Shoes in the Attic

You hear the stories from time to time. Stories where new homeowners, while gutting a kitchen or opening a wall or digging in the backyard, find treasure. Maybe wads of forgotten cash. Maybe a diamond ring with a long history. Maybe diaries or war time love letters. These things happen.

Do you know what we found last week in the crevices of our not-so-old 40 year old house?

Oh, it's a treasure, all right.

It seems someone left behind their bronzed baby shoes.

And they're not just keepsake copper-dipped baby shoes. Oh no, these booties are stylish AND functional.

Need an ashtray while you admire your kid's shoes? A place to flick your Marlboro Light while you reminisce about baby's first steps? No problem.

We're going to keep looking. Because there's got to be something better hiding in this house. I'm hoping for gold. Or a treasure map. Anything other than a creepy baby shoe-ashtray filled with mouse poop.

Good Will

“Toss it,” he says.

“Maybe,” I tell him.

My husband and I are in the middle of our yearly closet purge. While he effortlessly tosses old shirts into the Goodwill bag, I’m stuck in a time warp.

I have found my old denim jacket: vintage 1987 - beautifully faded, flannel lined and smelling faintly of youth.

I take it off the wire hanger and I’m lost in its history.

I am sixteen. My hair is cut into a short Natalie Merchant bob - a bold statement for me. It’s 7:23 a.m. and I’m waiting outside of school, alone and surrounded by clusters of my peers. It’s a chilly, late winter morning and I hug my new jacket closer to keep from shivering. I hate this. All of it. Seven hundred ninety-eight: days until I can get out of this town, out of this school that feels more like conviction time in some demented John Hughes movie. I’m startled out of my misery by a hacky-sack landing at my feet. Ugh. But just as the first bell rings, I see him from across the parking lot. My heart pounds. I feel good.

I slip one arm into a sleeve.

I passed! Other than the dismal parallel parking portion of the test, I passed! I open the creaky door of the rusted VW, toss in my jacket, and bounce into the driver's seat. This piece of junk won’t get me far, but I don’t care. Tonight I’ve got keys in my hand and an open road out my bug-stained windshield. I start up the engine, hit the gas and breathe a sigh of liberated teenage relief. I feel good.

I slide my other arm through a sleeve.

It’s late. We’re riding around our one traffic light town without a destination in mind. There’s nothing to do here but drive. Sometimes we stop at Tony’s for a slice, but tonight we’re just driving, killing time. The guy next to me in the backseat hands me a cigarette, my first. I inhale as he instructs me to, but I cough spastically and bury my head into my jacket. He hands me a bottle of Smirnoff to wash away my failure. It burns my throat and warms my belly, and it makes everything okay. I feel good.

I pull the jacket onto my back, feeling its weight on my shoulders.

A bunch of us are sitting in a booth at Bennigans on Route 46 eating mozzarella sticks and potato skins. The chatter morphs from trivial to significant. ‘Did you hear?’ ‘What a jerk’ ‘He seemed nice’ ‘Why didn’t she tell us?’ ‘I heard he hit her’ 'I think he had a knife' ‘Pyscho – he should be put away’  ‘What can we do?’ These words shouldn’t be ours. They’re too heavy for adolescent brains to bear. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ I sigh as I reach into my jacket for a crumpled $20. Walking to the car, the cold air smacks the bad out of the way. I feel good.

I stick my hand into one of the inside pockets and pull out a tattered Midnight Oil ticket.

I’m sitting in my dorm room 3oo miles from home on a Thursday night studying for an economics exam. The door is cracked open and they let themselves in, giggling a buzzed kind of giggle. ‘Are you ready?’ one of them says. ‘The show starts in an hour. Grab your jacket. Let’s go.’ And I do. I’m away and free, lost and young. I feel good.

“Toss it,” my husband says again, “It’s dated. It will never come back, you know.”

“I know,” I say, noticing my reflection in the mirror, “but it still fits.”

Write a piece - 600 word limit - about finding a forgotten item of clothing in the back of a drawer or closet. Let us know how the item was found, what it is, and why it's so meaningful to you or your character. More link-ups for this prompt can be found here.

Duped

Yesterday the Five Year Old came home from school with a one hundred dollar bill. A giant, photocopied one hundred dollar bill.

Which he insisted was real.

And which his older brother insisted was not, in fact, real at all.

Which caused The Five Year old to cry.

Because the Five Year Old wanted to buy an xbox with his giant one hundred dollar bill.

Which his older brother told him he wouldn't be able to do anyway, even if the one hundred dollar bill WAS real because an xbox would cost, like, double that. Or triple. He wasn't sure.

Either way, the dismal news of being duped made The Five Year Old weepy.

When he regained his composure and wiped the gobs of snot off his upper lip and the tears from his cheeks, he held up his giant one hundred dollar bill and said, Well, I'll just have to find someone else to trick. Then, with a glimmer in his eye, he sniffed, Like a toddler! I need some toddlers to trick!

That's the spirit, buddy, because no matter how low on the Totem Pole of Youth you are, there's always someone lower.

A few more years and he'll be peddling snake oil at the book fairs.

Domestically Romantic

After 11 years of marriage, he knows the way to my heart.

What this post-it note doesn't tell you is that before leaving for work at the ungodly hour of 5:30 this morning, the house still dark and slumbering, he brewed himself a pot of coffee, cleaned the carafe, and got another one ready for me.

Swoon.

Stuck (and a Bunch of Books I've Read)

I'm stuck. February stuck.

I can't move forward with any new projects. I can't write anything resembling... I can't finish sentences. I can't walk the dog or get out of the car at the bus stop. I just can't. It's too damn cold (good god, how many blog posts can one person spend complaining about the weather? many, apparently).

I'm in my usual February funk. The funk that forces me into my flannel pajamas as soon as the kids are tucked in their bunk beds at 8 pm. I don't mind. There's nothing on television and the family room is too drafty to sit in anyway. So I sip hot tea and take refuge under my down comforter.

And I read. I mean, I read a lot. A lot, a lot. Like my eyes are bugging out of my head, a lot.

All this reading might possibly be some form of an escape (you think?), but, hell, it's better than a lot of other ways people find to escape.

Because I can't string together any more sentences - I'm exhausted, frankly by the prospect of even thinking of anything else to say - I will, as simply as possible, recount what I've read SO FAR. And by SO FAR I mean in the last six weeks.

In no particular order:

• The Thirteenth Tale (Diane Setterfield): What's not to like? A ghost story told by an ailing writer at the end of her life. One of the few books that left me truly surprised. Loved it.

• Left Neglected (Lisa Genova): Interesting to learn about left neglect syndrome, but I was disappointed in the story and character development. Predictable and wrapped up in a nice clean ending. I liked her first one, Still Alice, better, but it's tough to write two great books in a row. Just ask Elizabeth Gilbert.

• A Scattered Life (Karen McQuestion): I picked this one up because of the author. She self published this book after not being able to find a publisher - a respectable act of courage on its own - and she now has a movie deal. Sweet.

• Major Pettigrew's Last Stand (Helen Simonson): I think I'm too young to truly appreciate this one because everyone I know who raves about it is in their 70s. Like my mom.

• Little Bee (Chris Cleave): I loved this. Loved it. I can't even tell you about it. Just go read it.

• The Bishop's Man (Linden MacIntyre): 2009 winner of the Giller Prize. What can I say? It's a fantastically written novel, but I had a tough time getting through it. I'm just not all that interested in priests and their scandals.

• Red Hook Road (Ayelet Waldman): Set in Maine, I found many of the 'maine-isms' off and stereotyped. And, well, let's just say I had some issues with the author, which clouded my view on the book. 

• The Good Life (Jay McInerney): From the guy who wrote Bright Lights, Big City; this one is set in NYC at the time of 9/11. Rich, spoiled midlife-crisis Manhattanites with a lot of celebrity name dropping, and I don't care enough about Salman Rushdie to be impressed.

• Deep Down True (Juliette Fay):  Chick lit at its finest because we all need a little fluff in our lives. Divorced 40 something mother with two kids blah blah blah finds love with her dentist after struggle and conflict blah blah blah.

• The One That I Want (Allison Winn Scotch): Chick lit not at its finest. Predictable, cliched, but better than watching Lifetime. I think.

• Magic Tree House - A Crazy Day With Cobras: Yeah, it's crazy alright. It's the latest and greatest Magic Tree House book that we've been waiting and whining for. A real page turner when you're forced to read it aloud to your 5 year old.

• Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro): Okay, I actually read this in December, but it's worth mentioning. Creepy, futuristic look at what a society will do to cure cancer and everything else that ails us. From the guy who wrote Remains of the Day. Also a major motion picture.

• Lit (Mary Karr):  Currently reading. Maybe not the best choice for the winter blues, but so far it's making me feel like I have a pretty good handle on my life. Like, for instance, I'm not dropping acid or hitchhiking barefoot through California and getting picked up by drivers high on crystal meth. It's all about perspective.

• The Lacuna (Barbara Kingsolver): Currently reading. This has been on my to-read list for awhile. I don't know what took me so long; she's always a favorite.

What's on your list?

If My Kids Don't Go to College I'm Blaming Milton Bradley

My husband and I believe that college, or some sort of post-secondary school education, is important. So important, that we have been saving for our kids' college education since they were born. Money is automatically deposited into their funds every month, discussions are had every so often about higher learning and career choices. It's our plan, our hope, that our kids study something, anything, after high school, whether or not we'll be able to pay for it is a whole other monster of a scary question.

Up until recently, they've been on board with the whole idea of higher education - as on board as a five and nine year old can be, that is. They're game so long as they can still sleep in their own beds at night and eat chicken nuggets for dinner, which is fine with us because by then they'll be big enough to maneuver the snowblower, mow the lawn and do the laundry. That's what college kids do when they live at home, right?

But lately, home or not, the college track is losing its appeal for them.

Over the last few weeks of this frigidly cold winter, we've been stuck inside playing a lot of board games. Or is it bored games? Either way, there's not much else to do in January in suburbia on the 500th snow day of the year. So. We gather around the kitchen table and have forced family fun nights. Star Wars Monopoly, Uncle Wiggly, Uno, Trouble and...Life.

Remember Life? The simulated journey in a plastic car through college, career, marriage, kids and mortgages? Harmless fun, right? Maybe an opportunity for some teachable moments?

Yeah, not so much.

At the start of the game, each player must make a choice whether to take the college track or the career track. By choosing college, you end up with bank loans to finance your education, but, theoretically, you should end up with a better paying career. If you choose to skip college and go right to work, you start out debt free and hit more pay days, but your career choices are limited and offer little advancement opportunity.

My husband and I, setting a good example, always choose the college path. We collect our 100K college debt cards (a bargain for a college education, actually), and spend our first few rolls of the dice making life long friends, choosing an impractical major, and playing quarters at the frat house. The Third Grader, setting his own example of why prolong school when you don't have to?, always chooses to skip college and go right to work. He spends his first few turns collecting pay day money, finding a spouse and purchasing his starter home.

And you know what? The kid always comes out ahead. After completing our board game education, my husband and I usually draw 'teacher' or 'salesperson' out of the college career stack of cards. While these are admirable professions, we hit the glass ceiling quickly, live in a double wide and have two sets of twins. The Third Grader always draws 'athlete' or 'entertainer' out of the no-college career cards, has unlimited earning potential, ends up in the mansion with no kids and a vacation home in the mountains. At the end of the game, he gloats in play money giddiness as he parks his pimped up plastic car at Millionaire Estates and enjoys a comfortable debt-free retirement, while his parents end up in Countryside Acres in their beat up old Buicks eating tuna fish out of rusty tin cans.

"See," he says as he fans his money in front of us, "you don't need college."

Thanks, Milton Bradley, for the super life lessons.

Turning it Around

I'm not going to lie, it's been a tough stretch of wintry weather so far. Today is snow day number five. Or ten. I can't remember. These strings of constant storms are not only blocking my memory, but also, quite literally, my view of the world.

Oh, spring will arrive. It always does. It's just that some days the eternal hope of sunshine feels more finite than eternal. Like today. And yesterday. And probably tomorrow. 

I'm trying to turn things around. I am. Despite the snow and dark and cold, despite the coughs and sniffles and the bone chilling effects of cabin fever, I am trying to turn my attitude around. Despite even the forces of nature working in direct opposition of, well, everything good, I am trying to turn the bad into the not-so-awful.

For instance:

I conquered the snow blower this week. The monstrous machine that outweighs me by a couple hundred pounds was the only thing standing in the way of getting to the bus stop to pick up The Third Grader in the middle of a snow storm. Never underestimate the power of maternal love.

The response time of the gas company is fast. Like, really fast. Especially when you call and tell them you smell gas in your house. Props to the nice gas man who came out on a Saturday night in freezing temps to make sure our house didn't blow up. No home explosion = good.

My husband has pretty excellent high altitude balancing skills. Even as I gripped the ladder and watched it wobble against the ice encased gutters while he chipped icicles off the roof with a hammer in one hand and a snow rake in another, he still didn't tumble to the ground. And even if he did, his fall would have been cushioned by four foot snow drifts. Also, this counted as quality time spent together as a couple. Who needs date night?

I now have a thorough understanding of how an ice dam works. So fascinating, really, as all elements must be working together in perfect below-freezing harmony in order for an ice dam to function properly. Where 'function properly' means cause significant physical damage and emotional trauma. Knowledge is power! Or is ignorance bliss?

Water dripping in through the walls may very well be just the tipping point needed to finally get new windows in the spring. And I've always wanted new windows.

Also:

Chocolate is good.

Wine is better.

Summer is best.

I'm trying.