Santa-monious

Google anything in images and the bizarre and unrelated will appear somewhere on the page. Like a tee-shirt espousing a person’s stand on a controversial subject. The gist of which was “I did this so you, being sanctimonious, can continue to do that.”

A pot calling a kettle black made even more amusing by the fact that sanctimonious was mis-spelled. It’s just a tee-shirt, not a tattoo. Still, if you’re going to wear an insult (hypocrisy aside), a typo in the very word you want to punch someone with is not going to land. 

Santimonious was the word used. I thought it was funny so I told Rob. But when I said the word out loud it sounded like santamonious. And I thought, hey I like that. I must add that to my vocabulary.

Definition of santamonious: generous gift giving at Christmas.  Used in a sentence: I never knew anyone as santamonious as my sister. There’s no room for any more gifts under her tree.

Aging

The horizon has a soft yellow glow that reminds me of my first time at a planetarium. The fake sky dome transformed from a soft glow to an amazing starry blue-black sky in minutes. 
The neighbor’s palm trees need trimming. The lower branches have lost their green and are sadly drooping. Age caught up with them. The setting sun brightens the now beige fronds into a subtle golden hue. A gentle breeze moves all the branches, but the beige ones hitting against one another create a soft enjoyable tympanic rhythm. A golden glow and a quiet drumbeat – aging has its moments.

Desert Landscape

We had a stray visitor this morning.  Not the first time.  We have a big fluffy calico who wanders around now and then.  The first time I saw her, she was traipsing around on the half column outside and knocked out one of the bricks.  It spooked the both of us.  She confuses our front patch of lawn for a litter box occasionally.

There are bully dogs that show up, sniff around and run off into the street, goofy and invincible.  They sometimes mistake our little lawn for facilities as well.

Then there was Snickers –the name on his blue metal tag.   He was tiny and carefree.  Ran right up to Rob while he was working in the yard.  Rob opened the front door to come in, get his phone and call the dog’s owner.  Snickers saw the open door as an invitation.  He flew in, wagging his tail and darted straight to the kitchen and our dog’s water bowl.

Next there were two tiny poodles.  Leslie found them in the front yard when she pulled up.  She brought them around the back where they’d be fenced in and safe and then called their owner who had to leave work to come and retrieve them.

There were a few more but today’s visitor was neither canine nor feline.  She was, in fact, a woman with a hand drawn map on white lined paper.  She wandered into our back yard through the side gate and all the way around to the gate by the pool.  Rob saw her and headed toward the glass sliding door in the back to see who she was and what she wanted. She turned and saw him.  With a look of fright and confusion, she yelled “sorry, sorry!” and walked briskly back to the front of the house.  Rob went out to see if she needed help and she started crying.  She kept sobbing “sorry, sorry!” 

She knew very little English, but she did have a cell phone.  Rob helped her call her friend who was right around the corner looking for her.  Ten seconds later, relieved and reunited, off they went.

I have to admit that woman was pretty brave.  I remember thinking when I first moved here that I wasn’t going for any walks around the neighborhood.  I’d never find my house.  I could just stop and ask someone.  Umm, yes, it’s beige with a reddish roof.  The front has a little patch of grass, some rocks and a few cacti. And oh, um, it has a cinderblock wall around the back. 

I could of course use my cell phone to call Rob, but I’d have to say I’m right in front of a beige house with a reddish roof, a little patch of grass in the front with some rocks, and a few cacti. Oh, and there’s a cinderblock wall around the back.

Even with a hand drawn map on white lined paper, it’s easy to lose your bearings in this desert landscape.

Some Good Old Days

I didn’t know until recently just how frugal my grandfather was. I never felt or noticed he was that way. But when I was born, he was married to a woman I regarded as my grandmother. She took good care of us and bought us nice things when we visited. In my grandfather’s defense, he grew up extremely poor.

Still, I’m surprised to learn of his reluctance to “waste money on little luxuries” when my mother was young.

My mom and I were talking about birthdays, and she said “I don’t think people thought that much about birthdays when I was a kid. At least me and Jack never had a birthday party. I think Aunt Anna made cakes for birthdays, but she made a cake every Sunday. My grandfather used to kill a chicken every Sunday. Aunt Anna cleaned it, cooked it and because the oven was hot, she made a cake. Not a fancy cake – just a one pan one. I tried to make a cake when I was about ten. There was a cookbook in the house – my mother’s. I looked through it and thought I can do this. I got all the ingredients, mixed them up, and popped it in the oven, and the oven wasn’t hot enough, so it didn’t bake. It was awful.”

I said, “That’s not your fault. The oven was no good.”

“No”, she protested, “We had a great oven.”

“Well why wasn’t it hot enough?” I asked.

“You had to use a lot of coal, and get it just right.” she said, “It was hard work. That’s why Anna baked a cake every Sunday. Since the oven was hot enough to cook a chicken, she didn’t want to waste the amount of coal and effort she put into it. My father never baked a cake. He baked bread – concrete. You know, I told you about it before.”

“Well, at least you had family close by. You could go next door and get cake from Aunt Anna on Sundays.” I replied.

She said, “Yes, she always gave me and Jack a little piece. Also, early on Sunday mornings, Jack and I would run down to Aunt Agnes’s. They got a paper delivered and she let us read the comics.”

“The funny papes.” I said, using my grandfather’s vernacular. I understood why he didn’t get the paper. He couldn’t read English.

She added, “Aunt Agnes had a phone too. There were a couple of people I gave her number to in case they wanted to call me. If I got a phone call, I’d run down there. My friends always waited.”

“How did you know there was a phone call for you a block away?” I asked. “She had kids. One of them would run over and tell me. We didn’t have a phone because my father didn’t have anyone to call. You know lots of people didn’t have phones back then. Because if you wanted to talk to your neighbor, you just yelled over to them.” she said. “When Alice married my father, she bought a phone and a refrigerator.” she continued.

“You didn’t have a refrigerator? What did you have, an icebox?” I asked.

She replied, “Yes, we had an icebox but no ice.”

“What?!” no ice?” I was shocked.

“My father wouldn’t buy ice. We put food in there but none of it was cold. I think Jack stored a couple of his comic books in there.” she replied.

“Oh, so it was a cabinet.” I said, and then asked, “He didn’t even buy ice in the summer?”

“No, but in the winter, if we had anything we wanted to keep cold, like jello, we put it in the living room. The living room had French doors and we could close it off. It was as cold in there as it was outside. I’m sometimes surprised we survived.” she said, laughing.

What Would You Pick?

The younger you are, the slower time passes. Then, when you’re my age, the days fly by like the rapid release of calendar pages in old movies. 

I only remember one Christmas from before the age of five. But it starts with an earlier memory. Was it a month before? Two, three months? At that age, it seemed to me a long span of time.

I was running through the kitchen to smash through the back door as I did every day to go play with my friends. My mother was sitting at the kitchen table flipping through a magazine and promptly stopped me before I hit the door.

“Come here for a minute,” she said, “I want you to look at something.” The magazine was open on the table and spread across the two open pages were toys of every kind. She asked, “If you could have anything here, what would you pick?”

I glanced at the pages and chose a monkey holding a banana, with a yellow vest, black legs, red suspenders, and white sneakers. And I ran off again, thinking nothing of it. Just a fun little game of “what would you pick?”

As I said, I don’t know how long it was between that incident and Christmas but on Christmas morning, that monkey was under the tree. Some sort of miracle!

I never believed in Santa Claus because at the age I might have, my brother thought it advisable to knock any silly notions out of my head by letting me know that he didn’t exist, the Easter Bunny was a sham, and the Tooth Fairy was a total fabrication.

So I knew it was from my mother. But how? How do you find something that was in a magazine and not a store? I was in awe of her ingenuity from a young age. Years later I learned the magazine was a Sears catalog, but it didn’t diminish the wonder of that morning. 

Through the years my mother has given some bizarre and humorous gifts mixed with some very thoughtfully chosen and/or handmade ones. Back then, If I believed Santa was a real person, and I were given the choice of gift-givers, I know who I would’ve picked.

Screenshot from an Etsy page. “Mr. Bim Chimp” sistersvintageattic

(Kinda creepy, now that I see him again)

Guests

I’m sitting on the patio with a cup of coffee and a square of chocolate, taking in the ghosts of the departed. Two chairs are where they left them, close to one side of the table, both for shade and conversation under the umbrella. A short distance away, an ashtray now empty, rests on a small yellow table next to his chair.  On the other side, two chairs facing each other. One to sit on, the other to prop up her feet.

A whispered echo and the less fragrant ambiance accompany a satisfying comfort. I breathe in deeply because I’m home. I exhale sighing because they are missed.  It’s okay. They all promised to be back.

Home Sweet Home

My sister in law’s youngest brother came to visit her in New Jersey once.  He spent most of his time watching tv.  There were seven channels to watch into the wee hours of the morning. I think a couple of them aired 24 hours at that time.

Where he lived, there were only a few channels and not a variety of programs to be seen on them. They ended early, signing off with the national anthem and displaying a test pattern symbol until the morning when programming resumed.

She said he was fascinated by the variety of programs, channels, and hours of viewing but in hindsight I don’t think that was the entire reason for all the hours he spent lost in sitcom space.

New Jersey was not like anything he was used to, and I think it intimidated him. He was no coward. At fifteen, he’d already broken who knows how many bones in the wild west where he lived with reckless abandon. But New Jersey was filled with pavement and buildings. It was a strange world with strange people and watching tv was his connection to the world he was familiar with.

He brightened up when a bunch of us went tubing in the Delaware River. Well, I went for the ride, but I opted out of the tubing. He was shocked and relieved to find natural beauty existed in the state.

When it was time for him to leave, my brother, sister-in-law, Rob and I drove him across the many states and the closer we got to his town, the happier he became. To be precise, my brother and Rob drove. I didn’t have a license then. When the two of them had driven until they were cross-eyed, they turned the wheel over to my sister-in-law, who promptly got off at the first rest area with a restaurant. She had driven for about five minutes at that point, and they didn’t let her drive again. I don’t remember the food, but I remember the looks we got weren’t friendly. Two men who seemed to be particularly disturbed by us were sitting at a counter. I overheard the name of one of them – well, nickname. Tiny was over six feet tall and at least 300 pounds. His shorter friend had the countenance of a pit bull.

I understood why her brother was more talkative, happy, and relaxed the closer we got to his home. Culture shock. He had culture shock in New Jersey. And I had it in Oklahoma (and at that restaurant, wherever that was). Women had long hair, but it was teased up high on their heads and men wore cowboy hats and boots. People looked at us like we had two heads and sometimes I could have used a translator. There was a lot of dirt and green and open sky. A storm hit one day and lightning streaked across the horizon stretching for what may have been miles. It was frightening.

We stayed with my sister-in-law’s family and her mother made something called chicken fried steak the first night. She also made flour tortillas. Both were extraordinarily delicious – and new to me. I’d never known either existed.

There were two other brothers at home, and they were both nice although they seemed to get a kick out of teasing me. I guess that was a way to make me feel welcome.

While we were there, we visited my sister in law’s friends. One day we canoed down a river. There were four couples and ours was the only canoe that didn’t tip over because Rob insisted that I stop “helping” to paddle.

It was fun. It was different. The people may have been strange to me, and from the way they stared, I was definitely strange to them. But I enjoyed meeting them and I enjoyed our stay. Nevertheless, I was happy when we were back to pavement and buildings. Home sweet home.

Game Daze

I was fifteen. They just turned thirty. I don’t know why they wanted me around, but they did. They were a nice couple. The son had inherited his father’s moving business and I knew many teenage boys who worked as movers for them, including my brother. 

I sat in their living room with their longtime friends and listened to an upbeat conversation about how they finally were okay with their lives. Yes, it all seemed to make sense when they hit the age of thirty. I had no idea what they meant but their joy in this light switch revelation was inspiring.

They took me to several concerts back when you could see famous musicians at small venues pretty cheap. And once they took me on a mini vacation with them. It was a lodge in Pennsylvania. The thing I most enjoyed was not all the crazy snowmobile riding through the woods, but the lodge itself – sitting in front of the humongous fireplace with my hands wrapped around a cup of hot chocolate. I’ve never liked the cold. Sitting there, facing the window, and watching the snow fall onto the arched stone bridge crossing a glistening icy creek was perfection.

I often dropped acid with them and their friends. They had a ping-pong table in the basement. The balls were painted in day-glo and there was a blacklight. The orange balls left beautiful trails as they were batted back and forth by adept players. 

One magical winter night, under the influence, we went outside to watch the snow come down in prismatic color. Several of us went “bumper skiing” by grabbing onto the back bumpers of the very few slow-moving cars braving the weather. I didn’t feel the cold. I felt a warm glow and saw the snow whisking by in electric rainbow streaks under the streetlights. I walked home as the sun was rising. The effect of the acid was waning as ice laden bushes melted into shimmering blobs. A magical night followed by a beautiful morning (dangerous stupidity aside).

I never played ping pong in their darkened basement with a blacklight, balls sailing through the air like a slow-motion video, but I sometimes have days that feel like that game. 

100 Word Story

I rushed out to pick up a strawberry cheesecake for the block party. New in town, I relished the opportunity to meet some neighbors. The gray and white striped tabby lying dead on the quiet side street startled me. I slowed as I passed and was reminded of the street I lived on when I was young. If some tragedy befell anyone’s beloved pet, word would have reached the family posthaste. Mourning and a backyard funeral would commence. I wondered if my new neighbors with their annual party were that close. The fallen beauty still lay there on my return.

Lesson Learned

In one of our many homes, there was a kind of long built-in storage area upstairs. It could almost have been a closet, but it was angled from the roof and wasn’t really a place to hang clothing. Because of the angle, it wasn’t even a place an adult could stand up in. It wasn’t used for anything, and once I made it into my own little fort. I brought pillows and toys in there, and because there were no lights, I brought candles.

I left the candles burning one day. My brother smelled the smoke and easily searched out the source. He was able to extinguish the small fire before it did any real damage and then looked for me. When he found me, he screamed at me before punching me and knocking me to the floor. I was seven. He was twelve. He never hit me before and never hit me again. And since that day, I’ve never left a candle unattended.