The Popes Among Us

Wouldn’t it just figure that the last two weeks the store is open the best customers start coming through the door?

I was working last Sunday and because everything is marked down and then 40% off things were busy.  Crazy busy.  Two women were making their way through the sale racks and I talked to them, offered a dressing room, kept checking on them.  One of them was in a long phone discussion with her mother about a sweater and two hours later she threw her hands up in the air and abandoned this shopping thing.

While she was talking to her mom, her mom was checking out our website and placing her personal requests via her daughter.  Much of what she wanted wasn’t at our store and so what started as a daughter wanting to get her mom something special turned into a fruitless discussion over things that weren’t readily available.  “I give up,” the daughter said.  “Thank you for helping me but she’s driving me crazy.  I can’t do this any more.”

The next day the same two women come back to the store and that’s when I found out they worked for United Way in Alberta, Canada.  They were in Kansas City for a conference on servicing the poor and we had a long discussion about attitudes towards the poor in both this country and theirs.  They were excited to attend this conference and bring back some new ideas to their city to solve the problems of the least among us.

They had walked for miles to our downtown area on a cold and windy day only to find out that the cute, little shops they’d heard about weren’t downtown.  An hour later, we sent them to our other store and to a shopping district worthy of their time, and they were just lovely.  Passionate, beautiful, lovely women.

On Tuesday, I was working at the new store and a women came in and happened to mention that she was a retired school teacher from Lake Forest, Illinois.  Well then, I asked, how did you end up in Kansas City?  Her daughter and her partner adopted Native American siblings and she wanted to be close by to see these beautiful new grandchildren of hers.  She herself was raised by her Native American grandmother on a reservation and so this was a full circle sort of thing…………….this gay daughter of hers and her partner raising these kids.

For the next hour she educated us about what life in this country is like when you live on a reservation and it is shocking.  Completely, utterly shocking and on her teacher’s pension she sends $200.00 a month to the family that raised her, and said that even if it was $2000.00 a month it couldn’t begin to fix the problems.

It’s been an eventful few weeks for the Catholics and you’d be hard-pressed not to have heard about this pope or the last one with the relentless media coverage, but for my new acquaintances from Canada and the reservation, it’s one weary foot in front of the other, day after day with little fanfare.

Caddyshack Part Two: Workmen’s Comp

I was down the street playing on a summer day when Friar Terry, hauling his clubs, came looking for me to shag some balls.  I didn’t want to.  I was having fun with my friends and, besides, I wasn’t wearing any shoes.  Terry convinced me that hanging out with him while golf balls were coming in my direction would be way more fun than kick the can.

“Ya can’t make a quarter doing this now can you, ” he asked.

Well okay, but first I have to run home and get some shoes.

“Nah, you don’t need shoes.”

No.  No.  I need shoes.

“You’ll be fine.  Shoes are for babies.”

Despite thinking differently and noticing that he had his shoes on off we went……….me and my big bro to the field for golf practice.

I took my position out yonder among the dandelions and I wasn’t liking what I was seeing.  There were bees everywhere and I was scared, but Terry said they wouldn’t bother me if I didn’t bother them.

They didn’t for about ten minutes and then I stepped on one and got stung on the bottom of my foot.  I started hopping around and wailing while dodging the golf balls that he kept driving towards my head.

I GOT STUNG!!!!!!

“Okay.  Let me just hit a few more.”

NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!  

I started walking in from the field.  Hurt, mad and not about to shag any more of his damn golf balls.  He scooped up the rest while I sat on the bench by the baseball diamond crying, and then we made our way home – me hobbling all the way.

Mom took a look at it and said I’d be fine but before long my foot blew up to twice its size.  This was problematic.  Mom, who could fix any kind of injury and was the best butterfly bandager on the block for the really deep cuts that should have had stitches, was stumped.  “We just may have to take you to the doctor.”

No.  No.  Not the doctor.  Please, Mom, not the doctor.

For back in the 60s if you were a kid and had to go to the doctor it surely meant you were getting a shot.  Everything that could be wrong with you required a shot.  I don’t ever remember getting medicine when I was sick, but presenting my stark white butt to a nurse to get another shot seemed to be a regular occurrence.

By the next day my bee sting had not gotten better so Mom and I sat in a doctor’s office that smelled like formaldehyde and found out I was allergic to bees.  “She’ll be okay,” the doctor said.  “But we’ll give her a shot just to be on the safe side.”

Mom said well sure that sounds like a good idea and my butt got a needle jammed into it to cure the bee sting on my foot.

It was a big deal amongst the clan when we got home and I did some show and tell and soaked up the attention.  “She’s allergic to bees,” Mom told Terry.  “You’d better not take her out shagging again without shoes or you’ll kill her for God’s sake.”

Before long my foot got better and my brother came around looking for his best shagger.  I had some time to think things over when it came to this job of mine and I made a few decisions about my future.

I’ll keep on shagging I told my brother, but there’s been a price increase while I was recuperating from my near-death experience.  A dollar a bag.  Take it or leave it.

He grabbed his clubs.  I grabbed my shoes.  We had a deal.

Caddyshack

My brother, Terry, is a great golfer.  So good in fact that he still competes and often wins tournaments.  His interest started when he made the high school golf team which required a great deal of practice.

He liked to take his clubs up to the field near our house, pull out his driver and let those golf balls fly – one after the other.   Mom sewed two dishtowels together and made a casing for a draw string and that held all the balls.  I was his shagger.  My job was to run down each ball he hit, find it amongst the dandelions and put it back into the bag without getting bonked in the head.  Once the weather got nice we’d do this every day and he paid me handsomely for the job……a quarter a bag.

One day he decided that we should go to the field by the elementary school instead of the high school to hit balls.  We had never done this before.  He pulled out his driver and was whacking them pretty good when suddenly a ball sailed over my head, hit the asphalt and kept bouncing until it crashed through a classroom window.  He came running up to me screaming, “Why didn’t you get that one??!!!  Look what you did!!!”

What I did?  

It didn’t take long for the janitor to show up on a golf cart to investigate and Terry took off running like a perp on an episode of Cops.  Through backyards, gardens, between houses, out into the street and then back again.  Terry was no match for a golf cart and eventually the old guy caught him, bringing him back to where I was standing.  “You finally done running, son,” he asked. 

He told me to get in the cart with my brother.  He was taking us home.  “No sir,” my brother said getting out.  “I’m responsible for my sister and I can’t let her get in here with a stranger or my Mom will be really mad at me.  No sir, me and my sister will walk.”   I was a little confused by this protectiveness since I’d never actually seen it before.

We did The Walk of Shame down Rose Drive – the street that was behind our house with the janitor in his golf cart tailing us.  “Listen to me,”  Terry whispered.  “You’re going to do everything I tell you to do.”

Oh no, Terry.  We have to tell Mom and Dad the truth about what happened.  That we did it and that we’re sorry and that you’re going to pay for it.  We can’t lie about it because that would be real bad and get us in more trouble.  The nuns say lying makes it worse.

“What are you talking about?   You’re going to have to pay for half of it since you didn’t stop it from bouncing.  Now shut up about the nuns and do what I tell you to do.”

“Hey, you two, what are you whispering about up there,” the janitor wanted to know.

“Nothing, sir.  My sister’s a little scared right now, but that’s okay cuz this here is our house.”  But we weren’t even on the right street.  

“C‘mon Kath,” he said and we walked up the steps and he jimmied the knob on the front door of the home of somebody who lived behind us and that I didn’t even know.  But Terry knew.  Terry knew the husband and wife worked all day and that nobody was home until dinner.

“Sorry, sir, Mom’s probably in the shower.  We’ll just go around back and get her.”

We strolled up the driveway like we’d lived there forever, admiring the lovely potted geraniums along the side of the house, and then Terry told me to run as soon as we were out of sight.  We ran like the wind, threw the clubs and balls over the fence and then ourselves, made a beeline for the boys’ bedroom in the back of the house and closed the door.

We had evaded the law.

We sat on the bunkbeds laughing at what happened and Terry said, “That janitor was one crazy guy.  Did you see how he chased me in that golf cart?  That son-of-a-bitch could have killed me.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “If he killed you I would have kicked his ass.”  I had become a lawbreaker and cusser in the span of thirty minutes and I liked it.

After awhile Mom yelled for us to come into the living room.   There was somebody she wanted us to meet.  Standing inside the front door, proud as could be was the janitor with his golf cart parked in the driveway.

The son-of-a-bitch figured out where we lived.     

 

House of Prayer

When I was little and my mom would come and check on my sister and I before she’d go off to bed herself, I would often poke my little, curly head up and say, “I can’t sleep, Mom.”

Say your prayers, Kath, she’d say.

It was my mom’s answer to E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G.

At dinner we’d say regular grace and then another prayer which was my dad’s favorite.  Sheesh, people, can we just eat already?

My whole life it was the standard answer to everything that was wrong.

Say your prayers.

My mom has been sick lately.  No appetite, lethargic, coughing a lot.  After two rounds of antibiotics she wasn’t any better and so the doctor ordered an abdominal and lung scan because she believed it was cancer.

Her six kids and their spouses were knocked to their knees.  Yes, my mom is older but she doesn’t act old.  She walks twice a day.  She’s funny.  She’s energetic.  She needs to stay with us.

That was on a Friday and yesterday we found out she is okay………….maybe a nasty virus that needs to run its course, but no cancer and no pneumonia.

Today is my birthday.

Mom isn’t going anywhere for the time being.

Hail Mary full of grace.

SALE!!!!!!

The store is closing in less than three weeks and I have been cruising the job market.

I went on a very promising interview last week, but no call back as of yet even though I totally rocked it.

It’s a real job and I was really nervous as the interview was cancelled twice.  This gave me time to think freak out.   The Big Daddy said, “Just be yourself.  They’ll love you.”  That’s not really true.  I can think of a few people who don’t even like me.  Because it’s mutual.  Besides……………when I’m myself I talk WAY too much which isn’t exactly a good thing to have going on in an interview.  I thought about faking going to the interview (who would know?), but instead hiked up my Mom Pants and crossed being scared shitless off my bucket list.  Again.

So now I wait.

Since the store is closing there is a big sale going on.  As employees we get a generous discount and now even more so with this clearing out of goods.  The tired winter merchandise that we couldn’t stand two weeks ago is looking much more inviting and there is continuous trolling through the racks.  My fellow shopgirls never stop selling.  They’re good.  Scary good.

That looks so good on you.  You should totally get that.  Did you see the price????   It’s crazy how much it’s marked down.  You. Need. That. 

It explains the poncho I dated on my shift today and am considering even though I’ve never been a poncho girl in my entire life. 

It could be quite the fashion statement when I’m sitting in a coffee shop dodging interviews.

Putting Out The Fire

After church on Saturday, Mark and I went to our favorite pizza place.  It was a little hard to get to as many streets were blocked off with fire trucks.  It was a show of force of emergency responders and when we got out of the car I smelled gas, which seems to be a little too common in Kansas City these days.

We went into the restaurant and ordered our pizza.  I was near a t.v. and could hear the report of a gas leak in the very neighborhood we were sitting in.  Before long somebody from the gas company came in with a meter to read the gas levels in the kitchen.

This was a little unsettling.

One of the waitresses that works there went to school with Will, and so I stopped her to find out what she knew.  The leak was at a nearby apartment complex and they were being extra cautious in light of what recently happened here.

With that, four fireman filed past our table to inspect the kitchen themselves to make sure everything was safe.

The waitress and the patron stopped conversing.  A minute later all was well and they walked by us again and out the door.

“Just once,” she said, “I’d like to be carried out of a building by a fireman.”

You and me both, honey.

Losing Vicki

Mary called me up.  Mary the PTA president.  Mary the Organizer.  Mary…….the friend you want when the shit hits the fan.

“Vicki called.  She’s been going to the doctor a lot and was wondering if you’d be able to take her to some of her appointments at St. Luke’s.”

Oh yes.  Yes, I would love to do that for Vicki.  Just tell me when and I’m there.

“Tuesdays.  You’re the Tuesday Girl.  I’ll call her and get the info and let you know.”

Tuesday arrived and I picked up my much thinner, very sick friend and helped her into my van.  We chatted all the way there catching up on everything as she’d been housebound for awhile with treatments for ovarian cancer.  When we got to the professional offices of St. Luke’s, I dropped her off in front.

“I’ll wait here for you while you park the car.  They don’t want me going up alone.”

Okay.  I’ll make it quick.

That is when I lost my friend.  I dropped her off on the ground level, parked on the 2nd level, took a walkway over the dropoff area (huh, I don’t remember seeing that) and got completely lost.  Where I was I had no idea and since I have no sense of direction and lay no m & m’s along the way to remember my path, I was screwed.  And a cell phone?  Well, Vicki and I had already talked about how neither of us had one of those new things and weren’t in any hurry to get one.

I wandered around.  Oncology, I’d ask.  Well, is she having chemo or radiation?  What kind of cancer?  Outpatient?  Is she having blood drawn?  Oh, try that building across the street.   

Vicki?  Tall, dark hair, talks to everybody?  You’d like her as soon as you met her.  Everybody does.

At one point I got so confused in a maze of hallways I ended up on the hospital side and thought I was going to cry. 

Mary is going to kick my ass.

I left the building, walked next to a construction site where they had to halt the crane while I wandered through sans hardhat and eventually ended up right where I dropped her off.

There she was.

Oh geez, Vicki, I am so sorry.  Have you been waiting long?  I got lost.  Do you know how many oncology departments there are in this place?  Who does this kind of thing to their friend?  I’m really sorry.  You can yell at me.  You could even fire me. 

Vicki did none of those things.  Instead she introduced me to one of her nurses and they both decided to wait there while I got the car and brought it around which that time I managed not to screw up.

Vicki kept me on as her chauffeur.  We didn’t tell Mary or anybody else how I lost her on my first day of duty, our secret joke every Tuesday until she moved on. 

The Blizzard of Oz

Last week’s snowfall of 12″ just wasn’t enough and so round two came through overnight.  Work was cancelled for both of us, schools were closed and everybody stayed home which would have been all cozy and lovely had the power not gone out at four a.m.  By nightfall, KCPL (those beautiful lineman literally trudging in snow up to their butts) brought the lights and heat back.

It was a winter wonderland right outside the door……………..

And The Big Daddy working the shovel with our neighbor like he was Michael Bloomberg..

And my snow garden…………

We warmed up for a few hours at Maggie and Nate’s and when we came home I finished reading this book by way of a battery-operated tea light. 

Snow days……….I’d love one more but all good things must end. 

February

I’m not a fan of the whole month of February.  At least in January you get the Christmas stuff put away, organize the house, make a fresh start.  This is useful stuff.

Then comes February.  Gray and shorter than any other month, like even it doesn’t see the point in hanging around longer than necessary.

A couple of weeks ago, I was supposed to go out to dinner with my fellow shopgirls to see a friend of all of ours who was in town.  I didn’t go and I couldn’t even make up a decent excuse.  Instead, Mark and I went to an evening church service which we never AND I MEAN NEVER have done before.  I thought that if I was going to bail on this planned dinner nobody could lay a guilt trip on me for going to church.

An hour of being still helped in matters of mental and spiritual health.

When I went back to work I offered my apologies.  I am off-kilter, I said.  I cannot explain it.  I cannot understand it.  I am just off-kilter.

My very wise friend and boss said, “Yes, it’s like that these days.  First Fat Tuesday, then Ash Wednesday, then Valentine’s Day.  It is as if the air is charged this week.”

I love her.

The air in Kansas City has stay charged with a gas explosion, a 12″ snowstorm on Thursday to be followed in the next 24 hours with another storm of up to 15″.

It is more than time to start daydreaming about all things garden…………the only remedy for a month that seems as if it will never end.

Serving

When I go to work I often come in contact with waiters and waitresses that are also going to their jobs and park in the same employee lot as me as there are many restaurants that are our neighbors.

Often we don’t speak, but I try to wish them a good day.  Though we are in the same type of service industry, my hourly pay doesn’t depend on how many people walk in the door and what kind of mood they are in.  I have never waitressed, but based on my own experience with customer service I know their job is much harder than mine.

The other day I took a phone order from a woman who seemed to delight in being condescending to salespeople.

Ma’m, do you spell your first name E-V-E-L-Y-N?

No, Kathy, it’s E-V-E-L-Y-N.  Didn’t you hear me?

Evelyn, just bear with me a moment.  I have to get the sales tax off your order and the computer is running a little slow this morning.

Kathy, what did you do wrong now?  Oh and Kathy, when you fold that skirt make sure there’s no creases in it so that when I take it out of the box and put it on it’s perfect.

That is just a small portion of the penance I did.  It went on and on………always with the “Kathy”.  Constantly referring to someone by their first name doesn’t make you less of a bitch.  Evelyn. 

On Wednesday, at just past six and half a mile from where I work was a gas explosion right outside a popular restaurant in the Plaza area of Kansas City.

There have been many serious injuries and several people are still in the hospital.  Everybody made it out of there with the exception of one waitress.

Her body was found the next day and one of her coworkers said, “Everybody loves her.  Nobody can say anything bad about her.” 

She was described as politically active, funny, had a law degree and loved working in the restaurant.

One of the hundreds of service workers that travel to that area every single day and try to eek out a living……

I hope she never encountered an Evelyn on her shift. 

I hope somebody wished her well on what would be her last day on this earth.

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