Bliss needed some "date" clothes. Her taste in everyday-wear dismays me, as I've mentioned before. She likes beat-up Converse sneakers, holey jeans, and silly T-shirts with pictures on them.
But we were in agreement that she needed something a little more upscale to wear on actual dates with actual boys, and she had such a date coming up on a recent weekend. It wasn't my pay week and I'm diligently trying to pay off my credit card, so I figured I had about $40 I could spend.
"Can we go to the mall?" she asked. Though my bargain-loving heart sank, I agreed. But first, I suggested, maybe we could try Plato's Closet, which is a "gently-used" store that seems to cater to young people. She didn't seem too interested, but (probably to avoid irritating me) she said she'd take a look.
We went in and she quickly gathered an armload of clothes and disappeared into the dressing room. At one point she asked me trade the jeans she had taken in for a size larger, and when I went up front I caught sight of my reflection in the glass door. I looked old. My hair looked bad, and my clothes had done that trick where they look fine in the mirror at home and terrible out in public. I also looked exhausted, which I was.
I went back to the dressing room and handed Bliss the jeans. Then I stood nearby, waiting for her, and began to feel bad about things in general. What kind of mother was I to send this beautiful young girl out on a big date in thrift store clothes? What kind of life do I live where I work so hard all day and don't feel able to buy her something new? The excitement of her date would probably be diminished for her by the knowledge that she was dressed in second-hand clothes, and that would be my fault. I got a lump in my throat.
Then Bliss came out of the dressing room. "Both the jeans fit," she said. "But should I get this shirt or the other one?"
"How much are they?" I asked. We added up the cost of everything she liked. Two pairs of jeans and three shirts came to thirty-eight dollars. I shrugged. "You can get them all."
"Oh my gosh, this store is AWESOME," she said, with stars in her eyes. "I want to come back here all the time!"
Friday, November 28, 2008
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Leaves
We have what they call a “wooded lot.” Real wooded. We’re knee deep in leaves right about now, and just for the record, I ain’t rakin em. I work really, really hard all week, and since my enjoyment of yard work is less than zero, either we’ll hire somebody or we’ll stay knee deep in leaves. I don’t care either way.
But I digress. I was in my bedroom the other day when a whole bunch of leaves fell from the tree right outside the window. Something about the way they looked reminded me of people jumping from a building, so then I thought of the way it seems like a great tragedy when a number of people die all at once… in a natural disaster, or a terrorist attack, or a plane crash or whatever. But really, whether three hundred people die or just one, it doesn’t matter much in the grand scheme of things. Whether one leaf falls or a whole tree full, we were knee deep already.
I thought about that Bible verse that says if God cares about a sparrow falling, you can rest assured he cares about you, too. But I have this tendency to turn Bible verses backwards and look at them another way, so I thought, yeah, that’s about right… people are about as important to the universe as sparrows. I can picture a bunch of people crowded around the deathbed of some loved one bawling “Oh Lord, please save my mama/daddy/husband/wife. We need him/her so much.” But the dying person falls off the tree anyway and joins the umpteen zillion others that have fallen, and nobody really cares but their families.
I have a theory about people who pray not to die and then die anyway. I figure maybe it’s like when children cry and beg for something ridiculous and parents ignore them. I was telling Brandon the other day that we’d like to move from where we live, and he got all worked up about negative aspects he imagined. I tried to tell him that if we moved at all, it would be to a BETTER place, but he can’t imagine it because all he knows is THIS place. Maybe dying’s like that, so God pays you no attention when you whine about it.
Anyway, as I’ve said many times, if something happened to me or any of my coworkers on the way to work one day, the survivors would all be shocked and horrified.We'd weep and moan for a while. But by ten o’clock we’d be thinking about where to go for lunch.
Not real uplifting today, am I? You should really go read Amanda. She’s much cheerier than me. www.nazarativity.blogspot.com.
But I digress. I was in my bedroom the other day when a whole bunch of leaves fell from the tree right outside the window. Something about the way they looked reminded me of people jumping from a building, so then I thought of the way it seems like a great tragedy when a number of people die all at once… in a natural disaster, or a terrorist attack, or a plane crash or whatever. But really, whether three hundred people die or just one, it doesn’t matter much in the grand scheme of things. Whether one leaf falls or a whole tree full, we were knee deep already.
I thought about that Bible verse that says if God cares about a sparrow falling, you can rest assured he cares about you, too. But I have this tendency to turn Bible verses backwards and look at them another way, so I thought, yeah, that’s about right… people are about as important to the universe as sparrows. I can picture a bunch of people crowded around the deathbed of some loved one bawling “Oh Lord, please save my mama/daddy/husband/wife. We need him/her so much.” But the dying person falls off the tree anyway and joins the umpteen zillion others that have fallen, and nobody really cares but their families.
I have a theory about people who pray not to die and then die anyway. I figure maybe it’s like when children cry and beg for something ridiculous and parents ignore them. I was telling Brandon the other day that we’d like to move from where we live, and he got all worked up about negative aspects he imagined. I tried to tell him that if we moved at all, it would be to a BETTER place, but he can’t imagine it because all he knows is THIS place. Maybe dying’s like that, so God pays you no attention when you whine about it.
Anyway, as I’ve said many times, if something happened to me or any of my coworkers on the way to work one day, the survivors would all be shocked and horrified.We'd weep and moan for a while. But by ten o’clock we’d be thinking about where to go for lunch.
Not real uplifting today, am I? You should really go read Amanda. She’s much cheerier than me. www.nazarativity.blogspot.com.
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Family Heirlooms
When my mother was sick recently—so sick we all thought she might die—she mentioned some pieces of family furniture she wanted to make sure were passed to me. Luckily, she got well and is now at home using her furniture herself.
But this afternoon while making gingerbread men with my son Brandon, it occurred to me that the items of my mother’s that mean the most to me have already been in my possession for many years. Her set of heavy glass mixing bowls, faded pink in color and decorated with a very retro design of some indistinguishable fruit or vegetable, were passed down to me when her remarriage (when I was twenty) led to my striking out on my own. One bowl is big, one is little and they both have handy pouring spouts. I use one or the other practically every time I cook, never without remembering all the times I saw her use them.
My mother—though she was a working woman of the 70’s with a wretched, evil husband, an elderly grandfather in residence, and me—put an awesome meal on the table every night. I had to grow up to realize the talent and creativity that went into that, not to mention the energy.
I’m glad to have been able to have her pink bowls for so many years. Using them now enables me not only to look back at my mother’s life, but also to view my own at various stages: I made tuna casserole in the big bowl as a single girl on a budget, I mashed up sweet potatoes in it the first time I hosted a family holiday as a young wife, and now I mix gingerbread dough in it to entertain a child. The years go by so fast.
When I’m gone I might expect my kids to want to keep copies of my written work or valuable items (like there are any) from my house. But wouldn’t it be special if one of them took the pink mixing bowls home and used them to prepare meals for their families, and thought wistfully, as I always do, “I remember Mama using this all my life.”
But this afternoon while making gingerbread men with my son Brandon, it occurred to me that the items of my mother’s that mean the most to me have already been in my possession for many years. Her set of heavy glass mixing bowls, faded pink in color and decorated with a very retro design of some indistinguishable fruit or vegetable, were passed down to me when her remarriage (when I was twenty) led to my striking out on my own. One bowl is big, one is little and they both have handy pouring spouts. I use one or the other practically every time I cook, never without remembering all the times I saw her use them.
My mother—though she was a working woman of the 70’s with a wretched, evil husband, an elderly grandfather in residence, and me—put an awesome meal on the table every night. I had to grow up to realize the talent and creativity that went into that, not to mention the energy.
I’m glad to have been able to have her pink bowls for so many years. Using them now enables me not only to look back at my mother’s life, but also to view my own at various stages: I made tuna casserole in the big bowl as a single girl on a budget, I mashed up sweet potatoes in it the first time I hosted a family holiday as a young wife, and now I mix gingerbread dough in it to entertain a child. The years go by so fast.
When I’m gone I might expect my kids to want to keep copies of my written work or valuable items (like there are any) from my house. But wouldn’t it be special if one of them took the pink mixing bowls home and used them to prepare meals for their families, and thought wistfully, as I always do, “I remember Mama using this all my life.”
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Don't Even Start
Of all the asinine topics of conversation that have bugged me throughout my life, the most moronic of all is the question of whether we DREAM IN COLOR.
Right off the bat, before I can delve any deeper into the topic, let me answer it by saying Don't even start with me--OF COURSE we dream in color. I do, and by God so do you and so does everybody else with normal vision, so don't make me lose my mind by even insinuating otherwise.
My half-brother, when he was little, once asked our father, "Was everything in black and white when you were a kid?" And it's funny when a kid reasons that just because all the pictures he has seen from 1940 or '50 are in black and white, it indicates that life itself was colorless. It is senseless, however, when grown adults seem to think their dreams are on FILM.
You SEE in color, don't you? Well hell, when you remember the sandwich you ate for lunch, do you REMEMBER it in color? Then who do you suppose swoops in and magically turns your DREAMS to black and white?
I nearly wrecked my car the other day when some news report came on the radio announcing that older people, who grew up watching black and white TV, are more likely than the younger generation to dream in black and white. AARRRGGHH!! Following this brilliant theory, I wonder what people did before there was TV at all. Maybe around the turn of the century their dreams were silent, with subtitles. Perhaps people of Van Gogh's day dreamed in frickin' OIL. I suppose cavemen dreamed of rudimentary drawings instead of thundering herds of real buffaloes.
Just don't start even start.
Right off the bat, before I can delve any deeper into the topic, let me answer it by saying Don't even start with me--OF COURSE we dream in color. I do, and by God so do you and so does everybody else with normal vision, so don't make me lose my mind by even insinuating otherwise.
My half-brother, when he was little, once asked our father, "Was everything in black and white when you were a kid?" And it's funny when a kid reasons that just because all the pictures he has seen from 1940 or '50 are in black and white, it indicates that life itself was colorless. It is senseless, however, when grown adults seem to think their dreams are on FILM.
You SEE in color, don't you? Well hell, when you remember the sandwich you ate for lunch, do you REMEMBER it in color? Then who do you suppose swoops in and magically turns your DREAMS to black and white?
I nearly wrecked my car the other day when some news report came on the radio announcing that older people, who grew up watching black and white TV, are more likely than the younger generation to dream in black and white. AARRRGGHH!! Following this brilliant theory, I wonder what people did before there was TV at all. Maybe around the turn of the century their dreams were silent, with subtitles. Perhaps people of Van Gogh's day dreamed in frickin' OIL. I suppose cavemen dreamed of rudimentary drawings instead of thundering herds of real buffaloes.
Just don't start even start.
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