celtic_writer

Dangers of Babysitting

Came across a statistic the other day concerning the average rate paid for a babysitter in the Year 2007 in this northern VA zip code: a cool $10.50 an hour for tracking one child.

Such numbers bring back memories of youth, when the most the market could spare was 50 cents an hour for being the temporary guardian of an unlimited number of kinder, hopefully a brood that wouldn't tie you up in a closet and steal your car keys, soon after their parents joyfully roared off to a few hours of freedom.

That is...unless you were raised Irish Catholic. Within family walls, childcare offered no compensation. And in terms of babysitting, it could be downright dangerous.

One Sunday morning, when I was around eight or so, the family conducted the normal holy ritual of attending 9 o'clock Mass, then returned home for the all- important Sunday Breakfast. My mother, Dottie M., gave my brother Kevin, age nine at the time, and I strict marching orders so the repast could be prepared.

"Watch your sister so I can finish making breakfast in peace," she commanded.

OK, Maw.

Our sister Kathy was about three years old when this story unfolded. We liked Kathy, but we would rather be reading the Sunday funnies than watching a toddler. So Kev and I came up with a plan. We would put Kathy in her crib, give her something to play with, and then we could pass the time catching up on the exploits of Prince Valiant, Mark Trail, Winnie Winkle and the other colorful comic characters in the New York Daily News.

The three of us went upstairs to the room Kathy and I shared. Kev swung the little one over the ribs of her crib. I found the Number 10 mayonnaise jar that had found a second career housing crayons for the creation of great art, and gave it to Kathy to play with. My brother and I then settled on our stomachs on the floor, with the unexplored wilderness of the funny papers expanded before us.

Kathy knew she was being ignored, and began jumping up and down in the crib, trying to get our attention. When this didn't work, she got busy dumping the crayons out of the jar and played with them for a while. Like many three-year-olds, she had the attention span of a gnat, and after about 30 seconds, she was looking for new adventure. If Kev or I had bothered to spend one second glancing in her direction to check on the welfare of our baby sister, we would have quickly ascertained that she had that boo-boo look on her face that always meant trouble.

So Kathy did what any attention-starved child would do. She turned to violence.

She picked up the crayon jar, and holding it like a depth charge over her head, chucked the monster at her unsuspecting siblings on the floor, cracking my brother on the head, knocking him out cold. The jar did not break, thanks to Kevin's head, but bounced on the rug a time or two, and rolled to rest against the room's far wall. Dottie M., despite the noise of sizzling bacon and the cracking of eggs far away in the kitchen, automatically knew something else was cooking.

"What's going on up there?" she called.

I looked at my brother. He had little stars and planets circling above his head. I glanced at my sister, who was laughing and jumping, and who thought this was so much fun that she would like to do it again.

I simply said,

"Kevin's sleeping."

Kevin did come to, just in time to share the parental reprimand. And he still, to this day, has the lump on his head to prove it.

Everything About Anyone

On this late Saturday afternoon, the windows are open in this abode, and the Labbies are lounging in a yard filled with dandelions, globes of silky filaments destined to sail away through the air.

What a week it has been in Virginia.

Late Sunday night there were strong winds and much rain. A tree came crashing down along a road not far from here, taking with it access to the juice supplied by overhead power lines. At 4:13 a.m. I woke with a start. It was the day I was to launch a Web site I'd been working on since July 2006. My kingdom for a computer that could power up to the Internet.

I cleaned up as best I could, powered up the Mighty Bug, and with a bad case of bed hair, motored to the main road outta here toward the state of Maryland. There were lots of flooded sections along the way, and the Mighty Bug hydroplaned through the streams flowing across the road by the wildlife refuge. We made it to the 7-11 where there was light, and at least one 20 oz. cup of coffee for sale.

The site did go online that day, and on the way out of the client's office, someone said, "A bunch of people have been shot and killed at Virginia Tech." On the way home, I stopped at the Shopper's Food Warehouse where the scene was full of rumor and relief. "75 people have been murdered at a local high school," one man announced to another, back in the bakery section. I pushed my cart down the soda/water aisle, past a woman on a cellphone, her teenaged daughter by her side. "She's OK," the woman told the young lady as the cell call ended. The older woman put her head down on the handle of the cart and sobbed. Her daughter's eyes filled with tears. She touched her mother's arm.

At home here in the woods, there were Labbies and no electricity. Got out the candles and flashlight and battery-powered phone. I listened to the transistor radio for a while. There was mention of a Virginia Tech professor who sacrificed himself for his students. This man was Romanian, and had survived the Holocaust. The end came for him when he used his body to stall the gunman's entry into the classroom so his students could escape. As most teachers know, there is usually only one way in or out of a classroom.

In the fading gray light that evening, I simply sat on the living room couch, and thought how impossible it is to know everything about anyone. I think it is because we all have a place inside us where we hold what we have come to know. This includes the goodness of action that occurs without need of notice, as well as the darkness that is either tamed, or released.

Envelope of the Heart

It is 2007, and there is a new dock down by the river.

Near sunrise this morning, the Labbies and I wandered down to walk upon it once more. Neighbor Scott and his friends have constructed a plain, sturdy place where one can sit on an edge of wood and listen to the sound of water.

Have been away for a few weeks, and it has been wonderful. It was the first Christmas in over 20 years I wasn't doing eight or more dishwasher loads in a silent house on Christmas night. Things never have to remain the same. I rented a large automobile that looked like a gangstah car, piled the Labbies and assorted gifts and stuff into its environs, and motored off the Thursday before Christmas. We ventured south to see our favorite cousins, then south again to a wooden home with fireplace near a lake. There I helped put up a fine Christmas tree in a newly-painted peach room, then ate goose with a special chef, a man who makes me laugh a tremendous amount. That was my Christmas gift. To be able to open up the envelope of the heart and drop something new inside.

And today, the gifts keep coming. This afternoon, Marg chased her tennis ball across the cold sleeping lawn for the first time in many months. She felt like retrieving. She was well enough to be herself. And she is smiling again.

Leonard Cohen wrote:

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.

And tomorrow at sunrise, we will walk to the dock once more, to investigate how the water has changed.

QUOTE: From Anthem. Lyrics and music by Leonard Cohen.

Sticking with Beautiful

It is Thursday evening in this Mason Neck neighborhood. Foggy, humid night. Blackbirds have been flying through in droves the last few days. Heading south. Soon it will turn cold for a good long while. And there are purple mums in the planter on the front porch. Purchased at a place called Pigboy Willy's Pumpkin Patch.

Cars have been the topic of conversation in these environs the last few days. Yesterday I noticed, from the window of my office in this humble abode, a myriad of cop vehicles moving up and down the country roads. When I walked the Labbies down to the river later in the afternoon, one of my neighbors let me in on the story. Seems a pack of thieves moved through this peninsula in the early morning, stealing anything they could out of unlocked cars in this usually quiet, northern VA land. The reality is 55 cars were pillaged. And they got this fellah's cellphone. He was unhappy.

The Mighty Bug escaped such violation.

The sweet little blue egg-shaped car was at the VW hospital in Alexandria, getting a checkup and certain replacements to suit its 118,000 miles. In this driveway, instead, sat a locked rental car. A grey Nissan Pathfinder. An auto I found unpleasing to drive. Like motoring around in a hippopotamus.

I dunno what it is about having something flashy new when you don't need it. What does it solve? Other than you have to let something of great worth go.

I returned the Hippo to its car rental home this a.m.

The Enterprise woman asked me, "How did you like the Pathfinder?"

"I didn't," I replied, took my receipt and left.

I walked next door to Dunkin Donuts and ordered a large light, and a tea with cream. The java tasted good, and I passed the tea to my sistah Kathy when she zoomed in the drive of the car rental place to pick me up. We chatted about life and Emma and Dave and Pete and their possible upcoming Florida vacation as we ventured up to Alexandria so I could retrieve the Bug.

At the dealership I paid, and waited for The Mighty Bug to be delivered to where I could gladly take possession of it again. A salesman, standing outside having a smoke, watched me. A young fellah drove The Mighty Bug near to where I stood, gathered up the paper floor mats, and told me, "Have a nice day, madam."

The salesman came to life.

"Ya know, I could trade that one in on that pretty blue convertible Beetle sitting right over there," he announced joyfully, pointing to a newer, brighter car in the lot.

Poor man.

I patted the top of The Mighty Bug, its roof dinged by more than one acorn from the big oak near the home driveway. He had no idea that this almost 7-year old car had motored me over 10,000 miles across the U.S. and back, had taken me to Death Valley, to the tops of mountains where I viewed Sequoia trees for the first time, and then, with a little thought on my part and its tremendous automotive effort, returned me back home again.

This man didn't have a clue.

"Yeah, that one's pretty," I told him. "But I don't need it."

I'll stick with beautiful.

Flying

Just got back from the South.

August seems to be the month of travel this year.

Trip home was interesting. Austin. 7 a.m. Myself (and fellow passengers) sat there for thirty more minutes after the plane was due to take off.

Arrived in St. Louis, walked off the plane to hear a statement over the terminal loud speaker: "Passenger Mary Gillen...please report to Gate C-1 for your flight to DC. The door is now closing." I was at Gate C-17. Shite, as the Irish would say! I turned to the American Airlines employee at the desk and inquired, "Could you please call down to Gate C-17 and tell them to hold the plane...that I am on my way?" She looked at me like I had seven heads.

Idiot.

I ran. Who am I kidding? I lumbered with all my might.

Made it there just as the lady airline personnel person was closing the door. "WAIT," I cried. She did, then acted like I was some kind of creature from another planet. Hold on. I paid good money for this ticket. What happened to customer service? She frowned, put my ticket through the computer, then let me through the Alice in Wonderland door to the plane where some fellow had already absconded with my seat. I asked him to move. He was reluctant, but did.

THEORY: Methinks the major airlines are double-booking their flights, leaving late on purpose from some destinations, letting stand-by passengers on, then telling their already-paid customers, "Oh I am sorry, you are late. We gave your seat away" for double the profit. And it is the customer's fault. I say "dirty dawgs," but that would be an insult to Margaret and Walter.

I am home. And am glad that there is a Labbie fast asleep under my desk as I write this to you, her sweet gub resting on the top of my right foot, so I won't get away.

It doesn't pay to transfer on an airline these days. Time = greed. And, c'mon, don't blame it on the cost of fuel.

But, while flying,  one good thing did appear. Two small boys, across the aisle on the plane. They were separated by a simple row of seats, and met through the small crack between chair and wall. They introduced themselves:

John: "What's your name?"

Toby: "My name is Toby."

John: "My name is John. Have you ever seen a tick?"

Toby: "Yes. Have you ever eaten Cheetos?"

John: "Yeah!"

And as we descended, getting closer and closer to the ground, Toby said,

"Look at the cars down there. Maybe the plane could land on a car's roof and we could all drive on down the highway."

Yeah.

Rust

I like to walk out along the road to get the mail.

There's a letterbox out there I've used for the last 16 years. It is rusty. It states on the door that it's been approved by the postmaster general, so it can't be all bad. Thought about painting it many times, but then I stop myself.

I like its color of rust.

Yeah, I know its corrosion is caused by water, and rust's gobbling nature makes things fall apart. Rust frightens. It's not clean. Destruction, inactivity, neglect. But we are all rusty in some ways, aren't we? So it is part of the movement of life. And every day it makes the act of getting the mail like getting back in the saddle once more. You simply open the mailbox door and look inside its corrugated grey for some sort of surprise.

It is not Christmas every day in northern Virginia. But at this time in my life, nothing inside this rusty container along a country road frightens me. Bills come every month, and I pay them. Living simply keeps the content of these glassine-windowed envelopes acceptable.

I like when the Dalai Lama writes to me. It's always addressed personally to "Dear Friend", and filled with words seeking dough for the International Campaign for Tibet. The last one included a string of paper Tibetan prayer flags. Cheez, I love the thought of those things. String them outside your house and the blessings fly off in the wind to land on someone else in the world. Though methinks this string would last about 1.5 seconds outside in the wind and would detach and fly and tangle in the holly tree behind the back porch. Sturdier sanctity is needed in this Virginia. So I've strung 'em edge-to-edge on the bulletin board in my office that is so full of photos/paper, it could use some grace.

And the annual birthday card from my beloved Aunt Cookie. She never forgets. Ever. She and our favorite Uncle John have retired to the beach in Delaware, and have better things to do than send birthday cards. At 51, it still makes me smile. Though I have stopped shaking the cards so the ice cream money falls out. Well, sorta.

The other day I opened the mailbox door to find a box. I had forgotten I had ordered great ideas. Sent by a service called The Readers Subscription located in that great book mailing mecca of Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, I received 12 paperbacks from a publisher called Penguin. They are simple little books, light little numbahs from thinkers, radicals, pioneers and perhaps a visionary or two thrown in to make sure you are getting your money's worth:

The Symposium - Plato
The Art of War - Sun-tzu
The City of Ladies - Christine de Pizan
How to Achieve True Greatness - Baldesar Castiglione
Of Empire - Francis Bacon
Where I Lived, and What I Lived For - Henry David Thoreau
Conspicuous Consumption - Thorstein Veblen
Eichmann and the Holocaust - Hannah Arendt
Fear and Trembling - Soren Kierkegaard
A Vindication on the Rights of Woman - Mary Wollstonecraft
The Social Contract - Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The Communist Manifesto - Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

So the old postal container standing stoically along the road delivers rusty thoughts that can always be revisited. And tonight I will read, just before I fall asleep, and those long-ago published thoughts will be different. And as I turn out the light, I will remember that I am too.

Hungry ATMs and Back Fat

It's been an interesting day.

The Mighty Bug and I stopped at the very convenient drive-thru ATM this afternoon after class to get some fast cash from checking, as one option suggests on the brightly-buttoned banking screen. I fed my ATM card into the slot, then heard a horrible gnashing sound. Methinks the machine missed lunch, 'cause it chewed my card into liquid plastic. I swear I heard a metallic burp.

OK. I parked the blue Bug between two white lines in the lot and walked around the corner to the bank lobby. Inside, I was not alone. The bank manager, already surrounded by four other customers, took one look at me and said, "Oh no. You too?" Seems the ATM machine must've been missing its carbs, as it had greedily consumed the ATM cards of four others before me. Temporary ATM cards for all.

Seems other machines are hungry, too. Today, in The New York Times, in an article titled Do My Knees Look Fat to You? it is reported that thin humans are now opting for liposuction of the knees and back.

Gewd Lawd.

I don't know about you, but I was born with fat knees, and they will always be with me. My parents gave them to me. They couldn't help it. And back fat? It sounds like something some savvy southern cook would place in a frying plan while prepping some amazing meal. But I suppose the term "back fat" doesn't sound as horrible as the description of the current liposuction process, where your fat is melted first before being stripped from your body.

Why do people do this?

None of us get out of here alive.

One of my students, Erica, commented today about how a friend of hers had liposuction on her stomach. "Her stomach is perfectly flat now," she reported. "But now the fat goes to her back and hips and butt. It always finds someplace to sit."

Methinks it might settle in some people's heads.

Scene from the Back Porch

Have a small wooden porch attached to the back of this house. It measures six feet by six feet, and links to seven steps down to the earth. It is a place you can loiter on, view great scenes and hear brave sounds.

It's only Tuesday, and it has been one of those weeks already.

The older I get, the more I realize how much I don't know, and can never understand. All day in class, trying to answer demanding questions about the illogical invention of code I did not create. Exhausting.

So, on days like this, I retreat to the firmness of the back porch, and sit on the landing, and let these Irish feet plant on the second step. It anchors me, and I listen to the silence, and forget about the insistence of the world.

There is an owl that perches on a birch nearby. He visits most nights when the weather is good, and I hear him hooting some kind of message in the darkness. I cannot understand what he is saying, but I am thinking my soul drinks in his thoughts. I simply absorb his sounds, and it is soothing.

In this neighborhood of rednecks and old hippies, fireworks whistle through the air tonight. Preamble to July 4th, I reckon. At the first twirl of independence noise, the owl flies away.

What are the answers? There are none. It is simply called living.

But the best part about stoop sitting such as this is that I can look up at the stars that appear in the night sky and know that the ones I care about are viewing the same light.

First Draft and Final

Memorial Day Weekend. Swimming pools are now open to splashers, the white purses and shoes of my childhood acceptable. I bought a pair of plain white Keds the other day, and they are already dirty, and comfortable. They are meant to last 'til Labor Day.

And here, below the Mason-Dixon Line, the switch for the central air conditioning is turned to ON, until October 1. The Labbies wander outside in the afternoons of 92 degree humid heat, do their business, then scratch on the front door to be let back in the cool.

And the roar of Harleys and big bikes abound on Virginia roads this weekend. It is called Rolling Thunder. It is memory in sound, redemption sought on wheels, a quest to continue to make some sense of it all.

Veterans are everywhere, even in grocery stores. I watched a group from Jersey and Pennsylvania, who silenced loud bikes with simple turns of keys in the parking lot, talking quietly among themselves in the produce department, selecting apples and lettuce, as many people do.

Last year, heading north on I-395, I heard the unmistakable roar of Harleys coming up behind me, and soon was surrounded by many grey-haired Rolling Thunder participants headed toward DC to the annual memorial gatherings. On one overpass sat a Vietnam vet in a wheelchair, holding an American flag. The cyclists around me gunned their Harley engines in unison as we passed under the chap, saluting their comrade.

Loyalty has its own voice. It is that of a motorcycle engine,  metal song in search of someone so very far away. The sound of my old man telling his children, "Don't you ever quit." Is that same statement the one so many heard, the sentence that made them sign up, volunteer, end their lives, or survive to return to a land where no one understood them? 'Cause it was a job to be faced, embraced, yet one you came to understand could destroy you. Some voices are silenced young. How old are we when we start to lose our friends? 50? How about at the age of 18, as so many have? It's unfathomable to me.

I remember a man I knew in school, a young fellow trained as a Green Beret, dead set ready to go to Vietnam, only to have the rug of truce sweep the war out from under his feet. "I go down streets at midnight," he told me. "I punch brick walls with my bare fists 'cause I don't know what to do. I've been trained to kill. And I am stuck in a place where I dare not achieve what I have been taught."

That's why there is a roar of cycles in DC the end of every May, and why I continue to listen to that music. The few times in my life when someone has said to me, "I cannot do this any longer. I am moving on," has hurt more deeply than I can ever explain. For to me, this Celt, it is disloyal, but standard issue of the human condition. Whether it be in Laos, or Virginia, or down the street from where you have lived all your life, it is a demise, the experience an end of some consequence to us all. But it is the death of relationship, physical or emotional, that makes us veterans of life. And I, as many, live my life as a first draft and final. No way to edit what has been done.

Sunday

Up early this morning, dogs reminding me they want to go out, then be fed. Looks like it is going to be a nice day. The windows are open, the neighborhood quiet, the trees and grass growing fresh spring green. An hour of sleep has been "lost" in exchange for longer daylight, yet I hear in places like Indianapolis they do not play with time. It is always the same out there.

The Sunday editions of the news sit like sausages in protective plastic on the drive, and Black Lab Walt accompanies me as I retrieve them. He carries his beloved red toy Kong in his mouth, nudges my leg, hopeful to play. Papers under my arm, I tell him to drop his rubber treasure so I can throw it for him. His game is not to release the Kong, but to run away, then come back, teasing, his tail wagging in circles, the sign of a happy dog. He finally drops the toy, runs round and round three times, then charges off across the long yard, and I throw. He usually grabs it after the first bounce. He is beautiful when he runs.

So, on this Sunday, I am solitary in the early silence, and it is good. I sit on the couch and spread The Washington Post and The New York Times across the coffee table, discarding the paper ad supplements and TV guide on the floor for the trash. Black Lab Margaret is asleep on her side on the living room rug. She likes the silence too, away from Walt as he runs along the front fence, all energy. Margaret will be another year older next month, and she is slowing. She seeks so little these days.

There is fresh hot coffee in a cup to my right. The quote printed on it states, "Life is short. Stay awake for it." So I read. Kevin Phillips writes how the combo of "oil, fundamentalism and debt" is bringing the Republic down. Another story tells how footwashing is now fashionable in homeless shelters, as the act harnesses humility for the washer, the touching of another human's feet being such an intimate act. We are now warned that cellphones are truly dangerous, being used as weapons in the latest news, celebrities and elected officials being carted off to the pokey for jabbing and throwing these devices at other humans. And the masters of debt are now courting the 10-14 year-old crowd with Hello Kitty logos placed on pre-paid Mastercards for presentation at birthday parties.

George Mason's Patriots are now out of the game, and tearful pictures appear in color on front pages of sport sections. There is a fashion photo spread of a starved model with black-painted toenails, her face a mask of dark makeup, just after a feature about the severely depressed. A blue station wagon drives by the house, its inhabitants laughing loudly about something. They are on their way, somewhere, to the beauty of this day, followed by a small truck that delivers the sound of Jackson Browne, who tells us to stay.

Papers complete, the sound of a lone lawnmower is heard somewhere not too far away. I will gather the dogs and take them down along the river, then for a long walk in the woods, before the ATVs start agitating their way along neighborhood roadways, and the laundry that needs to be done starts whining.