Crumbs From the Corner: Adventures in Woolgathering

Postcard Phyllis

2012-01-24T16:17:00.000-08:00

Spouse and I had come to our last day in Ireland.
It was after midnight and our flight was scheduled for early morning. Most inconveniently, it struck me all of a sudden that I needed a postcard, post-haste.
"What sort of a postcard?" Mike wanted to know as he rooted through drawers and flicked through some of his books in hopes of finding a tucked-away card that would suit.
"Anything," I declared, "but it has to be blank so I can write on it and send it. Otherwise it doesn't matter. One of an Irish landscape, if it's at all possible."
"I do believe I've got one hidden somewhere, but now I think of it, you probably wouldn't like it for sending to anyone."
"I'll take it."
"I don't know." The rummaging halted. "It's only an old postcard of Phyllis Hunt McGowan, anyway."
I announced that I'd never heard of Phyllis Hunt McGowan, but would be most happy to accept the postcard if Mike could find it.
I saw her in my mind's eye:
Late fifties, short grey hair, tweed skirt, green wellington boots, fond of horses.
Stubborn; incorrigibly so.
She'd do superbly on a postcard, especially given the late notice.
Mike was curious. "You've never heard of who?"
"On the postcard. I don't know who she is. Is she famous, or something?"
I'd been living away from the old homestead for a whole decade, you see, so I thought that maybe in the interim, I'd missed something fashionable or oft talked about in Irish culture. I was certain she wasn't the Irish president, but other than that, she could have been anybody, really, and I'd have had no clue.
There was a puzzled glint in Mike's eye. He admitted to me that he didn't know what I was talking about in saying I hadn't heard of her.
She must be Somebody, then, I decided. I hoped she wasn't an old ancestor of mine, although I was sure I'd have heard of any family members that had made it onto a postcard.
It turned out, in the inevitable moment of enlightenment and explanation, that the hearty, solid, horsey Phyllis Hunt McGowan was resident only of my mind, and she'd never set a toe outside it until that night.
The postcard Mike had been thinking of was one of "fellas hunting cows," and I'd spectacularly misheard him.
Poor Phyllis. I had quite liked the idea of her, vivid and startling as I'd imagined her to be.
Still: when such invented characters have chanced to dip their proverbial toe once into the real world, they don't ever go back to where they came from- not entirely. Which is why the fellas hunting cows have all but been forgotten, and she's still horsing around waiting for me to thrust her, perhaps, into the depths of an equestrian mystery story.
I look forward to working with her.

Small Town in Maine

2012-01-10T13:01:00.000-08:00

Houlton, Maine. A town with a motto:
'Valuing the past, planning for the future.'
It doesn't roll, exactly,
off the tongue.

Houlton's byword is its moose, lumber, land.
The houses tilting with time.
Grammy's Country Inn.
There ought to be ballads sung

About Grammy's onion rings,
About the thundering river
They call Meduxnekeag-
Tough to pronounce when you're young.

Nothing comes easy up there.
Living's hard. Words don't roll.
The ladder splinters
When you reach for the next rung.

Nothing's for free. Except, one time, a trout-
A fellow's only catch that morning
And he gave the prize away,
A speckled parting gift wrung

From the waters of red-barn country.
Things knitted, too, things planted.
We made this for you. Always room in the house
For another. Good people among.

Red Jeans and Elbow Grease

2012-01-06T15:28:00.000-08:00

Years ago, many an unsuspecting youngster was sent down to the shops to procure a tin of Elbow Grease, only to find a knowing, smirky grin, and the shopkeeper's chuckling assurance that no such item was in existence.
Off home the child would then march, empty-handed, hands bunched into ready fists, boiling with rage at the adult who'd played such a trick, smarting equally from the shopkeeper's gloat.
Poor Mater: it happened to her the other day. Except that Elbow Grease wasn't the object; and besides that, the thing does, in fact, have a place in the world.
Red jeans.
It was all that Mater wanted. She'd seen a nice little advertisement showing some merry people clad in red jeans and, although she'd never seen such things before, she decided- why not red jeans? Why not.
Off she went, gliding into a store in town.
"What?" the youth gasped at her. "What did you say you were looking for?"
"Red jeans," echoed Mater.
"Never heard of them," announced the fellow. "They don't exist."
"But I saw-"
"No such things."
"There was an advertisement-"
"No."
"Maybe another store would have-"
"They don't exist."
He was emphatic about the item's lack of existence. The discussion didn't so much draw to a close as it was slammed shut with a cling and a clang and some suitable, rusty-key-turning sounds, punctuated by the assistant tossing the proverbial key down his gullet and swallowing it.
From the proverbial key dangled a key chain which bore a miniature portrait of some happy people bedecked in their red jeans, but he gulped it too hastily for a terrifically baffled Mater to point out and use as evidence in her quest.
To prevent the fellow from performing such flimsy half-jobs in the future, I'd make sure to send him on a long, long journey to the shops to get a tin of Elbow Grease.

Allow Me

2011-12-13T16:26:00.000-08:00

Last week, Mater and her chum N patronised a little, local eatery, and each scoffed a small mushroom quiche, chips, a half-stuffed egg, and a salad with red onion, tomato, corn and dressing. I'm not entirely sure what a half-stuffed egg consists of; perhaps the chef gave up in the middle and decided to fashion the salad instead.
In any case, Mater deemed it supremely delicious food when all was said and done, and she was happy to pay for her portion and N's along with it.
"No," said N with emphasis; "I'm paying."
"I'm paying," said Mater, "and that's an end to it."
"Let me pay," N waved a fork-laden hand. "It was my idea to come here."
"And I agreed," Mater added, laying a defensive, ready hand on her own utensil, "so I should pay for us."
To save time, we can jaunt merrily along to the end of that line of chatter, because it was rather lengthy: the sun set, the cafe emptied of diners, the staff began to stack chairs on top of chairs and tables on top of lampshades, or near enough to it, I'd wager.
The pair did at last reach the happy compromise that Mater could pay- this once.
The winner fist-pumped the air. N sighed an ever so slight soliloquy.
Off they trotted, up the street into the cool of the December evening.
After a spell, N, inwardly sensing that something was afoot, abruptly stopped walking.
"You did-" She turned to Mater with a deepening frown. "You did pay, didn't you? After all that?"
After a gasp of horror, Mater was gone, beating a path back to the cafe, leaving behind her a cloud of dust so thick that N, whose house was a mere few doors down the street, was unable to get her bearings.
She's ensconced in that cloud still, as far as anybody knows, but the hearty quiche and half-stuffed egg should sustain her until the rescue party come out to look for her.
Winning the argument is not enough: the victor really ought to do something with the prize.

Happy Sixty-Two-Pence Birthdays To Tom Waits And My Mother

2011-12-07T14:38:00.000-08:00

Talk about coining a phrase.
Near her birthday
My mother muttered
'I'm almost sixty-two-pence.'
Imagine it.
Almost sixty-two-pence.

Somebody should mint a coin in honour,
A sixty-two-pence birthday coin
With my mother's laughing head on one side,
Tom Waits, hours older, on piano on the other:
I'd like such a coin.
Heads I win. Tails I win.

Boy Dandy: Birthday Poem For Mater

2011-12-07T10:50:00.000-08:00

She says I'm her Boy Dandy.
She lets me lick her head.
It took months of wide-eyed pleading,
But now we share the bed.

She's got her grievances with me,
She lists them almost nightly;
I only take her slipper
To keep her fit and sprightly.

She races after me with
One foot slippered, one foot not.
I hide the shoe in some dark place
that Time, and I, forgot.

My beard's too long and shaggy
I suspect she wants to shave it.
Sometimes I don't eat dinner,
I bury it and save it.

I might tuck it underneath her coat
And nobody I'd tell
And nobody's the wiser
Until it starts to smell.

I'm partial to an orange
So I borrow some of hers
If she peels and pips it first for me;
We're both fruit connoisseurs.

She says I chew the blanket
In my sleep, but just a corner:
I've never seen me do it
So I could hardly warn her.

She understands my naughty streak
For she was once as young,
Like me she didn't always know
Just when to hold her tongue:

She has to hush me sometimes
When I think it's right to bark.
She was brazen as a girl, she tried
To read books after dark-

No, the candle wasn't quite the thing
To hide under the sheet
But I'll always find the positive:
I'll bet that hole was neat.

So perhaps I tear around the house
Like a tiny jet-fuelled rocket;
And it could be that I eat money,
And tissues from her pocket,

And maybe I chew the fireside logs
And eat the splinters- maybe.
But her heart remembers how she once
Ate hailstones as a baby:

She scooped them up and ate them whole
The way some folks eat jam,
Reached out a chubby girl-fist
When they landed in her pram.

She must have thought they tumbled
From the sky for her delight:
The difference between us, now you see,
Is minuscule and slight.

She forgives me all that I do wrong
And loves the rest.
Her birthday's coming so I've got
To try and look my best.

I've never seen her birthday,
This is one I cannot miss.
I'll bring to her my playful eye
And a great big wet-beard kiss.

She says I'm her Boy Dandy.
She knew me when we met.
It took almost sixty-two whole years
But at last, I am her pet.

24 Legs On My Ceiling

2011-12-01T16:18:00.000-08:00

This is a story about enormous spiders, medium-sized dogs and tiny flies; and it's a story about how what ought to have been a straightforward finale to an evening in the old homestead in Ireland turned into a veritable ten-ring circus.
Spouse and I were beginning to yawn in our chairs beside the fading embers of the fireplace.
Mike and Mater were far ahead of us and had been yawning for a good long while as the hour drew close to midnight.
Sibling K was nudging T and suggesting that they both should hit the road and get home before it got much darker, although, all things considered, it was at that peculiar time of night when it is so dark it can't possibly get any darker: but when Sibling K said it was time to go, well, it was time to go.
But not yet. I had a task for T before she could go home.
"T," I said, "I have a task for you."
T was interested, and inquired about the monthly salary.
"None," I said quickly, "but there are three spiders on the ceiling in the corner above my bed. They're black and they're hairy and I will not sleep a wink with them above me."
"Oh," said Mater with a visible shudder, "that's horrible. I hope they're gone by the time you go to bed. I know a few ways to get rid of them."
"Right-ho," said T. "Let me at them."
"Myself, I'd just plug in the vacuum cleaner and suck them up," said Mater, thoughtfully, to nobody in particular.
T murmured, "I wonder what names I'll give them? Tom, Dick and Harry, perhaps."
T, you must understand, gets along very well with spiders, and she was the perfect woman for such a job. In she went to the bedroom, and she jiggled the spiders about a bit until they tumbled down and into the sleeve of her thick winter coat.
"Lovely," I said, pushing her away very gently with one finger. "Thanks a million for doing that."
T thought she'd chat with me a while inside the bedroom, but I edged her out of there bit by bit. No sense in her dropping the trio of spiders out of her sleeve and onto the bed, after all.
Away she went after Sibling K, who was already packed up and ready to leave, and I made certain she didn't leave a trail.
Mike, Spouse and I stood at the gate and watched Sibling K and T off into the night, while Mater waved them off at the roadside.
Then a small fly, or a midge as some of us call them, went up my nose; it was a problem exacerbated by the fact that the winged fellow paused halfway, for goodness knows what reason, but he was neither up nor down, neither in nor out, and immeasurably annoying.
I could feel every twitchy movement. My agitation caused Dandy the dog to start barking, which promptly turned into howling, and while Mater was saying cheerio to her son, I ran into the bathroom and threw water on my face, attempting to get it up my nose.
I blew up, I blew down, but nothing seemed to work.
The determined midge fellow was still hopping in there.
"Help," I cried, "the midge won't come out."
Mike made suggestions, as did Spouse. Dandy barked.
In stamped Mater out of the frosty, moonlit night, and took one look at me, my hand to my face, unease and desperation my new expression.
"Look," sighed my dear mother, still thinking of spiders, wanting so much in her innocence to help me, and gliding to the cupboard before anyone could stop her, "I told you. I know the best way. I'll get the vacuum cleaner."
I made a hasty escape, and shortly thereafter I was bent double on the couch with my head buried in a cushion, tears streaming down my face, howling much like Dandy does- who, it must be said, jumped up beside me and licked my face furiously and with great concern for my well-being.
What with all the crying I did, in the end the midge left me for pastures less hysterical.
Over and above my wails I heard Mike explaining to a befuddled Mater that the issue was no longer one of spiders, but one of my having got a midget up my nose in the meantime, and that Mater had missed a significant portion of the story while she was out saying farewell to Sibling K and to T- and, one would presume, Tom, Dick and Harry along with them.
It was Spouse who calmly pointed out that Mike really ought to have mentioned that it was a midge, and not a midget, and off we all went again with new visions of midgets trapped in my nose, and it all culminated in my mother getting flustered and Dandy laughing at us through his teeth until Mater, wishing only to hush the barking dog, put a hand on Spouse's shoulder and commanded: "Sit! Sit! Good boy."
Oh, was that ever the wrong shoulder.
I stumbled to bed- mercifully a spider-free zone- before they could bring out the dancing sea lions or the juggling elephants or the performing midgets, and before Mater could even contemplate approaching my nose with a household appliance.

The Mulchmen Cometh

2011-11-27T14:08:00.000-08:00

Gnarly Tree Company was offering deliveries of free garden mulch, and Spouse and I were in need of mulch, so we filled in a form and requested a delivery, and we waited.
Weeks upon weeks later, we got an early morning phone call to say that the Gnarly men were in the neighbourhood and would be unloading mulch in our garden within the hour.
Lovely, we thought, jumping with unfettered glee; we'd have a decent amount of mulch with which to make our garden grow. I thought of lemons, Spouse of tomatoes.
It was a frosty morning, the first proper day of Winter, and we stood shivering in the gloom at the cusp of our property waiting for the GnarlMobile to appear.
Up the road it motored at last and we indicated with a stiff wave of frostbitten fingers and hands where the men ought to unload the bucket of mulch.
Now, it's a fact that some buckets tend to be bigger than others, but I'll come back to that in a bit.
I was more concerned with the fact that, of the two fellows who turned up, one of them was muttering and exclaiming wildly from the front of the truck. His protests seemed to be centered around the fact that he was unable to operate the machinery, the handbrake, the gears, the levers, the back doors, the buttons or any truck-related gadgetry whatsoever.
He was also, rather alarmingly, the driver.
Spouse and I inched back ever further from the truck while the driver made effort after effort to find the device to tip the mulch container so that the material would spill into our garden. When he found the correct lever, he could not, however, control the bucket sufficiently to propel the mulch out, and it all sat there damply while his assistant stood nearby and wondered what to do. Meanwhile, Spouse and I slowly froze with the chill.
At last the assistant fetched a shovel, clambered into the deepest crevices of the truck and began manually flinging the mulch out and onto the grass. It seemed to be working smoothly; he was a speedy enough fellow with a shovel, and good for him for realising that often, hands can do a job faster than a machine.
Curiously enough, the driver chose that moment of all moments to learn how to fully tip the back of the truck; and he did so, violently, sending much mulch- and the stunned assistant- tumbling heavily downwards.
The assistant, fingers and feet unable to find any sort of grip as the machinery drastically altered angles, found himself one with the mulch pile.
Unhurt, buried up to his waist in miscellaneous wood chippings, he laughed the matter off, albeit a tad hysterically. Spouse and I were thunderstruck, and didn't know at all where to look.
"Where should we look?" I whispered to Spouse, examining my shoes for lack of anything better.
"I don't know," he replied, squinting at a dried icicle leaf beside his own shoe. "But whatever you do, I suggest you do not look at the approximately three thousand gallons of mulch that they've just deposited in our back garden."
"I won't," I nodded. "I'll never look."
That was all weeks ago, and I still haven't.
We're sort of hoping it will just go away; that one morning we'll look out the window and we'll have our garden back; that the Mulchmen were nothing but a dream of the most surreal and chaotic kind.
If all else fails, and Mulch Mountain turns out to be the stuff of reality- well, on the off chance that it snows some day, we will become trained ski instructors and charge people a fortune to come in and use our slope for the afternoon, with the provision, of course, that they'd have to bring their own sleds and skis and whatnot, and with the handy advance warning that there may still be a Mulchman underneath it all, waiting to reach out a gnarly hand and grab their ankles, because, come to think of it, I don't exactly remember seeing him climb back into the truck. I just assumed.
Then again, don't mind me: I was probably out in the cold for too long.

Dancing '82

2011-11-21T13:42:00.000-08:00

It came back to me last evening: the first song I ever paid attention to.
I couldn't have been more than three when my brother put a towel on his head to denote the long locks of that particular eighties crooner.
More than the song, I remember my brother's giddy song-and-dance performance. In any case, I recalled it just yesterday, but it came in flickers.
Something about dancing; he wanted to dance; and something about a baby.
The melody was faint and slightly off-kilter, but it worked its way towards me. I was patient; it would arrive eventually. Memories such as those never entirely fade away, and it was in there, I was certain.
And then Bernie Nolan started to sing at me.
"I'm in the moooood for dancing," she veritably warbled, with a whole-body spin and a disco grin.
What on earth? "Get out of here," I hissed at her. "I'm trying to think of something."
One trouble was that now I could only think of The Nolan Sisters chirping "I'm In the Mood For Dancing."
The other trouble was that she didn't get out, and she instead got louder and louder and more insistent.
My fellow. I had to focus on my fellow. He wanted to dance. That was something to start with.
Wait just one moment, now: was that Ireland's very own Daniel O' Donnell jiving next to Bernie Nolan? It was, and he was straining to be louder than her.
"I just wanna dance with you," he swished.
Bernie's face was like thunder on account of the intrusion- I knew how she felt- but it made her only the louder.
"No, no," I pleaded with the pair of them. "Neither of you are what I was looking for. You're singing about dancing, but it's not the right one. Go away, please."
Daniel tossed his microphone back and forth from one hand to the other, hoping, I presumed, to win me over, but I was getting agitated.
"Hang on," shrieked Bernie, "is that Whitney Houston in the corner?"
We all looked, and sure enough, Whitney came skating into the room belting out "I Wanna Dance With Somebody."
To my surprise, she hushed for a moment, smirked at me.
"What was it you were looking for?"
I sighed, doubtful she could or would assist me.
"I was trying to think of a song I used to know. Something about... about... something beginning with D, anyway."
My voice trickled away. I knew I was beaten.
"Diva?" suggested Whitney.
"Donegal," offered Daniel. "My own homeland."
"She means Denise, the other Nolan sister," said Bernie, shaking her head at the pair of them. Donegal, indeed."
"Forget it," I said. "Forget the lot of you. You're mean and you're trying to trick me."
Then, lo and behold, there was my brother on the scene, younger than he'd been lately, complete with fluffy towel on his head.
He sang, then, and Bernie, Daniel and Whitney mercifully melted away. I slapped my forehead.
"I got it wrong," I moaned. "I could have spared myself the trouble of listening to those three."
My brother kept dancing.
"You could have," he nodded and bopped. "If you'd only known."
See, Eddy Grant, back in 1982, didn't actually want to dance at all. That was the whole point of his tune, that he simply didn't want to dance with his baby no more. Still, it's good I remembered it.
Isn't it?

Punchline

2011-11-18T09:44:00.001-08:00

Elbows on the table, leaning forward, I wanted to know why Spouse's nose was sore.
Oh, he said, he and his friend had shared a joke together. A particularly witty joke, he reflected with fondness.
But the nose? Where did the nose come into the tale?
He'd been drinking Japanese tea at the time, he explained, and at the precise moment of punchline, the tea changed trajectory at great speed and poured forth from his nose.
That makes sense, I said, nodding. It makes sense.
There was a long silence then, and what I imagined would have been a perfectly suitable opportunity for Spouse to repeat the scene, minus the Japanese tea; but, oddly enough, he did not take it.
Tell me, I said at length, what was so funny about it.
Spouse took another moment to chuckle absently, his eyes misting up, then snapped back to himself again.
Oh, he said, I can't. I'm sorry. It was all in Sanskrit. I wouldn't be able to translate it.
I'll just have to take his word for it that it was full of hilarity, but I can't quite recover from the enormity of the letdown and the absence of a punchline.
Sometimes, I suppose, there is no straight, clear line to explain a thing.
It just Is, that's all. But if we decide to go looking for it, we'd better not be drinking tea at the time.

The Madman of Munster

2011-11-10T08:09:00.000-08:00

I can see it now. He's probably already gone down in local folklore as the crazed, waving fellow of the most southwesterly point of Ireland, notorious for his wild gesticulations and random bits of commentary muttered from the confines of his battered motorcar.
Really, it only happened the one time, but we all know how passers-by can be: they witness a curious, utterly out of the ordinary occurrence, and the next thing that happens, they're whispering through their teeth that they saw him at it last week too, it's a regular thing with him. Never mind that Mike only passes quietly through the coastal village twice a year or so, and that Mater's motorcar is shiny without a bit of batter about it- Mater's a most judicious driver.
So there we were, Spouse and myself in the back squinting at crumpled road maps, and poor Mike in the front passenger seat while Mater dashed in to get a pint of milk or the like from the tiny shop. Mike was familiar enough with the history and landscape of the area, I suppose, to want to explain to us the landmarks and whatnot.
"Now, do you see those big jagged cliffs over there where I'm pointing... there's a strange, eerie legend about them."
"And right over There, now, that's where That Thing happened."
"Those clouds, aren't they grand? I should take a photograph. There we are. Yes, grand photo, that one."
"Oh, that's a nice view of the sea. Don't you two think so?"
I'm almost completely certain that we would have thought so, because I always enjoy a good view of the sea, but Spouse and myself had long since vacated the back seat and were helping Mater to examine the milk in the shop.
We didn't hear a scrap of what Mike told us, didn't observe his enthusiastic gestures or his finger pointing or, indeed, his look of astonishment when he noted, at long last, that we'd both slipped out of the car along with Mater and that he was, in fact, chattering away to an empty vehicle.
We didn't know he didn't know, but now he'll have a reputation and it's all our fault.
It might be good for local business, though.
"Now, do you see that corner there, by that old, windswept shop, yes, they say that's where the Madman of Munster materialises every October about lunchtime and mumbles away to himself before vanishing into the vague County Kerry mist. Nobody knows why he appears, but he's been showing up for centuries."

What Mater Saw

2010-02-23T18:21:00.000-08:00

Months ago I got a set of stickers that I thought might make a gift for a child. I wanted them this afternoon, and I hunted high and low; but the safe place in which I had put the stickers was extraordinarily safe, and I could not find them.
Given that logic and reasoning and looking in all the normal places had not worked, I decided to ask my mother.
"Do you," I asked, "know where the stickers are?"
Thousands of miles away, Mater hummed a bit, and thought a bit.
"Do you even know what stickers I'm searching for?"
"Shush," Mater said. "I'm looking."
"They are on a shelf," she said slowly.
"A shelf? What sort of a shelf?"
"A shelf with a lot of books," she said.
"We have a few hundred books. Be a trifle more specific, if you don't mind."
"I see a blue book."
"A blue book. Good, good. That helps to narrow it down."
"A blue children's book. Hardback. There you will find the stickers."
I thanked her, and scampered off to have a look see.
I tore out every blue, hardbacked children's book on the shelves. I did not find the stickers.
Sometimes mothers bluff, and sometimes we daughters know that they bluff, but in the meantime, it never does a bit of harm to double check, in case bluff and luck should cross paths and the stickers emerge from the depths of wherever they have been hidden.
In any case, I can always ask again tomorrow.

All a Big Game

2010-02-22T17:42:00.000-08:00

We were at the checkout with a small package of bagels and a gallon of drain-cleaning liquid.
The assistant turned to us with a happy grin.
"Looks like you guys are stocking up for the Big Game."
We possess next to no knowledge about sports. We were not even aware there was a Big Game, and we found out later that the event in question was a little something known as Superbowl Sunday.
Spouse and I glanced quickly at the bagels, and the cleaning fluid, and wondered what sort of stocking up he thought we might be doing.
Spouse nodded, simply, one must understand, to be polite.
We only knew this much about the Game: it was Big, and people ate bagels and cleaned their bathrooms in the midst of it. Our embarrassed silence, along with our inability to look him in the eyes, ought to have been a clue.
The fellow, unfortunately, did not take the hint offered to him, and he proceeded to delve into conversation with us about the mysterious Game.
"So, who are you rooting for this time?" And he named two teams, both of which I have since forgotten.
Spouse, not sure whether it was football or baseball or miniature golf or swimming being discussed, promptly concluded the chat by suggesting that it did not really matter who won, as long as great fun would be had while watching it.
The fellow behind the counter was, to say the least, a trifle stunned, until it dawned on him that we probably were making it up as we went along, and that he ought to let us hurry on our way with our bagels and our cleaning supplies.

Lace Shoes

2010-02-16T17:36:00.000-08:00

I volunteer in a lace museum. I handle lace. I catalogue lace. And nowadays, it seems, I dream about lace.
I dreamed I went into the museum as usual: I was wearing my everyday shoes- but in a peculiar twist, there were additional pieces of lace flapping over the toes. I believe they were glued on.
I asked the other ladies for their opinions. I expected compliments and awe, and that I, a relatively recent arrival to the museum, would be welcomed into the fold on account of my innovative style. A trendsetter. Somebody who could take lace in new directions; somebody who knew how to wear it.
As I glanced down at my feet, I was alarmed to notice how yellow and fragile and grubby the lace really was, and it appeared to be getting yellower and grubbier by the second. It was not attractive.
The others, understandably, were not impressed by my lace-shoes, not a bit. I was mortified and considered running home to change. It dawned on me that I had committed a dreadful error, using lace in a way that was thoroughly tactless.
Fortunately I had the luxury of waking from the scene, donning my regular shoes, and starting over without any remnants of embarrassment.
If only all mistakes, great and small, could be shaken off as easily.

Bna's Your Uncle

2010-02-11T16:41:00.000-08:00

My mother spent the week with family in an Irish-speaking part of the country, taking in some salt air and brisk winds and staggering cliff tops, and she was cut off from all modern elements.
No, not entirely isolated.
Her friend and neighbour sent a text message, in typically brief text message language, about the glorious weather back at the old homestead, with a remark about how 'even bna was out and about.'
Mater had no inkling of what bna might be, but a quick guess told her that the friend was incorporating Irish words because of Mater's proximity to the Irish-speaking folk. Despite the years in which my brother and I became educated in the ways of Irish grammar, none of it made an impression on Mater, and she emerged from our schooldays knowing only the words for milk and shopping, and an affectionate term for a fool- all of which she uses intermittently to this day.
Mater thought and thought. Bna. What might it be? It was out, whatever it was, because the weather was fine.
It might well be the moon.
She asked her young nephew, as he sat doing his homework, if bna meant the moon.
It was not the moon, he assured her, with a shake of his head.
Worse, he had never heard of a bna.
Mater was lost after that. Her grasp of the Irish language had reached its limits, and her main resource- the nephew- had turned up no answers.
She got another text message a while after the first, with a correction from the friend, whose only mistake was typing while tired.
She had not at all been throwing around Irish words- had not, in fact, made the connection between Mater's visit and the language of the region.
She meant to say Bob.
Bob, a neighbour who had not been out in a while, had gone for a walk because the weather was delightful.
That was all she wanted to say, but it sent Mater off looking for the moon.
There we have it. Bna's your uncle.

*'Bob's your uncle' is a catchphrase used commonly in Britain and Ireland to punctuate an explanation or instruction, usually meaning, 'there you go.'
"You take this road, and then take a left, then a right, and another left- and Bob's your uncle."

Going Out

2010-02-10T16:26:00.000-08:00

Mater told me there is a new priest in the village. I call it a village: it consists of a single street, a post office, a school, the church, and two grim, dimly lit, melancholy, dusty pubs.
No matter where one stands in the Street, one can see the doorstep of every house and institution.
It being such a speck of a place, Mater has met the priest once or twice. His presence has offered, so far, little to report.
A group of twenty or so ladies cleans and polishes the church regularly. Their hard work keeps it sparkling, and they were due for a Thank You, which usually, in the best case, means a bus trip to the sea, or, at worst, a fancy meal in a Big City.
The new priest, so Mater informed me, wanted to demonstrate his gratitude, and so he took them Out.
"Where's Out?" I was curious.
"You don't," said Mater, "want to know."
I said that I did want to know, truly. Mater asked me to suggest the one place in the world I could not guess.
I named two upscale restaurants in the nearby city that I used to work in. It turned out to be neither of those.
"A really, really cheap place," trilled Mater.
I lowered my expectations. A fast food restaurant, mayhap?
It was not a fast food restaurant.
"Cheese sandwiches on a river cruise?"
It was not that.
"Could it be his own house?" I was half-joking.
"Getting warmer," Mater said.
I was struck with a thunderbolt of a notion.
"No," I said.
"Yes," Mater said.
"Absolutely not!" I said.
"You got it," said Mater.
"Say that he's not taking them across the road to the pub. Please say that."
Mater was sorry, but she could not say that.
The pub to which they went Out carries not a lick of food, and not a note of music. Nothing ever stirs there, not even the light. What went through the fellow's head when he decided to take the ladies to the pub next door is anybody's guess. In all likelihood, they probably haunt the pub every Friday night anyway. In any case, they see the pub from the church windows while they are cleaning.
I just hope the poor ladies knew the venue when they got dressed and ready that evening.

The Squeaky Shoe

2010-02-09T16:06:00.000-08:00

My mother was given two copies of the same book for Christmas. She was in fortunate possession of the receipt, and decided to return one of the gifts and exchange it for something else.
Mater told me she would return to Easons' Bookstore as soon as possible. Asked for my supposedly apt suggestions about the Something Else, I told Mater the name of a novel I had particularly enjoyed. A little research told me there was a copy in Eason's; I passed the news to Mater, who set off to find the volume.
Mater made an early-bird trip to the city; the sky had a thunderous look about it, and everything, everywhere, was grey drizzle.
Into Eason's she went, the sole customer of the morning, and her rain-slick shoes gave the game away.
Squeak. Squeak. Squeak. Squeak. Squeak. Squeak.
Mater sloshed and squeaked across the shiny floor, to the customer service desk at the very back, to where two idle assistants were watching the approach with interest.
Squeak. Squeak. Squeak.
Mater reached the desk eventually, and wanted to know if they carried the title she was looking for. They did. And could she make an exchange? Of course. They just needed the receipt.
Mater rustled around in her handbag for a bit, hoping she had not faced the rainy day for nothing.
At last, the crumpled paper.
One of the assistants gently told Mater that she was terribly sorry, but the receipt was for the other chain bookstore in the city, a street or two away, and not for Eason's at all.
It turned out that, contrary to Mater's assumption, the book had come from the other store. There was no arguing with that.
Mater returned the receipt to her handbag, stuck the duplicate novel under her arm, glanced at the pair and said, with a wry grin, "I suppose I'll just have to squeak away then."
Squeak. Squeak. Squeak.
The assistants were most amused by the curious encounter- and Mater got her book in the end, after an amount of puddle-hopping.

Good Taste

2010-02-08T17:26:00.000-08:00

A friend gave us a boxed gift set of two mugs, a canister of loose tea, and a jar of marmalade. The mugs went right into the cupboard. The tea I sampled once and found strangely lacking.
It being English, strong, black tea reminiscent of the brand I drank all my life in Ireland, I expected to find it to my taste. Surprised, I shrugged, fished out my Irish teabags, scraped the new marmalade onto some crisp toast, and forgot all about the loose tea. Spouse and I grew to adore the marmalade, although it possessed less of an orange shade than usual, and, as Spouse said on more than one occasion, a subtle whiskey flavour lingered underneath.
The tea, anyhow, sat on the kitchen table for about a month, until this morning. I picked it up while I waited for my kettle to clatter to tell me that the water had boiled.
I was tempted to give the loose tea another chance. I might, I reasoned, not have been in the appropriate mood that day.
I wavered. The water bubbled and thundered inside the kettle, but, all of a sudden, I was unable to move. I was staring at the label underneath the can, making great efforts to decipher the numbers because, after all, they could not mean what they seemed to mean. The digits swam and swirled before my eyes.
It appeared that the tea had expired in November of 1999, in the decade before last. I had been a teenager; I was in high school. The list was infinite, and my mind was whirling.
No wonder, I said, no wonder I thoroughly disliked the taste.
I carried on making the breakfast. Though startled, I was not so flabbergasted that I had lost my appetite or anything untoward.
And yet. Something, some minor detail was lurking at the back of my mind, bothering me, but it was not until I was pouring the water that the truth wafted to me through the steam. The tea had not been alone in the gift box. There was the set of mugs. No problem there: I had not used them, and they were made of porcelain, hardly a prime candidate for expiration.
But then, oh, then, oh, then, there was the marmalade.
I went to the fridge like a streak of lightning.
My fingers closed around the marmalade jar, the all-too familiar container, now disturbingly half-empty, that we had been using for nigh-on two weeks, daily, slathered thick and brown on our toast.
I wanted to know, did not want to know, but I steeled my nerves and had a glimpse anyway.
There, in tiny, almost-smirking gold letters, was the worst of inscriptions.
I squeezed my eyes shut but all I saw, emblazoned cruelly inside my eyelids, was a number so dreadfully, awfully out of place that I shuddered:
1998.
Well, then, no wonder it had an undercurrent of whiskey to it; no wonder it was less than orange: the marmalade was more than twelve years old- and that was just to calculate by the expiration date. Goodness knows when it had been packed and set onto the supermarket shelf. If I were to hazard a guess, I was probably fifteen years old when the marmalade was actually made.
Being a discreet distance from fifteen, I put the jar right back into the fridge and slammed the door on it as though I had trapped a venomous snake in a cupboard.
It is in there yet. One must dispose of such elements with extreme caution. I called Spouse and confessed to him the truth, that we had been consuming marmalade older than a high-school student.
To tell the truth, the new knowledge came as a terrible pity- because for a while there, the marmalade was rather delicious.

Brother's Challenge

2010-01-26T17:24:00.000-08:00

Spouse was away, I was horribly alone, and our house, unfamiliar as it was back then, seemed vast. Lonely, I telephoned my mother, but she was stifling her yawns, about to turn in for the night. She passed me on to my brother. The sun was beginning to set on my side of the world.
"Why don't you," my brother said to me, as cheerily as though he were suggesting a fairground visit on a sunny afternoon with a crowd of friends, "rent a scary movie tonight?" He named one such frightener that he had lately seen.
"I don't know," I said. But I certainly did know, and I intended to avoid such calamities.
"Go on," he coaxed, aware of my tendency to be chilled at the slightest provocation.
"It's too late anyway," I retorted. "It's going to get dark soon, and of course I don't have a car. And, oh, too bad, I don't have a membership card for any of the videostores."
"Then take a bus, and get one," said my relentless sibling.
At exactly that point in time I ought to have brought up the fact that there were probably no more buses running, or that I had a supper to cook. Instead I said to him, to myself, "why not? I'll do it."
My brother was pleased to be victorious, and shortly thereafter I was riding a bus into town.
I felt awfully grown-up as I signed on the dotted line for my very own video club card, and brave as I selected my brother's film choice.
I was just in time: I caught the last bus home.
As I twisted the key in the front door I glanced up at the sky, with its shrinking shreds of precious sunlight, and I all of a sudden remembered that Spouse was not home. But I had a promise to keep; I cooked my supper and settled down to watch the spooky cinematic offering.
The usual cliches followed: the house creaked, shadows danced. And yet, I did what I set out to do- I sat through the entire film.
The desperate, midnight telephone call I made to a friend, half-way through- best forgotten, I think. Once she knew what my agenda was, she gently set me back on the track to completing the spine-tingling odyssey by refusing to indulge my dawdling any further.
Best forgotten, because after all, I did what my brother challenged me to do. Still, I wish he had chosen a jolly comedy.

By the Book

2010-01-25T16:41:00.000-08:00

On Sunday afternoon Spouse and I ventured down to the local library with the thought of getting an amount of exercise and fresh air.
"Look," I said as we drew near to the main door. "There's a huge book sale on today."
We found ourselves, in the blink of an eye later, standing in the middle of the sale; and there and then we decided we would, for the time being, be content to read about said exercise and fresh air between the well-thumbed, toast-crumbed pages of discarded books.
We purchased a paper bag for a few dollars; for that price we could fill it with books, we were told, to the very top- just as much as we could cram in there.
As it happened, we got in at precisely the right time; we found some delightful copies of books we already loved, and not five minutes later I snapped out of my reverie, looked around and thought something about the scene had altered. The books were no longer visible to me on account of all the people- and where was Spouse? He had been carried away on a wave of shoppers, still valiantly clutching the brown paper bag.
I waved at Spouse; immediately my elbow struck a stranger's ear. I squinted at the spine of a curious-looking book- but an arm dashed across my line of vision and the book vanished before I could read the second letter of the title- snatched up, it was, and spirited away into somebody's paper bag.
Glancing at the books was similar to watching cars pass by- one tries so hard to catch a glimpse of a face here and there, but the moment is too fleeting.
This book- gone before my eyes. That book- was it there at all? This book- dancing in mid-air before my eyes. That book- a strand of unfamiliar hair lashed at my eyes just then, so I never got to know more about it.
Spouse, when he was able to swim in my direction, gasped that we ought to leave them all to it. He had observed people scooping up books and jamming them furiously into bags without bothering to inspect the titles or ascertain the slightest interest in them.
And one fellow, Spouse claimed, was wandering around with a small device in his hand to scan barcodes with, to tell him the value of a book and, one would suppose, its usefulness.
On our way out the door, the assistant checked our receipt and stared with some surprise at our paper bag. It was less than half filled.
"You can put more!"
We shook our heads. We had enough gathered, and, despite our lack of a nifty, space-age gadget to tell us how precious the books were, we were thoroughly pleased with the afternoon's haul.

More Than a Stone's Throw Away

2010-01-22T17:38:00.000-08:00

Having extracted all that I could from my mother of local news, I turned this week to the old homestead newspaper.
I have been urging Mater, since shortly after I learned to read, to refrain from buying its dreadfulness. I happen to know she still procures it from time to time, but the transactions take place only when Mater is safely garbed in dark glasses and discreet, mute-coloured clothing, and that she makes her purchase at sunset when there are less likely to be witnesses.
Given the limited resources for local stories, however, I still could not stop myself from having a rummage on the internet for odds and ends from that particular institution.
"Did you know," I said to Mater, "that there were recent plans to sell the Stone?"
The Stone is a monument to my home city- historical and vital and immensely valuable, the latter of which becomes noteworthy at a time when cities are running out of funds.
"Never!"
"It's true. The local government supposedly considered selling it to a casino in an American city. Atlantic City, they say here."
Mater expressed surprise, much as I had done. Mater wanted to know where Atlantic City was, and I replied that it was on the East Coast. Atlantic City got several mentions throughout the article.
"Read on, MacDuff," said Mater.
Then I hit an obstacle, as I knew I would. I stumbled over the segment where one of the local politicians assured the people of the city that the sale was not going to happen, was nothing more than a nonsensical rumour- and the newspaper reiterated the point by stating firmly and for the general relief of all its dear, patient readers, that the Stone would not be sent off to Las Vegas.
"Wait a minute," said Mater. Mater has strolled, wide-eyed and beaming, around Las Vegas; has had merry times with loose change at slot machines in Las Vegas; has posed for photographs in Las Vegas, grinning, with an arm around wax replicas of her favourite celebrities: as a consequence, Mater knows where Las Vegas is.
"I know," I said. "I know."
There was a bit of a rustle and commotion from Mater's end just then- that was probably the moment she locked the headscarf, sunglasses and trench coat into a deep drawer, and melted the key in the roaring coal fire.
Stone Mad! runs the title of the article. I do believe it is the first thing those fellows ever printed that I am inclined to agree with.

Blind Sight

2010-01-21T16:22:00.000-08:00

I noticed the other day that the window blinds in one room have taken to waving about on their own. We have lived here for six months, and it never happened before that the slats of the blind turned this way and that as though a hand were swiping them or, at the very least, as though there must be a gentle gust somewhere. I searched, and Spouse searched, for an open window- for any reason to explain the all-of-a-sudden change; but not a hint of explanation was to be found.
It started mysteriously and out of nowhere, and I am inclined to suppose it will finish up that way.
In that room I make my conversations with Mater courtesy of the telephone. Our communication has been improved significantly in recent times by the addition of a camera that enables us to see each other in our respective telephone positions.
"Do you have a window open?"
Mater was squinting at the grainy, moving image, staring beyond my shoulder at the big window illuminated with faint strands of afternoon sunshine.
"It's not open."
It being January, I rarely, these days, open the windows for long.
"It looks like it's open."
I could not think what she meant by her insistence. I told her so.
"Well, the blinds are moving about. I thought you had the window open."
I ought to have known. This is the very same Mater who, after Spouse and I visited an open house with a view to buying it, and later forwarded her the details, including pictures, responded by remarking, "I see the children of the house drew all over the walls."
I doubt if any of the foot traffic in the open house took note of the scribbles; but Mater observed it in a digitised, poor-quality copy of a copy of a copied photograph.
Maybe Mater, along with her eagle eyesight, has some suggestions as to just why the blinds sway the way they do.

Cabin Fever

2010-01-20T16:43:00.000-08:00

I thought I glimpsed
a patch of blue,
a corner clear,
this afternoon-
but then it winked
and slid away.
I counted forty
shades of grey.

I fetch my hat-
the rain seems less!
-I'm at the door-
you'll never guess:
Not quite the Stop
I thought it was,
the rain was only
taking Pause.

Of Ghosts and Laundry

2010-01-19T16:31:00.000-08:00

Mater remarked today about the nightly notions that instilled fear into her as a child: the monsters that positively lurked under the bed; the shadows that trembled and flickered behind the curtain; the way that a nightgown slung casually on the edge of a wardrobe manifested as a grinning, waiting witch with shiny button eyes; the host of terrifying possibilities that hovered, always, at the corner of her young eye- all made infinitely worse as she tried to read her book by the pale glow of forbidden candlelight.
Now that she is a grown-up, the phantoms have evaporated, replaced by analysis of the next day's chores and plans. There is nothing quite like plotting the next round of laundry to deter invasive ghostly thoughts; it keeps one's mind busy, certainly, but also bores the ghosts senseless.
"Where did the monsters come from?" Mater threw the question at various family members.
"It all seems so ridiculous now, to think that I was so scared. Where did the monsters come from? I didn't even read scary books, or watch spooky films."
One member of the family suggested, reasonably, and by pointing to Mater's head, that the eerie figures and half-creatures had originated in her mind; and that the mystery also concluded there.
I offered my ideas to Mater on that particular subject.
"I wouldn't worry about where the monsters came from," I said.
"You wouldn't?" Mater said.
"I wouldn't," I said. "What I'm wondering-"
"Yes?"
"I'm wondering where the monsters went."
To judge by the heavy silence that followed, Mater might need to have that list of chores memorized for tonight.

Nobody's Moomoo

2010-01-18T17:27:00.000-08:00

For some time now Spouse has been drawn, bit by bit, into the bosom of a lively and exceedingly friendly group. The members- all of whom are basking in the twilight of their lives- frequently share their exploits with Spouse through the medium of e-mail. They deliver bright and cheerful photographs of their various outings together, motivational quotations one of them chanced upon that week, or a new delicious recipe. They sound, on the whole, like marvellous people who grasp every joyous moment in life.
It would all be perfectly fine- if Spouse were the fellow they meant to send it to. On account of a minor misspelling, Spouse receives the group's regular newsletter, with its merriment and its litany of gatherings and its pictures of grinning men and women who formed friendships a long time ago.
Rather than feel annoyed at the onslaught of such that he never asked for, Spouse wonders how to deliver the news that he is not actually one of them; how to tell the chums that somewhere out there, one of them is not getting his or her weekly portion of friendly notes and might, for all he knows, fail to turn up at the next fishing trip because they never heard about it.
While Spouse pondered his dilemma, I got a friendly e-mail, albeit a brief one, of my very own.
The sender started with affection- 'Hi Babe-' concluded with a flourish- 'Love, Moomoo-' and in between reflected on how much it would mean to hear my voice, insisting that the written word could never make up for such.
I was at first startled, then flattered, then I was obliged to accept the fact that I was nobody's Babe and nobody's Moomoo; and that, therefore, there had to be some mistake.
As it happened, my dilemma was of a different nature than Spouse's, the sender being a close personal friend of mine. How to rectify it? In drawing the matter to her prompt attention, I feared I would bring about some degree of embarrassment; and yet, if I kept hushed about it, it would not be long before she declared that the intended recipient had thoroughly ignored her ruminations, and after that not long at all before she discerned the note's actual destination.
I tried to make it simple yet cryptic: I sent the Moomoo note right back, with my own text at the top.
"I think," I wrote, "that you dialed a wrong number here."
I fervently hoped it would do the trick, and that we might say no more about it.
My friend soon wrote back with word that she was mighty glad to hear from me- but what did I mean about dialing a wrong number?
I returned the original Moomoo message again, this time highlighted in a green so otherworldly and luminous that one's attention could not help but be drawn to it.
It worked. My friend recovered herself quickly, glad to be told the truth.
I suggest that Spouse extricate himself in a similar fashion before they all become too attached to one another.
For certain, I am nobody's Moomoo; but it might, even now, be too late for Spouse.