Tie o’ the Day is a swell geometric take on red-white-and-blue. Today, I paired my green-striped, old-timey swimsuit top with my madras shorts. I am so ready to find a sandy beach where I can wear my entire old-timey swimsuit while I get sunburned searching for seashells or purty pebbles for Suzanne. Despite it being relatively safe to travel hither and yon again, we are still cooling our heels about resuming our travel adventures, until we get my Hanky Panky taken care of—whatever action that requires. Until the pandemic hit, we were used to flying off to new destinations 4 or 5 times a year. Don’t get me wrong: I love being home. In fact, I am a dedicated hermit. However, I also like leaving home on brief junkets to elsewhere.
Ah, travel! I miss $5 airport Diet Cokes, and renting cars, and taking gastronomic chances by eating in suspect local dining establishments. I miss trying to find parking in cities I’m discovering for the first time. I miss new forks in new roads, and I miss deciding which road to take and why—which always makes me think of Robert Frost. I miss staring out the windows of hotels, watching how the light changes across the skyline of whatever city we’re visiting. I miss the understanding and wonder that a heretofore unknown landscape inspires. And then I like coming back home, where I know exactly where everything is located, where sometimes life is tedious, and where I already know everybody.
Since I make it my business to keep myself perpetually amused, I must always come up with new tricks. The neighbors who passed me as I walked to the mailbox yesterday were so gleeful about the outfit I was wearing (as seen in the previous post) that I was inspired to set myself this new gimmick: To explore what shirts and ties I can put together in my style with the same pair of madras shorts for an entire week. Here’s Day 2’s attire, complete with madras Tie o’ the Day. Fret not! I will wash my shorts daily.
FYI For anyone trying to catch me fail in my sobriety, please note that the Bud cans you can see behind me are from my Budweiser Zero, which contains 0% alcohol. I’m still behaving myself.
Paisley Tie o’ the Day was brave to be a part of this eye-injuring ensemble. The attire is goshdarn near-match-y, in its own way. I debated about whether to wear my cow Sloggers or my cowboy boots. I finally decided to wear the cow Sloggers, because—although the cowboy boots would mercifully cover up the glare of my fish belly-white chicken legs—they would also, unfortunately, cover up my taco socks. And here’s a little fashion tip no other fashion genius but I will ever tell you: Taco socks must be visible to onlookers at all times! Some style critics might call this outfit over-the-top. I call it “Happy Helen, Left Unsupervised On A Monday In June.” I’m rather proud of this clothing concoction. 🏆
Father’s Day without being able to plant a kiss on Dad’s bald head is still a tough day every year. Fortunately, I am blessed with an incredible pa-in-law who is always up for a hug. We celebrated him yesterday with a combo Father’s Day/Birthday party. Suzanne’s family knows how to put together mega amounts of yummy eats for family shindigs. They are easy people to be with and welcomed me into their family from the minute I showed up in their lives over thirty years ago. Merry Pa’s Day, Steven. You are a beloved soul.
FYI Suzanne’s dapper Dad is the one in the blue Hawaiian shirt in both pix. In the first picture, I am with my best buddy, Liam, who enjoyed posing with me and Bow Tie o’ the Day for pix. He also took me on a tour of every room of his house—three times.
Peace sign Bow Tie o’ the Day and I are just sitting around being peaceful on this Friday afternoon in June, contemplating the infinite possibilities the upcoming weekend holds for us here in the House O’ Ties And Fabric. That’s all. That is absolutely all we are doing this afternoon.
This canine Bow Tie o’ the Day is somewhere in my Top 25 all-time fave bow ties in my collection. I like everything about it: its jumbo size, its plaid, its mutts, and its combo o’ colors. It’s perfectly snappy.
While I was in the waiting room at my hearing doctor this morning, something got me thinking about my life—in terms of my bigly little contributions to civilization. It’s a mentally healthy thing to do, to periodically navel-gaze—to critically assess where you are and what you are. It’s a way to sort of give yourself a grade. Am I getting an “A” at being true to who I am? Am I passing the course called Good Character? Does what I do, and how I behave, represent what I say I value and believe? Can I do more for others? Can I be more for others? What legacy—if any—would I leave behind if I were to die today? Has my life made a positive difference to anyone? Am I at peace with what I have done with my existence? You know those kinds of questions. There are a million of them.
We answer those existential questions about ourselves with varying levels of satisfaction at different times in our lives. If we’re honest with ourselves, sometimes the answers to those questions are painfully humbling. We fall short. It’s especially at those times that it is wise to re-chart our course. We have to take responsibility for letting ourselves down with our heretofore unproductive choices, and we must vow to do so much better at living our own true soul out loud. In short, we have to change. Again and again, ad infinitum. It begins with forgiving ourselves for being the imperfect human beings we all are.
Cut yourself some slack, y’all. Give yourself a bear hug and carry on.
It’s been two weeks since my left hearing aid disappeared. I’ve emptied the ShopVac and searched its contents twice. I have searched nooks and crannies I never even knew existed in this house before now, but to no avail. My left ear is still empty. I now hear lopsided.
Tomorrow, I have a previously scheduled appointment with my hearing doctor. I’ve been contemplating giving up the search and giving in to buy a new left hearing aid. I think it’s time. If I haven’t run across the device after two weeks of living my usual life, in all my usual places, I doubt I’m going to one day just happen upon it in one of my pockets or something.
When I first realized my hearing aid was probably truly lost, I thought I could probably just buck up and go without replacing it. To my amazement, I have found that when sitting two feet to the right of Suzanne on the love seat, I see her lips move but can’t hear a thing above a mumble of a mumble. If I’m not looking at her directly when she talks from my left side, I don’t detect she’s talking to me. I cannot imagine what juicy tidbits of information I’ve missed out on in the past two weeks, but I’m certain I’ve probably missed out on numerous to-do items she’s assigned me. Now that I think about it, I suppose that’s the bigly argument for why I shouldn’t replace my left hearing aid. 🙀
It was that time of year again—time for the Davis Education Foundation’s Gala, with its accompanying silent auction. This year we were treated to dinner and a screening of the movie, A Quiet Place II. This annual event is better known in our house as The Night We Spend Too Much Money On Acquiring Too Many Completely Unnecessary Things. My excuse for bidding with a vengeance is always the same: It’s for a good cause. I then spend the next year making a gallant effort to use at least some of the items I brought home from the event, so I can feel better about all the spending I’ll surely do at next year’s annual fundraiser.
And what did we walk away with from the 2021 auction after we emptied our purses? (Yes, I took the Saddle Purse to the shindig.) We ended up with a funky blue chair we don’t need, a portable grill we don’t need, a fluffy green chair I can’t wait to deliver to Gracie, and a 6 ft-long fuchsia metal cabinet which nobody on earth needs. I do love the color, but I have no idea what I’ll use it for beyond storage. It really is for a good cause, though. 💸
Skitter and I stayed in the house—and out of the heat—yesterday. An outside temperature of 102 in mid-June is not our kind of thing. We did talk about getting in the pool, but the HOA does not allow Skitter to do that—despite the fact that Skitter is a much friendlier resident than the wacko lady a few doors away, who seems to think she is the HOA Rule Monitor. I have no doubt the old bat always has a notebook handy, in which she constantly logs alleged rule infractions committed by neighborhood residents who have better things to do than keep tabs on everybody else’s garbage can placement. While the rest of us live our lives, the HOA rules seem to BE her life. To each, her own. God bless her.
Skitter took charge of snapping TIE O’ THE DAY photos this morning. Personally, I think she’s making great strides with her selfie photography skills. She’s wearing one of her new summer-y ties, which she sneakily ordered on my Amazon account without my knowledge or permission. (Note to self: change Amazon account password.) I chose to pair my houndstooth floppy Bow Tie o’ the Day with this flowery shirt to achieve some middling clash. This bow tie goes with anything. Or nothing. Either way, it’s a key piece of my collection.
My father would have been 91 yesterday. If you ever had a chance to chat with him, you likely consider yourself lucky. He was a bear of hugs, pranks, jokes, and stories. He was kind, and he had the flirt gene. He was smitten with Mom almost from the minute he met her, but he also managed to have a lifetime affair with his endless parade of bees. I had so many mythic experiences with him, but here’s one I’ve never written about before. I don’t think I’ve ever told Suzanne about it.
In the late 90’s when I was teaching in Baltimore and living in Takoma Park, Maryland, Dad flew out to visit me. I wanted him to see some of the Washington, D.C. and Civil War sights he had always read about. We visited Harper’s Ferry and Gettysburg, and we hit all the major D.C. memorials: Lincoln, Jefferson, Vietnam, etc. One memorial was relatively new: the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial. It had opened only a few months before Dad’s visit, and even I had not yet seen it yet. The FDR Memorial is what I would describe as people-sized, as opposed to the towering Lincoln and Jefferson memorials. At the FDR, you are encouraged to stand eye-to-eye with the people-sized sculptures in its four outdoor “rooms.” You are encouraged to read the braille and touch relief sculptures on walls.
Anyhoo…As we were checking out the FDR Memorial for the first time, I kept my eye on Dad to make sure he was being sufficiently entertained. At some point, I sauntered off to read a historical marker and when I turned around again, he was gone. I could not see him anywhere. I was briefly frantic, then remembered he was a grown man and could take care of himself in the bigly city.
To find him, I stood still and scanned the other sightseers in the same way Dad had taught me to look for deer: You look for the thing by NOT looking for the thing. If you look for everything else, the thing you’re really looking for will stand out. (It’s a handy trick, and it works with relationships too. Just sayin’.) I stood and listened. From just ahead and to the side of me, I heard what I can only describe as a loud whisper—the sound of an astonished little boy trying to not to call attention to himself. It was almost a whispered cry. I heard, “Fala!” (pronounced like “fall-uh”) I turned to see who had uttered that word in such a strange way. Lo and behold—it was my dad, but it wasn’t Dad. He was stopped in his tracks, staring off at a cluster of sculptures, but he didn’t resemble himself. His face looked like the pictures I had seen of him when he was a kid. The expression on his face made him look about 10. “Fala,” he quietly squealed. Was he having a stroke? I said, “Dad? Are you okay?” He didn’t look away from the sculpture scene, and once again, he said, “Fala!”
As I stood with him, he began to look more like his older self. We started to walk to the sculpture that had so surprised him. Now it began to make sense to me. I hadn’t known this bit of trivia before, but I would never forget it now: Fala was the name of FDR’s dog, and here it was in a sculpture, triggering some long-ago childhood recognition in Dad. FDR was the U. S. President of Dad’s childhood and teens. Dad had heard about/seen Fala in newspapers, magazines, fireside chats, and newsreels during FDR’s presidency, and he had remembered the name of FDR’s dog after decades had passed by. Dad then told me all about Fala. So that’s how, on that day in Washington, D.C., I got to see and hear my dad turn into a little boy for a few seconds. It was so dang cool!
Ronald E. Wright. The man. The legend. The beekeeper.
The FDR Memorial in Washington DC. (Photo by: Loop Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)Statue of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s pet dog, Fala at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial Washington,D.C. Statue by Neil Estern
