Imagine an old woman wearing a stained white apron with yellowed lace over a blue plaid housedress. She has hair that looks like steel-wool--only a lighter gray--standing out in bunches where it's not held tight to her head by a green pullover knit cap. What does this woman want most?

Pearl stood at the screen door that looked out onto her front porch so badly in need of paint. She glanced sideways at the open main door, with it's tarnished knocker. It too could use a coat. Maybe that was a good job for the spring, now that the weather was warming up and she wanted so badly to be out in the field with Edward. But Edward was gone, as was the field. Now she was ready for the house to go too, but no one would listen. No one seemed to have listened for years.

But she had been getting rid of things. Every evening she would pack in ten minute spurts during the commercials of the sitcoms that bored or embarrassed her but at least provided some human voice to listen to. If she didn't love it, if it didn't make her smile it got wrapped in newspaper (several layers; Lord knew she had more newspaper stacked around the house than she did dollar bills in the bank) and placed in a box or bag and once she had ten she called the cerebral palsy people or the Vietnam Veterans or some other charity that took donations and have them drive out to pick them up.

She lived about fifteen miles out of town and she kept waiting for them to say they didn't come that far to pick up items, but they never did, so she always made sure it was worth their trip.

And now the inside was neat as a pin. Almost downright sparse. Today she found herself wondering if she could find someone who would take her in town for sandpaper and gray paint. And maybe a birdhouse or birdfeeder. Some flowers? A half barrel full of flowers on a freshly painted porch. Now that would be nice. Should she call a taxi?

She glanced at the small Bulova watch she put on each morning when she got up. It had hands--something she didn't see much in watches these days. And Roman numerals. With a black band she'd had to replace twice over the years and now had trouble fastening. Once this went she'd get one of those elastic slide-on bands that would leave ripples on her wrist like cordouroy. It was only 6:30 AM. Where would she buy paint at 6:30 in the morning?

Pearl reached down and wiped her hands on her apron out of habit, as though she'd just come to the door from cooking breakfast or washing dishes. She looked down at her blue plaid housedress, and wondered vaguely when she had last put on a neat dress and some decent shoes and actually left the house. She reached up and touched her hair, and was surprised to touch the old wool of the green pullover hat she kept by the bed. She must have gotten cold during the night and had pulled it on in her sleep. The air still got bitey cold at night but she had turned off the heat for the season. If a person kept their head warm the rest was easy.

She pulled off the cap, knowing that her hair was either sticking to her head or sticking out like a Brillo pad. This was ridiculous. It really was. She went days on end without thinking about what she looked like, and without talking to a soul. What would Edward think if he could see her now? He wouldn't believe she was the same person that met him with fresh makeup on whenever he came home from work and who fixed him dinner with as much passion as she loved him. He'd find her sad and old, which she was most of the time.

Was it too late to change? Could she paint up the porch and the door the way she packed up the debris and have some energy left to bring herself out of the solitary life that had closed in around her? How had she gotten to this point? People used to come for tea. She used to play bridge. She and Edward had not been blessed with children, but they had had friends, and neighbors. Where had they all gone? Why hadn't she at least gotten a dog to keep her company?

She wanted so to go back. Or to figure out a way to start over as a person alone. But she wasn't sure she had the strength.

But she'd never know if she didn't try. She wandered away from the front door and back to her bedroom and while she fought with her hair--which threatened to win against her trusty boars' hair brush--and found a decent dress she started making a list in her mind:

Sandpaper
Primer
Paint
Sealer
A half barrel
Potting soil
Flowers
Hummingbird feeder
Birdhouse
Birdfeed
Cards for bridge
A book on how to play bridge
A new door knocker for the company

petrichor (PET-ri-kuhr) noun

The pleasant smell that accompanies the first rain after a dry spell.

What a cool word! I didn't know there was a word for such a thing and it's like meeting an old friend for the first time to find it.

Now it's sister word would be the one that names the smell of rain in the air before it starts falling. I do love that smell.

I remember being puzzled by it as a child. I'd hear my grandmother say, "Oh, I smell rain." And I'd sniff at the air and wonder what on earth she was talking about. It was the same with humidity. "My it's sticky today, so humid!" and I should have asked what she meant. Or perhaps I did and she didn't have the time or the words to help me understand.

But I learned. I wish I could remember when, and what breaks that line between understanding an abstract concept and being lost in the dark. I watched the same thing happen with Abe in math. One day he just couldn't wrap his mind around what I was trying to explain. We'd play with the manipulatives and talk about addition and he could do that just fine, but sit a work sheet in front of him with the manipulatives translated into numbers and he was lost. I couldn't understand it. At times I thought he was just being stubborn and wasn't going to do what he didn't want to do. But now I have an understanding born from memory.

I learned a lot about the world around me when we moved to Oklahoma. I didn't pay much attention to the sky in Pennsylvania, or clouds, or the way the air felt. Perhaps it was more a function of age than anything. Or perhaps that it was all so familiar. Not many people are compelled to study the familiar, sadly enough. Oklahoma was so very different. So open--both the landscape and the people. There wasn't a busy highway out in front of the house, or people who had just moved in from Philadelphia that made all the neighbors talk and lock doors more often. In Oklahoma there were haybarns and ponies. Cattleguards! How we got a kick out of singing while we drove over the cattleguard! And then there are those long dry spells when all the adults, especially the farmers, wear a taut worried look, and look up at the sky in search of a hope or a promise. I do believe it is there that I first smelled rain on the air, and then it's decendant, petrichor.

Over the past few years I have been trying to be more respectful of the familiar. To recognize that the glorious unfamiliar that I drank like sweet wine in Colorado was in fact familiar to those who lived there. They passed by every day without seeing it, and what a waste! My dh doesn't understand how I love Oklahoma with the flatness, the heat, the small trees that bend northward under the relentlessness of the south spring winds. I think it's because I can see it with eyes that forget it's familiar. I can find such glory in simply watching the clouds billow and build and disperse and move across the sky that reaches like a bowl above me, with it's rim settled on the horizon all around. You can't see that kind of sky just everywhere. People ooh and aww over it when they come to visit. So why shouldn't I appreciate it every day?

This one really should be titled

Today's Rant and a Funny to Take the Edge Off

Rant 1:

To the world at large and people who live as I choose not to and who accept what I choose not to:

Just because I don't agree with you doesn't mean I hate you.

When did it become a crime to hold to my values? As long as I'm not assaulting you or trying to force you in some way to conform to what I believe, I'm not in any way demonstrating any hatred. I don't have to give up what I believe to "love" you.

Rant 1 over. I had to get that out of my system.

But here comes another!

Rant 2:

Here's the headline from MSNBC News: High Schoolers Flunk Personal Finance Survey Finds Seniors Have 'Dismal' Money Skills

This is what my poor family has to listen to me scream about on a regular basis (this and the fact that schools teach kids to hate reading, but that's another story...). There is all this clamor in Oklahoma now about how kids don't take enough higher math. Schools continue to start algebra earlier and earlier, so that by the time kids hit high school there's time to fit in geometry, trigonometry, calculus and whatever other higher math is out there. (Oklahoma is pushing for four years of higher math to graduate from high school.) Well all this higher math--to the exclusion of simple, basic consumer math--is leading to a world of routine bankruptcies because these young adults don't understand how the money game is played. Frankly I think the financial world is getting what's coming to them when they keep pushing credit cards and easy loans without being frank about the difference between paying cash and buying on credit. I think personal finance should be the first mandatory math class that a high school student has to take.

Thanks to homeschooling, it was for my son and it will be for his brother too. I highly recommend The Consumer Math Success Kit by J. Weston Walsh. My son covered detailed lessons about budgeting, figuring interest on loans and installment purchases and how much buying on credit increases the purchase price. He knows how to estimate and plan for living expenses like car insurance, and learned how to figuring income taxes. There are no financial blinders on this kid. He knows and he understand the danger of the overuse of credit. He knows how to be financially responsible.

How do I know? By his actions. He saves for what he wants and then goes and buys it with cash after he has shopped for the best price (usually by telephone so he doesn't waste gasoline running from store to store) and often he'll even wait for what he wants to go on sale. I let him have a credit card when he took his trip to Australia two years ago (he saved for that too) and I have never had to take it from him. He pays his portion monthly so that he doesn't have to carry too much cash. In fact he still asks me if he can use it before he does. He understands that it takes hard work to build a bank account and that if you're wise, you won't just toss cash to the wind.

His father and I have tried to set a good example for him in this regard as well. All of our vehicles are bought with cash. (No they aren't the latest and greatest, nor are they traded every two years, but they do the job we need them to do.) Our house is paid for. We seldom buy retail, and one of my dh's favorite pasttimes is haunting thrift stores for Armani suits and silk ties. We have no credit card debt. We keep our eye simple, weigh our needs against our wants, and we don't suffer the end-of-the-month anxiety about whether or not the money will last. It's there for emergencies and also for times when my dh wants to cut back on his work load a bit to do volunteer work. Time is valued more than money; having the time to spend together and in our spiritual pursuits makes our lives fulfilling and happy. We live a modest but contented life, and if that's one legacy that I can pass on to my children, then I feel like I have given them more wealth than money ever can. Did I mention we're a one-income family? A satisfied, content, well-cared-for, not-in-debt, one-income family. It can be done. You just have to want it and then work to make it happen.

So my rant to the public school system is back off on the higher math! It doesn't automatically create satisfied, happy, productive members of society. Give our kids the basic math skills they'll need in everyday life first. Then if there's time (and desire) for the rest, the important stuff won't have been neglected.

Ready for my schools-teach-kids-to-hate-reading speech? I didn't think so. LOL! So let's move on to this interesting word that AWAD sent me yesterday and that has cursed me all day long today. :)

The Danger of New Words

resistentialism (ri-zis-TEN-shul-iz-um) noun

The theory that inanimate objects demonstrate hostile behavior against us.

[Coined by humorist Paul Jennings as a blend of the Latin res (thing) + French resister (to resist) + existentialism (a kind of philosophy).]

"Oh this word should have been part of my vocabulary a long, long time ago," I said to myself (now should that be in quotes or not? Hmmm.) when I read the definition. I recognize it from all those times I need something to work quickly and well and it simply doesn't. The computer is by far the worst culprit, followed by my stove/oven, the can opener, the stupid, stupid cell phone, the car, the VCR especially when I need to program it quickly, the furniture legs that love to break my little toe, zippers of all sorts, necklace clasps, coffee pots, suitcase locks, door locks, the fob for the car.... I'm running out. Oh, how about bookmarkers. I sooner or later go back to memorizing page numbers--or stopping on page numbers that are easy to remember because bookmarks never stay where they're placed, even if they clip on. Then there's pens and notebooks. I have them everywhere but when they are most sorely in need they hide.

Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get me.

Oh, and beware! This new word has it's own way of imprinting itself on your brain. Forget saying it seven times, writing it repeatedly and using it in a sentence. Tomorrow it will come to you in a variety of forms and you'll shake your head and mutter, "There it goes again!" Mine started out with coffee filters, went on to encompass the washing machine, a ball-point pen that always works except when a tenant in a hurry needs a receipt for rent paid, my toothbrush, my shoes, and the broom. I won't go into all the boring details because then you might just stay in bed tomorrow and miss this exciting edge of life.

FYI: Here's the rest of the AWAD e-mail from yesterday:

"If you ever get a feeling that the photocopy machine can sense when you're tense, short of time, need a document copied before an important meeting, and right then it decides to take a break, you're not alone. Now you know the word for it. Here's a report of scientific experiments confirming the validity of this theory:

http://www.uefap.co.uk/writing/exercise/report/clatri.htm "

Happy reading! If you can get the browser to open the article.

Wrote this in workshop today. My chat buddies will recognize it. I had to search for a good prompt for the workshop timeframe as todays deserved a longer stint at the keyboard. I'm including every bit of what I wrote, even the starting whine because it's important to understand that sometimes you just have to show up and start and when you do, the rest will eventually start to flow. Here's what happened:

March 21, 2004

Write for 10 minutes from the following:

Person: A boxer
Object: Papers
Place: A hospital room
Theme: Uncertainty

What is the matter with me today? I can't get a start. I need to back up and get a running start on...on... Clicking through prompts is not writing. Hands to the keyboard. Keep writing. Don't think. Hey that's easy. No thinking just doing, letting the words come from brain to screen. Ugg. I have on my screen a prompt about a boxer. Maybe he's of Irish descent. Red hair of course, blue eyes, short and compact. Every bit of him is muscle. He's in a hospital room. But not for what you'd originally think. He's fine. He's visiting someone. Who? His daughter. His daughter that he hasn't seen for eight years. His wife didn't want him to box to support the family. It scared her and she couldn't take the anxiety. So she asked him to leave and not come back, which he did. It was easy at the time to leave the baby. He hadn't been around much in the early days and she seemed somewhat afraid of him. Cried uncontrollably whenever he tried holding her. It made him feel small and diminished somehow, as if the infant could sense some strong character flaw that made it impossible for him to hold a real job. That flaw connected to the temper that cost him in so many ways. So instead of being home and feeling small, he stepped into the ring and felt powerful, and thus he began his travels, sent his money home, but never heard from his wife one way or the other as to if it arrived, how it was used, how the baby was. Until two weeks ago.

Now here he stood feeling dirty in the sanitized atmosphere of the hospital. He couldn't believe the girl sleeping in the bed was his daughter. She wasn't compact and flailing about looking for something to suck on. That was how he remembered her. She was a young girl, with a head full of tight black curls, just like his. The curls. The color was her mother's. She was pale and thin as one would expect, as sick as she was. Her thick lashes rested against her cheek. He shifted his weight from side to side and wondered where her mother was, what he should do. He looked for other traces of himself in her, and prayed he wouldn't find them.

There was a soft footfall behind him and he turned. All at once she filled his view, the same beautiful girl he had fallen madly for. Maybe there were a few small lines in her face that hadn't been there before. There was a worry in her eyes that went so deep it touched his own heart.

They just looked at each other for awhile, uncomfortable. He didn't know whether to shake her hand or reach out and gather her up in his arms. Instead he stood in silence, staring.

"I have papers," she said. His heart caught in his throat because he was sure she meant divorce papers, and in this instant in time he knew that wasn't what he wanted.

"You'll have to sign these so they can test you and see if you're a match, John. Oh, how I pray...

This is a piece I wrote yesterday. I was stuck waiting and anticipated that I might be so I wrote down today's list of words in a notebook, packed my trusty pen, and I was set! The lesson: be prepared to take advantage of stolen minutes to write.

March 30, 2004

Write for 10 minutes using as many of the words in the following word list as possible. Any form of the word will do: pasta, flame, ignore, cactus, arctic, vibrate, croon, tough, glass, purple, silky, tomorrow

It was tough to ignore how Perry Como's bass croon, when played at maximum volume, could vibrate her breastbone. She paused to feel it fully. There was no sound quite as satisfying as a bass voice holding a low note. When it passed, she continued her work.

She flicked at the wrinkles in the purple-blue linen tablecloth that had settled over the small round table. The setting began when she centered two white tapers, secure in cut-glass candlesticks that threw lavendar sparks when light touched them. She fingered the gassamer silk of the white tatted placemat before placing it. The china was white, trimmed in silver, the silver graced with a twining vine and a single rose. Dinner plate, salad plate, dinner fork, salad fork, dinner knife and tablespoon, wine glass, water glass, even a dessert spoon and fork placed above the plates. The napkin was lavendar with a small white print held tight by a silver napkin ring. When she finally stood back, her handiwork smiled back at her with elegant grace.

Soon she was filling salad plates with an elegant mix of tender greens and hot-house cherry tomatoes. A covered serving dish didn't seal away the starchy warmth of well-cooked pasta. It was already mingling with the invisible evidence of a rich alfredo. Then there was shrimp and garlic. The sweet tang of her favorite Zinfindel. Finally she touched a match to the wick of each candle and watched as the flame took hold and burned steadily. It was all perfect. She sighed and hit the replay button so that she could be serenaded while she ate.

She sat down, spreading the napkin over her black silk evening dress and fully immersed herself in the tastes, smells, sounds and textures that filled her soul with joy. There was only now and sheer satisfaction. No tomorrow allowed.

***

In the morning she woke and as had been true these past few days, the first thing she felt were those familiar cactus spines poking at her heart, enshrined in some arctic casing that barely let it beat. But she could remember other things besides loss and pain. Had she not proved she could take care of her own well-being? She breathed deeply, gathering courage with her oxygen, touched her feet to the floor and stepped into her day, moment by moment, hour by hour, dinner by dinner as she moved forward.

There's an old gentleman sitting on a park bench. His short white mustache stretches out as he grins and stretches his long legs out in front of him. Who is he and what is he doing there?


Adam wondered if his face would be sore tomorrow. Those smile muscles hadn't had much of a workout lately.

Everything changes with the coming of spring. He wished he would have remembered that back at the beginning of February when he was trying to decide if it was worth opening his eyes on another day. If he had only been able to envision this one. There were blooms and blossoms everywhere. Redbud trees and Bradford pears were beginning to lose their edge with the mix of green leaves among their blossoms. Still, backed by the deep French blue of receding storm clouds, the tree blossoms and tender green leaves glimmered with the most stubborn of raindrops that resisted being sucked into the air by the brightening sun.

The forsythia bushes were clotted with yellow flowers. Pink, purple and white flox edged beds of finished jonquils and about-to-bloom tulips. The grass was truly beginning to green. It was the kind of scene that made a man want to put a camera on automatic and toss it in the air. There could not be a bad picture.

He could feel the breeze run invisible fingers though the thick curls of his white hair and then crawl down his neck. Adam pulled the windbreaker a little tighter against the chill. It would not due to come down with a cold this soon and have Caroline back in her nursing roll. He just couldn't take that much attention again so soon.

The solitude was lucious. With nothing to derail his train of thought he let his mind flit over things like having Walter Haley over to play chess, and getting back together with the book club. It was so quiet except for the birds who seemed to take such delight in singing after a night of rain. Not many people were up and about this early. Had his children known he had left the house even before dawn had truly broken, they would probably have dashed down here to coax him home out of the cold and into an overheated house to swallow unsalted, unsweetened oatmeal, no coffee, and half a glass of orange juice to sluice down the myriads of pills that seemed to fill his belly these days before he even got a chance to eat real food.

Two weeks ago Adam would have sworn that this day would never come. He thought he would be in pajamas and slippers forever, with his daughter Caroline hovering at his elbow asking how he was feeling and reminding him to do everything just as the doctor perscribed as though he had no memory left at all. Stewart would come by and read him the paper as if his eyes no longer worked then have him sign checks and papers to keep the gears of red tape turning smoothly. The only highlight of the long recuperative days was his granddaughter Pearl who seemed to ignore the fact that he had been sick and treated him like the grandpa she had always known.

He had heard the whispered arguments between Pearl's mother, Amy and Caroline about whether Pearl carried too many germs, or if she should be sitting on the bed, or if she stayed too long and wore him out. Adam would have died right then and there if Amy hadn't stuck to her guns and won these battles. The little girl was the torch held out in front of him that led him to the end of the tunnel.

Adam stared at the tip of his shoes and wondered if there was a way to straighten things out with Amy. How he wished he could. Things were easier exercising their relationship through her daughter, but these past couple months had impressed on him the fact that there wasn't endless time ahead of them. How much had they missed out on already and how much more would they allow go by before they tackled the tough stuff?

Here in the sunshine on the park bench, Adam felt it was time. He just wondered if he'd feel that way once he was back in the house where his courage and dignity seemed to flee from him these days as his children tried to do the "right thing" by him.

Adam stood up and stretched as though he were about to take off on a run. The path snaked over a gentle hill and then disappeared into a stand of elms that were throwing off bright green seed pods. Birds flitted in and out among the branches and he wondered how anyone could keep such a creature in a cage if they really knew--as he did now--what it felt like to be cooped up against your will. He settled into a long, comfortable stride, probably fast enough to give Caroline her own heart attack if she could see him. Just as he got to the trees a young girl jogged past him with a small dog on a leash bouncing forward at her side. Adam came to a standstill and watched the pair of them lope on in perfect harmony.

That was it. He needed a dog.

His Cocker Spaniel, Sophie, had been killed in the collision that had nearly claimed his own life. The heart attack had struck as he pulled away from the intersection of Tenth and Broadway headed north. He'd been lucky that the impact had happened at a relatively slow rate of speed. The other driver was uninjured and the heart attack was the only thing Adam had had to recuperate from. But Sophie had been tossed into the windshield like a rag doll.

He had missed her once he had been allowed to go home, but Caroline wouldn't hear of hair and germs in the house while it was under her watch. Now she was back home with her own family, her job finished with the doctor's pronouncement of full recovery. Stewart had just been sent to California for his job. It would be a perfect time to call Amy and enlist the assistance of she and Pearl on a quest for a new companion.

And perhaps he would find a way to regain the companionship of his daughter. Or at least start the journey to another kind of healing.