In more than one column, I’ve admitted to being a Yard Sale Junkie. This embarrasses everyone in the family except my sister-in-law, who chauffeurs us in her white van while I plot the fastest route to the next sale using the Chamber of Commerce map.
At a recent sale, I was thrilled to find a pair of little girl’s red glittery shoes just like those worn by Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. What made the find so magical was that Morgan and I had just watched the Wizard of Oz together. And we were both green with envy over Dorothy’s red shoes. Red is our favorite color, too.
I couldn’t wait till the family’s next visit so that I could surprise Morgan with the shoes. Of course, she immediately put them on, dancing around the house for the rest of her visit.
As I was fixing lunch, the farmer was also flitting around, wondering when lunch would be ready. Seeing a way he could help, I asked him to take Morgan’s picture in her Dorothy shoes.
What could go wrong with this request? It did cross my mind that there could be trouble, but it seemed like a preposterous worry.
Snap, snap, snap went the camera while I was serving up the snap beans. Later, with lunch over and the dishes cleared, I took the pictures to be developed. The picture of redheaded Morgan in her red Dorothy shoes would require a special frame. Aw heck, I figured, why not blow it up and give her a poster for her room? And I’d order an 8x10 to knock ‘em dead at the office.
Surely one of the three pictures would be a masterpiece. So I tore into the freshly developed pictures.
Picture 1: lots of floor and lots of feet, including Morgan’s feet in her new shoes. Oh well, there was Picture 2. But it featured less floor, everyone’s feet including Morgan’s, and some lower legs. I was rightfully worried, for the last great hope was Picture 3. Picture 3 captured Morgan from the knees down, with the red shoes the focal point of the picture.
The pictures couldn’t be blown up, so I blew up. “What were you thinking?” I sobbed, showing the farmer the pictures. “I wanted a picture of Morgan in her red shoes.”
It was the farmer’s turn to be perplexed. “So, what’s the problem? You are holding in your hands not one but three pictures of Morgan’s red shoes. You specifically told me to take a picture of her in her red shoes, and I did.”
Losing all religion, I said sarcastically, “Well, it would have been nice to have the rest of her in at least one of the pictures. I would rather have a picture of Morgan’s face any day than pictures of her feet.”
When I shared this crisis with my Sunday School class, they agreed it was a “man thing.” But they quickly added that one day these pictures would prove to be among our most prized family photos.
“Think of the laughter you’ll share, telling Morgan the story of ‘the day Grandpa took your picture.’”
Maybe, but I’m not laughing yet.
What a relief to send our baby back to NC State, where he’s a senior. Before you add me to your list of 10 Worst Wolfpack Mothers, let me explain why I was relieved to pass Miles’ pickup truck, loaded with his stereo and BBQ cooking gear, headed east to Raleigh.
Our boy will be a lot safer in Raleigh than is in Boiling Springs. About the worst thing that can happen to him in Raleigh is getting a campus parking ticket or losing his Carhartt jacket.
At home, on the other hand, every day presented a new risk to life and limb. His summer jobs included felling trees, bush hogging farm fields, and working in a meat slaughter plant.
Nor were his hours of leisure any safer. For fun, he fished through the night from a canoe, graveled for catfish, built bonfires in the old silage pit, and frequented Wal-Mart after 1 AM.
No wonder Miles dreaded his return to Raleigh, which he describes as B-O-R-I-N-G. (Capital letters are his.) I reckon Baby Miles is a chip off the old block. Years ago, when C.J. Underwood chose our family as subjects for a vignette on “Modern Young Dairy Farmers,” he asked the farmer how difficult it had been to readjust to life in Boiling Springs after having graduated from NCSU and having worked in Raleigh for about 5 years. Here is what the farmer told Channel 3’s viewing audience: “C. J., you are absolutely right. Coming back home has been a big adjustment for me. All those years living in Raleigh, there was virtually nothing to do. Back here in Cleveland County, there are so many leisure activities to engage in that I don’t have time to milk cows and do all that I would like to do.” C. J.’s expression indicated this was not a politically correct answer.
The other reason it’s a relief to ship our baby back to NC State is an even more selfish one: Miles has a way of working you to death.
In the spot that received run off from our dairy barn, he planted a very fertile garden. Once he figured how to keep the goats out, the garden took off. That meant weekend after weekend, usually on the Sabbath, I had to work up the produce he hauled to the house.
Never mind that I have a broken index finger, aching after an auto collision. He expected his produce to be worked up.
Take last Sunday, for example, when I faced a counter full of tomatoes. Worried that I might not can his Better Boys after he left for NCSU, Miles came home from church with this announcement: “I’m going to borrow a turkey cooker. We’ll fire up the tank, fill the cooker with water, and boil the skins right off those tomatoes.”
By 11 PM Sunday night, I had gotten the last of the tomato seeds mopped up – and the last of the 26 jars of canned tomatoes ready for winter eating.
Here’s what I’ve emailed the boy: “Bon voyage, Miles! Buckle your seat belt and study hard. But don’t you worry one bit about coming home to check on us -- until after the first killing frost.”
The young man whom I married not so long ago is fixing to retire. He claims to be old enough, and Social Security backs him up. If he is getting this old and there is only a 5-year difference in our age, can I be that far behind?
The farmer hasn’t been this excited since he came back from he Amish country a decade ago with his antique buggy restored. He was certainly ready to rock and roll that day. Grinning from ear to ear, he hitched up at 5 AM on a Sunday morning and rode off into the sunrise.
This same youthfulness is returning to his spirit as he gears up for retirement.
I don’t know about your house, but at our house, along the way I was crowned the Queen of the Details. If it involves paper, it’s in my domain.
Not so with the details of his retirement. He has made calls, appointments, and arrangements. He has ordered the paperwork, filled out the paperwork, and mailed it off. No important papers were lost in the Ford 250, the Ford 350, or Big Red, the International dump and final resting place of most important papers. Most amazing of all, he found his passport, his birth certificate, and his army discharge papers. Single-handedly. And without a hint of procrastination.
It is probably not politically correct to talk about it, but lots of wives out there recognize how newsworthy the above accomplishments are. It’s living proof of the maxim I preach at work: set goals you truly believe in, and nothing can stop you from accomplishing them.
After 33 years of marriage, I am excited to learn this side of the farmer exists. Surely these organizational skills bode well for his retirement. In fact, it bodes so well that I have already begun a list of tasks to delegate to him. If I can shuffle any of the paperwork to him, that will be glory.
But what I need to know, from those who already have experienced the joys of retirement, is how this new lifestyle works. For example, what is the most feasible housework arrangement with one spouse retired and one spouse working? Does the retired spouse automatically begin cooking supper, or does this have to be negotiated? Is it too much to hope that the retiree will do the taxes AND the windows? And who should go into town and run the mundane errands of daily life, such as buying stamps?
Such dreams about future possibilities are the stuff that make me as thrilled as the farmer about his retirement. This Queen of the Details wants to retire her crown.
But I’m worried about genetics. I remember his parents’ retirement: nothing changed. And when my mother-in-law died too young at 71 of breast cancer, my wise but plainspoken father-in-law wiped a tear and said, “Kathryn, I’ve lost my card catalogue.”
I hugged him because I understood what he meant.
But now, as I cast a longing eye toward the golden years, I’m hoping that Cline’s retirement at least means I’ll be getting a library assistant.
When the farmer and I left last week for a few days at the beach, we invited our youngest son to join us. Baby Miles answered: “Ya’ll vacate all you want to, but I have to earn money for this fall’s college expenses. I have a job lined up cutting down trees.”
Although I’ve drawn a line in the sand about tree toppling, our grown sons respond by sharpening their saws and jumping over my objections.
If mothers live long enough, we do reap what we sow. I reckon the seeds were planted years ago on the farm when I encouraged the boys to run along outside – to climb trees, jump creeks, and chase dreams. As the sampler encourages, I was giving them both “roots and wings.”
Fast forward to the present. While I was toting a peck of peaches into the beach cottage, the cell phone rang. Miles was on the phone, breathless, possibly because of cracked ribs. He slowly said: “Mama, you have always told me ‘that God will never forsake us no matter what happens.’ Well, I’ve learned today that that’s the truth.”
It was my turn to quit breathing. Miles quickly reassured me that though he had been hurt, he was OK. “I’m at the house where I fell out of the tree. There are lots of good-lookin’ women here fussing over me. If they think they need to, they’ll call 911.”
I went limp. The farmer took the cell phone, getting as many of the details as we could process.
We learned that the first couple of trees had gone down without a hitch. Miles was winding up on the third tree, having taken great pains to properly tie himself into the strongest branch on the big oak. Some 50 feet off the ground, he was sawing away on a massive, 250-pound branch. Unfortunately and totally unexplainably, he sawed off the very branch he was tied in to.
Old lumberjacks warn that this happens – that after so many limbs, you lose track of them.
I bought into this explanation until I later saw the tree. Miles not only sawed off the limb he was tied to, it was the only limb left on the tree! I asked him what in the world was he thinking?
“Don’t you get it, Mama?” he asked. “That’s what caused this. I wasn’t thinking.”
He later confessed that the man who had taught him the trade had stated over and over the guiding principle of tree trimming: “You snooze – you lose.”
Miles should not have survived this mishap. But as he was free falling, his safety belt hung up on a sawed-off stob. He estimates he had fallen approximately 10 feet and was facing the Pearly Gates when his descent (or ascent) was halted. A friend said, and as a mother I believe this, “God reached out and placed the boy’s rope over the stob that day.”
One of the locals told Miles, “You bein’ a college boy, I don’t believe you should be tellin’ folks how you sawed yourself out of a tree.”
But I’m a grateful mother. So listen, and you’ll hear me shouting from the treetops!
When I walked away from a wreck a couple of weeks ago, with my arms up in the air but my heart still beating, I reckoned the worst was over. But I had not reckoned on how it would feel to wake up the next morning without “wheels.” If I had needed to buy celery seed, I would have had to hitchhike to the store.
The farmer asked what did I mean I had no wheels? “The green Olds is at the barn,” he proudly said. “Go down there and get it. You can’t miss it. It’s a classic, and it’ll crank.”
No one can miss the army green Olds, affectionately referred to as the “Green Machine” or the “Green Bomb.” It’s a ’72 Olds Cutlass. It takes vise grips to start it. Even before I broke my finger, I couldn’t crank it.
And if that weren’t enough, driving that car contributes nothing to one’s image. Its main claim to fame is that once, as the farmer was uptown for jury duty, the town drunks made off with the Olds, ditching it in Patterson Springs when the contraption ran out of gas.
In its heyday, the “Green Machine” was surely a Sunday-go-to-meeting car. It had known the loving care of an older lady. Then the farmer and the Cutlass crossed paths, and the glamour began rusting away.
Hauling buckets of seed, bales of hay, rolls of barbed wire, drums of surfactant, and random bottles of axle grease is murder on glamour. Pretty soon, the remains of the car’s lovely cream upholstery had turned Cleveland County red.
On the positive side, if you were loaded with self-esteem and were built like the Incredible Hulk, the Olds Cutlass was your car. All our boys drove it to Crest High School, although the Green Machine was definitely the rage. But as they‘ve aged, I’ve noticed these grown sons now look for opportunities to drive the ’72 Olds.
So, this is the “classic car” the farmer proposed I drive to work.
When he saw that wouldn’t fly, he rented me a car. But that was just a temporary solution to a permanent problem. Last Saturday, there was nothing else to do but to visit car dealerships. I felt like a traitor: shopping out-of-town for a car not made in the USA. If I could have bought the car of my dreams, it would have been a Saab. However, the farmer vowed he would be laughed out of town, so I hunted down a Toyota instead.
Of course I didn’t walk into the dealership alone: after a few yard sales, my sister-in-law agreed to go with me. Four hours later, hungry, thirsty and worn to a frazzle, we headed home. What I wonder is, after experiencing the “new car haggle,” will yard sales be exciting enough for her?
Personally speaking, the longer I squirmed in the dealership, the more homesick I became for the “Green Machine.”
Here’s the truth: I would rather have my other carotid artery cleaned out – under local anesthesia – than shop for a car. At least, after the operation, they give you something to help you forget what you’ve just gone through.
“The corn is in,” the farmer whispered in my ear last Saturday morning. It was 5 AM. What was on my mind was not “doing corn” but doctoring a cold in order to get the jump on a few yard sales.
“I’m just not up to doing corn today,” I told the farmer. “Maybe tomorrow, after church, or maybe one evening next week.”
The truth about corn is, like time and tide, it waits for no man, usually no woman. Even my husband, who believes everything can wait till later, is overcome by a sense of urgency when “the corn is in.”
Move forward to Sunday, 5 AM. The farmer woke me up, even more eager to harvest his Silver Queen crop. “I’m hoarser and sicker today than I was yesterday,” I croaked. “There’s no way I can go to church.”
The farmer’s reaction? “Great! If you don’t feel like going to church, let’s do corn!” Whistling his favorite hymn, “Onward, Christian Soldiers,” he headed to the corn patch.
There was nothing to do but get up and start on lunch…because, in his family’s tradition, the lady of the house cooks the biggest country meal of the year on the day she does corn. Go figure.
Coughing and sputtering, at 6 AM, I put on the potatoes for potato salad and boiled eggs for deviled eggs. There was squash to fry, pork chops to fry and okra to fry. There were biscuits to bake, cabbage and green beans to boil down. And cucumbers, tomatoes and cantaloupes to slice. For dessert, some sort of cobbler to come up with. Never mind that there were just the two of us, and that one of us no longer eats my cooking. “So as not to hurt his feelings, I’ll just eat 3 naked ears of corn,” I said to myself, “and when he goes back to the corn patch, I’ll fill up on fat-free yogurt.”
Although I’m prone to go against tradition, not so on “Corn Day.” Maintaining these traditions means that for the rest of the year, when we enjoy corn, we are taken back to the memories of the summer day we shucked, silked and cut washtubs of corn off the cob – and had a country “dinner” to die for.
Memories like these are the reward for marrying into the country. Born and bred a city girl, I did not enrich our marriage with such a tradition. Mama’s idea of “doing corn” was opening a can of no-name corn and marrying it with a can of no-name black-eyed peas and canned biscuits. By the time I got married, on a scale of 1 to 10, corn ranked #9 as a vegetable. Then I got morning sickness, and corn dropped to #28.
Over the years, we’ve frozen hundreds of gallons of corn. More importantly, frozen in time are memories that nourish our spirits. We remember those who bequeathed us this tradition. We talk about them a lot on “Corn Day,” nervous that we are not doing it to suit them. For certainly, on this day of all days, they are watching us -- from heaven.
This year, just the two of us froze only 20 quarts.
“That should be enough, if you guard it carefully,” the farmer said.
“Like the gold at Fort Knox,” he rightly means.
This past week was not my week, or was it?
Monday afternoon I was heading out to a meeting in Southern Pines when my Toyota blew a tire. Son Jason changed the tire and warned me to slow down since the other tires were also worn.
Although I was following his orders, by Wednesday I had totaled my car. Except for a broken finger, a bruised arm, and possibly a fractured wrist, I'm OK.
The wreck happened at 3 pm as I was heading home on Highway 49 South in Cabarrus County. Because of my slick tires, I had taken a detour via Highway 73 to Highway 49 in order to avoid Independence Boulevard at rush hour. However, I was unaware of the road construction and congestion due to the widening of 49.
As I was trucking – safely -- down the hill past the Stonewall Jackson Training School stoplight, a pickup truck stopped in order to turn left. When the car in front of me suddenly stopped, the defensive driver in me kicked in, weighing what to do about the lime green tractor-trailer behind me. But with a guardrail on my right and traffic on the left, I was sandwiched in on all sides. Sure enough, the tractor-trailer couldn't stop in time and rammed me from the back. I then hit the car in front of me, but fortunately that car and its driver sustained little damage.
The impact blew my shoes off, caused my suitcase to fly into the windshield, and made both air bags go off. Possibly it was the force of the airbags that hurt my arm and hands. The patrolman said wearing the seat belt was critical to my avoiding serious injury.
Thinking the car would blow at any time, I put my shoes on, jumped from the car into the kudzu, and called the office. They said they would track the farmer down.
The artery or vein in my right forearm was swelling a lot, which terrified me. There was nothing to do but hold my hands up to keep the blood from pooling. Six hundred cars went by, with me standing in the kudzu striking an “I surrender” pose. Eventually, I took the medics up on their offer to ride with them to Northeast Regional in Concord, where X-rays revealed the above minor injuries.
Cline and his brother Joe came to the hospital to get me. Cousin Mary Emma, who rang me on my cell phone while I was in the ambulance to ask if I was coming to see her while I was passing through the area, visited me in the ER instead.
We learned my 1995 Toyota had been towed to Midland. The owner of the wrecker service said there was no doubt the Toyota was totaled, so we boxed up my loot and I shed a tear or two over the car and we headed home.
Cline says this is a sign we need a new pickup truck.
Cousin Mary Emma says, “Kathryn Mae, I declare. You make such a big deal over not eating fat and depriving yourself of ice cream and then you go out and get run over by a Mack truck.”
To which I declare, “In memory of my Toyota, wonder where we could get an ole-timey chocolate milkshake?”
On our anniversary last week, my husband sent 33 red roses, a rose for each of our years together. The roses gave me pause as I reflected on the top 10 reasons I would marry the farmer all over again:
1. He’s not getting older. Actually, in his mind, he has his own numbers reversed: he's 61 going on 16. If the research is correct that indicates those who live the longest are those who never think of themselves as old, the farmer will be here for the Tricentennial. The only time he acts his age is when he sings along on Lawrence Welk.
2. The farmer has a zest for life that is almost contagious. He greets each morning as if it were the first one God ever made. His joy at waking up ar 5 AM is beyond understanding. Although he knew when we married that I was a night owl, he hasn’t stopped trying to reform me. It's scary how close I have come to decking him when he jostles me awake before the sun comes up with talk about the price of diesel fuel in Blowing Rock.
3. In our case, opposites did attract. In order to stay together, we both have changed a little. A huge plus is our similar backgrounds: we had fiercely Baptist parents who raised us in homes where Sunday School, hard work and laughter were prized. Both of us had fathers who delighted in entertaining others by spinning yarns. I reckon now this trait is in our genes. Sharing humorous stories is the one thing the farmer and I have in common, besides the children.
4. How fortunate for us my husband is a great father; he thoroughly enjoys the companionship of our sons. They can talk for hours about sandbars and rebar and oyster bars; about trenches, wenches, and wrenches. When the boys and I get together, after the “howdy dos,” the conversation gets stuck, unless someone mentions politics.
5. I reckon the farmer and I have accepted the fact that we are different, with interests that are worlds apart. He doesn’t complain that I am working on this website while he is re-reads his favorite book: The Encyclopedia of Horses. Another huge plus: he has introduced me to realms of knowledge that I never would have imagined had I married a city slicker -- which was my life's goal.
6. The farmer brings me a fresh cup of Folger’s coffee every morning. Early.
7. He is a great advisor – and he’s usually right.
8. He likes and respects women. He doesn’t say so – he lives it out. He is probably oblivious to this virtue. But I notice. Actually, he treats all people with dignity, because he really likes people. He has close friendships with a truly mixed bag of folks, enriching both our lives.
9. He is kind, and blind, to most of my faults, most of the time.
10. Lastly, my mother approves. As she tells the farmer, “I’m glad she chose you.”
After 33 years, the farmer is one topic about which Mama and I agree.
When we decided to build our house on the top of a granite hill, the builder advised against a basement. I was almost relieved. Wasn’t a basement just a catchall for the extra stuff folks shouldn’t hold onto in the first place?
We would just live simply, I rationalized. With our children grown, how much clutter could there be? As an afterthought, we added an attic over the garage – just to store the Christmas decorations and canning jars out of sight.
When Mama heard about the attic, she asked, “Kathryn Mae, now could take your wedding dress home?” After 33 years, she was tired of looking at it every day, hanging on the door of her bedroom closet.
I claimed my wedding dress and took it home, with Mama insisting I take extra good care of it. Why, I wondered? Just in case???
When we moved, the fate of the size 6 dress with its train, tiara, and floor-length mantilla rested with a half dozen Hamrick men. That explains why my wedding outfit is scrunched up in the box containing chipped coffee cups from all the places any of us have ever visited.
By the time we moved, delusions of living simply had gone out the window. The attic proved to be the ideal catchall for the extra stuff we shouldn’t have held onto in the first place, including Miles’ waders, 300 fishing poles, and old science projects. Of course, if we were going to store his stuff, how could we refuse his older brothers’ fishing poles, tackle boxes, grasshopper boxes, FFA jackets, et al?
As for the house itself, I had had welcome help in deciding what to put where. Some of my own personal treasures didn’t pass muster and were relegated to the attic. My sister-in-law explained that the uncluttered house is a more attractive house.
The farmer’s treasures, what few were left after 33 years, met the same fate.
By the time we finished moving, the attic was stuffed to the gills. Boxes and crates and plastic bags randomly heaped, their contents filled with the stuff of our lives.
Then the weather turned cold -- too cold to organize the attic. A couple of Christmases came and went, with the men folk assigned the task of scavenging the attic for holiday decorations. By February of this year, Christmas bells and balls were spilling down the attic stairs. The farmer, unfazed and unashamed, asked visitors and total strangers just to step over Santa Claus, as he showed them the attic.
If I hadn’t had to have an operation this spring, who knows how long this mess would have gone on? With surgery coming down the pike, I did what any normal woman would do: devoted every waking moment to organizing the space. And women know why: “Just in case…”
After two full weekends, I hurt everywhere, but the attic and I were ready for surgery.
At first, I begrudged the labor involved. Then I found the postcards from Daddy, the letters from the farmer, and the hand-made Mother’s Day cards from 4 little boys. While the heart is the best place to store such memories, most of us create a special place we occasionally tend that holds the physical evidence of the blessings from along the journey.
As a columnist myself, I reckon it is only fair that I have run scared for 20 years on account of the words of another Cleveland county columnist, Kays Gary. When I was 37, newly diagnosed with hardening of the arteries, Kays Gary’s column on the arteriogram was unforgettable: “The arteriogram,” he wrote, “is a one-minute trip to hell and back.”
Since this was not a trip I wanted to make, for 20 years I succeeded at schmoozing my local doc out of ordering one. Last week, my luck ran out. The evidence on the MRI and Dopplers was too serious to ignore any longer, and I entered Baptist Hospital for both an angiogram and an arteriogram. I braced myself for quite an adventure in Kays Gary’s “hell.”
Thank God for advances of modern medicine. The only pain was having to lie flat for 8 hours following the tests.
The farmer, of course, was by my side – when he wasn’t making his rounds. “The test was really rough on me,” he tells friends. “There I was trapped, having to wait 8 hours, too. I would stand, walk around the hospital, lie on the floor, sit in the chair, go get coffee and my back still gives me fits.”
“If someone will feed her,” the nurse had said at lunch time, looking straight at the farmer, “she can have something to eat.” To his credit, the farmer cut the Jell-O salad and unidentified meat into one-inch cubes and kept the giant cubes coming.
Crammed full, I was gearing up for a major pity party. The nurse had called several days before to give me a heads up. “We have you tentatively scheduled for a subclavian bypass Tuesday. I thought you’d want to know so that you can plan accordingly.”
The hours passed and genuine fears of surgery replaced the misplaced fears of the arteriograms. The radiologist came by first: he reported they found plaque in all the arteries they looked at. He attributed my not having had an “incident” so far to my taking an adult aspirin a day.
Then he explained, “There’s something else. You have a fortuitous arrangement of arteries. A large fetal artery is supplying extra blood to the brain, something we see in about 15 percent of the population.” If I hadn’t been tied in the bed, I would have jumped for joy. On the negative side, my sisters called and cried, “No fair. No fair. We won’t play Scrabble with you again unless you give us a 25-point handicap.”
But what would the surgeon say? As this excited layperson understood it, he said that the subclavian artery supplying my left arm was significantly narrowed and was therefore “stealing” blood from the brain as needed. Nevertheless, in light of the overall results of the tests and my lack of symptoms, he felt subclavian bypass surgery was not warranted at this time.
Monday was a blessed day. The tests I had so dreaded were serious but not unbearable. My name was taken off the surgical schedule. And I increased my resolve to do my part at controlling the culprit: cholesterol.
On the way home that evening, I rewarded myself with a milkshake. It was the last an ex-dairy wife who had been given her life back could do.
This is the year that half a century of Southern cooking and high levels of inherited “bad” cholesterol are catching up with me. Now I have switched over to the other side – to the side that neither approves of nor fries okra, apple pies, or catfish.
Hopefully my efforts at transformation won’t be too little too late. In the meantime, in addition to carotid artery surgery, the docs are ordering more tests.
Last week it was a stress echocardiogram. The farmer agreed to accompany me, in case he had to collect the insurance money. We left from work, which meant I was dressed for the business treadmill instead of the heart treadmill.
As I entered the echocardiogram room, wearing black for solemnity, red for power, and the largest size silver earrings I could get away with, one of the 3 young technicians sized me up. When she asked if I were in the right room, my heart almost skipped a beat. Maybe I don’t appear to be a cardiovascular basket case, I thought.
Realizing that I was indeed the patient, she took it upon herself to brighten my day. She smiled, then said, and I quote, “We always like it when older women come in here all fixed up. It’s great when people your age care enough to put forth the effort to still look good.”
This was a lot to digest for an old woman fixing to be tested to see if she might be a heart attack looking for a place to happen.
The young technician went on, “My mother, who is about your age, won’t wear red – and she surely wouldn’t paint her fingernails red.”
Wiring me for the treadmill test, another young professional asked didn’t I want to lighten my load by taking off my earrings? Sensing that this was optional, of course I kept the earrings on. When you’re fighting to stay young, you just can’t let down your guard. I did, however, hand over my bifocals for safekeeping.
Fortunately, I was able to complete the necessary levels, and even an additional level, getting my heart rate to the desired rate without incident. All 3 of my new friends were impressed that I was able to walk and talk, go uphill and never break into a sweat. I reckon they aren’t raising 4 boys.
The technicians are right: it is a good thing for women to put forth a host of efforts to find the fountain of youth.
And with the increasing awareness that heart disease is also our #1 killer, eating right and exercising may be even more important than buffing and polishing our image.
The time came to leave these new friends. As I took off my tennis shoes and socks to change into the latest sandals, one of them hollered: “I knew it. Your toenails are painted fire truck red.”
When I reported the events surrounding the echocardiogram to the farmer, he said he wished I had worn my iridescent blue toenail polish. “Wonder what they would think of women your age then?”
At the end of the day, I was tremendously relieved at passing the stress test with flying colors.
It was the earrings.
My mother’s love affair with walking began upon her retirement as a history teacher. Seventeen years and 27,000 walked miles later, Mama, at 80, is superbly healthy. To her children and to others she has inspired, Mama is a moving testimony to the power of good habits. Over the 17 years, she has eaten everything she has wanted to -- and has gained 1 pound.
Brother Broadus says just think what our mother would look like today if she hadn’t walked around the world.
Once I asked Mama if she’s ever tempted NOT to walk. “NOT WALK? Kathryn Mae! I’m ashamed you’d ask.”
Mama will confess that the rituals she’s added to her routine reinforce her resolve. She begins her day with not drinking coffee – reason obvious. Next she calls to get the time and the temperature and records this info on her obligatory Official Walking Calendar.
After nearly 2 decades of 2.5 to 5-mile daily walks in all types of weather, Mama knows precisely what to wear for every 5-degree gradation in temperature. I’m proud of her many accomplishments, but fashion trend-setting is not one of them. Mama dresses to walk, not to kill. Which brings us to Mother’s Day 2003.
During that weekend, my sister Cynthia offered me a wonderful silk scarf someone had given her. “It’s your color,” Cynthia explained.
We noticed that Mama seemed, well, jealous. She left the den, then came back with some sort of see-through rag in her hand. She approached me, tentatively, kind of like Joseph’s brothers in Egypt. Clearing her throat and holding out the rag, she said she truly needed a new scarf to wear while she was out walking. Then she held up the only scarf in her wardrobe. After years of exposure to the elements, the scarf was worn past a frazzle.
“A friend gave this scarf to me years ago as a souvenir of her trip to Pike’s Peak,” Mama explained. Sure enough, in the center of the threadbare, faded scarf, you could see hints of the words, “Pike’s Peak.” All color was gone, the seams worn off, and “Pike’s Peak” so thin and holey it was translucent.
“Can spare the scarf Cynthia gave you?” Mama asked. “Or is this the only head scarf you have?”
The moment of truth was upon me. How could I explain to Mama that I had a drawer crammed full of scarves – that my biggest problem was digging through them to find the least wrinkled one?
Of course I gave the new scarf to Mama. Then we broached the taboo subject: throwing away “Pike’s Peak.” That suggestion went nowhere in a hurry, resulting instead in a rehash of Mama’s favorite preacher’s wife sermon: “Make do; use it up; wear it out; don’t throw it away.”
Thanks to our generosity, going forward Mama may look more like a fitness guru than a babushka.
Regardless of dress, I asked Mama if she realized that she must be an inspiration to folks in Rowan County who observe her walking to and fro, from Spencer to Salisbury and back. Mama said, “Well, the lady at the bank says she has lost 100 pounds on account of my example.”
Way to go, Mama!
Thirty-three years ago, for better or worse, I married a Lawrence Welk fanatic. Actually, my husband fancies himself a cross between Lawrence Welk and John Wayne, with a little bit of Clint Eastwood mixed in. These guys are his American idols. No musician alive will ever knock Lawrence Welk off the farmer’s pedestal.
Because I grew up in a Baptist parsonage, I never identified with Lawrence Welk. Welk allowed dancing on his show. Therefore, his show, along with American Bandstand, was forbidden fruit.
But don’t think we were deprived. While my peers were swinging to Paul Anka’s “Put Your Head on My Shoulder,” I was listening to big records. Mama’s favorite was the Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald duet, “Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life.” When Daddy wasn’t home, Mama sometimes played “Indian Love Call.”
Then the Beatles came along, and a bad case of generation gap overtook our household. When at age 17, I bought the Beatles’ hit 45, “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” if there had been a way to do a Baptist ex-communication, I would have qualified.
Now, after all these years, I wonder if Mama watched the American Idol show last Wednesday after she got in from choir practice? If it was showing on the only T V station her antenna can pick up, she probably was.
What surprised me was that the farmer planned last Wednesday evening around watching the grand finale. For starters, I was shocked that the news of this national craze had reached his ears. The next shocker was that he cared.
No sooner did he perk his after-supper pot of coffee than he settled in the recliner and summoned Miles to help him find the American Idol. The farmer knew this show was on; he just couldn’t recognize it while channel surfing. Only those of us married to 60-somethings can relate to his dilemma.
Lastly, with the Fox channel blasting our eardrums (60-somethings require mega decibels), the farmer summoned me. Wasn’t I going to join him and the rest of the United States of America in seeing which of two young men would be elected our national idol?
My husband obviously underestimated the anti-idol influence of my parents. I remembered the time on our Elderhostel trip to India when a well-meaning tour guide gave us a Lord Ganesh idol. Mama erupted with a few choice words on idols. Today Mama keeps Lord Ganesh, the prosperity god, in the back corner of her closet with his face to the wall. Why doesn’t she just throw the idol away, you wonder? Because she grew up during the Depression … and the “waste makes want” theology.
With all these influences swirling in my head, I begged off watching the American Idol, choosing instead to read e-mail. The sounds, of course, reached me upstairs. Amazingly, the farmer fought off sleep long enough to be there for the crowning of Ruben Studdard. Miles ran upstairs to check out my reaction.
“Ho hum,” I said. “Who really cares?”
Miles said. “Mama, don’t talk like that. You’re starting to sound like an old person.”
I reckon so. Can anyone e-mail me the Lawrence Welk schedule?
To honor her on Mother’s Day, we 4 siblings gathered at Mama’s house Saturday. We cooked, we ate, we watched the lone TV channel. All the while, we fanned, wishing for permission to turn on the lone air conditioning unit in the kitchen window.
Since Mama always turns on the air conditioner for Baby Sister Janice, we were ticking off the time for Janice’s arrival from Raleigh when Mama announced: “Brace yourselves. Janice says that David {her Baby Son} will be bringing his new pet bird with him. I fully expect you children to be nice to David’s bird,” she warned.
Just talking about birds in the house caused my tomboy sister Cynthia, age 55, to have an anxiety attack. Call us scaredy cats – she and I won’t deny our bird phobias.
What in our upbringing caused us to turn out this way? Was it watching Hitchcock’s “The Birds?” Or was it due to our parents raising chickens in the back yard, then chasing, scalding and de-feathering them before our tender eyes?
Or was it due to our own close calls with chimney swifts in the parsonage, or with covies of quail spooking us as we ran through vacant fields?
Why in the world would our nephew ruin Mother’s Day by inviting his parrot?
Our anxiety attacks were pointless. It turned out that David arrived bird less, though he brought a reference work, “Cockatiels for Dummies,” which he read to us.
Thank goodness for our Brother Broadus, who interrupted the reading with his own bird story.
Unbeknownst to us, Broadus and his wife baby-sit birds. This is because they live in Charlotte, where people have more money than horse sense. Several times they have served as bird sitters for a neighbor with an African gray parrot. “That bird really talks,” my brother added, “and comes to our house jabbering.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “What does the bird say to you?”
My brother hesitated, looked at Mama, and said, “For starters, every time his owner brings him to our house to be babysat, the African gray looks at us and sighs, ‘Oh, Lord.’”
Brother Broadus added that this bird plays pranks on them, such as imitating a ringing telephone and answering “hello” when they pick up their phone.
Then Mama joined the family circle, saying, “Well, I like birds, too. In fact, I’ve always wanted to have one.” Just as we four siblings were noting “talking parrot” on our Christmas lists/Palm Pilots, Mama woke up and smelled the coffee. “Just because I like birds doesn’t mean I want a parrot for Christmas.”
Now that we’ve grown up and left her nest, Mama enjoys feeding and watching the birds at the feeders outside her den window. In fact, no sooner did we eat lunch than Mama excused herself from the kitchen, saying she just must go fill the birdbath lest the neighborhood birds die of dehydration.
Some days I wonder if our family is dysfunctional. Did any of you get stuck doing the Mother’s Day dishes, with your mother taking care of blue jays and your siblings discussing the pros and cons of caring for thousand dollar loose-lipped parrots?
No matter how many years we are married nor how many columns I write about him, I still cannot read my husband like a book. Ladies, is this him – or is unpredictability common to the whole breed?
Mentioning “breed,” of course, brings me to last weekend. The farmer had asked me to go away with him for the weekend. How romantic to think he’d invited me. He explained: “Well, I don’t want to set out by myself to haul the 2 mares to Virginia to be bred,” further explaining that “since no one else is free to go, I thought of asking you. Looks like we’ll be all by ourselves,” he apologized.
No sooner did we load up the Ford 250 and the horse trailer to head over the mountain than I wished I‘d bribed someone to take my place. To his credit, the farmer had cleaned the truck, inside and out, so that I didn’t have to sit on rope or rest my feet on a tangle of barbed wire.
The farmer even thought of fixing us a cooler of Mountain Dews and Diet Coke – and fished out his hands-down favorite tape, Willie Nelson’s “Won’t you Ride in my Little Red Wagon.” What he did not work on was the shock absorbers.
By the time we got to the high mountains, last Friday’s storm arose in earnest. With the wind threatening to blow our romantic caravan off the mountain, the farmer got really scared. He had a lot invested in the mares. I knew he was scared out of his wits when he stated: “I don’t want to talk any more,” adding, “Now would be a good time to shut your eyes and nap.”
We were still trucking when I woke up alive in Tennessee. Our destination, Abingdon VA and a horse breeder our son had found on the Internet, was getting closer. The farmer’s fear turned into exhilaration.
Of course we did not stop for supper for nothing superseded our mission: finding a shire stallion out of Tampa named Bogie (short for Humphrey Bogart.) Bogie, I am proud to say, did not disappoint us. “As tall as I am at the withers,” the farmer hollered into the cell phone as he called our sons. “2100 pounds, and 19 hands. White stockings on his feet and a white blaze. He about takes the roof off the stable, and yet he’s gentle as an old bird dog.”
Reluctantly, it came time to leave the mares, Lib and Lu, with Bogie’s owners. “I’ll check on them first thing tomorrow,” the farmer said.
“They’ll be missing me lots,” he said, as we drove off. I knew how he felt: I had left 4 boys in first grade.
As for our romantic weekend, there was lots of competition. Me wanting to talk about the meaning of life; the farmer wanting to talk about equine reproduction.
A week later, back home, the farmer misses his horses, though he enjoys envisioning the two foals we surely will get out of the deal. And he’s counting the days till he can cross the mountain and bring the mares home.
Any one out there want to ride shotgun in my place?
Is there abroad in the land a household or workplace that does not fight over who controls the thermostat? My theory is that if you want to know who’s in charge, observe who has rights to the thermostat.
For the first half of our married life, the thermostat was not a battleground. In fact, there was no thermostat in our vintage farmhouse. We once had an indoor/outdoor thermometer, but it was short-lived. It disappeared the December morning the farmer announced that this thermometer, which he’d left on the dresser, registered 20 degrees outside and 22 degrees in our bedroom.
After 16 winters of chunking firewood into a wood stove, which knocked the chill off the greater kitchen (if you consider 55 degrees “knocking the chill off”), we bought a house in uptown Boiling Springs.
This house had two thermostats! We absolutely rejoiced over the luxury of the two heat pumps these thermostats represented. Thanking God for central heat lasted about 5 years; then the euphoria wore off and we got soft.
The boys faced their own adjustments to heat. How can I ever forget the first snowstorm in our uptown house? When I got home from work, Baby Miles, age 9, met me at the back door, beaming with pride. “Mama,” he said, “you don’t have to worry about water. I’ve taken care of that.” Sure enough, he had filled 5 five-gallon plastic buckets of water and lined them up in the kitchen.
“The water hasn’t frozen yet,” he reported, “but when it does, I’ve got our water supply. We’ll be able to flush the commodes, and you and Daddy can have coffee.”
Of course, I hugged him. And of course, now I wish I’d taken Miles’ picture with his buckets of water. His upbringing had not prepared him for winter in a heated, insulated house. Much as I assured him these pipes wouldn’t freeze, he thought I was off my rocker. But eventually, he got soft, too.
Now we have thermostats -- and we’re hooked on them. And instead of fighting for turf around the wood stove, we fuss over what constitutes a comfortable setting.
They say that I won’t let them run the heat high or the air low. They say I am stingy. They say I am like my Mama.
I say that if they were up stirring around, they would get hot in the winter and hotter in the summer and we would be able to agree and we would set the thermostat sensibly.
And I add that no wonder they are cold sitting around the house in the dead of winter in T-shirts, without socks and shoes to boot! And no wonder they are hot in the summer with their long-sleeved shirts and long pants.
To keep our power bill from going out the chimney, I’ve taken up lying. “The thermometer is set on 80,” I tell the farmer. “I reckon it’s just you. Put on your long johns, for heaven’s sake.”
Or I tiptoe to the thermometer and set it where a reasonable person – me -- would set it.
Then I go to work, where people are also running hot and cold.
Most seasons, if it weren’t for estrogen, I couldn’t take it.
