Slim Pickins'

My mom is pulling together a bunch of stories about dating after 70. She is 86 now and has a lot of funny moments to write about. Like the guy Walter who picked her up for her date wearing a U-Haul uniform. Now to understand the humor in that, you'd have to know my mother. She grew up during the depression. In the midst of it, she was snatched up by her aunt and brought to Boston to live the rest of her young life. She took private voice lessons, attended the New England Conservatory of Music, went to poetry readings, went to college, and essentially lived a life of refinement from 14 onward.

When she decided to write these short stories, she had a hard time coming up with the title. I told her to call them Slim Pickins' because there were few guys in her age group from which to choose. She's decided to accept that fact and simply be happy alone. I think she still wants to have a 'significant other' but she is pragmatic. She can't take care of another man. She's done enough of that, first my dad when he was dying and then her third husband Don who slowly died from emphysema. She has done her share of care taking and is ready for someone to take care of her.

But her stories are funny and I hope we can get them published for a large audience to enjoy them. After all, with our population aging, they could be quite the hit!

Random ramblings about leaving winter behind

I am ready for winter to go and not just because I hate all the dead leaves that pile up in front of my front door, crusty, brown and congregating in the corner. My front entrance is covered in them. I get out the blower and watch them dance upwards and fly out to the yard. Then my husband comes home and asks why are all the leaves in the yard. Well, because. They look ugly on the front porch. I need to freshen up the front, it's a Fung Shui thing maybe. I want my little water feature and my wind chimes to have top billing, not those old brown ugly leaves. Plus, they just look messy.

Winter isn't bad here in Charlotte, but it's bad enough. We don't have snow piled up in front of the house in drifts of glistening white. I guess if we did, the snow would hide the dead leaves. But I grew up in New England where seven feet of snow on either side of the driveway seemed to be the norm. Growing up, I had enough shoveling to last me a lifetime and more. Here is how it would work. Our driveway was on an incline so the base was lower than the top near the garage. We would get out the shovels and push the snow downhill to the bottom of the driveway into the street. Some snows were light, fluffy and we actually had fun shoveling. But in New England we had a lot of heavy snows - those "noreasters" carry a lot of moisture. A noreaster blows in from the north Atlantic Ocean mixing with the cold from Canada creating heavy, wet snow that blankets the landscape and makes shoveling very difficult. Invariably as we would clear the driveway, the town's plows would come through and create small mountains blocking the driveway's entrance. Pushing that snow away to make a gateway into the driveway could prove more than difficult for a child's strength. I would get mad and curse at the snow plow - although never out loud. That language was not abided in our household. Many times I wanted to give the snow plow driver the finger but in a small town that would have gotten out quickly. So I'd push and grunt to get the heavy blocks off the driveway and turn around - no! The snow would still be falling and it would be time to shovel it all over again.

Yes, I'm ready to leave winter behind. But what is about the second of February that makes Americans faithfully look for a rodent's shadow. Each year I wonder why is it that we believe if a quirky little marmot sees its shadow in February in a little town in Pennsylvania, we will have more or less winter ahead of us? How does something like that get into our national psyche? What does it say about us as a people? Are we duped into believing something as silly as a rodent can predict the future? When did rodents become cute in our country that we create an annual holiday featuring them as the main star? I did some reading and discovered groundhog day started as a totally humorous folklore. I think someone was pulling someone's leg and it grabbed on like an urban myth. It is exactly six weeks until the first day of spring. "Therefore, if the groundhog saw his shadow on Groundhog Day there would be six more weeks of winter. If he didn't, there would be 42 more days of winter. In other words, the Groundhog Day tradition may have begun as a bit of folk humor," according to Don Yoder who wrote a book in 2003 called [well, what else?] Groundhog Day.

All silliness aside, I like to hope winter is behind us. On my way to class last night I noticed the plum blossoms are itching to burst forth. If the temperatures dip below freezing this week, spring will be short-lived. I like spring the best in Charlotte. Longer days, warmer temps and I can actually walk around without a coat. Maybe that is a big reason why I have such a disdain for winter. I hate wearing a lot of clothes. I like my uniform of tank tops and shorts that I normally wear from spring through fall instead of all these layers.

So we are another day closer to the first day of spring. I like it. Even if we celebrate with a goofy animal from a funny-sounding name in a northern state. Spring is on its way. Hurrah!

They believed it

I spent many hours on the telephone with girlfriends when I was a teenager. I'd sit on the floor in my mother's room leaning against her bed. We didn't have much to talk about, and many times we'd just eat snacks and watch tv together while on the phone. I'm not a big conversaltionalist, never have been.

One time I remember talking to my girlfriend Mary Anne on the phone one day when we were out of school due to a snow day. She and her sister were raised by a single mom who worked at the GE factory in the next town. Their house was quiet. In my house were six kids and two parents, an assortment of family pets and always someone's friend over. I always thought my personality was so different from my siblings that I must have been adopted. I was a quiet, introspective child, didn't talk much. My siblings are loud and boisterous and talk a lot.

So I was sitting on the floor with the phone in my ear and our conversation was dull as usual. It was snowing outside and cold and I was bored. I wanted to liven things up. I made a loud noise opening a drawer of my mother's bedside night stand. I gasped out loud. Mary Anne asked me what was wrong. I inhaled loudly. I told her I found some papers that looked important with my name on them. She asked me what they said. I told her something about blood type and something about adoption and something about sealed records. She completely believed me. The next day at lunch time in the cafeteria she told our other girlfriend that I had just discovered yesterday that I had been adopted. My other girlfriend didn't believe her. I told her I saw the paperwork and it had my blood type on it. Something about that made her believe. For the rest of that school year, my two girlfriends believed my lie. I expanded on it at odd times, told them I understood now why I was the only blonde in the family.

My mother tells everyone she named me after Mary, the mother of Jesus, because she wanted a girl so badly. I created a fantasy world where my mother adopted me out of fear she'd never have a girl. Once she did, she got pregnant with my sister. Why did I create such a bizarre story and expand on it over time? Maybe because I was the odd one out in the house. My siblings excelled and took first place in science fair exhibits, piano recitals, ice skating. They all had talents and outlets for those talents. I could sing, but my mother had been on the stage and sang opera so I couldn't compete there. I could ice skate but we couldn't afford lessons when I was growing up. I could play piano but taught myself and still have trouble with the bass notes because I never took lessons. Again, we could not afford lessons when I was growing up. But lessons were affordable for my younger siblings. And they got honors and praise for their efforts. That made me disappear even more.

The fact is the only paper I found in the drawer that day was a receipt from a drugstore. I was lying, or perhaps creating for myself another world in which I was the star rather than the one who blended into the background. Psychologists would probably have something to say about my desire for attention. But I did not attempt to get attention at home. It was best to keep quiet, stay out of trouble. But at school my girlfriends looked up to me as their leader, their star. This story seemed to lift me a little higher in their regard but I'm not really sure why.

The day before school ended for the summer, I told them I had made it all up. They didn't believe me. They thought I was lying.