Category Archives: Uncategorized

Uncategorized

No Holiday Prep Here–And It’s Divine

Leave a comment

Any other year I would have purchased my turkey by now.  Would have fretted over it, the size, the brand, frozen or fresh?  Would have wondered if you had already beat me to the best turkeys, the most favored size.  Too small and you run out, too big and risk setting the oven of fire, which I did, three years ago.

The canned pumpkin would have been bought, also my favorite pecans, possibly the yams.  There would be a notation in my calendar indicating what date to buy bread so it can get properly stale.  One year I bought my bread too early, thinking, stale bread is stale bread.  No, my friends, it is not. 

On these errands I would be thinking of how I drove my grandmother around to gather all the staples for Thanksgiving.  The bread from the discount bread place.  Celery from Wetzel’s.  Maybe the turkey from there, too. 

This year, I will prepare pies, and only pies.  And even that isn’t a requirement, but a suggestion if I feel like it. 

For the first time in decades, decades, I tell you, I am not fixing a turkey, nor dressing, nor yams nor cranberries, nor nuthin’. Except maybe those pies. 

When my brother-in-law’s daughter floated the idea of hosting Thanksgiving at theirs, he laughed and said, well,  good luck getting Kathy and Greta to let loose of doing the dinner. He honestly thinks we enjoy it. And now I wonder if my Granny Opal loved all the preparation and work as much as I assumed she did. 

Kathy and I jumped, or would have if either of us were able, at the idea of showing up, eating, and going home.  That we had to drive to do it, a nice little hour and half jaunt through Indiana, well, that was even better.  An adventure, an “over the river and through the woods” sort of thing.  

It must be said, I pride myself on doing the Thanksgiving food, but I have grown weary of it.  Kathy, less enamored with cooking than I, prides herself on her house, big enough for us all and comfortable, well-appointed with centerpieces and decoration that have required thought and artistic expression. 

She can cook, but the aggravation of preparing the meal while trying to feed kids who mess up the kitchen and get in her way, well, it’s been a nice set up.  I cook, she cleans and decorates, and the kids, if they can be bothered, drag out to my car to help carry in the bird, the dressing and various pots and pans full of food.

But this year.  This year!  We have accepted Mandi and Chuck’s kind offer and we will turn up on the day to feast and feast and feast some more. Spend the night if we want.  Spend two.

Here is the other thing.  We will not even have Thanksgiving on Thanksgiving.  We will gather on Friday to accommodate a couple of conflicting schedules, and that is just fine, too. 

Never did my family do this.  There wasn’t a pressing need, really, but even if there might have been, my mother was not one to flex.  

We were lucky as a family that we all lived close enough to see each other often, so it didn’t seem a tragedy if a few were missing from the table. We would see them on Saturday. 

But nor did my mother guilt my married siblings when they spent a holiday with the in-laws.  She insisted they do, sometimes, if a set of parents were aging and and she felt like she would have years with her children they would not. It was a kind and thoughtful gesture in her matter-of-fact way. 

Although I worry sometimes we blow off too many family obligations–any kind of obligation–these days.  Attending the funeral, choosing skiing over the holiday with family.  Just not showing up, however that may look.  This new bunch of people we have about us — notorious for not showing up.  The ones aggrieved at going to the office three days a week–how cruel! Never mind an entire workweek. 

But this year, I see how this easing of tradition has suited me just fine.  Better than fine. I see how it reduces stress for my niece and her husband with the three little ones.  They can be with his family on Thursday, all relaxed and happy.  Then with us, in Indiana, also relaxed and happy. 

How surprisingly easy it has been to let some things go. 

Uncategorized

Boo, 60s Style

Leave a comment

The weather is just about perfect for the lead up to Halloween. Suddenly much colder, rainy, with leaves slicking the streets. Dark mornings, a sense of foreboding by afternoon. Lots of staying inside and looking out into a world transformed into a blustery something, that is familiar and foreign. The fretting–would we still be able to trick or treat in the rain? Would our costumes melt before we made it to school, before the parade around the neighborhood that started just after attendance was taken?


Parents, and by parents I mean mostly mothers, lined the sidewalks for the spectacle, maybe even walking us to school since our vision was often obscured by our vacuum-formed plastic masks. Perhaps they were on standby to take our costumes home, I can’t remember. Some costumes were elaborate, I suppose. I never noticed. I shuffled along with self-conscious steps, thinking only of my own get-up, wanting, and not wanting, everyone to look at me.

Down Frederica Street, to Griffith Ave., then up Alderson Court, and in through the back door of Longfellow School. What learning could have taken place between that parade and the cupcakes some mother would bring a few hours later?


Even before elementary school, I must have been dressed in store bought costumes, the ones with the face mask attached to your head with a fiddly elastic band. The flimsy smock of a dress to show you off as a princess, or someone else pretty, worn over your clothes all twisted and uncomfortable. The costumes came bundled in plastic wrap, dangling from a hook by the cardboard top. There must have been glitter involved because it clung to my face for a couple of days.


And those masks, those false faces of torture. The eye holes than never quite matched up with your actual eyes, the way the nose holes scratched your face, the mouth hole wet with condensation. The temperatures might have been autumnal, but inside that mask it was a sauna, but so much went into choosing the costume I never complained. I thought I would be in trouble if I took the mask off. Or the magic would be gone, or something.


But sometimes the weather wasn’t blustery at all. It might be sunny and hot, remnants of a summer that just wouldn’t die. This was wrong in every way. Sunny and cool was acceptable. Hot and humid was not. I remember almost nothing about those Halloweens, except a great disappointment.


As my siblings and I got older, we were less interested in the Ben Cooper store-bought costumes, whose masks were, let’s face it, always a little bit creepy and not in a cute way. They were for babies, anyway, and we were surely not that. We began to make our own, but we put forth the least amount of effort, dipping into the rag bag for inspiration.


Our dad was a World War II buff, so we had plenty of G-issued gear–map cases, ammo belts, and helmets to choose from. Our repertoire then, ran from Army Guy to hobo. If Mother felt energetic she might burn a cork and give us five-day-old stubble, which worked for both Army Guy and hobo. That was the extent of our theatrical make-up.


When we were really little we hit our own block, then we went to our grandmother’s, who never once recognized us. After working over her neighborhood, we visited her best friend, Beulah, who didn’t recognize us, either. She invited us in anyway, and once she discovered she knew us, brought out full sized candy bars she had set aside for us. After you hold one of those – it took two hands — Trick or Treat was over. We sat on our spines on her living room sofa, sighing and resting and contented.


I have one friend who loves Halloween and the sophistication and terror of her costumes astonishes me. Last year she scratched on my backdoor all done up as a witch, screeching my name. My heart leapt to my throat –I knew it was Linda, but in truth, it took a minute.


I don’t have trick or treaters in my neighborhood now. Churches, communities host events, the “trunk or treat” outings that provide a safe environment for the little ones. I get it, but sometimes I long for a glimpse of tiny children, all scary and proud, shuffling through leaves and dragging plastic pumpkins and pillow cases, parents watchful, just outside the range of a vacuum formed mask, the illusion complete.

Uncategorized

Dark Academia For the Ages

Leave a comment

For someone with very little going on, I still wake in the hours just before dawn with a mind racing with a hundred niggling things to do, to see to, to settle and to clean. Most recently the names of Dark Academia color palettes have jostled me from my sleep–Turkish Coffee, Essex Green, Urbane Bronze, Vintage Vogue.


Dark Academia is the antidote to all that white/grey/is it some kind of blue/phase we are coming out of. For ten solid years I couldn’t buy furniture, could barely purchase pillows and the like because everything on offer was cool and gray and, to my eye, antiseptic–and none of it went with anything I already owned.

When Laura Ruth first came to my house to see about what we might do with the addition she uttered, maybe to herself but I heard it, “Well you aren’t afraid of color…”and I took it as a compliment, whether intended or not. Even with the addition, which is all scandi-like, the whites are warm, the oak floor stained nice and toasty, and beiges and tans and pale wheats are punctuated with black and white, and capped with dark bronzy ceilings and warm burnished brass.


And right now, I am sick to death of my bedroom, and so enter Dark Academia. Think of any study in any English manor house on any Masterpiece Theatre you have seen. Think of riding to the hounds, the inner sanctum of an Oxford don’s office. Think of rich browns, greens so green they are black, and jewel tones so revved up they are no longer jewel tones, but something deeper, sootier, darker.


Tweeds, velvets, elbow patches, Wellies by the door sitting next to the Irish Setter.


And yet, a quick search for Dark Academia colors will also include some warm whites, one of which I am happy to say is the wall color of my sitting room and pantralarium. And let me recommend it to you now, as I have to everyone I know — Shoji White, thank you, Sherwin-Williams. A white that is warm, but not yellow, working in all lights and on lots of walls, no matter your decor.


But back to my bedroom. Mostly what I want is a new bed. And that will mean some rearranging, and its been awhile since I last painted, and, having a fear of missing out, I have been wracking my brains to figure out a way to use some of the dark colors I have been seeing. I have already made the commitment to do a black and white bathroom, but it just simply isn’t going to be enough.


Some of that moodiness is gonna have to spill over into that bedroom.
I can’t go full-throttle, with dark woodwork, dark ceiling. I have some restraint. But as it stands today, I am thinking a Turkish Coffee for the walls, and working some velvet in there somewhere. It is a fine line to walk, the one between masculine smoking room and bordello. But that’s half the fun, isn’t it?


Much can be accomplished with unlacquered brass and those warm gold picture frames. Apparently, there are even rules to live by for those who wish to live the Dark Academia lifestyle. I ran across this gem of a list:


Wear vintage clothes, elegant accessories, emphasize sharp features with purely dark or light colors and jewel tones


Listen to jazz or classical music


Light candles


Stay ahead in school


Make ancient Roman or Greek food (?)


Have routines


Hang stuff up on your walls


READ.


Okay. Now, we can imagine the author of this list, and I see her, for surely I think it is an early adolescent girl, and my heart swells a little with her earnestness. The colors, the clothes, the attention to scholarly pursuits in her personal version of academia. But is there anything here to offend, to censure? I think not. Parents may have some rules about those candles, but if the advice is to make a warm and cozy place to burrow into and dream and think, and especially the all caps, READ, she pretty much nails it.


I write this on the rainy morning after the harvest moon, and I am an autumn and winter girl at heart. So, bring on that Dark Academia. I have jazz stations on my phone, and candles, and ton of books I need to READ.

Uncategorized

Bardstown on the Run

Leave a comment

x

Last week nine of us from our girls group convened in Bardstown for a two-day visit that I can recommend to you. So I will.


Our pal, Julie, has lived in Bardstown since college and she planned our days with precision and compassion, leaving time for us to acclimate, to eat, and then, you know, eat some more. We gathered at her home to coordinate, but mostly so we could visit her mom.

Nancy Purdy was secretary at Owensboro High School for years, and we knew her, not just as Julie’s mom, but also as our friend and protector as we negotiated the vagaries and angst of high school. She was happy to see us, and we were happy to see her, and she told funny stories and hugged us in that special way someone does when they have known you most of your life. We couldn’t linger, though, because – ice cream.

We caravaned downtown, parking in the city lot — I think that was the actual name, City Lot, a half block behind Hurst Discount Drugs. Hurst is important because of this. It has a lunch counter. In addition to their famous chicken salad (says so right on the menu) Hurst sells ice cream treats of all kinds. Old fashioned shakes and malts, the ones where they pour half of it in a glass and leave the metal cup it got mixed up in. Ice cream sodas and sundaes, generous sized kiddie cones. I didn’t see what everyone got, but we sat there in a row, the straws standing at attention in old-fashioned dispensers as we spun on the red stools like we were eight.


We checked out the cute shops all up and down the street and ended up at the Talbott Tavern. You can eat there, of course, or you can wander around upstairs and look at the historic rooms, see where Abraham Lincoln stayed, check out the bullet holes courtesy of Jesse James, and contemplate that for a minute or two.


We finished up at the Basilica of Saint Joseph Proto-Cathedral, the first Roman Catholic Church west of the Allegheny Mountains. It takes but a minute to explore but still fascinating. Pick up the brochure with a QR code that will take you to a virtual tour of the cathedral and its history.
Almost next door is the Rickhouse, a nice restaurant that serves, among other things, a huge pork chop, but it takes forty minutes to prepare, and I doubted my group possessed that kind of patience. But I plan to ditch them and return for it at a later date.


Thanks to the popularity of the Bourbon Trail, we had access to a newly built farm house, complete with a pool, hot tub, game room in a barn, and fire pit. We are old now, so mostly we looked at the pool, admired the fire pit from afar, and I never made it to game room. But the house accommodated all nine of us comfortably and I bet there are more houses there just like it.


Julie rousted us out of bed the next morning with fresh doughnuts from Hadorn’s, a family owned bakery and a Bardstown staple, and for reference, it sits just behind the City Lot and a stone’s throw from Hurst Discount Drugs.


We had reservations for a tour of Maker’s Mark, and I’m tempted to say if you have seen one distillery you have seen them all, but no. It was a great tour, and it ended with a tasting for four bourbons, and an exit through the gift shop.


Since I traveled with some who don’t drink, it is possible, by their generosity, I was over- served. But I wasn’t driving and I bought a lot of stuff.


Then we spent the afternoon in the tiny burg of Bloomfield, where Jerry and Linda Bruckheimer have restored what looks like the entire downtown, Linda having roots in Bloomfield. Nettie Jarvis Antiques is named for her grandmother. There is the clothing store, a tea room, Ernie’s Tavern, which is a bar on one side, a bowling alley and ice cream shop on the other.


And by bowling alley, I mean one from the 1950s, with ashtrays and paper scoring sheets. Bring your own shoes, or just stand there and throw your ball at the pins. That’s what we did. Dinner was pizza from Cafe Primo, all brick oven crispy. Leaving the next morning in an autumn fog, we looked like the final scene of a some wistful movie, six cars in a slow procession down the long drive to the main road. Sweet and nostalgic, and a longing to return.

Uncategorized

Killer Hot Tubs

Leave a comment

When on vacation with friends of a certain age, I find we are on different pages in terms of our interests and willingness to take on risk. For some of us–okay–for me, I prefer to pace myself by moseying, always moseying over to the pool. Perhaps a little saunter out to the balcony or deck, or screened in back porch. Shopping, well, yes, but as the sun sets, not during the heat of the day. A nice sprawl in front of the TV anytime.


Mornings I search for clues of the rapture, because by the time I arise the place is empty and devoid of human life except my own, as I slink — inside I slink–to the coffee maker, retrieve a mug, as long as it is sitting shoulder height or lower. My friends are out walking, biking, I don’t know what all, but more power to them.


Often on vacation there will be a hot tub, either attached to the place we are staying or in the lovely commons area out by the pool. One particular friend loves a hot tub about all things, especially at resorts and she keeps hitting the button–that one there, just below the red warning sign indicating the need to limit time in the hot tub. As wanton as a hussy she ignores the admonition and overcooks and why don’t I join her, what a great way to chat with people and find out good restaurants? No. I am pretty sure hot tubs kill.


And now we have proof, this cautionary tale from out to the east of us.
Two women, both in their eighties, were enjoying the hot tub at the cabin where they were staying with friends for a girls’ trip. When they tried to get out, they couldn’t. Mobility issues, pre-existing conditions, every news outlet reported. They became overheated, as you do, and then became unresponsive. Their friends couldn’t retrieve them either, but managed to jump in and hold their unconscious heads above water until help arrived — at their remote cabin in a remote area of Red River Gorge, and both women came close to succumbing to their relaxing dip in the hot tub.


Trips to the hospital packed in ice revived them, but still.


What were they thinking?


What are my buddies thinking when they keep adding time to the hot tub when the big red signs say not to. I joined them once, and when I got out on the trembly legs of a new-born fawn, I walked three feet and thought I might faint. Explain to me the appeal. I won’t even sit with my feet dangling over the side, anymore.


And I am not eighty.


But I am not a spring chicken, either. And since last December I have had a horrifying glimpse of what it is like to have “mobility” problems, what with a hip flexor injury taking its own sweet time to heal, and all the accompanying aches and pains that come with it–the over-stressed knee that has never caused me problems, until now. The knotted up rhomboid in my back that reacts to my bad posture and my ungainly gait, the one that likes to kick into spasm just as I drift off to sleep.


So, I am not without sympathy, but surely some common sense might be in order.


In exactly one month I will be on my own girls’ trip, in a large house somewhere near the Bourbon Trail, with its own hot tub, I imagine. There will be discussions about who should have what bedroom because this one can’t do stairs, that one wakes early and needs to be close to the coffee pot, another one hardly sleeps at all and needs to wander the premises all night long.


Not to be a spoiled sport, but I would rather not be called upon to hold one of their heads above water until the squad arrives. I would do it. But I would resent it. Because, forget about the temperature for moment, what about the quality of that water and all those flesh eating bacteria?

What about those?


No, I believe I will continue to mosey, to slink and to sprawl on fat furniture. I will swim in the big garden tub in my room, I’ll relax, sitting on my spine, reeking of Tiger Balm, and catch up on Netflix.


Y’all have fun out there in that tub, and keep 911 on speed dial. I’ll let them in if I’m getting up for snacks.

Uncategorized

Breaking the Ice

Leave a comment

Consider the ice pick. So simple, so understated, possessing a design that has not changed since the 1800s. Basically a wooden handle with a metal collar holding a thin, rounded blade in place. Perfectly balanced, with its beveled handle a comfortable two and half inches long, fitting sweetly in the palm, fingers resting gently on the smooth sanded edge, a grip comfortable and secure.


Lightweight, just this short of flimsy, but no. In that first downward dagger motion, the motion with the hand held high and a moment’s hesitation before crashing into the ice, it becomes evident, immediately and with a certain pang of guilt, this energy, this attack is not necessary, requires no gritted teeth, no concentrated strength. We understand in that moment the ice pick is perfectly suited for its job.

It is substantial, yet requires no force, no finesse. It just performs. If it were mechanical, it would hum. And hum and hum and hum in comforting perpetuity.


We may be forgiven the momentary lapse of judgment when we first pick up the ice pick.


We have before us a big bag of commercially made ice, ten or fifteen pounds worth. We bring it home because we plan a party, and some of it will be go into a cooler and some of it will be used for drinks. And all of it clumped together in a mass of frustrating, aggravating finger-burning coldness, making a mess of the counter and the floor.


First we do the the floor whomp, banging it down with might, thinking this will loosen it up. It does, but only the last little bit of ice in the bottom of the bag, that ice which will never see the inside of a glass or an ice bucket. Next, the butter knife, preferred by women, a steak knife preferred by men. Forgive the incorrectness of this, but it bears a truth not easily denied. Both methods equally ineffective, although the sharper the knife the more dramatic the failure, with those little piercing shards of ice flying around and melting on contact with the counter.


In organized households perhaps someone takes the hammer to it, the little tack hammer in the drawer there, the one used for hanging pictures and not much else. In my household, it is the first heavy object at hand; the corkscrew, the manual can opener, one time a can of tomato paste.
But no. An ice pick, and only an ice pick will do.


And who has one of those lying about?


Not I.


Until last week, when I had just about had it. For months I have struggled with big bags of ice or going without ice altogether, the difficulty of a glass of iced tea enough to unhinge me. The reason, simple. I do not have an ice maker. Imagine it. I still can not. But a glitch in my kitchen design means I am lucky to have a no frills fridge at all and forget about one with a factory installed ice maker.


No worries, I thought. I have the old fridge in the garage, I can store bags of ice there, and make my own ice cubes, anyway, circa 1962. I gave myself much for credit for energy and motivation. I overestimated my ability to remember to buy ice, I underestimated the ease of making my own ice cubes. Gone are the industrial aluminum ice cube trays with the lever that ejected twelve ice cubes at a time.


We thought walking across the floor with those filled with water was delicate. Try it with the tiny ice cube trays all floppy and made of silicone. I went in search of an ice pick. I found one, and of course I found it at my neighborhood hardware store. And when I say I found one I mean, I told the guys at the counter what I needed and they walked me to the back of the store to get one. Sometimes they go and fetch me things but that afternoon I needed the exercise.


It was just like the one my grandmother might have purchased. Just like my grandmother had, in fact. Just like the one we probably threw away when cleaning out her house that last time. A simple tool, elegant and efficient in the way it bends to its one task with ease. Dangerous looking. Much maligned, a horror film cliché. And yet, my new beloved.

Uncategorized

HEAT WAVE

Leave a comment

There was a heatwave, not unlike this one. I was living in Bowling Green then, my sister was spending the summer with me, taking classes, and we were fiends for tennis. Boys wouldn’t play with us. Well, they would, but they didn’t like it.


We hit the courts one fine bright noon. Kathy remarked how deserted it was. We had our pick of courts with the sun bearing down on them, our little water bottles sweating in our hands. “Where is everybody?” she wondered.

“Inside, where they belong,” I replied. “You know people are dropping like flies, right?”


“Huh? “

“This heat, it’s killing people from Chicago to Memphis and anyone with sense is in the air conditioning, if they can find it.”


She looked blank, I shrugged, like it was of no more importance than if I was passing along something interesting I had just read about King Tut’s tomb. We played three sets of tennis, and feeling fine, but not total idiots, decided maybe we should go in search of some air conditioning, too.


We gathered our cans of balls, our tennis rackets and tiny tennis towels, our skimpy water bottles and took ourselves off home.


What I remember most about that afternoon is this. We were young, not too bright, and as fit as we ever were or ever would be. We were golden.


I write this in a chair that rocks, swivels and is in possession of a matching ottoman upon which my feet rest. The sprinkler rakes the big windows to my right, but I am not going out there any time soon to turn it off. I calculate the window of safety in which I might venture out to save my plants. It is a grave kind of arithmetic, even though, while it is hot, I have been hotter, and I am not sure it is so awful out there. I mean, it feels bad, but not that bad. Yet, I peek through the drawn blinds — no I don’t, I wrote that for effect — and take my pulse and try to remember when I last hydrated.


Because now I’m old.


Decidedly unfit.


And if I am honest, a bit of a scaredy cat.


There have been medical issues, not many or long-lasting enough to say I have a (fill in the blank) condition. But I creep around like maybe I do. I stay out of hot tubs, am cautious in a sauna, I weigh up my stamina for a walk around the neighborhood.


As if I could walk around neighborhood, anyway. I am almost recovered from a wonky hip issue, one that has vexed me since Christmas. The pain has migrated all over the place and is now, I think, in the last and only place left to be. And I am so much better. I can pick stuff up off the floor now. But it has gotten my attention.


I suppose I’ll never hold another tennis racket. I can’t get a bead on pickleball, and I suspect it is a pride thing. And while I have never been the biggest fan of summer, I have a soft spot for the girl I was once in it. The one with that backhand, the mean second serve. That one, who thought nothing of tennis at high noon, and 96 degrees. That one, who was always game, even if she wasn’t always best suited for the weather. I want a piece of her back.


She would be out there right now, mulching or pulling weeds, She wouldn’t care if it was hot. She would be at the nurseries this afternoon, looking for plants. Come home. Dig some holes. Maybe I need to quit twitching the curtains and just go out there to meet the day, whatever kind of day it is. If I only make it to the porch to drink iced tea, well, that is something, too.

Uncategorized

Townsizing

Leave a comment

I am happy to report my first townsized get away is in the books and oh, you all. It was perfect.


Townsizing, you may remember, is the new trend of vacationing in smaller places, places we might drive to, where the emphasis is on slowing down, immersing in the local culture, relaxing and piddling with only the flimsiest of agendas.


Which is exactly what I and three of my friends did last week, at the West Baden Springs Hotel. West Baden is three miles down the road from French Lick, both are grand old hotels that had once seen better days and now are all gussied up to their previous splendor, with a casino to punch things up.


My friends and I opted for West Baden, the more grown up of the two, no casino, no activities for young families. The idea of West Baden suited us much better and we chose wisely, I think. Not only was the place beautiful, the staff was friendly and attentive, but with a nice midwestern charm, nothing snooty or off-putting.


We were looking for calm spa experiences, lollygagging around in the spectacular atrium at West Baden, and moving languidly from one overstuffed chair to another, then out to the rockers on the veranda, and back again for afternoon drinks. We acquitted ourselves nicely. We took a scheduled tour of the West Baden Springs Hotel, learning all about its history that took it from hotel and spa to boondoggle to seminary and back again to hotel.


It was a pleasant way to spend an hour before an afternoon tea, each of us with our own generous pot of a personally chosen tea, our own little tier of sandwiches and sweets and scones. There was a harpist. Our pal who opted not to splash out for the tea settled into a little corner of the atrium where she ordered a hoagie and then texted us throughout with the names of the songs our harpist supplied. We were in another corner of the atrium, all fancy-like and pinkies out, knowing what she was really doing was making the point she got harp music, too, for a fraction of the cost.


We didn’t care. We were joined at our table by a delightful woman who was also on our tour. Her husband and twenty three of his friends were playing golf, and had come all the way from Texas to do it. Every year they look for a new place to play, the only non-negotiable thing is the proximity to a casino.


They golfed by day, gambled by night, and returned to West Baden to sleep in old world charm. Perfect, because West Baden and French Lick make it easy to sample all there is on offer without ever having to drive. Trolleys and little buses run in a loop and they will take you anywhere you want to go–the other hotel, to restaurants in town, arcades and grocery stores.You can even summon them from out in town, if one isn’t on the horizon.


You will need your car for some things, but we parked on Tuesday afternoon and didn’t move it until Thursday morning, when we stopped by Nila’s Place on the way out of town. Perfect omelettes, by the way.

Nancy and I had massages scheduled as soon as we arrived at the hotel, and it was there I fell in love. With the spa robe.


The gigantic, soft and luxurious spa robe. I had to have it. Or one just like it. Sadly, they haven’t stocked them since COVID, but the always friendly staff helped me find the maker and with just a few clicks of the keyboard, I have one just like it on the way. What makes them so wonderful? My research tells me spas provide you with humongous robes, at least 4X, maybe 5X. So perfect for the drape, the weight, the cozy, the decadence of it all.


We did just about nothing. We did some things together, some things alone. Some of us got up early to walk. Some of us had breakfast at 10. It just worked out. Now, it wasn’t an inexpensive get away, but it was perfect for us and I could go back right now. I had forgotten how relaxing it is to have no expectations.


And the best thing? The very best thing? Getting there, getting home, was completely no stress. No Nashville traffic. No airport. We lingered at Nila’s, and still got home before 1:30pm. Can you put a price on that? No, you can’t so don’t even try.

x

Uncategorized

Decoration Day, Then and Now

Leave a comment

My grandmother called it Decoration Day and told stories of picnicking among the stones of her departed family members, in a prairie cemetery in Indian Territory, in what is now east Oklahoma. The Paxtons would descend on the windswept and flat parcel of land and spend the whole day. They sang. They played games. They cleaned the graves of dead flowers and planted new ones to be buffeted by the wind, but that was just fine, because it gave the impression of dancing, those bobbing heads, in a stark and lonely place, there, on the outskirts of town.


I think she wanted us to recreate the picnic at Elmwood Cemetery or, rather, she wished we could, but knew such a thing would be impossible, unseemly, not done. The story appalled my mother. But Granny never failed to mention it on those long-ago Saturday mornings as she popped the trunk and hauled out tools, watering cans and washtubs full of flowers.


We followed her, our Keds and Red Ball Jets growing wet at the toes, then cold and uncomfortable as we trudged up the small rise to the place where our people lay, all of them, a case of serendipity having orchestrated both sets of grandparents with plots in spitting distance of each other.


“Look for the statute of the girl missing a finger,” she called over her shoulder. “That is our landmark.” And there she is, Bernice Fitts, who left this world at the age of eighteen, a giantess missing a finger, pointing, and not pointing, in the direction of the grandfather I never knew.
We were always excited, but subdued, too. We understood, as much as we were able, that this was a solemn duty and there were things here, mysterious and big, echoes of Sunday sermons, bellies of whales, lion’s dens, the dead to rise again. All of it scary and thrilling and incomprehensible.


But it was fun, too. An outing. A tradition. We were not a family to visit the cemetery regularly; we didn’t decorate graves for the seasons, on holidays or the birthdays of the departed. We might wander up to Elmwood on a pretty day, a moody afternoon, but never to linger.


Yet, Memorial Day was sacred, although we never used that word. But to ignore it, to miss one, would wrack me with guilt, and my sister, too.


Now, we call up, half-ashamed, asking if the other has taken flowers to the cemetery, hoping the answer is yes, so we are off the hook. The answer is always, no. We scurry around then, and gather plants and a watering can, and tend the graves in the most perfunctory of ways. But we feel better afterward, and both of us sigh with relief and satisfaction as we pull out onto Breckenridge and get on with our day. A duty done.


My mother was in the habit there toward the end of buying hanging baskets she would place on the graves and retrieve later for her summer garden. This was a great idea I thought, yet it worried her someone would steal them, so she sent me out early on Tuesday morning to bring them home. And people do steal them. Never our pots because they weren’t special, just some impatiens, still too small to make much of a display, but the nice ones, the specially made arrangements, these disappear.


We need not discuss what makes people do this, how low-bred, how disrespectful. We know exactly the sort to help themselves to a remembrance left for a loved one. To dwell on it is to wish for a stone hut on an isolated island in which to live out our days, away from people, just about all of them. To give up on them.


And some days I do give up on them. But not most days.

And some days I remember so clearly being a child of four, seven, ten.
The cool and damp of a May morning, the bucket of peonies in my grandmother’s trunk, children running in a game to find their grandparents who are only stories to them, faded photos, this gray stone. Another child, or just so recently a child, her head bending on a slender neck, her upraised and fingerless hand, showing the way.

Uncategorized

The Cost of Beauty

2 Comments

It started with a bar of soap. Almond soap. Triple milled, old fashioned, sophisticated and expensive, from a company that has been around since 1752. An American brand to rival, as the website says, “the legendary houses of Europe.”


And I paid full price, although with an eagle eye you can find this soap on the shelves at TJMaxx. I bought a sister soap a year ago, maybe longer, in an old, but upscale, pharmacy in St. Louis. Paid top dollar then, too. Like my grandmothers, I set it aside because I thought it was too good to use, saving it, or what? The day my nieces toss it in the trash at the final clearing out of my home ahead of the FOR SALE sign?

But no more. A fancy soap is a small luxury, within anyone’s reach and I am going to use it up, then order some more.


Here’s the deal. I grew up in a family with five kids vying for the one bathroom, and buddy, you have to be quick, and I was. I still am, and I wonder what my girlfriends think, when we are on one of our trips, all crammed into a big house or condo, taking turns getting ready. I am so quick surely they whisper concerns about how clean, really, could I be?
One of our pals takes an hour and a half getting ready. She really does. I can’t imagine what she is doing in there. To be fair, she never makes us wait for her. She knows how long she needs, and if we are leaving for a day trip at nine, she is about her ablutions by 7:30. She is sitting sweetly in the back seat by 8:58.


But this almond soap, you all. You have never smelled anything quite like it, and it inspires long baths, and showers, and lots of sudsy sensory enjoyments. I get it now, lingering at one’s toilette. Because I haven’t stopped at almond soap. Oh, no. I have researched lotions and potions and buffs and masks and I have set about procuring them, the better to scent and spritz and slather myself.


It is glorious.


I missed this in my formative years. As an adolescent I didn’t have lotion or powder, lip balm or eau de cologne at my disposal. Zest soap, Vaseline, and Champho-phenique were our signature scents. Along with mercurochrome and its evil twin, methiolate, a pair of tweezers and some adhesive tape, our family hygiene/first aid kit was complete.


What money I earned from babysitting was spent on book and 45’s culled from the bins at the Wax Works. My mother wasn’t fixy, and overwhelmed to boot, so we never had mother-daughter afternoons of magazines and nail polish, lip gloss and Dippity-Do. My friends weren’t particularly fussy, either, or if they were, it was carried out at home. We sometimes made fun of the girls who cared about their hair and engaged in those first attempts at being pretty, prettier.


We were a sarcastic bunch and ridicule was our game, and no way were we risking it being turned on ourselves within the tribe. Speaking for myself, my eye rolls and sneers for girly girls were in direct proportion to my own jealousy and inadequacy. Growing up with brothers who were brutal in their takedowns didn’t help, either.

My girls group, the same one from those long ago days, are all girly, now. Or maybe we are just trying to save our skin, quite literally. We sit around for hours with our sangria and blood pressure pills, little puddles of supplements we eat like peanuts, discussing moisturizers and facial peels, sunscreens and rash guards, foundations and eye shadow, having our eyes done–medically indicated, mind– and who’s up for pedicures later today?


Just this morning I was out looking for a soap saver to protect my delicious almond soap, triple-milled though it is. I don’t want to waste any of it. Later today a new order of facial cleanser and moisturizer will arrive, and I am contemplating foot masks.


My new goal is to clock myself as I go about my ablutions, set the ambition to take, if not an hour and a half, at least more than twelve minutes. Start a list of products and beauty tips to share with the girls, the next time we are together. Look forward to reveling in the experience as we giggle and gently tease each other, with nary an eye roll to be found.