TIE O’ THE DAY presents my fave picture of my bro, Rob, and me together. This was likely taken one Easter, near my grandparents’ fence. Dad’s bee warehouse is visible in the top corner of the photo. Neither of us is wearing anything close to any kind of tie, but Rob is wearing a bright reddish-orange turtleneck dickey. That qualifies as neckwear, I suppose. The inherent beauty of a dickey remains mysterious to me. Is it considered a piece of clothing? Or is it considered an accessory? I have no clue what message a dickey means to say either. Dickeys aren’t sexy or sophisticated or playful or intriguing. I think a dickey is simply “there.” But I have no earthly clue why they exist, or why anyone ever thought they needed to. A neck and chest warmer, perhaps? 🎂🍰🎈
I donned a blue-polka-dotted orange Bow Tie o’ the Day and Skitter was wearing her avocados Tie o’ the Day (which you can’t see cuz it’s covered by her blankets in this photo), and we headed to Delta to see Mom last Friday. Suzanne managed to get the day off work, so she drove us to our destination.
When we got to the care center, folks were getting on the center’s little bus for a short outing. I could see Mom was already in the front seat, ready to see the sights. She had no idea we were there. I could have caught the group before they headed out, but since the pandemic began, the Millard Care and Rehab residents haven’t ventured out until recently. I did not want to keep Mom from a drive with her current neighbors, so Suzanne and I said to each other at the very same time, in almost the same exact words, “While we’re waiting for Mom to come back from her ride, we should go to Mom’s Crafts!” Mom’s Crafts is Suzanne’s idea of Heaven. Because Suzanne always spends a lot of $$$ there, Mom’s Crafts is also my idea of a depleted bank account.😜 So Suzanne bought a ton o’ fabric, and we both got to say “howdy” to Kyla. Mom’s Crafts is always a good time. Even Skitter was grooving about it. Skitter told me she wants Suzanne to teach her to sew, so she can shop for her own fabric at Mom’s Crafts and make her own doggie blankets. It’s gonna be a long and interesting winter, I can tell.
When we returned to the care center, the bus was already there, and Mom was already inside the building sitting with a pal at her table in the facility’s new fancy dining room. What a great space! I didn’t see Mom’s face as we were walking in her direction, cuz I was wrangling Skitter across the room and through the other residents, but Suzanne said Mom’s whole face beamed when she saw me. I was wearing my mask, and Mom had no idea I have shaved my head to the nubs, but she still managed to recognize me. I am always glad for that. It is something so basic, but it has become incredibly important to me now. I need Mom to know me. (So far, it was only that one instance when she didn’t recognize my voice on the phone.)
In Mom’s room, Skitter jumped up on her bed and curled right into Mom like she always does. Mom absentmindedly stroked Skitter throughout our visit, as is her usual way. Mom was in high spirits, as she always seems to be. She says she’s sleeping well—”like a log”— and she’s snoring well. This is true. She says she is in no pain. This used to be true until quite recently. But it’s not true anymore, and she will not admit it. She maintains her playfulness and penchant for humor. But she is also quieter than I have ever known her to be. We left her a stash of peanut butter Snickers and candy corn pumpkins. Mom is beyond pleased when we pretend on occasion that she doesn’t have to watch her sugar. 😉 We can’t wait for our next visit with her.
It’s time for a trip to Delta to visit Mom. I’m not sure exactly when I’m going to make the drive, but it will be soon. I like to plan my travel attire ahead of time, and today I came up with this outfit that seems appropriate to the current Delta weather. Fortunately, I have an umbrella-covered Face Mask o’ the Day and a raindrop and umbrella-covered Tie o’ the Day. My cow Sloggers boots should come in handy for wading through puddles and newly formed lakes, and my bigly floppy hat will keep the rain off my bald head. Yes, I think this will suit me well on my next trip to my hometown.
TIE O’ THE DAY managed to dig up this ancient snapshot of today’s birthday boy, my bigly brother, Ron. Here, he is holding baby-me. I think carrying pudgy me around was part of Ron’s first weightlifting routine—getting him into shape for his storied football, baseball, and basketball mastery. He made a school career of being a savvy and skillful athlete. He was a guard on the only Delta High School boys’ basketball team to ever win a State Championship, in 1972. As far as I’m concerned, he’s still a champ. But now he’s a really old champ.
BTW Look! I have more hair on my noggin in this picture than I have on my head right now. (See yesterday’s post photo for comparison, if you haven’t seen my current extra-baldy look already.)
That’s my brother, Ron, in the middle. He’s my oldest brother, and it’s his birthday. He is a decade older and wiser than my 57. After all these years, I still claim him. Here, he’s flanked by me (and my cork rifle), and our brother, Rob. We’re on our front lawn, back when our house was a color I call 50’s-era pink. I’m assuming the pup there is new to the family and is the reason for the photo. I don’t know how it got the name, but the dog’s name really was Dumb Dumb—which is odd, because the word “dumb” was forbidden like a swear word in our house. That contradiction always puzzled me as a wee sprite.
TIE O’ THE DAY wishes you a swell birthday, Ronald!
I’ve been a bit bummed out the last few days, and it has nothing to do with the state of my Cranky Hanky Panky. The sweetest angel on the planet—who happens to be my very own mother, Helen Sr.—has caused me to be upset. It’s certainly nothing she’s done intentionally. She doesn’t go around agitating her family or friends, or even the few people she doesn’t necessarily care for all that much. So, what did she do that got my heart in a dither? Well, when I called to check on her at Millard Care and Rehab earlier this week, Mom had to ask me which of her kids I was. That has never happened before. This was a first, which I hoped would never happen at all. I did not like it one bit—no, sir!
To be fair, my siblings and I do all sound remarkably alike, especially on the phone. But still, I am my mother’s babiest baby, and she knows my voice. I think it should be against the law for her to not know my voice. Mom will be 91 next month, and changes like this make it feel like she is gradually moving farther and farther away from us. I feel like she is moving farther away from being the mother of her babiest baby. I hate having to deal with these complicated feelings. Logically, I understand exactly what is happening. It makes perfect sense. I know it is the Circle of Life and all of that stuff. It’s all the feel-y things that go along with these natural changes that get me stirred up.
I also know that as hard as it was for me to hear Mom tell me she didn’t recognize my voice, it was just as hard for her to have to ask me which kid I was. These changes never go just one way. We still need each other’s help to get through it. That’s called empathy. I learned it from my mother.
Bat signal Bow Tie o’ the Day seemed an appropriate piece of neckwear to be the cherry on top of my Superman tank and my Suzanne-made harlequin cape—along with my madras shorts. My cow Sloggers boots are deceptively fast. Even as an old broad, I can run fast enough in them to cause my cape to fly. If you put together a truly fantastic outfit, you’ll be amazed at the powers you can utilize. I learned this fact one morning when I was 12, when I woke up late for softball practice. Practice was at 8, and I woke up at 8:07. I scurried to get dressed and grab my mitt. On the way out of the front door, I was putting an old, broken set of spurs on my tennis shoes—just for the style of it. Spurs on, I jumped on my bike with all my fashion superpowers, pedaling so fast to the softball field that I was able to get there at 7:59. I kid you not.
I have stacks and files and reams of paper everywhere in my house. Paper finds me: It’s a law of nature, as sure as gravity. I’m currently—and always—trying to get rid of what papers I don’t really need, and today I was going through a file of papers from one of my Delta boxes. I came upon this specimen and initially wondered why I saved this messed up envelope. But then I remembered. I decided I had to post it for y’all, even though there’s no neckwear in sight.
I found this envelope sitting on Mom’s kitchen table one day about five years ago. It’s not an important document, in the traditional sense. It’s important to me because Mom wrote the message, while simultaneously talking to Kathi on the phone and mixing a batch of cookies. She wrote the note-to-self on the first paper thing she found handy, to remind her to pick up one of her great-grandkids the next day. It is so Mom-esque, with its hurried handwriting and the little blobs and smears of what is, no doubt, chocolate chip cookie dough from her busy-baking hands. This item is a scratch ‘n’ sniff treasure to me. It’s not going anywhere.
The LDS Primary songs of my youth continue to make it impossible for me to wallow in tedious labor. “Saturday” is a song that has gone through my head every Saturday for more than fifty years now. I can’t help it. It’s just there, being the soundtrack of one entire day of every week. Some people work all week long just to get to the excitement of a wild Saturday night on the town, but that’s not how it works for me. Because of the aforementioned song, “Saturday,” from the official Primary songbook, being permanently stuck in my head, Saturday is tasks, chores, and to-do lists. But it’s oh-so fun because there’s a song to sing about it.
Like any good kid song, it is simple, and so it easily accommodates new lines about the real-life Saturday tasks I find myself engaged in. One of my best “true” lines came about because my dad—not too long before he passed away—had been on his back in the driveway, fixing something underneath his forklift. Later that Saturday afternoon, he was puzzled because he couldn’t find his lower dentures. Mom was poking around in every nook and cranny of their house to find them. I asked Dad where he had been working. I got the rake and headed for the forklift. Dad was yelling to me out the front window that he didn’t have his teeth at the forklift, so I didn’t need to look there; meanwhile, Mom came outside to give me a run-down of all the places where she hadn’t found his lowers; and just at that moment Suzanne called from Ogden, needing something. My dogs circled my feet, wanting me to throw the ball for them. My head was full of all these voices. I answered the phone and said to Suzanne, “Whatever it is, handle it. I can’t talk to you right now because I’m busy raking the gravel for Dad’s dentures. Click.” Thus, the following line was born, and I forever added it to “Saturday:” “We rake the gravel, and look for Dad’s teeth,/so we can be ready for Sunday.”
I did, in fact, find Dad’s lowers in the gravel under the forklift. My instincts were correct. He had put them in the chest pocket of his overalls while he worked, and they had slid out of the pocket as he tinkered. Suzanne later told me she thought I was drunk on the phone, because it didn’t make any sense to her why I would be raking gravel to find Dad’s teeth. Like any really good story, it didn’t make any sense at all. Of course it didn’t make sense: It was true!
When I woke up this morning, I fully intended to throw Skitter in the car and drive to Delta to see Mom. I put Skitter’s diaper bag in the car, then waited for Suzanne to get off safely to work, at which time I would head for the west desert. I waited and waited, but Suzanne didn’t come downstairs at her usual time. I figured she knew what she was doing, schedule-wise. About 30 minutes past when she was supposed to actually be at work, I finally went upstairs to see if she was okay. She must have slept through her alarm, because she was still sleeping. I woke her up to verify she wasn’t dead or comatose, and then I told her how late she was. She was up in a flash, and out the door in another flash. If I hadn’t been home, she’d still be in bed snoozing this afternoon. This is why I like to wait for her to leave before I do.
Meanwhile, I had noticed that I kept nodding off from the moment I got out of bed. I didn’t feel tired, then all off a sudden, my eyelids would close and my head would fall back against the couch—and ZIP, I was wide awake again, until the next time I dozed. I can take a hint. I made the bigly, unilateral decision that taking a long drive was probably not the smartest plan today. If you drive on Utah freeways frequently, or at all, you have likely come to the conclusion that many drivers surely seem to be driving in their sleep. It might work for them, but I ain’t up for driving like that. Nodding off is not how I roll—especially with a Skitter on board.
BTW Yes, I am! I am wearing the same Bow Tie o’ the Day I wore yesterday, just because I can.
