all of the selves we Have ever been
I burned my cheek with a curling iron. Two days later, the area below my left eye had swollen into a squishy lump the size of a baseball. Despite the pound of flesh, my hair still looked like hell. Of course, this happened on a Friday. There were no appointments available at my doctor’s office. I made two attempts at nearby walk-in clinics. On the first attempt, everyone was out to lunch. By the second attempt, the clinic schedule was booked for the rest of the day. Employing the three-strike rule, I went back to the bench. By then, the day was pushing into evening. I weighed my odds: the wound would either get better or worse. If it got better, I would save time and money. If it got worse, I would spend a large portion of the weekend and my 401(k) in the emergency room. I placed my bet on good hygiene and “a tincture of time” as one of my former general practitioners used to say, and I went to the medicine cabinet. After reviewing my arsenal, I selected hydrogen peroxide to cleanse the wound and antibiotic ointment to treat it. These measures did not stop me from obsessively combing the internet instead of attending to my unruly hair. I spent a long, restless night convinced I would die from tetanus. Morning came, and I lived—a small victory for benchwarmers everywhere. When we were kids, we suffered our injuries and left the sleepless nights to our parents. Back then, I would have slathered the burn with butter and got on with my day. If that wasn’t enough intervention, I would have retired to the couch with a soft striped afghan and an afternoon of cartoons. If my mother felt some sympathy for me, she might have brought me warm tea and cinnamon toast. If the situation escalated, the family doctor would have been consulted by phone or stopped by for a late evening house call. The family physician’s entire arsenal fit into a little black medical bag, a supplement to the basics we all had at home. Home medicine cabinets contained far fewer germ-fighting, cough-suppressing, pain-relieving, age-reversing weapons than we have now. The first-aid kit of my youth contained a mercury thermometer, baby aspirin, and Mercurochrome. With luck, there might be a Band-Aid to spare if Chatty Cathy had not suffered a boo-boo while we were playing house. Most other healing agents were found in the kitchen: baking soda, a shot of whiskey, hot tea, honey, chicken soup, cinnamon toast, and butter. Butter was certainly handy in the kitchen where most minor burns occurred, but I discovered that modern internet sites do not recommend butter as a treatment for burns because it traps in the heat and has no antibiotic properties. The exception to the no-butter-to-the-burn rule is when removing hot tar from human flesh. I will keep that in mind in case I prove to be a worse roofer than I am a hair stylist. In any case, I am happy to have a reason to keep butter around in the enlightened age. Mercury-containing products were quietly escorted off the drug store shelves a long time ago, but my knees are permanently pink from Mercurochrome. I may have experienced brain damage from the mercury-laced antiseptic and from chasing those little beads of mercury around the kitchen floor when a thermometer broke. With all of that accumulated mercury and the trapped heat from so much butter, it is no wonder that I am a woman on fire. I now understand menopause and the stir-fried condition of my hair. There was a time when health enthusiasts and food manufacturers tried to convince us that a new product, oleomargarine, was better for us than butter. I think the shift may have started during the mercury years. Eventually, margarine went the way of mercury. It proved to be worse for our health than butter. Let’s face it, butter has staying power. From well-stocked grocery store aisles to ample, soft hips, no amount of fat-shaming or internet advice can turn us against butter. Speaking for myself, I can stand up to the saturated fat in beef and bacon. I eat those meats about as often as I attend a high school reunion. I am willing to remove the slimy skin and fat from chicken which is my diet’s protein mainstay, but the butter stays. I honor it by keeping it an old dish that belonged to my grandmother. I might portion it out in teaspoons like a heroin addict, but I don’t even pretend that I will give it up “tomorrow.” I don’t need to read a recipe or to perform a chemical analysis to know if a dish contains butter. If the food is delicious, it contains butter. Quite frankly, I am astonished that butter does not require a prescription. Is it possible to be anxious or depressed while eating a soft, chewy brownie? How about the high that comes with eating a flaky, buttery biscuit? I am willing to live with the side effects. After feeling the burn, my advice is to get a tetanus booster and a good haircut. Don’t put butter on your burns. Save the butter for the big stuff, the internal injuries—damaged egos and broken hearts. In the event of catastrophic injury, increase the dose and add a scoop of ice cream. If I am wrong about this advice, don’t blame me; it might be the mercury talking.
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Mick Jagger turns 78 today. Poor guy. He just can’t get no satisfaction. Mick does try. And he tries. And he tries. Mick may be more famous for his persistence than his rock ‘n roll. In the fifty-six years since Mick sang those words, sharing the pain of sexual frustration and American consumerism, Mick has had eight children with five different women, five grandchildren, and a great grandchild who is older than Mick’s youngest child. Jagger’s chronic dissatisfaction has resulted in a net worth estimated at $500 million. Maybe that helps to ease the pain. I have a net worth of about $5.00, but I am more easily satisfied than Mick Jagger, and I don’t even try. Yesterday, I found a solid wood Ethan Allen side table sitting up pretty next to the dumpster. I live in a college town, and that’s what people do with good stuff when they move. Instead of taking the bulky items to Goodwill or another charity donation center, they set the items near, but slightly apart from, the regular trash as an offering to their neighbors. If passers-by spot the items before it rains or snows, they get a great deal. It troubles me that so much of this perfectly fine stuff ends up in the landfill. I try to recycle it by using it myself, passing it on, or taking it to a donation center. When I was growing up, we were not so carefree with our belongings. Our homes were furnished with good quality hand-me-downs from the generations before us. Every item had a story, and we waited patiently to contribute our chapter. Furniture was sturdy and made of real wood and natural fabrics. Our clothes were sturdy, too. We got new clothes at the start of each school year and for the big holidays like Christmas and Easter, unless we had a growth spurt in between. Being the oldest or the only might mean new stuff--unless there were cousins. Being a younger sibling meant hand-me-downs. We had school shoes, Sunday shoes, and play shoes. Play shoes were often just our worn out old school shoes. We changed into our play clothes the MINUTE we came home from school or church, and we hung them up IMMEDIATELY. There was no shame in patches or in mending, especially when the handiwork was skillfully done, and most moms were skillful. Girls endured life-long apprenticeships for their roles as mothers. They came to the mending game experienced. Most dads were tinkerers and fixed the other broken and weary stuff. They did not have to storm the legislature to demand right-to-repair laws. Not to repair was an insult to rugged individualism and American know-how. No one needed a special amendment to the constitution to carry a wrench. There was pride in making things last, an essential strategy in the pursuit of happiness. When a spare part or something new was needed, we turned to the Sears catalog. While I have attributed my love of reading to Nancy Drew, I don’t think I gave Sears, Roebuck and Company enough credit for the growth of my mind. I have to acknowledge the Sears catalog for helping me to become a visual learner. The catalog was also a free course on how to write descriptions. That big catalog sold everything including houses. I dog-eared plenty of pages and starred many illustrations of the items I wanted, but I didn’t really expect to get them all. Dreaming was another American past time. It did not fill me with dissatisfaction; it fed my imagination. There was no keeping up with the Joneses. Not one of my friends would be getting that stuff either. Sure, we argued over who saw it first and who deserved to have it, but we easily tired of the competition and got back to Barbies, the sprinkler, and chasing fireflies. The advertising industry has exploded since those days, and with ample supply, convenient access to shops, and on-line retailers with promises of two-hour delivery, we don’t give consumption the thought we once did. Back when Mick announced his dissatisfaction, there were just a couple of seasons in the fashion industry—warm and cold, and later, spring, summer, fall, and winter. I recently heard that some retailers change fashion styles weekly in order to drive up sales. Some of the prior “season’s” clothing is removed from the racks, shredded, and tossed into the landfill. There are no free lunches or leggings in America. Someone said, “You can never get enough of what you don’t really want.” Well, the pandemic changed all of that for me. A year of social isolation showed me just how much I really do need. Turns out, it isn’t much. A little does go a long way toward satisfaction. And my little is so much more than many others have. Mick Jagger, I think you may be trying too hard. Meet me at the dumpster.
Start the presses and spread the news! There is still time to shop. It is National Oreo Cookie Day. If ever a cookie deserved its own holiday, it is the Oreo. I don’t even mind if the government halts mail delivery. Oreo is the signature product of the National Biscuit Company, the food manufacturing giant better known as Nabisco. The cream-filled cookie also made Hoboken, New Jersey famous for something other than its view of Manhattan. A grocer in Hoboken was the first to sell the treats in cans for twenty-five cents a pound. No one knows where the name Oreo came from; perhaps it is O for the O-shaped cookie, or O for the “Ohs!” uttered by the tasters in Nabisco’s test kitchens. I once thought the Hydrox cookie was a sad wannabee, the second born, a disappointing substitute, but it turns out Hydrox was the first chocolate sandwich cookie of that type on the market. Hydrox made its debut in 1908, four years before Oreo’s introduction in 1912. The Oreo has been the best-selling cookie ever since. Sorry, Hydrox, nice try, and a good idea…but the name Hydrox sounds more like an antiseptic, and the taste, compared to an Oreo, well…a lot like the taste following oral surgery. The Oreo has stayed strong through two world wars, a great depression, and a bazillion weight loss trends. The beloved cookie now comes in double-stuffed, thins, minis, Neapolitan, and Mega Stuff. As of 2019, 450 billion Oreos were sold worldwide. Add the consumption during the COVID pandemic year, and I am sure sales have easily climbed to 1.9 trillion. The National Biscuit Company was granted a trademark for the Oreo on March 14, 1912. National Oreo Cookie Day is celebrated on March 6th because that is the day Nabisco made its application for the trademark. That makes two miracles for the Oreo—the greatest cookie of all time and the fastest turnaround by a government office in history. The product’s tag line is “Milk’s favorite cookie.” Sure, there are a lot of dunkers out there, but there are many ways to eat an Oreo. The best known strategy is for “a kid to eat the middle of an Oreo first and save the chocolate cookie outside for last.” The process is important. Lifting or prying the cookie apart is much less effective than the gentle twist that leaves the creamy layer intact to be scraped off by the eater’s two front teeth. Oreo fanatics have expanded the brand. Oreos are now a staple like flour or sugar. Oreos appear in recipes for pie crusts, pies, cakes, ice cream, milkshakes, candy bars, and are even coated and deep fried at county fairs. Oreos are a snack, a dessert, a special treat, and paired with milk, they are practically a health food. The standard package notes that a serving size is three cookies with twelve servings in a pack. Really? Who can eat just three? I suspect that an entire row is more typical. Three Oreos? That just wets the appetite because Oreos are as addictive as cocaine. They are the preferred party drug of the tea party crowd. Decades ago, I experienced an Oreo overdose. My mother had gone to the hospital to deliver a baby—my brother or sister? I can’t remember because the real event was the Oreo tea party authorized by our father to keep my older sister and me out of his hair. Mary and I each consumed far more than the suggested serving of three Oreos. For dessert, we topped off our tea party meal with the Oreo’s favorite cousin, a bag of M&Ms. When it was time to retire for the night, my sister and I climbed into our bunk beds that were covered with matching white chenille Sleeping Beauty bedspreads. Initially, our stomachs gurgled just a bit, but before we could fall asleep, our guts erupted like Mount Vesuvius. Eventually, we slept well. The nightmare came for our mother who returned home with a new baby and plenty of laundry to do. The entire episode was easily forgotten by me and my sister. It may have contributed to our parents' later divorce, but Mary and I never fell out of love with Oreo cookies or tea parties. Oreos have been around a long time. Even their current design has remained unchanged since 1952, longer than I’ve been alive. I like things that stand up to the test of time and remain sweet no matter how many times we encounter them. I feel a tea party coming on. Hold the M&Ms. The first lacey snowflakes drift past my window. They are the delicate advance men for a fierce nor’easter on its way. The anticipating world is already subdued. A forecast of snow brings with it a universally shared sense of caution. Go slow. Take your time. Tardiness will be excused. Don’t go out if you don’t have to. The snow provides a buffer against sound and activity. All is surreal. We watch the world, but are we in it? On such a day, the snow-covered earth is like an innocent bride in a gown of white while home is the church where children give thanks for snow-prayers answered. Staring out my window this morning, I feel the way I once did as a child living in the hilly suburbs of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was a time when the world had no problem sheltering in place. It was the average lifestyle. During the day, neighborhoods were devoid of traffic. Dads had the only cars with them at work. At home, Moms were busy with all of the hard labor of keeping house and maintaining large families. Kids went only where their feet could take them. Most businesses were closed on Sundays and there were blue laws. For school-age children, the lights went out by 9:00 PM, and the three television networks stopped broadcasting after the nightly news. Depending on the location, a ten or eleven o’clock public service announcement adjourned the day by asking parents, “Do you know where your children are?” We had a large bay window in our living room. On a snow day, that window was our weather channel. We were all budding Al Rokers, shouting weather updates from the sofa and providing special reports of kids sledding or cars skidding down our steep hill. When the snow accumulation became deep enough, we bundled up and went outside to play in the yard, throw snowballs, sled, or build snowmen. We might also shovel the area around the mailbox to make way for the postman or sweep the walkway to the front door for the paperboy and the milkman. My little brother, a budding entrepreneur by age 8, was quick to mow a lawn or shovel snow. He was born knowing how to make a buck. One winter, HB got his hands on a used snow blower. He made up little business cards offering services to the neighbors. He cranked out the cards on a small hand-held device that contained an ink-filled roller. In addition to my brother’s name and our home phone number, the cards listed his services including lawn mowing and blow jobs. We didn’t understand our father’s reaction to the cards, but they were confiscated and a new batch prepared with parental supervision. After hours spent outdoors playing, shoveling, and giving blow jobs, we came back inside through the basement, stripping off our ice-crusted boots and top layer of clothing. Clothing was hung on a makeshift clothesline where it could drip dry into the floor drain instead of all over the hardwood floors upstairs. We made hot chocolate from Nestle’s Quick which we all agreed would have been much better if only we had marshmallows. We spent hours playing Monopoly, and when that got old, we sleuthed with Nancy Drew, or helped to fold laundry. Snow days had the pace of a day one might expect in heaven. By nightfall, we were exhausted but happy. We paused in our home chapels to pray for more snow. Sometimes God heard us. More often, he took mercy on our mothers and gave priority to their prayers. He sent sunshine. Joe Morgan died this week. The headline popped up on my web browser home page. There are some who looked at that headline and said, “Who?” Others may have seen the news and thought, “Who cares?” Me? I was pierced by sadness. I immediately emailed my best friend from high school with the news. I knew she would understand. They were young, and so were we. They were major league baseball players. We were high school students. They took the field. We took our seats in the stands--as often as we could. We were all in the middle of something. My friend and I lived in Pittsburgh. We were Pirates fans. The 1970s was a great decade for baseball in the tri-state area. The Pirates and the Reds were both powerful teams and fierce competitors. It was the Lumber Company versus the Big Red Machine. We watched the greats like Roberto Clemente, Willie Stargell, and Bob Robertson go toe-to-toe and bat-to-bat with Joe Morgan, Pete Rose, and Johnny Bench. When the Reds came to town, it was guaranteed excitement. Sometimes the heat of competition spilled over into a brawl on the field. Joe Morgan was particularly memorable. Stepping up to the plate, bat in hand, his back arm bent and flapping like a wing, Joe was part eagle about to take flight. His stance was twitchy, like the ball was already out of the park, and Joe was late for his date with home plate. My friend and I saw a lot of games. We saw many young men hurl their first major league pitches and step up to the plate for their first swing at bat. Not all of them rose to greatness in the history of the game. Not all of them stand out in our memories. Some, like Joe Morgan, became legends. We are moved by their passing. My sadness today leaves me to ponder the question—Why? Like the millions of stars that fill the night sky, it is only a few that reach us with their brilliance. They beckon us to look up. Fans are stargazers. They know where to look in the night sky. They study the stars, count them, and give them their names. We were witnesses to their lives. We clapped and cheered, game after game, as all of those games added up to something remarkable. We watched our heroes transform from youthful rookies into seasoned veterans even as our own youth slipped away. Their lives and careers became mile markers on our personal journeys and pages in our collective history. They belong to us and to our national treasure chest. Like so many of the balls he hit, Joe Morgan has left the park. Like the stars, his brilliance lives on. I will think of him each time a rookie steps up to the plate and an umpire cries, “Play ball.” There are some stains we treat and scrub. We want them OUT. But there are others that become part of the fabric of our lives. Unexpected souvenirs of people, times, and experiences we cherish. We want them to remain FOREVER. I began the day searching for my light gray sweatpants, the ones with the white paint stains on the knees. My Saturday clothes. I had things to do. The paint stains are a happy reminder of living in Missouri and helping a friend to prepare his new home for move-in day. It was a different Saturday as we stirred paint, filled trays, and loaded the rollers. We worked across the room from each other sharing stories and anticipating the new life my friend would have in the freshly painted rooms. A year later, I would bring a little of my friend with me when I returned to my home in Ohio. The stains on my sweats remind me of that pleasant paint-filled Saturday and a kind and faithful friend. As I prepare my breakfast, I see the blue and white enameled butter dish with the worn finish. A hint of rust hides under the lid. The loop of a handle has a dark spot where I place my thumb. I imagine my grandmother holding this butter dish in her hands and lifting the lid. It is her thumb that wore the spot on the handle. For a moment, my Sita is present with me in my kitchen. I sit in my rocking chair to sip some morning tea. My bottom slides over the well-worn seat helping to erase the wood’s finish. The arms are worn as well. Rocking the chair back and forth, I remember the purchase of this chair from an Amish furniture store. It is the chair in which I rocked both of my babies to sleep each night. Worn as it is, I don’t care to have it refinished. I don’t want to disturb my memories of that tired mother or of those sleeping babies. On the wall adjacent to my rocking chair is a plate rack that contains four angel plates. Each white plate is decorated with the colorful image of an angel in a distinctive pose. One angel is ringing a bell, another holding a star. A third is playing a harp. The last angel is releasing a dove. The last plate was broken into several pieces during a move. I glued it together. On close inspection, the repair can be seen, but I don’t care. The plate stays. It is part of a set--a set of plates, and a set of friends. Some of my dearest friends, godparents to my children, gave me those plates on a Christmas day long ago. The plate rack was a find during an adventure with a new friend who has entered the ranks of dearest friends. I go to the storage cupboard for a box and spot a battered suitcase. It is very large. I never use it, but my baby girl, Emily, took it on a trip to Europe. She was in college and the first of our family to travel abroad. The suitcase still has the tags from her trip. Emily turned thirty this year, but I retain a piece of her youth in a suitcase in my closet. There are other scuffs, stains, cracks, and chips that fill my home—a child’s greasy hand prints, scuff marks from little feet. Blood stains from boo-boos. Chipped dishes from dropped spoons. I cherish all of these reminders of a life lived and of people loved. Scuffed, stained, cracked, or chipped, I want them IN. FOREVER. Does anyone speak 1960s? I need an interpreter. I am trying to crack the lyrical code. The 1960s have been described as tumultuous, turbulent, violent, and divisive decade. It was a time of dangerous incidents around the world and civil and political unrest at home. The country was engaged in the Cold War with Cuba and the Soviet Union. North Korea captured the USS Pueblo, a naval intelligence ship. The negotiations dragged on and on. Marchers and activists filled the streets of America’s cities demonstrating against racial injustices and the war in Vietnam. Teens and young adults no longer trusted parents, leaders, and government. A generation gap developed with traditional, conservative parents on one side of the divide and questioning, liberal, non-traditional, rock-and-rollers on the other side. Assassinations of politicians and civil rights activists filled the news. The 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago was surrounded by barbed wire, police, and protesters. I was just a child, but I was in the room when Walter Cronkite or Chet Huntley and David Brinkley delivered the news. Those black and white images are forever pressed into the pages of my mind. I will never forget the moment Walter Cronkite removed his eyeglasses and shed a tear as he reported that President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas. I watched my parents and other adults around me respond to each of these events. I didn’t understand it all, but I knew that it was serious and unsettling. Fast forward to 2020. The international, civic, and political climate seems similar. The big difference as far as I can tell is in the music. 1960s music is my favorite jam. Protest songs were gentle and thought-provoking and included songs like Sam Cooke’s A Change is Gonna Come or Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind. A listener could feel the peace and love and calm the shattered nerves without selling out. But it was the '60s love songs that contained the mysterious mood elevator. If you can’t have peace, might as well have love. What was in that music? Someone spiked the punchline. These songs prove love has its own language, hence my need for an interpreter. In this contentious time, it is my civic duty to crack the code. Can’t we get some National Security folks workin’ on this? Here’s what I mean. Sing a few bars. You will feel the effects. Let’s start with this 1963 hit by The Crystals: I met him on a Monday and my heart stood still Da doo ron ron ron, da doo ron ron Some boy told me that his name was Bill Da doo ron ron ron, da doo ron ron In 1964 Manfred Mann had the hit Do Wah Diddy Diddy: There she was just a-walkin' down the street, singin' ' "Do wah diddy diddy dum diddy do" Snappin' her fingers and shufflin' her feet, singin' "Do wah diddy diddy dum diddy do" She looked good (looked good), she looked fine (looked fine) Moving along to 1967, a song from the musical Hair became very popular: Glibby gloop gloopy Nibby Nabby Noopy La La La Lo Lo Sabba Sibby Sabba Nooby abba Nabba Le Le Lo Lo Tooby ooby walla nooby abba nabba Early mornin' singin' song Good morning starshine! By 1968 the Beatles got in on the act: Desmond has a barrow in the marketplace Molly is the singer in a band Desmond says to Molly, girl, I like your face And Molly says this as she takes him by the hand Ob-la-di, ob-la-da, life goes on, bra La-la, how the life goes on Ob-la-di, ob-la-da, life goes on, bra La-la, how the life goes on I think I might have been at the wedding of Desmond and Molly Jones. When I sing along, I can practically remember dancing with the groom. If only we could get our da-doo-ron-ron’s to do-wah-diddy-diddy and nibby nooby abba nabba maybe we could ob-la-di, ob-la-da as life goes on. The answer to feeling better is in the music. I swear it is so. In-a-gadda-da-vida, baby! |
AuthorLilli-ann Buffin Archives
April 2024
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