Lasting Impressions

Pink mascara lashes lengthen against baby blue sky batting away white candy-floss filled green valleys.

What a beautiful sunrise this morning.

The painters palette at work again. Although, I have to say, Arizona has the most awesome sunrises in the history of sunrises. In my view, of course.

The air, crisp and clean, rushing through the window, until it abruptly changes to skunk. It wasn’t his fault. I’m sure a car hit him, or another animal got too frisky with him. But, Au weh ist mir (‘Oh woe is me,’ for my non-German speaking friends), the smell.

The smell reaches your nose sending two signals to your brain. The first, ‘Oh god, a skunk,’ the other telling your hand to hit the up button on the window, which you, given the circumstances, will assuredly hit the down portion of the button first, filling the car with even more obnoxious gas before getting the window rolled-up, trapping the gasses inside the car with you. This is what we call a, ‘loose, loose scenario.’

These are lasting impressions. We take the good with the bad.

Traffic Jam of Ideas

I sit.

I sit looking at a blank page, not waiting for inspiration. I have plenty of inspiration. My brain is
a traffic jam of ideas. I wait for the chaos to clear so I can pick out an elegant one, a single well-designed idea, on which to write about today.

As a writer, I keep a few things with me at all times. One is a pen, the second is paper, usually
a spiral notebook, and third is a book -- it is usually the book I am reading that week, or
weekend, depending on how good the book is. I can eat up books like potato chips -- One is just
never enough.

I will dip into the well of writing from my notebook for this next story. It is a glimpse of something we all see at one time or another, but may take for granted. It is the airport. This is what I saw the day I picked up my daughter.

The Airport

The airport is a busy milling of ants running here and there, chauffeurs stand like statues holding illuminated signs of passengers they whisk away to exciting and boring places. Eyes race to a fro looking for family faces, signs of information and baggage claim carousels.

People who travel alone are expeditious, finding their avenues of exit quickly and easily.

There is a man with three small children in tow, things dangling from every possible clip on his already overflowing backpack, each hand filled with a smaller, more delicate one. They look at him with awe and wonder, their protector.

Women in heels, click clack their way across the floor, always perplexing me. How do they maneuver in airports, making connections in hubs, demanding miles of legwork?

The young couple is holding hands, tired from their journey. Who knows how many hours they flew? That same couple, aged with years of travel and worldly trials, walks thirty or so feet behind their younger selves, still hand in hand, still smiling, still tired from hours of travel and he still loves her, you can tell. He glances at her, making sure he isn’t dreaming, she smiles and grips his hand a little tighter, reassuring.

A women stands with me at carousel “J” for the United flight -- on time. She is waiting to see her daughter. It’s a reunion. They haven’t seen one another in twenty years. Anxiety bubbles in my stomach for her, butterflies and knots making their appearance. She has twenty minutes left to wait.

I watch a young couple embrace after their absence from one another. He wears a shirt stating,
“Life Begins.”

A new beginning, a new start, that is today for everyone in the airport. I decided to check the schedule again. I want to embrace my daughter; I miss her.

I want our life to begin.

Singing the Blues and Other Hues

Judith, my aunt, and mother to my cousins Kevin and Melodie, sings.

She also plays the piano, a talent I envy. Oh yes, it’s a brilliant emerald green, this envy. She is also the first reader and editor of my stories. (Not this blog however, or it would be grammatically correct, all the time.)

Judy has the ‘ear’, which in musical terms means perfect pitch. Like a perfumer, who has a perfect ‘nose’ for sniffing out fragrance, Judy can hear a song and know with certainty what key it’s in, what cords are used and best of all, can tune my guitar without picking up a tuner.

This is talent. To me, one of the finest talents in the world.

She came to visit my humble abode (and when I say humble, I mean the straw house from the three little pigs) in September after a whirlwind trip through Germany, visiting her brother who was turning 70 years old. Many members of my family were on that trip to Germany. I, however, didn’t go. I’m poor, a writer, enough said.

I was thrilled when she came to visit; I would have kept her here permanently, if the gods allowed it. We sat and talked about her life and music. The stories are so much better when you’re old enough to understand them. I showed her the first ‘inklings’ of the story, Ms. Abigail Spotty’s Rainbow Spots, I was writing for my daughter. Kelsey hates that I named her Abigail; she is just Ms. Spotty to her.

Judy talked about Vegas, one of the first places she worked, and Gene Autry, for whom she worked. She met many wonderful people during her stay in Vegas, Liberace (that man sparkled), The Rat Pack’s Dean Martin and many other singers, songwriters and big band leaders, of the day. To be honest, I was star struck. WOW.

I got around to asking her about a song she wrote many years ago. The song is called, “Just a Bend in The Road.” Eddy Arnold performed this song on one of his albums. (I don’t know if there are right infringements to this song, so I can’t incorporate it into the blog.)

Judy came to the VFW here in Millvale and played for everyone in the club. Oh happy day. She took requests, sitting in that smoke filled bar and put a smile on everyone’s face. That is a blessing. That, my friends, is talent with a capital T. My husband, Kevin still talks about that day with a glimmer in his eyes. He wishes she would come to stay, too.

She never did play the song, “Just a Bend in The Road.” She told me the story behind the song, which is a private part of her life. Someday she'll let me tell the story.

And Maybe she will come sing the blues for us again.

You come along and sing in your hue.

Cracking Creative

Since I was old enough to hold a crayon, I have been creative. To be honest, I was creative before I held a crayon. Smelly art however, may not count.

My mother told me a story of, coming home to an awful smell, overpowering the house and my father, blissful in his ignorance, hadn’t noticed any smell.

I am giving you fare warning, if you have a weak stomach -- stop now.

“Oh god, Roger, what the hell is that smell?”

I am sure my mother held a hand to her face, trying desperately to block the odor. He most likely just shrugged, wondering why she asked. She proceeded to my nursery room finding me, happy -- enjoying my first masterpiece of creativity.

“Jesus Roger.”

I know my mother pretty well; I am truncating what you might have heard. Her spoken words would have had more flourish, (meaning, a truck driver would have blushed).

The white walls and crib were now a subtle shade of greenish brown and so was I. My diaper had been my first palette and the walls and crib, my first canvas. Luckily enough, I don’t remember this every happening. I only have the word of my mother and she wouldn’t make this up. Who would make up a story this horrifically wonderful?

I was the Picasso of poop.

I'm sure it wasn't long after that, crayons made their appearance on the scene, then pencils, acrylic and finally oils, with plenty of paper and canvas thrown in for good measure.

I am an artist in the truest sense of the word. I have created all my life, in multiple mediums.
Writing was thrown into the mix somewhere on the timeline of 45 years, probably during Jr. High School. Writing wasn't something that came easily to me, nor did reading. I stumbled around in the darkness of words, unintelligent in their meaning.

A wonderful English teacher in 7th grade opened my world and mind to the written word. The first story I remember breaking through the darkness was, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe -- by C.S. Lewis. The door cracked open and blinding light shone through. I was engaged in the story, which the teacher dutifully read to us each day in class. The characters came to life in that classroom. My mother purchased the rest of the stories for me, which I devoured with a voracious appetite. I was starving and didn’t realize it.

I sat, unmoving for days, lost in worlds completely foreign to me, saturating my minds eye with images of magical places, beasts that talked and children who were brave beyond measure. I was hooked, a story junkie looking for my next fix.

High school brought with it the classics, Dickens, Melville, Steinbeck and Homer. Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men, Withering Heights and the Tale of Two Cities, were lost on me. I didn’t appreciate them. I didn’t know how to appreciate them because I was new to the written word. It wasn’t until much later in my life that I grew to love the classics, thankfully.

I bravely brandish a shirt, which states, “I read banned books.” A philosophy I happily live by. "Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it." Edmund Burke (1729-1797). All books and art are part of our history. The good, the bad, and the ugly (idiotic idea -- banning things -- censors, argh).

Writing starts in lower grades, but I didn’t become competent in the concept of writing until High school. Essays -- WOO HOO. This is where you learn serious organization of thought into coherent sentences and paragraphs on a blank page. Most people I knew hated essays. For me, it was a place for creativity. I was given a blank canvas and words colored my new palette.

Blue ethereal skies filled with beetle black ash, vomiting forth in volcanic explosions of words. Who could not write with a palette like that? They are vibrant, multi-hued expressions of what we see, just like a painter with dollops of paint on his canvas; the writer paints a picture, allowing us a glimpse into his or her perceptions.

Beautifully creative.

A World of Work

In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth -- and all manner of creatures to fill that earth, including Adam and Eve of course.

Let’s look at this for a second. God created -- this means the omnipotent being that he is had to work (didn‘t he see that coming). Sure, he only had to work for six of the 7 days, getting his holiday after, but the man/women/being had to w.o.r.k. (I’m thinking I wouldn’t have wanted the job.)

Therefore, Adam and Eve had to find jobs. Their first job was naming everything. I would like to have been a fly on the wall when body parts came up in that conversation, or for that matter the platypus. I mean -- really -- platypus. Their main job however, was not to eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge. This seems like a pretty easy job to me, but alas, no -- Eve sticks her big nose into Adams business, “You need to assert yourself, you’ll never make manager if you don’t take initiative.” That is how I hear the conversation starting. “Go on show him you can take charge.”

I get a chuckle from the thought of Eve brow beating Adam.

Oh, so many wives have had this conversation. I knew it started somewhere.

Back to work.

Life Of Laughter

Laughter is an automatic response (usually) to jocularity. When something is funny, we laugh, simple. We also laugh in response to horror, anger and fear, which is a defensive mechanism developed by men to show they ‘ain’t scared of nothing,’ -- that makes me laugh.

I am a laugher, but there was a period in my life when I wasn’t. I used to say, “Oh that’s funny,” but would never laugh. People thought: I was stuck up (of course that wasn’t the case), or just didn’t find ‘things’ as funny as normal people -- normal being the key word here. The problem was and still is, I have migraines and anyone who knows about these, (you’d rather put your head through the wall) light blinding, noise sensitive, head splitting types of headaches, will appreciate that certain things set them off. Of all the things that could and would possibly set them off, laughter was the culprit. I found this out (after years of going home so sick I wanted to die), at the amusement park. So, I stopped laughing, good-bye, the end.

Kevin, my cousin and jester in residence of our family, used to get me laughing so hard I would stop breathing as tears streamed down my face. I might even turn blue, if the jokes were particularly riotous. We loved to laugh and Kevin was always happy to help in that aspect of our lives. He was a class clown that George Carlin would have envied. Luckily enough, Kevin found an outlet for his jocularity. He moved to Hollywood and now tortures others with breathless, tear stained, sidesplitting glimpses into his endless well of jokes.

My sister Chris and my mother Susan (you remember her from the southern cooking piece I wrote) and me, used to sit in our estrogen based atmosphere and make each other laugh, boys are banned from this club. They found particular pleasure in trying to cause my death.

We will call this “Death by Taco Chip Inhalation.”

A little Mexican food restaurant, down the street from our home, was a favorite of ours. They would wait patiently until I consumed the crispy chips in the bowl before hitting me, upside the head, with punch lines of jokes. This, in turn, would instantly cause me to inhale fragments of chips into my lungs, making the two of them laugh even harder. At the time, it wasn’t funny to me. Years later I look back and laugh -- it was funny but dangerous.

They weren’t being mean (I hope), they were just enjoying the time spent together laughing.

After realizing that laughter was causing my migraines, I found a way to fix the problem medically (better living through chemistry). Thank goodness. Could you imagine going your entire life without laughing? Neither could I. So now I laugh and pretty regularly too I’m happy to say.

I have children now who need tortured with the jocularity that runs rampant in our family. I promise not to choke them on taco chips, or turn them blue -- maybe. I might see if I can get my kids to laugh milk through their noses though. George Carlin and I will both laugh, him in heaven (because God likes a good joke) and me here on earth.

She laughed.

Oh The Food My Mother Cooks

On any given day, in Arizona, you can find my mother cooking something, she is an excellent cook. (She's a better cook than I am a writer.) Her mom, dad, and sister were and are expert cooks.

Judy, her sister, owned a restaurant in Tennessee where I worked summers busing tables, rolling napkins and washed dishes during my stay. I learned a lot about food and cooking in those summers.

The one thing my mother and my aunt cooked, especially for me, is rutabagas. If you don’t know what rutabagas are, you will have to check with a produce manager in your supermarket. They fall somewhere in-between a kohlrabi and a turnip, closer to a turnip I think. They are large and somewhat waxy in texture on the outside and very much like a hard potato on the inside. My mother would peel them, boil them and finally mash them into an iron skillet with bacon fat and fry them. Oh, for the love of bacon fat. This was love for me. Emeril has no clue. BAM! to you sir.

The other food, which I alway loved (I think I got it twice in 18 years), is ham hocks and beans with cornbread. But not just any cornbread, oh no. It was Jiffy cornbread, the little blue box that was three for a dollar -- that was something special. If you haven’t eaten it, you don’t know what you’re missing. It is manna from heaven that cornbread. But, of course, it's a southern thing. It's soul food.

Southern women know how to cook (my mother is originally from the south). The love they have for cooking is counted in the calorie content of their food, and their food alone. You ask Mrs. Paula Deen. If a southern woman cooks your food, the love she puts into her cooking will add 10 pounds to you before you leave the table. This is soul food, this is the food of love and this is my Southern heritage. Smothered chicken, red eye gravy, buttermilk biscuits and ham hocks do me just fine.

Thank you mom. Can you pass another biscuit? I still have gravy on my plate.