No Telling

I’ve Moved, Sorta

No Telling


Still in the same Blogspotty place, of course. The only difference is a new address:

This is nothing drastic, and Blogger promises to redirect everyone quite nicely should they use the old http://ohtheresjustnotelling.blogspot.com address in feed readers and bookmarks and such. I tell you, the whole move has been ridiculously easy (and inexpensive) through Blogger.

I tried to snag the .com, but apparently there’s this unfriendly gentleman in Argentina who bought it years ago and wants to sell it like a bag of diamonds. Since I’m neither a conglomerate nor a Rockerfeller, he can keep it.

I like “net” anyway. Reminds me of mama’s Aquanet hairspray, a miracle right up there with electricity and the virgin birth.

Accidental Tourists

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Whew. It’s Spring Break.

The days have been slamming into each other at such a fast clip, and suddenly there’s a bit of stillness. It’s nice. I’m actually faced with a day when I don’t have to be anywhere at any particular time, and the only pressing item on the to-do list is housework.

I’d go outside and spend the day in the sun, but there’s been some meteorological confusion recently and the high here will be in the low 40s today. There’s a bizarre chance of snow tonight. I’m sure the weather will right itself in a few days, though. It’s not like Arkansas is anyone’s Spring Break Destination, so there’s no danger of losing the college-boy tourism dollar.

The danger is when the ground warms back up. That’s when the creepy crawlies set up housekeeping in the garage and odd high corners. Spiders – as long as they’re not furry or unduly large – I can deal with. It’s the snake situation that’s making me nervous. In the fall, there was a local phenomenon that somehow introduced scads of baby copperheads into neighborhoods where they’d not previously visited. Em killed one, a neighbor lady had an incident, and we saw two flattened in the road. I’m not convinced we’ve seen the whole family yet, is all I’m saying.

Since Aruba is out this year (well, every year) it looks like I’ll be close to home. I’m itching to throw a soul-cleansing yard sale, even though it means braving creepy crawlies in both the garage and the attic. Anything’s better than a surprise snake, though. Anything.

I’m praying for this funky-cold weather to continue through Friday, just for good measure. If anyone out there is an expert on the seasonal behavior of Arkansas copperheads, please give me a heads up.

Waiting for the Tsunami

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It’s a funny thing, all this science predicting natural occurrences. Historically, acts of God came on suddenly, randomly. Now we can watch numbers bounce off of carefully placed buoys bobbing about in the ocean, those numbers singing to satellites which turn them into warnings, a chance to gather supplies, find higher ground. There is time, now, to evade the Great Wave.

On Tuesday, my friend Olive Hilliard did not hear the singing. She died the next day from the massive stroke that never bothered to give her warning. Olive was 52, a mother, a sister, a teacher, a light.

For three years, Olive and I shared a windowless office and our lives. We nursed each other’s wounds, bragged, cursed, ate chocolate and dieted. We traded the secrets of teaching and wept over our children. Two women talking in an enclosed space, we decided, could eventually repair all the broken things in the world. I still believe that’s true.

The fact that she is gone now feels like a lie. Her beautiful children, the reflection of her goodness and bottomless love, had no chance to gather reserves, find higher ground before losing their mother. Their lives now are split into two chapters, and they have to figure out how to live in this new story. I ache for them.

The rest of us, her friends and women of a certain age, are hugging our children more closely. Whether we talk about it or not, we’re suddenly listening to our internals for signs of the singing, hoping we’ll be able to predict The Wave where Olive could not. And we grieve.

What the Moon Is

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“The moon is not luminous in itself, but it is well fitted to take the characteristics of light after the manner of the mirror or of water or any other shining body; and it grows larger in the east and in the west like the sun and the other planets, and the reason of this is that every luminous body grows larger as it becomes more remote.” ~ from The Notebooks of Leonardo DaVinci.

DaVinci did a great deal of scribbling. I love to sift through his notebooks now and then – my fat copy is always on the bedside table – just to find a piece of truth to carry around with me. I try to imagine a mind so recursive and fearless, so mathematically poetic, dipping quill after quill into ink. Who did he imagine might read all these random thoughts?

DaVinci’s moon is the simple metaphor of teaching and parenting and grandparenting, always reflecting some brighter light. I think of the students I run into at the grocery store or the bank, those who never said much when they sat in my classes, but who gush and say the loveliest things now that classes are years over.

My Grandma Monda, who died when I was nine but has become for me the largest definition of love – there’s a moon.

Old sweethearts we immortalize and who sanctify us – there’s another.

In his mad scribbling, I suspect our man Leo couldn’t help himself. The scientist’s observation and the poet’s metaphor were clearly simultaneous for him. His mind processed like a synaptic pinball machine. What a gift.

O Captain, My Captain

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Captain Phil Harris of the Cornelia Marie has died. If you’ve never watched Deadliest Catch on the Discovery Channel, then you probably don’t understand the enormity of such news. Captain Phil was a Bering Sea crab fisherman, a roughneck, a superstitious seafarer, a treasure hunter, a pirate with a heart as big as a refrigerator. He died Tuesday at 53.

This series began on the Discovery Channel about the time The Perfect Grandson was born. Our little guy had some scary reflux, and for the first three months of his life he slept in an upright position under the watchful eyes of either his mother or me. One of us was always awake with him. We slept in shifts, and my night shift was from 10 pm to 3 am. The Discovery Channel and those crab fisherman on Deadliest Catch were my salvation in the wee hours. No matter how much sleep I lost, those boys on the Cornelia Marie lost more. When The Perfect Grandson woke fretfully, we cuddled and watched the boats rise out of the waves and snatch crabs from the freezing bottom of the sea, the Cornelia Marie crew dangling like bait from their own boat.

In fact, I made a list at one time of Things The Perfect Grandson Can Never Be. A Crab Fisherman in the Bering Sea came in at #2, just behind A Prisoner of Any Kind and several ahead of A Republican.

But that’s not why I’m heartbroken over the passing of a man I only know from a reality TV series on the Discovery Channel. Captain Phil was every boy I went to high school with who drove muscle cars too fast and partied too hard, who screeched into the school parking lot with a Marlboro clenched in his smile and a warm roach-clip tucked in the ashtray. Phil was every rough boy playing pool with his paycheck on Fridays and sporting a two-day shiner on Monday mornings. The kind of boy who made you laugh despite yourself, who winked and called you darlin’ in front of your boyfriend. The kind of boy who fell in love, hard, every time.

Captain Phil was every unapologetic charming rascal I’ve ever known. They defy geography and time, those fellas. For the most part, these boys are bulletproof – you can’t kill them and they can’t kill themselves, no matter how hard they seem to try.

So I was understandably gut-punched to hear that the good captain died, of a stroke no less, at 53. While I’ve come to some sort of hand-shaking terms with my own mortality, it’s trickier to see the charming rascals of my youth as human enough to die. At least not from something like a stroke. A crash or overdose or barroom fight gone south, maybe, but not from some old man’s disease. There’s no hero in a story like that.

A man who rode the Bering Sea like a wild horse for thirty years needs a stronger ending.

(Photo via CorneliaMarie.com)

The Novelty Has Worn Off

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Be careful what you wish for, is all I’m saying. This snow experience came without much warning. No one, in fact, had time to clean the shelves out at Kroger before it became too tricky to get there. So I guess we’re all stuck inside eating bread-heels and watching the news.

Five more inches tonight, they say. Clearly this is some sort of Superbowl/Saints overflow miracle. That, or the eighty or so students who had a paper due in my class today gathered together some powerful mojo to buy themselves some time. It could happen.

What do y’all up North find to pass the time during such a snow? I’m at a loss, dahlings. Bread-heels and bad daytime TV are about to do us all in.

UPDATE: A couple of fast shots taken from the warmth of an open doorway.

Housewives of Faulkner County

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Just received a notice that my 30th high school reunion will be in the fall. Octoberish. Plenty of advance notice to . . . what? Have extensive plastic surgery, lose forty pounds, have my teeth whitened, and find the perfect spray-tan, I guess. I say this because now through the Miracle of Facebook there are women I went to school with suddenly sporting all of the above modifications. And they’re wearing a lot of strappy tank tops, even in this chilly weather.

Not all of these women have lost their minds, but the numbers of those who have are shocking. I’ve noticed a correlation between the numbers of newly-divorced and party pictures showing tanned decolletage. It’s like Orange-County-meets-Cougar out there. These are women with grown children – did I miss a memo or something?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for looking your best and such, but I find it unnecessary to recreate my 18 year-old self this late in the game. Aside from appearing entirely too desperate, it’s fairly impossible to actually roll back the clock and make us the dewy teens we were. Even with quality cosmetic surgery we’ll still look better in low lighting.

The main reason I won’t be playing this round has to do with the degree of panic on all their Facebook faces. High school was an uncomfortable time for most young women – we set impossibly high standards of physical perfection even then (thank you Vogue and Seventeen). No need to pull that level of discomfort back out and wear it again just because it fits. I’m exhausted just thinking about it.

As much as I hate Facebook, I may have to post something on there about how beautiful they all are, but not because of any recent alterations. The women I went to high school with thirty years ago have always been beautiful. All they need to do is exhale a little and find weather-appropriate clothing.


Photo: an untitled, unnumbered piece in William Eggleston’s Los Alamos

Don’t Count Your Snow Days Before Checking Outside

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It’s been a while since we had one of these ice storms, so I guess we’re due. The weather map is all over pink with it right now I can hear it falling on the metal chimney top. Not like hail at all, which always sounds like a great fist is hurling it. Sleet is skittery and indifferent.

School is already closed for tomorrow because that’s how we do things. The closing was announced long before the first drop fell and while the temperature was certainly above freezing. It was a good call this time. No one needs to be driving around in the Armageddon we’ll have tomorrow morning, especially since no one around here knows how to drive in winter weather. We’re generally experts at driving muddy dirt roads, though. We also think we’re experts at driving on ice, but it’s never true.

In college, we used to put on golf shoes and walk to the corner of Donaghey and Bruce, lugging green-and-white folding lawn chairs. We found that if we positioned ourselves carefully, we could see two, maybe three fender-benders an hour as we nipped judiciously at a shared bottle of peppermint schnapps. Occasionally we’d hold up signs to “score” each driver’s attempt or failure. If I remember correctly, it took a good 360-degree spin to earn anything higher than an “8”.

No one was ever hurt, by the way. Cars had real metal fenders back then and didn’t crush like cheap Coke cans.

But that’s not my favorite winter-weather story. The best one I heard second-hand at a year-end teacher party some years ago when I was still teaching high school English. Many of the schoolmarms I taught with had been my teachers back in the 70s, and they told a Snow-Day Cautionary Tale to end all tales.

No one remembered exactly what year it happened, but seems the weathermen were all convinced the entire state would be buried under 12-18 inches of snow by the next morning. it had been an especially tense and arduous school year, so a good number of teachers plotted to ride the snow storm out at one house – the plan was a dusk to dawn Snow Day celebration.

At the final bell, everyone scurried to gather food and liquor. These were the lean years, mind you, when a good teacher might have made $9,000 a year or so. Add that to the insult of living in a dry county, and it was no wonder these otherwise staid educators needed a throw-down.

And throw-down they did. As the marms told it, the liquor and food held out until dawn when one young teacher stumbled out to retrieve the morning paper and found it hadn’t snowed at all.

No snow, no Snow Day. No one had slept a minute all night, most were still under the influence, and they were now due in their classrooms in a little over an hour.

They all made it in, by the way, mainlining coffee and propping each other up for the duration. I can tell this story only because all the suspects have since retired, but I do wonder if I might have been a student sitting in one of their classrooms that hangover day. If I was, I never suspected a thing and none of my friends did either. None of us would ever have dreamed such a thing could happen, really. Teachers partying all night? Naw.

So even though I hear the sleet beating hearty rumba on the neighbor lady’s wind chimes right now, I’m setting an alarm. You never know.

The Perfect Grandson…

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…is going to be fine. He should be coming home tomorrow. It’s been a harrowing week for everyone, but he is a strong, brave boy surrounded by love and good medicine. Maybe it was asthma or an ear infection run amok – we don’t know. He’s breathing beautifully tonight and the best team of nurses in the land hover over him.

His Mama is holding up well and I’m proud of her. Nothing prepares young mothers for this kind of fear. I guess nothing could. Emily has become the rock she always thought I was. She knows how to cry behind a door now and that’s how it works. Parenting in critical times is mostly smoke and mirrors and shaky bravado. She’s learned to compartmentalize in the moment and that’s not something they teach in college.

The Perfect Grandson braved all manner of poking and procedures without a tear. He’s the light and joy of everyone at the hospital and they worked tirelessly to make him well. He is better, and tomorrow he’ll be home. Four days is a long time for a little guy to keep still and be good, but he’s done it.

Tonight he’ll sleep and breathe without assistance. Em will curl herself around him in that skinny hospital bed, and her gentleman friend will sleep in the lounge chair beside them – just as he’s done every night this week. He’s a keeper and she knows this.

This is what a happy ending looks like.

Note on the Fridge to Everyone

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I‘m having a difficult time turning my attention to anything light or funny right now. I’ve begun three different posts in the last few days and deleted them all. I want to tell you local stories and interesting observations that might otherwise be funny, but knowing there are children in Haiti trapped and dying and waiting for help too slow in coming – I can’t shake it.

The stories and images on CNN and elsewhere have burned through my skin and marked me. I hug The Perfect Grandson too tightly at times and kiss his fat little cheeks until he has to push me away. I don’t care. I have the luxury of knowing where he is and that he’s not hungry or alone in the dark. Or worse.

The thing is, I’m taking this tragedy personally. Many people just as removed from the earthquake as I am are feeling the same. Empathy isn’t a tap that turns cleanly off and I guess it shouldn’t be. Loving and aching for people we don’t know in places we’ve never visited should not be difficult. Something in our DNA must connect us all, like twins who feel each other’s pain, simply because we are human.

It’s the sense of helplessness that’s haunting me right now. There are things to be done and very few time-sensitive ways to make them happen in Haiti. I’ve given money. Past that, I’m just some grandmother sitting in a chair watching the news. I’d rather be clawing at concrete, bare-handed and bleeding.

CNN has a list of emergency relief groups who need your donations. You can also donate $10 via text to the American Red Cross. Simply text “Haiti” to 90999. Giving in this time of anguish is the most and the least we can do.