Changing times

Congratulations to Cpt. Kristen Griest and 1stLt. Shaye Haver for making it through West Point and the Army Rangers' program. It couldn't have been easy.

How do I know?

A long time ago, I was in the Women's Army Corps. I was a WAC. They don't exist any more and I wasn't in long enough to do much damage. There were plenty of young women, strong, courageous, talented, intelligent young women who were in for a full enlistment. To them, I tip my hat.

Basic training back then was hard, though not as hard as it was for men during the Vietnam War era. I wasn't athletic, but it sure would have helped. Most of the women who were with me (150 of them) were as soft and girly as I was. The physical pain and endurance was hard. Staying awake all night and marching five miles with a full pack in one day was hard. Attending classes for hours in the Alabama heat. Crawling on your belly, getting tear-gassed, buttoning buttons and zipping all zippers, scouring toilets and polishing floors...I consider that hard.

What these two abovementioned women did was stupendous.

I was a WAC because there was no other way I could support the fighters though not the war. I had to prove to myself that I could DO something, not just sit around and complain or watch television news and wonder if that was my brother being blown up. (He was there.)

But as much as I admire these women, something inside me, the real inner me who is old and physically past any prime I nearly had, wonders if it is going to be worth it. Is it going to be worth being the two Rangers in a field of so many strong, brave, powerful men who in the long run will probably be physically more fit because they're made that way?
Once again, I am thinking of myself in their boots and that is wrong. So wrong.

I wish you both enormous luck and safe journeys. Godspeed.
I'll be praying for you.

Daddy and the Hundred Dollar Bill

It was the 50s, to be sure, possibly '57 after we got the Pontiac.
I think, unless I am disremembering, that we were going on vacation...somewhere. We went on vacation every year, even if it was just upstate NY to see Niagara Falls again, hoping against hope to see the colored spotlights on the falls. It never happened, even when Herb and the girls and I went there some years ago.  I must bring on the breaking of the spotlights. Lucky me.

Anyway, we were going to go away. Dad must have gone to the bank to take out some traveling money because he came back with this great smile he was capable of smiling, the one he practiced in the mirror.
Mom called it his "shit eating grin". I think that was an ancient Ukrainian expression because I never heard anybody else ever use it. Stands to reason. Ukrainian expressions tended to involve fecal matter or wishes for dread diseases. I digress.
So Daddy walks in the side door with his grin in place and calls my older brother Jack and me over, he has something to show us.
We're all excited because Dad was not the demonstrative type, not really. But that grin let us know there was something afoot.

He bends down and takes a $100 bill from his wallet.
We gasp!
This is more money than we had ever seen in our lives. Jack had a paper route and regularly made about five bucks a week from it. He was a wealthy, hardworking young man. I probably had never held a dollar bill in my short life at this time.
And here was Dad, showing off his hundred dollar bill!
He was rich!
We were rich by proxy or proximity.

I don't know what happened to the money, how it got spent, if it got spent or put into the bank. Maybe we visited relatives in Canada that year and gave it to them...I don't know. They didn't seem poor to me, but Mom always gave them stuff. They were refugees, I was told. They came here with nothing. They couldn't come into the US for some reason, not to live, but I never knew or understood why. Not that Canada isn't a nice country, but, really. I was a kid, full of Eisenhower and patriotism.

That would be the end of this little story except for a little footnote: While driving our brand new Pontiac with a huge engine on one of the president's new superhighways, Daddy floored the engine and we went 100 miles an hour for a brief couple of yards! I know because we leaned over the back of the front seat and saw the speedometer slide over the 100 mark.

Wow. Such a little thing, such little things were so cool to unjaded kids in the '50s.

Lee the ogre has an epiphany

     "Don't touch that!"
     Lulu and Sally jumped away from the guitar. Lulu's eyes rounded while her sister's immediately filled with tears.
     Lee stood framed in the doorway, scowling, looking down at the two girls who had edged away from the instrument.
     "Ah...no. Don't cry!" A sharp blade of guilt stabbed him.
The girls' reactions had ratcheted up to fat tears rolling down their rosy cheeks.
     He'd seen tears before. The little Italian kids, half starved and tattered, had rivulets of tears coursing down their dirty faces more often than not. At first, he had tossed chocolate bars and gum at them. After awhile, though, there had been so many damp faces, he realized no chocolate or chewing gum would make their world any better.
     Lee allowed his humanity to surface.
     "Two things," he said softly. "Two things are important right now."
     Lulu wiped her eyes, leaving a wet smear. Sally blinked several times and sniffled. Their expressions were ten times worse than any little Italian kid's.
     "There are two things you must know." He paused.
     Lulu looked up, wiped her nose again. "What two things?"
     Lee straightened, felt the cramp in his scar and chose to ignore it.
     "Thing number one," he began, "is that the guitar, this particular guitar, is  a very delicate musical instrument. It is not a toy. Only people who really know how to play a guitar should touch it. Gently. Carefully. Do you understand rule number one?"
     They nodded, solemn as a pair of tiny nuns.
     Lee choked back a chuckle and continued. "Rule number two: if you really want to learn how to play the guitar, meet me back here after supper and lessons will commence."
     Lulu scrunched her nose. "Is that a rule?"
     "Yes. Yes it is."

Reminiscing

We had a lively, fun dinner this evening.
The girls started remembering places we'd taken them on our trips, every museum, tour, boat ride and Civil War something or other.
Each place evoked memories.
Hated it or loved it.
Civil War stuff bored the pants off them, along with the Corning Glass museum (which I liked), but DC was cool--Arlington, The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the Korean monument and the pain of the Vietnam Wall. I knew two people who had died in 'Nam and we looked them up. Brought tears to my eyes for sure.

It was fun. They remembered most of our trip to England, but in a totally different way. Take the Tube. They didn't remember the ride, they remembered that there were Cadbury candy dispensers on the columns. Frankly, I thought that was also the best part of the Underground.
They remembered chicken sandwiches in York that had butter on them and how packed the McDonalds was in Chester. Lake Windemere, how old everything was, Daddy and the peacocks.

It made me feel good, knowing that they had good memories of us all being together, learning even if unwillingly, the food we ate, Reed's drive in in Lockport and the white hots and red hots.

They're too old now to see things through innocent eyes.   Elyse has been to England and Scotland several times. Karyn has been all the way to Russia!

I do miss us all traveling and experiencing life outside Bridgewater...together.
I'm glad we have so many good memories.  All of us.

The sleep test

Tangled up in about 40 wires, seven electrodes stuck on my scalp with glue, a thin cigarette case sized metal thing dangling on my breast, two around the chest straps keeping things tight...a contraption on this thing between my nostrils to measure my breathing, wires going down my back and front to my legs.
Sure, Irene, now sleep.

I didn't.
The tech said I slept for long enough to get some measurements, but I deny this vigorously as I heard every inhalation and exhalation I made. I couldn't turn. I couldn't sleep on my belly without pulling wires from my flesh that had to be replaced.
After 2 am, I was through trying. I sat up uneasily and watched TV.
Just like at home, only with the wires.

I felt like a fish caught in a net. Or one of those porpoises caught with the tuna. Or a fly stuck in a spider's handiwork.

It was not fun.

Why did I allow this to happen? According to the cancer doctor and somebody else, my hemoglobin had risen, sign of something awry. First thought, naturally (?) was lack of sleep since I don't get enough restful sleep. So, I had to have this test.

It is easier for me to go into the other room or make up the sofa bed and sleep. I do sleep well in either place as long as I am not aggravated.

When I was picked up by my husband (who had not slept since 2 am anyway) at 6:00, he drove me home, made me some breakfast, told me to go up and get a shower. He later joined me in bed for a snooze. I slept. Like the dead.
Yes, I can sleep, thank you very much.
And I will sleep very well when I am dead.

It's in the book

Every week I get about five fat lady catalogues from various companies who thankfully sell clothing for women with more than size zero bodies. I look through them, turn down page corners, sometimes I even buy clothes. Usually I call in my order because I like to talk with one of the eight hundred or so operators who handle catalogue sales. Sometimes I order online. It is impersonal, I often screw things up, but eventually I get what I need.

Today I got a new catalogue. The beautiful woman on the cover was probably a size six. I guess the photographer thinks that's hefty.

I looked inside. Lovely clothes for women with jobs or women who do not sit around in their pajamas writing most of the day. Then I get to about ten pages in.

Now...this catalogue is supposed to be for women of a certain size. Big. Not zeroes. Big ladies with hips and breasts and thighs. Not teeny tiny bodies. Big ladies.

The two pages contained dresses in animal prints. Tigers, zebras, leopards, cheetahs...the only thing missing was an elephant print. Of course, the models were slim. How could they put a zebra print on a woman with substantial body parts? It would look terrible. Scary. Nearly as awful as a woman wearing something in a cow print. Talk about setting oneself up for mockery.

Yes. I realize a woman should be able to wear whatever she wants to wear without fear of somebody pointing at her and laughing. Or wanting to jump her and rape her. Bikinis and halter tops and hip hugging short shorts should be fine. On some little twinkie perhaps, but not on someone with overly sufficient flesh.

Unless they want to hang out in Wal-mart and have their photos taken so the entire internet can laugh at them.

There are ways to dress and ways not to dress. This may be old fashioned of me, but oh, well, I'm too old to display myself. Back in the day, however, it wasn't the case. But I still went toward the more conservative side. I thought a little guessing was preferable to leaving nothing to be desired.

I am old.

Say cheese!

Gawd. I look awful.
Just got a gander at the photo I posted of the husband and me together. Granted, it was about a year after chemo, but it doesn't look like the me I want to see.
It's reality.
It's ugly.
How can that be the same person...uh, yeah. It's me, all right.

Let's face it.
I got old.
Wrinkled. Grey haired. Fat. Fatter.

Now, just to make myself feel better, I oughtta look up photos of me when I was in my prime.  Too bad I can't get them into the computer...I may have to ask my kids.

The only one I have of me from a long time ago is this one, and I've posted it several times.  It makes me feel better, though, so you're gonna get it again.

This is August, 1970, right after the Army.

This is us, 2014. Not my best angle. Friends since 1960. You can't go back, though. The ravages of time.