Kathleen Fisher

Hannibal

A couple of years ago, we started taking a new route to Illinois. We bypassed Iowa, Interstate 80 and its traffic for the soothing Route 36 with its similar speed limit but minus the screaming 18-wheelers, construction or detours.

Because of its tranquil ways, it does not offer the amenities of the interstate. If you have to pee you’d better do it at the gas station when we fill up as there are no rest stops. There also aren’t any restaurants along the side of the road………no Culver’s, Taco Bell or Buffalo Wild Wings.

The lunchtime stopping point for us is in Hannibal, Missouri. Every time we’ve been there I must say out loud, “You know, this is where Mark Twain grew up,” as if nobody remembers me saying the very same thing six months ago.

Hannibal has seen better days. It looks a bit run down, likely the result of a lousy tax base and a hit or miss tourist season.

When we stopped there last month, we took a chance on eating lunch at a bar. We walked into the dark place with the mounted deer heads on the walls and there was but one occupied table. Hardly a ringing endorsement.

We all ordered. Mark and Will got sandwiches, Mal and I split the burger. We got a few orders of fries because they were a buck apiece, and how big could they possibly be at that price? While we waited for our food we entertained ourselves reading the quotes of Hannibal’s famous citizen on the walls while the t.v. blared The Talk with one of reality t.v.’s infamous citizen, Kris Jenner.

What in the world would Mark Twain think of somebody like her?

We got mounds of fries and the burger was the best I’d ever eaten. I couldn’t figure out what made it so good and so I asked the waitress if there was some kind of secret. Worcestershire sauce brushed on the patty and lots of seasonings. We all ate for thirty bucks, left a big tip for our lonely waitress and headed to the car.

One last gaze of the Mississippi River with a movie reel in my head of days long gone, and then we drove out of Hannibal until the next time.

“I hadn’t had a bite to eat since yesterday, so Jim he got out some corn-dodgers and buttermilk, and pork and cabbage and greens—there ain’t nothing in the world so good when it’s cooked right—and whilst I eat my supper we talked and had a good time….”

Meeting Ann

Last week, Will, Mallory and I took a trip to see Maggie’s first grade classroom. After being a 5th grade math teacher for one awful year and two years as an ELL teacher, she now has her own group of six year olds for the entire year.

She’s quite over the moon about that and so are we. She has paid her teacher dues.

Last year she shared a room with the speech therapist, and though there is about a forty year age difference they became good friends. While we were visiting I got to meet the famous Ann.

I had to go to speech therapy in high school and so I have a soft spot for the people whose work it is to correct those problems. I didn’t know there was anything wrong with me until I went to a screening, and within a few days I was being pulled out of social studies twice a week. In the middle of class I’d get up and head for the door with my hall pass and inevitably the teacher would forget and say, “Where do you think you’re going?”

Nothing like standing out when you’re already awkward, shy, dorky and lispy.

Ann was instantly the kind of person you could see yourself being friends with. Funny, energetic, passionate, happy. We visited until it was time to get Mal to work, but before we left she said, “Maggie has shown me some things on your blog. You’re a wonderful writer. She said you write every day.”

“I usually do. It’s how I process things.”

Ann’s a runner. She gets it. No matter how tired or bored or sad or whatever, you fall back on That Thing.

“So,” she said. “When are you going to write a children’s book?”

A children’s book?

I have thought about that for years and never said it out loud to anyone.

Ann the speech therapist.

Ann the calm in the storm for my daughter.

Ann who uncovered my secret in ten minutes.

Oh, Ann.

A Miniature Nun

My dad was a member of The Serra Club. It got its name from Fr. Junipero Serra and its mission was to promote the vocations of priests and nuns in the Catholic church. Once a month on a Thursday night he would attend their meetings, and on occasion he and Mom would go to the yearly convention. You don’t hear much about them any more, but back in those days it was a very active group.

Shortly after Easter each year the club would host a family breakfast at a private country country club that some of the members attended. The group was predominately upper income – lots of doctors and dentists living in big houses.

And then there was us.

Mom would be a nervous wreck prior to this event, making sure we had nice outfits and that we knew to mind our manners. “And you boys better not try any funny business,” she’d sternly tell my brothers. “I’ll be watching you the whole time.”

On a Saturday night prior to our annual pilgrimage, Mom wanted us girls to try on the dresses she had sewn for us one more time. She got one whiff of Jean and said, “What in the world………..?” Jean had a fondness for garlic salt and had been pouring it into the palm of her hand and licking it over and over.

I thought Mom was going to cry. Her sure bet – The Girls – had just thrown her for a loop. “Look at me,” she said to Jean. “Don’t you get to close to anybody tomorrow, do you hear? You and that garlic need to stay next to your brothers and sisters and nobody else. You’re going to reek for days.”

Mom was right. Jean smelled like a garlic farm, but we scarfed down the hash browns we only ate once a year at the swanky, members only club while The Boys crammed their pockets with dessert mints.

******************

In the group’s promotion of this line of work, they would put on pageants at local churches which my dad was in charge of for years. Stacked in our utility room were boxes of the miniature habits of priests and nuns that kids would get chosen to wear for The Parade of Vocations.

It was Toddlers and Tiaras for The Catholics.

When it was our church’s turn to hold this event, my dad (who with my mom shlepped those boxes around the Chicagoland area for years) made sure I was picked to wear the habit of the nuns who taught at our school – The Congregation of Notre Dame.

At nine years old even I knew it was an honor.

I was dressed in the starchy, uncomfortable habit that made turning my head impossible. Being a nun required putting this on every day? Sheesh, no wonder The Serra Club had its work cut out for them.

I whined to Mom as she and the other helpers got the kids ready in a 4th grade classroom. She would have no part of it. “You get out there and smile and do your best.”

“But Mom……” I cried. “My butt really hurts.”

“What???”

“My butt. It hurts when I walk.”

“Oh for God’s sake……..,” Mom said as she marched me to the back of the line with the other miniature priests and nuns for the big clergy parade. “Act like a nun and pray.”

When it was my turn I smiled and tried to look in the direction of the audience but that starch was stiff as a board. I couldn’t see a thing on either side of my head, but the audience seemed to love the pint-size version of that familiar habit. Unbeknownst to them was the fact that I was miserable with a delicate problem underneath the heavy, black robe.

I followed Mom’s advice and prayed to Mary to miraculously heal my burning butt, but with each step I took around the gym another revelation unfolded before me.

I knew that I was born into a family that had no business trying to get into the convent or the country club.

Sleeping With Salmon

Our bedroom is on the 2nd floor of a fifty year old house. As soon as you’re halfway up the stairs you can feel the heat.

A few years ago we got a new air conditioner and I talked to the installer about our hot 2nd floor. “This new AC will make it a little better but you don’t have enough ducts up here. That’s your problem,” he said. I inquired if correcting that problem was costly and he laughed too long and that was the end of that.

We also don’t have an overhead light fixture to accomodate a ceiling fan and even if we did the bed is too high. We have investigated room air conditioners but that droning noise all night would make me crazy and then looking at that ugly thing hanging from the window all winter would make me crazier.

We were sweating it out (and offering it up for the poor souls in pergatory as my mother always said until the Catholics decided pergatory was over) when The Big Daddy came up with a solution. He has access to lots of ice packs (that’s what the Ebola/Mad Cow/Legionaires/Cholera/Influenza/Typhoid virus is packed in when it arrives in the lab) and so he brings them home all the time. Behind our neck, on our foreheads, lower back………….we lay on an ice pack and cool off enough to sleep. Most nights it does the trick except for the chronic cough, fever and fatigue we seem to have lately.

For our anniversary we decided to spend the night in a ridiculously expensive hotel room. A bottle of champagne was waiting when we arrived. We went out to dinner and when we came back to our room on the 8th floor it was chilly. We slept like babies with the covers on.

We had the covers on.

Ever since then we’ve been talking about that room, that bed, that air conditioning.

Are there people who really live like this? They sleep all night in comfort without a lost, sweaty ice pack swimming in their sheets?

That’s absurd.

The Big Daddy summed it up best.

“For the first time all summer I didn’t go to sleep feeling like a salmon in the butcher case.”
Pike Place Fish Co, Pike Place Market, Seattle - home of the "flying fish" & the best fresh king crab around!

Theresa

When I worked in Chicago my job was in the HR department for Peoples Gas Light & Coke Company – the Gas Company for short. I processed employee health claims along with two other women. In our office were four desks lined one behind the other.

The new girl always started at the back of the line which is where I sat for a long time. Ahead of me sat Theresa. She processed retirements and pensions. She was full-blooded Irish, a redhead, not married and lived with her widowed father and sister in a walk-up near Wrigley Field.

Theresa turned me into a tea drinker. Every afternoon she would make herself a cup, and after repeatedly asking me to join her I finally did. After awhile I became the brewer and at 3:00 each day I’d get up and go to the back of the office to make our tea. I turned her into a black tea drinker because I always forgot to add her milk and sugar like the Irish like it.

When the other girls were making us crazy………..Darlene with her constant bitching or Andrea with her on-again, off-again relationship with her 3rd husband……….Theresa would turn around, look at me and roll her eyes. We were partners in work and inside jokes.

After six years of employment with the company, I was leaving steady, secure employment (on beautiful Michigan Avenue of all places), to marry a graduate student and move to a farm town in central Illinois with no job prospects. If one of my own kids were about to do that I’d be shrieking in a corner, but I was sure it would all work out and my coworkers were genuinely happy for me.

Except for one person.

Beverly was Theresa’s boss. A few days before my wedding she called me into her office and said, “I think you’re making the biggest mistake of your life and it’s okay if you back out. I know your job here has been filled but the company will find something new for you. Champaign, Illinois with a graduate student? This can’t be what you really want.” I stammered some declaration of love for this man I was marrying in a few days that sounded pathetic even to me and went back to my desk.

When Beverly left for lunch I told Theresa what happened. She was no fan of hers and it was clear that she thought this conversation crossed the line. She looked at me and said, “You’re going to marry Mark on Saturday and you are not going to give this another thought. She said all that to you because she’s miserable and don’t you forget it. If she calls you into her office again you are not to go, do you understand? Don’t you dare go in there and I’ll take care of the rest.”

I don’t know how she took care of the Beverly problem nor will I understand what happened that day, but I remember everything about it. Beverly with her self-righteous bun and severe suit, the punch to my heart that her words felt like while I gazed at Lake Michigan from her office window, and the look on Theresa’s face when I told her what happened.

Over all these years Theresa and I remained in touch with notes and cards, but for the last three years nothing I have sent has come back with a response. The last she’d written is that she’d been traveling in her retirement and working summers as an Andy Frain usher in Wrigley Field. Wrigley Field, Theresa? Really? Every home game? Lucky you……..was my note back.

Since that wedding day in 1983 and three different states, Theresa never forgot our anniversary. Every year like clockwork a card from her with a handwritten note would arrive in the mail.

Every afternoon I have a cup of tea.

Jumpers & Purse Holders

When all of us siblings got to be older we would go with our spouses/girlfriends/boyfriends to Great America in Gurnee, Illinois. It was one of the first big amusement parks somewhat close to us and all day we could ride the roller coasters, ferris wheel, tilt-a-whirl…………..

You could get wet from rides that dropped into the water and drenched you or because you peed yourself.

I was a pee pants.

I don’t like heights, speed or falling from heights at great speed.

Truth be told a fair amount of my siblings are Fellow Pee Pants and so we would be put in charge of holding purses for anyone braver than ourselves who wanted to go on the rides.

Sometimes the bench would be full of Purse Holders.

One time my brother convinced me to go on a roller coaster with The Brave Ones and I was so woozy and nauseous after I got off that I had to sit down in the grass until I felt better.

And stopped crying.

“Wasn’t that great, Kath? Didn’t you love it? The pukiness is just excitement. That’s what that is. Excitement.”

No Friar Ter, I thought I was going to die on that thing and I’m never going to do it again.

“Sure you are. You’re just overly excited right now. You’ll do it again. Mark my words.”

This summer my brother-in-law crossed something off his bucket list and parachuted out of an airplane. What a thrill! What an adrenaline rush! He couldn’t stop talking about how awesome it was.

The next day he showed us the video. Him getting training, in the plane talking and laughing, at the door with his instructor getting last minute tips.

The open door of an airplane.

“You guys should think about doing it,” he said. “It’s kind of expensive but if we register online we’ll get a discount. If we get a group together another discount.”

A group?

You mean us?

No, sorry brother-in-law. Wrong family. We’d all be crammed onto a bench on terra firma fighting over the purse holding for someone who doesn’t even carry one, and collectively peeing ourselves at the thought of that airplane door opening.

skydive

An Imperfect Union

I met The Big Daddy on a blind date thirty five years ago. He was roofing his way through college and would stop and eat at Sambo’s Restaurant where my friend worked as a waitress. She got to know him and thought he was perfect for me. After getting my phone number from her he called and asked me out. I agreed because I had nothing else to do that night.

We went to Denny’s.

When he dropped me off and we said goodnight, I closed the door and knew I had just met my husband.

After a five year courtship we tied the knot and the knot has stayed tied for thirty years this week.

The other day I was talking to a friend who has been on vacation and she was wondering if the four of us could get together on Saturday night. “We can’t,” I said. “Mark’s boss is having his annual summer party that night.”

Mark, who was in the room during this conversation said, “No, it’s Owen’s party. He’s having a party for Owen’s promotion.”

“Right. The Annual Summer Party for promotions.”

“Yeah, but it’s for Owen.”

“Sheesh, Mark, these people don’t even know Owen. They just wanted to know if we could get together over a bottle of wine.”

The BD sighed loudly and went back to the paper.

An hour later, I was calling a neighbor to get the number of a plumber for our situation downstairs…….the pipe under the laundry sink that has had a bucket under it all week – not to catch a slow leak but a significant, steady gush especially when the washing machine is running.

As I was leaving a message for her, (i.e. talking) he said “I’m taking somebody out to lunch today. Just a heads up in the finance department.”

“Really, Mark, do you mind? I’m trying to talk here and the neighbor probably doesn’t care about your lunch plans today or our dicey finances.”

“Well, you don’t have to get so snippy about it,” The BD said as he headed off for work.

What’s the secret to a long, happy marriage?

I have no idea. We have been making it up as we go since we started.

What I do know is that the communication part that everybody talks about only happens when I pick up the phone or as soon as I put my mouthguard in when I’m going to bed.

And the arguing over little stuff that I’m so good at? Usually much ado about nothing.

Larry The Affordable Repair Man never showed up for his scheduled appointment and so my pretend plumber kept his head under the sink until the problem was fixed.

I’m smitten with my husband once again and doing a load of towels sans the bucket.

Thirty years and one day……………..

One Black Sweater

Years ago when I first heard of estate sales and the incredible things you could find at them, I was a little creeped out. Digging through the remains of someone’s life seemed disrespectful to me and something I wasn’t sure I wanted to participate in until a friend said to me, “If you died and your family took what they wanted, wouldn’t you want the rest to go to somebody who would appreciate it?”

Yes, I would like that and so I started going to estate sales.

One summer afternoon I set foot in a charming cape cod and made my way through the house. I am a methodical estate shopper. I like the basement and garage first. I am not after fine antiques or name-brand furniture. I am attracted to the rusty-what-the-heck-is-this kind of castoffs that live in the dark.

I made my way upstairs into a bedroom full of linens. I have never been a linen shopper at estate sales. I remember the days of my childhood when my mother ironed everything………my dad’s white shirts five days a week, six kids in uniforms with white shirts and the pillowcases for eight heads. She would sweat over that ironing board every day and the hangers would fill the clothes rack. When I see a stack of linens it makes me think of the thankless job my mom did for all those years, and so I take a pass on the embroidered penance.

Amongst all those folded linens on a make-me-an-offer bed was a small vintage, black sweater with pearl buttons. It looked like it would fit but was a little pricey for an estate sale – $12.00. It was also cashmere. I had never bought clothing at an estate sale before and a lengthy argument ensued within regions of my brain as to whether this was a good idea. The Catholic guilt side was telling me that buying a dead woman’s sweater was some kind of sin. The other side wondered where that sweater had been. Did you go over a fancy party dress and dance the night away? A luncheon with lady friends? Perhaps packed into a suitcase for a vacation in Europe? Were you worn in mourning? Was your price tag so expensive that kids had to pool their money together to buy it for their mom? Were you amongst many things of beauty in the closet of this woman who had great taste?

I told the Catholic guilt side to hush up and laid my money down.

That was more than ten years ago. Since then I have worn it over a party dress, to a luncheon, in Spain, at funerals and everywhere in between. It is showing its age now and so I wear it over my nightgown in the winter in place of a bathrobe. It stays on a hook right inside the closet door – at the ready on those first cold mornings

That one black sweater I brought home so long ago is the only article of clothing I’ve ever purchased at an estate sale. It is the guardian of a thousand stories…………and what a treasure it’s been to be the caretaker of a few of them.

Men Behaving Badly

Well, haven’t we had a nice full week of lewd comments, lewd texts, lewd pics, lewd behavior, lewd men? Although, in the case of Anthony Weiner who is running for NY mayor and Bob Filner, the mayor of San Diego, lewd is a rather tame word for their blatant, offensive crimes against women and civility.

They’re not the only ones. I would recommend staying off of Huffington Post during your lunch hour seeing as how they had a story this week about employees of Subway putting their penises on the bread of the sandwiches they were making.

I know. I didn’t even read it and still it caused my to lose my appetite.

When I was 19, my friend and I used to go biking a couple of times a week out to the forest preserve and back. While stopped at a traffic light some guy hung out the passenger side window and smacked me on the backside so hard I nearly fell off my bike. The car full of boys drove off laughing. Since my friend was ahead of me she didn’t know what had happened to me until we stopped.

I still remember the sting – physically and emotionally.

I have never been on the receiving end of anything so physically blatant since then, but there have been comments and touches that have made me uncomfortable and that I have passed off as “you know how he is”………

………..the message being that it is okay even when it is not.

Ever.

Nobody said it better this week than Helen Mirren.

“If I’d had children and had a girl, the first words I would have taught her would have been “f*** off” because we weren’t brought up ever to say that to anyone, were we? And it’s quite valuable to have the courage and the confidence to say, “No, f*** off, leave me alone, thank you very much.” You see, I couldn’t help saying “Thank you very much,” I just couldn’t help myself.”

I used to work with this darling, young girl who waited on a customer once and who became so enamored with her that he frequently came in asking for her. The manager devised a plan to get her off the floor when he came in the door because she was so freaked out by him. Obviously, we weren’t able to tell him to f*** off, but in hindsight I have to wonder why any business has to be polite to a predator and why we women are so hesitant to say the two words that will change the game.

Purses & Dresses

My Grandma Dora lived to be 97 years old. As she got older she split her living arrangements between her daughters. Mom and Dad’s house from spring to fall in Chicago and the winter months at my Aunt Dood’s house in Arizona.

She tended to make my mom nuts.

Every time she came to town she’d complain about her pocketbook. “It’s got all these pockets and compartments,” she said. “Look at this darn thing. Everything gets lost in here.”

Mom would let out a heavy, deliberate sigh about this ongoing pocketbook saga, but before long we’d pile in the car to go to Sears for Grandma to look for a new one. Mom would wander off and my sisters and I would help Gram in the handbag department. She’d look at all of them, open them up, try them out and say, “No, not this one.” Sometimes she’d poke her cane at one of the bottom ones and say, “Honey, grab that one. I think we might have a winner there.”

But we never had a winner.

After looking at every single one we would leave Sears empty-handed and then go to Kresge’s for an ice cream cone before heading home.

Another few weeks would go by and Gram would say at dinner, “Why don’t we go to Sears tonight and look at pocketbooks? I need a new one.”

“For crying out loud, Mom, you’ve been looking for a purse for twenty years,” is what her daughter had to say about that.

Recently, I told Mallory that I was going to the mall to look for a t-shirt dress. “They’re on sale at the Loft and look pretty cute online. Maybe this time I’ll find what I want.”

To which my daughter replied, “Geez, Mom, I think you spend every summer looking for the perfect tshirt dress.”

I have.

I do.

All this time I’ve been channeling Gram.

For crying out loud………….