Day 22 = Hula Dancing Heros

Sometimes when I sit down to write, the process of sorting out my earliest childhood memories makes my head hurt. If I had known that these things would become important later in life, I would have taken better notes. Nevermind that, in most of these circumstances, I was too young to hold a pencil properly let alone jot down an accurate record of the events unfolding around me. Despite the fact that some of my stories might sound like tall tales, I frequently consult with family members to fact check my writing so that I don't inadvertently fabricate an event that never happened. With that being said, the following family recollections happened around the time of my grandfather's retirement. In my childhood memory bank, they happened on the exact same weekend, but in reality that is probably not true. I'm sure that some of my faithful readers will be able to help sort out those details but when I conferred with my own parents, they were equally foggy on the sequence of events. We did share a few laughs over the whole thing despite being unable to come up with any kind of factual timeline.

When I was small, my father's side of the family always gathered at my grandparent's house in Cleveland to celebrate major holidays. However, for those holiday weekends that fell during the summer months, the entire clan escaped the concrete confines of the sticky city to our much cooler cabin in the wilderness. As previously mentioned in numerous posts, my grandparents maintained a vacation getaway/retirement property in the mountains of western Pennsylvania. My husband always laughs at the tiny tree covered lumps of earth that we call "mountains". While it's true that his homeland in the middle of the Pocono Mountains towers over our much less lofty Alleghenies, the people who live in the Rockies probably scoff at the puny Poconos, so it's all relative. Growing up in a part of the state that was largely flat farmland made the mountains immediately to the east seem fairly large to us even though other people might consider them to be foothills at best.

Regardless of your opinion of the local terrain, there was no arguing that cramming five families and my grandparents into a three bedroom house was no easy feat especially when one of the bedrooms belonged exclusively to my grandparents. The rest of the family was dispersed between four double beds, one single, and a pull out couch in the living room. For all the leftover bodies that didn't have enough clout to successfully procure a slice of mattress for themselves, we had an abundance of snuggly sleeping bags lying around camp. Truth be told, the joke was on those poor unfortunate suckers who snagged the trusty pull out sofa bed. It was guaranteed that they would woefully regret their choice in the morning. When they woke up the following day, their spine would have a considerable kink in it from sleeping with an unforgiving metal bar across their lumbar region all night. No worries, by noon they would probably be able to stand up straight again.

For the record, if everyone was in town for the weekend, the total number of adults and children came in at a whopping twenty eight souls. Twelve adults and sixteen grandchildren. It is also worthy to note that the grandchildren varied in age from infants to twentysomethings. To say it was a wee bit crowded was a serious understatement. We were jammed in there at night like a bunch of kippered herring. Personally, I never worried about my own sleeping quarters because I had a special spot reserved exclusively for me. Being one of the younger grandchildren, I could be easily squeezed into a smaller space for sleeping. Each night, I was crammed into a crib that was tightly tucked inside my grandparent's closet. Before you consider calling child protective services over that one, I should tell you that this particular closet did not have doors on it until years later, and I slept there quite comfortably until I was about five. The crib was one of those old hazardous drop side jobbies, so when I woke up in the morning I could easily free myself. I would simply sling my little jammied leg over the treacherous half-raised side rail and scamper off down the hallway to see who else was awake.

My older brother could always be found sacked out in one of the many khaki colored Coleman sleeping bags scattered across the living room. I would run down the hall at the crack of dawn and jump on him a few times in an attempt to unsuccessfully rouse him from sleep. My other cousins were tucked into similar matching sleeping bags, so I apologize for accidentally jumping on any unsuspecting sleepers who were not in fact my brother. The guys all looked the same wrapped up like a bunch of giant green burritos on the floor. In a sea of lumpy humans who were tightly swaddled in green cloth, a case of mistaken identity was bound to happen. The fact that everyone was related and their faces were usually covered in a futile attempt to block out the blinding sunlight streaming in through the picture window didn't make it any easier to identify who was who.

As for that sunny window, our cozy little camp may not have been fancy, but it did contain curtains. Unfortunately, for those asleep in the living room, my grandfather would open those particular drapes at first light in an effort to wake everyone as early as possible. If this technique was not successful, he had numerous other options in his arsenal of wake up tools. Grandpa was almost always awake before everyone else and since we didn't own a family bugle, he would rally the sweetly slumbering troops by hollering down the hallway like Tarzan. The Tarzan yell was followed by the important informational announcement that those who were still snoozing were in fact wasting the day away. His second favorite technique was to spin his favorite vinyl on the stereo turntable at volume level 10 until all his lovely guests finally stumbled their way to the breakfast table, rumpled yet rested.

When I analyze the situation as an adult, I have no idea how we fit everyone into this small space but we made it work. The point is that my entire extended family was quite used to spending time together in close quarters and for the most part everyone managed to get along quite well. We shared loads of laughter and good memories together. Unfortunately, the rest of the world wasn't always prepared to handle our antics, especially when we arrived at a venue en masse. If left to our own devices, we had a tendency to get a teensy weensy bit rowdy. Maybe that's why my grandfather built our cabin practically off the grid in the first place. That way we had a secluded retreat where we could cut loose without having to contain ourselves because other people were staring at us and saying things like, "Can you believe those people?" That wasn't a problem for us as we never cared much about what our critics had to say. Inevitably, someone from our group would provide a sassy retort along the lines of, "If you people would loosen up a bit, you could be having a good time too instead of sitting there looking like you just sucked on an old lemon." That usually didn't go over very well but it certainly never seemed to put a damper on our ability to have a good time wherever we happened to be.

There are two distinct occasions when I remember our entire clan getting together at places outside of our camp in the woods, not including obligatory family celebrations or yearly reunions. This is where the timeline gets a bit fuzzy, but both events happened around the time of my grandfather's retirement. To celebrate the end of his contributions to the working world, our entire family minus one little cherub got together to share a special meal at a restaurant. This was something we rarely did as procuring a table for twenty-eight at most dining establishments wasn't always easy. On this particular occasion, we were probably only twenty-seven. The youngest of the clan was missing because either she hadn't been born yet or she was still in the process of incubating in the womb. Nevertheless, the majority of our brood made our way to some sort of steakhouse to fete the newly retired patriarch of the family. I was fairly excited about this outing because not only did I get to spend time with all my cousins, I also knew that this meant that I could order a Shirley Temple for myself at the bar. At the time, it was my drink of choice and ordering one from the bartender always made me feel like quite the little sophisticate.  After all, nothing says grown-up like having a maraschino cherry stabbed on a little plastic sword that is casually floating in your kiddie mocktail. 

I'm not sure why but this particular restaurant featured a Polynesian/Hawaiian themed floor show during dinner. The restaurant was located somewhere in the greater Cleveland metro area and when I recently asked my parents where it was or why we went there, they weren't much help. All they could come up with was that they thought it was in one of the suburbs that ended in -ville (of which there are several) and that they had absolutely no recollection of who picked it or why. Perhaps it was because my grandmother had always hoped to visit Hawaii some day or the fact that my grandfather enjoyed listening to musicians strum away on the Hawaiian guitar. How we ended up there in the first place may be a mystery but the events that unfolded during the course of the evening were unforgettable. Even if certain individuals would prefer to forget the evening altogether, the rest of the family is more than happy to jog everyone's memory. Decades have passed and the story still never gets old.

The evening's entertainment began with the arrival of a bevy of lovely hula dancers decked out in traditional hula garb. Everyone probably expected these gently swaying ladies to appear. They were crowned with pretty palm leaf garlands and they wore flowing grass skirts. It seemed like a nice relaxing backdrop to our family dinner. Our ginormous table was located amongst other unrelated diners and the whole crowd seemed to be enjoying both the cuisine and the tropical ambiance. Halfway through the meal, the mood of the evening took an unexpected twist and I'm not sure if anyone realized that the second half of the show was going to be quite so intense. Seemingly out of nowhere, the gentle hula was abruptly interrupted by frenzied drumming that was quickly ramping up to an ear splitting crescendo. It was obvious that the show was building up to something but no one had any idea what was about to come next.

We certainly did not expect a bunch of shirtless men waving flaming batons of bamboo to explode onto the stage. This type of establishment should warn their unsuspecting diners that something of this nature is about to happen. It seemed like an awfully good way to cause choking as you gasp in surprise and accidentally suck a chunk of steak and pineapple down your windpipe. Nothing a few whacks on the back by a sibling can't remedy, but for goodness sakes, a little warning might have been nice, no? What kind of performance was this? Isn't this supposed to be a family friendly show? Why are all the dancers half naked? And isn't there some kind of public safety rule concerning throwing a bunch of searing hot torches around inside a crowded restaurant? While some diners actually enjoyed the show, my mother was not among them. She was silently cringing and seeking out the nearest exit and the exact location of her husband and three children. Should the whole place accidentally go up in flames after an errant piece of smoldering torch flew into the crowd, she wanted to be personally prepared to get her own family to safety as quickly as possible. Of course, she would drag out as many nieces, nephews, and in-laws as she could manage but this was certainly not her idea of a relaxing meal.

As the initial shock of the second half of the show was wearing off, the staff began looking for a bit of crowd participation. Surely, some eager diner was willing to go up on stage and learn to dance the hula or perhaps give one of those flaming batons a few whirls. No takers? No problem. In the hubbub of the wild performance, we barely realized that one of our own had been kidnapped and drug onto the main stage. Out of everyone in the crowded restaurant that evening, my grandfather's eldest son found himself on stage as part of the entertainment crew. No one knew exactly what was in store for him, but it was too late for anyone in our party to execute some kind of rescue mission. He was already front and center on stage and committed to participate. If he refused he would surely be heckled by the other tables for temporarily bringing the whole show to a halt while the dancers rustled up a willing replacement. It should be noted that the crowd wasn't exactly filled with eager volunteers who were disappointed that they hadn't been chosen to go up on stage. A bit of a mob mentality ensued. If my uncle had attempted to cordially decline and return to our table, he might have been met at the stairs by a bunch of angry audience members with pointy tiki torches forcing him back up on stage. It was one of those "better that poor guy than me" situations.

I am sure that once my uncle realized that his fate was sealed, he thought he would simply join the dancers, politely learn a few hula moves and quietly make his way back to his seat after a brief round of applause from the audience. Instead, he ended up dancing around the stage in his bare feet, wearing a crown of palm leaves, and being harassed by a bunch of female hula dancers. They insisted that he remove both his socks and shoes and roll his pant legs up to his knees in order to participate in the show. I am fairly certain that he drew the line at removing his shirt but it all gets a bit hazy from this point forward. I don't know what was more entertaining the actual floor show or the fact that my uncle was forced to become a part of it against his will. This single event provided his younger brothers with years of comedic material. Finally, after his participation was deemed sufficiently embarrassing by both the audience and the staff of dancers, they allowed him to return to our table, blushing a bit, but essentially unharmed.

Having not learned our lesson at the tiki lounge, we decided to attempt yet another family outing with the entire brood. Around the same time as the retirement party hula incident, we arranged to take a private tour of a local historic mansion. That's right all twenty seven and a half or possibly eight of us. Now truth be told, if I were a tour guide and I saw this motley crew coming my way, I would simply resign and find a new career path. He or she was bound to repeatedly experience one or more of the following:

1. Overall rowdiness 
2. Inattentive children who could care less that all of the woodwork in the joint was hand carved by a bunch of blind monks who lived as recluses deep in the Italian Alps.
3. Skeptics who would demand to know exactly how blind monks could successfully carve all those tiny identical wooden rosettes if in fact they had zero eyesight. Could they see a little bit? Did they have some kind of help? Did they use some kind of special tools? Where did they harvest the wood? How was the final product shipped to the states? What if a piece of woodwork gets accidentally damaged? How will an exact replacement be obtained? I mean all those monks are probably pushing up daisies by now and it's not like you can just pick up something like that at Lowe's, right? The questioning would be well-meaning but endless. 
4. Ongoing impromptu jokes about blind woodcarving monks. 
5. Increasing levels of rowdiness as the tour wore on. 
6. More jokes as the brothers three were able to gather more hilarious material since those monk jokes could only go on for so long before they lost their zip. 
7. More intense questioning concerning supposedly factual information presented during the tour. Even with extremely tactful wives who have learned how to successfully intervene on behalf of their husbands over the years, it would still require a highly skilled tour guide to wrangle this boisterous clan of jokesters who also happen to be extremely inquisitive by nature.
8. Did I mention rowdiness?

Although we were probably given loads of information about the history and the decor of the house, I personally don't remember much about the place except that the exterior was in the Tudor style. The interior seemed a bit dark for my taste and it had lots of leather, lots of hand carved woodwork (not actually done by blind Italian monks, that was just a hypothetical example), lots of stuffed dead animals hanging from the walls, and an Olympic size swimming pool. Perhaps this was because the most memorable part of my experience happened beyond the stuffy confines of the old mansion. Surrounding the whole place were massive botanical gardens that would have taken an entire week to explore. My parents usually kept a fairly tight rein on my sister and I, but on this particular occasion they had relaxed their normal rules and allowed us to saunter off ahead of them with the rest of our cousins. You know, safety in numbers and all as there were sixteen of us. I was thrilled to have a tiny bit of freedom and I felt totally grown up, until I unexpectedly found myself wishing that I had been forced to hold my mom's hand as usual.

One minute I remember happily making my way across the grass to join the other kids and seconds later I found myself fearing for my life, frantically yelling for my parents to snatch me up pronto. A few moments prior, I had set out ahead of my parents in order to catch up with my older siblings and cousins. The gardens were massive and sprawling and although my parents kept a constant visual on me, we were all spread out quite a distance from one another. I had been merrily skipping down a flight of concrete stairs when I briefly lost my footing and stumbled. What should have ended as a simple skinned knee, a slightly smooshed ear, and a bruised up elbow quickly turned into a far more disastrous adventure.

After temporarily losing my footing, I was miraculously able to recover from what could have been a fairly major faceplant. Unfortunately, I had hardly any time to enjoy the fact that I had somehow managed to keep my balance and stay on my feet. An unexpected consequence of my amazing recovery was that my tiny feet had taken on a life of their own and were currently running one after the other down the stairs at break neck speed. No matter how hard I tried I could not control them. I knew that at this rate attempting to stop myself by falling down was much too dangerous. The rapidly increasing momentum of my little body hurling down the stairs was far too great to be able to bring it to any kind of gentle stop.

To make matters worse, there was an enormous reflecting pool on an expansive landing located directly at the bottom of the stairs. The surface of the water was covered with an intricate patchwork of lily pads and exotic floating flowers. It may have been beautiful to observe from afar but the thought of diving in head first and splashing about was far less appealing. It was at this very moment that I realized that I was most likely about to die given the fact that I had not yet learned to swim. There was no possible way to avoid impact with the brilliant emerald green water. The pool was far too wide to steer myself around and the water was too dark and murky to determine the exact depth. Everyone within a six-mile radius heard my cries for help but my parents were too far behind to catch up and my cousins were too far ahead to help. This left me solo and screaming as I hurtled towards my impending doom.   I could hear my mom saying, "She's out of control...honey...she's completely out of control!" 

Furthermore, drowning wasn't my greatest concern. I was absolutely positive that if I didn't drown immediately, I would be eaten by a bunch of ferocious snapping turtles. In hindsight, I doubt that this carefully planned water feature actually contained any snapping turtles. My conclusion was a logical one given the fact that the only other pond I knew of that was covered in lily pads was near the home of my great aunt and uncle. I knew for a fact that their pond was chock full of those vicious pointy beaked reptiles waiting to take a chunk out of anyone who dared to enter the slimy waters they called home. I had witnessed first hand what those snappers could do to a broom handle and since this pool also had water lilies, I assumed that it too had a flock of resident snapping turtles. I closed my eyes in preparation for the inevitable final impact. My parents would have to tearfully request that the following warning be engraved on my teeny tiny tombstone: "Here lies our dear half-drowned daughter. She would have made it but she could not swim and she was snacked on by snapping turtles before we were able to fish her out by her ankles. If only she had taken swimming lessons like we asked."

As I flew down the stairs towards my imminent demise, I briefly regretted having vehemently refused my mother's reasonable request that I take swimming lessons at the local lake. At the end of every school year, a sign up sheet was sent home for anyone interested in learning to swim. Every single year my mother signed me up to take part and every year with heaving sobs, gnashing of teeth, and fits on the kitchen floor, I refused to attend. Eventually, my mother would grow weary of the theatrics and give in to my ridiculous, unreasonable behavior. As every mother knows, sometimes you have to pick your battles. My refusal to take swimming lessons centered around three pieces of information that I had garnered while observing my older sister as she received swimming instruction at the lake in question.

Before I was old enough to enroll in formal swimming classes myself, I had been carefully watching my sibling and her doggy paddling peers from the comfortable safety of the dock. First of all, the lessons took place early in the morning and the water at that hour was absolutely freezing. The shrieks of entering ice cold lake water on blustery June mornings did not appeal to me in the slightest. Contrary to popular belief, where I grew up swimming season did not truly get into full swing until midsummer. Except for a few unseasonably warm days, everyone who grew up south of Lake Erie knows that entering a body of water in the month of June will most likely cause you to lose your breath momentarily. Seconds later your muscles will contract, rendering your limbs completely useless, causing you to nearly drown. Your only hope is to frantically fight through the pain and start swimming around all the while attempting to visualize that you are some kind of happy little arctic seal.

Second of all, I thought that one of the guys who taught swimming lessons at the lake was a little creepy. He may have been a nice enough cat. I have no idea. I never actually made it to class to find out, but he seemed weird from afar. It was the early eighties and he looked like some kind of throw back to the late sixties/early seventies. In my opinion, he was a bit too old to have a summer job teaching kids how to swim. Shouldn't he have a real job? He had long hippie hair and he wore loud flower patterned swim trunks with gold medallions draped around his neck. He looked a bit like shaggy from the Scooby Doo cartoons but he was a bit plumper. He wore gold aviator sunglasses while standing in the water, looking grumpy and twirling a whistle. I'm sure he drove a van of some sort and he was also extremely hairy. When he came out of the water after diving in, it looked like he was wearing a soggy old v-neck sweater. Of course, he was not the only teacher and it is very likely that he was an all around great guy and an amazing aquatics instructor. Still, I felt the risk of ending up swimming in ice water with seventies man as a teacher was far too great.

Finally, there was the little matter of the giant man eating fish that frequented these local waters. The lake had a little snack shack that sold...wait for it....snacks. I never actually ate a meal there so I don't know exactly what other kinds of fare they specialized in, but true to its name, they did stock chips, candy and soda err...I mean pop. (After moving away from the area where I grew up, I have been forced to modify the vocabulary word that I once used to describe fizzy carbonated beverages.  Don't worry, I'm not getting uppity, it's just that no one outside of the regions where people say "pop" know what you are talking about when you order a "pop" unless you change it to the more universally accepted soda.)  Occasionally, while my mom sat on the edge of the dock chatting with the other mothers, (carefully observing their teeth-chattering children who were desperately trying to learn the back stroke before full blown hypothermia set in) I would be allowed to walk to said shack with two shiny quarters jingling in the pocket of my pink pedal pushers. I would happily surrender my fifty cents to the friendly clerk in order to purchase a tiny green and white bag of sour cream and onion potato chips. It was an odd post breakfast snack to be sure, so it was a rare treat, but don't worry I would only ever finish half of the bag. I always saved the second half to feed those feisty, fighting fish.

With bait in hand, I would stomp back across the sandy beach, crunching away on my salty snacks until I finally reached the dock. I would make my way across the planks looking for the perfect spot. Once I found a large enough space for my little eyeball to see through, I would lay down on my belly and peer down between the boards into the shallow silty waters below. Just a few feet from where my sister was splashing around in an effort to keep her core temperature from dropping to dangerously low levels, lived a massive herd of ridiculously enormous silver carp. They were bigger than my entire body, they stunk horribly, and they loved thrashing around and rolling over each other in order to fight for a few leftover bits of potato chip. It was a great way to amuse myself and way more fun than watching those boring old swimming lessons. My major concern was if those huge fish went totally wild for a little shaving of fried potato, imagine what would happen if they got a hold of a swimmer. Totally terrifying. There was no way under any circumstance imaginable that I was going to put my big toe in that chilly water let alone submerge my entire body with those filthy fish flopping around just beneath the surface of the lake.

Unfortunately, as I was flying wildly down those concrete stairs with limbs flailing and filled with panic, I began to regret this earlier decision. Perhaps eschewing swimming lessons on account of frigid water, odd teachers, and stinky carp had been a mistake, but it was far too late for regrets. There was a skinny little sliver of drab grey cement lying between the very last stair and the murky lily-pad covered pool of putrid slimewater. When my tootsies finally touched this puny piece of pavement, I closed my eyes tight and prepared for the giant foamy green splash that was guaranteed to happen at the moment of impact. I could practically taste the pond scum.  At that very second, instead of hitting the stinkwater, something hit me instead. It felt as though I had been unexpectedly whacked in the throat with a log. I wondered if this was what it felt like to be dead. I sputtered and coughed and opened my eyes, fully expecting to see those enormous pearly gates before me. Instead, I realized that I was actually still alive and that by some sort of divine intervention, I had stopped short just inches away from that disgusting deep green pool of inky darkness.

I had no idea what had happened, but one of my uncles was now standing next to me asking if I was alright. I will never know how he made it to me in time, but out of nowhere, like the Flash, the very same uncle who had been hula dancing against his will earlier in the story had just saved my life. By trade, he happened to be a police officer. Prior to this incident, I would have never said that he was a particularly fast runner, but unbeknownst to the rest of the family, all those years of chasing baddies must have kept him in tip top shape. With one outstretched arm, he was able to sprint to my location with only seconds to spare in order to stop me from careening head first into the algae ridden reflecting pool. Given the urgency of the situation, his only available option was to clothesline me with his forearm bringing me to a rather sudden and abrupt halt. My uncle felt a bit bad about purposely knocking the wind out of a preschooler, but he was left with little choice. Of course, at that moment, I couldn't care less that my whole neck was throbbing and that my breathing sounded like an old busted Hoover sweeper. (Of course that's midwestern speak for vacuum in case any of you out-of-towners were wondering.  We also frequently eat supper in these parts instead of dinner.) The alternative outcomes of drowning or death by snapping turtle were far more unpleasant to imagine than simply being clotheslined by a cop who also happened to be your hula dancing uncle.

In modern times, our entire family could have probably sued both of these venues for negligence and emotional distress. The restaurant for causing public humiliation on the part of my uncle, smoke inhalation for everyone else, and undue stress for all the moms in the room frantically counting the number of steps between their families and the nearest available fire exit. As for the mansion and its surrounding property, I would like to know what wizard of garden design decided that it would be a good idea to construct an enormous water feature at the bottom of a set of stairs. I'm still traumatized after all these years, but rather than get a lawyer on the horn, I'll just continue to share these crazy little stories in the hopes that they will provide my readers with a few chuckles. Then again, suing the estate of a bunch of millionaires from the heyday of the tire industry could prove very lucrative.

Nah....instead of pursuing litigation, I think I will use my free time to teach my toddler to swim. Once he masters the basics of the aquatot curriculum, we'll work on snapping turtle identification and self-defense measures.  My great-grandfather taught me how to get a snapping turtle to release its grip if you are ever bitten by one, but that my friends is a story better recounted in person. Finally, we'll google "How to dance like a Hawaiian" and practice our best hula moves (minus the flaming fire batons of course). After all, you never know when this kind of thing might come in handy.

P.S. If any of you happen to run into our local hula dancing hero in your travels, tell him his niece said thanks for going above and beyond to make sure that I made it past the age of five!

Posted with Blogsy

Day 21 = The Amazing Adventures of Beat Up Old

In recent days, it seems like my two-year old son would like to take every single toy that he owns outside in order to play with them there. It's as though somehow toting his pile of playthings out into the great outdoors will make them even more fun than they already are in the comfortable confines of the house. If I have said, "No, you may not take _____ outside with you to play." once in the last two weeks, I have said it forty-seven times. I am not so old that I am unable to understand the allure of dragging all your cars and trucks and trains and playing cards, and playdoh, and crayons, and plastic livestock out into the backyard in order to play with them.  It's true that our yard is a much more interesting locale than our boring old living room. That being said, I am old enough to realize the unfortunate consequences of exposing your toys to a bit of fresh air from time to time.

Playtime al fresco will result in metal matchbox cars that desperately need a new paint job after speeding through the scratchy sand. Trucks will be forgotten in a shady corner of the patio. Their once working parts will quickly rust solid, rendering your once rolling big rigs completely immobile. Trains will also begin to seize and sputter on their tiny tracks after only a few hours of exposure to the salty sea air. Paper playing cards will grow damp if accidentally forgotten on the dew covered lawn. Like some kind of specialty prop for half-rate magicians, your carelessly forgotten jack of diamonds will magically separate into four distinct layers of wrinkly weathered card stock. Your pristine pots of playdoh will become hopelessly polluted and pocked with pebbles, pollen and potting soil. And, any colorful crayons that you leave lying around on the back porch will be slowly seared by the sun until they eventually become melty, molten pools of weather beaten wax. And this, my dear, is not even the worst of it.

At some point, it is inevitable that you will leave a piece of your plastic livestock behind after sending the whole herd out to pasture in the tall weeds.  For a bit, this careless oversight by a distracted herder will go unnoticed, only to be accidentally rediscovered by the trusty old lawn mower in the weeks to come. I can say with one hundred percent certainty that your poor father will not be happy when his right front shin is shockingly assaulted by an out of control spinning plastic sheep that has been kicked out of the weeds by the whirling blades of the push mower. And you will be super sad when you discover that despite miraculously surviving a life-threatening lawn trimming accident, your sweet little sheep now only has three legs instead of the usual four.

I know about these things because when I was a little girl, we had a three-legged sheep who used to spend his days limping around our holiday manger scene. He was never the kind of sheep that ventured outdoors, but I believe an unfortunate fall from the treacherous edge of the dining room table was responsible for the loss of his right rear lamb limb. Despite his unfortunate disability, he is a hearty little creature who to this day continues to trot out to his special place under Pop Pop and Grammy's Christmas tree each and every December. Inevitably, the delicate condition of his right rear appendage is often forgotten from year to year. After setting him in place, only to have him fall over several times, whoever is responsible for arranging the holiday stable eventually remembers why this poor little sheep is so unusually unsteady. One of his little lamby pals has the luxury of being carried on the shoulders of a shepherd. Another of his baa-ing barnyard buddies was carefully carved in the prone position. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the only remaining sheep in the flock. Instead of becoming the last sheep standing, proud and tall at the heels of one of the three gentle shepherds, this poor little pile of wobbly wool has to be inconspicuously propped up against one of the rear walls of the stable. If this precaution is not put into place, the poor little three-legged lamb falls over at even the slightest vibration, threatening even greater catastrophic damage to his three remaining shaggy sheep shanks.

Sheep in need of prosthetic limbs aside, I really do understand where my son is coming from. As a child, I clearly remember relentlessly pestering my sweet mother in an ongoing attempt to persuade her to allow me to drag all of my favorite playtime pals out onto the lawn with me. It was lonely out there with only a bunch of sticks and weeds and rocks to play with. Practically living off the grid without access to a bunch of playmates meant I was desperate for a little buddy to accompany me on my exciting outdoor adventures. I mean who was I supposed to share my outdoor experiences with if no children my age lived within a six mile radius of our home? I at least wanted to be accompanied by a pretend pal whenever I dug in the sandbox, played on the swing set, rode my big wheel, walked on stilts, played hopscotch, twirled baton, ran through the sprinkler, splashed in the kiddie pool, or hurled my body down the slip and slide. (Okay, I have to admit that the last item on the list never actually happened as the in house safety committee would have never, ever signed off on the purchase of something as inherently dangerous as a slip and slide.)

If I couldn't get my hands on a real live kid, it was only fair that I be allowed to arrange for a temporary stand in until other kids my age were available for a prearranged play date. Stuffed animals were right out as their ability to suck up moisture and grow swiftly soggy was glaringly obvious even to an overoptimistic preschooler like myself. The family dog was actually willing to go along with my outdoor antics for quite a while, but even she had her limits. Her patience and endurance often began to flag after being continuously tortured by countless hours of chic doggy dress up and distinguished hair styling for hounds. Eventually, no amount of milkbone bribery could keep her by my side for yet another luxurious bout of puppy pampering in my imaginary backyard beauty parlor for discriminating doggies. She much preferred a more solitary, less hands on, existence. After a long, harrowing morning of permitting me to work my magic in the form of yet another signature mutt makeover, the family dog spent the remainder of the afternoon laying on her side, sprawled out in the shade, snoozing. She could be observed occasionally squinting in the direction of her tiny human charge, through one half closed eyeball, in order to make sure that the mean neighborhood German Shepherd wasn't attempting to take my tiny arm off while she caught a few much deserved doggy zzzz's.

Despite my campaign for a partner in crime that I could happily drag with me around the yard, I continued to come up empty handed. I occasionally suggested that my parents solve the problem of my solitary existence by providing me with a new sibling. Surprisingly, they were not the slightest bit willing to get on board with my exciting plan to add an additional child to our existing family of five. Truth be told, I never pushed too hard for this particular option.  After all, I was sharp enough to recognize that adding another baby to our brood meant that my preferred status as the spoiled, bratty youngest would be rather quickly compromised.

If my parents wouldn't agree to go out and rustle me up a new baby brother or sister, I would have to make do with the next best thing, a precious little baby doll. In fact, I already owned two little dolls who were dressed in beautiful white christening type gowns that my grandmother had given to me as gifts. Surely, one of these two baby beauties could accompany me out into the wilderness. Unfortunately, their willingness to be dragged around the lawn by yours truly was intercepted by my mom, who vetoed this plan as well. Despite her flat out refusal to allow me to ruin two perfectly good dolls, she understood my plight and offered up an alternative in the form of the perfect outdoor companion, a unique creature, aptly named Beat Up Old.

I'm not quite sure where exactly we obtained dear Beat Up Old, but I will always remember her fondly no matter what her mystery origins happened to be. She may have been a secondhand castoff passed down from my older sister. It was also entirely plausible that she was an unbeatable bargain picked up at a neighborhood yard sale. I was too young to remember how we acquired her, I only knew that I loved her to pieces. She came by her name honestly as my mom would gently remind me that the only indoor toy that I was actually allowed to take outside with me was my "beat up old" doll. This sentence was uttered so frequently that eventually the entire family just began referring to my grubby faced outdoor doll as "Beat Up Old".

I am uncertain if Beat Up Old ever actually had any doll clothes of her own. If she once owned some kind of frilly doll-sized frock, it was long ago sullied by bright green grass stains and accidental fallout from extra sloppy mud pies. I can't speak to the fact if she ever owned a wardrobe as the only way I remember her was as a proud little nudist. She had a pinkish-beige cloth covered body and her plastic arms, legs, and head were carefully sewn onto this stuffing-filled, flesh-toned frame. Of course, my sister and I had lots of spare doll clothes tucked away in our toy box, but unfortunately, none of them were the perfect match for poor Beat Up Old. Unlike Goldilocks, there was no outfit in our joint possession that fit just right. The giant pile of doll clothes that my sister and I owned were either way too big and constantly fell off or way too tiny and didn't fit over her super sized noggin. So, Beat Up Old was left to roam the yard in her plain old birthday suit.

Speaking of her noggin, let's have a chat about delightful dolly hairdos. A few of my female cousins and childhood friends used to proudly own a collection of beautiful dolls. These dolls came with special stands so that they could be elegantly displayed on dressers, shelves, or tables in bedrooms and playrooms. I am quite certain that most of these dolls were far too expensive to ever venture outside of the room where they were carefully placed, let alone the house. Their delicate dresses were arranged just so and their unbelievable up-dos were salon worthy styles. Every curl was perfectly pinned in place with beautiful ribbons and baubles. This was not the case for poor Beat Up Old. Just like her original outfit remained a mystery to me, so did her original haircut. I only remember her post modern makeover. I am sure that when I acquired her, she had long lovely locks of silky synthetic hair, but you can only drag a doll around the back forty for so long before her hair starts to look a wee bit bedraggled. After one too many irremovable tangles, unfortunate chewing gum and lollipop incidents, and well-meaning organic mud bath hair treatments, Beat Up Old developed the kind of bad hair day that was chronic and incurable.

There was only one thing that could be done to save her hair and that was to give her a seriously short shearing. I was hoping that when my mom was finished furiously lopping away at her once lovely locks (not that I personally ever remember her having a beautiful bouffant but I'm certain she once did have one, just not when I owned her) that she would end up with a cute little pixie cut just like me. That was not exactly how it turned out as her plasticky doll hair was far too damaged to warrant keeping very much of its original length. My mom made a valiant effort, but after numerous attempts to successfully save her with a sweet little short cut, she was left with a single, less than desirable option.

Beat Up Old ended up sporting a spiky, bleach blonde crew cut, looking like she would fit in better at the annual convention of a somewhat androgynous gang of female bikers than at the local playground. Despite her edgy new hairdo, I loved Beat Up Old all the same and continued to carry her almost everywhere I went on my daily adventures in the great outdoors. Others might have thought it a bit odd to see a little girl toting a nekkid doll around that was a dead ringer for that nineties fitness guru Susan Powter, but my whole family and I had become oblivious to the fact that Beat Up Old was quite unlike any other doll on the planet. Unless you were in the business of combing through old garbage dumps and abandoned out buildings in search of antiques and long forgotten treasures, you had never seen a doll like Beat Up Old. Even if you were into junk picking as a hobby, and seeing dolls like Beat Up Old was a routine occurrence, it was still extremely rare to observe a doll in this kind of atrocious condition that was still tightly attached to the arm of the little girl who loved her.

Despite her outward appearance, I never gave up on Beat Up Old. I still had precious pretty indoor doll babies that I played with in the house, but none of them compared to Beat Up Old. The whole point of having a doll like Beat Up Old was that you could take her absolutely anywhere and you didn't have to worry about getting her dirty, messing up her hair, or ruining her clothes. All of those things had already happened, so she enjoyed complete and total doll freedom. There wasn't anywhere you couldn't take her. (Except maybe church, by all accounts, that one was right out.). If you accidentally left her hanging on the swing set and she got caught in a terrible thunderstorm, it was no big deal. If you forgot her in the woods during a game of hide and seek and your dad found her a few days later, you didn't get in trouble. Dad just brushed her off and handed her right back to you. (After a quick once over to check for fleas, ticks, and other outdoor vermin, of course.) If she flew off the back of your bike as you were pedaling at top speed down the driveway and landed in the middle of a mud puddle, there was no stress. You didn't have to endure the trauma and separation anxiety of waiting for your mom to run her through the washer, you just rinsed her off pretty good with the garden hose and went about your business with a slightly dampened dolly. If her left arm was accidentally dislocated in a freak tree climbing accident, no tears were necessary. A band-aid and some Bactine for your banged up elbow, a few quick sewing stitches for the lost limb of Beat Up Old, and the two of you were back on track in no time.

That was the beauty of a super sturdy, completely dependable, already well-broken-in doll baby like Beat Up Old. You just couldn't ruin her, no matter how hard you loved her. Just like her factory original hair and clothing, I can no longer recollect when and where we eventually parted ways. Not surprisingly, Beat Up Old was not found among the other beautiful dolls that my mom had carefully packed away to be someday handed down to her future grandchildren. Besides the fact that Beat Up Old was probably a walking petri dish of germs, who smelled a bit funny, and looked far worse, her somewhat rough outer appearance would probably be a bit frightening to any small child who didn't know her and love her from the beginning. Even my own family grew so accustomed to seeing me with this somewhat scary looking, slightly dingy doll, who lived life au naturale, that they were often shocked when outsiders publicly mentioned her deplorable condition. Even when faced with outright criticism from strangers, no one had the heart to separate me from the disheveled doll baby that I so clearly adored. I imagine that Beat Up Old was eventually retired after my mom found herself on the receiving end of one two many snarky comments in the checkout line at the grocery store. "Someone should buy that poor little girl a proper doll instead of making her carry around that hideous beat up old thing."

Little did they know, I was the proud owner of plenty of other pretty dolls in pristine condition. The flawless appearance of my other dolls was able to remain "just like new" because they usually never made it into the regular toy rotation. No doll could compare to Beat Up Old and she was the only doll I ever needed, even if she did look like I dug her out of a garbage dumpster. Besides, who wants a doll that costs so much, you're not even allowed to play with her. And, as for those perfectly coiffed dolls in designer duds that some of my friends and family owned and displayed for all to see, that kind of thing just wasn't for me. It's true that they were beautiful to look at and admire during the daytime, but once you turned off all the lights, I always thought those things turned a little creepy. I never enjoyed the feeling of all those perfect little dolls standing around the room staring at me all night long.

You never had to worry about that kind of thing with Beat Up Old. I didn't usually take her into bed with me. Despite the fact that I showered her with unconditional love during daylight hours, even I had my limits. We weren't completely blind to the fact that Beat Up Old was a dirty old outdoor doll, we just looked the other way most of the time. This did not include snuggling her little stinky body as you drifted off to sleep. Some things are just gross. I mean you wouldn't put your filthy, grass-stained little feet straight under the covers without at least pretending to rinse them off in the tub first, would you? I preferred to sleep with my little brown and white teddy bear, who played "Rock-a-bye, baby" when you wound up a tiny metal key on the left side of his fuzzy bear butt.

Besides, if you've ever tried to sleep with one of your baby dolls, you know it is not without its potential hazards.  It's rather unpleasant to wake up somewhat disfigured with the extremely painful outline of a rock hard plastic baby doll arm permanently imprinted into the middle of your shoulder blade. Beat Up Old never minded being given the boot from the tiny bedroom that my sister and I shared when we were little girls.  You could always count on Beat Up Old to be cool like that. She was perfectly content to spend her nighttime hours snoozing under the corner of the living room couch with all those cuddly little dust bunnies, lounging in the muddy garden next to a pretty green tomato plant, or sleeping in a cozy pile of sawdust, half-slumped over the radial arm saw table, out in the garage. She was too busy resting up for all the amazing adventures that we would have the following day to care about exactly where she sacked out for the night, and let's face it, it's not like she could have gotten any dirtier.

P.S. Thanks mom for allowing me to have at least one doll that I was actually allowed to take with me whenever I went outside to play. Sorry about those nasty people who threatened to call children and youth services on account of Beat Up Old. It was totally uncalled for and completely unfair. After all, it's not like I was the one running around the lawn naked as a jay bird, sporting a slightly crusty crew cut, with a two-inch layer of dirt caked on my face.

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Day 20 = Dealing with the Dreaded Clam Cough

Once a year, my dad's entire, enormous, extended family got together to enjoy a giant clam bake hosted by my great aunt and uncle. While family gatherings of this style may be common place in coastal towns throughout the country, I feel it is noteworthy to mention that this gargantuan family seafood festival actually took place smack dab in the middle of Ohio. One of my grandmother's younger sisters had married a mountain of a man who chose to pursue a career in agriculture there. Together, with their children, they owned and maintained acres and acres of sprawling farmland. They specialized in raising pigs, but they also kept some big, old brown cows in their barn and a few other farm animals made special guest appearances from time to time.

Out of all the regulars that hung out in their little barnyard, my personal favorite was a curly-coated hound named Clyde whose shaggy fur was once jet black until he got old and it gradually turned to salt and pepper. Clyde was a friendly pooch who spent his days lounging near his little dog house conveniently located in my aunt's side yard. From this particular vantage point, Clyde could easily observe the whole of the farm and alert his owners to any unforeseen changes in the surrounding environment. Clyde the dog loved his job and he prided himself in doing it well, but from time to time, he may have gotten a bit carried away with his self-appointed responsibilities. He barked in order to announce every single activity happening on the farm from guests arriving, to lose pigs on the run, to clunkety tractors passing by. Unfortunately, his ability to prioritize proved to be to somewhat problematic as kids on bicycles, oinking pigs who were safe and secure in their pens, and corn stalks blowing in the breeze garnered the same exact response as unwanted intruders. In fact, Clyde liked to bark so very much that he eventually developed chronic doggy laryngitis. Despite his unfortunate health condition, he continued to bark at everything in sight, ignoring the fact that no sound came out anymore. Clyde was the unofficial head of the clambake welcoming committee, silently greeting all the hungry guests as they arrived at the farm.

When you first arrived at my aunt and uncle's farm, it didn't go entirely unnoticed that it was a bit of a stinky business raising pigs. It was a working farm after all, but if the breeze was blowing in the right direction and even when it wasn't, after awhile you just didn't notice the smell quite so much. This was especially true if you wadded up bits of paper napkin and stuffed them inside each of your nostrils, however, if you happened to be older than seven, this technique was probably not for you. Through some rarely understood social phenomenon, the very moment you turn eight, you immediately become far too cool to walk around a family gathering with brightly colored party napkins sticking halfway out of your nose. This was difficult for the under seven crowd to understand as they found their unique stink-stopping technique to be both effective and highly entertaining.

No matter what camp you actually belonged to, it was virtually indisputable that getting to see all those adorable little piglets up close, made the sometimes smelly situation much more tolerable. Unfortunately, every single one of those cute little pink piggies with curly-q tails eventually grew up to big, honking, hairy hogs covered in mud and who knows what else from snoot to hoof. Why my aunt and uncle hosted a clam bake instead of a pig roast remains somewhat unclear, but for me, this clam-centered occasion was the event of the season, something that I eagerly looked forward to all year long. I constantly pestered my parents throughout the spring and summer months, demanding to know if it was time for the highly anticipated clam bake yet. I began to bother them about it as soon as the winter weather broke as I was certain that meant clam season was just around the corner. 

I absolutely adored spending time with my aunt and uncle, although it wasn't likely that we would spend a ton of time with them on the day of the big clam bake.  They were far too busy hosting their own party to spend too much time lingering in one spot. However, we did get to see them on a fairly regular basis. Despite living a few hours away from each other, they used to stop by our house quite often. You see there was a high quality livestock auction just down the road from my house where specialty swine could be bought and sold at reasonable prices. Whenever my aunt and uncle were in town on official pig purchasing business, they used to pop in for a quick visit prior to acquiring their new piggies of course. These sometimes surprise visits were always a pleasure and the whole family was always excited to see their car turn into our long, bumpy driveway. The thing that I remember most about the two of them was their hearty sense of humour. They were always so kind-hearted and they both shared a contagious kind of laughter that could completely fill a room. I can appreciate this, because my own laugh often comes out at a ridiculously loud volume. It doesn't happen all the time, but if I find something particularly hilarious, you can easily identify my ear-splitting ha-ha-ing from half a mile away. Some people I have known have found this trait of mine to be a bit overwhelming, but my best friend has always been a fan of my king-sized chuckles. The way she sees it, it always makes her look like the most entertaining person in the entire joint.

This very same aunt and uncle who knew how to laugh and graciously doled out clams every single September, also taught us how to be complete corn snobs. I never purchase ears of corn at the grocery store, not without totally regretting it, and please do not bother to offer me any kind of hog corn. Just because it's yellow and it comes wrapped in a bright green husk does not mean it is fit for human consumption. If an ear of corn wasn't freshly harvested the very same day it was to be eaten, my aunt wouldn't touch it. I grew up to practice and enforce the same strict corn policy in my house. In fact, we still import our corn from the nearby farmlands of Pennsylvania as I have yet to discover a single high quality ear of corn anywhere on the whole of Long Island. Despite the fact that there is a fairly active farming community out east, the farmers there must save all the good corn for themselves.  They pawn off their lousy, old field corn onto the city billies who don't know any better but I'm no green horn when it comes to corn.  Therefore, I will continue to smuggle my freshly picked Pennsylvania sweet corn across state lines.

Upon moving to this area, I was shocked to learn that when hosting a summer shindig in this neck of the woods, it is common practice to only prepare a single piece of corn per invited guest. I learned this the hard way after accidentally consuming someone else's ear of corn at my neighbor's backyard barbecue. My embarrassing faux pas wasn't even worth it. The first ear was lousy and I was hoping it was simply a dud and that the second one would prove to be delicious. No such luck. I tried to explain to the guy whose ear of corn I had accidentally pilfered that I had just saved his palate from being assaulted by corn that was only fit for animals to eat, but it was no use. I have now been forever labeled in our neighborhood as the local corn hog over an icky old ear of hog corn that I regretted ever bringing to my lips after the very first bite. Instead of being able to discretely dispose of the slightly nibbled bit of compost-worthy corn, I was forced to eat the whole stinking ear.  The already awkward situation would have been made even worse if I had stolen some guys highly-anticipated singular ear of corn and then heartlessly chucked it into the trash bin after only consuming three crummy kernels. I would like to go on record among the corn connoisseurs of the world, that I would have rather eaten a well buttered napkin than that rotten old ear of field corn, but I had little choice in the matter.

Back to the family clam bake, where delicious, fresh-picked sweet corn was always served up in abundance. I could hardly contain myself in anticipation of this annual family gathering. I couldn't wait to get my hands on a few ears of that super yummy corn, chow down on some clams, and hang out on the farm. You might find the third and final part of that statement to be slightly out of character for me, as I am not typically a huge fan of the whole farm scene. I grew up practically assaulted by agriculture as nearly every third student in my class lived on a farm and my dad actually sold and repaired farm equipment for a living. One of my older, city dwelling cousins used to tease me by saying "Hey, Farmer!" every time that I saw him. It instantly infuriated me because I was NOT a farmer, nor, for everyone's information, did I ever plan on becoming one at any point in the future. Luckily, when you are five, blind seething rage is only sustainable for about two minutes. After that, you just get over yourself and scurry off to play with your Barbies.  By the way, despite our extremely rural locale, I want you all to know that my Barbies always spent their afternoons having lunch at trendy restaurants and going to museums. Not once did they ever milk cows, muck stalls, ride horses, bail hay, or put up vegetables. (For those of you who may not be familiar with that expression, that's country talk for canning the stuff that you grow in your garden.). Despite not being a big fan of all things agricultural, I truly couldn't wait for this clam bake. It wasn't the farm itself that made the event, but it did provide loads of entertainment options and my dad's family was always a rowdy, fun-loving crowd.

As previously mentioned, the farm where the yearly clam bake was held was located in northern Ohio, not too far from the bustling metropolis of Cleveland. Given the interior location of the venue, I am not entirely certain where they sourced their seafood, but I do know that they purchased a boatload of cherry stone clams or quahogs if you prefer to call them that. The preparation process was quite time consuming as the zillions of clams had to be fed cornmeal in giant plastic kiddie pools in order to ensure that they were clean and sand free. As a kid, there was a whole shroud of mystery surrounding the process of layering the food in a certain way in special pots with spigots so that the precious boiling hot broth could be carefully drained out of the pots and all the food was guaranteed to turn out amazing. Besides the main dishes provided by my aunt and uncle, the rest of the family members brought side dishes, dessert, or both. Since my dad's side of the family is chock full of amazing cooks, the table was always covered in delicious dishes and everyone usually brought their personal culinary specialty. What a scrumptious feast!!  Even if you weren't particularly fond of seafood, it was guaranteed that you would never walk away from their house hungry on the day of the annual clam bake.

My dad has always been a fan of seafood, but unfortunately fresh fillets of ocean fish and other varieties of shellfish weren't always readily available when you were marooned in the middle of Ohio. Fortunately, in the early years of my parent's marriage, my dad did a lot of traveling for his job, so whenever he found himself in an area that specialized in seafood, he would readily partake. Another issue with the availability of seafood back in Ohio was that my mom didn't personally enjoy snacking on either snapper or shrimp.  Growing up, every single Friday in my mother's house was fish night. She used to conveniently and discretely dispose of her foul fish bits in the joint where the leg of the dining room table met the underside of the table top. She lived in constant fear that this little hidey hole would eventually become so crammed full of fish flakes that she would be left with no choice but to actually consume the funky fish that was polluting her plate. Oddly enough, every week, the previous Friday's fish had mysteriously disappeared. They did not own any pets at the time, so where exactly that fish went continues to remain a mystery to this very day. Needless to say, when I was growing up, every Friday in our house was rechristened homemade pizza night. I've mentioned the cardinal rule of our family kitchen once before, but in case you missed it, the cook never has to serve any vittles that she herself does not personally enjoy, unless said dish has been requested as part of someone's favorite birthday meal, then it is an unavoidable requirement.

Given my mom's compete lack of interest in preparing any fish related foods, whenever my dad had the opportunity to get his hands on some quality seafood, he would jump on it, happily sucking down all sorts of salty, savory, sea creatures. This routine was repeated in countless cities across the eastern seaboard, until one day my dad's free pass to gorge himself on seafood unexpectedly expired. He happened to be flying on an airplane, when he popped some sort of little seafood snack into his mouth. Obviously, this was way back in the day before airplane food became unidentifiable, preservative-laden blocks of artificially flavored I'm not sure what. Anyway, shortly after ingesting this little snippet of seafood, my dad started to feel a bit funny, a little tingly. His throat grew scratchy and he developed a mysterious cough that he hadn't had just a few minutes before. While his symptoms were slightly concerning, they were about to reach a whole new level of frightening. As time slowly passed his symptoms grew worse and worse. His ears began to ring so loudly that he could barely hear and he began to see spots in front of his eyes before his vision suddenly went completely black.

Not sure whether he was having a stroke or if someone had slipped him a mick, my wheezing, totally blind, and nearly deaf father flagged down an air hostess and tried to act completely normal while he requested a shot of whiskey. Don't tell the lovely lady that you are in need of medical attention because you can't hear, can't see, and can't breathe because it feels like your windpipe is in a vice grips, just casually request a bit of booze. Excellent emergency plan. Perhaps she simply thought he had developed a bit of anxiety during the flight. Whether he thought the alcohol would help to ease his scary symptoms or whether he thought he would drink a toast to a life well lived in his last few moments over Earth is unclear, even to my father. Perhaps, in reality, it was a bit of both. Either way, the shot magically relieved his symptoms. By all medical accounts, this should never have worked as alcohol is a depressant that should have slowed down his system, keeping him wheezing, sightless and half deaf for even longer, but for whatever miraculous reason it actually worked. My father regained his ability to see, hear and breathe moments after throwing back a generous mouthful of throat-burning whiskey. This was long before the widespread availability of the Epi-pen, so people had to simply make due with whatever tools they had. If a swig of Wild Turkey kept my pop from unexpectedly expiring mid-flight, so be it.
 
To be fair to my dad, it is a well-known fact that we don't always make the most logically sound decisions in times of extreme crisis. Even my own mother, who is normally quite a rational lady, fell victim to extreme panic and illogical actions when she found herself in a moment of danger at one of the family clambakes. She was standing in the middle of the kitchen inside my aunt's farmhouse and I belief she was helping to prepare an enormous batch of coleslaw to be consumed by the hungry masses, except for me, as coleslaw is the one thing on Earth that I abhor. In fact, I am comfortable admitting that I would rather starve than put a single spoonful of that putrid stuff into my mouth ever again for as long as I live. Anyway, after successfully shredding no less than sixteen bags of carrots using an old school box grater without slicing off a single fingertip, my mom was feeling particularly proud of her work. After shredding the final carrot into the big bowl of slaw, she absentmindedly popped the last remaining bit of carrot into her mouth as it was getting too risky to shred it anymore without inadvertently removing the whorls of her fingerprints. Her happy little toss must have been slightly more vigorous than she initially intended as that little piece of carrot had suddenly become unexpectedly lodged in the back of her throat.

My mom knew better than to excuse herself from the room, but she did not let any of the thirty-five other ladies crammed in the kitchen around her know what was happening. She never made the international sign for choking. She never beat her fist on the table to get someone's attention. She never jumped up and down and waved her arms in the air to alert the other women that she needed help. She never attempted to give herself the Heimlich maneuver over the back of a chair. Despite carefully lecturing each of her own children on what to do if they ever found themselves choking and in need of help, she just stood there frozen in disbelief over the fact that she was about to tragically expire in the middle of the annual family clambake. She hoped she didn't take out that colossal bowl of coleslaw that she had just spent three hours making when she collapsed to the floor.  Seconds before she was about to lose consciousness, her final plan of action was to fruitlessly attempt to yell for my father. Nevermind that even if she had been able to squeak out any sort of sound, my dad was a quarter mile away helping to tend the coals with the rest of the guys over at the clam pit.  Miraculously, in her voiceless attempt to shout my dad's name, the little chunk of carrot that had been clogging her airway was forced to move along and she was finally able to breath again. Although it didn't make sense, it did save her life. I wouldn't recommend her technique to anyone else anymore than I would recommend a shot of Jack to cure an allergic reaction to seafood. She might as well have been relying on good old silent Clyde to alert my dad to the fact that she was about to choke to death on a leftover chunk of coleslaw carrot.

My mom's controversial, yet successful, anti-choking technique was a one time event. Not once did I ever hear her recommend it to anyone else. Unlike Mom, my dad continued to attempt to manage his adverse reaction to shellfish with a little nip of alcohol for many years. The truth about my dad's questionable treatment plan was that he did not initially attribute that medical emergency on the airplane to a seafood allergy. In fact, in what may have been a new-agey attempt at practicing mind over matter (or complete and total denial), my dad continued to consume small amounts of seafood over the years in the hopes that eventually his food allergy might magically resolve itself.  It did not, as evidenced by the hearty clam cough that he developed at the end of every summer while indulging in shellfish at the annual family festival of all things clam. My mother was personally not a fan of this technique nor were we kids. It always started with fits of sneezing so loud that you could easily hear them all the way across the farm. While standing inside the house in my aunt's kitchen, surrounded by a gaggle of chatty female relatives who were busy preparing party food, my mom could clearly her my father's colossal, clam-induced ker-choos. His highly-amplified, serial sneezes were followed by a wheezy asthmatic cough and yet my dad continued to consume a few more clams undeterred. Not only did this ongoing little dance with the devil irritate my mother, it made no sense to her whatsoever as she herself was no stranger to allergic reactions.

As a tiny baby, my mother used to break out in mysterious hives from head to toe. The origin of these itchy bumps was unknown for quite some time. It happened so often that my grandmother and the doctor were in constant contact. Finally, through the process of elimination, it was discovered that my poor mother was highly allergic to wool, a material that babies were constantly surrounded by back in those days. When she was eventually old enough to require bandages for boo-boos, it quickly became apparent that she also had an allergy to latex. Point being, she was well versed in her own allergic reactions and her method of dealing with them was to avoid the substances that causes her to develop intensely itchy sores and bumpy rashes like the plague. Not once did I ever come home from school to find her covered in a box of band aids from head to toe, wearing latex gloves on each hand, while tightly wrapped in wool blankets in an attempt to overcome the physical weaknesses that caused her to be allergic to said items. But unlike my mom, for decades, my strong-willed dad refused to give up hope. After thirty years or so, he has finally accepted that he does indeed have an allergy to shellfish. He is now the proud owner of injectable epinephrine in case of emergency, a more effective, yet admittedly far less enjoyable, alternative to taking a great big slug of firewater.

Not surprisingly, my father wasn't the only one in the family who was allergic to seafood. My parents were always concerned that one of their children would develop an allergy to shellfish as well. One of my dad's little sisters always served one of those fancy shrimp cocktail rings at her holiday parties. I loved the taste of shrimp and it was never served in our house because my mom disliked it and my dad wasn't supposed to eat it. While my dad would have happily slurped up shrimp drenched in cocktail sauce anyway, my mom preferred that he continued to breathe freely. So, given the lack of shrimp in our house, I used to eat all the shellfish I could hold whenever it was available. I wasn't aware until I was much older that my aunt was actually allergic to the seafood that she so graciously served. So allergic, that one time my uncle gave her a little kiss shortly after he had snuck a morsel of seafood off the freshly prepared shrimp platter. My aunt quickly discovered the rat when her lips swelled up to twice their usual size due to the shrimp laced smooch my uncle had planted on her moments before the guests arrived. If Botox lip plumping injections had been all the rage back then, she would have had a much cheaper, albeit somewhat risky, alternative! Although if you're willing to risk it all in the pursuit of beauty and youth, I suppose exploiting your own allergy to seafood might be a shade better than willingly injecting rat poison into parts of your face, but that's just my opinion.

What you may not realize about seafood allergies is that they often develop later in life. The compounds in seafood that cause allergies gradually build up in your system over time. While you once might have been able to polish off pounds of lobster, shrimp, crabs, and clams at your local seafood buffet with nary a wheeze, eventually your condition gradually worsens until you can no longer tolerate seafood at all. My brother spent his formative years by taking a weekly trip to the local dairy isle with my grandparents. A dairy aisle is a little seasonal snack hut that serves various types of ice cream along with little paper-lined baskets of fried food. Before indulging in an after dinner ice cream cone, my brother would stuff himself with a heaping, red, plastic basket of crispy, breaded, deep-fried shrimp. He often jokes that if he had known he would one day develop a shellfish allergy, he would have paced himself more carefully, not realizing that he would ingest his predetermined lifetime quota of shrimp before the age of nine.

His seafood allergy became apparent after munching on a tainted fish stick in our school cafeteria. Obviously somebody at the fish processing factory was sleeping on the job as some shellfish must have accidentally slipped into the giant vat of fish flakes that were carefully formed into little logs and flash frozen. This means of preparation allowed those unfortunate, land-locked folks in the Midwest without access to fresh fish to "enjoy" the day's fresh catch in the form of frozen fish sticks. Shortly after chomping one of those crispy cylinders of compressed cod bits, my brother began to feel funny, a little tingly. His throat grew scratchy and he developed a mysterious cough that he hadn't had just a few minutes before. While his symptoms were slightly concerning, they were about to reach a whole new level of frightening. As time slowly passed his symptoms grew worse and worse. His ears began to ring so loudly that he could barely hear. He began to see spots in front of his eyes before his vision went completely black. Since he knew the story of my dad's first allergic reaction, he knew what was happening, and he knew exactly what to do to save himself.

Unlike my father's incident on the airplane, shots of alcohol were scarce in the school cafeteria. It was common knowledge that one of the Math teacher's kept a secret flask hidden in his desk drawer, but attempting to obtain it would be too risky and drinking after Mr. Super Cigarette Breath would be too gross. It might save his life but them he would probably fail Algebra and his life would be over in a completely different way.  He would also need a lip transplant after sharing a flask with Mr. Chronic Mouth Stink. Seeing no alternative, he calmly turned to one of his pals at the lunch table and said, "Look, I don't want to alarm you unnecessarily but I've just gone blind after eating one of these fish sticks, could you do me a favor and guide me down the hall to the nurse's office without making a big scene?" Even under duress, no one wanted to be forever remembered as that unfortunate kid who got carted out of the cafeteria on a stretcher. After an emergency phone consult with Mom and Dad, the nurse knocked him out with a dose of Benadryl and sent him home. My brother and I are super sensitive to medication so Benadryl totally turns us into Rip Van Winkle. My brother probably slept for at least a week before finally coming around. Unlike my father, after that incident, my brother no longer dabbled in shellfish or fish sticks ever again. In fact, by the time I started school, fish sticks had been removed from the school lunch menu entirely. Some nasty rumors were circulating that they had made a kid go blind a few years back which greatly reduced their popularity among the lunch purchasing population.

Shellfish intolerance is more common than you might realize. A close friend of mine also suffers from a serious allergy to shellfish. One of my favorite shellfish disaster stories happened to her when she was enjoying an evening out at a really lovely restaurant. The gentleman she was seeing ordered a serving of crab legs. She mentioned in passing that she was allergic to them but as long as he didn't force her to eat one, she should be just fine. They had been enjoying a delicious dinner together until the evening came to an abrupt halt after what would have been disregarded as a minor dining mishap under normal circumstances. In the middle of their lively conversation, in an over zealous moment of crab cracking, a tiny bit of liquid from inside one of the crab legs shot directly across the table and hit my friend square in the eye. Aside from stinging a bit, it was nothing that a few quick dabs with her napkin couldn't fix. No biggie. Until rather suddenly, it became a really huge biggie, as in her eye exploded to three times its normal size, after which the entire right side of her face became hideously contorted. Not exactly the kind of impression she was hoping to make and her date felt terrible for inadvertently causing her to become temporarily disfigured. It's hard too look cute and act flirty when you have unexpectedly morphed into the likes of Quasimodo.

Knowing all of this is starting to make me ever more leery of consuming shellfish. I love it and I live on the water, so it is readily available. At least once a week in the summer, I can be found wielding a pair of tongs and wrestling a bunch of angry, feisty crabs into an enormous pot of boiling water. I've been lucky. I have yet to have one of them escape and run around my kitchen threatening to pinch my toes off, but I am sure that it is bound to happen one of these days. After steaming them, my husband and I sit down to enjoy our fresh caught feast. He dives right in and begins chomping on crab bits, while I am always a bit more tentative. It's not the business of crab cracking that slows me down, rather it's those little annoying questions in the back of my mind.  Is my throat getting itchy or am I imagining it? Am I developing the crab cough or did I just swallow down the wrong pipe? Are my lips getting tingly or did I just get a little carried away with the Old Bay Seasoning? So far so good, but I am ever on alert for those sneaky symptoms, wondering if I'm about to crash though my crab, shrimp, and clam quota never to be able to enjoy shellfish again for as long as I live. Will one too many childhood clam bakes take me out of the seafood game early? Only time will tell. In the mean time, on any given night, if you were to sail past my house on your boat, you could clearly hear me laughing like a hyena, while I crack crabs and shuck clams at my dining room table. I'll be reminiscing with my husband about fond family memories like clam bakes on the farm of my aunt and uncle, hoping to successfully avoid the dreaded clam cough passed down from previous generations before me.

While I don't currently own an Epi-pen, we do keep a bit of Benadryl on hand in our medicine cabinet just in case. I would only rely on it in an extreme emergency though, as I'd hate to turn into Sleeping Beauty and lose an entire week of my life over a false alarm in the food allergy department. Don't worry about me though.  I assure you that I have learned from the error of my parent's ways. If one unfortunate day in the future my ears start to ring and my throat gets all tingly after chowing down on a bunch of shellfish, I promise to actually seek some sort of medical attention. I won't just blindly stumble across the kitchen in order to suss out a bottle of booze from the bottom shelf of the pantry despite the fact that I hear, while somewhat unorthodox, it's a fairly effective cure for the dreaded clam cough. And, if I ever find myself choking on a morsel of food while standing in the middle of an entire flock of close friends and family members, I will actually let someone near me know about my near death dilemma.  I will forgo silently attempting to yell for help, despite the fact that my husband is out of earshot and I am unable to speak in favor of life saving measures that have been proven to work in a choking emergency.  Don't get me wrong, I am grateful for the fact that my parents have taught me an amazing amount of essential life lessons that have kept me on the straight and narrow for decades. However, by my parent's own admission, not every bit of parental guidance is a keeper and hindsight is always 20/20.  In retrospect, the alternative treatments of food allergies and choking are probably not techniques that my mom and dad would recommend that their offspring attempt to replicate in the future.  Therefore, I will be filing these two questionable emergency response techniques into the old "Do as I say, not as I do" category of parenting.  In these two particular cases, I feel fairly confident that this decision will not bother my parents one little bit.

Posted with Blogsy

Day 19 = Open Cupboards and Odd Family Rituals

For a variety of reasons, I am personally not a fan of the open kitchen cupboard, despite the fact that I happen to be the proud owner of two of them. By open, I do not mean that kind of kitchen hazard that occurs when some careless trespasser has accidentally left one of the cupboard doors slightly ajar. Of course, poor unsuspecting moms usually discover this by walking straight into the corner of the offending cupboard door, which had been safely shut only a few seconds earlier. Giving yourself a big ole black eye while baking brownies for the family was probably not at the top of your daily to do list. It goes without saying that the loved one who left the door open doesn't get to enjoy any brownies fresh from the oven...at least not until they fess up to the crime and fetch mommy a bag of frozen peas to ice her aching eye socket.

The kind of open cupboard that I am referring to here is open as in open concept, total dish freedom, a doorless set of shelves where you keep all of your trusty kitchen gadgets, dishes, and glassware in plain sight. Not only does this kind of cupboard leave your dishware cruelly exposed to the elements, they are also constantly displayed for all the world to see the minute they cross the threshold of your kitchen. Unless, of course, you live in one of those trendy new-fangled homes that boasts a lovely, spacious, open floor plan...then, even the UPS guy (or lady...mine happens to be a dude, but I am savvy enough to realize that your delivery person might not be) can probably easily scope out the state of your cupboards from your front porch without ever setting foot inside your home.

The first problem with the open cupboard situation is that of all of the homemaking tasks that loom large over my entire body on a daily basis, I do not wish to add the pressure of keeping perfect cupboards to my chore list. Having the ability to shove dishes in a cupboard with a loose sense of organization without having to worry that guests will judge me based on how neatly or sloppily my dishware happens to be stacked is essential to my survival as a homemaker. No worries to all you white-gloved visitors out there, there will still be plenty left to judge about my home without exposing the inner guts of my happy, crowded little cupboards. While they may not look perfectly organized on the inside, I assure you that, for me, they are perfectly functional.

The second problem with open cupboards is the shocking amount of unsightly dirt, dust, and grime that can accumulate on both the dishes and their surrounding shelving. This is particularly problematic for those specialty items that are rarely circulated. If all of your dishes got a regular mealtime workout, then you would basically have no worries. Keeping dishes in a constant rotation will keep them regularly cleaned and shiny. However, the more problematic areas are those less used objects that you keep around for a few times a year when you decide to get a little fancy. Even when secured in a closed cupboard, you may find that your special occasion china, your special pan for baking mini donuts, or your special crystal plate for displaying deviled eggs are in need of a good scrub before you use them again. Obviously, no one wants to swill a bit of egg nog out of a lovely, yet dust-coated, holiday goblet. If dust and debris can sneakily wheedle its way deep into cupboards that are closed up tight, imagine the disaster you might find if you were to heartily embrace the open cupboard concept.

In order to properly disinfect the pretty punch bowl that you use once a year at annual holiday gatherings, you are going to have to drag it out into your yard in the middle of December. If you don't hose it off outside, you risk contaminating your poor family's lungs with unidentifiable dust particles, year-old bits of petrified household debris, and some kind of mysterious plant spores (despite the fact that you do not own a single houseplant). Somehow a thick combination of this crud has accumulated on every available surface of your punch bowl. If you attempt to handle this task indoors and one of your loved ones should inadvertently suck in a toxic dust rhino the size of Arkansas, one that has been hiding and growing deep inside the bowl since last New Year's, don't forget to pack up a plate of Christmas cookies and a thermos of eggnog to share with the nurses at the nearest local ER.  I promise you will get better care if you arrive bearing baked goods even if they are snickering at you and your open cupboards behind your back.  Don't worry though, they've seen this kind of thing before.  Didn't you hear the admitting nurse say, "Hey Marge, the family behind curtain sixteen is a victim of the open cupboard bandwagon.  We've got another classic case of acute dust bunny inhalation on our hands tonight.  Treat 'em right though, they brought homemade cookies and eggnog.  I'll see if anybody has a flask hidden under their scrubs in order to make things a bit more festive during tonight's shift."

I don't care what lies those interior designers on television or the helpful people at IKEA try to sell you, I am telling you that the open cupboard is a complete and total waste of time. Why you may be wondering if I am so opposed to this kitchen design disaster do I happen to have not one but TWO open cupboards in my own kitchen? I will attempt to explain this oddity. In a hasty decision that placed function over form, on one of his visits, my dad spent a single afternoon whipping up two lovely pieces of furniture for my kitchen. Their intended purpose was two-fold. To provide storage space which I desperately needed, as well as extra counter space so that I might actually be able to prepare food in my kitchen. Without them, my culinary efforts would be confined to the only available flat surface in the kitchen, (besides the vinyl tile floor, a less than appetizing choice) a two by three foot workspace to the right of the sink. I know for those of you who have lived in an efficiency apartment, these kind of kitchen accommodations might seem luxurious, but once the microwave, the toaster, and the coffee maker were in place, there was little to no room left for actual food preparation. You would have been hard-pressed to find enough available counter space to successfully open a can of Spaghetti-o's, not that I would ever in my life open a can of those, as I find them utterly revolting, but you get the point.

Seeing me struggle to chop vegetables with a cutting board balanced precariously on top of the toaster prompted my father to spring into action. After all, he preferred having a daughter with ten fingers not nine. Did I mention that this happened on the day before I hosted my very first Easter dinner at the house that "the man-friend with whom I lived" and I had recently purchased. (This was the title I used to use for my husband before we were actually married. Saying my boyfriend and being over thirty at the time always made me feel awkward like I might as well be calling him my prom date or something. There is no grown-up word to refer to this situation. Someone should invent one. I mean saying the guy I'm seeing sounds too casual and saying the guy I live with sounds too trampy.  Saying my husband is a lie and if accidentally used in the wrong context people get all excited thinking you eloped in Vegas over the weekend. Then you have to explain that no, you did not in fact elope and no, he has not asked for your hand in marriage yet, and yes, you have been together for twelve whole years. Common law husband? Obviously something is wrong with one of you, otherwise you'd be officially married. Partner? Waffles between being too gay and too cowboy. See, we really need a better word for this kind of thing. By the way, Happy 15th 3rd Anniversary, dear!)

When my father created the now infamous Easter Island and it's accompanying sideboard for my would-be spouse and I, his efforts were complicated by a few tricky issues unique to the design of our home. The sideboard had to be left completely open, in both the front and back, as there was a heating vent located directly behind it. Allowing unrestricted airflow was necessary to prevent the plumbing on the other side of the kitchen from freezing and exploding during the blustery February freeze while my future spouse and I were off vacationing in the Carribean. Placing an open cupboard in that particular location, the only space available, I might add, was already a calculated risk. I didn't want to tempt fate even further by hanging a little curtain up for fear of accidentally frosting over the water pipes while I was away in the dead of winter. I learned that little curtain trick from my mom of course. During a period of remodeling in my childhood home, she had open cupboards for a brief period of time. (Well, it felt brief to me, if you were to ask her, she might tell you that it was actually ten years, but who can remember?) She used shiny gold spring rods and little ruffled curtains to manage her doorless cupboard situation. Cute, clutter-hiding, dust-shielding curtains. Very innovate and resourceful idea that I absolutely love, but unfortunately not practical for my purposes. Returning from a beautiful vacation to find busted water pipes have blown water all over the interior of your home somehow makes your bliss-filled get-a-way a bit less blissful.  The desire to have lovely clutter-concealing curtains grace my cupboards just wasn't worth the risk of redecorating my kitchen with an unplanned water feature.

As for our lovely Easter island, placing doors on it was a logistical nightmare due to the space contraints of my tiny elf-sized kitchen. No matter which way you tried to situate the island, there was no way that you put doors on it and still successfully open them without bashing then into the nearby shelving, the other cabinets, or the refrigerator. Even if you managed to open them without denting every other vertical surface in the room, you would have had to contort yourself into a pretzel-like position in order to extract necessary items from the interior of the island. There was no way that the doors could have ever been opened fully. This would have made storing any items over a certain circumference practically impossible, which is how we ended up simply leaving it doorless altogether. These pieces were meant to be a short term solution for a temporary problem, and at the time, it seemed like no big deal. Five years later, after a wedding and a baby, I am realizing that they may continue to be a more permanent kitchen feature than I had originally planned for a bit longer. Like until the year my son turns eighteen.

That may be the next time we actually have the extra time and resources to take on an intensive but necessary kitchen remodel. In the meantime, those crazy cupboards have become the bane of my existence. Of course, this in no way reflects on the quality of my dad's design or his solid craftsmanship. Without these two pieces of kitchen furniture, I would have no where to put any of my pots and pans, serving bowls and  platters, or kitchen appliances. Also, I might be down a finger or two from trying to precariously prep carrot and celery sticks on top of the toaster. I am forever grateful for his contributions to my kitchen, especially since the original version only came with four cupboards and one drawer. This drawer is no longer in service at this time because after we replaced our vintage 1950s era stove, our sole kitchen drawer no longer opened without crashing into the handle of the new stove requiring it to be permanently sealed.  The drawer of course...not the stove.  I know that people have much worse kitchen difficulties. I did live in an efficiency apartment in Paris for a few years, so I am well aware of what it means to have a truly minuscule corner of the room for cooking without a single shelf to your name, not even an open one.

My utter disdain for the open cupboard was created many moons ago. It was not due to any experiences in my current home or the one of my parents. It was created and nurtured by a three-shelf monstrosity that engulfed the entire upper half of one of the wall's in my grandmother's kitchen. Once a year, usually in the spring, but sometimes in the blazing heat of summer, we would set off on a pilgrimage to my maternal grandmother's house in order to help her do a bit of a ridiculously large amount of spring cleaning. It's hard to identify exactly what season it happened to be, because my grandmother consistently kept her thermostat at a blistering ninety-two degrees year round.

Whether it was the height of summer or the dead of winter, once you entered her home, you lost all concept of what the outdoor climate might be. We quickly learned to dress in layers in order to avoid falling victim to heat stroke in the middle of our Thanksgiving feast. My father, my siblings, and I would all fight to be the one to let the dogs in or out of the backyard. It was a cheap excuse to stick your head out the back door of the kitchen and suck in refreshing gasps of crisp November air in order to cool your core body temperature to a less life threatening level.  I may or may not have feigned being woozy on occasion just so that my dad would have to take me outside and walk me around the block a few times until I came around.  Oddly enough, he never complained about doing this even when he knew we were faking.  In fact, he may have even encouraged our little fainting episodes by unexpectedly exclaiming things like, "Oh no!  Your sister is looking peaked, I'm taking her outside for some fresh air."  Funny, like the rest of us, my sister was starting to break a sweat, but she hardly looked as though she were about to pass out at any moment.  He also took to reading the paper on the screened in sun porch after holiday dinners even in November and December.  If you brushed the snow off the glider, it was actually quite comfortable.  One year, I even borrowed some disposable elastic sweatbands from my paternal grandfather's extensive supply and placed them in everyone's stocking to be used at the Christmas dinner table in order to prevent us all from getting sweat in our eyes.  Despite the fact that they were both practical and necessary, my mom recommended that we forgo the sweatbands in favor of blotting our brows with the golden cloth napkins that my grandmother used at her holiday table.  We didn't want to accidentally offend Grandma after all.  Of course, she was right, but I also didn't want to end up with cranberry sauce in my eye or mashed potatoes on my forehead. 

While my dad sweated out every holiday meal with the rest of us, he almost never accompanied us on our annual spring cleaning adventures at Grandma's house as he always had to go to work. Besides the usual tasks that you might expect like wiping down wallpaper, scrubbing floors, and clearing out clutter, we had the additional burden of tackling the giant orphanage for wayward dishes that loomed over the entire left side of my grandmother's kitchen. After a solid year of neglect, almost every dish that was stored there, was coated in about three inches of sticky, difficult to detach, dust, grit, and grime. It was so thick that it was hard to identify whether an item that you held in your hands was a gravy boat, a beer stein, or a teapot. My uncles collected cartoon character drinking glasses, but they only kept certain select ones in their daily rotation. All the other poor little guys in their enormous collection were left to practically suffocate under a thick layer of cobwebs in the corner of the cupboard.   Piece by piece we would unload the cupboard and stack the dirty dishware around the kitchen and dining room.  We were never allowed to place them on the floor although I truly don't see how that mattered as they were about to be washed anyway, but those were the rules. While my grandmother did own a dishwasher, unfortunately most of the pieces were delicate items that were not dishwasher eligible. Not to mention tossing a few of those dust-enrobed items into the dishwasher might do irreparable harm to the interior components of the appliance. Without dad's expertise to save the day, the dust clogged dishwasher would end up being a total loss, so we were left to wash everything by hand. 

My grandmother would park herself at the head of the dining room table to watch the action unfold. My mom was the foreman who oversaw the operation while tending to a myriad of other tasks at the same time.  We were like a tiny fire brigade rescuing long lost trivets and teacups from choking to death on dust balls.  My brother being the tallest was charged with dish removal, cupboard wipe scrape down, and dish replacement. My sister dutifully washed, wiped, and scrubbed. I dried and handed each squeaky clean dish to my brother so that he could put it back in its proper place on a now sparkling shelf. And believe me, each of them had a proper place. If my brother inadvertently put even a single dish back in the wrong location, my uncle was quick to help him move it to the appropriate spot that it was supposed to be in. The process was a slow one. My sister could wash approximately three pieces of filthy fine china before having to drain the blackened dust-coated water from the sink, refill it with another round of soap suds, and start over. She might have been able to wash a few more dishes at a time, but we all knew the story of the Cuyahoga river and how it once twice thrice caught on fire.  Not knowing what kind of toxins we were dealing with meant taking some added precautions just in case. If someone ignited one of the burner's on Grandma's stove in order to brew her a cup of Sanka, we might end up with a four alarm sink fire on our hands.  Better to be overzealous about refreshing the dirty dishwater than burn the whole house down.  It felt like it took the better part of nineteen hours to complete this task, but we were always happy to help out, as we knew our grandmother wasn't able to do this kind of chore herself.

We never thought to question why she held onto this massive myriad of dishes, the majority of which, she never even used. Nor did we question why in the world no one broke down and slapped some doors onto this crazy cupboard to cut down on all the mess. We just happily scrubbed and polished and hummed little tunes until the whole job was done. It was a weird little ritual that we knew was completely fruitless.  By the time we returned for the winter holidays, our work would be all but undone.  We knew this but somehow, we still didn't mind doing it. While we tended to those dusty dishes, my grandmother would fuss at my mother who was scurrying about the house trying to accomplish everything else that had been jotted down onto my grandmother's super lengthy list of spring cleaning chores. My mom would be washing bedspreads, rotating winter and spring wardrobes, wiping down walls, and supervising her dish-washing children, while simultaneously tending to a pile of mending that threatened to topple off of the dining room table and take out one of the dogs at any moment. While all this was happening, my grandmother would be tsk-tsking my mother for allowing her grandchildren to do so much hard work. Oddly enough, she was totally okay with my mom bearing the brunt of the spring cleaning responsibilities, but she felt the children should be spared this kind of intensive labor.

The truth is we didn't mind helping our mom out at Grandma's house, but our motives weren't as virtuous as I've led you to believe.  If we weren't there to pitch in, she would have had to leave us at home alone with dad for at least a week while she was away trying to tidy up at her mom's house. Not having mom at home for weeks on end made all of our lives, including Dad's, mostly miserable. Dad did the very best he could while mom was away and there were loads of perks to be enjoyed when dad was at the helm. It always meant that we were allowed to eat as many bowls of sugary cereal as our bellies could hold which sounded great until you came down with the worst tummy ache of your life. We didn't have to take a bath if we didn't feel like it which sounded great until somebody at school told you that you were starting to smell like a farm animal. Bedtime could be drawn out way later than usual which sounded great until you actually had to get up at the same time as usual the next morning in order to catch the schoolbus. Life in our house just wasn't the same without mom.

Dad didn't have all the secret knowledge of those special things that only mom knew how to do. He didn't know how to fold our socks quite right. He couldn't put our hair in French braids. He once got a little carried away with the laundry soap and filled the entire hallway of our house with soap suds. While having a foam party in the hallway of your home might sound like sheer awesomeness, especially since this incident occurred before foam parties were ever a thing, I assure you that the excitement of being on the cutting edge of this kind of entertainment quickly wore off. Repeatedly wading through a wall of soap suds in order to reach your bedroom, while wearing swim goggles to protect your eyes from stinging laundry soap, and trying to breathe through a snorkel so that you didn't end up with the taste of Tide in your mouth was less than ideal. To save mom from weeks of scrubbing at Grandma's house, with the secret plan of getting her to come back home with us at the end of the day, we were willing to do whatever we could to make it happen. I'm not saying dad couldn't handle managing the house, he just couldn't do it like mom, a fact he himself would readily admit if you ask him. Don't worry about my dad's feelings though as he also had a stake in operation bring-mom-home. Despite the fact that he himself was unable to come help with the chores, don't think for a moment that we weren't richly rewarded by Dad (unbeknownst to mom of course) for making sure that mom was back in the car and on the road home with us by nightfall.  It's true that our allegiance came cheap in the form of ice cream cones and chocolate bars, but we were handsomely paid off nonetheless.

As for my own kitchen situation, it may take a bit longer than I originally planned, but I am sure that I will eventually be able to replace my two open cupboards. Unfortunately, the ones Dad built will probably never wear out as both the sideboard and the Easter island are far too well made to meet an untimely end. I've really tried hard to abuse them in the hopes that they might crumble, but they easily seem to handle whatever I throw at them.  Knives, broken dishes, giant blocks of ice, rotten potatoes, my entire body, are all no match for these sturdy kitchen workhorses.  I know it is a lofty goal to set, but I hope that we can eventually complete our kitchen remodel before I am too old to do my own spring cleaning. After all, I wouldn't want my grown son and his family to have to come hose off all the dirty, unloved dishes that have been hanging out on our open kitchen shelving, gathering dust and debris for a whole year. It is also a great incentive to take immediate action by decluttering any of those unused and unloved items that have been languishing on my kitchen shelves since way back when we moved in.

On that note, I'm going to go wipe down the shelves of my open cupboards for the two hundredth time this year and see if I can't rustle up a few more objects of kitchen clutter to donate to the Goodwill Store. Maybe for old time's sake, I'll fill my high efficiency washer with regular old laundry soap to see if I can successfully fill our basement with soap suds in honor of my dad. While my son naps, and I patiently wait to see if out-of-control suds monsters start to climb up the basement stairs, I'm going to sit down and write a letter to those folks at Ikea. As I am sure you might guess, I am recommending the removal of open cupboards from both their catalogues and their store displays. It's the right thing to do, lest some poor unsuspecting newlywed couple blow their budget on a trendy set of open cabinets that I promise they will rapidly regret installing even if they seem like a good idea at the time of purchase.

Unless of course they happen to be the kind of couple who can comfortably afford to hire someone to clean their kitchen for them. Then they can install as many open cupboards as they like because the responsibility of keeping them clean and tidy will fall entirely on someone else. In fact, I am certain that their hired help will be happy to clean every single item on every open shelf in the house as often as they request because the lovely couple is paying them to do just that.  I just hope they're not surprised if one day they discover via nanny cam, that the housekeeper has actually been scrubbing their favorite crystal wine glasses in the toilet bowl using the bossman's or bosslady's toothbrush. After all, it doesn't matter to the cleaning person, they're wearing gloves and they don't typically drink wine at the house of their boss, not out of a glass anyway.  Why dirty a glass when you can take a swig right from the bottle?  And the hired help certainly isn't about to use their employer's toothbrush. Gross, that thing has been in the toilet!  Of course, everyone is free to make their own home decorating choices, but when it comes to deciding to place open cupboards in your kitchen, you can't say that no one warned you!

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