HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Jules!

(Due to problems with my computer that cause it to freeze up with increasing frequency, this may not be the post I hope it will be.)

Today is Julie's birthday. She is twenty-six years old, and this is the first year she won't be home with us for her birthday. Imagine that - an adult daughter who wants to spend time with her parents. I don't know how we got so lucky.

I do know Ben and I desperately wanted to have a daughter. We had hoped that Tom would be a girl when I was pregnant with him, although we both sensed from early on that he was a boy. He turned out to be such a delight that when I got pregnant a month before his first birthday, Ben and I agreed that another little boy (just like him) would be fine. I was so confidant that my second child was a girl, however, that we never even chose a boy's name for the baby I was carrying.

She was due two days after our sixth wedding anniversary, although my ob/gyn had told me I would probably deliver late. To be on the safe side, however, Ben and I decided to celebrate our anniversary a few days early, on the sixteenth. We dressed up and drove to Vermilion to have dinner at McGarvey's, a popular lakeside restaurant. I guess I was pretty hugely pregnant, as our server that night seemed amazed - and a little concerned - that I was out and about. We laughed at her concerns, and enjoyed our dinner. When we got home, however, and I bent down to pick up my twenty-month-old Tommy, my water broke. Ben took the sitter home so she could pack some things for an overnight stay, and I went to lie down for a few hours.

Skipping all that messy, painful stuff in between, I was safely delivered of our daughter, Julie Anne, the following morning. I was delighted. So was Ben, although he swore he would never go through that again (!) I missed Tommy too much to stay in the hospital, so we came home after only two days - which was early at that time. Our little family was complete.

Ben and I are so proud of our children, and who could blame us? Happy, happy birthday, my sweet girl. I love you very much.

breakin' the law

I noticed the other day that my university parking pass had finally expired, so I threw it away. It felt okay to do that. When I first left the university, I knew I would leave the pass on my car until I felt ready to be without it. I didn't feel ready for a long time.

In the small university town where I live, most of the cars are small foreign cars - Toyotas, mostly, but Hondas and Subarus and Mazdas, as well. A good percentage of those cars sport university parking passes. I see them in parking lots at grocery stores and restaurants and the public library. A quick glance shows one the pass hanging from the rearview mirror, a closer look identifies the lot where the bearer parks. For a long time, I couldn't imagine driving around town without that identifying marker.

It's not that the university didn't want the pass back. I received an email not long after I left demanding its return, threatening to ticket me if I tried to use it in any of the campus lots. I thought about all the times I couldn't park in the lot I had a paid permit for because so many cars that didn't have passes were already parked there, and I knew I didn't have too much to worry about.

I did use it a few times in the past eleven months, actually. I have been back to visit my former co-workers occasionally - less frequently as time has passed and I have grown accustomed to being away from them. I don't have it any more, though, so I will have to be a scofflaw like dozens of others if I want to park on campus again - a risk I am willing to take.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Bill!

Today is my brother's birthday. I won't tell you how old he is, but I will say that I was seven years old when he was born, so he is my "baby" brother. I remember my mother being pregnant with him, and I most especially remember the day he was born.

I had just finished the first grade, and at my elementary school, we traditionally went back for an additional morning to pick up our report cards, which would tell us if we had been "promoted" to the next grade. I would be allowed to take my younger brother, Tommy, along, and we could wear shorts to school - something our strictly-enforced dress code did not allow during the school year.

I woke up excited that morning, and found my mother awake and pacing the house. "I think today is the day, honey," she told me. "I think I will have the baby today." "No! Oh no!" was my reaction. "Who'll comb my hair for school?" It is important to know that I wore my hair in a "pixie cut," a hairstyle popular for young girls at that time. It was short, short, short all over, and I can't imagine that combing it was too difficult. My mother assured me that my dad's sister, Aunt Isabel, had already been telephoned, and she, along with my grandmother and cousin, were on their way. They lived over an hour away, however, and I knew they wouldn't arrive in time. My dad would have to comb my hair.

Tommy and I went off to school, and I can remember the two of us sharing the seat at my desk as we waited for the report cards to be handed out. My teacher, Miss Pressler, sang in the church choir with my mother, and asked if she had had the new baby yet. "She's at the hospital now! She's having it now!" I was thrilled to have such important news.

As we started the walk home with dozens of other newly-promoted children, my aunt drove up, yelling out the window, "She had a boy! You have a new little brother!" Then we hopped in her car, and as she drove us to the grocery store to pick up food for lunch, Tommy and I tried to understand what this new addition to the family would mean for us. For one thing, it meant that he would be the one to share his bedroom with the baby, and not me. It meant that the wicker bassinet that my mom had spray-painted baby blue out in the gravel driveway was the right color. And it meant that I would stay my daddy's girl, which was pretty important to me.

We didn't see Billy until he came home from the hospital, of course, and the first clear memory I have of him is in that blue bassinet at the foot of my parent's bed. He had wispy red hair, but it was his little face that was bright red, as he exercised his new lungs and wailed. Tommy and I were fascinated and appalled. We weren't allowed to cry like that.

The memories tumble out after that, and I see my mother holding him and singing, "Oh where have you been, Billy-boy, Billy-boy? Oh where have you been, charming Billy?" I remember learning how to change his diaper and give him a bath, and I remember the endless trips up and down our short, dead-end street, pushing him in his stroller. But I also remember the soft, orange curls that sprang up all over his head and how he would nuzzle into my neck and fall asleep, even on the hottest summer days. Oh yes, I loved my little brother. And I still do.

Happy Birthday, Bill.

school's out --- completely

Julie finished her classes last week. No, I mean she finished her classes. For good. After twenty years of more or less continuous schooling, and just short of her 26th birthday, she has taken all the courses necessary for her PhD. Now, all she has left to do is take her comps and write her dissertation. It kind of makes attending classes seem like the easy part, doesn't it? Proud doesn't begin to cover how I feel about it all.

When Tom and Julie were growing up, we always used the phrases "when you go to college" or "after you finish college". We didn't even want them to look up from their books until they at least had their bachelor's degrees. And they didn't. In fact, they both went on to complete their master's degrees, as well. Tom was tired of being a penniless student, I think, and opted to join the real world at that point, although I know he often thinks about returning to school.

Julie, on the other hand, has never left the world of academia, and, in fact, probably never will. She and Andrew both hope to become college professors - aspirations which I think suit them perfectly. I can see them in future years, with a big house full of dogs and plants and books - mostly books. Julie will be wearing her bathrobe and plaid pajama bottoms... Yes, I can see it all now. And I can't tell you how proud and happy it makes me.

the merry month of may

We may have had a more beautiful spring than this one, but if so, I don't remember it. The weather has been the perfect blend of warm and sunny to make everything bloom, with cool and rainy to keep the flowers blossoming longer. Everything is so lush and green right now - I think this is what the Pacific Northwest must look like.

May has been my favorite month of the year for a long time. What's not to like? The whole world is green and blooming, the temperature is perfect ("ideal," the thermometer outside my kitchen window reads), there is no humidity when the sun is shining, and there are almost no bugs. Maybe I am noticing it more because I am at home every day to appreciate it. Whatever the reason, I am loving it.

Rufus wants to go outside now, and so do I. Hope you are enjoying this spring as much as I am.

May 4th

Later today, as I do every year, I will drive over to campus with four bunches of freshly-cut flowers. I will lay them at four temporary memorials marked out in the parking lot where I used to park when I worked at the university. It is the only way I know to leave a concrete symbol that I remember what happened there.

Thirty-eight years ago I was a junior in high school. The first knowledge we had of something gone horribly wrong at Kent State was a frantic phone call from my aunt. Shots had been fired, she told my mother, "I'm going up there to get David." Davey, my much-loved cousin, was a KSU student living on campus that spring. My aunt and my grandmother got in their car and drove from Canton to Kent to "rescue" my cousin. I learned later from countless news stories about the hell they drove into. We all learned about it. It was the only topic of conversation in all my classes in the days that followed.

You know what happened that day - or you should. Government troops had arrived and set up camp on the university commons. Armed soldiers patrolled the campus perimeter. When students protested the military presence on the campus where they lived and attended classes, the troops opened fire on the unarmed students. Thirteen of them were shot, four fatally. Two of the dead students were a part of the protest; two of them had been walking to class when they were gunned down.

So many thoughts swirl through my mind as I remember that day. The one that I come back to time and again, though, is how it feels when spring finally comes to Kent, Ohio. The winters are long here. The days are cold and snowy, the skies are gray for months on end. When the temperature finally climbs above 70 degrees and the sun shines and all the flowering trees on campus bloom, it is the most joyous time of the entire school year. Everyone is outside, playing frisbee, laying in the sun, checking out the opposite sex, for sure. Doing anything, really, just to be outdoors on a glorious spring day. I know if I had been on campus that day, I would certainly have been on Blanket Hill to see what was going on, and, yes, probably to protest an armed government presence on my campus.

Allison and Jeff, Bill and Sandy were older than me when they died - I was still in high school, after all, and they were college students. The years have passed, however, and now my own children are older than they lived to be. I think of their sunny, bright, young faces in all the photos I have ever seen of them, and I know I won't ever forget them or how they died in that sunlit parking lot - killed by agents of their own government. I hope you will always remember them, too.


Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.

Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are gunning us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.

Ohio - Neil Young

and I don't eat 'em, either

This time of year, it's not unusual for me to see dandelions when I close my eyes at night. Robust, vigorous, brilliantly green-leafed, sunshine-yellow dandelions, growing up through the grass. I see them because I spend a part of each day pulling them out of the struggling grass in my back yard. I even have a special tool to pull dandelions. I hate dandelions. I cannot express that strongly enough.

In my earliest memory of dandelions, I don't hate them, actually. A neighborhood child (who it was is lost in the mists of time) and I have picked large bouquets of dandelions and I marvel at their intense color. The other child encourages me to present my bouquet to my mother, and although I sense that is a bad idea, I give them to her anyway. She quickly abuses me of the notions that they are a)beautiful b) flowers or c) an appropriate gift to give her. She tells me to throw them away and go wash my hands.

I have one other memory of my mother and dandelions. The only work I can ever remember her doing in our tiny back yard or our even tinier front yard was when she would go outside on a spring evening after dinner with an old kitchen paring knife, and cut dandelions out of the lawn. She must have hated them alot to do that.

I have been told that dandelions were introduced to the U.S. by the A. I. Root Company in Medina, Ohio for the benefit of their honeybees. The closest thing I could find to a verification of that is this: "They were even introduced into the Midwest from Europe to provide food for the imported honeybees in early spring. " I found that information, for what it's worth, at this website:
http://www.wildmanstevebrill.com/Plants.Folder/Dandelion.html Damn them to hell, if it is true. What a curse they brought upon our land.

None of us like to think that we have become - or are becoming - our parents, but when I do battle with my mortal enemies, the dandelions, I think of my mother, bent awkwardly at the waist, cutting dandelions out of the yard on a warm spring evening. It's not the worst trait I could have inherited from her.