Kathleen Fisher

A Club

The Big Daddy started riding with a group of guys every Saturday morning a couple of years ago. When the weather turned colder, they’d retreat to the warmth and comfort of their suburban homes and put the spandex away until spring.

But not everybody.

The BD found out that one guy continued riding every Saturday morning, regardless of temperatures, and decided to join him. For The BD does not let anybody outman him without a fight. Off he’d go to meet his biking buddy, and even if he came in stiff as a popsicle wrapped in lycra, he’d say that he and Joe had a great ride. Or at least that’s what it sounded like he was saying. It was hard to make out because his lips didn’t move until he’d stood under the vent for a spell.

Before long, they named themselves The Polar Bear Club and he’d set the alarm every cold Saturday to go meet “the club.” I was confused.

Just how many people did you say are in this club?

Well, there’s two of us. Me and Joe.

That’s not a club.

Yes it is.

No……….a club is a group of people.

We’re a club.

The Shriners are a club. The Loyal Order of The Buffalo is a club. The International Order of the Friendly Raccoons is a club. Captain Kidd and the Mateys? Club. Two guys on a bike in January? Not a club.

Two people can make a club.

Yeah, but it’s not really legit since a club is a group of people.

A club is in the eye of the beholder. We’re beholding The Polar Bear Club.

And so it’s gone these past winter months this year and the year before.

This weekend, five bikers showed up to ride before the sun came up with a temperature at 35 degrees. Some snow. Some ice. Some wind.

Some crazy fools on bikes getting their club on with no lodge in sight.

Preheating the Oven

We just got back from a trip to see The Queen Mum and the family. For the last few years, The Big Daddy and I split up for the duration. Mallie Bee and I sleep at Mom’s house, Mark, Will, Maggie and Nathan sleep at my sister’s.

Trouble in Paradise?

The Big Daddy and I used to sleep together on our visits, but The Queen Mum likes her house nice and toasty throughout the year. She keeps her thermostat at 72 degrees in the winter. Just like Florida. In the summer, she keeps her air conditioning at 80 degrees. Just like not turning on the air. Sometimes she’ll get a chill and say, “Is anybody else cold or is it just me?” It’s just you, Mom. Then she cranks up the heat some more and we all lounge around like animals in the zoo waving our tails once in awhile to feel a breeze.

The Big Daddy and I would try to sleep in a bed with flannel sheets and sweat, while every few minutes the furnace would blast more hot air into our already stifling room. Some nights we’d open the window, regardless of the frigid Chicago temps, just to feel some fresh air.

By morning we were zombies. Sleep-deprived, baked zombies and so he moved across town to the digs of my sister and her husband who like their house a little chillier and a lot more internet accessy.

Mal and I stay at Mom’s where there is no limit of good snacks and a remote that jumps between QVC, Say Yes To The Dress and the soaps.

While it is still too warm for my menopausal self, The Mum always keeps at least two bottles of her homemade moonshine……………Irish Cream in the fridge. A couple of shots of that, a closed vent and a wobbly ceiling fan and it’s just like vacationing at your favorite sweat lodge.

Source: flickr.com via Comfort Climate Service on Pinterest

The Grandmas

This is a repeat from awhile back. We went to Chicago for a few days and I saw my aunt and uncle – the brother and sister of my dad. My aunt moved to Florida and so it is rare that her and I are in the same place at the same time. She says she reads my blog and this one is her favorite, so this is for my Aunt Alice. She took me and my sister to our very first movie………….Mary Poppins, and that’s when I started believing in magic.

The first time my mom went to my dad’s house she thought his family was rich because their house was so nice. Not even close. My grandpa was a mechanic for the city bus line. My dad used to say that my mom’s mom could make a ten course meal at the drop of her hat. Not so, but she was able to pull things out of her fridge and put them in little serving dishes so that lunchtime looked like a tapas restaurant.

I have no idea how financially secure either one of them were but like most women of their generation, they had the ability to make something out of nothing. A long time ago, that virtue was tossed aside so we could dive headfirst into consumption which doesn’t seem to be giving anybody great results.

I keep pictures of both of my grandmas close by. Like one, I love to decorate. Like the other, I can make something little look like something big. They left this earth many years ago but their spirits remain nearby, teaching me that making do has always been about making a life.

A New Year

I have never been one to make New Year’s resolutions. This is due to a combination of arrogance (what do I possibly need to change about me????) to laziness (there’s so much wrong with me I don’t know where to start). I’ve been thinking a lot about resolving some things and so my 2013 mantra is………..

Pay attention.

Pay attention to…………………

1. What I spend. If it’s on sale or at the thrift store and I am madly in love with the price point then I need to walk away.

2. What I eat. My tank is compromised with sugar.

3. What I say. Though snarky runs in my blood, it’s not necessary to haul it out for every occasion.

4. To creative urges. I have traded the joy of being creative for a paycheck. There is a balance to be struck and I need to find it.

5. To wasting time. When I have a day off, I need to not surf the computer most of the day and instead work on #1 thru #4.

6. To listening more than talking.

A new year, another dance around the sun and a fresh start…………lucky be thy name.

And The Children Shall Lead Us

We always go to the children’s mass on Christmas Eve at 4:00. It has a lot more to do with the great time of the day it is than the kid part of it. I was supposed to work until 5:00, but managed to find somebody who was looking for a legit excuse to get out of a commitment and offered to work the end of my shift for me. That in itself was a miracle.

We got there about twenty minutes early, and all those kids……… I started tearing up the second we sat down because across the country in a little town in Connecticut, their celebrations had twenty less kids and that………. Well, that still doesn’t seem real to me.

For the children’s mass, there is a multi-generational choir, and if you can hold a note or your attention for a hot minute you’re in. Nobody in our family is good at either of those things. A young one of about fourteen sang between the readings all by her nervous little self. She’d sing the psalm and everyone would sing the refrain…………

All the ends of the earth have seen the power of God.

She would sing her part and look over at Pat, our choir director, and Pat would smile and she would smile back. And you could see her get more confident, and as she got more confident the refrain would get louder.

She rocked it. Oh my goodness, did she rock it.

When she finished, she went racing up the side steps of the altar, disappeared behind a door and then reappeared two minutes later to be an altar girl, and I was better after that because in the brokenness I had seen a great light.

Source: alittlebitofsillinessreally.tumblr.com via Judy on Pinterest

Festivus 2012

We have sent out a Christmas letter for twenty years and for a girl who writes every day, this year was tough. Every time I sat down to do it, I’d write five minutes of crap and then surf for crap on the time-sucking net. I found out that the Kardashians photoshop their card, Michael Jordan got kicked off a golf course in Florida for wearing cargo shorts and the way to make your crinkly, aging neck seem more youthful is to wear a scarf. Drrrrr………………

But I got it done in the nick of time………………a Festivus miracle.

So…………we had a little party this summer. We cleaned up and invited the whole clan to come celebrate the day that Maggie and Nathan got hitched. Contrary to what you may have heard about Kansas and our peoples, in this case the new Mr. and Mrs. are not cousins. Near as we can tell.

In August, Mal bid the parents adieu (that’s French for I can’t get out of here fast enough) and departed for college. She rarely makes a home visit for the obvious reason that we are here. She is a dance major and had her first gig at the new performing arts center this fall. We paid admission to get a glimpse of her, bought her some dinner afterwards and then returned her to the dorm and her pretend family.

Will is a senior at K-State and working in a grocery store as a bagger and weekend food demonstrator. He may have found his college job passion with an electric skillet and vast refrigerated bunkers of food at his disposal. He is a weekend warrior at the Hy-Vee (where there’s a helpful smile in every aisle) and when he finally made it home for Thanksgiving, he smelled like tortilla-crusted tilapia.

Maggie and Nathan (and their little dog, too) are happy and living about a mile from us. Maggie is in her 3^rd year of teaching and Nathan is still at Sprint, thus providing a Friends and Family Entitlement for our cell phones. Unlike the other two, they show up around here often to eat dinner while their dog roams around snacking on wayward underpants.

This was the year that we became empty nesters, which was quite sad for about three days. It didn’t take us long to figure out that cooking and picking up after ourselves wasn’t nearly as labor intensive as when the house was full. We’ve had grand plans to travel abroad (or maybe to Omaha) but with two kids in college we instead walk the dog, go to work, come home, yell at the t.v., go to bed, rinse and repeat.

Whether to carry on with this letter or not has been the dilemma of the weekend in the wake of so much grief and sadness in recent days. We decided to continue with what we hope to accomplish every year, which is to remind you that you are loved, that you are the shiny ornament in our tree of life and that more than ever, we wish you and those you love a merry little Christmas. Until next year………

I Think I’m In Love

My youtube consultant is home for winter break and it didn’t take long for her to get back to doing what she does best……………..

Apples

This was supposed to be a post about teachers and parents……..like the over-achieving ones I’ve known who have marched into the principal’s office in August with the letter that had the name of their kid’s new teacher and demanded it be changed because “I’ve heard some things.”

Or the mothers who made Maggie’s 5th grade teacher’s life a living hell. Years later she told me that if she didn’t have a mother (who was a high school teacher) to prop her up every night she would have never come back again.

I never understood this trash-talking of teachers that goes on among parents. It is so counter-productive to success in school, and wouldn’t it be nearly impossible to be fair to a student when their mother is bitching to everybody about you?

Instead I will tell you about a conversation I had with Maggie about teacher wardrobe issues………..

I was wearing a really cute outfit the other day. A pencil skirt. Hose. I was wearing hose. Do you know not one person told me I looked cute. Not one single person.

Mama said there’d be days like this.

So a couple of days later, there’s this old teacher – maybe a couple of years older than you.……..

Fossil.

She’s wearing one of those dorky holiday sweaters and you know what I said to her?

That she belonged in a museum.

That I liked her sweater.

You said that about a holiday sweater?

I didn’t like her sweater. I thought she looked like an old lady in a goofy sweater.

A relic wrapped in a knitted Christmas tree.

Is this my life? Pumpkins, turkeys, snowman, shamrocks, hearts…………all over my clothes?

It sounds disturbing.

It’s Pinterest, you know. Mallory and Caitlin are always pinning these cute outfits and I don’t know what I’m doing.

We’ll have an intervention over the break. Those two live for that kind of stuff.

Be generous this year if you’re giving a gift to the teacher. No dollar store crap. No apple mugs. No lotions or potions, notecards or hot cocoa mix. Give them a gift card for coffee, a movie, Panera or Chipotle, the mall. Give them something that’s just for them.

Give. Give. Give……………

…………….because this week we know.

Public & Private

When I was growing up, my siblings and I went to a Catholic elementary school. With a public high school just blocks from our house we parted ways with a private school education after the 8th grade. Some of my siblings have sent their kids to Catholic schools, and some of us have gone the public route.

Like my family, my neighborhood is a combination of both. When we moved here I entertained the idea of sending my kids to the Catholic school, but this area of Kansas is known for its quality education and so we decided to send them to public schools. We have never regretted the decision and I am sure my neighbors with kids in private schools would say the same.

Over more than twenty years of being in the school system, we have known many families that have experienced tragic losses. My dear friend, Vicki, died of ovarian cancer with a 7th grader and kindergartner left behind. Days later, another 7th grade girl lost her dad to a sudden heart attack. I know two families who have dealt with the sudden shocking diagnosis of a brain tumor and several mothers who have breast cancer. Last month, a senior at our high school died in an ATV accident two days after Thanksgiving while the fifty year old father of two other students collapsed and died on the following day.

In the midst of all of this is a school community that has been enormously supportive. Meals, carpools, transportation to doctor appointments, house and yard cleaning. If a family is in crisis, somebody takes charge and puts people to work.

It is what we do when we cannot fix the very big thing that has gone terribly wrong.

Former Governor Mike Huckabee and other conservative Christians were quick to point out hours after the devastating losses in Connecticut that this tragedy was because we have removed God from our public schools.

Our community is a mixture of many faiths and our public schools are a reflection of that. If those first graders, and the courageous staff that tried to protect them in the last moments they had on this earth, didn’t hear the voice of their higher power say…………..

Be not afraid
I go before you always

…………..then I have wasted a lifetime of prayer.

Lincoln

Last month, Mark, Mallory and I went to see Lincoln. As is the nature of our half-assedness, we ordered tickets online but left the house later than we should have for a crowded Friday night that also featured the new Twilight movie.

When we got inside the theater there weren’t many seats left and so we sat near the front. There were five rows ahead of us that were too close to the screen, then a wide aisle before the rest of the regular seats. We sat to the left of the movie screen behind the aisle – a small row with only four seats.

Directly in front of us was a ramp that led to an emergency exit.

Throughout the movie my eyes kept darting to the exit. Over and over. There were no seats in front of us, and so I surmised that if that horrible night in Aurora, Colorado was replicated, I would dive onto Mallory and Mark would likely shield both of us.

Twice during the movie, a guy got up to share snacks with someone he knew who was sitting a few rows ahead of him and I watched his every move. When friends asked what I thought of the movie, I said it was good and left out the part about feeling trapped for too long in a theater.

Ever since then I’ve thought about writing of that night. I thought about it again last week when there was the mall shooting in Oregon. I also thought that my anxiety level was reaching ridiculous levels.

I never fathomed it was about to go to a new place.