License plate Bow Tie o’ the Day heralds its own retirement. With the delivery of my new truck, I put my 98 Isuzu Hombre out to pasture. My red Hombre served me well for more than two decades, and it now romps freely on acres of other junked vehicles—where it will likely be used for parts. And in that way, its pieces and parts can live to ride another day. Not only did I decide it’s time to retire my faithful truck, I decided it is time to retire the infamous “HELEN W” license plates. Mom first ordered the vanity plate in the 80’s for her Oldsmobile, which we immediately began referring to as the Helenmobile. With each new car she got, she transferred her HELEN W license plate to it, and that car automatically became the new Helenmobile—whether it was an Oldsmobile or not. When Mom gave up her car keys a few years back, it made sense that she transferred the HELEN W license plate to me. I gleefully transferred it to my Hombre. I fully intended to transfer the license plate to my fancy new truck, but the testy climate of the world as it is now makes it not so wise to drive around with a license plate that shouts out your first name and last initial to passing strangers. So, with all due respect and gratitude for their previous service, I have retired the HELEN W license plates, although I will officially own them until I die.
Suzanne, Rowan, and I spent most of Saturday in Delta for Oakley’s funeral and burial. We ended our day there with a visit with Mom. Mom had been able to attend the funeral, but was glad to be back home at the care center. (I will write more about our visit with Mom in another post.) In honor of Oakley, I tried to pack as much purple into my wardrobe as I could, including Bow Tie o’ the Day. Even my socks and shoelaces were purple. When I commit, I am true.
I’m taking a deep breath this morning. Oakley was privately and publicly honored over the weekend, and then her body was laid to rest near family. Last week was a constant shock—of loss, and breakdown, and gutting through every moment. I can only speak for how it seemed to me, but it felt like, from one minute to the next, family and friends were alternating between being supportive to each other and being supported by each other. Now, we are supposed to get back to normal. We are supposed to go back to business as usual. But the thing about the idea of “normal” is that there is no such thing. There never was. Things are always changing, always in flux. Movement in time and space is the way all of this works. Change is the constant. Last week, in barren grief, time seemed to stop for our family. But we were the ones standing still. We stood as witnesses to Oakley’s earthly dance, and we applauded her as she entered into the eternal present she now inhabits. Today, we are again tasked with finding our momentum. We are left to choreograph our own dances. We are left to interpret the moves Oakley taught us while she was with us. I will tell you this: If you did not learn something about life’s dancing from our Oakley, it’s only because you didn’t know her.
Oakley was all about fun and making sure everyone knew she was having it. Her joy was thunderous. I snapped these two photos at a belated 75th birthday party Mom gave for herself at her house. Oakley and her cousin, Brix, stole most of the attention that day, and Mom thought having them be the entertainment was just about the best birthday gift she could imagine. I love that Oakley’s toddler happiness is inescapable in these pix, and I am newly moved by the photo of her with two of her most beloved protectors: her Grandma Mary and Mom. She admired and adored them both. The feeling was forever mutual. TIE O’ THE DAY honors all three of these incredible women, during this sad time.
Skitter and I made our way to see Mom yesterday, on what was her 92nd birthday. I told her she’s had so many birthdays that she’s starting to go backwards in time: I told her she didn’t look a day over 29. Someone on the staff stuck their head into her room to check on her and Mom informed them she’s 29. When the staff person was gone, Mom winked at me and said, “Do you think they believed me?”
The first thing Mom said to me when I walked in was not “Hi!” Nope. She said, “You just missed Joyce Moody! She gave me this pillow.” And then she showed me the birthday card Joyce gave her, and we laughed about that. Mom clutched her new pillow the entire time I was there.
I brought Mom another stash of snacks. Gummy bears are always a hit with her. I introduced her to pretzel bites filled with peanut butter, which she fell in love with. I also gave her a Fruity Pebbles Birthday Cake candy bar, which she finished off right before the nurse came in to check her blood sugar. Oh, boy! I felt like apologizing to the nurse for Mom’s extra high blood sugar. But the nurse didn’t fuss about it. “I’ll just give her some insulin,” she said. Whew! As far as I’m concerned, when you’re 92 you can eat whatever sugary things your heart desires. When I gave Mom her Hostess Birthday Cupcakes, I decked one out with candles. I explained to Mom that I thought it wise to not attempt to put 92 candles on it, so I just went with the 2 candles—plus the one orange Bow Tie o’ the Day candle at the very front of it. I love Mom’s photo here. Still clutching her birthday pillow, she’s giving the thumbs up. I chose her birthday tiara to sort of match with the purple housecoat I guessed she’d be wearing. And yes, Mom managed to easily blow out all of her candles. We had the best time together yesterday. I love Mom so very much. I can’t wait until next year—when Mom turns 28. 🎂 🎈
The grocery bag Mom is checking out is the stash o’ candy we gave her.Mom and her purple housecoat, earrings, and snowman pin. Again.Suzanne and Mom talked about something serious which they wouldn’t tell me about, so I know they must have been talking about me. I don’t yet know if I’m in trouble with either and/or both of them.
With all due respect to the recently departed Queen Elizabeth, Queen Helen is NOT dead. We made a jaunt down the road to visit with Mom, and she is as alive as can be. In fact, she’s unstoppable. At some point in our lively conversation Mom mentioned she’s “quite content” to spend time in her room. She says she doesn’t “jingle” like she used to. She quickly corrected her mistake, saying she meant to say “mingle.” Then she went off on a rift about how she’s had a good, long life and she has—in her words—”jingled, jangled, and mingled all over the place.” She kept repeating that she had jingled, jangled, and mingled. I said, “Gee, Mother, you make it sound like you were a stripper!” To which she replied, “And your dad loved it!” Talk about wearing your feelings on the sleeve of your purple housecoat! That’s how Queen Helen rolls.
Mom assured us she’s not ready to die just yet, because she knows exactly where she’s going to go when she does: to Hell, of course, according to no one but her. We told her not to worry because we and Skitter will be there, too, so that works out okay. That got us all talking about sitting around and making s’mores over the fires of Hell, and Mom was all for that. Suzanne reminded us that Hell can be hot, but it can also be “as cold as Hell.” Suzanne said this is a good thing, because we can make those s’mores when we’re in the hot part, and we can eat ice cream when we’re in the cold part. Either way, I’m positive it’ll be nothing less than tasty as Hell. 🔥 🍫 ❄️ 🍦
Flip-flops Bow Tie o’ the Day has convinced me to come clean about something I have done for decades. I admit it. I did it. A lot. I confess: I have hit my mother almost every summer, more times than I can count. I have hit her with The Chronicle, The Salt Lake Tribune, and my notebook. I have hit her with a flip-flop, a dish towel, and a fly swatter. In fact, I have hit her mainly with fly swatters. To be fair, I have only hit her at her own request—whenever she’s said something along these lines: “Sis, there’s a fly on me and I can’t reach it. Hit it! Hurry!”Mom cannot abide a fly anywhere, especially on her.
At first, I couldn’t swat the fly on Mom hard enough to kill it because I worried I’d hurt her. It is antithetical to everything I am to raise a hand—or fly swatter—to Mom for any reason whatsoever, but when the gentleness of my swatting merely urged the fly to go somewhere else, Mom fussed at me bigly for being tentative and not annihilating the offending fly dead, dead, dead when I had the chance. She gave an order: “If there’s a fly on me, hit me as hard as you need to, but kill that fly!”
I must tell you I have never seen anyone enjoy seeing a dead fly as much as Mom. She relishes it. Seeing a squashed fly with its guts dangling from the head of the fly swatter has always reduced Mom to a primal glee I can barely describe, no matter who killed it. More than once, I have observed Mom so elated about killing an annoying stalker fly in the house that I thought she was going to drive up to Curley’s and dance on the bar in celebration. If I could have, I would have had the head of every fly she ever so happily obliterated mounted and hung on the wall in the family room right by where Dad’s moose, elk, antelope, and deer heads hung in all their taxidermy glory.
And so, over the years of purposely hitting my mother with any available swatting devices, I became a pro at swatting any fly who dared light on Mom—all the way to their flattened deaths, while doing as little damage to Mom as possible. It’s all in the wrist, as they say. I hit Mom for so many summers that I believe it qualifies as a full-fledged family tradition. I hate flies landing on me, too, so I plan to hand down this semi-violent-but-necessary summer tradition. Thus, I will pass down my cherished quiver o’ fly swatters to the next generation—along with the order to kill dead, dead, dead any fly dumb enough to land on me. Mom will be so proud to know the family tradition will live on past us both.
FYI You can never have enough fly swatters. When you see one, buy one. They are like reading glasses. You use both of these items for a few minutes at a time, then you lay them down when you’re done, and then you forget where you last had them. I say, cut to the chase: make sure you have a fly swatter and a pair of reading glasses in every room of the house. It’ll be incredibly useful for weeks or months. Eventually, you won’t be able to find any of the reading glasses or fly swatters in any room, yet again. You’ll lose them all. When it gets to that point, it is a sign it’s time once again for you to clean and organize your house. Some people do “spring cleaning.” I do “reading glasses and fly swatter” cleaning.
When I was a wee sprite, Mom rarely commandeered the living room television. Before cable, satellite, streaming, and even VCR’s, we had a grand total of 5 channels in Utah from which to chose what to watch: ABC, NBC, CBS, KBYU, and KUER. That was it. Televisions were pricey back then, so most families I knew only owned one, and we were no different. Eventually, Mom and Dad got a color TV (with remote!) in their bedroom, and I got a clunky and tiny black-and-white TV set (remote-less) in my bedroom.
In the evenings of my single-TV childhood, Dad was kind of the unofficial boss of what the family watched, although he generally let whoever had a strong preference for a certain show watch whatever they wanted. I guess you could say Dad let anybody who was at home figure out what we were going to watch between ourselves, and he went along with it. He did exercise ultimate veto power whenever he felt it necessary to our benefit or for his own viewing sanity. When it was down to just me, Mom, and Dad left in the house, I fully admit I pretty much chose our nightly living room TV schedule. Dad and Mom both seemed fine with my choices, mostly. However, I give Dad props for enduring hours of TV shows he would rather have missed. When faced with a program like The Smothers’ Brothers Comedy Hour, Laugh-in, Chico And The Man, or The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour, Dad sat in his chair, silently gritting his dentures, and reading The Salt Lake Tribune, his hunting magazines, the encyclopedia, and volumes of Popular Science. He read harder when I chose to watch shows like Mod Squad, One Day At A Time, All In the Family, Charlie’s Angels, Hill Street Blues, Police Woman, Facts of Life, and Columbo. He read extra hard when I wanted to watch artistic PBS offerings on KBYU or KUER—like Masterpiece Theater, classical music concerts from Carnegie Hall, and ballet and plays from Lincoln Center. Eventually, I took pity on Dad and decided arts programming was too problematic for him to watch, so I regularly retreated to the tiny, remote-less, black-and-white TV in my bedroom for the majority of my bigly art-viewing choices.
It was universally understood in our house—like the Law of Gravity—that the unalterable living room television default for Sunday day viewing was NFL football or NBA basketball, depending on the season. LDS General Conference weekends were the exception to the NFL/NBA rule. Likewise, the living room TV was always tuned to the national news (usually Walter Cronkite) at 5 PM, and the local news at 6 and 10 PM, every day. No exceptions. Other than that, what we watched was a mostly civil whoever-calls-it-first matter.
Mom liked to watch Hawaii Five-O, Barnaby Jones, and a show called Petrocelli, which was a remarkable TV show on NBC that didn’t make it past its first season. Mom rarely had a programming preference—except when it came to a handful of occasionally shown movies. When any one of these movies was going to be broadcast (usually on KUER), Mom was adamant about watching it on the bigly living room TV, no matter what else anybody might have wanted to watch. The list is small, but clearly I remember it well: A Summer Place, An Affair to Remember, any Doris Day/Rock Hudson film, The Days of Wine and Roses, I Want to Live, The Student Prince, and Picnic. I loved watching Mom sit down to completely immerse herself in watching these movies. I loved seeing how much she loved letting the cooking go, letting the dishes go, letting preparing her Sunday School lesson for the Sunbeams go. For these films, Mom stopped flitting around the house from one duty needing to be done to another duty needing to be done, if only for a brief while. For my part, I would secretly take the phone off the hook, so there could be no outside interruption to Mom’s state of movie grace. Throughout my life, I rarely saw Mom light somewhere and let it all go for a couple of hours. But for the duration of these only-occasionally-shown movies, Mom was enthralled and perfectly still.
It’s Picnic that prompted me to write this post. The events in Picnic take place on a Labor Day weekend. I have long had the Picnic DVD, and I have watched the movie on almost every Labor Day since I managed to find it. Suzanne is not impressed with the film, so she’s watched it with me only once. So I am usually an audience of one when I throw it into the DVD player—unless you count whatever dog(s) we have at the time. I like the movie, separate from how I associate the movie with indelible memories of watching it with Mom. Yes, William Holden is too old to be the character he’s playing, And the scene with the-train-racing-through-the-tunnel symbolism is a bad cliche. But the writing is otherwise generally strong. William Holden and Kim Novak give fine performances. I would dance to the song “Moonglow” at a Labor Day picnic with either one of them. The air sizzles when they dance to it. Above all else with this film, what will stand the test of time is Rosalind Russell’s performance as an aging-and-looking-for-love school teacher. Her acting is beyond fantastic. I mean—Russell’s acting in this flick approaches Meryl Streep realms at times. She makes her character a dynamic blend of spot-on smarts, biting humor, and devastatingly desperate and perpetual disappointment. The movie is hilarious and sad and and hopeful. With a small side order of cheesy.
Oh, I know none of y’all are ever going to sit down and stream Picnic, and most of you have likely never even heard of it before. But I watched my mom watch it a couple of times when I was in my kidhood, and that alone has sealed it as one of my all-time fave films. If you had ever watched Picnic with Mom, I have no doubt you’d feel exactly the same way I do about putting it on a movie pedestal. Every Labor Day when I watch it again, I feel like Mom is sitting right here beside me—content and still and entirely unconcerned with any world beyond the movie. She is purposely—but temporarily—not doing something for somebody else. She is relaxed in her soul, and the wrinkles fall away from her face. The wrinkles fall from both our faces, really. Mom and I are exactly how I always see us.
Folks, I forgot to wake up this morning. Technically, I got out of bed and went downstairs to the recliner, but I immediately fell asleep and slept for 3 more hours. I never do this sort of thing. And even when I finally did wake up, I can’t say that I felt like I was fully awake. A few minutes before 3 this afternoon, I suddenly felt like my eyes finally opened wide enough to qualify me as actually being awake. That was my good luck, because Judge Judy begins at 3 and I do not miss it. Perfect timing.
Check out this repeat from August 2018.
BEES GOTTA BE WHO THEY BE
Before Bow Tie o’ the Day and I can wreak havoc on Davis County today, we’re jumping in the car to go visit my regular doctor. You see—I am in dire need of re-upping my EpiPen supply. In all the hub-bub of selling the Delta house last year, I didn’t take time to get my yearly EpiPen prescription. My current injectors expired months ago.
The irony of my needing to carry EpiPens is that I am allergic to bee stings, which is not the best allergy to have when your father is a beekeeper and the bee warehouse is in your backyard. Bees around your house can make for some tense times. Oddly, my allergy didn’t kick in until I was 16. Getting stung was a somewhat regular occurrence in my childhood. I considered the bees my siblings, and sometimes we fought. It was really no big deal. I even worked in the warehouse sometimes and hung around with Dad in bee yards.
But the summer I was 16, I was wrangling some hollyhocks growing up against our house, and I got stung by a bee who was enjoying the ‘hocks. A couple of minutes later, I couldn’t stop sneezing. I decided to settle my sneezing by lying down on the couch with a cold rag on my forehead. I had a hard time catching my breath, and when Mom saw me she asked why I was turning blue. That’s when I connected how I was feeling to the bee sting. I hadn’t even considered a sting being the cause of how I felt because I’d been stung a thousand times before without any problems.
So off we went to the old Delta Hospital. I was not breathing well at all. My appendages were swelling up. My eyelids swelled up to the point I couldn’t open them. But I did get four shoes—sort of—out of my bee sting hospital visit. Apparently, when I got into the ER, the nurses needed to take off my shoes. When they couldn’t get my Nike’s off my swollen feet, they cut them off me. Thus, two shoes became four partial shoes. I’ve been armed with EpiPens, all of the time from that point onward.
I was officially excused from helping Dad in the warehouse or in bee yards ever again. And that was kinda sad.
Wow! The same camo Bow Tie o’ the Day, posted twice in one week. This old post is from August 2019. Good anecdotes—and bow ties— can always be repeated. Please read it with joy, as always. 🌵 👔 💻
SOUNDS CRAZY, I KNOW
Camo Bow Tie o’ the Day is one of my faves. Its size is referred to by Beau Ties Ltd. of Vermont as “butterfly jumbo.” Here, I am waiting in line at DICK’S Pharmacy. Of course, as a fashion maven, I know my cactus-print shirt needs to be ironed, especially down the front. Suzanne is as picky about ironing as Mom and Peggy always were. That’s one of the Top 10 reasons they’ve always liked Suzanne. Those three gals were born to be Wrinkle Whisperers. All Suzanne will see when she looks at this photo is the bigly wrinkle by the buttons. I didn’t iron my shirt, but on purpose.
Okay, so I’m in a minor snit at Suzanne today, and knowing how she feels about pressed shirts and ironing, I know this wrinkle biz will get under her skin mightily. It will bug her. That’s my goal. This is how I’m being passive-aggressive in a way that is tiny, but irritating enough to get her attention. She’ll know exactly what I’m up to when she sees this photo’s shirt needs pressing, then she’ll think about what she could have done which might possibly be upsetting me. She’s smart, so she’ll figure it out and fix the wrong. I will then notice she fixed the problem, and I’ll say, “Hey, will you please iron a couple of shirts for me?” That will signal to her that she’s forgiven, and all’s right with us. The whole routine saves us a squabble over some crumb of an issue that amounts to nothing, without either of us ever having to bring up the real topic.
Weird? Yes. It’s a kind of shorthand that lets us both save face. If you’ve been attached to someone for a long period of time, you know darn well you do similar dances with each other about certain things. The dance’s strange footwork is part of what helps you stay with your person long-term. You have to choreograph your own “happy family” groove. Sometimes you both have to just pipe down and dance a jig together no one else in the galaxy could possibly understand.
I had to zip over to the pharmacy to pick up my meds Saturday afternoon, and it just happened to be at the very same time a Noah’s Ark-style deluge of rain decided to drop from the sky right over my head. By the time I had made my way inside the store from the parking lot, I was soaked. Fortunately, I was wearing one of my water-resistant golf caps, so my gorgeous hairdo was not rained out. And of course I had to make the equally wet trek back to my car after I had purchased my meds. I seriously wanted to snap a selfie of me getting soaked as I dashed back to the safety of my vehicle, but I feared my phone would drown if I took it out of my pocket. As I drove home, I was reminded of Mom’s creativity when it came to devising ways to shield her weekly-done hair from any rain or snow she might encounter as she went through her busy days. Yes, she had rain bonnets, but they easily got left hither and yon—wherever she was when the rain stopped. I’ve lost umbrellas the same way in at least three states and the District of Columbia. So, after I got home Saturday and changed into dry clothes, I made a list of some of Helen Sr.’s bonnet-type choices. I marvel at Mom’s ingenuity.
Mom’s go-to when she had to leave the house in the rain, but couldn’t find a rain bonnet, was to shield her hair with a section of the newspaper. Of course, she thoughtfully selected a section Dad wouldn’t miss, like the classifieds or the Arts. I also saw her shield her hair with any one of his old Field & Stream magazines on occasion. Back in the olden days before cell phones, I once discovered the Delta phone book in Mom’s car. When I asked her why she needed a phone book in the car, she quickly told me she had used it a few days before to protect her freshly done hair from the rain when she had to rush from the house to the car to do an errand in a drizzle. But her efforts to hold a fortress around her hair in rainy times did not stop with reading material. No, I once saw Mom hold a basketball directly above her preciously coiffed hair as she scurried from the front door to her car as the clouds let forth a humble sprinkle. Her most creative and surprising choice of hairdo shield by far, however, has to be the time I saw her walking down the sidewalk in the rain carrying one of Dad’s pistol cases—pistol inside—over her impeccable hair. I’ve got to hand it to the old girl: that is heavy duty hairdo protection. Ain’t nobody dared mess with Mom’s salon-done hair. In her words, “It has to last until Church.”
BTW Bow Tie o’ the Day is one of my duct tape creations. I admit I have the duct tape bin open this morning. No good can come of that. 🤡
