Oh, Happy Day!

I was culling through my St. Patrick’s Day props this morning when I took a break to check my email. Glory be! I got an email informing me that Millard Care And Rehab is finally allowing visitors again. I CAN NOW HUG THE STUFFIN’ OUT OF MOM FOR THE FIRST TIME IN OVER A YEAR!!! You can bet I’m planning a road trip for Skitter and me to Deltabama ASAP. I’m so excited that only a bigly Bow Tie o’ the Day like this one is bigly enough to illustrate my mood. ‘Scuse me while I go cry for joy and fill a box with treats to take to Mom.

My Mother Is My Leprechaun

Here’s a photo of Mom wearing a St. Paddy’s Hat o’ the Day, in March of 2016, while dropping by to visit me at my Delta house. You can see where I get it. And by “it,” I mean high fashion style, coupled with an I’m-here-to-entertain-you attitude. I love Mom.

A Serendipitous Meeting (Part 2)

[A love-themed re-post that finishes this story I began this morning.]

Caught in the crosshairs o’ love, Bow Tie o’ the Day waited patiently to read Part 2 of our little tale. When we left our saga o’ love in the previous post, this is where we were:  Suzanne and I had decided to quit being we/us. And, as I have admitted, it was all because I was a dope. My bad.

Fast forward to the year 2000, when I moved back to Delta from the Baltimore-Washington, D.C. area. Between my freshly diagnosed bipolarity and my freshly flaming Hanky Panky (pancreas), I was not well. I seriously expected to die soon. I was drained of health and hope. I needed to choose a power of attorney (POA) to handle my finances and medical decisions if I couldn’t deal with them myself. I pondered about who knew me best in the world. I pondered about who I trusted most in the world. And even though I hadn’t seen her or talked to her in over a decade, Suzanne was the answer.

I had no idea where Suzanne even was. I searched. Was she still in Utah? Did she move to England? It was almost Christmas so I decided to try to contact her by sending her a Christmas card, in care of her parents— hoping they still lived where last I knew them. A couple of days later, Suzanne replied to my card by telephoning me from her house in Ogden. I was glad her parents still lived at their same address and that they actually gave her the card. And I was gladder that she still lived in Utah. And I was gladdest of all that our phone conversation wasn’t one bit awkward.

I drove my 1970 Ford Falcon from Delta to Ogden a few days after that phone conversation, to meet Suzanne for dinner and a chat about my need for a Power of Attorney. We went to her fave Italian place on 25th Street, where I ate halibut and explained exactly what I needed her to do and why. That dinner changed the course of our lives. Everything since that dinner has been nothing less than a wondrous second chance. From the moment we sat down in the restaurant, we talked easily, laughed far too loudly, and couldn’t quit smiling at each other. It was as if the years we lived through without each other had never happened at all—like we had never been apart. Love at second sight. The decade-long homesickness for something I could never quite pin down made its exit. We were where we belonged. We were home at last.

The Bees And The Bees

[My head is in a bipolar tailspin right now, for no real reason other than it’s just how my head is sometimes. Worry not. I’ve been in this state of mind before. I will probably be repeating some posts for a while. Re-posting is better for my crazy head than not posting at all. It makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something, however small. Thanks, y’all, for bearing with me.]

Tie o’ the Day is content to hang in the background, while Mom stars in this morning’s pix. These are evidence of Mom’s alluring ways. Dad was born into a beekeeping family, and bees were his thing. He was crazy for bees from the minute he could toddle. Based on that fact, I have no doubt Dad thought the photo of Mom dressed up in beekeeper attire was the sexiest of these two pictures. Mom does have nice legs though.

Dad’s family lived in Delta. Mom was from Oak City, a small town about 15 miles away. In Oak City, at that time, the kids went to school there until high school, then the Oak City-ites rode the bus to Delta High School every day. Mom and Dad didn’t know each other until that came to pass.

But they had sort of met once before high school. One summer day, Dad and his pals happened to be at the swimming pool when Mom was there with her friends. (I think it was the Oak City pool.) Mom was standing by the edge of the pool when Dad walked by and pushed her in.

Mom was ticked off, turned to her gal pals, and said, “Ignernt Delta boys!”

Dad smiled, turned to his friends, and said, “I’m gonna marry that girl.”

And he did. And she wasn’t even a bee.

And The Birthday Balloon Bow Tie Goes To…

Birthday balloons Bow Tie o’ the Day reached waaaaaaay back for this photo, which includes today’s beauteous birthday girl, Shelly Shields Monroe, there on the left. This picture hails from 1980, when we ended up together in the Miss Liberty royalty. Yes, I wore a dress. Lisa Topham was Miss Liberty. Shelly was 2nd Attendant, and I was 1st Attendant. For those of you not from the Delta area, and who are not familiar with the Miss Liberty pageant, let’s just say Miss Liberty and her attendants are the 4th of July royalty. We three rode on our own float in the 4th of July parade that year, in matching fabric dresses. Yes, even on the float, I had to wear a dress. At least Mom had made the dress for me, and—as she did with any dress she made me—had made pockets in it so I could carry a handful of Lemonheads, a pen, a tiny notebook, and a tiny book with me at all times during the July 4th parade. Lisa and Shelly and I waved and waved and waved and waved all the way down Main Street. Other than that, all I really remember about the whole Miss Liberty competition and the 4th of July parade was that I kept whispering sarcastic things to Shelly to make her laugh at inappropriate times. It worked.

Shelly and I haven’t lived near each other since we graduated from good ol’ Delta High School nearly 40 years ago. We have talked to each other probably only three or four times since then, but each time the talking came as easily as if we see each other every day. I highly suspect that if life were different, and Shelly and I lived in the same town, we would be like Mom and Peggy: grabbing a daily Coke and going for a ride through the landscape, during which we would help each other navigate the vicissitudes of life, and we would solve the problems of the world—being clever and snort-laughing all the way. Yeah, I think we’d be like Mom and Peggy, but with a lot of Thelma and Louise mixed in. Mostly Louise.

Merry Birthday, my friend I never see!

Make Centerville Less Windy Again

Last night on the news, we heard we would be under a High Wind Warning mid-way through the night and into mid-morning, and I woke up this morning to the sound of solid objects spinning around outside our house. I saw garbage bags flying in the neighborhood, and Suzanne told me she saw hunks of tin flying in our street. I swear I thought for a minute I had woken up back in Delta, where the wind comes whippin’ down the plain 24/7. But no, I was here in Centerville, where bigly winds are not the norm. Today’s winds, however, were interfering with our garbage and recycling pick-up. I decided not to even take our cans to the curb. This windstorm was nothing like the one that came through a few months ago, which uprooted trees everywhere in our neck of the woods, and took out the power for three days. I am at the age that I calculate the severity of any kind of storm based on how much tv I have to miss because the power is out. Flying sheets of tin or not, I judge this morning’s storm to ultimately be a lightweight piece o’ weather, because the television didn’t lose power for even one second. I was not inconvenienced one bit. That’s my kind of weather.

Two Helen’s Through The Looking Glass

Look closely! That’s Mom in there.

I threw on my dog bones Bow Tie o’ the Day, and we all took a Sunday drive to Deltabama yesterday to “visit” Mom. We delivered Mom some tasty goodies from us and from BT, and then Suzanne and Skitter and I stood outside Mom’s window in the cold—feeling warmed by the company through the window. As with every visit, Mom said hello to Skitter first. It is odd to be so close to Mom and yet have to speak to her by phone. Mom kept joking that our visit made her feel like she was in jail. I asked her if she had been hiding a prison record from us, because there’s no other way she could know what jail visitation is like. That made her cackle up a joyous storm.

Mom is doing well, despite her pandemic time in solitary. Whenever I speak to her on the phone, she is generally in her normal happy spirits. But I still have to see it for myself on occasion—even if it is only through a care center window.

BTW Mom sends her regards to y’all. She often refers to my TIE O’ THE DAY readers as “the tie people who sent me birthday cards for my 90th.” Thanks again, for doing that.

A Man Of Few Bad Words And Many Christmas Balls

I rarely heard my dad use profanity around the family. The swear-y word I recall hearing him say on occasion was “balls.” It always made me laugh. I’ve never heard anyone else use it as a “swear.” These 9 Ties and 4 Bow Ties o’ the Day are for Dad. I’m missing him extra bunches today for some reason, and so I’m wearing my striped overalls—as was daily his custom.

There is a Christmas story that lives in my family lore, which I have heard many times, from many of the actual participants. I have never heard the story told the same way twice, by anyone who was present when it came to pass. I had not yet been born when the event occurred, so I am only figuring as to the “truth” of what happened. I have listened to all the versions of the story, and this is what I have settled on. The gist is true. Some details may or may not be. But this is how the story sits in my as-told-to mind.

Mom wanted a flocked Christmas tree one year, probably sometime in the late-50’s. Dad invoked his belief in the principle of “happy wife, happy life”—and swiftly brought home, not just a Christmas tree, but some flock-goo and a hand-pump flocking gadget. With the bare tree on the sidewalk, just off the front porch, Dad began to spray flock onto its branches.

Mom watched. The kids watched. I’m sure Lyman’s peered out their windows from across the street to watch. Let me just say this: This was back before any real tree-flocking technology had been perfected to even the teensiest degree. The gooey flock kept getting gummed up in the pump. As Dad pumped the gadget, the flocking spit at the tree in streaks and glops and splotches. This was not the pretty tree Mom or Dad had envisioned.

Dad’s patience with the project was thinning. And even as Mom could see it unfolding, she was powerless to stop the inevitable. The frigid air on the entire street was getting prickly, as Dad became—how shall I say it—”vocal” about the clogged flocking gadget. At some point, Momo even emerged from her house next door to ours, to investigate the ensuing holiday hullabaloo in our front yard. As the anticipating crowd grew, so did Dad’s irritability. Dad said some bigly bad words as he tried to complete his flocking mission. I am fairly certain, based on the many retellings of the story, the bigly bad f-word finally flew out of Dad’s mouth at some point. And I don’t mean the word “flock.” I heard that Momo scurried back to her house to find Popo. Mom made sure my siblings made a bee-line into our house.

I am sure Mom and Dad had a brief, tense two-person family meeting out there in the cold, after which Dad likely went coyote hunting for a couple of hours to re-set his blood pressure, and to think of how to make proper apologies to his mother—and to mine.

How did this story end? I have heard that my dad finally managed to passably complete the flocking o’ the tree, and all was made right with the world. (I highly doubt that version.) I have also heard that my parents used the tree in its as-was imperfection. (I don’t think that is believable either.) In the most Ron-and-Helen-Wright-esque version of the story I can imagine, after Dad took off in his truck, Mom dragged the half-flocked pine behind the house and set it on fire—and later, Dad showed up with a freshly cut, naked, better-than-the-first-one X-mas tree. Now, that’s the kind of home I was born into, give or take a fact or two—and I’m proud of it.

Holiday Tie Tally: 128 Neckties. 39 Bow Ties.

No-tie O’ The Day

Today marks 13 years since Dad left us to go to The Painless Place. I still miss kissing his bald head. The coyotes he loved to hunt continue to howl in the raw cold of dawn. The bees are dancing their various jigs in their winter playgrounds. And we’re all still down here just holding up the sky, and missing the old man who taught us how to work with joy, and how to love each other with laughter.

This pic of my beekeeper dad was snapped long before I was born. I’ve titled it, ST. RON OF THE BEES. I don’t remember what I was being punished for as a wee kid once, but Dad kicked my butt with his work boots. He did it so softly that only my pride felt it.

#dadwouldwearthedangmask #dadwouldgripeaboutitbuthewouldwearit #daddidnotseeconspiraciesundereveryrock

A X-mas Gift For Mom

[Enjoy this repeat of a “Christmas balls” post from 2017.]

Tie o’ the Day is covered in holiday greenery and classic ornaments: Christmas tree balls. I love these classic ornaments most of all. I mean—I like balls, in general. Sports balls, of course. And there’s Cinderella’s ball. And cotton balls. And cheese balls. And disco balls. When Mom reigned over the porch at my Delta house, her favorite balls belonged to our mini-dachsie, Vincent D’OGnofrio (R.I.P., Vin!). They amused her to no end. Whenever Vinnie sped across the lawn, she’d say, “His balls are so cute!” I should have painted them red and green one year for her for Christmas.