all of the selves we Have ever been
Sometimes when I need to wind down for sleep, I turn on my bedside radio. Last evening the radio show host was talking with callers about their fathers. It reminded me how much my own father loved the radio. There were many radios around our home in every conceivable shape and size. Wherever my father was, one of the radios was playing. In the evenings, dad would hunker down in a basement area he established as his private, personal space. He especially enjoyed listening to talk radio. Occasionally, dad would be one of the callers. During the short delay between call-in and broadcast, dad would race up the basement stairs and turn on another radio so the entire family could hear dad on the air. He delighted in his seconds of radio celebrity. While sheltering-in-place, I have kept busy sorting through boxes, envelopes and binders of memorabilia brought down from the top shelves of my storage closet. Among the treasures, I came across a note my father wrote about his “radio days” as a youth, the time when he began to nurture his love of the medium. Dad died thirty years ago, but the radio always brings him back to me. In honor of Father’s Day, I am sharing dad’s notes about his radio days. Here’s to you dad! Listening to the radio is like reading a good book. The descriptions are verbal, yet the mind conjures up vivid pictures. You might find yourself laughing or crying along with Ma Perkins as her life at the lumber yard took a turn for the worse. After school there were fifteen minute broadcasts of a variety of adventure programs designed for children. “Hop Harrigan,” America’s ace of the airways, would blast from the speaker at 3:15 PM. That segment was followed by Dick Tracy and the Lone Ranger. Evil-doers were generally finished off in fifteen minutes, but occasionally, there were cliff-hangers. It would take a number of segments for justice to triumph. The sponsors of these shows enticed the listening audience of boys and girls into buying products by offering a prize. By sending in a label or a box top and a small fee a listener could obtain a secret decoder ring, or some other item used in the show’s segment. Without the item you would surely miss those secret messages sent directly to you by the show’s hero. Worse, you would be belittled by your peers for not having the latest item. I remember being eight or nine year’s old sitting in a darkened room listening to “Lights Out.” The only light in the room was from the glow of the radio dial. I waited in silence with my heart racing anticipating a good scare. The sound of the creepy, squeaky door opening at the start of the show… nothing could compare to that! My eager ears took it all in and went on flights of fantasy. For a brief time I could escape to places only my mind and imagination could take me. Those days have passed, but I will always remember the heroes that saved the world from crime and corruption: the Green Hornet, Jack Armstrong, the Lone Ranger… They are gone, but not forgotten. You too, Dad. You too. Happy Father’s Day!
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Some people are memorable no matter the passage of time. A dear neighbor was such a person for me. The woman’s name proved difficult for my toddler-son to pronounce, and soon she became known in our household as “Mrs. Wiggly,” a moniker suitable for a fairy tale character. It was a perfect name for our petite, kind, and good-natured neighbor who had all the time in the world for little children. Her fairy tale stature was enhanced by the treats she sometimes magically produced from the pockets of her white cotton shorts. A narrow, grassy slope separated Mrs. Wiggly’s driveway from ours. The children adored her and watched from the large living room window for Mrs. Wiggly to make an appearance. The kids then scrambled down the slope to take a seat beside Mrs. Wiggly in one of the plaid folding lawn chairs that decorated her narrow front porch. I enjoyed spending time with Mrs.Wiggly too. We could easily find topics for conversation even if we had spoken two or three times earlier in the day. One morning, I noticed that Mrs. Wiggly was sitting on her porch wiping tears from her eyes with a wad of tissue. When I inquired about the reason for her crying, Mrs. Wiggly sobbed, “My baby signed up for Medicare today.” Not what I expected. As a mother of two young children, I was busy filling baby books with memories of all the “firsts.” This one had never entered my mind—one day my children will apply for Medicare. Better save a blank page. Will I be equally impacted by my children achieving official senior citizen status, I wondered. And what other firsts have I failed to consider? While I was experiencing new motherhood and measuring the ages of my children in pounds and inches, number of teeth, vaccinations, and school years, I was presented with the reality of a future in which my children would be not just grown up…but grown old. In Mrs. Wiggly there was a new kind of reckoning, a great sense of loss. Like the Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz, Medicare reached out on behalf of old age and threatened, “I’ll get you, my pretty, and your little girl, too!” We are accustomed to being older than our children and seeming ancient to them. Is it possible that we will ever see them as old? How will it be to have a parent-child relationship in which we share the same gerontologist? When we go for our heart caths together? Both sit out a grandchild’s wedding dance due to arthritis? Wear each other’s silver sneakers? At some point our children will begin to keep a book about us—doctor’s names, appointment times, medication schedules, unexplained symptoms, the name of our accountant, and where we keep our passwords. Instead of the tiny envelopes I keep that hold a lock of their hair, a baby tooth, they will have notes about where I keep my wig and the cup for my dentures. Today, I see my children as young adults. They are busy with life, so healthy, competent, and confident. It is hard to imagine a day when they will sign up for Medicare. And do they see a day when they will be keeping that book about me? That is too big for my brain to comprehend. I’ll see if I can make it to Medicare myself… For now, I am going to stick to the path in my fairy tale forest and make believe that my children will always be young. When my son was a toddler trying to absorb language and grasp the difficult concept of time, he would sometimes preface a question about the future with the words “after this day.” “After this day will we go to grandma’s house?” or “After this day will I go to school?” Anticipating the future, he began trying to understand its denominations—minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years. Even little ones desire clarity about what’s ahead. That yet-to-come time can be puzzling, exciting, and fraught with uncertainty. “After this day” reminds me of the language of fairy tales and the world that existed “once upon a time.” It has a dream-like quality that makes my head feel fuzzy. What is real? Imagined? Possible? Nearly six months have passed since the start of the year 2020, and yet it seems like one long, harsh day. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and ask myself, “Did all that really happen?” It reflects the feelings of unreality we all share during this strange and difficult time of microscopic invaders, wolves in sheep’s clothing, and looming dangers like financial ruin and social injustice. What will happen after this day? Fairy tales entertain and educate the young. The stories provide life lessons about dangers lurking in the world, about how to face challenges and solve problems. The tales give us examples of how to be heroes even when we are reluctant or afraid. Heroes are good, kind, brave, smart, resourceful, and do what needs to be done. Despite difficulties, heroes win in the end, triumphing over evil and villains, captivity and harsh conditions. Often the hero endures trial after trial to save someone else. Sounds a lot like parenting. I am trying to endure and be brave though often I feel a fool. I am going through my own trials but still trying to outwit the enemies and rescue the world for my children. I will never outgrow the desire to be a hero for them. And I owe it to that sweet toddler boy who once upon a time believed in fairy tale princes, magic beans, and a mother who could see into the future. May we all live happily ever after… After this day. Bicycles have made a big comeback in the age of the coronavirus. They seem to be everywhere—a freedom ticket, a legitimate exemption from the shelter-in-place, social distancing orders. I step outside and notice a mom supervising her toddler. The child is seated aboard a tiny new red and white tricycle. The little girl beams her pride in my direction. Two stubby ponytails bob like small pom-poms on her head cheering on the short legs and chubby feet that tackle the pedals. As I progress down the street, I notice a family coming down the bike path. They are like the gaggles of geese that sometimes bring traffic to a halt on our busy urban road. Dad is in front leading the way. A boy and a girl make up the middle. Mom brings up the rear, keeping a watchful eye on her goslings as they approach an intersection. They are all wearing helmets and obeying traffic rules. I turn down a neighborhood street and notice a driveway cluttered with bikes. There are too many to count. A matching number of boys and girls stretch out on the adjacent lawn—one for each bike. They practice social distancing even as their bicycles mingle and touch on the pavement. Parents chat with their neighbors across the shrubbery. On the return trip home the sun is blazing. An unsupervised six pack of shirtless school age boys zooms past me. Not a one is wearing a helmet. There is probably not a milliliter of sunscreen between them. They are various shades of tan like the rotisserie chickens spinning on the rack at my grocery store. They don’t seem worried. Helmets and sunscreen are things that keep parents awake at night. Children don’t read from the catalog of things that can go wrong. If they did, they would return to the womb and not the bike path. These boys jockey for position on the narrow, two-lane shared-use path. It might as well be the Tour de France sans helmets and uniforms. They keep their eyes on the leader. You can see the look of determination in each sweaty face. Their arms are tense, hands clutching the handlebars. They lean into the wind, wiry legs pumping hard. They are focused! I look at that six pack with envy and think back to the days before exercise became a chore, before we were assigned a number of steps to be tallied at the end of a day—too often a discouraging score. I remember when moving was as natural and vital to existence as breathing. It was freedom. It was fun. I realize that I have not been on a bicycle in years. My life as a pedaler began as toddler too. I received a small red and black train engine called Casey Jones. It was pedal-operated. It didn’t go too fast or too far—up and down the driveway mostly, but I loved that thing. I was as proud a pedaler as the tike I witnessed this morning; I just didn’t have the pom-pom ponytails cheering me on. I soon advanced to a more standard tricycle. While I was mastering my small-fry vehicles, my older sister, Mary, moved up to a very large tricycle. Practically a bicycle built for two. One of us could occupy the seat and the other ride by standing comfortably on the metal sheath that covered the rear axle. Being older, Mary was the first to get a real two-wheeler. It was a teal colored Schwinn, the Gucci of bicycles at the time. I was envious and later followed by acquiring a red Huffy as a birthday present. I was fascinated by the tiny headlamp and the rear rack. My younger brother would later be the first to get a ten-speed with hand brakes. Might as well have been a Lamborghini. Throughout my youth, no one heard of helmets. Often, no one wore shoes. Bicycles were a freedom ticket then too. If you didn’t have a bike, you had to walk. Boring! Parents weren’t about to drive us around in the evening. By day, the cars were at work with our dads. Bikes provided initiative to get out into the world on our own. They were essential to existence. You lacked standing in the world of childhood if you did not have a bike. All was well in our two-wheeled world until the incident. My friend Cindy lived up the hill from us. It was a very steep hill, and she lived one house from the crest. One day she got onto a bicycle in her driveway. She had not yet learned how to ride a two-wheeler. I am not sure if she intended to make her inaugural ride down the hill that day or if the bicycle got away from her. But it happened…she and the bike began moving down the hill gathering speed by the nanosecond. In her wake, Cindy left a trail of screams. We all stood frozen with terror, gravity holding our feet firmly to the pavement. It was not slow motion. In an instant the bike crashed into the guard rail at the bottom of the street. Thankfully, the rail protected Cindy from sailing through the picture window of the house that waited there. When Cindy’s bike collided with the guard rail, she flew into the air coming down hard with her face to the ground. That thump released the force field holding our feet immobilized. Somehow we managed to run and hold our breath at the same time. Today, someone would have called 9-1-1. There would have been an ambulance and a police report. We would have made witness statements. The neighbor into whose yard Cindy flew would be contacting his homeowner’s insurance carrier. But back then, there was no 9-1-1. No dads were home, so no cars were available on the street. We all ran to her, kids and stay-at-home moms alike. When Cindy got to her feet, she dusted herself off. Able to walk, she went on home. Maybe the doctor made a house call. I don’t know. And I don’t know if Cindy suffered any life-long trauma as a result of the incident. I also don’t remember if I rode bikes with Cindy after that day. We did continue to jump rope, play tag, catch lightning bugs, and swap Nancy Drew mysteries. I can’t recall if that day changed my view of bike riding, reduced the pleasure, or increased the fear. Perhaps that was a turning point in my childhood. Maybe it was the day I started my own catalog of things that can go wrong, tucking away my memory of the incident to become “the prime example” I would call upon years later as a parent—on that later day when I would ruin bike riding for my son by insisting he wear a helmet. This is one of my favorite poems about mothers. It was written by Ohio humorist and poet, Strickland Gillilan. The Reading Mother I had a mother who read to me Sagas of pirates who scoured the sea, Cutlasses clenched in their yellow teeth, "Blackbirds" stowed in the hold beneath. I had a Mother who read me lays Of ancient and gallant and golden days; Stories of Marmion and Ivanhoe, Which every boy has a right to know. I had a Mother who read me tales Of Gelert the hound of the hills of Wales, True to his trust till his tragic death, Faithfulness blent with his final breath. I had a Mother who read me the things That wholesome life to the boy heart brings-- Stories that stir with an upward touch, Oh, that each mother of boys were such! You may have tangible wealth untold; Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold. Richer than I you can never be-- I had a Mother who read to me. Happy Mother's Day! Every mom has an inner MacGyver. We may not be secret agents, but we each have a deep well of resourcefulness. We can save a life, and we know how to make do in a pinch. The Hollywood MacGyver is described as having genius-level intellect. He can speak several languages and dispose of bombs. He understands physics and engineering. MacGyver is known as a non-violent problem solver. He does all of that in his fashionable Hollywood wardrobe. Most moms do genius level work without the IQ testing. We may not speak several bonafide languages, but each child comes with his or her own dialect. Moms are masters at diffusing things that are about to explode. Just ask any mother who has three kids at home with the stomach flu. We don’t have to study physics to understand the relationship between time and space. Moms know there is never enough of either, and yet the kids show up to the bake sale with cupcakes on a moment’s notice. As to engineering, I’ve been known to oversee the construction of everything from erupting volcanoes to a scaled-down version of the Parthenon, and I know 50 ways to unclog a toilet. If most moms weren’t so busy being moms, we’d be diplomats. That situation in the Middle East would be old news by now. And we can do it all on a bad hair day while wearing our pajamas. There are the common, simple things we do like minor repairs to eyeglasses using twisty-ties, and cardboard shims under wobbly desk legs, reusing shopping bags and wrapping paper to cover school books, and wrapping a washcloth around a spatula to make a lotion applicator for someone’s back. Stepping it up, we create entire Halloween costumes out of rain ponchos. One time I had to transport a Jello salad to a gathering three hours away. I had no cooler, but in true MacGyver-fashion, I transformed a cardboard box, aluminum foil, and a plastic bag into an ice chest. The salad made it to the table with not so much as a drop of sweat on the glass dish! I hate to boast, but it was a proud moment. But the Oscar goes to my Aunt Addie. She tops the list of impressive MacGyver-style improvisers. Many years ago, Aunt Addie attended an evening basketball game in which her son was playing. A terrible snowstorm kicked up while the game was in progress. By the time they returned to their car to make the trip home, it was dark outside and the car was covered. The snow continued falling thick and heavy. Addie started up the car, but when she turned on the windshield wipers, they malfunctioned and went dead. The snowfall made visibility too poor to make it home without the wipers. Addie took the shoelaces from my cousin’s high-top basketball shoes and somehow rigged them to the wipers. They manually operated the windshield wipers by pulling on the shoe strings and made it safely home! A legendary, hall-of-fame, MacGyver-Mom move! One of my favorite MacGyver-Mom stories is one I only read about. A child complained to his mother that his costume did not fit, and he had nothing to wear for trick-or-treating. The mom suggested the boy wear his pajamas and go as a tired person. Pure genius! And that mom was probably swinging between rooftops taking food to a neighbor when she came up with the idea. After recalling all of these mom maneuvers, I decided to look up the definition of “mom.” A mom is “a person who has responsibility for the care of children.” What?! That seems pretty lame to me, but perhaps the description was just too long to print. In fairness, I am revising the description of MacGyver to “a person who takes after their mom.” As I looked through my kitchen cabinets wondering how creative I can be with the contents should I face quarantine or empty store shelves, I had a flashback. Something I had not thought about in…well, maybe ever. There were four children in my immediate family. I had one brother. The males were outnumbered two-to-one. As my brother got further along in grade school, our father began a manly Saturday night ritual. After all the girls went to bed, my dad and brother would stay up for the late night movie. It was usually some horrible, grotesque, old, black-and-white sci-fi flick. By today’s movie standards, those films were primitive. Might as well have been cave drawings. The ladies of the house were far too sophisticated for such nonsense. We were glad to go to bed. We later learned that the movie was not the main attraction on those Saturday nights. What was really going on downstairs in the kitchen below us was the crazy sandwich contest. My dad threw down the gauntlet. Each contestant had to create a sandwich for the other to eat. And the player HAD to eat the concoction. Any ingredient was fair game as long as it was edible. The sandwich could be flat or tall as long as it could stand on a plate between two slices of bread. The creations became outrageous. A sandwich might contain peanut butter, lunchmeat, pickles, mashed potatoes, raisins, and maybe an Oreo cookie or two. The combinations were endless and often unimaginable. My stomach would become squishy just hearing about it, but my brother loved this time with our dad. The ritual went on until our parents divorced. It just occurred to me now how much my brother must have missed those Saturday nights. My father died many years later. My brother died not too long after our father. My brother was never really able to regain his footing after dad died. I miss them both. Today, I am grateful for this delicious memory of abundance in a frightening moment of scarcity. Our people come back to us when we need them! When we are years away from this coronavirus pandemic, may we look back and see that it was a unique, heaven-sent opportunity to slow down and be together, a time for family bonding and new rituals. May our children's memories of this time be sustenance for them when they are faced with a scary time in the future, a time we cannot yet see. |
AuthorLilli-ann Buffin Archives
April 2024
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