The STUFF Sisters

Cousins & Hairdos

I do not envy my son the following things: youth, thick hair, brainpower, speed, agility. Or even his dry, quiet humor. I do, however, envy him his cousins.

I do not envy my son the following things: youth, thick hair, brainpower, speed, agility. Or even his dry, quiet humor.

I do, however, envy him his cousins. He has more than a full house of amazing people to live his life with. Two in Chicago, one three blocks from home, and three more in our town. My cousins were not the best. Maybe this was because we were too close in age, we lived too far apart, one of them stole from me, or we spent so little time together that we had little in common.

This past weekend, we traveled to Chicago to begin the process of looking at colleges and universities for our son, a junior in high school. The highlight of the weekend was not the campus tour, the great road trip, or the fantastic food. It was watching my son get his hair done by his cousin, Emily – an untrained but enthusiastic twelve year old.

hair beginning — The beginning. The basket is chock-full of doodads,

She of the “super-thick Asian hair” was stunned by how thick his was. Within minutes of greeting him for the first time this weekend, she said, “Tonight I want to do your hair.” Dakota, my son, was pretty much not in full favor, but he played along for the rest of the day, during the walk to dinner – where he was the vehicle – and all through the dinner at a local restaurant while my niece regaled him with the instruments, gels, cremes, clips and equipment she planned to put to use. He playfully hemmed and hawed and told her to pretty much forget it.

She didn’t. When we all got home from dinner, she raced to retrieve all her implements and, clamoring back down the stairs, proceeded to get Dakota to sit up straight in the chair so she could begin.

He gave up and gave in. Before it was all done, they were both laughing and shooting selfies.

I have spent a few days looking at these pictures and digesting the smiles and smirks. These guys love each other and have a trust between them I will never know.

I do not envy him much. Not his cool demeanor, his calm personality, or even his temperament. Those I pretty much adore.

cousins totem — Cousin Totem Pole: She rode on his shoulders to dinner. I figure she was planning her attack on his hair from that vantage point.

When I’m Done, I Share

My Dad really doesn’t like the sound of Garrison Keillor’s voice. I guess it’s pretty much like me being scared out of my wits by Christopher Walken’s voice. Heck, the whole Christopher Walken, really.

This weekend I finished my National Geographic magazine. There is really only one way to read the magazine, and it goes like this:

1. Rip open the plastic bag it arrives in and think briefly about how much you miss the brown paper sleeve it used to come in.

2. Immediately find your son and give him the Geo Quiz on the mailing label. Watch his face as he nails answer after answer correctly.

3. Go through the magazine. Read the editor’s letter. Read the short articles in the front. Read all the captions on all the photos and maps.

4. Fold down the corners on the articles you plan to go back and read after perusing the entire magazine.

5. Go back and choose which articles to read in which order. It does not have to be in the order they appear in the magazine. Choose carefully the story you want to end with.

6. When finished, copy pages you want to keep for files and ideas.

7. Hand over the magazine to your son. Remind him of the really good articles that he should consider truly reading, knowing full well he only really participates or accomplishes steps two and three.

15-lake-calhoun-summer-evening-670 — Lake Calhoun and “the cities” in the distance. Credit: National Geographic magazine.

The last article I read today was a piece Garrison Keillor wrote about his personal geography of his beloved Minneapolis-St. Paul. I enjoy listening to him on A Prairie Home Companion – a treat I love sharing with my son and husband – and I’ve read many of his books. His style of memoir is very enjoyable. And, during every show and every book, I think of one thing I want to tell my Dad about.

Today was no different. The last five sentences of his article were absolute magic. I immediately wanted to call my Dad and read them to him.

I believe my Dad likes hearing these stories and things from me. Maybe because he hears a voice he loves, not Mr. Keillor’s.

p.s. I have been receiving National Geographic magazine since my grandmother gave me my first subscription when I had my first apartment. It was a Christmas present I received until the year she died. Purchasing it for myself has been a yearly reminder of how much I was loved. Still am, really.

Voices In My Head

I clearly heard my grandfather in my head this morning. When I reached over my desk and turned the switch and the click wasn’t the same, I heard him say, “They just don’t make things like they used to.”

Now, honestly, they don’t. My office desk lamp was the current casualty in a line of things that are not made to last as long as I think they should.* It had been a gift to me for high school graduation from one of my mother’s friends. A person nameless to me now. The lamp went with me to a year at Mizzou and did even greater duty providing the decorative impetus for me to outfit my first cubicle with red accents – stapler, incoming and outgoing metal baskets, metal pencil cup, desk lamp. Maybe even a trash can, the underneath of my first desk eluding me from this distance of time.

It was still doing duty at my current desk when the tragedy occurred. This is a great lamp. One hundred watt limit allowing for serious illumination then – when graphic design was key to my employment – and now – when my reading-glass-swaddled eyes need the boost of decent light. A weighted bottom so it can be contorted into any shape or direction. Metal-on-metal tension screws for fixing the direction of the arms and the shade.

My corded friend just recently had an appointment with my husband due to a small popping noise where the bulb met metal. It never smoked or sparked, and he was able to find and fix the problem very soon after begging me to unplug in before it “fried”. His words; pure drama.

Today it didn’t even make the right clicking sound as I turned it on, but I still went looking for another bulb, and, when that wasn’t the problem, I checked that it was plugged in. Little troubleshooting things that are in my electrical skill set.

I did not tear up when unplugging it from the wall, although I was tested by the voice and my sporadic attachment to inanimate objects. Instead, I took a deep breath and walked toward the dumpster. Where I instead gently placed it in the back seat of my parked car on a soft, folded sheet.

Home to my husband, where I promptly received “the look” when my intentions were made apparent. It was placed on the kitchen table – by me – because things in that location have a tendency to be dealt with over the coming weekend.

“Is it too much to ask that things are built to last?” I remember another grandfather saying, most likely over something greater than an inexpensive desk lamp. I can’t really say.

I am praying for a positive outcome from the impending surgery. Thirty years isn’t really so much to ask for from a desk lamp, is it?

My grandfathers wouldn’t think so, I just know it.

* STUFF vacuums. Don’t get me started.

p.s. Tell me you can’t see and feel its jaunty personality from these photos! Pixar Studios has nothing on my sweet little lamp. Heck, it’s older than their first films!

Eight Year Olds Love to Party

She stood there holding the plastic-encased sheet cake in tiny hands. Her eyes were huge as I opened the door, and she looked up at me with bright blue eyes and said, “Lala, this is a bar!”

She stood there holding the plastic-encased sheet cake in tiny hands. Her eyes were huge as I opened the door, and she looked up at me with bright blue eyes and said, “Lala, this is a bar!” as she confidently crossed the threshold into what she had been told would be a restaurant. “I’ve never been to a bar,” were her next words – spoken quietly and more to herself than to me.

She continued her comments as we walked toward the room dedicated to our party and got settled. She had been with me since I picked her up from school 90 minutes earlier, and she was already running the show. I was delighted to have been delivered of a leader – at a grade school! – so late in the day. I needed the help, and her excitement was contagious.

“Is this our place?”

“Is it a bar or a restaurant?”

“This is really nice. Look at the pillows.”

“Should we put the cake and cards here?”

“Will they light the candles on all the tables?”

“This whole room is for Uncle Harl?”

“Can I help hand out the favors?”

Last week was a week like no other in recent history. My work life was overfull, my time with my son was at an all-time low due to his schedule and mine, every evening had harbored an event, and the whole week was to culminate in a celebration of my husband’s fifty years on Earth.

I clearly needed the help of someone younger and full of energy. I found her waiting for me in the carpool line already in her party dress and shiny sandals. We whisked off to the grocery store for the cake I had never thought to order, having prayed since noon that extra cakes could be found at my grocer. Plates and forks would be needed as well, and who better than an enthusiastic niece to make these decisions? She got a little tripped up on the math of how many sets of plates we would need to reach 50 if they came in sets of eight. “It would be easier with paper and a pencil. Just give me a minute.” As she thought the multiplication and division through, she found sets of 10 plates, and that made the decision so swift.

Special “number” candles were chosen, chocolate or white cake was debated, icing patterns were deliberated, and we were in the car headed to the restaurant within 20 minutes.

However, it was her decision on how to get her uncle’s name on the cake that makes me smile even now. It was found in the cracker aisle: Scrabble Cheez-its.

Always perfect with chocolate cake.

p.s. Bistro 303 is a restaurant and a bar. It is one of my favorite places in town, even after Derrick gave my niece a butcher knife when she went in search of something to cut the cake with. Well, a butcher knife and a Bic lighter for the big 5 and 0. She truly is a Girl Scout – no cuts and no burns!

A Hug That Changed My Life

Yesterday I hugged a customer at the store. I am a hugger. I have always been a hugger, and I plan to stay that way. I believe hugs could save the world.

Yesterday I hugged a customer at the store. I am a hugger. I have always been a hugger, and I plan to stay that way. I believe hugs could save the world. I hug people, trees, dogs, cats, and the occasional lilac bush. I often end my notes with, “hugs….” A hug will set you free.

But yesterday this particular hug deeply changed my life forever.

A woman came to the store to shop in support of a local school. We were hosting a charity shopping day at the store. She bought a pile of gifts. She was generous with her shopping, both in what she chose for others and in splurging a bit to help the school. At one point, she handed me two handmade artist plaques and said she wasn’t sure who she would share them with, but she just knew they would love them.

When we were finishing her sale, I found myself in a conversation with her about her battle with cancer. She has stage 4 colon cancer. She has been in treatment for over two and half years. She is beautiful. If she didn’t have the tell-tale regrowth hair that often screams CANCER to the world, I would have never known she has cancer.

She spoke frankly with me. She never looked away. She was honest, direct, kind, and flawlessly open. She didn’t feel sorry for herself. She did not hide her pain or dramatize it. She was heroic.

I came around the counter and asked if I could hug her. She graciously said yes. We embraced for longer than you would normally hug a person you just met. Her hug was warm, kind, and open, just like her words.

I had to take a handful of deep breaths when she left. My life was forever changed. I believe I will remember our exchange for the rest of my life. My wish is that the memory will come to me often. I deeply hope I can grow to be as honest, giving, calm, and willing to be fully alive as this remarkable woman.

What happens next is unknown for her and for me, but isn’t that reality for all of us?

Hugs…

Here is a handful of hug-moments. Note the joy, love, and happiness being shared.

My daughter and father sneak in a hug. — My daughter and my father sneak in a hug.

Proof hugs and kisses make people happy.

My pup and daughter stop for a hug. — My pup and my daughter stop for a hug.

This is my nephew "holding hug" my giant pup on the sofa. This is one of the best hugs you kind enjoy. — This is my nephew “hug holding” my giant pup on the sofa. Another great hugging variation!

The Storm Passed

In recent months, I have been drowning in the flood of my own life. A “perfect storm” of work, parenting and volunteering put me on my knees. I had a plan. I really did.

In recent months, I have been drowning in the flood of my own life. A “perfect storm” of work, parenting and volunteering put me on my knees. I had a plan. I really did. But then those unexpected and unlikely events started to hit.

Every time I turned around, another (medical, staff, tenant, dental, roof, appliance, plumbing…) issue hit. Again, again and again. I thought this time I was going to break, thankfully I had help with the materials and equipment from http://profoam.com.

Then last week my daughter climbed into my bed after a bad dream. I was still awake, lying in the dark holding back tears of fatigue and fear. She crawled onto my stomach, her limbs falling past my knees and over my sides as she drifted back to sleep.

I looked down at her in the dark, and just like that the storm passed. Only one thing actually changed…me. My heart could finally be heard above the screaming in my mind.

I let go.

Last Thursday, when an actual storm ripped my roof open, tore siding from my house, and knocked the power out, I lit candles, put buckets out to catch the water, locked the windows, and cuddled up on the couch with my child and fell asleep in the warm glow of my home.

A home isn’t a house. My house may very well fall down around me one day, but my home will always be warm, well lit, and open to the people I love and who love me in return.

You Can’t Always Get What You Want

I was frustrated last night. Angry frustrated. I wanted to walk in a charity walk with my Dad, and everything in my life conspired against me all afternoon and into the evening. I didn’t have a pity party, but I did throw a private hissy fit.

I was frustrated last night. Angry frustrated. I wanted to walk in a charity walk with my Dad, and everything in my life conspired against me all afternoon and into the evening. When I called him to finally tell him I just wasn’t going to make it, I got my stepmom on the phone. My voice broke when admitting I wasn’t going to make it. I didn’t have a pity party, but I did throw a private hissy fit. It went something like this:

Why is this city getting so big and busy that I can’t get to Corporate Woods in 20 minutes at the end of rush hour?

Why would a charity hold an event on a Friday night and have it begin at 6:30? Don’t they know people own businesses that don’t close at 5pm?

Why did I have a child? Didn’t I know he would grow up and have a busy life and need rides?

Why did I marry a man who is always busy with his own small business?

Why can’t I just do what I want to do and not have so many people demanding so much of me? Don’t they know I just want to walk in the dark with my Dad and remember his incredible journey through cancer? Don’t they know I want to hold a delicately glowing balloon in the quiet of a wooded suburban setting?

Then the moon came out. The biggest, most beautiful moon of the year so far. By that time of my night, I was back at my business sneaking in a few important tasks between car rides for my young man. I stepped out into our back alley to get something out of the car and was blown away by the brightness of the night sky. Then I saw the monster moon. I turned, locked the door to the store, and walked around the block.

Quietly. Slowly. In the glowing night. By myself. And, in every way, my Dad was there with me while I quickly put the hissy fit to bed.

p.s. At the end of the evening, I realized I was where I was supposed to be last night. When my final pick-up of the golden child occurred, the first thing he said to me was, “Mom, did you see that moon?” I told him that indeed I had and that I had bathed in her amazing powers. That’s when I got the look that only a sixteen year old can grant.

p.p.s. I know you’ve been humming The Stones while you read this. That makes me smile!

The Mother Lode

Our son returns Monday from a three week trip to China. Since he was small, I have jumped upon his times away from home as perfect chances for me to tidy up his things. A few days ago, I hit the motherlode.

Our son returns today from a three week trip to China. He loves to travel, and this trip, with his aunts, cousins and uncles, has been no different. We have Skyped with him three times, but only two really count due to a rural location for him and a bad Internet during one session. (It was like talking to Neil Armstrong on the moon!) He has sent a few emails from his aunt’s computer, but mostly it has been radio silence from him.

His smiles on the phone screen have been radiant as he shares stories and jokes. Pixelated conversations are hard, and when he tried to show us photographs on his camera through the computer call, it was all blurry.

Time is flying by for this kid, our only child. His last two years of high school start in a month, he got his first “real” job this summer, he now plans his own volunteering, he is learning to drive, and three weeks of travel away from us had him smiling on Skype two days ago.

Since he was small, I have jumped upon his times away from home as perfect chances for me to tidy up his things. He does a pretty good job of keeping his things in order, but the crevices, containers and dump bins need the occasional scrubbing.

A few days ago, I hit the mother lode. In the “Potential To Make The Mom Cry” category, this find was in the Top Five. Squirreled way in the bottom of a drawer were his business cards. The business cards he made for himself when he must have been five years old.

I remember the day he came home from visiting my mother and had the paint samples in his tiny hands. They had been to Home Depot, and he had scored a few freebies in the paint department. I remember remarking about them and asking what he was going to do with them – and why there were so many. I probably sprinkled in a little bit of “waste” and “these things cost money,” and then we moved on. I never saw them again after that discussion.

In my mind’s eye, I can see him in his little denim overalls and bright T-shirt reaching for the ones he liked best. Taking a moment to choose correctly. Possibly being limited by what he could reach. Maybe asking for help. He is still a child that loves all colors, and I can imagine this whole process was magical.

I took pictures of each of the cards today, and, when I loaded them onto the computer, I stopped to look at them all. To mourn the passing of his little script forced from pudgy hands. To grieve the little bit of tongue he stuck out past his lips while accomplishing difficult tasks. What struck me deeply was how, on each card, he played with the graphic design. I noticed how each card is different while the copy is almost the same. Initials vs. full name? Three initials or four? The battle was most likely epic with his tongue taking most of the punishment.

To this mom, the discovery in my own home was perfect. Just what I needed to remind me that, since he was born, he has been moving away from us. He has been moving towards new adventures. New places. New people.

And on this day, with this collection of evidence, I realized he was moving toward a career even at five years old. He even took the time to make business cards.

p.s. A few years ago I cleaned a closet in his room while he was away. Click here to see what happened.

Healthy Summer Cold Treats

I don’t know about you, but getting enough liquid in my child during the hot, hot, hot summer days can be a challenge. I have tried many tricks, but

I don’t know about you, but getting enough liquid in my child during the hot, hot, hot summer days can be a challenge. I have tried many tricks, but this one works the best. I make homemade jumbo popsicles with a variety of juices and other drinks.

At home we have a nifty popsicle maker thingy, but we are on vacation this week and I had to improvise.

What I discovered, is she likes the jumbo ones more than the little ones I make at home. I like it because she gets more hydration each time and my favorite part is that I used handy kitchen items everyone has on hand (no fancy gizzmos or special clean-up and storage).

Pursue good stuff this summer…

These photos were taken by me – Casey Simmons – “on location” on Anna Maria Island, Florida.

Natural State

Yesterday I re-entered my natural state. I woke up, left my pajamas on the hook, and took off into a world I love. The one where my swimsuit is the main mode of clothing.

Several weeks ago, my best friend texted and briefly stated that she had just encountered the smell of Coppertone and was transported back to our summers as pre-teens, teens, co-eds, working women, young mothers and working mothers. I have never known a summer without the brown bottle. And anything banana-flavored has never touched my skin. I don’t even like banana candy, although I like bananas.

My dermatologist and I look at my largest organ in depth every year. My addiction to the sun has lessened as my age has increased. However, my yearning to live full days in Lycra and spandex fully coated in Coppertone has not abated. Good thing we’re supposed to wear sunscreen in the shade.

I live my dream every summer vacation by waking much as I did yesterday: shedding my PJs for my swimsuit and then spending the day moving through activities lightly clothed. A worn-in Oxford cloth dress shirt with the arms rolled way up is my ultimate cover-up. In our little corner of Florida, this passes as more than acceptable for restaurant dining. I shower long after the sun has gone down and move swiftly back into my cotton sleepwear. Never a bra or panties in sight. Never a long sleeve, hem or button to fence me in. Although, I do admit to window shopping on my favorite 7 best websites to buy sheer and see through lingerie but only at night when I couldn’t sleep, in bed, waiting for sleep.

She took me to the pool yesterday, my best friend, for the first time this year. This may well be a record. So late in “the season” for my inaugural walk into cool water. I am grateful and happy for her invitation, and the lingering aroma of our amazing friendship was with us the whole time. In my pool bag. Just waiting for me to un-cap it and let the memories overwhelm me.

Every boat dock, sun deck, beach chair, over-sized towel and speedboat returned to me. Every sun hat, pair of sunglasses, T-shirt, flip-flop and tote roared at me. My newborn son seeing pool water three months after his birth. My Dad skiing behind our boat. My Mom judging our dives from the edge of our pool. My sister holding her breath and my hands while we attempted “butt bumpers” for the one millionth time.

All this in one little bottle.

p.s. I mean no disrespect to anyone who wears Banana Boat lotions or eats those delightful banana flavored Laffy Taffy.