Welcome to Been There, Done That
	I started my column "Been There, Done That" 11 years ago when I was a writer/editor for our local paper, The Clarion News. As a freelance writer, I continue to write my bi-weekly column, and below is the most recent and some of my favorites.

I need to be needed
	January 10, 2007 My girls moved out years ago and my stepsons don’t live with us, but I’m still the one they run to when faced with what I call “a crisis of essentials.”   My daughter Carlene was home a few weekends ago for a friend’s wedding. She was getting ready for the rehearsal dinner when she realized she forgot her razor. And she had a hole in her stockings. And the shoes she brought weren’t suited for her outfit. And she didn’t have a lighter jacket than her winter coat. And the batteries in her camera were losing power. Enter Mom – Averter of Crisis. I’m never without an extra razor or two, and the junk drawer is always stocked with assorted batteries. Carlene and I wear the same size stockings and shoes, and I had a sweater she could wear so she wouldn’t be bogged down by a heavy coat. When the boys visit and forget a toothbrush? Mom’s got an extra. Forget deodorant? Mom has both roll-on and stick. Need to ship a package? Mom’s got boxes and tubes and tape and a postal scale. Cold? There’s always plenty of jackets, mittens, boots, and hats. When my girls don’t have quite the right shirt or skirt, they know I probably do. Remember the game show “Let’s Make A Deal”? Sometimes Monty Hall would ask people from the audience if they had things like paper clips, egg timers, string, magnets, clothes pins – odd things like that – in their bags or purses. If they did, they’d get $50 or a chance to win a prize behind door number one, two or three. My purse is “Let’s Make a Deal” ready. I’ve got Band-Aids, a nail file, Tic Tacs, two kinds of gum, “member” cards from every major retail store, paper, pens, pencils, a $2 bill, lipstick, lip gloss, dental floss, hand lotion, a compact, comb, aspirin, Celebrex,  antacids, Kleenex, vitamins, postage stamps, and who knows what else hidden in the zippy pockets. The funny thing is that I’m not a pack rat. I don’t hang on to things that I won’t use within a reasonable amount of time. In fact, I’m prone to throwing things or giving things away and then realizing a short time later that I need them. I think it’s just years of practice that keep me in supply of useful things beyond the scope of normal. Why have one screwdriver when three or four in varying sizes have more potential uses? One curling iron is a good thing, but one half-inch iron, one one-inch iron, and a flat iron is  even better. If you have straight hair, I have shampoo for that. Curly hair? Yup. Got that, too. My pantry and refrigerator always have enough food for unexpected company or for days when I don’t feel like making the meal I’d planned. I hate running out of cooking spray so I always pick up an extra can at the grocery store. Same with dog treats, sweet potatoes, canned tomatoes, Mr. Clean Magic Erasers, and candles. They keep, they’re cheap, and I avoid a trip to the store when I need them the most. I like being the mom who thinks ahead, who anticipates what my children might need, even though they live away from home. After all, when your kids leave home, you still want them to need you in some capacity, right? I’m glad my daughter could wear my shiny black boots to the rehearsal dinner. I’m glad I had a razor she could use, and pantyhose to wear and a sweater. Having batteries on hand saved her a trip to the store, thus preventing her from being late to dinner. My kids take for granted that I’ll have extra stuff on hand, but they don’t live their lives expecting everyone will have extra stuff on hand for them. They’re quite independent. I’m just glad they know I’m still here for them, that they can still rely on old Mom for things they need when they come home. When they were all here for Christmas, I was prepared. I was sure there’d be something they forgot to pack or realized they needed. I stocked up on laundry soap, bought a Clorox pen and a lint brush, made sure I had gift wrap, tape and scissors for last-minute gift emergencies, and extra blankets and slippers in case it was cold. They all remembered their toothbrushes, but the blankets, slippers and laundry soap came in handy. I’m just like anyone else in this life: I need to be needed. And if having a few extra essentials around the house makes me indispensible to no one else than my kids, that still makes me one happy mom.

Remembering the layers of 2007
	December 27, 2007   2007 will go down in my personal history as one of the most complex years of my life. Not complex in a complicated sense, but complex in terms of the texture of the experiences. Some years are like angel food cake – light and fluffy with not much substance, but tasty nonetheless. Some years are like pound cake – dense and heavy with so much substance it’s hard to digest. This year was like a layer cake filled with a different flavor on each tier. Some layers were rich like chocolate, others light like marshmallows, and a few seemed to be made with rotten eggs and rancid butter. There weren’t many of those, but the ones I tasted left a lasting impression. My granddaughter’s birth is by far the most rich of all these layers. Warm and comforting, her life gives new meaning to my own. She’s infused in me a renewed joy of mothering that in recent years has faded due to my children growing up and making homes of their own. While new, being a grandmother feels familiar. It think it’s because by grandmothering Claire, I mother my daughter. I’ve missed that caretaking role, and I delight in every moment I’m with Claire. Friends old and new filled in several layers this year, thanks largely to the Internet. Some feared the Net would cause users to become isolated and less social, but I found the opposite to be true. Several childhood friends found me through the Internet this year and we’ve renewed our relationships through email. Through online support groups I have formed close ties to people who, like me, have lost a significant amount of weight. Just because I’ve not met some of them face-to-face does make them any less of friends or confidants. Communication is what sustains a friendship, and writing is a perfectly viable, if not sometimes preferred, conduit with which to communicate. Sometimes you meet someone for the first time and feel like you’ve known her all your life. I had the good fortune this year to meet two such people. Shari and Kristin are old souls: honest, compassionate, independent and funny as hell. How I got so lucky to meet two such remarkable women I can only attribute to grace. And it was grace that provided a humbling and wildly engaging trip back to my home state of Minnesota last summer. From the time spent with my daughter driving out there and back, to the time spent with my daughter’s grandmother, my cousin and his sons, my former choir director and my late husband’s second-grade teacher, an old flame turned dear friend, my maid of honor and her family, my parents and sisters and brothers and aunt and uncle and dozens of cousins (whew!), I am, four months later, still ruminating on all that was said and done. Memories like these are best savored over time. Some readers might recall I wrote about my experience at the train tracks in southwest Minnesota, the place my husband died 25 year ago. I’m skeptical of miracles, but there’s no other explanation for what transpired that day. As I realized that freight trains really don’t make noise until they’re right in front of you, I felt forgiveness at its purist, both for my husband and for myself. Again, grace.   Forgiveness was a theme that threaded its way through my year and was central to living through the most difficult layers of this cake-year metaphor. I learned you can’t make people care or see your point of view or take your side even when to do so is the right thing. I learned that sometimes standing up for what’s right can leave you standing on the outside looking in. And I learned forgiveness opens your mind a lot wider than enmity. This hardly puts me on the fast track to sainthood. It’s just easier to breathe and my heart beats a little slower when it’s not taxed with hostility. I put my trust in people I thought would make decisions with their hearts and consciences but instead relied on lawyers and money. The ensuing firestorm of rumors and botched management left several people hurt, including me. Rather than fight, I chose to forgive; my energy is better spent in peace than resentment. In that same vein, it was hard to learn that the inimitably historic store I owned in Nickleville was torn down by a man whose heart apparently couldn’t allow him to see the beauty of its architecture or the importance of its history to not only the landscape, but to the thousands of people for whom it held special significance. I was mad and I felt guilty. Mostly I felt helpless. Finally, I forgave him, and in doing so, I found that tearing something down doesn’t make it go away. No one can take away the life I knew in Nickleville, the lessons learned, the peace I found. My memories are safe from harm and they are forever.   Finally, there were the softer layers, those textures of everyday life in which we make decisions, both rote and deliberate, and live the routine of our days. They don’t stay in our memories the same way as the rich and the rancid layers, but they are the foundation of our lives and often the glue that holds us together during extreme highs and extreme lows. It was within these layers that I went blond, found a good chiropractor, and met Oprah. I made my goal weight and learned to manage my arthritis. I picked up some new writing gigs and bought a mini skirt. I became a vegetarian, went to a Nickelback concert, and walked a 5K in 38 minutes.   It was a complex year. Given all these textures and lessons learned, I’m ready to say goodbye to 2007. Not because it was too dense or complicated. I just need some time to absorb the flavors. I’m hoping 2008 is a little lighter, like a strawberry shortcake perhaps. Thank you, my dear readers, for your many kind words this year and for telling me your own stories as you are reminded of them through mine. Be thoughtful of one another and stay in touch. Happy new year.

A simple ‘Thank you’ will do
	December 13, 2007   I don’t pay much attention to grocery store receipts. They’re not like department store receipts that you need in case you have to return something. Who returns lettuce or canned peaches? When I’m at the grocery store, the cashier hands me my receipt, I smile, say “Thank you,” and stuff it into my purse. I forget about it until enough receipts accumulate and I can’t zip my purse shut, then I wad them all up in a ball and throw them in the trash. Grocery store receipts are supposed to be non entities, a “Who cares?” a “So what?” of the paper world. Then one day last week I bought mushrooms. That’s all, just a few mushrooms. Given the receipt that spewed out of the register, you’d think I bought out the store. My little $2 box of mushrooms rendered a receipt so long it could provide enough confetti for Times Square on New Year’s Eve. ‘What’s written on this receipt?’ I thought. ‘“War and Peace”?’ With all the exclamation marks it looked like an email from my 13-year-old niece: “You saved this much today! You could win a $1,000 shopping spree! Tell us about your shopping experience! Take our survey!” The store’s mission statement, which more or less commits to making my shopping experience akin to a trip to Disney World, was printed at the top along with the store’s address, phone number, and the manager’s name. Every possible piece of information about the store, except for the combination to the safe, was printed at the bottom. “Your cashier today was Brandee.” Made Brandee sound like a pilot or a tour guide. There was the store number, the checkout aisle number, a customer code number, the date and time (to the second), and how many total items I bought. And in case I’d forgotten, it told me I paid with cash and got $7.23 in change.  It also thanked me profusely for shopping there.   As I stood there reading this novel, I asked myself two questions: Why did I need to have all this information when I only bought a box of mushrooms? And how many tree limbs did it take to make that receipt? It was a waste of both my time and natural resources. When I was a kid and worked at my dad’s grocery store, I used a black metal 1940s adding machine to check out people’s groceries. It weighed a ton yet did nothing more than print and add numbers on a narrow piece of paper that rolled up through the back of the machine every time I punched in a price and pulled down the handle. Every soup can, every bar of soap, every package of pudding, dog food and noodles was marked in purple ink or with a little white sticker. No bar codes. No computer glitches. No need for a price check in aisle three. Produce had no product codes. I knew, as did everyone, that bananas were 10 cents a pound. When customers bought bananas and the scale said they weighed about a pound and a half, I knew to charge 15 cents. Push in the 1. Push in the 5. Pull down the handle. It wasn’t rocket science. A tax table was taped next to the cash drawer so when someone bought a box of Borax or a mouse trap, I’d look at the price stamp, find that amount on the tax table, and punch in the right amount of tax. And when the customer’s grocery cart was empty, all the grocery prices punched into the adding machine, all the groceries bagged in paper bags, and the bill was being paid, I counted change in my head. If the total was $26.34 and the customer handed me two twenties, I knew to give her back a penny, a nickel, a dime, two quarters, three ones and a ten. If someone had bought mushrooms at my dad’s store, the receipt would have been two lines long – the price and the total – and it would have used up about an inch of paper. No coupons, surveys or mission statements spewed out of the black metal adding machine. I also said “Thank you” and didn’t let a receipt do it for me. Paulie Frackman owned the hardware store next to our grocery store. Every day he’d come in and buy a plum. I can only imagine the look on Paulie’s face if I’d handed him a receipt, let alone an 18-inch-long piece of paper, every time he grabbed a plum and threw a dime on the counter. And if it said, “Your cashier today was Lynn,” he’d no doubt laugh and say, “So? You’re doing your job, girl. No need to advertise.” I realize it would take forever to get through a grocery store checkout lane if we went back to adding machines and scales and taped-to-the-counter tax tables. I don’t even expect cashiers to know the price of bananas or to count change in their heads. But grocery stores could save us all some time, and a few trees, too, if they simply delivered good customer service rather than promising it on the top of a receipt. There’s no need for endless drivel, coupons and promises of shopping ecstasy typed on a mile-long piece of paper when a simple “Thank you” will do.

My “Oprah” adventure
	November 29, 2007   Three weeks ago I was in Chicago for four days preparing to tape The Oprah Winfrey Show that aired yesterday. I have no idea how the final edit turned out since this column was due before the show aired, so I can only hope I didn’t look like a dork. I don’t remember much about the actual taping. I was too busy trying not to fall over in my boots or blink too much because my hair was poking me in my eyes.  What a week it was. My friend Shari and I flew to Chicago on Monday and a limo driver took us directly to Harpo Studios. I taped the voice-over for the before-photo montage that was shown before I walked out on stage. It was 30 minutes of “Tell us just how awful you felt when you were morbidly obese.” It left me sad and homesick. I started wondering why was I there in the first place. It seemed like a good idea when I wrote the letter to the Oprah show back in April. But Shari helped me sort out what was making me feel so stuck, and I woke up Tuesday feeling stronger. Tuesday afternoon I went to Macy’s with a few other guests where I met more Oprah producers and stylists. For four long hours, I tried on shirts and jeans and tights and boots and shoes and sweaters and bras and coats and heels and belts and dresses, all to find three outfits that senior producers could choose from. I had dinner plans at 5:45 with friends who live in Chicago and by 5 p.m. the producers had photographed me in my third outfit. Perfect timing. I put on my coat. I waved my goodbyes. Then a producer smiled sweetly and asked if I minded trying on a few more dresses. ‘So close,’ I thought. “No,” I told her, smiling back. “I don’t mind.” After all, this was not a vacation. If I wanted to be on Oprah, I had to do the work. I missed dinner with my friends, but I figured that’s why God invented room service. Wednesday, all 21 guests were brought to Harpo to learn which outfits we would be wearing on the show. Then we were taken in shifts to a salon for hairstyles, highlights and manicures. I rode in the limo with Nancy, the woman who’d lost 530 pounds, whose waist size used to be 108 inches. Nancy gets car sick, she told me, and I laughed and said, “Well, then you’ll understand if I fly through the window here between us and the driver if you do!” Nancy and I have emailed each other a few times since the show and something she wrote really defines the common thread among people who’ve lost a lot of weight: “Many times during the stay (in Chicago) I found myself stepping back into my ‘other life’ and remembering how it was to be inside. Feelings I had thought were buried deep or were dead in me; I hadn’t thought much about them in a long, long time. They re-emerged on this trip, stared me in the face, and I felt a weight (one I wasn’t fully aware was still on my shoulders) lifted and sent where monsters go when the sunlight creeps over the horizon. I felt fully alive and HERE TO STAY.” Amen, Nancy. We all slew a few of those monsters on this trip. I didn’t recognize myself after Dina and her crew were done styling my hair. Dina (who has two assistants, one of whom merely hands her combs) blew my hair straight and ran a flat iron through it. No one would ever guess I had curly hair. Back at the studio, the makeup artist airbrushed my face and put on so much eye liner I looked like a cadaver. I couldn’t get the mascara off my eyes before I went to bed and my eyeballs felt glued to the insides of my eyelids the next morning. Thursday, show day, was like a Salvador Dali painting. The entire day was just a few degrees off real. At Harpo, the producers were in full show mode. The Osmond family, all 124 of them, were in the studio taping their Oprah show while we were back stage getting ready. When they were done, they all spilled out to where we were, Osmonds young and old, and it was fun to watch them interact. They’re just as normal as the rest of us, only famous. We quickly ran through rehearsal wearing our street clothes, only I wore the suede boots the producers chose instead of my sneakers to get a feel for how they’d respond to the stage floor. Nothing screams redneck quite like the cropped sweatpants and t-shirt I was wearing with $200 boots. After I was dressed, one of the producers went over the script with me. She said, “Oprah might ask this question and so you might want to say this. But then, she might ask you something completely different and in that case you’re on your own.” Great. I could barely remember my name at that point, let alone the answer to a question I might get asked. I went back to the dressing area to hang out with some of the other guests. Shari had been taken to the green room along with a few other friends, trainers and significant others that had accompanied other guests. I talked to some of my weight-loss peers. We were all in a zone, trying to deal with the unknown. Soon it was time to line up in the hallway back stage. Hair and makeup people kept walking by, fussing with our faces and hair. Finally it was my time to get on my mark. They started my montage. I watched 10 seconds of it from the monitor behind stage, but I had to look away. I heard my voice talking about how I felt when I was 300 pounds and I saw the photos of me and I got sad and I knew I couldn’t take that person out on stage with me. I had to be positive. I looked away. The guys behind stage kept looking at the monitor and then at me, their faces skewed in disbelief. I wanted to say to them, “Yes. That was me. This is me. We’re the same person inside, just not on the outside.” Then I heard Oprah say something like, “Come on out, Lynn!” And so I did.  Here’s what I remember: I hugged Bob Greene. Then Oprah shook my hand and gave me a hug and when I looked in her eyes, I was calm. She has the most soulful, calming eyes. I knew that anything I said up on stage she would hear. I knew she was in the moment, not thinking about what she doing after the show. I was able to answer her questions as though I were talking to her at my dining room table. Before I knew it, the segment ended and the director led me to my seat in the front row. After the final interview, we were led to the stage for the last segment. Standing there, looking out at the audience, I felt empowered. I thought, ‘I’ve lost a lot of weight. I really worked hard for this moment.’ While I didn’t lose weight for that moment, I finally appreciated and understood what I’d done the last (nearly) three years.  My Oprah adventure continues to amaze me. I met many inspiring people and had so many interesting moments. They keep coming to me, flashing in my mind when I’m driving or cooking or working out. Was I really there? Did that really happen? Yes, it did, and I smile and shake my head when I remember. I was glad to get home and back to my life, but I’m not the same person who got on that plane for Chicago three weeks ago. I’m even stronger.

It Takes Awhile To Feel Like A Grandma
	November 15, 2007 Claire is a month old now and what an education she’s been for her old grammy. Being a grandmother isn’t anything like I thought it should be, and for awhile I worried I was doing it wrong. I loved Claire before I met her, when she was more a thought than flesh. But waiting for her to arrive was like standing at the arrival gate at the airport to greet a relative you’d never met before and hoped you’d recognize. The day she was born, I was tired and out of any semblance of a comfort zone. There was the middle-of-the-night phone call, middle-of-the-night bag packing, middle-of-the-night drive to the hospital, middle-of-the-night seeing my daughter hooked up to monitors – nothing felt real. As the night became day, I kept waiting to feel like a grandma. I expected to feel some distinct feeling that I’d inherently recognize as grandparent love and not just the simple common love I was feeling. But no fairy godmother sprinkled fairy dust on my head. No brick fell. No hammer. When Claire was born I was in awe that the little baby I’d known as a mere thought came out perfect with all her toes and fingers, big eyes and a little hair. I kept crying and saying, “Oh, she’s perfect!” I was overwhelmed by all the newness. So much emotion entered the room at once that it was like grabbing Jell-O to pick one feeling to experience fully. I saw Claire for awhile after she was born and again the next day. I went to stay with my daughter and her husband when they brought Claire home and I didn’t understand why I still didn’t feel like a grandma. What I felt instead was fear. I was afraid of taking over, of offering advice, of being in the way. I was afraid I’d love Claire too much. I was afraid she’d go away. I was afraid I’d fail. I made dinner and breakfast for the new family, kept my daughter company as she tackled nursing, walked the dog, fed the cats. I slept in my room with the door shut and was careful not to disturb my daughter and son-in-law as they roamed the halls at 2 a.m. I held Claire a few times, but she was so small and wiggly I thought sure I’d break her. I began questioning how I’d ever mothered my own daughters. I wasn’t afraid like this when they were born. My mother came to stay with me when I had my first daughter and she didn’t seem insecure or afraid. I went home at the end of the week tired and emotionally drained. Surrounded by familiar things and separated from the source of such overwhelming emotion, I was able to sort through the last nine months and especially the last week. I thought about love and how there are as many kinds of love as there are things and people to love. I love my dogs and I love my Jeep, but not in the same way. There’s love at first sight, obligatory love, and love that grows over time. I expected grandparent love to be like the love I have for my daughters, but it isn’t. It is a love that makes my gut ache and my head swim. I can’t take my eyes off of Claire when I hold her. I kiss her soft head and I want to cry. Heck, I cry just writing about her. She’s nothing I expected and yet everything I need. Last week I went to Chicago. Before I left, I stopped to see Claire to say goodbye. I changed her diaper and we had a little talk about how I was going to miss her but that I’d be back and we’d read “Horton Hears A Who.” I carried photos of Claire in my purse and didn’t give anyone I met a chance to say no when I asked if they wanted to see photos of my granddaughter. When I got home, I told Claire about my trip and she responded by kicking her feet and forming an O with her lips. “You’ll be smiling soon,” I told her. It took a 1-month old to show me how to experience love and not put it in a box and restrict it with preconceived notions. Grandma love is nothing like I thought it should be. It’s everything it’s meant to be.

The Adventure of the Flat Tire
	November 1, 2007   In the back of my Jeep is the blown out (and I mean BLOWN out) tire that used to be attached to the back on the driver’s side. I ran over some construction junk driving northbound on Route 28 out of Pittsburgh yesterday and ended up pulling over just before exit 14, stuck between New Kensington and Tarentum in rush hour traffic. I probably should have pulled over sooner, like when I smelled the burning rubber and thought every car passing me had a muffler problem. I had no idea it was all coming from my Jeep until some chick in a late model gold Chevy Impala stuck her head out her window and gave a very strange look to the back of my SUV. Well, that and the fact that I had the gas pedal to the floor and was losing power. I was a little slow on the uptake. I pulled over, cussed a little, and turned on the flashers. I was especially pissed since I was listening to the Jay Thomas Show on Sirius and laughing my ass off having a good time. Deep breath. My cell phone was fully charged, a rare thing for me, so I dug out my Triple A card and dialed the emergency number. “I have a flat tire,” I yelled through the phone to the nice lady who answered. The traffic was loud. I assumed since I could barely hear her, she could barely hear me. “Where are you, ma’am?” she asked. Good question. Shit. Where was I?  I was sitting in the passenger’s seat backwards, facing the oncoming traffic. I turned around and looked out the windshield and saw a big green highway sign that said “Lower Burrel Exit 14.” “I’m between exits 13 and 14,” I said. “You’re on a four-lane, right?” “Yes.” “I’ll make this a priority call and get someone out there right away.” Priority? I liked the sound of that, but crap. Was I in danger? Did drivers on this road typically crash into motorists stranded on the shoulder? I got a little nervous. I took comfort in her sing-songy reassuring voice, hung up, and thought about how to entertain myself for the next 30-60 minutes. Good thing I’d shopped at Trader Joe’s an hour earlier. After calling my husband and dragging him out of a boring meeting to tell him where I was, I popped the hatch, opened the cooler and dug out the salsa. In the back seat was the bag containing corn tortilla crackers. I popped the plastic on the salsa with a key and had me a little snack in the back seat as I waited for the Triple A truck. Cars sped past. Vrooom, vrooom…..I was bored and started counting them. I got to 20 and stopped. I was having a “short-attention-span” moment. It occurred to me that I’d logged nearly 3,000 miles in the Subaru without incident on my trip to Minnesota a few weeks ago. I go to Pittsburgh in my trusty Jeep and all hell breaks loose. I guess that’s better than breaking down on I-80 through south Chicago where cars and trucks take up six lanes of traffic and travel much faster than 55 mph. I put away the salsa and decided to make myself useful and free the spare tire. I took off the cover and unscrewed the bolt holding the tire to the inside of the hatch. It never occurred to me to change the tire on my own because I had no idea where the jack was (I’ve owned this vehicle for 10 years) and even if I did, I wasn’t interested in learning how to use it. That’s why I pay Triple A $50 a year. Let’s just say that it’s paid for itself more than once.   With the bolt off, I was free to move the tire off the large screw that held it in place. I tugged at it a bit, got mad because it didn’t move, and then pulled really hard, grunting and everything, until it loosened and the tire flew off and smacked me on the side of the head. “Smooth move, Haraldson,” I said out loud. That’s all I needed, to be passed out on the blacktop when the Triple A guy arrived. (For the record, I have a little bruise on my face and I had an annoying headache all the way home. Tires are heavy solid suckers, let me tell ya.) I went back to the passenger’s seat and thought about the tip. I always tip the Triple A people. I carry very little cash these days and I’d used my only 5 to buy ice for the cooler. I was left with three ones and eight quarters. I was embarrassed I didn’t have more, but short of giving the guy my debit card, there was little else I could do. I tucked the money in my pocket and stared out the back window again. “Do you need some help?” a voice asked to my left. I jumped and my heart leapt into my throat. A middle-aged balding man in a Tommy Hilfiger t-shirt was standing next to the Jeep. A thousand cars had driven past me and I never thought anyone would stop to help me. I know I wouldn’t have. “Are you from Triple A?” I asked him. “No. I just saw you had a flat and thought I’d stop to see if you needed help.” “Well, the Triple A guy should be here soon, but do you wanna see what I did to my tire?” I asked him, laughing. He smiled and followed me to the back tire and I showed him the big old hole and the rim resting on the blacktop. “When I run over something, I really run over it,” I said. He laughed. I told him I appreciated him stopping and said I’d thought a cop would have wandered over by now. He said they were all sitting in their cars where the southbound lanes turned to one lane due to the construction about a mile away in the other direction. Good point, I told him. He asked if I needed anything and I said no, I’d be fine. It was nice to have the company for a few minutes. Fifteen minutes later, a tow truck with flashing lights pulled up behind my Jeep and a nice looking fellow with a crew cut and a tattoo with the name Charlotte was emblazoned on his left arm got out and walked to my car, tire iron and jack in tow. He greeted me with a smile and I told him I was glad to see him. He just smiled and laid down on the ground, positioning the jack. He had on tight jeans, a blue t-shirt and brown work boots. I stood there in the grass looking around like an idiot, uncomfortable with doing nothing. He quietly changed the tire, took down the jack and smiled again at me. I took out my three ones and eight quarters and told him I wished it was more, but to take what I had and he said no, it wasn’t necessary. Keep it, he said. I got in my Jeep. I was shaking a bit. He got in his tow truck and waited until traffic was clear and waved me to merge ahead of him. He took good care of me. I liked that feeling. He turned off at exit 14 and I waved to him. My stomach was in a knot for the next 20 miles and I drove 55 in a 65. I had to trust my spare and process the events of the last hour. No worse for wear, I arrived home safe and sound an hour later. Don’t you just love flat-tire kinds of interruptions? Sure, they can make you mad at first, but flat tires offer you time away from your planned activities. It’s a chance to think on your feet and be a little primitive, be a little out of your comfort zone. Not a bad way, Zen speaking, to spend an hour.

It's A Claire!
	October 18, 2007 My new favorite person made a surprise appearance a week early. Claire Raelyn Conti was born at 12:02 p.m. on October 12. She weighs 6 pounds, 13 ounces, and is 18 inches long. I forgot to include her vital statistics in the group email I sent out from the hospital, and within minutes I heard from perturbed friends and family asking how I could have forgotten such crucial information. I guess I was too busy being ecstatic to think about it. Describing my feelings for my granddaughter is like describing quantum physics to a 2-year-old. Bear with me. I’ll make this column as cliché-free as I can. Claire has big wide eyes, and when she was born she looked around the room in a calm, knowing way. She cried only at first to satisfy the doctors and then continued her survey of the new and louder space she found herself in. Claire’s skin is porcelain pink and soft and flawless. Her face follows the voices of her parents. Her nose is a button and she has soft brown hair and long blond eyelashes. She has her mother’s earlobes and long narrow feet and her father’s mouth. When she cries she sounds like a kitten, and she’s not real fond of being naked. Claire’s last day in her mother’s belly was a family adventure, yet much different than last year’s family vacation to Niagara Falls. I got the call from Cassie at 12:30 a.m. that she was in the hospital and it was “baby time.” With only two hours of sleep, I was living on adrenaline as I drove to Pittsburgh in the rain and fog. I picked up my other daughter and we got to the hospital at 2:45. Cassie was hooked up to a monitor and pitocin drip (a drug that forces contractions) and her husband was by her side. Neither had slept since 6 a.m. the day before, but they were wide awake and a little nervous just below the surface. Cassie was having strong contractions, but she took them in stride, quietly breathing and shifting positions in her bed every three minutes. Nurses fussed every 20 to 30 minutes making it difficult to rest. Carlene and I shared the couch while Matt tried to sleep in the chair. We all drifted a little, but mostly we laid awake and quiet, listening to the baby’s heartbeat on the monitor. Back when I had babies, there was nothing called an epidural. I was skeptical when Cassie told me she was going to have an epidural when she was in labor. It felt like cheating. Childbirth hurts, but there’s a purpose to the pain. I feared that blocking the pain would slow the process or cheapen the experience. But this wasn’t my body or my labor and because I love my daughter, I accepted her decision. At 4:45 a.m., a nice lady in a white gown came in and asked Carlene and I to step out of the room for a few minutes. When we came back, that lady was officially Cassie’s best friend. The pain had ceased and Cassie was able to rest. While I am still skeptical about the common use of epidurals, I was relieved Cassie felt better. No matter how old they are, you never want to see your children in pain, despite the reason. Cassie was taken off pitocin and her labor continued on its own: 5 centimeters at 5 a.m., 7 centimeters at 8:45. Cassie, Matt and Carlene watched “Saved By The Bell” and laughed and talked like they were in Cassie’s living room on a Sunday afternoon watching a Steelers game. I wrote emails and played Solitaire on my computer. We figured at the rate Cassie was progressing we’d have delivery around 2 p.m. At 11:15, Carlene and I went to the cafeteria to get lunch for us and for Matt. When we returned a half hour later, Cassie’s birthing room door was wide open. Her doctor and nurse were moving quickly around the room and I heard someone say the word “pushing.” Pushing? Oh no! I’d waited nine months for this moment and I was going to miss it because I went to get a spinach salad? I threw down my tray on a table in the lounge across the hall and ran into Cassie’s room and to the head of her bed. Matt held her legs, the nurse instructed me to hold up her head while she pushed, and 10 minutes later, Claire was in the room. They were 10 of the most astonishing minutes of my life. I’ve tried, but I can’t write anything to describe it any better than to say nothing I’ve ever done – never, never, ever – compares to watching my granddaughter’s birth. I’ll remember it in perfect detail until I die or have no memory left, it is that strong. I don’t know what I like better: watching Claire move, sleep and make faces or watching my daughter watch Claire move, sleep and make faces. Just as I hate seeing Cassie in pain, I love seeing her happy. And the joy on her face when she looks at her daughter is the stuff of poetry, of paintings, of music. My new favorite person weighs less than seven pounds and yet she is larger than life. Right now I am typing with one hand and holding Claire in the other. Her fingers are in her mouth and her eyes are surveying the room. Soon we’ll read “Goodnight Moon” together and I’ll show her the star I picked out for us – a lovely bright star between Orion and the Big Dipper, visible in the early morning hours of the October sky. I thought I’d discovered the absolute outer edge of true love when my children were born. Then along came Claire.

Raised up in the ‘hood
	October 11, 2007   One summer day when I was 5 and I lived on W 111th Street in suburban Minneapolis, I sat with Tommy Becker on the grass next to our driveway and we waited for our new neighbors to move in. The Esaus had just moved out, taking their son Eric with them, and so Tommy was hoping another boy would move in. I was hoping for a girl. We sat there concentrated on the moving men hauling in furniture, watching for anything that indicated children were moving in and if so, their age and gender. The neighbors on the other side of my house, the Manns, had recently moved and a family with a very long Polish last name that started with a K and ended in “ski” had moved in. I missed the Manns, particularly the mom, Suzanne, who when I learned to talked I called “Sanna.” If my mother couldn’t find me, she knew I’d wandered into Sanna’s house to play with the family’s golden retrievers. I didn’t care that they were four times my size. My family owned a canary. The dogs were the closest thing I had to a real pet. When the K-skis moved in, my mom suspected the teenage son named Cliff was a no-good. The only thing I remember about Cliff was that he was skinny, had long hair, and usually didn’t wear a shirt, not unusual in 1968. My siblings and I weren’t allowed to trick or treat there, and eventually mom’s intuition about Cliff was justified. A drug dealer, Cliff eventually killed someone and went to jail, and I remember mom saying she felt bad for his mom because Mrs. K-ski was a nice lady. The Lumleys across the street lived in a house architecturally identical to ours, only they had a deck in the back and we had a family room. Bonnie was a year younger than me and we liked to play in the mud while wearing frilly dresses. Her little brother Brian once convinced my little brother Matthew to stick raisins up his nose, but they were 3 and found this amusing. Brian and my brother played dump trucks and rode trikes, and they always found time to sit on the front stoop with their blankets and silently “huck their hums.” Brian had a problem with fricatives. Next to Bonnie’s house lived the Cheneys. They had a sloped driveway that I liked to ride my bike down to gain momentum and speed down the street. One day as I took off like a bat out of hell down their driveway, I was almost hit by a car. I was scared to death, and so, too, was the driver given the look of shock on her face. I never told my parents. Forty years later and reading this, they know. Sorry about that, Mom and Dad. That wasn’t the only time I cheated death in that neighborhood. Three doors down on my side of the street, two houses from the K-skis’s, lived a boy named Tyler who was three years younger than me. His parents had an above-ground pool as well as an inflatable baby pool. During one of the neighborhood picnics, this one hosted at Bonnie’s house, I asked my mom if I could go swimming in Tyler’s pool with the other neighborhood kids. She said yes, thinking I’d swim in the baby pool, but I had grander plans. I wanted to get in the big pool with all my other friends. Problem was, I’d never had a swimming lesson. I tried to stay on the shallow end, but I was a little kid with little buoyancy and before I knew it my feet slipped further down the cement bottom and I was in over my head, floating under water and unable to breathe. I remember looking up and seeing a shimmery shape. An arm scooped me out and in seconds I was gasping and spitting water. Mr. Hord, a neighbor further down our street, had saved my life. Why he was there is still a mystery. He brought me to my mother at the picnic and was kind and nonchalant, like saving a child was something he did every day. Tommy and I sat waiting long after the movers finished unloading the moving van. Finally, an aqua blue Ford with six people inside pulled in the driveway. Out came a mom and a dad and two boys and two girls who looked to be around our age. They were the Christens and our lives would never be the same. Hub and Joyce and their kids Tonda, Todd, Teela and Troy quickly became staples in our neighborhood. Teela and I were inseparable. I was almost as happy to see Hub come home from work as I was my own father. He was, and still is, a wonderful father and one of the kindest people I’ve ever known. Our families have remained friends for 39 years, and we’ve seen each other through some very trying times. They were the only people other than my family to make it into my bedtime “God bless…” prayer. Now that’s friendship. I like to drive through that old neighborhood when I’m in town. The trees are taller, the houses seem smaller, and a few of the old neighbors still live there. It was a safe place to grow up, despite the drug dealer next door. Not until I moved to E 8th Avenue in Clarion had I felt that same connection to a neighborhood. There are a lot of children on our street. I’m sure a few of them have stuck raisins up their noses or sat in mud puddles with their dresses on. This world can be a scary place. I’m glad for the trust and security of a good neighborhood. I wish everyone could live safely and experience the kind of positive energy a kind neighborhood generates. Not to sound like an old Coke commercial, but the world would be in perfect harmony if it had more W 111th Streets and E 8th Avenues.

We all need a good blanket
	September 27, 2007 “Well, I’ve discovered a new truth. There are two classes of people in this world which are violently opposed to thumb-sucking. One of them is dentists and one of them is grandmothers. INTERFERING GRANDMOTHERS!” Linus Van Pelt, March 21, 1961, the first time he mentions his blanket-hating grandmother in the “Peanuts” cartoon strip. I wanted to play the piano like Schroeder, but didn’t have the gift; I looked like “the girl with the naturally curly hair,” but was never popular in school; Lucy had chutzpah I lacked; and Peppermint Patty always scared me a little. Linus is the “Peanuts” character I related to best. A middle child like me, he was thoughtful and daydreamed and best of all, he carried a blanket. My childhood blanket was white and soft and paper thin from use. It was the center of my night life. Always in my bed, waiting for me to crawl between the sheets, I’d roll it between the fingers of my left hand as I sucked my right thumb. I did this every night as my dad read me a bedtime story and even as I said my prayers. God knew what I was saying. So did my brother. It’s not easy carrying on a conversation with a thumb in your mouth, but we understood everything each other said. I stopped sucking my thumb in kindergarten (OK, maybe first grade, perhaps second), but my blanket remained my comfort, my surrogate mother. If there was a storm, I’d run to my parents’ room and crawl under their covers, doubly safe because I had them and my blanket. I envied Linus that he brought his blanket with him everywhere. Surely I’d have done the same thing if not for fear of ridicule. One day when I was 11 years old, I put my blanket in the laundry basket and it never made it back to my bed. My mom decided it was so frayed and full of holes it would never survive another washing and so she threw it away. Mom couldn’t know it at the time, but it was like she threw away my best friend. I was devastated, but I said nothing. I remember thinking this must be what it’s like to be a grown up. Grown ups didn’t need “blankies.” Only big babies needed blankies. I soldiered on and managed to sleep every night, but I missed my blanket terribly. While I slept with a dozen stuffed animals, none of them replaced the comfort of my tattered old blanket. That comfort returned when I graduated from high school and my friend Scott bought me a full-size throw with the image of a horse on either side. When I wrapped it around me the first time it was like my worn out white blanket had come back to life. I felt warm and secure, and while it hasn’t matched any of my bedroom decors since 1981, I’ve slept under it every night. When I was six months pregnant with my oldest daughter, I bought her a soft yellow blanket with silk trim at the JC Penney’s in Pipestone, Minnesota. I was shopping alone, not sure what I needed to buy, but I knew my baby needed a special blanket like the one I had. Twenty four years later, Carlene still sleeps with that blanket. It’s torn and tattered, been stitched back to life more times than she can remember, and there’s very little “soft” left on it. But it smells like her, feels like her, and it’s an inexplicable part of her life. It’s that surrogate mother. She’s had her blanket as long as she’s had me. I bought the same kind of blanket for my second daughter, only in green. Cassie’s is in better shape than Carlene’s, but not by much. Cassie’s blanket often doubled as a cape, a tent, a rug and a curtain. She played with her blanket, unlike Carlene who used hers mostly at night. Neither of them allowed me to pack their blankets in a suitcase when we went on vacation. Their blankets were travel companions, ready pillows or dividers, making sure one girl didn’t cross the “line” over to the other’s space. And whether they were watching Saturday morning cartoons or late-night movies, the girls were usually wrapped up in or clinging tightly to their blanket friends. The girls have other irreplaceable blankets, too; crocheted and knitted blankets made by their great-grandmothers for special occasions. They might have spit up on them or had a diaper leak, but I cleaned them and stored them, saving them for the day they had their own children. Now that Grandbaby is on the way, I dug out Carlene’s baptism blanket and Cassie’s birthday blanket the other day and they made me smile. Like smell, the sight and feel of a special blanket can invoke strong memories, the kind that are woven in the yarn.  My friend Val knows a thing or two about blankets. Not only is she the mother of 10 kids, she also hunts for soft, fun fabrics and makes the kind of blankets children never outgrow. Unlike Linus’s grandmother, I understand the whole blanket thing. Grandbaby can rest assured that I’m a blanket-loving grandmother. I ordered two blankets from Val to give to Grandbaby. One is yellow chenille and one is flannel made of gender-neutral colors because we don’t know if Grandbaby is a he or a she. My hope is that Grandbaby will, like his mother and aunt and Linus and me, understand the importance of a blanket companion. A good blanket provides comfort, inspiration, and, in the case of his mother, a very cool costume for superheroes. So you’re an adult now? Curl up with a soft blanket and just see how much better life feels.

Plains, Trains and Forgiveness
	September 13, 2007 The Great Plains stretch to the curve of the earth and meet the sky like the ocean. The wind stops nowhere and sound carries for miles with no barriers to trap it. Their vastness is daunting and powerful like a god. They make even the strongest person feel small standing in their fields of rocks and prairie grass or driving over their dirt roads, straight and never-ending. The smell of the Great Plains – manure and mown hay – welcomed me home a few weeks ago when I visited my small piece of the prairie: Jasper, Minnesota, population 599. I’d lived there as a kid, working in my dad’s grocery store until we moved to the city when I was 14. I missed it so much I moved back after I graduated from high school. That’s when I re-met Bruce, my junior high crush, five years my senior and clueless that I existed. I looked a lot different at age 17 than I did age 12 which is why in 1981, he finally noticed me. A year later, he married me. A year later, he was gone. On this trip home, I visited the railroad tracks where Bruce died. No one would know anyone died there. It’s just a ditch like any ditch anywhere. The intersection is a dirt road over a couple of tracks with a stop sign at the approach. This place of death was quiet as always – just a few cows mooing in the distance, a few birds chirping. It was foggy and misting. I parked six feet from the tracks and got out of my car. I heard a train whistle several miles north. The sound was faint, but the train was traveling in my direction, the same direction the train came when it hit Bruce’s tractor. I grabbed some raw cauliflower out of the veggie bag I’d packed and ate it as I walked over to the tracks. I took a few photos and let whatever I needed to feel be felt. It was mostly the same old same old – regret, sadness, anger; the same question to Bruce: How didn’t you hear that train coming? I felt cocky. I looked to the southeast. Our farm sat a half mile as the crow flies from the tracks. It looked the same. The creek bed in the pasture was low. The hog shed was quiet. The house was still white. I looked north and wondered if I should stay there and wait for the train. Did I want to recreate in my head the time a similar freight train sent Bruce’s tractor reeling, tossing his body through the cab’s windshield and into the ditch? Did I want to stand there and feel the engine’s wind and hear its roar? I walked back to my car, tossed the veggies back into the bag and my camera on to the dashboard and sat down in the driver’s seat. I left the door open and dangled my left leg over the gravel. I wrote a little to collect my thoughts and breathed deep to calm my stomach. Yes, I decided. I’d stay and wait for the train. A minute passed. I looked south and watched birds fly out of a field. I lowered my eyes to the writing paper in my lap. A second later I glanced to my right. I sucked in a breath. There it was, barreling toward me like the freight train it was, a massive orange engine pulling dozens of black cars. The whistle blew as it approached the intersection, but I didn’t hear it coming, its sound swallowed up by vast open space. I had barely a second to grab my camera and jump out of the car. The whistle screamed at me to stand back. The ground shook. My hair blew all around my face. And then as quickly as it came, the train was gone. Fifteen seconds. I could still see it to the south and yet the air was still and quiet, like nothing happened. Six weeks after Bruce died I had a dream. He and I were sitting on the couch in our living room and I asked him how he could die the way he did? How could he be killed by a train when he’d crossed those same tracks all his life? Bruce answered me calmly, as was his manner, “I didn’t hear it.” I shook my head. I couldn’t understand. “How do you not hear a freight train?” I asked him. He smiled and said, “I love you. I have to go now.” And I woke up. Twenty four years later, as I stood at his death place – a mostly quiet and sometimes frenetic intersection of land and steel – I finally understood what he tried to tell me in that dream. For 24 years I didn’t listen. I chose to believe Bruce was careless, and I carried around unnecessary anger and so much unforgiveness. But as I stood there frozen, mouth agape, watching that southbound Burlington Northern freight train that I didn’t hear fade quietly south, I felt Bruce’s kind presence. I heard his voice in the wind blowing across the acoustic starkness of the plains: “You know now that I didn’t leave you on purpose. I love you and I always will.” I didn’t cry. I only smiled and picked through my dumfounded thoughts. How had I gotten there? An hour before, my plan was to bypass the tracks, just leave Jasper without that visit. I guessed it was the spirit of the Great Plains calling me and I somehow knew to heed its call. It knew better than I what I needed from that place. Rest in peace, Bruce, in the infinite space of the plains. Like the dirt roads and the place where the prairie meets the sky, we are never-ending. Thank you for helping me  understand that no train can stop that.

Describing the indescribable
	August 16, 2007   Ever since I learned last March that First Grandbaby will arrive in October, experienced grandparents have tried to share with me what it feels like to be a grandparent, and they all say pretty much the same thing: it’s hard to explain. I suspect it’s like describing the color blue to someone who has never seen blue. We all see blue and feel blue and relate to blue differently, and those who haven’t seen blue can read elaborate descriptions and poetry and chemical analyses of blue, but until they experience blue themselves, they can do little more than shrug their shoulders and trust that blue is what everyone else says it is. I am beginning to understand these grandparents’ indescribable feelings, their lack for the right words, because here at the end of month seven of this nine-month chasm between zygote grandbaby and breathing grandbaby, I am caught up in a continual unfolding of new and unexpected feelings – some sweet, some frightening, some so deeply awe striking they take my breath away. Cassie and her husband don’t want to know the gender of Grandbaby, so I decided around month four that I wouldn’t spend five more months being politically correct by using the phrase “him or her” in conversation. I chose to use the pronoun “he” (even though “her” would be a very good thing, too) because this experience feels like a “he.” Nothing scientific in my reasoning. It’s just a feeling. I found out in March (during the infamous Applebee’s pregnancy test) that Grandbaby was formed and growing, but it wasn’t until May that I got up close and personal with him. Cassie invited me to an obstetrician appointment to hear Grandbaby’s heartbeat, so I went to Pittsburgh the day before to hang out with my daughter, have dinner and such. That night, the things grandparents tried to describe about the indescribable started to make sense. I was getting something out of the refrigerator (probably a glass of wine or a Hershey Kiss or both) when Cassie exclaimed, “Ooooo!” Her eyes were wide, and she laughed and put her hand on her lower right abdomen. “Baby kicked and I SAW it! Here, Mom, feel this!” I put my hand on the spot he’d kicked his mother, and I held my breath. A few seconds later - pop! Grandbaby landed a punch dead center on my palm. “Oh my God, he’s really real!” What an awe-filled space that is, feeling the life movements of a human being crawling around inside the very person who moved in me the same way 22 years ago. Not much astonishes me anymore, but Grandbaby rendered me speechless. My pathetic lack of vocabulary can still only describe that punch as “cool.” It got even better the next day when the doctor took out a Doppler and placed it on Cassie’s belly. Within seconds, Grandbaby’s heart whispered in the room, a soft pucker and unpucker, 149 beats per minute. There was a moment of static and then the heartbeat again. “Did you hear that?” asked the doctor. My daughter was propped up on her elbows, her face in a smile I’d never seen before. “Hear it? I FELT it!” she laughed. The static was the baby moving. You could have told me the world was ending and it wouldn’t have wiped the smile off my face. At that one moment, we were the universe. Me, my daughter, her baby – we were aligned like the earth and the moon and the sun during an eclipse. A fleeting perfect moment, strong and unforgettable, like the loudest cricket in a field or the reddest Cardinal at the feeder.    Perfect moments happen so that we can find comfort in their memory when the ordinary moments of life become difficult. Cassie broke her hip five years ago during Army basic training and her doctor told her she might have problems during pregnancy. While you always hope doctors talk in hyperbole, this one was dead on. Every night Cassie struggles to find a comfortable position in which to sleep. She told me this on the phone awhile ago, but I had the sad opportunity to watch her and listen to her deal with the pain a few weeks ago. I was staying at her house the night before her baby shower. I’d just washed my face and was walking to the guest room when I heard her crying softly. I walked to her bedroom and saw her hunched over on the side of her bed, her hair falling all around her face. Matt was softly rubbing her back. I sat down next to her and put my arm around her shoulder. I’ve seen my children hurt, but never had I felt so impotent and powerless. Not a kiss, a bandage, or all the money in the world could make the pain go away. And so we sat, and she cried, and the moment was what it was. She says Grandbaby is worth any amount of pain, and so I think about his whisper heartbeat, his kicking feet and punching fists, and I think of the time when he’ll rest on Cassie’s hip instead of stretching it from the inside. It’s a perfect moment waiting to happen.   In the anticipation of being a first-time grandparent, I’m trying hard to walk in that space between overbearing and never there. I think I’m doing a pretty good job so far, in my own humble judgment. I’ve tolerated my son-in-law’s grandmotherly nickname for me (which I won’t reveal because I know a few of you will torment me with it) and I didn’t camp out on their front steps to see the video of the ultrasound a few months ago. I was pretty sad, though, when I saw the photos from the ultrasound on their refrigerator and I didn’t recognize anything – no body parts, no anything. How could I not recognize my own grandchild? But it was like looking at a 3-D puzzle. Once Cassie pointed things out to me and I stood back a ways, shifted my eyes around, blurred them a little, then yes, I could make out a face, an eye, an arm. In two months, no less I hope, I’ll meet him face to face. My perfect moment grandbaby, the indescribable, the person I trust will prove to me that all the other grandparents are right.

The long and winding road
	August 2, 2007 I love rock concerts – the smells, the loud amps, the occasional naked person. But never in the 28 years I’ve been going to concerts have I experienced something like Clara. A few weeks ago, I met my friends Ann and Dana in Hershey for the Nickelback/Staind/Daughtry concert. We stayed at the Milton Motel, a clean little motor lodge on the east end of town, about three miles from Hershey Park. None of us wanted to drive to the concert, but there is no taxi service in Hershey, and Hershey’s only public transportation is a little trolley that rolls up and down the main drag lined with Hershey Kiss topped street lights, and it stopped well before the Milton. When we realized our predicament, Ann came up with a plan. Why not ask the motel owner if we could hire him to drive us to the concert venue and pick us up when it was done? Perfect! Count us in for twenty a piece, Dana and I told her. It would be well worth the not driving.    Ann discovered we weren’t the only people with transportation woes because the motel owner was prepared with the phone number of someone who transported people to concerts “all the time.” Her name was Clara and Clara drove a silver Hyundai Elantra. Excellent. Ann called Clara and arranged for her to pick us up at 5:45. This would give us plenty of time to get to the stadium, grab a beer and find our seats before Daughtry took the stage at 6:30. At 5:35 we walked down to the motel office and sat on a bench near the parking lot to wait for Clara. And we waited and waited and waited. Dana called Clara at 6:10. Clara apologized and said she was on her way back from taking other people from our motel to the concert and that she’d pick us up in five to seven minutes. Sure enough, a few minutes later, a little silver Hyundai pulled into the parking lot and the three of us piled in. There were empty wine bottles on the floor of the back seat and Clara explained that the people she dropped off before us had a “good time” on their way to the concert. Hmmm… Hershey Park was northwest of our motel, but instead of taking a right out of the parking lot to go toward the park, Clara took a left and drove east, assuring us that the way she had in mind was faster because traffic to the park was really (and she emphasized “really” several times) congested. Ann, Dana and I were delighted with our find – a local who knew the back roads. It felt like a little coup. We had one leg up on the other 30,000 concert goers. Suckers. After five minutes, however, we were still heading east and we saw signs for Allentown. Being polite 40-something women, we didn’t say anything. Clara kept assuring us that the traffic was horrible near the park and that this way was going to cut our time by 10 minutes. Finally, 10 minutes after we left the Milton, Clara took a left and drove north. And she drove and drove. We passed dairy farms and more diary farms and then Clara got a phone call from a couple staying at the Milton, honeymooners who needed a ride to the concert like we did and had booked a ride with Clara earlier in the day. Clara was confused. She didn’t remember three different parties calling her and needing rides. She looked at Ann riding in the front seat and asked who we were, like we were some rogue middle-age hitchhikers scamming rides off women driving Hyundais. Ann assured Clara that she had indeed talked to her around 2 p.m. and that Clara said she’d pick us up at 5:45. Clara didn’t remember. She rummaged through bits of paper scattered around the dashboard trying to find where she wrote down our transportation information. She was mumbling, blessing the people on the phone and thanking them for their forgiveness while at the same time navigating twisty turning roads through the backwoods of southeast Pennsylvania with Dana and I trying hard not to get sick in the back seat. Clara was frantic. So was I. I took out a deposit slip and wrote on the back of it, “I don’t want to die,” and handed it to Dana, who was as pale as me. Clara ended her conversation with the honeymooners saying, “God bless you for your forgiveness. Thank you for understanding. Yes, I’ll be there by 7:15. God bless you.” Clara fussed and rambled on about the mix-up and the traffic and finally Dana asked her how much longer it would be. Five, ten minutes? “Oh, about 15, 20,” said Clara. Yikes! We’d already been in the car 15 minutes. Then Clara started talking about the “view” she wanted to show us. What view? This wasn’t some Pennsylvania Dutch tour. What view was she talking about? The secret place in the woods she kept dead bodies? “You have to see this view,” she kept saying. Finally, after squeeling around one more nauseating curve, Clara announced, “Here’s the view!” The “view” was Hershey Park. “Look at the traffic!” Clara exclaimed. The “traffic” near the stop lights was moving smoothly and was “piled up” only three deep. We’d driven 20 miles out of our way to avoid traffic as bad as what you’ll find on 8th and Main in Clarion. We drove past the Red Robin restaurant where we had agreed she’d meet us at 11:45 to take us back to the motel, only Clara didn’t stop there. She instead took a right and started driving away from the park, saying she knew a way to a spot she could drop us off closer to the stadium. That’s when she saw the police. Clara announced she didn’t like police. That’s when I started thinking perhaps Clara didn’t have a valid driver’s license.   Clara kept driving and ended up back at the Red Robin where she finally pulled over along the road. Wisely, Ann paid Clara $20 for her services, even though Clara insisted we didn’t have to pay until we got back to the motel. Clara started driving again, even though Ann wasn’t completely out of the car. “Oh my God!” said Dana after we realized Ann’s toes were intact. “I thought we’d stepped into a Flannery O’Conner novel!” There was no way we were getting back in that Hyundai, so I spent the majority of Staind’s set booking a taxi from Harrisburg to pick us up after the concert. Three hours later we were riding in an SUV with a bona fide, license-carrying taxi driver who took us back to the Milton in less than 15 minutes, despite “traffic.” I still love rock concerts and the smells and the noise and the people watching, but there was a moment on the backroads outside Hershey when I thought that would be my last one. In retrospect, I suppose Clara was harmless, but if you’re ever in Hershey and need a ride somewhere, heed my advice: avoid women in silver Hyundai Elantras unless you like the “scenic” route.

A priceless makeover
	July 19, 2007 I sat on the front porch last week and listened to three kids on the corner peddle makeovers for 15 cents. Yes, you read that right: makeovers. Every time a car or pedestrian went by they’d yell out, “Makeovers! Fifteen cents!” I had a feeling their mothers gave them the almost-gone eye shadows and powders from the bottom of their makeup bags, the ones with just a tiny amount of product caked to the sides. Or perhaps they used all the freebies their moms got from Lancôme or Clinique – those outrageously colored blushes and lipsticks no one would ever wear, thus the reason they’re free. The whole thing was pretty funny, especially the reactions of people as they went by. A makeover booth is about as far removed from a lemonade stand as you get. This made me think about my 14-year-old stepson Kevin, who was visiting us at the time. He could use a makeover. He doesn’t care if his hair is combed or his teeth are brushed or his pants rest just over his ankles. As long as he has a Game Boy, iPod, and the TV remote control, the boy is happy. Wait, I forgot beef jerky. Beef jerky makes him happy, too. Kevin received a couple of gift cards for his birthday and so we took him shopping. We went to Best Buy first – Mecca for electronic game pilgrims. Fluidly, he picked out a game and a Weird Al CD and went through the check out. He’d have been perfectly content to go home at that point, but he had one more gift card to use, and this one made him nervous. Old Navy is a pretty laid back place to most people. Not Kevin. His hands were planted firmly in his pockets, his jaw set, as we walked through the doors. “What size do you wear?” I asked. He shrugged. “Iontknow,” he said, all one word, just like that. I made him turn around and I dug in the back of his jeans and pulled out the tag. Fourteen regular. Just as I suspected. He has a small bottom just like his dad. So off to the boys’ section we went. “What kind of shorts do you need?” I asked. “Iontknow,” he said. He looked around a little. “They’re kinda expensive,” he said a few seconds later. Bless his heart. “Kevin, when’s the last time you bought clothes?” I laughed. “That’s cheap. Trust me. Pick something out.” He spied a pair of khakis. But they had to go past his knees, he informed me, otherwise everyone at school would tease him for wearing “short shorts.” So I grabbed a pair of non-short shorts and asked him what kind of shirt he wanted. “Polo? Button-down?” I asked. “Iontknow.” I sighed and shot him my best “mom” look and amazingly he found a blue striped polo he liked. I grabbed one in what I figured was his size and we headed to the dressing room. “Do you need t-shirts?” I asked as we passed a sale table. “They’re only $3.25.” Again he shrugged. We got to the dressing room and he followed the attendant to a room. She said to let her know if he needed anything. He looked at her like she’d asked him to strip naked and lie on an ant hill. She smiled and closed the door. In the time it would take me to try on a dress, three pairs of pants and two strapless bras, he tried on a shirt. “Does it fit?” “Yeah.” Thank God. We might actually get out of here by dinner, I thought. “Do the shorts fit?” I asked five minutes later. “Um, no,” he grunted in his best voice-changed baritone. “Would you like me to get you a 12?” I offered, knowing that if the dressing room attendant asked him, he’d surely be eaten alive by those red ants. “Um, yeah.” I brought him a pair of 12s and he tried them on. At least I assume he tried them on, because when he opened the door after he was dressed into his own clothes he had both pairs of shorts meticulously hung back on the hanger. Apparently no one ever told him that it’s OK to not hang up the ones you’re going to buy. This explained the long wait in the dressing room. It occurred to me, though, how you have to be a rocket scientist to figure out those dang hangers and that Kevin just placed first in his school’s science fair for the rockets he developed. The kid might not know a whole lot about fashion, but if the rocket thing doesn’t work out, it’s good to know he could always find a job in retail. We walked out of the dressing room and past the $3.25 t-shirts. “Um, I’m going to camp and you know, you can’t have enough dry t-shirts,” Kevin said. I smiled. “Pick out two in a large,” I told him. We got to the checkout and I gave him a twenty to cover whatever his gift card didn’t. In the two minutes we waited in line, he’d managed to roll the bill into a wad. When the cashier told him the total, Kevin tossed his card and the bill on the counter. “Kev, at least unroll the bill and hand it to her,” I sighed. “Oh,” he said and reached for the bill. The cashier laughed and picked up the wadded blob. I just shook my head. I thought about the kids on the corner and I looked at my stepson. It would be tempting to pay them 15 cents to dress the boy and show him how to comb his hair. Then I thought of that Visa commercial: Makeover? Fifteen cents. T-shirts and shorts? Thirty-five dollars. An hour shopping with your fashionably clueless 14-year-old stepson? Priceless.

Post-Creation creations
	July 5, 2007 As I sat on my white kitchen floor the other day I thought there was no way God stopped creating after the sixth day because the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser I was using to remove dirt from the linoleum crevices was surely heaven-sent.   I’m convinced that half of God is female because a “she” is the only logical explanation for the creations that followed that seventh day of rest. I suspect Female God had a hand in the invention of the washer, dryer, electric stove, ice box, tampons and pants for women. Wise and a little on edge one week a month, she understood the need for Midol despite Male God’s insistence that it was all in her head.   Loose hair of the canine, feline, and human varieties causes uptight clean freaks like me great distress. That’s why I’m sure the domestication of dogs and cats, along with the appearance of the hand-held hair dryer, prompted a memo in heaven from the female side of omnipotence calling for the creation of the Dust Buster and Swiffer Sweepers.   There are some things in creation that have us all scratching our heads. The platypus, for instance, or deep-fried Twinkies. Politicians, too. The serpent in the Garden of Eden was the world’s first politician – he promised Adam and Eve the world and for their trust they ended up homeless and naked. I’m sure neither Male or Female God is taking credit for the creation of politicians (or Ann Coulter), but to save face, God answered prayer with a few handy devices to help us avoid them: the television remote control mute button and caller ID.   What a I love most about these post-Creation creations is that Female God clearly understands balance and the need for choices. There is evil in the world, no doubt, but one person’s evil is another person’s joy. Think thong underwear, the lottery, and Bruce Willis movies. Stiletto heels, trans fat, and credit cards can get us in as much trouble as eating that apple from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. It’s a good thing Female God gave us arch supports, the YMCA and debit cards.   Peanut butter is a tricky little creation, full of fatty goodness on one hand and protein on the other. Ever the mindful mother concerned for our waistlines, Female God surely prompted the recent development of powdered peanut butter. Called PB2 and produced by Bell Plantation in Tifton, Ga., this gem of a product has just 54 calories and 2.8 grams of fat in two tablespoons. This is my new favorite food discovery since Trader Joe’s uncured turkey bacon at 25 calories and .5 grams of fat per slice. You can only find PB2 on the Internet (another handy creation most of the time) at www.bellplantation.com.    And speaking of food, milk, fruit, yogurt and ice were around during the original six days of creation, but it was the blender that brought these things together into smoothie love. If I’m truly made in the image of God, then God loves smoothies. And Junior Mints. And a good chardonnay.   As a person with chronic pain, I give my sincere gratitude to the double-X creative powers for Advil and massage therapists; yoga and the Buddha; cortisone, Synvisc, and ergonomic keyboards; heated neck pillows and non-melting ice packs; and hot tap water, Jacuzzi tubs and Biofreeze (although I strongly discourage applying Biofreeze to your entire body after take a hot bath in the middle of the winter. Trust me on this.).   In