A Short Century

This is one of my two favorite grandmothers. She lived all her life in south Texas, where she taught me to play Spite 'N Malice and Canasta, and taught me to make candy: toffee, divinity, fudge, pralines. She taught me that fresh strawberries were extra good if you held them by their green tops and dipped them in a bowl of sugar before you ate them, and that I shouldn't watch soap operas, even though she did. Her Sunday-after-church dinners were a southern feast: ham and okra gumbo, black-eyed peas, mustard greens, cornbread and the best cobbler I've ever eaten, made from wild, thorny Texas dewberries.

Besides cooking, she liked to sit and visit. As a child, I would lie after supper on her thick living room carpet, eyes closed and ears open, listening to stories that bobbed and rebounded through the air above me. Avoiding bedtime banishment, I pretended to be asleep until I actually was asleep, wrapped in the comfortable conversation of aunts and great aunts and adult cousins who knew and loved each other well.

My grandmother was born in October of 1910. October the tenth --- 10-10-10. The rhythm of her birthday numbers underscored what I already knew: she was one-of-a-kind and very special. Through her, 10-10-10 leapt out of the history books and became real--playing cards and eating cobbler with me in my very present daily existence.

Decades later, I still think of my grandmother every time the month and date and year align, and even when they almost align, as they did twice last week. The time I spent with that 10-10-10 grandmother seems not so far away, and yet I can almost touch the next 10-10-10.....October 10, 2010.

How can a century be so short?

The Spaghetti Handshake/Sick Princess

For all of you big sisters, or aunts or uncles, or moms and dads who are not familiar with the Spaghetti Handshake, heads up. It goes like this:

You ask your young friend if he knows the Spaghetti Handshake. Of course he doesn't, so you take both of his little hands in yours, and then waggle them up and down as fast as you possibly can. His arms and shoulders feel like limp spaghetti, so he breaks out laughing, which causes you to break out laughing, because the whole thing is so entirely silly.

We learned the Spaghetti Handshake from crazy Mr. Yonker when the girls were all knee high. I used to think that only little kids could be repeatedly amused by the Spaghetti Handshake, but last weekend proved me Wrong-O!

This childhood game lives on, but another one--Sick Princess--seems to have passed away. Sick Princess rules require two underlings to bear the Princess in her sedan chair (a large cardboard box), wherever the bossy monarch directs.

As the servants' arms begin to tire, rebellion creeps in. They slam the flaps closed on the cardboard box sedan chair, and begin rolling the chair very rapidly, end over end through the yard. The Royal Passenger screams her displeasure to no avail; the servants keep rolling the box until she is ready to throw up.

Then the sisters all clamor to be the next Princess.

One Thousand Nine Hundred Seventy-Two

I started working through the Spanish language CDs right alongside my girls, but, as with everything else around here, I couldn't spend as much time on it as I'd like, and now I'm behind. Way behind. Like completely dropped out, and no one's even pretending that I might learn Spanish before the Lord comes back.

When you grow up in Texas, you start learning Spanish just about the time you finish learning the pledge of allegiance. In spite of several years' instruction, I have forgotten every bit of it, except for one terrific little phrase: "mil novecientos setenta y dos." It rolls off my tongue quite easily, sort of like a Spanish version of "Super-cali-fragilistic-expiali-docious." Only it's not some silly, made-up, useless little babbling. Not at all! Mil novecientos setenta y dos is a REAL Spanish expression that could come in quite handy in today's globalized world.

It means "1972", and if that's not a pertinent thing to know in a foreign tongue, I don't know what is. This bit could prove invauable if I ever cross the border and need to convey some vital information, like, say, how many calories are in a Mexican Big Mac, or how much a draft horse weighs. Or maybe I'm in on a big discussion about Watergate----where would a big Mexican discussion about Watergate be if no one could say 1972?????

And I know it so well, I think I could say it in my sleep. That's because, at the beginning of junior high Spanish every day, we had to greet the teacher and recite the date. Most of what we said changed often---the day of the week, the date, the month--- and none of this took permanent root in the ol' cerebrum. But no matter the day or month, the classroom chorus always ended with "mil novecientos setenta y dos". 1972.

Back in junior high Spanish days, it was always 1972. And as far as my understanding of the language goes, it always will be. All I have to do, to slow down my fast-paced world, is speak a little Spanish.

On the other hand, we don't really want to go backwards, now do we?

Overcoming

Audrey has been interested in insects for as long as I can remember. As a young girl, she would pluck colorful caterpillars off of dill plants, set them up in a cage, and feed them on our kitchen counter. I didn't mind. Sometimes one would escape to build its cocoon on the kitchen wall somewhere. I didn't mind that, either. One day we came home from church to find a freshly-hatched swallowtail butterfly plumping its wings on the end of a wooden spoon. I thought it was beautiful.



A sphinx moth pupating in its little cage on the kitchen counter was not a big deal, either, and I even thought her African Giant Millipede, Clem, was kind of cute, scratching his tickly little massage up and down my arm.





Grandmother & Clem, 2003
















Audrey recently captured this praying mantis, six inches long. It is one in an extensive string of insect pets that have lived in aquaria, cages and jars in the house, or died in the freezer, to be pinned in her collection. I haven't minded. I even toss the mantis a cricket or other insect whenever I find such an intruder running loose.

Mantis photo by Audrey

All of that puts me in pretty good shape for Homeschool Mom of the Year, wouldn't you say?

I certainly thought so, but I'm discovering that my cheerful tolerance of Phylum Arthropoda has its limit.

The latest insect pet is this: A Madagascar Giant Hissing Cockroach.

I can't think of an organism I like less than a cockroach. I spent part of my growing up years in humid Houston, cockroach heaven, where they fly, and can grow up to two inches in length. An early riser, I was usually the first one to flip on the kitchen lights, signalling the end of party time for the roaches, and sending two or three of the nasty brown creatures scuttling to their hidey holes. It was a fairly unappetizing start to breakfast, especially the time that one of the hiding places, unknown to me, was under the toaster. I was just about to drop my bread in the slot when I saw the long antennae poking out under the edge, undulating and gently sensing the air. Though I'd sat through health class and heard the standard warnings about skipping breakfast, the consequences for eating it seemed worse.

It made quite an impression. That was thirty years ago, yet I can still feel the shock of realizing that those two long brown "hairs" sticking out from the toaster weren't hairs at all.

The presence of cockroaches in Houston didn't indicate slovenly housekeeping any more than does a periodic invasion of ants or flies. It was just a fact of life. A can of Raid lived under the kitchen sink, right next to the dishwasher soap. From time to time, when the roaches got too thick, my parents would call an exterminator. We'd live roach-free for a while, until word spread that there were empty digs in our kitchen, and the thugs began to creep in again through cracks and crevices, or hitching a ride, hidden in the folds of paper bags from the grocery, or under anything carried from the garage.

Every now and again I find a cockroach here in Nebraska. The small kind, less than a half-inch, and apparently not nearly as prolific as the Texas variety. I kill what I find, and don't see another one for years.

But this week begins the intentional habitation of a huge cockroach in our home! Audrey has to observe it, feed it on purpose, and then write a paper about it for the distance entomology class she is taking from the University of Nebraska. She tells me that the female of the species bear live young, and that, not wanting to risk a lawsuit over parental heart attacks, the University only sends out males. She even shows me the distinguishing armor bumps and feathery antennae that prove a boy cockroach is indeed a boy. She shows me that this guy is too big and way too slow to scuttle anywhere; why, he moves as if he's half asleep all the time.

Why am I not comforted?

I'm not sure I'm up for this. My instincts may just kick in and bring a quick end to this project. The bigger they come, the harder they fall. I hope the teacher grades on a curve for people whose mothers grew up in Texas.

Snakes

As a kid growing up in Texas, I was warned about rattlesnakes, copperheads, and water moccasins, all poisonous snakes whose venomous bites can be fatal. Water moccasins are also called cottonmouths; when they are frightened they pop open their wide mouths, revealing creamy white insides. My uncles kept always on the lookout for them swimming in the creek next to my grandparents' weekend cabin. Sometimes there'd be a hullabaloo and a hollering; toddlers were snatched up out of the water, and someone ran to get a gun.

Once, my grandfather discovered a nest of rattlesnakes in the crawl space under the cabin. He stretched out on the ground, peered into the semi-dark, and shot their swaying heads one by one.

My other grandparents lived on a wild rolling hillside outside of Austin, thick with scrub mesquite and prickly pear, in which snakes and scorpions were apt to hide. He and my stalwart grandmama cleared the spindly trees and ragged underbrush; then laid stone and wood and concrete blocks by hand until two stories of house and a rooftop deck for star-gazing telescopes looked out over the tangle of Texas scrub. Not yet tired, Grandmama carved out a spot for goldfish ponds and lily pads, an oasis amongst the cactus and scrappy cedars. Barefoot was not an option in a place so full of pricklies. The men shook out their boots before pulling them on each morning, even if they had been indoors all night. "If you're ever once stung by a scorpion," my daddy said, "you'll never forget to shake out your boots."

Eastern Nebraska is tame by comparison. I saw this harmless bull snake sleeping in the afternoon sun on a lazy farm road. Unlike the venomous snakes I encountered in Texas, bull snakes are constricting reptiles, calmly wrapping themselves ever tighter around mice or rabbits, until the prey gives up breathing.

I woke this one gently for the photo shoot; then thanked him by encouraging him to meander into the road ditch, safely away from the next set of tractor wheels.

Wall Art

My grandmama loved British history. She loved it so much that she painted names and tiny portraits and family trees of all the British royalty on the wall above her bed. As a child, I used to lie on that bed and ponder the wall, intrigued by the abundance of Edwards and Henrys and Charleses, and amazed that an adult was allowed to paint whatever she wanted on her bedroom wall.

My grandmama also loved needlwork. She combined the two loves on a stretch of cloth, upon which she painstakingly stitched a segment of the Bayeux Tapestry.

Grandmama embroidering,
approx. 1970

The original Bayeux Tapestry is so named because it was found, and now hangs in a museum, in Bayeux, Normandy, France. It tells the story of the Norman conquest of 1066 A.D., and was probably embroidered by people who were alive at that time. The original tapestry is 230 feet long, but my stalwart grandmama chose to reproduce a section only about eight feet in length. Her rendition now hangs in a museum of my family's own history, namely my parents' home in central Texas.

A Clever Someone has animated the tale of the Bayeux Tapestry and supplemented the original Latin annotations with English subtitles. Click the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDaB-NNyM8o