I’ll spend more money if you call me “honey.”

I’ll drive across town to go to the post office where the person behind the counter, who’s younger than I am by ten years, says, “Hey kiddo.”

I’ve always thought that I could cash in bigtime on a 900-number. Forget about phone sex. This would be phone sympathy, with a side of sweet nothings. The callers would be answered by an African-American woman of indeterminate years and girth – who sounds maternal and substantial. “He said that to you? Are you kidding me? Awww, honey.”

In fact, the number would be 1900AWHONEY. Take my card number, and let the minutes roll.

It’s a cold world, and while I don’t want the equivalent of phony-celeb xxoo’s, and I don’t want creepy presumed intimacy, any spoonful of sympathy is like homemade preserves on my heart. Increasingly, to even the human voices I interact with, I’m a number – actually, I’m the last four digits of my Social Security number. This is for my protection. This is for my ease. But it’s not for my pleasure. For that, I want people to know my name and behave as if they’ve just been waiting for me to call.

It’s absolutely not the kind of sweetness that comes from long and genuine acquaintance. But no moment of human kindness goes unnoticed … heed this, order takers, veterinary assistants, and presidential candidates. A little bit of personal means a whole lot of power.

Don’t Take No Shortcuts

 

That above quote is from an 1847 letter written by one of the young women who survived the terrible ordeal of what is now called “the Donner party,” not to be confused with the dinner party …

You should always beware anyone who knows a short cut. But the nice young author was from Tucson. The lovely folks who’d driven us had lost their car keys. It was late, past ten, but a nice night, and Christina Baker Kline (a pal and the #1 New York Times bestselling author of ‘The Orphan Train,’), a very supple woman, said, “Come on!” She was undaunted by her high heels. We decided to take the short cut.

More than an hour later, Christina was daunted, thirsty, annoyed, and ready to call the taxi App Uber – although Mr. Shortcut, kept on trucking in his Merrells. I was barefoot, on a dark urban street, trying to avoid broken glass, embraced by shame that the shoes I had to remove were just flats, although very cruel flats.

“I know the hotel is right around here,” said Merrell man.

“As in … Arizona?” muttered another of the writers.

Finally, we got there. I surveyed my blisters, the size and shape of Thin Mints. I called my son, Rob. Heat a small knife, he said, cut them open, then stuff them with Neosporin and layer on big Band Aids. All I had was a coffee swizzle stick and a safety pin. I ran the safety pin through the coffee machine until it was … warm.

Lancing blisters is fun in a grisly way.

After that forced march, I deserved a little fun.

Then I fell into bed, both soles pulsing.

When I woke up, I nearly threw up, those blisters shouting with pain and twice as big.

My friend Victoria, the creator of the reading event Women’s Voices, called to caution me to be on time. Considering canceling, I said, frostily, “I am never late.” I tried not to think of whatever else had happened on the carpet of that hotel hall as I toe-walked to beg for Band-Aids. Plastering them on, I failed to notice the open water bottle on the bed next to me. I was already fully dressed in my only outfit when suddenly, I was sitting in a pool of cool.

Don’t picture me standing on my toes using a curling iron on my hair with one hand and a blow dryer not on my hair with the other hand.

I admitted I couldn’t walk.

If I had been a Civil War solider, my commander would have shot me. I wouldn’t have cared.

As it was, I tried to avoid the gaze of those who made way for the golf cart. I knew they were thinking the thing you think when you see a group of fat, perfectly healthy people being ferried through O’Hare on a trolley. They were thinking, big old lazy sissy loser.

Don’t take no shortcuts.

https://jacquelynmitchard.com/2014/03/4134/

I expect things not to work.

I expect to waste money on things that kind of work or look like they will work or work for a while because, whether because of design, craftsmanship, or my own inability to make them work, things usually don’t, at least for me.

This isn’t a how-things-are-now versus how-things-were-then thing. Planned obsolescence of electronics, for example, is to be expected: they cost so much less than they did originally that we sort of deserve to have them wear out after a while. When you think that a $1.99 “calculator” can do more than Univac, one of the proto “computers” that was the size of a room – and that the modern iteration fits on a keychain, you have to give “now” some credit.

And there are a few things and processes that, in my recent life, have astounded me by doing what they’re supposed to do. Let me tell you about a couple of them:

 Boottights. That’s a hard name to say, but these things are just crazy good. The brainchild of Shelby Mason, a gusty entrepreneur, these are tights with all kinds of cool patterns and colors that end in a little foot sock, the kind you wear to exercise. Your feet don’t either sweat or get cold; your boot lining stays nice, and you look really, really good. They cost about $12 and are worth twice that.

Parchment paper for baking. Your cookies and bread really do come out nicer and they really don’t stick to the pan. You don’t have to wash the pan. I’d like parchment paper coverings for my kids.

Etsy. I’m shocked when people don’t know what etsy is. Etsy is my life. It’s a website on which you can shop directly with artisans, buying everything from clothing to furniture to jewelry to art to soap to honey. I just got so excited talking about etsy I went to etsy and bought something. I bought honey (I’m obsessed with honey, the good kind, and it should be on this list because in my house, we go through honey the way other people go through dish soap). Some of the best things I’ve purchased on etsy include a charm bracelet celebrating the book ‘Anna Karenina,’ with charms including a red purse and a train (I know) made by this guy Sam who has a store in London called Hoolala. I also bought a ring from Sam that, when people get close enough to see it, says ‘Be careful what you wish for.’ I love the way some people laugh and others kind of back away. The BEST thing I ever bought on etsy was from DesignsbyAnnette (you have to run the words together), and it’s earrings made of the image of books printed on thick cardboard. Each earring has the image of a vintage typewriter key attached, and sometimes, the keys are the author’s intials. And there’s a QUOTE from the book on the back of every cover! OMG! Readers to whom I give this gift worship me, and it cost me $19! Annette can make earrings from any book! I hate to tell you about this because now I can’t give you the earrings as a present. Most years, I buy virtually all my Christmas presents on www.etsy.com.

 Positive Reinforcement Training for Dogs. My brother yells at his dogs .. and they do anything they want. I praise my dog to the stars and even give him a crumb of cheese for coming when I call him, and Dante would come when I called him if he were chasing a T-bone steak down the street.

I’m going to write more about things that actually do what they’re suppose to later … if you want to share some of yours with me, write me via my website, www.jackiemitchard.com.

I like spiders.

No, I love spiders.

One of the reasons (a small reason, but important, to be sure) that I hate being away from home for more than a few days is that I know that I’ll come home to find a can of Spider Kill displaying pride of place of the hall shelf — the purchase of my mother-in-law, who hates spiders with the same vigor that I respect them. She shares this fear with my eldest daughter, who won’t open the windows of her room, even in hot weather, for fear that a spider might get in through the screen.

They say that phobias are the manifestation of opposites. A humble person actually, perhaps unconsciously, is so conceited that he wants people to start a religion about him. People who fear spiders actually want to be them or eat them … or something.

I don’t believe this for a moment, at least spider-wise.

To love spiders, you have to be grateful to them. As Annie Dilliard wrote in her masterpiece, ‘A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek,’ “I allow spiders to run the house. I figure that any predator that hopes to make a living on whatever smaller creatures might blunder into a four-inch-square surface bit of space in the corner of the bathroom where the tub meets the floor needs every bit of my support. They catch flies and even field crickets in those webs.” While she allows that fish gotta swim and birds gotta fly, and insects seem to have to do one horrible thing right after another, she exempts spiders.

And while I will get in my bed and scream for help if a big moth blunders harmlessly into my room, I will fend off anyone who tries to hurt one of my spiders.

It isn’t just because of the gallantry of Charlotte A. Cavatica in E.B. White’s splendid tale for children and other intelligent creatures. At my wedding, one of my sons read, “It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both.” It’s because when I look at those webs, which are almost proof of intelligent design (or at least the intelligent design of spiders) the bloodless corpses of things that are so much worse and more disgusting are displayed there like trophies on the walls of some 1040s big-game hunter.

Water bugs. Done for.

Moths. No more than husks.

Silverfish. A whole shore lunch of them.

Mosquitoes. Oh, be still my heart! Any enemy of a mosquito is an amiga of mine.

In ancient mythology, spiders (perhaps because making webs is painstaking work) were symbols of patience and even wisdom. They don’t bumble about but make their trap strong as steel (did you know that a spider’s web is, in fact, stronger than steel, although you might not want to drive your car over a span made of that silk) and then they wait. I imagine them thinking about delights to come. They look almost sleepy, until the fly gets moored on the sticky stuff, and then, they move like the eight-legged little cheetahs they are.

When I’m away, and my daughter’s mad at me, she calls me  and says, “I just killed your spiders.” As messages go, this is better than, “I just finished smoking crack,” but it still wounds me. She knows the effect it has. But karma has its uses. May all those slain arachnids visit her in her dreams, reminding her that it’s not nice to fool with the order of things.

If I had only one child, I would still be around the bend by the amount of paperwork that comes home from school.

With six kids still in school, and the ambition of being a good mother, and a caring mother, or at least a present mother, I try to thoroughly read the things I sign.

In part this is because I care, and try to be good. In part it’s because I don’t want to learn I ended up as chair of the planning committee for a playground structure to be completed in 2018.

The first thing every single one of my kids does after walking in the door is dump the backpack .

Then, like the paper zombie apocalypse, they surround me with hands thrusting things in my face. “Sign this, Mom, and read the discussion questions.”

The discussion questions?

“Sign the pledge, Mom. You forgot that part.”

The pledge? Like AA?

“Mom, you have to sign this and give me a check for thirty-five dollars. Or twenty-five dollars. I’m not sure.”

“Mom, sign this. It means I’m staying after every other Tuesday from three to four in the afternoon. So I’ll come home on the bus but then you have to drive me back right after because I’m not in Stay and Play.”

“Mom, can you volunteer to help my English class write a novel? Twenty of us are going to write one chapter at a time.”

“Mom, sign my spelling test.”

Sign my take-home folder. My permission slip. My picture-day makeup. Sign my math practice. Sign the slip for my recorder and put five dollars in this envelope. No, I can’t use Will’s because he said he spit on it and had cold sores.

Sign this twelve-page document explaining the reason I was assigned to the orange reading group instead of the green reading group.

Sign the permission for me to audition for ‘Annie.”

Sign the permission slip for me to try to get into the orange reading group.

All this leaves out the visitations, which began the first week with Open House – for which the children draw maps, write letters and make puzzles intended to cause wretchedness for those parents who are still at work at 5 p.m. when the tour of the school begins – and continues through Back to School Night, Progress Night, The Octoberfest, The Holiday Holller, The Spring Fling and The End of Days.

Now, I know that my parents knew where my school was, and knew my teachers in a general way. This was not because they ever showed up for any Open Houses that didn’t involve liquor or barbecue. It was because I got very good grades and also got in trouble a lot. I got the good grades because I liked to read, and I got in trouble because I had (and still have) a mouth disproportionately big compared to my size and … it must be said, intelligence. I remember once my mother having to come to school because I refused to write the fifth-grade skit about the immortal love of John Smith and Pocahontas because my sources had proved conclusively that they were BFF’s (although she might have been better off with him than  John Rolfe). The 60s offered a more civilized approach to school: my parents did their job and I did, or didn’t do mine. My own school bag was like the vacuum cleaner bag of someone who owns five golden retrievers, swollen with papers I dutifully put in but never took out.

I know what today’s teachers are trying to accomplish. They want to make sure that uber-busy parents stay connected to school, and take responsibility for their children’s education. I hope this has worked for me, although when I was quizzing my eldest daughter on SAT words and learned her definition of “probity,” I had my doubts.

I don’t know about where you live, but for me, there hasn’t been this much signage in Massachusetts since the Constitution.

It wasn’t a big deal, my daughter missing her doctor’s appointment. Not life or death. But she missed it because of all the roadblocks for an annual walk to raise money to fight a dread disease. And we simply couldn’t get close enough to the office fast enough.

Actually, it was a big deal.

We scheduled her appointment months earlier, failing to check into the schedule of walks, runs, and rides that would pass through our very small town. We still had to pay, and reschedule, months in the future.

Just the other day, the driver of a balloon-festooned follow car yelled at me, “Be safe! You’re too close to the runners!” I was driving kids to school. To be farther away, I’d have had to cross into the other lane of traffic.

That was just what happened not far from here, when a bike race for another cure caused a car accident. No one was badly hurt, but one car was totaled, another’s front end smashed, and a biker’s arm broken. The racer is suing.

Now, no one denies the glorious impulse to band together for the common good. Much of the time, if you scratch any of the bike riders decked out like the Italian Olympic team – who’s making me mad by throwing empty water bottles on my lawn — you’ll find someone who cares. Those walkers may have a daughter, a sister, a wife who battles MS or beat breast cancer.

I’m no road hog who thinks motor vehicles own the street. But as these well-meant events get bigger and bigger and more frequent (last weekend there were three in a five-mile radius) they interfere, often rudely, sometimes dangerously, with the very life they’re fighting for.

And I also know that not all those ferocious competitors are in it for the cure.

Some want a good excuse to practice the X-treme sport they love, and for which they’ve bought thousands of dollars worth of equipment. For some people, who aren’t jocks, it’s a reunion with old friends.

Nothing wrong with any of that. The money raised really helps. But organizing those events costs a ton of money too.

It would help just as surely if you gave directly to Women Against MS, with a flick of your finger to their website. It would really help if you volunteered to drive a wheelchair-bound MS patient to clinic appointments.

You don’t get people standing along the road cheering for you for that. You don’t get the tee shirt.

But it is, in its quietness, an even truer way to help.

It also doesn’t wreak as much havoc as these huge and endless walks and rides do – in small towns like mine, and in big cities. The most recent wasn’t even in support of a cause: it was commemorating the role of a famous teacher in history.

When the circus moves on, the elephant dung remains.

And that’s true of the 5K for Whatever, too. The roads are littered with Solo cups and empty water bottles; the rain shreds the posters. The organizers are supposed to tidy up; but they don’t. They’ve done their good.

Do I sound like a curmudgeon? I don’t think I am. My best friend has MS, and I’ve gone to 47 states to fund-raise for that fight.  I walk the walk, even if I don’t walk the Walk with a capital ‘W.” I actually believe more people ought to try another way, one that brings them up close with whatever they’re trying to erase – from Alzheimer’s to animal cruelty.

So, walk thirty miles with a group of pals. Do it every year.

Race across three-states on a bike race. Fight to win.

But as the old commercials say, just do it. And if you have to do it on the street where I live, don’t yell at me if I go on living my ordinary life there, too. Not everybody races for a cure.

 

Here it is, summer ended and everyone back in school – the nights no longer “good for sleeping” but edging toward cold. The old timers (and the young timers) say that this summer rushed past. I know that it did for me. It took me a full six weeks to recover from the emotional toll of two daughters graduating eighth grade.

It was joyous. It was lovely. It was, more than either of these, harrowing. Read on.

By my count, including kindergarten, I’ve graduated five times. Of course, that was what my children call “back in the day,” before iPhones, $200 ballet flats, and instant status updates – which is to say, pre-culture.

Still, I know about commencement. Three of my nine children have actual college diplomas, and they received them only yesterday, it seems. There were rituals, observances, fountain pens given and then re-gifted.

Despite this, nothing could have prepared me for the onslaught associated with the graduation of my two eighth grade daughters.

Said Thoreau, beware occasions requiring new clothes. Beware especially five of them in six weeks.

OMG, as my daughters would say.

At first, my shy girls, Mia and Merit, weren’t sure about the “semi.” (Merit, born in Ethiopia, thought this dance might be held in an eighteen-wheeler.) We urged them to reconsider and go.

After all, we’d had an eighth grade dance. It was in the gym – in a gym similar to the place where, four years later, we would go to the prom.  We bought dresses. We bought them at Sears.

How could we know that, once unleashed, our girls’ desires would make  Anna Wintour look like the poster girl for voluntary simplicity?

They thought we might have to go to New York for a weekend to shop.

They discussed how to measure up to Simone, Stephanotis, and especially Serena, whose dress was created for this purpose when she was eight or something by a designer in Istanbul using age progressions.

Then came the class trip. Not a day trip to the amusement park. A week trip to D.C. No more than $150 each in spending money!

Next, an LBD.

For the dinner dance.

What’s up with dinner dance? A dinner dance is what your parents went to in 1969 at the Moose Lodge.

The EIGHTH GRADE dinner dance is being held at a place called the Jailhouse Tavern. I’m not making that up.

This leaves only the yacht cruise.

Now, our family is so large that when we moved to this small town, it basically changed the census data. We have a certain need. So the school was gallant in helping make sure that our daughters were included in all these adventures.

We also did our part.

Each event required multiple corollary events.

Christmas tree sales, wrapping paper sales, bumper sticker sales, fudge sales, bake sales, yard sales, plant sales, car washes, cat grooming, piñata demos, spaghetti dinners, pancake breakfasts, pizza lunches.

Of course, as with all school fundraisers, no one except the parents buys anything. Co-workers now avert their eyes when they see us coming, even if we pretend the sign-up sheet is just a petition to ban books or something.

Now, there are the tributes. Serena’s parents are buying ads in the local papers and hiring a videographer. Stephanotis has an uncle who designed fireworks for their family celebration. There’s a question of dresses for the private parties? Is re-wear okay?

I put my foot down. It’s okay for Katherine, Duchess of Cambridge. It’s okay for you, too.

We bought dresses. We bought those dresses at Sears.

And yet, since January it’s been a check check here and a check check there. Here a check, there a check, everywhere a check check.

What am I going to do for high school graduation? Sell my plasma starting in tenth grade? Will Serena’s parents host a destination party in Tuscany?

Does anyone else think this is a little excessive for the culmination of only the first eight years of school?

Isn’t this consumer culture pushed to its extreme, ordinary life as an MTV reality show, the unsurprising adultification of adolescents, the trickle down of red carpet desires into a blue-collar world, the crass reification of life altogether?

And isn’t it nuts that I have to do this three more times?

 

 

 

 

WEATHER PORN

I’ve only lived three places in my life.
One was Chicago where, although there was some of the most barbarous weather south of the south pole, people tended to kind of shrug it off — as they did almost everything else. Baby born at home? Take it to the hospital when the game’s over. Head wound? Looks worse than it is most times … he awake? Business failed? You always wanted to travel …          And so, when I moved to Wisconsin, at the tender age of 21, I was unprepared for the nearly salacious atmosphere of amazement, jubilation, and downright tongue-lolling arousal that greeted every cumulonimbus. People didn’t actually want tornadoes to touch down and blow up their houses, but they kind of wanted tornadoes to touch down and blow up their unattached garages. People didn’t actually want school to be closed by the blizzard of the century … but they actually did want school to be closed, and, in anticipation, bought seven gallons of milk and queued up eleven back-to-back episodes of Special Victims Unit. After a long time (34 years), I moved away from Wisconsin, to, as it turns out, the other place on earth where weather is porn.
Now I live in Massachusetts, on Cape Cod.
As I sit here (in Wisconsin, at a relative’s house), the sun shines brightly after a wimpy little blizzard scarcely deserving of the name “dumped” (they always “dump”) six new inches of snow on an already frosted landscape. I was to have been in Boston, but I missed the narrow window of opportunity, and now can’t go back until at least after the weekend, until End-of-the-World-Storm-Nemo has done its worst. I should be glad. But I’ve changed. I’m jealous of my family, about to participate in a branch-popping, road-clogging, light-quenching, hem-drenching big fist of a blizzard. I want all that drama. I want to see that mean North Atlantic face. I want to huddle with my nearest and say, it’s really coming down now, as if it would do anything else.
On Cape Cod, people still often fish for a living, or do other things that put them at the indifferent mercy of the elements. They speak of the weather the way they speak of boats and tides, with a rueful, respectful, and undeniably lustful approbation.
This is the day for meteorologists. The other reporters stand when they walk through the newsroom.
White collar crime?
It’s for sissies.
No-collar crime?
Another day.
Give us weather, that’s what we want — the bigger and meaner the better. We want to be controlled.

On my grave, I don’t want it to say, ‘SHE NEVER MISSED A DEADLINE.’ I do want it to say BELOVED MOTHER. But also, I want it to say, SHE HAD EXCELLENT MANNERS.
Now, I’m … polite.
I’m … personable.
I’m .. not nice.
I’m … gallant.
But I want to have manners of the kind demonstrated by my friend Whitney, who is practically British.
She would never bring up a problem of her own, even if her arm were detached and gouting arterial blood, before asking after yours. She would never put a morsel of food in her mouth before seeing that you had your lunch (brunch, dinner) with a cloth napkin. Upon me, she did inflict her cat — even though I have allergies to cats that border on rabies. I did not say she’s perfect. But she has excellent, excellent manners.
She also responds to a gift with a handwritten note MENTIONING WHAT THE GIFT IS and how she intends to use it. When you sleep over, she provides cocoa before bed EVEN IF YOU DON”T ASK FOR IT, which why would you, but you want it desperately?
She does no icky things, like look at her Kleenex after she blows her nose. She dresses up for everything.
I think that excellent manners involve restraint.
I think that is what excellent manners really are: they are the practice of civility in the want of the actual good cheer. Good manners mean that you are really listening, instead of just waiting.
What do they mean to you?

Today I told a therapist who’s an acquaintance that I’d be happy to go to rehab if I had a vice.
I don’t drink or smoke or chew, or go with boys who do. (Actually, I suspect one …)
The idea of daily therapy and a cell with clean sheets, just for a break, would be pretty fabulous.
I wouldn’t want to bring anything except my computer and my single page of research.
If all people who went to prison were smart, more great books and novels would come from prison (some have, despite the fact that the lights are on all the time). With 60 days to write, group therapy, and huge amounts of free time, I could get the biceps of Jillian Michaels and write Warren Peace (it’s a retelling). I could write five articles, a novella, and a screenplay. And a chapbook. I don’t even know how to write poetry. I could learn.
Why do only people who are addicted to things get to go to rehab?
Why do only nuns get to go to convents?
Why isn’t having nine children with complex lives a pre-existing condition requiring sequestration?
Don’t write to me and say that I shouldn’t make sport of this because your brother or sister, or god forbid, your beloved child, really did have to go to rehab. It goes without SAYING — yet I will say it — that this is a sendup …. except not really. I really would feel far less guilt, and far more pleasure, if someone FORCED me into seclusion … and I’m not taking it back.