Trick or Treat “Grandmas are moms with lots of frosting.” – author unknown I cough with late October allergies, and Ella holds her ears. My sensitive granddaughter hurts when I do. Empathy lives in her being. So, I choose to play, even as I wheeze. And beg a second puff of inhaler to work. Now. “I will be okay,” I say “My medicine is power, just like your smile.“ And the silent music of clear breath returns to my lungs. “Halloween magic,” she says, handing me a reusable grocery bag, a plastic box of snacks in her lap. “What’s your costume?” she asks. “I am an apple,” I answer. “A squirrel took a bite out of me.“ “Got any apple bandages?“ She giggles and waits for my next pretend character. I arrive as a mouse and ask if she has any cats? Another smile as I peek inside her pretend home. “What’s your costume?” her eager voice asks as I become a fish with three eyes, whose third orb roams in every direction. I complain. “This middle eye. It won’t behave.”
Then, as a cod, I ask Ella if she wants to share a worm. “It hasn’t been dead long.” “Ooh” is a sufficient response. My imaginative turn entertains too well. She lets me remain permanent trick-or-treater. And my six-foot circled path along our living room rug mimics a triathlon. I want to rest, stare at nothing, disappear into self-imposed limbo. But Ella has had two open-heart surgeries. She carries a tripled twenty-first chromosome. Down syndrome matches an up personality.
It has sharpened her awareness of struggle, life’s balance at a cost. Ella hugs the box of treats. She is ready for another round.
Another imaginary personality appears, a spider with nine legs. I ask for a Halloween treat. “Anything is fine. I have nine appendages to open it.“
A new store just north of town, designed for writers, opened up this week. The size rivals IKEA, with rooms filled with every imaginable writing tool and solution, definitely at least a day trip. I needed to tie-up two subplots that had gotten kind of knotted. So, I set out to explore Writers Ultimate Solution.
The first floor opens to grammar, punctuation, anything basic. The second caters to all aspects of non-fiction: science, nature, current affairs, blog advice, and cooking. It holds a full-service cafeteria. Just to make a writer feel at home, a dietician sits next to the cashier and hands out rejection slips to those folk whose trays lack adequate nutrition.
The third floor is the poet’s friend. In fact, on the day I arrived, WUS had a three-metaphors-for-the-price-of-two sale, going on. Unfortunately, as it often is with sale items, two lines would fit, but add the third and it sounded like something out of a 1960s Beatnik coffee house. I guess I could use the lines in three different poems, but I didn’t want the cashier to think I was on drugs.
The fourth floor, the most crowded, specialized in fiction, just the section I wanted. It also looked and felt more like a circus. Clowns somersaulted from room to room. The Red Pony dropped something of himself in the hallway. And Curious George kept trying to lead me to the children’s section. “Another day. Another day,” I told him. Guess there’s a good reason why he has been around since the 1940’s. Signs in every room read: The fiction writer’s job is to entertain. The top level of WUS has been designed to stimulate your creativity. Instead, I got a migraine.
A door at the end of one hallway read: Excuses. By this time, I thought it didn’t seem like such a bad idea. Fortunately, I looked inside before I took a step. A cold breeze provided the first hint; there was no inside. It led to a mud pit at least six feet below.
“Our boss’s little joke,” an employee said when I backed into Moby Dick, not Ahab, the book’s main character. I was caught by the whale.
I ended up buying three ballpoint pens, and a half dozen semi-colons that will only apply themselves in the best-suited places—and I got them at a double-markdown price. Interesting that items were marked down so soon after opening. Hope that’s not a bad sign. Maybe it’s a good thing I didn’t grab one of the dollar-mystery bags, probably full of adverbs. My story still sounds like it was written inside a blender. Guess I need more than a superstore.
“One of the hardest jobs in this world is to be able to preserve the innocent face of our childhood in our adulthood as well!” ― Mehmet Murat ildan
“Let’s play in my room,” my four-year-old granddaughter says.
I’m accepted as another kid. A genuine compliment. My daughter-in-law smiles. Very few preschoolers have a playmate named Grandma.
I take the observation seat on the floor as our granddaughter begins a run with various dolls through the girls’ dollhouse. She includes a monster at least twice the size of several Barbies. Monster is given the part because her hair is twice her size. Something like a fuzzy hot-air balloon the color of a faded blue dishcloth.
“Ahhhhhhh!” our little girl yells. I suspect the drama is for my benefit.
I watch as each doll slides through the window. Enthusiasm complete.
I grab one of the team from the stack. It is wearing a short, semi-existent top. No pants.
“Uh, I think this Barbie needs some pants.”
“Oh, it’s okay she just wears a butt.” My playmate’s voice sounds matter-of-fact as she finds a fresh antagonist for her play. A rabbit taking on the role of a skunk. Is the show for me or is this a standard activity?
I face fairy tales with a twist.
“What’s wrong with your hands, Grandma?” my playmate asks as she studies the smooth back of her hands.
“Not a thing, sweetheart. It’s a thing called age.”
Oh, well! I guess I didn’t escape reality as thoroughly as I thought.
All creative people want to do the unexpected. Hedy Lamarr.
Bailey, an elderly leprechaun, found a magical four-leaf clover wedged under a pot of gold that belonged to his family.
“Hmmn,” he said to his wife Ginger. “Where did this come from? What should we do with it?”
“Let’s check out the rainbow on the other side of the house. See what we can find when we follow it. Go someplace new and different. This may be some real fun.”
“Okay. As long as we don’t need to go to a Walmart in Ohio, I’m with you.”
Magic works in strange ways. The trip took minutes.
“We are at a Walmart outside Cincinnati! Ohio, my dear, Bailey. How in tune can you be? Whether you want to be or not.”
They landed invisibly and a man with a HELP sign found the magical clover. He tried to pull off a leaf. Instead, it mysteriously shaved his beard. He tried again and he was instantly bathed. One more pull, and his clothes were changed and clean. By the fourth try his heart was healed and he remembered who he was, how he had lost his job and gradually everything he owned.
“I’m going to wake up any minute,” he said, trembling.
Bailey approached him and magically calmed the man long enough for him to put aside his sign and step to the other side of the building. However, the man was still convinced he was dreaming.
“Jack! Jack Harris, is that you?” Another man called as he approached the store. “I haven’t seen you in a coon’s age. You won’t believe this, but I need an accountant. Yesterday. Got a moment?”
The man held out his hand. Jack took it.
Bailey smiled. Ginger linked her arm to his. “Our job is almost completed,” she said. “Well, we’re going to need to explain magic to our Jack first. Then do another resuscitation. It’s a good thing CPR is included in our training. It doesn’t begin and end on St. Patrick’s Day. Do we need any ordinary fare at Walmart before returning to Ireland?”
When we are children we welcome thinking of the future. This innocence leaves us free to enjoy ourselves as few adults can. The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind. Patrick Rothfuss
Nope, No Wedding Yet
The rocky ground at the bottom of the street of my grade school home became my mini-mountain, perfect for climbing. It was hidden behind enough trees to be its own paradise, a place for a kid to climb and become king of the world. When I was nine years old I saw nothing peculiar about a strawberry-blond girl king.
The great play arena eventually disappeared as developers plowed through. But in the mid 1950’s Joe and I claimed the world. He was my self-proclaimed boyfriend. In fourth grade I hadn’t graduated from paper dolls and mud pies, so the notion of a white veil followed by a life in the kitchen sounded as appealing as living with a perpetual mop. I was allergic to homework, much less life responsibilities. Imagination was more appealing.
Joe wasn’t like the other guys in my class. We played as equals. I knew his family wasn’t tidy. I didn’t care. Joe didn’t need the meaner boys around him to be okay. He wasn’t the tallest and certainly not the most popular kid. Mom had never met him. That alone was good enough for me. Outside, Joe and I could always be free. From homework or chores. From real life. We challenged an open space where the air moved freely around our imaginations. And the blue sky was on our side.
“Hey,” he said one day. I saw a kind of shy smile in his brown eyes that didn’t match the same dirty blue jeans he wore all the time, and he planted a kiss right smack on my lips.
I thought, oh yuck, but didn’t want to hurt his feelings. Joe wore a kindness that transcended grime. You had to face foreign lands on a fun rock to see past the classroom to understand Joe. We never talked about school stuff. Only the next jaunt into places we created.
“I’ve got a special surprise for you since your birthday is coming up,” he said. “Come to my house.”
We cut through two yards and landed on his street in something like three eyeblinks.
“Hey, Mom!” he called. “Where’s the engagement ring I found? I am going to give it to Mary Therese.”
Mary Therese! My at-school name. I groaned. Oh no. Formal talk. Sounded like a nun. Not me. I’d never hit anyone with a ruler in my life. And I would be off balance with a rosary that big at my waist. A wedding would spoil that lifestyle but neither wife nor sisterhood sounded appealing. And call me Terry, my at-home name.
How could I say something about how I thought girls had to at least have boobs before marriage without sounding personal? Joe’s mom wasn’t mine. The question would need to wait.
“Oh Joe, I’m sorry,” his mother said, not sounding sorry at all. “That ring got accidentally flushed down the toilet.”
Joe groaned. Now that I didn’t need to worry about a commitment, gratitude filled every cell of my tiny being. Who needs a ten-year engagement? Or worse, a lost recess for a wedding ceremony? Yet somehow Joe quickly recovered.
Our relationship ended long before puberty. As time passed, I hoped Joe found someone. Later. Much later. Long after the septic system absorbed my first engagement ring. I always wondered whether it had been born in a box of Cracker Jacks or found on a west-side sidewalk.
At least now if someone asks if I ever broke someone’s heart I can say, “No. The ordinary toilet took care of that for me.”
"I think the next best thing to solving a problem is finding some humor in it." –Frank A. Clark
My first attempt at writing a limerick (A rhyme with a rhythm AABBA) The critics who know everything are like birds who fly with one wing. As they drop from the sky without knowing why that’s when other folk hear what they sing.
They say the universe is expanding. That should help with the traffic. (Steven Wright)
I wonder how many drivers have made road trips—without wondering what the…heck is that guy doing? One driver is traveling at NASCAR speed and another is moving twenty miles an hour in a fifty-plus zone.
When my younger son was about kindergarten age I turned onto a narrow road behind a woman, obviously elderly. Her shoulders sloped, and her head leaned over the steering wheel. She drove the center yellow line as if she were failing a sobriety test in slow motion.
When I reacted, my youngster responded, “Oh Mom, maybe she just has old-timer’s disease.
I don’t recall how I got around her, or when she turned onto another road. My son’s innocence, however, stays with me.
His simplicity didn’t nullify the lady as a roadway threat. It did help me get through the moment.
Years later, my middle granddaughter was in the car when a driver cut me off with half a foot to spare.
I gasped, but my granddaughter saved the moment again.
“Grandma, is that what’s called a jackass?”
“Bad driver,” I answered.
Unfortunately, not every accident is an almost. Signs above the highway note the statistics.
Today I am driving in the rain. Someone, male or female—it doesn’t matter—passes me on the left over the center line, misses an oncoming car by about a foot, and then repeats the favor with the next car.
Peace, I think. Not in pieces. Someday. Somehow.
(The above is an edited blog from five years ago.)
A neologism is a created word. The following are cooking terms developed from writing while cooking, generally not a meal worth repeating.
speeel-over: a spill in the oven caught by the smoke alarm. The number of e’s is contingent upon the size of the spill and the amount of time it takes to get the smoke out of the kitchen.
eggsplodor: eggs boiled until all water is evaporated and they explode, generally onto the ceiling and walls. The name is suggested by both sound and scent.
charcolate chip cookies: This one could be self-explanatory. Degrees range from ridge-only-dark to even-the-dog-won’t-sniff-it.
unrestirable sauce/gravy: any liquid kept on a stove long enough that a black, sticky residue develops on the bottom. If it takes longer than a week of soaking and more than two steel wool pads to clean the pot, it becomes compaste because of its similarity to compost and its amazing glue-like capabilities.
nuke-a-tray: a frozen microwave dinner, the only alternative if all five scenarios occur on the same day.
“The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found.” ― Calvin Trillin
A neologism is created language, part of one word attached to part of another. Words like obscene and horrid didn’t exist until Shakespeare put them together. Click the link to get a fuller story. I don’t know what sixteenth-century word parts created the new concepts. My grandchildren may think I am that old, but my birth certificate proves I arrived a few centuries later.
A neologism offers a perfect place for humor. The stage I chose for this entry is the kitchen. Since the process of word blending has been happening for centuries, I encourage readers to suggest a few. Who knows? Maybe in a dozen years, your new expression may become a favorite expression.
Speeelover: an oven spill caught by the smoke alarm. The number of E’s is contingent upon the size of the damage and the amount of time it takes to get the smoke out of the house.
Eggsploder: eggs boiled until all water is evaporated and the eggs explode onto the ceiling and walls.
Charcolit chip cookies: This one is self-explanatory. Degrees range from a scrapable black bottom tray to even the dog escaping the scene.
Unrestirable pudding: A dessert boiled on high heat with a black, sticky residue at the bottom.
Compaste: unrestirable pudding that has soaked for more than a week and resists more than two steel wool pads. The name comes from its similarity to compost and its exceptional glue-like capabilities.
Nukatray: a frozen microwave dinner. This is the only alternative when the above scenarios occur on the same day.
terrypetersen 