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Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love! Hamilton Wright Mabie

  

ROSE TO THE OCCASION
Ellie Searl

The phone rang at four in the afternoon just after I put the egg yolk glaze on the braided bread dough. It was a guy named Bill. He wanted to check the time of the open house.


“At five . . . No, you needn’t bring anything . . . Yes, please, your friends are welcome.” Thank god someone was going to show up.


I didn’t know this Bill, nor his friends, but now at least a couple of people would enjoy my superb hors d’oeuvres and appreciate my style and grace as a hostess. I slid the bread into the oven, poured another glass of wine, and leaned against the counter. I looked at the serving dishes ready for goodies. What was next?


The open house would be the first gathering in our home since we moved to this hellhole of a city in September. I didn’t like Youngstown. A steel town. Certainly not a garden spot. Smokestacks belched dirty clouds of iron ore debris. Street gutters ran streams of rusty water when it rained. MORE . . .

MS. CRANKYPANTS SEIZES THE SEASON
Ms. Crankypants - Guest Contributor

For starters, let me introduce myself. I’m Ms. Crankypants, guest contributor for the month. Carolyn is busy with other things – well, to be honest, I sent her what looked like an official email that the blog was taking the month off so she didn’t have to write anything. I don’t even feel that bad about it. A girl has to make her own opportunities after all. So this is my chance to tell you what I think for once.


About the holidays for instance. I’ve had it – year after year with the shopping, the decorating, the wrapping, the baking. Well, I don’t personally actually bake, but searching the stores for the special cookies that come in the cellophane covered boxes that are like the ones my grandmother used to make takes a lot of my time. MORE . . .

GRATITUDE

Human beings are actually created for the transcendent, for the sublime, for the beautiful, for the truthful...and all of us are given the task of trying to make this world a little more hospitable to these beautiful things.
-Archbishop Desmond Tutu

  

CANADIAN LANDING

Ellie Searl

Dan’s laid-back attitude and grubby appearance made me skeptical - wrinkled, flannel shirt, frayed jeans, scruffy boots, yellowed fingers, and long, greasy hair oozing out of a ratty Montreal Expos cap. Would he pull out a pocketknife and scratch dirt from what was left of his fingernails? He lit a cigarette. Did he take drugs, too? Drink? The snob in me bubbled over. But then we couldn’t be choosy about who would escort us through this critical event. We either drove ourselves - with our own car, sporting our own license plate, risking arrest - or let someone else drive - someone like Dan – someone with experience sneaking people like us, American war resisters, back and forth across the Canadian-US border. MORE . . .

CATCHING ON

Carolyn B Healy

I met Lucia at a writing seminar. She was slight, with a lined, hard luck face and unruly dark hair that obscured her small brown eyes. Twelve of us, all strangers, sat in a loose circle in a sunny high-desert retreat house waiting for the first session to begin. Our leader, a successful and engaging author of personal growth books, arrived and immediately handed out water bottles and instructed us to drink and keep drinking to stay ahead of headaches and any other high altitude symptoms. It was a way of telling us we’d be safe here. MORE . . .

FRIENDSHIP

A friend is someone who is there for you when he’d rather be anywhere else. - Len Wein

SMALL (TOWN) FRIENDS

Ellie Searl

Before Becky moved to town, Gloria was supposedly my best friend, although I never much liked her. She was mean. And bossy. At her house, we played her games, danced her way, and ate her peanut butter, potato chip, cream cheese, and pickle sandwich creations. At my house, she rode my bike, used my mother’s lipstick, and dulled the tops of my new crayons. But she seemed popular with the other kids, so by association, I was popular too. I didn’t understand enough about personality types to figure that because she bullied her way into relationships, probably everybody hated her. MORE . . .

FRIENDS, NOT ENEMIES

Carolyn B Healy

We flew in from the west over O’Hare, then banked over the Loop, studying first the close-together highrises and then the suburban houses ringed with still-green grass. Our friends sat in the row behind us and we talked about how great the city looked if only those puffy white clouds would get out of the way. We’d had a great week playing golf and seeing the Texas Hill Country but it was time to return to normal. We headed for that lovely moment of touchdown, when you are back home where you belong, but not yet overtaken by daily responsibilities. My calendar for the coming week was full. I’d see my writer friends on Tuesday, my poet friend Wednesday, a counselor friend late in the week. I felt fortunate to have all that to return to. MORE . . .

LESSONS LEARNED

“. . . people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Maya Angelou

  



THE GREATEST OF THESE
Ellie Searl
Ed smiled and said, “Now is the time to declare with a kiss the wedding you have performed and we have witnessed.” Friends and family dabbed tears. The just-married couple embraced, kissed softly, and held onto each other, a little longer than usual, as though they couldn’t let go for fear it might all be a dream.


I took pictures of the crowd, and of the lanterns, and of the flowers, and of the tasseled wedding program resting on the seat of a white chair, and of the radiance streaming through the branches.


My husband Ed, a Unitarian Universalist minister, often asks me to go with him when he officiates at a wedding for people I don’t know. Ed gives me compelling reasons to attend, probably because he doesn’t like to go alone: the mother is a famous writer, the father is a New Delhi cartoonist, the bride is an Argentinean swimmer, the groom is a relative of Andrew Wyeth, the reception will be at the Newberry Library. “It will be great fun.” He says. “You’ll love it.”


So when Ed asked, “Want to go to a wedding in Dubuque? It’s in a park overlooking the Mississippi and the reception is at Eagle Ridge Resort. Should be pretty,”


I thought - Road trip. Wedding in Iowa. Reception in Galena. Great.
And when he told me who was getting married - Absolutely. This was an event I wanted to honor and celebrate, and it didn’t matter that they were perfect strangers. MORE . . .


UP DEEP CREEK
Carolyn B Healy



I stood on the bank and squinted at the two white-clad figures in the middle of Deep Creek’s swirling water. As a nine year-old city girl temporarily plunked down in the Smoky Mountains for a family visit, I was on high alert for things I couldn’t see back at home, and this was going to be a big one.


My cousin Annette, six years older, was on the list of my most admired people. She could cook and sew and win 4H prizes. She had the same name as my favorite Mouseketeer, and I harbored a secret hunch that she was really the famous Annette and the family was keeping it secret. Plus, she was a teenager with teenage friends, some of them boys.


Now she was standing in the middle of the creek in a pretty white dress with lace trim. I bet she made it, I thought in a spurt of pride. I knew from experience what she was up against out there. That water was cold as ice. I knew that because her mother Anna Lou would regularly pile the cousins into her Plymouth and barrel over mountain roads to take us to the swimming hole “up Deep Creek” and then back to her house for popsicles. MORE . . .

SUCCESS AND FAILURE

Success
“If A = success, then the formula is A = X + Y + Z, with X being work, Y play, and Z keeping your mouth shut.”
- Albert Einstein


Failure
“If at first you don’t succeed, try try again. Then quit. No sense being a damn fool about it.” -W.C. Fields

  


SUCCESS AND FAILURE - CUBAN STYLE
Carolyn B Healy


Celia got us there with 20 minutes to spare. We collected on the open-air platform and looked around. On the earth road alongside, we witnessed a few centuries’ worth of transportation options whiz by. A horse and cart carried a local man hauling a sack of grain; another cart hauled a tourist couple also rushing to make the train. A bicycle rickshaw scooted by, carrying a local woman dressed for the office, although looking around the very small town, it was hard to see where she might be headed. A series of 1950-era Chevys and DeSotos and a couple of rusty Ford pickups also buzzed by while we waited. A mid-1960’s Soviet Lada, a boxy successor imported once Fidel shut down the supply of the U.S. cars, followed. Cash for Clunkers would be an enormous hit in Cuba if only anyone had any money or the right to buy a new car.


Early that morning, after a sumptuous brunch at the hotel, Celia had urged us onto our luxurious Chinese bus for our trip into the countryside. Maximo sat at the wheel, greeting each rider with nods and a wordless smile. Maximo spoke no English, we were told. We had also been told that Celia, like all guides, would have to watch her words, as you never know who might disapprove and turn her in to the state for unauthorized opinions. That was enough to get us all to keep an eye on Maximo and his motives (How did we really know he speaks no English?), and nervous that our endearing single mother new friend Celia would overstep her boundaries. MORE . . .


EXIT CENTER STAGE
Ellie Searl


Perhaps I shouldn’t have resigned.


Drama and my life have been a tight weave since words could cascade from my imagination. I told stories with great flair - performing my way through stream-of-consciousness sagas, updating the adventures of my characters-du-jour. They somersaulted when excited, stomped when frustrated, danced when amused, wailed when upset, shrieked when scared, and pouted when ignored, which was often, due to audience failure to remain as interested in my stories as I. Center stage. I thrived on center stage.


For years, my mother called me a pest. I heard it often in one guise or another. “Stop your blather.” - “Quit being a nuisance.” - “Be more like your brothers - they don’t annoy people.” Once she called me histrionic. I thought that was a compliment.


I was in my first play was when I was six, cast as an apple tree, draped in brown and green crepe paper with red felt dots. I stood erect under the August sun with my bent limbs held in position for the length of the play, which to me seemed like hours, sweat dripping down my tummy making me itch. I wanted to be Alice – the lead – but my friend Karen, Miss Alpha Pants, a doctor’s daughter who always got what she wanted, played that part. Besides, the show was in her back yard, and it was directed by her mother, who also made the white cupcakes with orange icing and pink lemonade. In time, I learned to accept that there are no small parts, just small actors. Often it’s the small role that’s noteworthy. Take Robert Duvall. He played Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird. All he did was stand behind a door. Mute. Like a tree. MORE . . .

IF WE HAD IT TO DO OVER . . .

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Albert Einstein

   

ENOUGH ALREADY
Carolyn B Healy

I turned on the Today Show this morning for the first time in weeks, and they’re just lucky I was prepared to give them a second chance. I had to put them on probation back on the second day of the Michael Jackson death marathon. If they were going to act like the entire world screeched to a halt just because one exceedingly troubled entertainer died, then they’d have to do it without me. I am not without compassion for M. Jackson, as he was clearly victimized first and repeatedly before he turned his attentions to young boys. I just sought some balance and the slightest recognition that he became a predator himself.


Soon after, I left on a lengthy trip where my morning viewing switched to the cruise director’s daily closed circuit TV show, for which he donned a turban and received a lovely facial from the spa staff, and talked on and on about shopping. I didn’t miss Today at all.


Once back, I needed a week to overcome jet lag, and was finally ready to resume my usual habits. Certainly Today was over the pop star immersion by now and back to actual news. I switched it on. What filled the screen but the entire Duggar family, the reality show crew who unapologetically shows off their incredible flair for reproduction, a 21 person mass seated somehow - they must have bleachers in the living room - around the parents.


“The Duggars are here. And they have an announcement,” the off-screen voiced teased. “We’ll be right back.” MORE . . .


HAPPILY EVER AFTER
Ellie Searl

. . . they lived happily ever after. THE END.

"Night, night, sweetie girl, sleep tight.”

“How do you know?”

“How do I know what?”

“That they liveded happily ever after.”

“Lived, not liveded.


Well, they just did, like in all your other stories.”

“Bambi’s mommy didn’t - she got shotted by a bad hunter.”

“Shot, not got shotted.”

“And the poor little match girl got frozed.”

“Just say froze.” MORE . . .

IF WE DON'T LAUGH, WE'LL CRY

Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face. Victor Hugo
 

  


MAMMOMGRAM 2009
Carolyn B Healy

4:23 am
Fear penetrates my dream – trapped in a warehouse with endless stairs and no door. I awake with sweaty palms and dread. Dream fades. Whew. Reality invades. Shit. Mammogram Day.


6:00 am
Shower, no deodorant.


6:25am
Check email. Do not make To Do list for day, just in case.


6:45 am
Take two Extra-Strength Tylenol. Ha! Outwit the flesh-squeezing bastards.


7:00 am
Remove envelope of old films from closet shelf, safer at my house ever since the year they misplaced (and eventually found) them, making it all worse. Do not look at them.


7:05 am
Drive. Park.


7:10 am
Take elevator to 4th floor. Enter office. Go to bathroom. Complete paperwork. Pretend to watch Good Morning America present the various tragedies that occurred overnight while I thought only of myself. Go to bathroom again.


7:25 am
Follow receptionist to changing room. Choose locker # 11. Strip to waist, don enormous pink-flowered flannel gown with many strings. Wrap tight. Sit in waiting room. More Good Morning America. Maintain cocktail party-style chit chat with other patients. Do not mention that we are all in the Diagnostic Mammogram wing for some good reason, not downstairs in Routine Mammogram.


7:35 am
Experience strange calm, proving once again that reality in the moment is easier to handle than the anticipation of it. MORE . . .

JUST A KID
Ellie Searl


He was just a kid, and he used to live in that shack-turned-shrine.


Gaudy bouquets of sagging paper roses fall into the weeds. Wrinkled posters scrawled with “Rest In Peace,” and “I will love you forever,” written in black magic marker above a distorted sketch of his face - the ink, purple from rain and dew, bleeds across the page. Candles, balloons, American flags, and melted candy lump together in piles. Stuffed animals - bears and tigers and dogs - with faded bows and grubby, matted fur, are topsy-turvy, tossed among crumpled sympathy cards and hand-written notes.


Slumped mourners take snapshots of each other, marking history and capturing tears of personal loss in front of the twisted, yellow Do Not Cross police barrier, stretched from the fence and around the stubby tree - jammed with soggy dolls, hand-made gifts, and toys – into the bareness of the backyard. MORE . . .

MOTHERHOOD

Mother's love is peace.  It need not be acquired; it need not be deserved.  ~Erich Fromm

MOTHER OF THE YEAR
Carolyn B Healy

Elizabeth Edwards slogs forward on her book tour, pundits lob shame-bombs at her, and I cultivate a growing resentment about the whole scenario. My friend Kathy and I even had a spat about her the other night. Kathy thinks she should just stop talking and toss her husband to the curb. Kathy thinks she’s pathetic. I think she’s anything but.


I’d like to talk about Elizabeth without wasting too much time on husband John. Kathy and I agree on him. Let’s just stipulate that he’s the guy you hope your daughter won’t meet. Too good-looking to have been required to develop character, although well-trained in creating and cultivating appearances. An overgrown adolescent. If you don’t agree on the last point, watch clips of his coy flirtation with the videographer he took up with. A middle-schooler lusting after the new social studies teacher wouldn’t display such leering desire. Narcissistic, arrogant. The good-guy imposter genus of the liar-cheater species of the human male. Yeah, yeah. He’s also done good works. He should have stuck with those. MORE . . .


MY MOMMY IS BETTER THAN YOURS
Ellie Searl



I knew my daughter, Katie, would be a far more charitable parent than I when she was twelve. It was while she was babysitting our four-year old neighbor, Laurie, an outspoken, precocious child. You know the type. The over-indulged genius-spawns who are taught that adult conversation is of minimal significance and interrupting a discussion about mortgage meltdowns or the President meeting with dignitaries in the Middle East with such earth-shattering news as, Mommy, see? I made the letter L, is a far more critical issue in the scheme of world events.


Such children are encouraged to speak their minds – no matter what. They’ll stare into a poor soul’s face and say, That fat man looks like a gorilla – when he unfortunately does – and the mother, in her need to take every opportunity to reinforce her child’s powers of perception and add yet another word to the child’s burgeoning, somewhat annoying, vocabulary, responds with, Yes, Honey-Bunch, aren’t you the observant one! Observant means you see things very accurately, “accurately” having been taught the day before during dinner while the family contrasted the various green shades of arugula, pesto, and blanched broccoli. MORE . . .

RIDING THE WAVES

I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving: To reach the port  . . ., we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it - but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor. ~Oliver Wendel Holmes

THE DUNKING POOL
Ellie Searl

Love, sex, and religion were not discussed in my household when I was a kid. Each brought embarrassment, awkward stammering, and red faces. Kissing relatives or saying “I love you” was out of the question. My mother once said, “Nobody in my family ever talked about love.” Well, neither did she until she got old and we forced it on her.


And sex? That was just a distinction between male and female. When I was sixteen, my mom and I had our one-and-only sex talk. She squinched her forehead, “You know, don’t you?” I said, “Yes,” and left the room.
It was the same with religion. No questions. No answers. No discussion. Church was just something I did once a week unless I had junior choir rehearsal or youth group later on in high school. The whole system was a big interference in my life. I had better things to do.


If my parents wanted me to believe in a traditional religious doctrine, other than a fundamental, all-encompassing fear of the Almighty, somebody missed the boat. My Federated Church experiences as a kid left me melancholy on Sundays, guilt-ridden all the time, and scared of God. The only thing I liked about church was Communion Sunday when everybody received fresh bread chunks and tiny glasses of Concord grape juice served in silver trays. Other than that, church was a place I suffered through if I wanted to see the light of day for the next 24 hours. MORE . . .

PADDLING TOWARD TODAY
Carolyn B Healy

I know two people who have been on the Today Show, for very different reasons. The first is Wendy Goldman Rohm, a Chicago area writer and teacher who wrote books on Bill Gates and on Rupert Murdoch and rode her book tour right in there to appear with Katie and Matt.

A book tour sounds glamorous to me who has never been on one. I imagine I’d love the attention and all the stimulating questions, but Wendy says a book tour is a pain. Apparently answering the same questions all day for weeks gets a little grating. On the plus side, they can never take the Today Show away from her. MORE . . .

BE AFRAID - BE VERY AFRAID

Fear is one thing. To let fear grab you and swing you around by the tail is another.  ~

Katherine Paterson

FROM THE FRYING PAN TO THE FIRE
Ellie Searl



I went to school early to become familiar with the layout of the building and to put my lesson plans and activities in order. The classroom looked like those in the states: rows of flip-top desks with attached swivel chairs; counters strewn with spiral notebooks, teacher’s manuals, and paint tins; hanging cupboards stacked with yellowed bank boxes; bulletin boards covered with faded construction paper; dusty green chalk boards; and a stopped-up sink. It even smelled the same - sour milk, musty gym shoes, and bologna. The odors hovered in the stale air, trapped by painted-shut, screenless windows.


At one time, schools were built for function, not comfort. A couple of doors, a principal’s office, classrooms along a bleak hallway, a windowless multi-purpose room in the basement, which served as a gym, auditorium, and lunchroom, and open-stalled bathrooms, made an adequate facility to hold children captive while they learned the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic, or until they turned sixteen. It didn’t matter if kids were hot, cold, bored, or constipated.


I placed a red welcome sign on the bulletin board and a curly ivy on my desk to brighten up the institutional appearance. MORE . . .




FREEFALL
Carolyn B Healy


I was the only kid in Chicago who had never been to Riverview. It wasn’t for lack of interest, as I’d been to Kiddieland over and over and was a real fan. It was a matter of logistics. In that era before expressways, when we’d set out for the occasional visit to the relatives in Oak Park, it took forever. And forever in a 1949 Ford, with no air conditioning of course, was no picnic. And Riverview was all the way on the North Side. For all I knew that would take more than forever.


Finally, early in high school came my big chance. My best friend Leslie and I got to go. I remember that. Whether it was it a school trip, or a YMCA outing, or somebody’s brave mom who drove us there and then disappeared for a few hours I can’t tell you.


We entered the gate and trailed from ride to ride, from The Bobs to Aladdin’s Castle, doing whatever we wanted. I felt liberated, grown up, finally part of the larger world. It was delicious. MORE . . .