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.
I thought it was only fitting to wear my cell design Bow Tie o’ the Day in a post about my DNA results which just came in from ancestry.com. I must say that I was disappointed to learn that ancestry.com no longer offers health testing, which can identify things like a person’s genetic tendency to have blood clots or heart problems. That’s the testing I was originally most interested in. I did the “traits” testing instead.
The DNA findings are mostly what I expected. I am definitely related to my family. Duh! I discovered I share more of my DNA with my brother, Ron, than I share with my sister, BT/Mercedes. The test says I have the sprinter gene, which I didn’t even know existed. Interestingly, I learned from the results that bright light is not likely to make me sneeze. My DNA also indicates that I probably notice a distinctive smell when I pee after eating asparagus. In fact, I do. I thought that happened to everyone, but it doesn’t. There—I learned something.
My DNA says I likely have no problem digesting dairy products, and I have a high sensitivity to sugar—both things I can verify by my experience. According to the test results, I likely have “wet” earwax, unattached earlobes, and three types of iris patterns: furrows, crypts, and rings. Yes, I have all those traits. The DNA did not say that I am the whitest white person on the face of the earth, as I was sure it would. There are, however, two traits I have that defy what my genetic code says is likely to be true for me. First, my genes say I likely have wavy hair, but I really have stubbornly straight hair that always came out straighter after I got a permanent. And second, my genetic code says I am likely to not have a unibrow. Oh, but I do. If it weren’t for my dedicated brow landscaping habits, you would see the wonders of my unibrow. And you would be appropriately askeered. Y’all are so lucky that I routinely wield a fancy pair o’ tweezers.
June is over, almost. On this final day of PRIDE Month, I must display my grandmother, Zola Wright’s colorful handiwork. She made this humongous rainbow afghan many decades ago. I like to think she made it just for me. I’m wearing her rainbow caftan, as well. The rainbow scrub cap and Bow Tie o’ the Day are my contribution, of course. Until next year, Merry PRIDE Month to y’all!
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.
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
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.
I hadn’t planned to write a post this morning because I didn’t think I would have time. You see, I had a virtual therapy appointment scheduled with my “crazy head” doctor, so I planned nothing for an early TIE O’ THE DAY. I donned a nuts-and-bolts-and-screws Bow Tie o’ the Day to symbolically scream to my doc that I have many screws loose, for which I must be treated. But when it got close to my scheduled appointment time, I got a text from my doctor asking if we could switch my appointment to 3:00 PM this afternoon.
Now, you know what time 3:00 PM on weekdays really is to me, right? It’s Judge Judy o’ clock! My world stops at Judy o’ clock. Skitter knows not to need anything at that time of day. I won’t answer the door or the phone. From 3-4 PM, I exist only in theory—not in the flesh. Judge Judy is my daily respite from mundane household tasks, the pessimism of the world, and the conspiracy theories of those who believe in something only if it’s a conspiracy theory.
So, where was I at Judy o’ clock today? In a Zoom therapy session with my “crazy head” doctor. I didn’t say “yes” to switching the appointment time because I’m in any kind of dire bipolar pothole and must be seen ASAP. I agreed to switch times for one simple fact: My parents taught me to help make things easier on folks, even in small ways. If switching the time of my appointment helps my doctor’s day work better—and it doesn’t do me any damage—I have an obligation to do it, whether I’m gleeful about it or not. And, believe me, I was not gleeful about it. But I can adapt. I can make concessions. I can get along. Judge Judy would be so proud of me.
This past weekend, my nephew, Jeff, tied the nuptial knot with the beauteous Sharida. If my aging memory is correct, the first time I met Sharida was exactly four years ago this week, when she and Jeff visited Mom in her hospital room at Utah Valley Hospital—where Mom was recovering from emergency hip replacement surgery. I was not at all surprised to see Jeff walk into Mom’s hospital room. He is Mom’s first grandchild, and he adamantly maintains he is her favorite grandchild. (Of course, each of Mom’s grandkids claims to be her favorite.) But the fact that Jeff brought Sharida to join us in the chaos of Mom’s High-flying, Broken Hip Trick Adventure spoke volumes to me about how Jeff and Sharida thought about each other. Sharida’s concern for Mom was all it took for her to win me over.
Anyhoo… Suzanne and I drove to Ogden for the wedding celebration, which was held on the rooftop at Ogden River Brewing—a place which did not yet exist when we lived in Ogden. It was a fine-and-funky venue for the event. I can verify that the Diet Coke was good. Suzanne can verify that the wine was of yummy vintage. Oh, and Suzanne liked the peach cobbler, too. My one sadness of the day is that I missed running into the Father of the Groom, my longtime bro-in-law, Kent. Fortunately, my sister, Mercedes/BT, sent me a photo of Kent being his cute self in his neckwear. I have included the snapshot here. Kent’s wearing a paisley tie, in honor of me and my love for paisles. I regret that Kent and I missed out on gawking, in person, at each other’s neckwear choices.
For my own Tie o’ the Day, I chose to don my “usual” wedding tie. It’s kissy and romantic. I haven’t worn it to every wedding get-together I’ve attended since I bought it in the late 80’s, but I’ve probably worn it to more than half of them.
It is sometimes tricky for me to dress for events like wedding celebrations. It’s not that I don’t have anything appropriate to wear. It’s that I”m…well,…me. I have too much to wear, and—if left to think of only of myself—it would be kinda easy for me to devise a way to wear all of it at once! But somebody else’s wedding reception is not my show. I don’t want to stand out from anybody’s event’s purpose in any way whatsoever. On the other hand, after all these years of expressing my fashion ingenious-ness, I do have a style reputation to uphold. People expect a little flash-and-chuckle from me, in terms of my attire—whether I’m at a funeral, or at church, or at an Elton John concert. If I’m not wearing some piece of clothing or an accessory that is—for lack of a better word—LOUD, people tend to worry that I’m not feeling well. I have to carefully calculate to find the style balance between being who I am and being part of a family/community gathering.
My style mission is further complicated by my Bigfoot-like/Loch Ness Monster-like way of attending bigly events. Ask anyone who has ever thrown a party I’ve been invited to: I’m there, and then I’m suddenly gone. Sometimes, the only way people are completely convinced I even attended a shindig is that they tend to remember seeing something weird or excessively cool about what I was wearing. Someone will ask, “Was Helen there?” Then someone else will say, “I think so, because I remember seeing chicken-print Sloggers shoes under a bathroom stall door.” And then, someone else will say, “I’m pretty sure she showed up, because I saw someone wearing a cape out on the patio.” They tabulate the eccentric evidence, and eventually come to the conclusion that I had, in fact, been wherever I was invited to be.
The Tie o’ the Day. I have worn it to decades of wedding celebrations.The beautiful people. My nephew, Jeff, and his bride, Sharida. They like each other. A lot.The wedding celebration was held on the roof at Ogden River Brewing.My soda pop Socks o’ the Day and my animal-print Sloggers o’ the Day.The Father of the Groom wore a paisley tie just for me. Thanks, Nuk.Suzanne enjoyed the view by the river and a tomato or two.And the sunset view to the east of the party was dreamy too.
This showed up on my Wayback Machine Photo Feed today. Here’s our baby-man Rowan, wearing a formal Bow Tie o’ the Day for his prom, in May of 2015. I cannot believe he will be 24 in August. I guarantee you that as well as Rowan filled out the tux-and-bow-tie at his prom back in the day of these photos, he would fill it out even better as the manly man he is now. He has definitely grown. I taught him how to sport neckwear, at least.
Somehow, Suzanne managed to wrangle a day off yesterday, so we drove to Delta-bama to visit our hero—Big Helen. Skitter was a sly mutt, cuz she gave Mom a bigly bag of candy, totally ignoring Mom’s glucose levels. Every time I looked in their direction, Skitter was handing Mom another Swedish Fish. I knew we would be in trouble the next time the nurses checked Mom’s sugar. And we were. The nurse told Mom there was an insulin shot coming her way. As we were leaving Millard Care and Rehab, we walked Mom to her lunch table—trying to hide her from any syringe-wielding nurses. But the staff at MCR doesn’t miss a thing. The nurse accosted Mom with a shot in the hall. All’s right with Mom’s blood sugar again. Hey, Mom’s 90. If she wants Swedish Fish, she’s getting Swedish Fish. Besides, it was Skitter who gave her the bag of candy anyway, so you can’t blame me.
BTW Here’s a factoid about Mom: Whenever a nurse prepares to test Mom’s blood, Mom ALWAYS gives them her middle finger to prick. It amuses the nurses, and it amuses Mom to sort of flip the bird at her situation. Everyone wins. I love Mom.
