Sunday Scribblings: Toys

In a Twitter conversation with my son last weekend,  I learned he had taken some time off from a horrendously busy and frustrating work week to drive to the mall and buy himself a new toy – an iPhone 3g.   His actions recalled similar jaunts to Toys R Us, back in the day when he was a fidgety toddler, and would become whiny and restless about 4:oo in the afternoon.  Some days, when I simply couldn’t bear to read the Scruffy the Tugboat one more time, or play another round of Candyland, we’d pile into the car and go shopping for a new toy.   Often, something as simple as a new Hot Wheels car would do the trick, and provide him with the impetus to come home and play happily on his own until dinner.

Of course, the older he got, the more sophisticated  expensive the toys became.  But thinking about the kinds of toys which drew his interest, even as far back as infancy, I can see the linear development of his later interests in life.  For as long as I can remember, he loved anything electronic, from the tv remote to the VCR (which he could program perfectly at age 2), or anything with wheels.  So it really came as no surprise that his lifelong passions are computers and automobiles. 

Reading Anne’s lovely meditation for this week’s Scribbleset me thinking about the toys I most loved, and the way they reflect my current interests.  Certainly one of my earliest favorites would not surprise anyone who knows me…a tiny toy piano, which I could sit and bang away at for hours. It was that little piano (which remains in my mother’s basement to this day) that convinced my parents I might really be serious about learning to play someday, and led them to invest in a Wurlizter console for my 6th birthday.  

I never cared much for dolls, particularly baby dolls, and I admit that infancy is not my favorite stage of child rearing. But I had the largest collection of stuffed animals among any of my friends.  I relished buying fashionable outfits for my many Barbie dolls (and I continue to like clothes shopping for myself as well), and spent hours making up complex family dramas for Barbie, Ken, Skipper, Midge…a real potboiler of a novelist at work there.

Easily the most disappointing toy I ever owned was the Easy Bake Oven my aunt purchased for me one Christmas.  I’m sure you can draw your own conclusions about my culinary proclivities.

As a child, my husband loved building models and taking things apart  to see how they worked (he’s an engineer).

My friend P. often talks about her son’s passion for building things with Lego’s and Lincoln Logs (he’s now Vice President of a huge construction company).   Her daughter, on the other hand, was prone to playing dress up and was known for her emotional and dramatic outbursts (she’s an actress). 

“The Child is father of the Man,” wrote William Wordsworth, and so our childhood toys may be more than simple playthings, but the precursors of lifelong interests and passions.

How about you?  What did you play with as a child?  What vestiges of your favorite toys are part of your life today?

for more Sunday Scribblings, go here

Sunday Scribblings (on Monday): Scary

“When I look out there it kind of seems like I’m in the suburbs,” my uncle said, peering out the front door of the home he’s lived in since 1953.   “Really, though, I don’t know where this is…”

He turned and shuffled back to his bedroom, crawling into the bed where he spends most of the days.  He rarely gets dressed now, a man who once shopped only at Brooks Brothers, buying three or four suits at a time to wear to work, and countless pinstriped shirts and khaki’s for “everyday” around the house.  My aunt, who once complained that he felt the need to use a clean towel for each of the two or three showers he often took per day, now nags him somewhat relentlessly until she manages to get him into the shower once or twice a week.

When my mother in law died last September, another victim of Alzheimer’s Disease, I had watched her decline for about eight years.  And now, I’m watching my uncle follow the exact same pattern.  

Can I say how much I despise this disease?  How angry it makes me that a person’s entire life is erased from their memory, that they can no longer recall their children, their home, their favorite color or song, can’t crave the taste of chocolate or coffee, can’t sing a tune or swing a golf club, write a check or a grocery list.  I want to stomp on Alzheimer’s Disease, I want to tear it into shreds and toss it into the ocean.  I want it eradicated from the face of the earth.

Most of all, I want it to leave my family the hell alone.

Am I scared of this disease? You bet, I’m scared.  Terrified would be more like it.  I have to remind myself not to get too smug, that just because no one in my direct blood line has it – not my parents or grandparents, nor any of their brothers or sisters – that doesn’t mean I’m immune.  It could strike me randomly, like a wayward bomb from some crazy fighter pilot in the sky.

And I’m petrified for my husband, who has developed every other health condition his mother had, right down to benign cysts on their right kidneys and identical parathyroid tumors on the same gland (which they both had surgically removed on the same day back in 2004).   Add to that the plethora of other risk factors he has – a long history of high blood pressure and high cholesterol,  recently diagnosed pre-diabetes, poor diet, a sedentary lifestyle – and I feel as if I might as well put him on the waiting list at Chestnut Village.  Does he listen to my warnings, or those of the myriad health professionals out there?

What do you think?  If he inherited anything at all  from his father, it was stubbornness.

But lately I’m feeling just as angry as I am fearful.  Where did this scourge of a disease come from, anyway?  Why all of a sudden are so many millions of people living their last years of life being stripped of their memory and intellect?  Is is something in the water? In food? In microwaves or cell phones? 

Somebody just tell me, so I can do something about it.

For of course, there’s the biggest fear of all.  This horrible disease causes it’s victims to lose complete control over their lives.  And for a control freak like me, what could be more fearsome?  A fate worse than death, indeed.

So yes, I’m scared.  But I’m also “stomp my foot” mad, and I don’t want to take this anymore. 

Let’s get to work on stem cell research.  Let’s support the efforts of the Alzheimer’s Association, and other organizations who are looking for cures.

Let’s insure that our children and grandchildren can forget all about Alzheimer’s Disease, and needn’t be afraid of it at all.

for Sunday Scribblings

Sunday Scribblings – Art

“It does no good to wire the world if you short circuit the spirit…”

Voices raised in song…rays of sunlight beaming through stained glass windows…the gentle undulations of a silk scarf draped round a woman’s shoulder…art in many forms surrounded me this afternoon as I sat in a corner pew soaking up the unbelievable sounds of a college choir. 

Music feeds my soul –  especially choral music, because it combines the two art forms I love most dearly, it juxtaposes music and language together in a complete artistic thought.  Today’s young musicians, The St. Olaf College Choir, exemplified the epitome of choral singing, their purity of tone and expression oozing directly from their souls.  The great Anton Armstrong, their conductor, spoke of music being an expression of their connection to God and a “dynamic means of grace.”

Art is grace, isn’t it?  For those who make it and those who partake of its essence.  Yes, the world depends on science and technology, depends on wires and engines.  But the soul depends on art- on the beauty of sound and melody, of colors of paint on a canvas, the perfect sentence in black and white on the page.   Art is what connects us to the spirit, to a mystical place of wonder where pain and suffering are mitigated, where we connect with our own deeper humanity.   

What good is all the wizardry of the modern world if the  soul is dark and bare? If only everyone could find an artistic spark with which to ignite their spirit,  then what a difference in the wiring of our whole world!

for Sunday Scribblings

 

Sunday Scribblings-Vision

“I can see clearly now, the rain has gone,

I can see all obstacles in my way

Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind

Gonna be a bright, sunshiny day.”

 

Funny how sometimes a tune will pop into your mind, and, once there, refuse to leave.  When I read this week’s Sunday Scribblings prompt, these lyrics immediately came to mind, and now I wish I had an escape key for the microprocessor in my brain.

Nevertheless, they’re appropriate for the topic.  After all, ”I can see clearly now…”seems the perfect seque to a reflection on the word “vision.” 

Unfortunately, it’s the second line of the song that seems to dominate my thoughts. 

“I can see all obstacles in my way.“  I wish I were more of a visionary, but after 50 plus years on the planet, I seem stuck in my overly pragmatic (bordering on pessimistic) outlook.  Everywhere I look these days, in the wide world and in my own little backyard , I see obstacles – monetary, political, environmental, medical. Many of my own dreams are on hold because of the faltering economy and shaky socio political status.  Health concerns loom in my family right now, from the oldest members on down to the youngest.   All of life’s obstacles are clearly visible, and they’ve gathered overhead in the shape of some pretty formidable clouds.

At first it seems that phrase is a little out of place in the general “sunshininess” of that song, doesn’t it?  I mean, if you can see all the obstacles in your way, how the heck can it be a bright sunshiny day?

Our minister’s sermon this morning was quite appropriate to my thoughts today.  Entitled “Weeds in the Garden” he talked about the pervasive nature of “weeds” in our lives – those obstacles that spring up totally unbidden, flourish despite our efforts, and threaten to destroy the vision we have for our lives.  How do you fight these invaders? he wonders. 

Three things…a vision, a plan, and committment.  Have a clear picture in your mind of what you want your garden to be, make a plan to achieve it, and committ yourself to whatever it takes to keep the weeds out.  Of course, if you have a spiritual life, then God (or your higher power) becomes the guiding principle in your life’s plan, as well as in the means of bringing it to fruition.

Having a vision seems to be the key.  If you can dream it, you can do it, as the saying goes.  I struggle with that  – not the dream part, because I have those in abundance.  But in finding a means to make them come true.  And a big part of that is not allowing those inevitable obstacles to blind you to the brightness of your vision, and in allowing the universe to do its part in making the dreams come true.

So, I continue to work toward “openess to possibility,” toward looking for silver linings of opportunity peeking out from beneath those obstacles of clouds.  In the midst of economoic turmoil, I’m grateful everyone in my family has good jobs; amidst concerns about health, I’m reassured that hopeful solutions exist; despite a loss of focus among our current leaders, I have faith that new leaders will emerge to provide inspiration for change.

And so, maybe it will be a “bright, sunshiny day.”

  

 

Sunday Scribblings-Telephone

She was on the phone when it happened.  I was playing on the floor in the living room, so I could see her standing in the archway between the dining room and kitchen, the dark corner where the telephone sat on its narrow wooden table. 

I wasn’t listening to her conversation, being wholly absorbed in lining up a series of Matchbox cars on the ramp of my Fisher Price service station.  I can still hear the skittery sound their tiny wheels made on the hard plastic ramp, like dry leaves blowing across the pavement on a fall day.  The pleasant tone of her voice droned in my ear, probably an ordinary conversation with one of my aunts, whom she talked with daily. From the corner of my eye the hem of her pale blue house dress was visible, its wide circle skirt hanging in gentle folds just above her ankles.

It was the skirt that first caught my attention, for it puddled across the hardwood floor when she fell creating a pale lake on the dark wood.  I turned my head just in time to see my mother’s body crumple to the floor, a dull thud the only sound she made.  The heavy black telephone receiver fell from her hand as she went down, taking the rest of the telephone clattering to the ground behind it.

Within seconds my grandmother came tearing through the kitchen door – I”m sure she was screaming, because she screamed at everything anyway, and the sight of her only daughter lying unconscious on the floor would certainly have set off paroxysms of alarm.  But I didn’t hear her – I was frozen, transfixed by the sight of my mother so still and motionless on the floor, one arm awkwardly folded beneath her back, the other outstretched, reaching toward me.  The next sound I remember was the relentless cry of ambulance sirens, racing toward our house.  Huddled behind the brown sofa, I stared wide-eyed as paramedics burst through the front door, quickly buckled my mother’s still form onto the stretcher, and rushed her into the ambulance.  As they sped down the road, sirens screaming away into the distance, I became aware of the telephone, ominously droning one long penetrating tone into the empty room.

In medicine we talk about sequela, a pathological condition resulting from an injury, disease, or attack.  Not surprisingly, there were a number of sequela resulting from my mother’s allergic reaction to penicillin, back on that spring day in 1959.   For her, it spawned a life long fear of taking medicine – even though she had been taking penicillin all her life,  that one dose nearly killed her.   For me, a frightened three year old who watched her mother collapse instantly in front of her eyes, and then be rushed to the hospital where she would remain for nearly two weeks, it triggered an obssessive need to be close to her every moment, so great was my fear that something would happen to her.

Oh, and one more sequela from this event – I despise telephones. 

for more telephone tales, go here

Sunday Scribblings-Fearless

Fear. Less.

Disconnecting the word is the only way I can make sense of this week’s prompt.  Because I must admit to you that I’m consumed with fear these days.  And writing/reading all the platitudes about conquering your fears and taking risks and diving in with both feet will fall on deaf ears here at the Byline.

Rough words from me, I know.  Writing is usually the way I work myself out of fears, my method of rising above the things that frighten me.  But I’ve sunken into a fear-full pit lately, and not even words (my weapon of choice for all life’s dilemmas) can offer me the leg up I need to pull out.

“At the risk of sounding like an old fogey,” my mother (who just turned 81 but prides herself on “thinking young”) said the other day as we were driving to the market, “I do believe the world has gotten itself into the worst mess I’ve ever seen.”

Well, I do believe she’s right.  Countless businesses closing every day, homes and companies being lost to foreclosure right and left, while prices for necessary consumer goods continue to rise exponentially.  Health care costs soaring, making even basic medical treatment unaffordable.  People living longer and longer, but with deteriorating quality of life, spending their life savings to be warehoused in institutions.  And war, dragging on forever, costing young men and women their lives, and costing this country trillions of dollars.

It’s a mess.

And it makes me fear full.

So, on this second Sunday in April when winter seems to have returned once again, snow flurries falling from leaden grey skies, I would dearly love to fear less.  I want to stop being afraid about the falling equity in my home(s), the rising prices at the gas pump, grocery, and drug store.  I want to stop being afraid about growing older, about dementia and cancer and bone disease.  I want to stop being afraid this war will not only continue, but will escalate into additional conflict.

I want find a way to fear less. 

How about you?

 

for Sunday Scribblings

 

 

 

Sunday Scribblings-Photograph

It’s really a slide – remember those?  That’s what my dad took, back in the 50’s when I was very little,  and he had a huge, boxy brown camera with a flash attachment as big as a lampshade.  Not only did the bulbs flash in your face when you least expected it, they made a sharp Pop! sound, their bright little lives over in an instant.  Oh, was I terrifed of that thing!  Each one of my bithday parties was completely spoiled by the knowledge that he was prowling around with his camera and its horrible flash attachment, trying to take my picture.

But I digress. 

It’s the photograph (or slide) I’m here to recall for you, and since I have no idea where the actual item has ended up, recall it I must.  Actually, I believe it’s quite well etched in my memory, for it’s the image of myself as a child that most describes the essence of me.

I’m probably two at most, and I’m standing at our back gate – the proverbial white picket fence type.  My back is to the camera, my little legs are bare underneath the short dress I’m wearing.  The neat bow at my waist has started to come undone, and hangs slightly askew.  I’ve probably been swinging on my swingset -my most favorite outdoor activity at that age.

So there I am, standing at the gate, reaching on tiptoe as far as I can reach, one hand on the latch about to lift it and make my escape to -freedom!  And the camera catches me just as I look over my shoulder, a pleased and rather wicked little grin on my face, to see if anyone is watching.

Oh, you can be sure I was stopped before I got out.  I was watched mighty carefully in those days – after all, an only child whose mother (and grandparents) were in the house 24-7 was in no danger of having too much freedom, believe me.

But that image still haunts me.  It recalls the feeling of being trapped, of not being allowed out of the safe confines of my home, of being cloistered behind the gate. 

At the same time, it summons that buring desire to throw the gate wide and burst out at full throttle, like a race horse off the gun.

If I could find that photograph, I’d have it enlarged into a huge poster I could hang on the wall, a poster that would remind me I’m all grown up now, and I can open the gate if I want to.

There’s no one to stop me anymore.

 

go here to see more photographs

 

Sunday Scribblings-Out of This World

He has a rather goofy grin, don’t you think?  The man in the moon, I mean.  Kind of slack jawed and spacey (sorry, punning again), similar to a circus clown or someone who’s just a bit deranged.

As a child, I often stared up at him, his friendly face beaming down during those summer nights we sat on our front porch, me in my nightgown with a blanket wrapped round my shoulders to ward off the evening chill.  It was a summer time ritual in my family, the porch sitting thing.  I looked forward to it with a great sense of anticipation, for even though I was called in at dusk (along with the rest of my neighborhood playmates), while they were sent to their dark and lonely bedrooms I was allowed to stay up with the grownups and sit on the front porch.

And watch the man in the moon.

What was he doing up there? I wondered.  Was his smiling face beckoning me to come up and visit?  After all, Neil Armstrong had recently walked around there – I had seen him with my own eyes on the blurry black and white TV screen, bobbing about like a puffy marshmallow floating atop a cocoa mug.  And I would squinch my eyes very tightly, hoping I might be able to see a glimpse of that American flag he planted so proudly amongst the rocks.

No flag.  Just that silly smiling man in the moon face.

But Walter Cronkite had suggested that one day space travel might be commonplace,  sometime far, far into the future – perhaps in the year 2000! – people would rocket around to stratospheric space stations in much the same way they already flew from coast to coast.  I stared deeply into the night sky, wondering if I might spy one of those bubble topped sky vehicles like George Jetson drove, whizzing between the stars.

No space cars.  Just myriads of twinkling, starry lights.

Meanwhile my eyes would grow heavy lidded and tired as I burrowed deeper into my blanket, my head would wobble a bit as I struggled to keep it upright on my neck.  The voices of my mother and grandmother became remote and fuzzy – “I just never did see the likes of it,” my grandmother would say, her soft Southern drawl cadenced like a lullaby, “all those children of hers runnin’ round nearly nekkid…”

Oh, she’s talking about the O’Reilly’s I thought sleepily, whose seven children were allowed to wear their bathing suits all day long during the summer.

I wonder if you had to wear clothes on the moon? I might think, sneaking one last peek at the man in the moon. 

Maybe that’s why he had such a goofy grin on his face.

for more writing that’s out of this world, go here

Sunday Scribblings-Sleep

“hush-a-bye, don’t you cry, go to sleepy little baby…”

Sleep is my nemesis.  Just ask my mother – the stories of my sleeping -or non sleeping- habits as an infant are notorious in our family.

“There I’d be,” my mother will say, “lying in bed with you there beside me, and I’d finally doze off because I was just so tired, but then I’d wake up and you’d be staring at me with those big dark eyes, wide awake and looking all excited.”

Yep, that’s me. 

There’s always so many more interesting things to do besides sleep.  Books to read, music to listen to and to play, stories to write, friends to visit, movies to see, walks and bike rides to take, food to cook…the possibilities in life are endless.  Why waste time sleeping, when all the world lies before you?

Most children defy bedtime, and my parents wisely never forced me to bed early.  They trusted me to get the sleep I needed, and apparently I did, for I grew to be a normal, healthy young woman.  Now my mother claims I didn’t like sleeping because I was “bright” and “didn’t want to miss a minute of anything going on.”

Actually, she’s probably right – at least the part about not wanting to miss things.  Because the older I get, the less I like to sleep.  After all, there’s only so much time in this one wonderful life, and now that I’m into the second half of my century, who knows how much of it I have left. 

So why waste it sleeping?

click here for more thoughts about sleeping

 

Sunday Scribblings-Miscellaneous

Helloooo….anybody out there?

Oh, there you are! How kind of you to stick around after I’ve rudely ignored you all for the entire week. I do apologize for neglecting this space – in all honesty, I’ve been a bit consumed with that new blog of mine. You know how it is with fresh toys, they’re new and exciting, and ever so much fun. That’s how it is with Bookstack, and if you haven’t been there yet, you should go! Really, you should.

But I promised myself I would not neglect the Byline. If Bookstack is my place to blog about all things bookish, well the Byline is for blogging about…well, everything else! All the miscellaneous and sundry things that happen in an American woman’s Life in General. So thanks Sunday Scribblings, for giving my muse a well needed push in the proper direction.

A couple of my regular blog buddies have written about their efforts to incorporate exercise into their lives, and so I’ve been thinking a bit about “healthy lifestyles.” We’re on a bit of a health makeover at our house these days too, instigated largely by elevated cholesterol levels (both of us) and a recent diagnosis of pre-diabetes (just Jim).

I’ve had varying degrees of success with weight loss programs. Probably my most successful initiative was just after my son’s birth, when I lost about 45 pounds, and then managed to drop an additional 15 over the next several years. But after midlife, I’ve found weight is much harder to lose. I get frustrated very easily at the lack of progress.

So, I’m approaching this a different way, trying to adopt better eating habits and an exercise program as part of an overall plan to improve general health and well being. (And who knows, perhaps I can trick my body into thinking I really don’t care if it tones up or not.)

Yesterday morning, I went walking, and it felt wonderful! The air was cool and crisp, I was all alone so I could clip along at a good pace, swinging my arms merrily, watching the herons tiptoe around the edge of the ponds. Great stuff!

Along my route, I pass the community’s fitness center, where stationary bikes and treadmills are arranged around the perimeter of a large bay window overlooking the main lake, providing a view of the sparkling water as you pedal or trudge away. From the corner of my eye, I can see legs busily pumping, arms swinging, wires from headphones trailing along in rhythm.

I’ve been one of those people on occasion. But you know, I sometimes think about the absurdity of the whole concept of “working out.” Perhaps it’s because I’m only one generation removed from farmer’s, people who walked miles every day in the regular course of their daily life, who got plenty of upper body toning in scything and hoeing, and did their riding on horseback, actually going somewhere in the process. How they would stare in disbelief, my grandfathers, at these automatons in their shiny workout clothes!

And I think the only way an “exercise program” can work for me is if it comes naturally, is almost intrinsic, like walking or dancing. Bike riding is great, because it involves forward movement, and I like that-gives me the sensation that I’m doing a lot more than I really am. I have trouble with exercise equipment that just “stands still.” I guess I’m not a stationary kind of girl.

I hope to keep up my walking and biking, although it’s much more difficult in the frozen waste wonderland-that is Michigan in winter. Harder yet is keeping my husband on a lean diet. Who would have believed a grown man could react so childishly to mashed potatoes and Oreo cookies (or more precisely, the lack thereof).

There, I think I’ve effectively taken a broom to the stray thoughts that have been circling in my mind, and gathered them up into a neat little pile for you to read.

Hope you enjoyed the miscellaney!