Good Dirt

“Have you had any tooth pain since that last time we saw you?”

“No,” I said without confidence, feeling certain I would have remembered if my teeth hurt. Tooth pain is something that could make Daddy cry and he was a Colonel and The Bravest Little Soldier Ever if I believed any of the stories he told. Even with everything I have had going on, I was fairly certain I would remember. Dental visits are a lot like the 5 of Cups; no matter what happens, you tend to focus on what you didn’t like.

Tea Tarot
(c) Copyright 2011 Marcia McCord



“No,” I said, this time with more confidence. “Cold stuff, hot stuff, everything seems OK.” Everything seems to get chewed up and land on my hips or some other undesirable resting place. If I can type 110 words a minute, why doesn’t that burn up calories?

Have I had any traditional tooth challenges lately? Well, there was no problem with the corn on the cob last weekend. The television commercials used to show that as a challenge, but I guess that’s if you have dentures. I have my own teeth with a few enhancements in the fillings and crowns department. But under all that they are, at least, mine.

Turtles, I thought. John’s been getting those divine dark chocolate turtles from Lileds down the street. They have thick dark chocolate with hard caramel and pecans. Now if anything is going to destroy good dental health, those turtles would do it. Of course, if anything was going to make a soft landing where I already have plenty of soft landing available, turtles would do that, too.

“You want a turtle?” John will holler from the kitchen about 9 pm.

This is a moral dilemma. Do I do the good thing and say, “No, just another glass of ice water,” or do I succumb to temptation?

“OK, but just one and make it a little one.” John likes companionship in small sins. I reflect on how close the candy shop name “Lileds” is to Lilith. Lilith, the vampire chocolatier, I think. Something about that makes sense but I can’t put my finger on it. Who would need a snake if you had turtles in the garden, after all?

Why is the vegetable stand a farther walking distance from the house than the candy shop? I suppose somewhere in there is the element of choice, right? I chose to buy this house. But, hey, the Universe swatted us with the Big Two-by-Four of Enlightenment years ago and said, “Ya’ eedjits, this house is a BARGAIN you will never see again. Buy it now!” We did.

Can we help it if it’s a short walk to Baskin Robbins or Lileds? Was it my fault they moved the Grocery Outlet across the freeway so I actually have to get in my car to get my bargains now? And China Ocean with its artery-blocking delicious General Chicken is a mere 2 blocks away? My closest bodega is El Dos de Oros, my favorite little Mexican grocery named for, of all things, the Two of Pentacles, sort of what I look like trying to manage a few veggies. It happens to be right across the street from my new little favorite restaurant, Quiero Mas with its fiery salsa, flavorful carne asada quesadilla and low, low prices. Yo quiero mas, no problemo.

But I digress. Have my teeth hurt since the last time I was at the dentist? Well, no. I’ve even flossed and gone out of my way to brush my teeth. I never feel self-righteous at the dentist though. It’s like going to an auditor, on purpose. There’s always something I should have done, something I could be doing better.

Trivia time: So did you know that the leading cause of death, death, I’m saying, in the year 1000 wasn’t dragons or swords or plague or plagues of locusts or mead overdoses or even malnutrition? Nope, it was, [insert dramatic pause here] tooth decay. Tooth decay was a cause of death! Sink your teeth into that the next time you visit your dentist or hygienist for a cleaning.

I was impressed this time with the new-fangled technology the hygienist used. I used to suspect they wore masks and gloves to protect their identities since they were, of course, all trained in advanced interrogation techniques a la Dustin Hoffman and Sir Lawrence Olivier’s mano a mano, so to speak, in that old movie. Is it safe?

Well, it’s safer than it used to be. I remember in my tender twenties having to cry uncle to my lower wisdom teeth which insisted on bouncing in and out of my gums. It was like the cat, you know? They’re out, they want in. They’re in, they want out. Zeesh, make up your minds! My dentist back then looked just like Santa Claus on his off hours, so the visions of sugar plums were all guilt-ridden when I visited him. When the critical moment came with forceps—oh, what the heck, they were pliers in anyone else’s toolbox—they slipped off my tooth and whacked me on my upper molars.

Just like that, like lightning, the reflexes honed over time of being ambushed by my older brother like Inspector Clouseau being ambushed by Cato in The Pink Panther, I did it. I gave Dr. Santa Claus a round-house right to his jaw. He reeled and staggered back, not expecting that from the dainty sweet thing in the pink dress.

“Ho, ho, ho,” he laughed—I said Santa Claus, didn’t I? “I guess we’re even!” I apologized profusely, wondering if anyone ever actually died of blushing and we got that wisdom tooth out without further surprises.

So, no, I don’t remember any tooth pain, I told my pert little hygienist in her blue mask and blue gloves, not black like executioners wear. Then she tipped me back so I couldn’t fight back and turned on the power tools including some PowerWash thing that probably loosened everything up down to my toenails.

Damn, I thought. She’s going to get rid of all the good dirt, too!

“Good dirt” was a theory I had developed during my eight years as a secretary back in the old days. (I refuse to say “back in the day” as if there were only one day; there were seemingly endless days.) The typewriter du jour was the IBM Selectric and if you were really lucky you had a Correcting Selectric. This was where I honed my words per minute fingers of flame. Computers came much, much later. Please, no older than dirt jokes, ok?

Inevitably the IBM Repairman, a concept of employment no longer remembered by most people, would come around to service your typewriter. This, I say, had all the charm of the less savory, more barnyard sense of the word service, so I would always step away to be spared the vision of That Man Putting His Hands on my precious machine. And just as inevitably, he would ask, “Have you had any problems lately?”

“No,” I would reply truthfully. “She works like a charm.” Those Selectrics were great workhorses.

When I would return after a discreet amount of time, just as inevitably, something would go wrong with my typewriter.

“It’s the good dirt!” I complained. “That guy took out the good dirt that was holding this thing together!”

He would return, make some adjustments and things would be back to normal again.

Stepping out of the dentist’s office after having negotiated my release for a small fee called a “co-pay” that makes you think someone else is somehow helping you with the payments when it’s just your premiums at work, I wriggled my jaw around. I felt rearranged. Numbers 30 and 31 were a little loose, they said. They call your teeth by numbers just so they don’t have to call them by name. Cowards. That girl took out the good dirt, I swear. And they want to know when I want to come back and do this again.

Best wishes.

Animas

The Animas River runs through Durango, Colorado. Formally, Rio de las Animas Perdidas or River of Lost Souls, its dark blue waters with frothy rapids make a rafting recreation haven in the summer for a place usually associated with skiing and the Durango and Silverton Railroad. The water looks cold, which looked wonderfully inviting earlier this week with temperatures in the 90’s.

I was there for my brother-in-law’s memorial service. I wanted to be there for my sister. I wanted to see my other family members. I wanted to talk with Don’s friends and the people in the small community just east of Durango and the Animas River. The weather promised to be warm and dry, too dry really. It is too close to the dry weather they had for the Missionary Ridge fire of 2002. I could still see the scars from that fire, the trunks of burned trees turning the ridges into hedgehogs but not as cute. In ten years there is regrowth, but it will take a long time for tall trees to take the place of the blackened trunks. The fire did not take everything. Oh, there are closed businesses around the lake but that’s the economy that burned up all the money, not the fire, per se.

Selfishly I was glad to spend a little quiet time with my sister and enjoyed the ride from the airport into Durango to get a tired repaired. I found an egg salad sandwich at the convenience store since I could not imagine eating well enough to buy a sandwich at the airport hours earlier for my 6 a.m. flight. We walked to the public library with her two dogs who were happy to sniff the new smells as we passed by a school playground. We sat in shade with young mothers and their toddlers, the dogs hopeful for a rule-breaking bite, disappointed at my resolve to behave in front of my sister.

Perhaps Marilyn would not have thought the time quiet, I reflected. McCords talk, at least most of them do. It can be hard to find the quiet when you put two or more together. We laughed about the time when she wanted to change the tire on my husband’s car when he had a flat in a parking garage in San Francisco. For practice, she had said. He had been happy to let her do it. Now with bigger tires on a four-wheel drive, it seemed better to have an expert do it.

Tea Tarot
(c) Copyright 2011 Marcia McCord

We talked about the arrangements for picking up other relatives at the airport, for food for everyone, for the memorial service the next day. We talked about Don. We walked back to the tire place and picked up the car. We drove to the lake watched by Middle Mountain and the others who stand watch over the little valley, Vallecito. We joked about the time Marilyn’s new car had stalled on the steep drive up to her house and we rolled backwards without brakes to be caught by a willow stump and a power pole, saved from going over the edge to the creek below.

“Don’s going to kill me!” Marilyn had cried once we piled out of the new Subaru that day.

“We’re alive!” I smiled happily and hugged her that day. John and I called it our “backwards and in high heels” trip to Marilyn’s house, high on a ridge at the edge of the San Juan Forest overlooking the little valley and its lake, a ridge that had almost but luckily had not burned in 2002.

We made it up to the house without problems. The dogs were happy to be home and wagged their way to the door. In the thin air of 8,000 feet in elevation, I was once again glad I had packed light, easier on this near-sea-level traveler.

Friends and relatives joined us throughout the afternoon and evening. We told stories. We sampled Don’s legendary wine collection, finding only one or two spoiled bottles. Don’s friends were hikers and skiers, friends for forty years or more. They had funny stories about each other, about Don, about nothing at all. One family of friends told their harrowing story of losing an axle to their camping trailer on their way. My brother and his wife and my niece arrived from New Jersey. Finally, Marilyn’s daughter, whose flight had been delayed, came in, followed by more of Don’s friends. We filled the house with talk and hugs and all the energy of sorrow and love and laughter. We sat around the table into the night.

The service was perfect. We all said so. There was a bagpiper. My brother read a wonderful passage about the wonder of wilderness, of listening to the sounds of water and of how man inevitably changes nature whether he means to or not. I read my blog entry To the Earth almost all the way through without crying. Marilyn scattered Don’s ashes mixed with flower petals, all taken by the wind towards the mountains in the north. It would be where Don would go, I thought, to the mountains with their little crowns of snow. It was his birthday, his scatter-day. The oboe player played the iconic melody from Ken Burns’ Civil War, then “Coming Home” from the New World Symphony. We hugged. We snacked. We dispersed. We retired to Marilyn’s house.

Late that night, the night of the New Moon, I was too hot again, too used to my cool climate near San Francisco. The altitude was evident in my breathing. Ginger lay at the foot of the bed. The night was quiet without even little night noises. The trees stood silent, pointing to the Milky Way. I tiptoed out to the deck outside my room, the room that had been shared by Marilyn and Don in the house they built from Don’s vision. I sat on the chair and looked to the stars who said nothing.

“Filthy Don,” they called him, for a hiking trip that resulted in the hikers being less-than-pristine at the end. Silent Don, I said to myself, hearing his voice in the night as loudly as if he were sitting next to me, for Don was always a quiet man. Somewhere, like the Judgement card in the Tarot, those ashes were rising up past the pointing trees to become the twinkling of stars overhead, not a lost soul like the river’s name. No, not lost. Found.

Best wishes.

I Say No to Ice Cream

It doesn’t really make any sense, does it? I just turned down my husband’s offer of a dish of ice cream. I can’t figure it out myself, but for some reason I’m a lot more interested in glass after glass of ice water in the evening while I watch the San Francisco Giants on TV. It was a warm day and we have the big fan on to pull in the cool night air. The cats are still moving slowly from the warmth of the day, although Pixie did just take a flying leap from the front door to the end table. She’s young. She has years to sleep like an adult cat.

Victorian Trade Card Tarot
(c) Copyright 2010 Marcia McCord



I love evenings like this at home. Whoops, Brandon Belt just hit a home run that splashed into San Francisco Bay and now the score is 6-2 Giants! I indulged myself earlier in the evening with an episode of Lost Girl. Our star, an unaffiliated Fae who just happens to be a succubus, tried to help out her friend the bar owner (there’s more to that story, I’m sure) and her friend the doctor. Her sidekick took a turn entertaining the wild-child daughter of a dignitary with the “usual unpredictable” results. I’m waiting for Dyson to get cured of his enchanted indifference to Bo, myself.

I watch Giants television (that’s baseball, not Fae now; I’m back to the present. Stay with me) as much for the announcers as I do for the sport. One of them just commented that his fellow announcer would be able to recount the details of tonight’s game whether he had seen it or not. That’s the mark of a true announcer! Baseball is my idea of reality TV. I have to agree with my friend Dan “Mr. Crankypants” Pelletier. Baseball is an entire deck of tarot cards.

My husband rails at the announcers as they tread on superstitious ground. There are things you don’t say during a baseball game. There’s an old song by Jim Croce about all the things you don’t do. You don’t spit into the wind. You don’t pull off the mask of the Lone Ranger. You don’t mess around with Jim. The Hubs is such an easy-going guy that people probably don’t realize he’s a stickler for baseball protocol. The last two words of the National Anthem are “play ball.” You don’t talk about a no-hitter during the game because it will ruin it. This is why the movie Bull Durham explains the Church of Baseball. It’s a matter of faith, not logic.

As delightful as this evening is in its small ways, I am so glad I was able to get away this past weekend. How could I possibly need a break from this beautiful life I have? No, I’m not worthy.

I had told people that I really needed the weekend away. It wasn’t that I needed to get away from my husband; he’s an angel, even when he’s screaming at the television for the announcers not to jinx the ballgame.

Oh, they won, by the way. Tonight’s game, I mean.

I really needed to get away from a little bit of the stress of work. The tension has been building for software releases, the usual changes at the last minute, the usual changes in tactics and strategy, the usual tension from management trickling down to the next level whether they mean for it to or not. My favorite way to unwind is to unplug and go to nature. A weekend in the redwoods started to sound like an emergency by mid-week last week.

I’m not worthy of my lovely friends who stole a weekend from their busy lives, either. We had our semi-annual Goddess Weekend in the redwoods last weekend. Not everyone could be there this time; we were only four for the weekend. The four of us have careers in technology in common, so we waxed geek with each other long into the night over a lentil soup, minted cucumber yogurt salad and tabouleh. We watched a chick flick, One for the Money, a Stephanie Plum romp.

I meant to get up early on Saturday but I slept until almost 9 am. We indulged in the nearby natural wonders of shopping. Oops, that’s not nature, but we indulged. I found a couple more of my favorite tie-dyed dresses. I chatted with the cats and dogs in the shops we visited. We lounged in the sun and in the shade. We laughed uncontrollably at a battery-operated motion-activated rolling and laughing cat. My friend Kaye couldn’t resist and bought the dog model of the laugh machine. It was for her dog, she said.

We stopped at Duncans Mills for lunch and decided to skip lunch and go for dessert. Goddess weekends are like that. We split this apple cake with buttermilk syrup confection, a celestial treat something like tres leches cake only richer somehow. I had iced tea to offset the calorie load as if that would help.

We shopped some more, stopping at the Saturday flea market that is a mainstay of the Safeway parking lot in Guerneville. Ah, the glass lampshade for my back porch I had been looking for and for only $3!

We determined to go out to dinner Saturday night. Usually we are not that well-organized and succumb to leftovers. No, this time was a treat. We dined al fresco under the redwoods with glorious views of the coastal hills. We made friends with the cute little girl playing with her Dad’s cane at the next table, found out about his dreadful knee accident, rubbing our own knees in sympathy.

We retreated to the house we had rented and attempted our traditional craft project. This time we decorated glass vases with glued on glass doodads, fussed about the quality of the glue, despaired of the glue ever bonding, frowned over Ronda’s round vase with its extra challenges. All the while, we told each other the story of our lives, our jobs, our families, our men, our pets, our gardening triumphs and failures.

Another breakfast the next morning and then the real healing: A walk in Armstrong Grove where we took pictures with our cell phones, revered the cathedral-like trees and played with bubble stuff.

“Redwoods grow like a mother surrounded by her children,” I murmured, not sure if anyone was listening or needed to. “I wonder why people keep naming trees for men when the trees seem so obviously like moms?” The sunlight bounced through the green tops far above onto the large oxalis on the ground. This was a place of spirit.

Back at the house, I read tarot for everyone. Kaye insisted on a reading for me too. Yup, I need to pay more attention to details, money stuff, home stuff, health stuff. Yup.

My 8 of Cups weekend ended, my journey away from what I love for a little side-trip to the reconnection to nature that I crave. I went back home to those I love most, my dear husband, my little family. I think I can handle the workaday world again now. Sometimes you don’t need the ice cream.

Best wishes.

Devil’s Line

My friend Sandy retired after working for the same company for 38 years. She looks just a shade over 38, maybe a shade under, so people were always shocked and confused when they learned how long she had worked there. In today’s job environment, her accomplishment is nothing short of a miracle. Oh, and she's gorgeous and funny and smart, just to set the stage.

I know she has mixed feelings about leaving the place she had dedicated so many of her waking hours to from the time she was a child to now, now when she’s old enough to know better and still young enough to consider it, whatever it is.

She’s a dedicated wife, mother and grandmother. Her family has experienced a lot of ups and downs. It’s America. It’s 2012. She’s so fortunate that she has been able to complete a career and go home to spend time with her family.

I’ll miss her at work. She and I had a rule: Only one of us could cry per day. We stressed out about a lot of the same things, experienced a lot of the same disappointments, disagreements, points of view, values, likes and dislikes. We worked well together. She had the long-time business experience and I had some hard technical experience at several corporations. Sometimes people called us by the other’s name. As much as we wanted individual identities in our work, we both thought the mix-ups were fun.

When work is consistently not fun, it’s time to make a change. It wasn’t just work that wasn’t fun. Retirement seemed like the best answer for her in my opinion but it’s a delicate decision.

Leaving a company you’ve been part of for 38 years is a lot like divorce. You want to give it second chances. You want some kind of counseling, an alternative opinion, a different way of looking at things. You think of the good part, the good times, what does work about the relationship, why you originally thought it was a good idea in the first place. Sure, the relationship has changed. You’re no longer the innocent kid and, well, lots of things have changed. You can just about predict behavior, responses, “new” ideas that aren’t really new. But it’s hard to let go. It’s the devil you know, have known for years, the one that has felt like the better choice for so long.

You fall for the smallest shred of hope. You cling to compliments, the promise of a better tomorrow. But it’s still the devil you know. And when the devil you know becomes just wrong for you, maybe not wrong all over, but wrong for you, then, then finally, it is time to go.

Do I make it sound like she was worn out and past her effectiveness? Oh, not at all. I loved the fact that she had so much history at the company. I teased her that she not only knew where the “bodies were buried,” she had pictures, the witness list, the negatives, film, tape recordings, an entire documentary of the back story on how so many decisions were made, so many careers won and lost. She helped me navigate some of the corporate political swamp, pointing out the alligators and quicksand. She’s quick, bright, savvy, and articulate. She’s fantastic at presentations. She understands the short and long term effects of change on a corporate landscape. She’s a great predictor of outcomes. She knew which projects were winners and which ones were poison. Better than that, she was so, so often right. Those abilities have only grown, not faded over time.



Picture Postcard Tarot
(c) Copyright 2010 Marcia McCord

She did have a series of personal difficulties and with enough stressors after work adding to the already stressful work engine magnified every flaw, every slight, every disappointment. A more stable work environment, some sincere appreciation of her efforts, some public recognition, acknowledgement, reward, all that would have kept her going. But that didn’t happen. After 38 years, you’d think somehow you would have “arrived.”

The Devil isn’t like that though. You put in your time with him and you exercise all your best and worst, you grow in ways you never thought you would, and yet, what you get from him is…indifference.

The sad fact is that the Devil doesn’t care. Those chains? You put them there. They seemed like security at the time. With a little clarifying perspective, a shake-up to help you remember what you really love, you look down at those chains that once felt like the reins that drove the Chariot of your career and realize they are holding you back. It was fun for a while, maybe like Sandy, fun for a long while. All the fresh-start promises the Devil makes are really just another room in hell and you’re pounding rocks again. It’s keeping you away from what you love.

That’s how you know it’s time to go. You know finally what you want has changed and not changed all at once. You always loved your life, your family, your home. That’s what you were working for, right? But somehow, the work became your life and you put so much of yourself into it. If you had any passion at all for your work, when it dies, it hurts.

If you’re lucky, you come out on the other side like Sandy has, with your family, retirement, home, time and energy to enjoy all of that. You try to let go of the fact that you aren’t somehow getting a medal for all you’ve done, sweated and slaved over, endured other people’s and your own tears, fears and tantrums. You realize that, like Dorothy and everyone else in the Wizard of Oz, you already have the prize you wanted to be awarded.

It’s confusing. What were you doing for 38 years then, buying the Devil’s line? Like the Devil in tarot, you were learning a lesson. You learned what was really important to you, really. And wrenching as it is, you learned to choose it with passion and ease and grace and dignity. You learned that you are starting over every day. And, instead of that feeling like a setback, it feels good, fresh, like the air after a morning rain.

Best wishes, always.

Dust Bunnies

“I think it is perhaps best if Soror Marcia visits the Solarium with me,” said Thalassa with a sweep of her robes of office.

OK, out of context, this may not be as funny as it was at the time, I admit. It was a relief, too. My friend Thalassa has had too many hits on the not-funny side of life lately. The fact that she can determine that my character is in need of removal from the room to a sunnier spot where I can do less harm is, to my mind, a spark of hope in an otherwise bleak few weeks of stunning losses of dear ones to her. Her humor here is no sign of disrespect. It’s a spark of sanity that she will be OK, at least in time, in spite of Death’s calling card too near. My friend needs hugs and laughs and adorable pictures of creatures with cute little nosies and a little sunshine. My friend needs a break from people dying and the job market being the pits.

In our Salon of, well, I was going to say misfits, but everyone there is “properly placed in their present position,” a term I used to snark at when used in corporate performance reviews, we have fun. It’s a group of friends who are tarot readers. We like to have fun and even though we consider our studies, our reading, our interests and our businesses in tarot serious stuff, we poke fun at taking things too seriously without poking fun at any person or organization specifically.

In our Salon, we are devotees of divination, which isn’t a joke since we actually are, but in the Salon we are perhaps over the top in tradition, ritual, magical properties, heritage and, in the latest turn of fun, the newly revealed never-before seen photographic evidence of the extended fictional family purported to be the foundation of our fervent “secret society.” After all, if you talk about it on Facebook, it’s not much of a secret, right?

In our imaginary Salon, we have celebrations that go on for too long, toasts that leave the revelers toasted, old scandals hinted at, new scandals barely avoided. Or not. It’s one of my few forays at role-playing because I’ve never been into the chat room alter ego before.

With all characters there in some basis ourselves with a twist, I play some version of myself mixed with my first piano teacher Mrs. T and a lovely optimistic version of Miss Havisham I met when I was a child accompanying my mother on a hunt for antiques for her shop. Add gin, and serve. I don’t disguise my real name although lots of people do in the magical world of the internet. I’m just me, well, sort of, and all these other people a bit too.

Mrs. T wore sweeping jersey shirtwaist dresses cut on the bias, an easy-breathing, swirl of print fabric over a generous frame. She had a voice something like Meryl Streep’s version of Julia Child and towered over me as I once again proved I had not practiced my piano lessons for the week. Mrs. T liked all her students to have an annual recital and dress in costume for the show. I loved my costumes, one in particular was a long brown dress, cap and apron that harkened of Pilgrims and Thanksgiving turkeys. The piano playing was the turkey for me and I learned that my particular form of stage fright occurs after I’ve gutted it out through the ordeal, curtseyed and strutted offstage, only to faint dead away backstage. The show must go on, after all. Mrs. T’s world was just a little fluffier and more floral than the real world and I suspect she tippled a bit after a long day of piano lessons with truculent brats. I was never sure I liked her, but I was pretty sure she did not want me to know who she really was either. I was a job to be done, however grudgingly. The jersey print dresses were rather dreadful. It all added to the ambiance. The key to Mrs. T for me was the swirl of the skirt and the dogged way she stuck to her idea of appearances and the show going on.

Miss Day was my happy, not spiteful, Miss Havisham. She lived in a world that was dusty, old, preserved and not quite decaying. What once had been splendor had turned into something more like the asylum walls. Every possible surface within her vast apartments was encrusted with Cracker Jack toys set in some hardened matrix. It was like a LegoLand of little bits of childhood forever frozen and covered in draping strings of dust. It was wonderland. Miss Day was what we might characterize now as being a little “out of it.” I think that’s a little unfair. I think she was so “into it” that she never quite came out again. She was gracious and airy, with effortless Victorian and Southern manners. We drank tea in porcelain cups set on a shadowbox table full of tiny toys, perched on worn velvet and horsehair fainting couches, loveseats and chairs. It was the kind of place you were meant to wear gloves to and yet, due to the dust, you’d take your gloves off at once to save them.

Miss Day was charming. She had a high melodic voice that drifted off into reverie so that Mother had to reel her back in every so often. She wistfully showed us a framed remembrance of her family, an intricate braided design made of her mother’s, her sisters’ and her aunt’s hair in all the family colors, light and darker and a little red thrown in. It was gruesome fairyland, these strands of lost loved ones, memento mori.

If I put those two women together, sweet, damaged, mannered, cultured, asynchronous, anachronistic women whose vision of the world had swerved another direction from their own expectations, and added a generous dollop of gin for “medicinal purposes,” I find my character in our Salon. She fervently believes but has become lost beneath the divan for several days after a particularly boisterous ritual celebration, her jersey dress tangled beneath her ritual robes, tripping up her sensible shoes. And under the divan, among the dust bunnies and cat fur that has piled up over time due to unclear responsibilities for such mundane duties as cleaning that characterize the Salon, The Common Room as we call it, she finds a little inspiration.

And so I have, and I present to you my latest deck of cards, not a tarot this time but a relative oracle deck called The Dust Bunny Lenormand, a 36 card deck of gently humorous Victorian images, now available for $20 plus postage. When the scraps of this world may not seem to make sense, it can be in the least likely places we find insight. Let our tired minds and hearts rest from the effort to make patterns of the pieces of our lives, rest and come back to love another day.

Best wishes.

*&*&*&*&*&*&*

*Contact me via email if you are interested in obtaining a copy of The Dust Bunny Lenormand. Gin not included.



Wings and Feathers

Jason Hawes, one of my favorite TV ghost hunters, posted a note about the angst of fathers of teenage daughters on Facebook today regarding his daughter Hailey.

I had to laugh when I saw this. I remember my father’s reaction to my dating. It was never positive.

Oh, he liked this one guy I dated in college because the guy was older and knew Dad through some engineering classes. The guy worked at the radio station and flirted with me on and off. He wasn’t too tall and looked Dad in the eye when he talked to him. He went so far as to toe the ground with my Dad to ask for my hand in marriage, believe it or not, lovely old-fashioned manners that my parents just ate up. Several weeks passed after that happy moment with no correspondence from him through any means. Finally, I picked up the phone and called him.

“I think we made a mistake,” he said.

“I think we did, too,” I said, relieved.

And that was it. No, harm, no foul. A few speculative shopping trips to jewelers and bridal shops. My grandmother was confused that no wedding ensued from the encounter, but other than that I was good with the whole thing. It made sense that, if I weren’t devastated, I hadn’t really been in love. What I marveled at, though, was the enthusiasm my parents had shown for the guy and his parents in me.

I know it sounds like being left at the altar, but it wasn’t like that. We just called off the game before it became a huge sunk-cost financial and emotional loss. It’s always better to weed out the wrong ones in the interview process. He was a nice guy, just not my guy. I think that’s what he had concluded about me, too. Or, something. It didn’t really matter to me. I wasn’t devastated, period. And this was the guy my parents liked. That was always a mystery to me.

There’s nothing I wanted less than a level-headed romantic relationship. I wanted the kind of thing that made Daddy get out his shotgun and polish it, just because he could sense the attraction. That was a good thing, in my opinion, confirmation that the right chemistry, at least on some level was going on. For all daughters who complain that like Bill Cosby’s comedy routine their fathers insist on “four pairs of long overalls” when they go out, I have to say that most of the time those fathers just want to spare their daughters the sorrow of being very close to someone physically and discarded quickly, broken-hearted. Also, most of the time those fathers just can’t stand what they imagine is going through the prospective beau’s little lizard brain either, recognizing vestiges of their own lizard brains.

They are the King of Wands, the guy who understands impulse and the tendency to shoot first and ask questions later. They see themselves in the young man’s lack of impulse control and don’t want their little cupcakes anywhere near the effects of that lack of high mental faculties, consciousness of consequences or even belief that tomorrow follows today. They don’t want their sweetums to get stuck with an idiot that she will have to deal with the rest of her life and therefore they will have to deal with the rest of theirs. This protective, defensive and sometimes hostile reaction to Buffy bringing home Spike to meet the fam is as much a biological imperative as, well, the one that looms as Daddy’s biggest Unthinkable.

Dating isn’t easy. They always talk about those first awkward attempts. I remember attending a dance at 15, spying a young man seated sullenly by himself, piecing together that he must be the older brother of one of my classmates and giving in to my bubbly extravert nature. I walked across the flashing, blaring dance floor and sat down next to him. He had brown hair that fell over his forehead. He had blue-green eyes. He had a few freckles across his nose. He had broad shoulders and scuffed boots. He was already silent and at my presence, looked at me bug-eyed a moment, terrified at a girl who would make the first move presumably, and sat there the rest of the dance. I spoke to him a little. He answered in monosyllables. By the time the dance was over, I figured he hated me or was shocked but I was a little pleased at the freedom of not waiting to be asked. We did not dance, but I’m a lousy dancer anyway, so I didn’t mind. It seemed like a successful venture, but I figured I wouldn’t see the guy again.

The next evening, however, something remarkable occurred. He showed up at our front door unannounced and needed help. It seems he had run out of gasoline and wondered if we could assist him. This ruse worked, although everyone knew the score. It was a safe evening’s adventure, complete with giggling and glancing that passed for advanced flirtation 40-some years ago. Well, then. Apparently I had not offended the diamond in the rough as I feared.

It was a tempestuous relationship that lasted much longer than my parents had hoped and ended abruptly and badly. I think every young person should have such an experience so they know what wrong is, but I don’t regret the experiment. I was left with a stronger sense of self and understanding of human character and a fading few burn marks on my calf from the over-heated exhaust of his rebuilt Benelli motorcycle.

Fast-forward about 25 years and I am no longer a teenager but Daddy is no less the King of Wands. I have brought my beloved soon to become husband home to meet the fam. I may be no Buffy, but John’s no Spike. Nevertheless, The Conversation occurs.

“Wings and feathers,” my feisty little father muses looking off the back deck into the oak canopy.

My husband listens attentively, not quite sure where the conversation is going but with growing understanding of my Dad’s ferocious nature.

“That blue jay,” the Colonel said, nodding toward the dappled afternoon sun through the trees. “That blue jay did not have to tear that titmouse’s nest apart that way.”

John agreed certainly, uncertainly.

“I just got out my shotgun,” Daddy cited the make and model number to impress John who is impressed an altogether different way, perhaps the more important way, “and there was nothing left of that jay but wings and feathers.”

“Would anyone like a drink?” my sweet-natured dear step-mother interrupted before anything else happened.

“Yes,” John said. “Yes, I would.” And we went inside with greater understanding that neither the King of Wands nor his daughter would ever age in this story.

Best wishes!

*&*&*&*&*&*

The Dust Bunny Lenormand is here! $20 plus postage. Please email me so I can give you the best rate.

Marcia Has a Point

I really was (and still am) that girl who wants to be loved for her brain and not her body. The cats and dog think this is a silly reason to be loved, of course. After all, a warm human is just the thing on a cool night, just like the application of a 15-lb. feline poultice is an excellent cure for a knee addled by arthritis or a mild chest cold among the non-allergic. There’s plenty of me to love, from the cats’ and dog’s points of view. I’m the cuddly type, especially for creatures with a couple of eyes and a nose.

Mother despaired of this trait in me when we wandered into a mall petshop and I nearly melted with joy as a Pomeranian puppy happily gnawed on my finger.

“If the boys knew that’s all it took, you’d be the most popular girl in town,” my mother quipped in an unusual display of humor about sexuality. That was The Topic Never to Be Discussed.

“Yeah,” I gushed in my usual display of searing intelligence, and let the widdle cute-ums gum away for a while longer. I was an easy mark for the finger chomp thing, at least amidst the small and furry types. I did of course have my standards for suitors of the human variety, but at that moment I couldn’t think of any. I was helpless in the jaws of love, if only puppy love.

No, I wanted to be loved for my brains, specifically my left brain. After all, that’s what my mother taught me was the thing that lasted, beauty being skin deep. I knew I had some hurdles to overcome. After all, I’m blonde. Yes, yes, straight off the drugstore shelf, but I was originally blonde before the curse of the dishwater attacked me and then later this funny patriotic stars-and-stripes thing I have with my nearly-whites coming in. A lovely woman in an elevator with extraordinary hair with its natural lightning-lightening told me we call it the “Crown of Wisdom.” There ya’ go. Even my hair is trying to enhance my brains. They have to be in there somewhere, right?

I spent a good deal of my youth trying to draw guys’ eyes away from my undeniably ample chest, undeniably ample even when the rest of me was, uh, more streamlined than the current silken layered, luscious, soft-hearted creature you may know me as now.

“Yoo-hoo,” I would bend my head, smile and wave. “I’m up here.” Subtle, eh? C’mon, guys, there’s a time and place for everything and I was trying to have a conversation here. Back then, apparently so were they, but it wasn’t exactly with my mind. I would laugh. I would get angry. I would try to analyze it. I would counteract the effect with fashion disguises. I would assume The Tone of the cold scold. I would point and laugh. But the fact was, I just wanted to exchange some intelligence.

Per my loving husband, that seems to be the fatal flaw, the presumption that a hetero guy when presented with the presence of a biological reminder of primitive urges can actually be considered intelligent. Well, zeesh, I seem to be able to speak to people in spite of their long, dark eyelashes or broad chests or well-muscled thighs or even a tight-fitting wardrobe. Viva la difference, they say. Maybe I should have had that Pomeranian chomp a little more often to remind me how I can melt into a puddle of unintelligent ooze, spewing baby-talk to a creature that does not speak my language.

Still, we all manage to get our work done somehow and I can still point out a logical flaw in a computer or business solution now and again and pat myself on my back for not thinking of kittens or baby turtles at the critical moment. And, every once in a while, I like to get peer recognition for it. The words I long to hear are, “Marcia has a point.” It’s that joyous moment when I get some kind of feedback that I made sense, that it may have added to the conversation and moved us all a step closer to solving the whatever- it-is we are working on.

My favorite work moment like this happened a few years ago at a company that will remain unnamed.

I was being screamed at by people who were frantic to solve a customer service problem that was, in their eyes, a technical issue that I was being “stubborn” about.

“Unfortunately,” I explained for the third? fourth? time, “the system requires that the user sign on with their Social Security Number.” Note: this was a few years ago for all of you who just suddenly got bug-eyed at the violation of privacy and use of personal, non-public information that could be snatched by identity thieves. The system has since been remediated, reformed, rehabilitated and repentant about the requirement and has an alternative solution. But, as I say, this conversation was before that.

“But people in the Bahamas don’t HAVE a Social Security Number!” the little darlings screamed at me. This conversation was in a large meeting, well-attended with many otherwise intelligent creatures who were all tired, urgent, frustrated and ready to strangle me.

“OK, you could get some numbers for these folks that aren’t really Social Security Numbers and use those, but you would need to make sure each of them knew their number. Don’t Bahamians have some kind of number?” I wasn’t melting under the pressure, but I was trying to think outside the box. That’s the box that the magician sticks knives into while the girl inside keeps smiling, that box.

“Wait,” logic overtook me. “Isn’t this supposed to be a U.S. domestic site only? What are Bahamians doing trying to sign on in the first place?” And then, the kicker, maybe my favorite sentence of the year, “You folks do realize, don’t you, that the Bahamas are not part of the United States.”

A hush fell over the large crowd of urgent, tired, intelligent, angry people. A small voice in the back, like a child pointing at the nude emperor with the Ace of Swords, the sword of truth, rang out just loudly enough for everyone to hear.

“Marcia has a point.”

My ears turned red. I tilted my head back. I breathed deeply. Finally!

They all agreed, scuttled to fix their business, not computer problem and I was released from torture. I got my B.A. in English and my B.S. in Applied Computer Science for a little geography lesson that changed a business direction away from potentially larger business issues towards a solution.

The meeting was over and I smiled down at my chest. “Lefty rides again, eh, girls?”

Best wishes.