My dad was 84.  That was……..

Time enough to serve his country in the Navy during World War II

Time enough for his big hands to put my hair in pigtails when I had the measles

Time enough to find newborn bunnies while he was mowing the lawn.  Together we tried to keep them alive.  We used my doll’s baby bottle to feed them milk from the refrigerator.  I am pretty sure that my dad knew those bunnies didn’t have a chance….

Time enough to get his share of speeding tickets.  The last time he got a ticket, the policeman pulled him over and my dad said, in good-natured disbelief, “Officer, I’ve been driving for 40 years and I’ve never had a ticket…”  which was ridiculous. But the policeman looked at my dad and said, “Well, sir, you’ve got one now.”

Time enough for him to turn my five -year old body upside down while I was choking on a cherry lifesaver.  He shook me by my ankles until it popped out.  That was the Don Shea version of the Heimlich Maneuver.

Time enough for my dad to work two jobs during my four years at the University of Texas.  I was only peripherally aware until a decade later that this was out of financial necessity. He never complained.  Not once.

Time enough to carry my mom’s ashes down the aisle of the church.  That was one of the most heartbreaking moments in my life.  He was adrift, all at once without his partner of 55 years.  This stoic dad of mine had tears in his eyes and I walked alongside him, arm around his stooped shoulders

Time enough to consume I don’t know how many batches of brownies at Sunday dinners at my house in the last year of his life.  His idea of the perfect dessert.  Sending him home with the leftovers was no sacrifice at all.  A year of Sunday brownies was more than enough for everyone in our family.

Time enough to teach me how to ride my two-wheeler.  My dad hung onto the seat of that little red bicycle, running alongside me, screaming “Pedal, pedal, pedal” into the wind.

Time enough to grumble.  When I was a senior in high school I’d gone to Galveston with some friends for a day at the beach. Before heading back to Houston, we ran through the drive-through of the Jack-in-the-Box.  Once home, I felt awful.  Severe stomach pains that got bad enough that my dad took me to the ER.  All the way there he grumbled — and my dad was not a grumbler — saying that he was missing Ed Sullivan because I had been foolish enough to and I quote, “Eat at a dump like Jack-in-the-Box.” Turns out I had an emergency appendectomy that night.  Completely independent of the hamburger I’d eaten earlier that afternoon.

Time enough for him to watch two decades of Ed Sullivan and Johnny Carson and time enough to mourn the passing of one of his favorites, Andy Rooney

Time enough to spend some wonderful days sailing together.  We’d pack 3 bologna and cheese sandwiches – two for him, one for me, cheese doodles, Fig Newtons and an orange pop to split. The menu never changed. We’d come back with sun sprinkled faces.

Time enough to take me to the office on Saturdays where he would get some work done and I would play secretary.  I stapled things, paper clipped other things, used the stamp pad, played with the adding machine and and called him, when he was right across the room and say, “Can I put you on hold?

Time enough to write me a shoebox full of letters when I was at UT.  This accumulation of letters….those letters were more about his staying connected to his only daughter and less about delivering any kind of communication.  Those were communications of the heart, that had little to do with pen, paper and a stamp.

Time enough to teach me to skip stones in the Atlantic Ocean.  I never did have much aptitude.  He’d sort of do a run toward the water, turning sideways at the end of his approach and let go of the stone as it skipped sometimes a dozen times until it sank.  Me?  I think I managed three skips….once.

Time enough to beat me at checkers hundreds of times.  He would start with six to my twelve and he’d still win.  I am sorry that I wasn’t more of a challenging opponent.

Time enough to make dozens of animals carved out of toast for my kids.  A little butter and then the carving would begin. His elephant was second to none.

I have a favorite quote….one that my kids have heard over and over while they were growing up…

“You have lived a perfect day when you have done something for someone else that they can never ever repay.”

My dad had a lifetime of perfect days

Foursquare.

Not the playground game.  The let-everyone-know-where-you-are version. If you’re on facebook, you’ve seen it.  Just this a.m., Kevin was at Tower Dry Cleaners.  About 7:32.  Got in his car, threw a bag of dirty shirts in after him.  And this is information I need….because…..?  Is this the 21st Century’s version of keeping in touch?

I have given a lot of thought to why anyone would put that kind of information on their facebook page.  What are the possible motives?  To let everyone know that they are keeping themselves clean?  Or that they don’t wear dirty shirts?  Or that they beat the sun up and are racing through some unknown-to-me dash to get the chores knocked off the list?  Or that they have more than one shirt?  I don’t get it.

I’ve also seen women who use the app to let everyone know they’re exercising.  ”Just clocked 3.7 miles.”  Ugh.  Those are the worst.  And I sit home, eating my third donut and I’m still in my nightgown with glazed donut bits stuck to the front.  I couldn’t choke out an “Atta girl”.  Then there’s the out-to-lunch updates.  ”Just checked in to Cafe Provence for lunch with Frieda, Muriel and Bea.”  WHAT??????  Those are my three best friends!!!!!!!   Frantically checking junk mail and missed calls to see if they did try to invite me but I missed the memo.

Then there’s Sergey Kobinsky.  How in the world he got on my News Feed page is inconceivable.  We don’t even speak the same language.  It is written in Urdu, the language of Pakistan. He is from OnToplist.com.  So I clicked on that.  The second entry is from a chap named Salman Ahmed.  And I quote — “If any age and matured female from Karachi want secret relations 0333-3619803.

If anyone has any frequent flyer miles, be my guest.  I’m going to take a pass.  I’m not good at keeping secrets anyway.

Pet peeve:  Whining.  Merriam-Webster’s definition:  ”To complain in a feeble or petulant way”.  Well, if you want the living breathing human being version of this, you have to look no further than the cover of Time Magazine’s August 11 issue.  The title? Chore Wars.  The battle of the sexes.  Who does more work around the house. No need for a long intro here — nor was there much of one in the article.  The very first paragraph set the tone — set the tone for whining-on-steroids.  And I quote —

If there was one time in my marriage when life felt the most unfair it was during the witching hour.  When our children were young and I was working from home.  I would relieve our babysitter at 5 pm. and start to feed and bathe our 3-year-old and 6-month-old and begin various pre-bedtime rituals.  By 6 p.m., this thought would be running through my head:  If my husband doesn’t come home from the office soon to help, I’m going to lose my mind.

So let me get this straight.  One hour into the evening ritual, she is frazzled and gaining significant where-the-hell-is-he momentum??????  Boy, I can just imagine that this poor guy is certainly not going to hear the Hi-honey- how-was-your- day? greeting on this miserable Wednesday evening!  Where did all this keeping-score come in?  As if the give-and-take of a marital day can be boiled down to a he-did-she-did tally sheet.

There are eight kids in our family.  We didn’t have a score card.  Heck, we probably couldn’t have laid our hands on a pen that worked and a piece of paper at the same time anyway.  We both hit the floor running when the alarm jangled us from never-enough sleep.  And we never stopped until the last kiddo was in bed for the night. And then we fell back into bed into instant slumber.  And in the in-between times we loved our kids, tore our hair out, fed the cat, baked cupcakes, tried to mend a broken heart or hurt feelings, changed diapers, mowed the yard, changed the windshield wiper blades, tripped over some little person’s shoes, threw out the cantaloupe growing mold in the bottom corner of the refrigerator drawer.  Life.  Fussing, smiling, crying, sighing, giggling, shrugging our shoulders, holding back tears, giving into the meltdown, being grateful for the chaos surrounding us.

So — how does one lose one’s mind in an hour of bathing little kids?  And even if that was so, who — I mean who in their right mind admits that to Time Magazine??? Circulation 3.5 million!!!!

Admittedly I would do the grocery shopping in the evenings.  Family fed, kids bathed, Wood reading stories on the couch, kids snuggled around him.  I — I would start at the card store in the little shopping center about three miles from home.  There I would pick up a birthday card or two and wander the aisles smelling candles and looking at picture frames.  Then off to the grocery store.  Slow-motion grocery shopping in an effort to miss the whole bedtime scene at home.  If Wood were keeping score on that one, I would have no points for the evening.  I’m not even sure he knows all these years later, what a gift that was to me.

Oh, he had his moments.  One regular old morning, he at work, I at home with the kids.  Maybe four kids.  Ten o’clock in the morning, after downing two cups of coffee, I felt awful.  This was impending flu, big time.  Clammy, nauseous, a physical yearning to be horizontal, 101 temperature.  I call Wood at work. Give him the unofficial diagnosis.  In what he thought was a generous enough offer, he said, “Oh, I’ll get the kids after school.”  Dead silence.  It’s ten o’clock in the morning and kid-pick-up isn’t until three.  So I am supposed to be vertical for five more hours?????  The sanitized version is that he was swiftly educated that it was time to cancel meetings and do a mom-relief mission.  We still laugh about that.  Good thing the score card wasn’t out on that one, or he’d still be working off the deficit of that day.

Reminiscing the other day about my growing up years….

My mother could probably best be described by a few examples, rather than a list of adjectives.  Definitely a no-frills lifestyle.  Her medicine cabinet contained cuticle scissors, a nail file (stainless steel), tweezers and one lipstick.  In the event of an evacuation of any sort, she would have been the first one packed and on the curb with her suitcase.  She would roll over in her grave if she could see the “teen bathrooms” upstairs at my house.  There you would find nine kinds of shampoo, twelve soaking wet hair ties on the floor of the shower, three bottles of body wash, all of which have about a squirt and a half in them, three rusty razors, two growing-mold washcloths. That’s just the shower inventory. On the counter is deodorant, seven bottles of face wash, every shade of pink nail polish known to man, and then blue, turquoise, lime, orange and purple.  And  six cotton balls.  An ipod charger.  Two brushes.  A straightener.  And a paper towel with the leftover crumbs of a handful of oreos.  And toothpaste blobs in the sink.

Back to my mother.  In her kitchen drawer where she kept what Jeopardy would call “Things that cover food”, my mother had aluminum foil.  Saran Wrap never darkened our doorway.  So I was the only kid at school that had a sandwich/cookies wrapped in foil.  And stupid as it sounds now, I had Saran Wrap Envy. I thought the stuff was so cool. I had foil.  And more often than not, in the folding of the foil to wrap the sandwich, the sandwich got smushed.  Not a pretty sight, that pb and jelly smashed beyond recognition on Wonder Bread four hours after it was dumped in my lunchbox. But oddly, now I use no Saran Wrap.  The stuff actually drives me crazy.  I can’t seem to angle that box to get a piece of the stuff without it wrinkling up and attaching itself to itself until I have a fourteen inch square of crumpled up, stuck together clear plastic.  More trouble than it’s worth.  So I use — foil. But my kids’  sandwiches make the commute to school in baggies.

I am sure that I have had quirks that my kids will talk about when they have families of their own.  I admit to a few.  Donuts at our house.  Eight kids.  Two adults.  And a box of glazed donuts.  Kids expectantly sitting at the kitchen table.  And they would say, before I even put the sugary dough into their hands, “Two fingers, right Mom?” Thumb and index finger of the hand they wrote with were the only part of their hand that was to touch that donut.  No kid of mine would have dared put that donut in the palm of their hand.  And clean-up?  A snap.  A quick two-fingered swipe and they were clean and ready to go.  And my kids, five of them now in their twenties, still talk about that bit of genius efficiency I raised them with. (Okay, they still talk about the two-fingered part, but I am not sure they yet have the maturity to wrap their heads around the genius part!)

Sitting in the front seat.  After the better part of who-remembers-now-how-many-years, the Dickinson parents had had enough of “It’s my turn to sit in the front seat.” “No, it’s my turn.”  ”No, (spoken like there are twelve syllables in the two letter word) remember when it was Andrew’s turn to sit in the front but he had soccer practice and Mr. Ludington drove so Kathleen was supposed to take his turn in the front but she said Mary could have her turn just to make me mad….”  See what I mean.  Insanity. (“I need a pharmacy in aisle three.”)  So the rule became “The oldest kid sits in the front.”  Not one kid in my family could ever trick us and change their age.  So that became something we never had to talk about again.  Car-loading became tolerable. And the funny part?  This still works!  Kid comes home from college?  The then oldest kid at home automatically moves to the back in deference to the college kids visit. This seniority thing is something that is now etched on their DNA strand.

Cooking.  My mother saw cooking as a very utilitarian task.  It was all about filling the void and had nothing to do with enjoying the food.  I love to cook.  I love it when Mary’s boyfriend, Kenny, comes for dinner and wants seconds.  No higher form of flattery.  And I would say I am a pretty good cook.  Except when I make meatballs. My mother taught me how to make meatballs.  Take a hunk of whatever kind of hamburger meat is on sale and roll it in your hands until you have a ball.  (Obviously the same set of donut-rules doesn’t apply here.)  Then you put them in a pan and cook them.  Meghan used to stand on a chair next to me at the kitchen counter and we’d make those one-ingredient meatballs.  We used to joke about how we were never going to share the recipe.  I made meatballs that way for the better part of the first 25 years of our marriage.  No one ever said anything.  Until my neighbor gave me her passed-down-from-the-Italian-great-grandmother-recipe for spaghetti and meatballs. That meatball recipe had ingredients in it.  Egg, romano cheese, onion, garlic, breadcrumbs.  Obviously way more labor intensive.  You cannot imagine the reception those got the first time I made them.  On and on, five star rating.  So now it goes something like this…”What’s for dinner?”  ”Spaghetti and meatballs.”  ”How many ingredients?”

When I was a kid, my mom cooked pudding.  In a saucepan with milk.  Stirred and stirred.  Then it had to cool.  This had to be done at the beginning of the day in order for it to be ready for dinner’s dessert.  Eventually, modern culinary science saw the dawn of the “instant” pudding phenomenon.  Powder in a box. A good Tupperware container with a secure lid (learned that one the hard way… pudding running down my forearm…).  Ten, maybe fifteen minutes later, ready to eat.  Then pudding evolved yet again.  Individual servings in little plastic disposable cups with a foil top that you peel back.  Enough pudding for a big newborn or a small toddler. Now the funny part.  My kids think that the instant stuff is homemade!

Yes, this is the Microwave Generation.  Gen-M. We want it now.  Popcorn?  Two minutes.  Baked potato?  90 seconds.  Frozen solid Stouffers Lasagna?  Under fifteen minutes. Pizza Rolls?  Before you can get out the plate and fork. Oh yes, we’re in a big hurry.  Instant gratification.

My mother-in-law had one of the first round of microwaves in the late 1960′s.  A huge big thing.  Took up a lot of counter space.  I remember coming to Kansas City to visit Wood during a school break.  She offered to warm up a cinnamon roll for me.  Hey, I love cinnamon rolls.  Apparently she was still getting used to this mammoth beast that was taking up a lot of real estate in her kitchen.  She proudly served me two.  I dug right in.  Huge big bite.  And I chewed.  And it tasted just like someone had dumped the contents of their charcoal grill — that grey powder — onto my plate.  And so she’s sitting across from me.  Just the two of us at the table.  Oh, boy.  Time to impress this mother-in-law-to-be with my wit and intelligence.  She is watching me expectantly.  I managed an “Ummm” (it’s the neutral version of “Yum” through my rancid, powdered-coated throat.  It is way too early to start making noises about how full I was getting. There are still 1.8 cinammon rolls on my plate.  So it was stare-down time.  Woman vs. cinammon roll.  Crank up the grit (not the grit on the plate but the true-grit kind) Second bite.  It is at this point that I have downed the entire contents of a big glass of orange juice.  The mother-in-law refills it.  And so it goes.  I quit after the first bite of the second cinnamon roll.  I have a highly evolved gag reflex.  Wasn’t going to risk that.

So maybe that explains me coming late to the table (that’s the wit I was talking about) in the purchase of our microwave all these years later.  Maybe we bought ours in 2001?  Mary, then 11, put a metal coffee mug in the microwave while Wood and I were gone to Costco.  We came home to a house that smelled like an iron and steel plant, belching smoke out the chimney.  Resourceful Dickinson that she is, she tried to mask the stench by spraying perfume — lots of it — around the kitchen.  No one would have accused me of being on the cutting edge of that microwave trend.

And I still can go days without using it.  It’s a terrific little tool for melting butter. Heating up leftovers.  But I haven’t ever cooked anything in it — cooking in the assembling-ingredients sense.

Maybe I missed the wave of hurry-hurry-hurry.  Or maybe we just don’t use much prepared food.  I still make real mashed potatoes. Real lasagna.  My own spaghetti sauce.  My own pie crust.

But I make instant pudding.  Now that’s a reason to hurry.

Yesterday afternoon the phone rang.  I saw that it was an unknown area code and in an impulsive moment picked it up.  (I usually let those calls go.  It’s generally a nuisance call — someone needing a donation or someone telling me that I’ve won a 3 day 2 night stay somewhere no one wants to go, or someone wanting to set up an evening appointment in my home to discuss burial plots.)

What followed was about six minutes of Life Flight-able cardiac arrhythmia.  In the red zone.  As in get the crash cart ready and someone who knows what they’re doing behind those paddles.  (I had a writing professor who once told the class that women tend to do “medical report” in their writing.  That last sentence qualifies…..)

“Hello?”

Slight pause, then, Is this Patti Dickinson?  Nothing cordial here.  Stern.  Authoritative. This is Sergeant William Torres with the FDA. Odd.  Rarely even take an Advil.  What could he want with me?

I confirmed that he was talking to said Patti Dickinson.  We have a very serious matter here.  We are conducting an investigation.  Recently we have been made aware that you have been buying prescriptions on-line.  You have purchased a controlled substance without a prescription.  And that is illegal.  (Emphasis on illegal)

I tell him that he must have the wrong person.  That I have never purchased on-line medication, legal or otherwise.  That I am just a regular citizen (not a drug lord, but I didn’t say that part).  I thought that was going to be the end of it, an ooops-sorry-to-bother-you kind of conversation.

Nope.

He leans into his role of interrogator.  He is doing the bad-cop routine.  I am wondering when/if the good cop is going to show. You have broken the law.  Mrs. Dickinson, I have a list of 65 names here in front of me.  I can hear the rattle of the paper he is holding.  The list.  With my name on it.  Gulp.  These are the names of people who were involved in illegal international drug purchases.  You are one of them.  I am just not sure that you understand the seriousness of this crime.  In an odd twist, he’s sounding like he’s given up on me, already made the decision that he’s confirmed his earlier suspicions.  That I am a scoundrel. A perpetrator. White collar crime at its basest level. That I am a thug in khaki shorts and he knows it.  Have I been tried and convicted already? Now I am wishing that I’d paid a little closer attention in my American Government class…and don’t they have to read me my Miranda rights???

My heart is about ready to pound out of my chest.  My breathing is shallow and I am wondering whether I need an attorney. Whether I will be wearing stripes for the rest of my life and eating slop from a chow line off a dented tin plate in Leavenworth.  (At least I will be close to home.)  I take a different tack….Look.  I am really not sure that you are who you say you are.  I mean, anyone could call and say they were a Sergeant.  I am appalled at what just came out of my mouth.  I have been confrontational and  I am alarmed at my momentary aggression, So I backpedal, saying, I am sure that you mean well, and are just doing your job.  Start with a compliment, Patti.  Regroup.  Nothing accusatory.  But there are a lot of people that use the phone to intimidate people.  And you are intimidating me.  I am not sure that you realize that you are coming on kind of strong and I have done nothing wrong.  So I don’t really understand why you are talking to m this way.  I mean, are you telling me that I am in trouble? Are you asking me to help you put the bad guys in jail?  

You are not listening.  You have not heard anything that I am trying to tell you.  I. am. conducting. an. investigation.  This is serious.  Do you know that we have recently intercepted a package of 90 pills, mailed to your address, that are laced with cocaine? This package came from the Dominican Republic, so this is an international issue.

Oh. My. God.

Surely this is enough to have me in leg shackles and if I am lucky, shuffled off to a life of general population living.  Maybe I will be perceived as a snitch.  That ought to get me a solitary confinement classification.  I know all this stuff because I have watched Breaking Down the Bars and Jail.

I am scared senseless.  I am wondering how I am going to prove that I didn’t do all this stuff when it sounded like this Sergeant had overwhelming, albeit incorrect evidence that I had done it.  So I go for broke and say, Look, I don’t think you are who you say you are.  I would like you to write me a letter and tell me this stuff in writing.  I am a soccer mom (oh, good grief, did I really say that????)  I don’t want to continue this conversaton.  If you give me your number. I maybe can call you back.

He ratchets up the stern-factor.  He never raises his voice, which makes him sound all that much more menacing.  You are making a mistake.  You are getting in the way of my investigation.  You are being uncooperative.  If you choose not to continue this conversation, I can and will  have  patrol cars in your driveway in under three minutes. They will ransack your house.  We have a search warrant.

Are you kidding me?  I just cleaned the house.  I even organized the spices.  They’re going to come to my house and turn everything upside down?  What will the neighbors think when they see patrol cars screeching to a halt at all angles in my driveway?  I don’t even know an attorney that could handle this sort of thing.  So I tell him I will call him back….I ask for the number.  I can hear his impatience, his disgust.  (Don’t ask me how you can hear those things, you just can.)  He barks the number at me and I hang up.

Now I wish I had speed dial.  I call Wood at work. Hysterical.  Ask him how much money we can lay our hands on at 5:30 in the afternoon after the bank is closed.  I guess about $37 if I count the two dollar bills I found in the dryer last week, the change in the console of my car, in the couch cushions and on Wood’s dresser and in the bottom of my purse where the half-eaten fuzzy unwrapped mints lurk.  I keep looking out the window.  No SWAT Team cars, no one in uniform lurking behind the trees, brandishing weaponry. No yellow tape, no handcuffs.  Not yet, anyway.

So how does this six minutes from hell end?

Wood calls the FDA here in Kansas City.  They tell him that when they suspect cocaine importation, they do not do a phone interview and announce their intent to ransack a house.  And they don’t have sergeants.

I call the FBI.  Now that I have relaxed a bit, I am kind of hoping that I can be a pivotal piece of capturing this phone-terrorist.  Perhaps being flown in at FBI-expense to Washington, D.C.  Instead, they told me that this was an old, weary scam.  They said that had the  phone conversation continued, I would have wound up with the good “sergeant” asking for a credit card number to make this whole thing disappear.  I even tried to call the number back (intending to hang up really fast if this same scoundrel answered the phone.  Got a recording.  Didn’t leave a message.

How’s that for a bit of a shake-up to a pretty hum-drum summer afternoo?.  Beats the prison shake-down any old day.

She was one of a kind.  She, the two houses-down neighbor, one of eight siblings. I the half-CrAzEd mom-of-eight, up to my neck in Cheerios, spelling lists, skinned knees, chipped teeth, chicken pox and laundry.  Yup, we had some common ground, albeit from two different perspectives.  And that’s how a twenty-five year friendship began.

Alice’s smile surfaced in her eyes before it ever got to her mouth.  A small woman with a hearty laugh.  A head that nodded, while making eye contact with whatever kid she was talking to….communicating that what they were saying was the most important thing, the only thing that had her attention.  Everything about her communicated “happy”.  Bouncing curls, oversized glasses, her way of bustling about.

Alice died on a Sunday morning, March 13, 2011.

Claire, Kathleen and Mary Morgan were her tea party buddies, long before “tea party” became an inflammatory political buzzword. Sometimes we would find an invitation tucked into the storm door.  Other times a phone call, a come-on-down-Let’s-Make-a-Deal sort of invitation would be extended.   She would take the girls up to her attic and there, a virtual little girls’ paradise.  Long dresses, sequined.  Hats, high heels, gloves.Once dressed for the occasion, the kids would clomp down the stairs in their oversized heels and the tea party would begin. Alice would pour little puddles of Coke in each of four tea cups and serve peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with the crusts cut off.  Wonder bread crust on a tea party sandwich?  Never.  Certainly not befitting this fancy afternoon.

And for the better part of three hours our girls listened to Alice’s stories.  They hung on her every word.  Certainly that village-thing of days gone by, two generations sharing time together.

Yesterday there was an estate sale at Alice’s house.  The “No parking” signs were all up and down the street.  I could hear a steady cadence of slammed car doors in front of my house.  All afternoon I fought the urge to go down to Alice’s.  I certainly didn’t want to shop.  I gave into that urge late in the afternoon.  I needed one more look. One more opportunity to soak in the essence of Alice’s house.  The place where my kids gathered memories.  I needed to feel Alice’s presence one last time.  Once more I needed to feel the comfort of that house.  A house where spills were okay, where it was probably even okay to talk and chew a mouthful of food at the same time.  Where three little girls were one of three, not one of eight.

If Dr. Phil is right, then kids are blank slates.  We write on their slate every day.  With our words, with our attitudes, with our complaints, compliments, criticisms and body language.  With what the world — teachers, scout leaders, coaches, neighbors, friends, tell us about ourselves.  And so Alice Gertrude Wickersham left her mark on three slates. She didn’t cure cancer, she wasn’t CEO of anything.  But she was a hero in her own right, in her own neighborhood.  God bless you Alice Wickersham.

Right this minute a miracle is happening across town.  My kid #3 is delivering her kid #2.

And I remember…..

Holding those little seven pound — give or take a handful of ounces —- bundles of newborn warmth.  A little human. And for anyone who has ever experienced even a smidge of infertility, well, you know what a miracle this is.  All the little things that had to go right, to launch a new baby into the world.

I remember Claire’s birth. I remember wondering how I would manage this third little person when I only had two hands.  Her bald head.  Her take-your-breath-away blue eyes.  Her little girl ways.  That little blue smocked dress.  Shy.  The body of an athlete.  The little mother when baby #4 through 8 came along.  My sidekick.  And she became — well, herself.  Feisty — still is.  Lots of common sense and a funny way of retelling stories.  Always a strong sense of justice.  ”Mommy, why does God like burglars?”

Her defeats and her accomplishments.

But somehow, in the tallying, it’s neither of those things that really matter much now.

It’s the memories of little painted toenails, and little stubs of pigtails and little fists molding Play dough. Or filling up the kitchen sink, dumping in some soapsuds and throwing anything within reach in there to “wash”.  Three big chairs and three little girls all in a row, up to their elbows in bubbles.  That got us through many a cabin-feverish day.  Or the Thanksgiving when five of them had chicken pox.  Or the year that all eight of them were M and M’s for Halloween.  (Even I can sew eight circles and stuff them with fluff)  Or the giggles that happened after “lights out”.  The kids still talk about all that nonsense — that while I didn’t know the details of these nighttime escapades — I knew something was going on but I was too tired to climb the stairs one more time to do anything about it. The dozens of in-progress dioramas on the dining room table. The hundreds of spelling lists stuck on the refrigerator.  The school lunches and the lost and/or forgotten library books. The piano/clarinet/violin/guitar lessons.  Did any of you practice?????  The soccer/basketball/swimming/wrestling/track/cross country/tennis/softball that we stood on the sidelines for, and depending on the season, in blistering heat or sleet or rain.  Those trips to the grocery store, one kid on either side of the cart, holding on — because that was the rule — one kid sitting underneath and one in the baby seat.

Yup, they wore me out.  But they filled me up.

Welcome, Charlie.  Make some memories.

Must admit that the Catholic schoolgirl in me still exists.  It still lies latent under some additional wrinkles and fat cells.  I still squirm when the erectile dysfunction commercial comes on the television.  Usually, I can be counted on to stand up, clear my throat and ask anyone in the room if they want something to drink, have any more homework, remembered to take out the trash or put all their laundry in the laundry basket.  Most of the time it is a yes-no-yes-yes.  Nowadays, in television advertising, anything is fair game. Tampons, feminine itch, diarrhea, hemorrhoids. I can still remember June and Ward Cleaver sleeping in beside-each-other twin beds. Ward? Well, I think Ward got along just fine without Cialis.  There was, after all, Wally and Beaver.

In the Cialis commercial, a couple sit in side-by-side bathtubs on the shores of a lake with their backs to the camera. Ummm….what about the plumbing?  In the middle of nowhere — two porcelain bathtubs on the shore???  Not a towel rack in sight. Is this the 2011 version of the late ’70′s commercial for Calgon?  Remember those little blue crystals that you add to bathwater and in the background, someone whispers, “Calgon, take me away”. Calgon didn’t deliver exponential sex.  But probably the worst that could be expected with these blue crystals is an itchy rash. Cialis has the potential side effect of permanent or partial blindness.  An over-the-top romp in the hay and the potential for needing a seeing eye dog????  No thanks.

Now, I guess in the day of litigation hiding behind every corner, drug companies are required to list the possible side effects. Oh boy.  So Cialis — you are to report to the hospital for an erection lasting more than four hours to avoid long-term injury.  Just imagine how that scenario would play out.  Walk through the automatic doors of the local ER.  The triage nurse asks for the “chief medical complaint”. “Ummmm, well……I have….well, I was…..and it’s been about four hours, maybe a little longer and I, uh thought I should come in…..”  I would think that any forward thinking male would picture that vignette and take a pass on enhanced sex!

Other drugs have less embarrassing side effects, yet they are not to be taken lightly. Take Boniva.  Sally Field tells us about this med used for the management of postmenopausal osteoporosis.  You can’t take this med if you can’t stand for 60 minutes.  You could experience chest pain, severe heartburn and bone pain.

Then there is Valtrex.  This med is used to reduce the risk of spreading genital herpes. However it is not known if Valtrex reduces the risk of spreading genital herpes in same sex couples. You could be in for headache, nausea, abdominal pain, constipation, allergic reaction, dizziness, tremors, compromised immune systems and drug reactions.

How about Strattera?  This is an ADHD medication that, when taken, could result in jaundice and liver damage.  In children, upset stomach, decreased appetite, nausea/vomiting, tiredness, dizziness and mood swings are possible. Can you tell me how a school kid can be at the top of his game in the classroom with that list of symptoms?

A female lubricant that enhances sexual desire.  The commercial ends with a couple sitting up in bed, looking as though they have both had sex on steroids. Really?  As my kids would say, “T-M-I”.  (Too much information)

Seems like pharmaceuticals ought to be weighed on a cost/benefit basis.  What is the taking of this drug costing the patient? This isn’t a dollars and cents answer.  This is the cost of the quality of the patient’s life.  Some of the risks are permanent.  Is terrific sex worth the price of being blind?  I think that pharmacology has gone beyond what any of us could have imagined in recent years.  Good meds that have made the relatively new field of palliative care possible.

But responsible use of prescription meds is important.  We seemingly have a pill for everything.  Too fat?  There’s a pill for that. Can’t sleep.  Take a pill. Feeling anxious? Ditto.  Maybe the real problem is that we have forgotten how to just live with a nervous stomach kind of day, or a night when you look at the ceiling more than you snore.  Could it be that our bodies are telling us something — and we are medicating ourselves and ignoring the real issues behind that anxiety or sleeplessness?

My oldest daughter and her family recently moved far enough across town that it requires a bit of I-35 travel to get there.  Door-to-door….18 minutes.  Well let me tell you — I have seen the very worst of humanity on that highway.  The two lane left turn lane to merge onto the highway is the first of a series of steering-wheel gripping opportunities.  Those two lanes, in an ideal world, converge into one lane.  That would, you would think, demand an every-other-car merge.  Nope.  It’s whoever is fastest or whoever is the best at the game of Chicken.  The stakes are the loss of a bumper. This has absolutely nothing to do with the wait-your-turn concept.  Once the auto-alpha’s “win” it is off to trying to merge onto the highway.  Good luck with that one, as the Geiko man says.  You better hope that you aren’t behind some 20 mile-per-hourer being leisurely about getting on this highway or you’re going to run out of room on the entry ramp and wind up in the ditch or have to come to a dead stop and then you will be there until you are old enough to collect Social Security. Once you manage to get on the highway, having merged successfully, unless you are exiting at the next exit you have to get over another lane because the lane you entered is going to disappear on you.  Death-defying, stiff-backed, eyebrows furrowed, chin almost resting on the steering wheel, hands white-knuckled at the 10 and 2 o’clock position, waiting for trauma.  No amount of Lisinopril can regulate this kind of blood pressure.

What is this about?  Are people really that unkind?  Is it because besides a vulgar hand gesture, there will be no retaliation with that person in the other car that  just about ran you off the road?  This is what the sociologists would call uncivilized behavior. And I see it — not once in awhile, but several times on each and every trip out to see my daughter.  Why can’t we all just relax a bit?

Isn’t life too darn short to mow down everyone in your path to be first?