Beauty is a Beast

I can handle the fact that my body is changing and gravity is having its way with me. There is a freedom in acknowledging “The ole grey mare just ain’t what she used to be.” I can go grey and thumb my nose at the exorbitant cost of hair color. I can laugh away the Lyrca on my hips and tummy while shouting, “No more!” No more straining to pretend I have a perfect body in an imperfect world. I especially don’t want to look like a similar version of other women my age because of Botox and fillers. If it makes you feel better, if it floats your boat, go with it. Me? I’ve been tempted and I’d be a liar if I said I haven’t thought about it. In the long run, I think I’m sailing away just fine in spite of the wrinkles in the sails and the extra cargo I’m carrying along.

Who says we must be wrinkle free? Photos are airbrushed in every single magazine. Makeup conceals, breasts are lifted or enhanced, tummies are tucked and we’re still going to grow old. I’m not saying go for the dumpy look and let it all hang out. Heaven forbid! I’d start a stampede of people running away from me if I did that. I mean, beauty is a real four legged beast. We preen, we pluck, and we spend mega bucks on simply keeping up appearances. I enjoy a pedicure and manicure and having my hair styled. I enjoy buying new lotions and eye gels, hoping they’ll turn back the clock, but it’s the extremes that I see others go through that make me shake my head.

Twenty and thirty-year-old women are altering their faces and bodies at such an alarming rate that I wonder if they’ll recognize themselves when they hit forty. I am concerned for the younger women around me. It almost appears as if people are starting to prefer beauty over intelligence. In the UK, a new survey was recently completed and the results are, that given the choice, women would rather be more attractive than be smart. Isn’t that just swell?

I Googled the key words, aging naturally, to see what was out there on the almighty internet. After the first page, everything was about how to reverse aging naturally. Gracious! There is so much natural beauty in each and every one of us. I think we’ve been brainwashed by advertising, designers who pick stick thin models, super stars with trainers who take them through three hour daily workouts,and the aging ultra-rich who've had so many cosmetic procedures that when they cross their legs, their mouths hang open. Have we forgotten to look at the “real” beauty in each and every one of us? I worry about this stuff because I have a daughter. I worry because I see so many going too far and actually putting their health in harm’s way to have yet another procedure. I worry because I thought our minds were just as beautiful as our outward skin. If we’re not careful, I worry we’ll forget that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and what a wonder real beauty is.

Bullies - Go AWAY

Very few of us who follow the news with any regularity have missed the story on the elderly bus monitor in New York. She was bullied and harassed by middle school (MIDDLE SCHOOL) students. If, like me, you have tried to watch the video to see what the hullabaloo was about (here's the link to CNN's article with the video), you may have turned it off before being done. Some of you may have even had the same reaction I did - I cried. 


The video is vile. The language is such that you expect to see either a rap star or Mel Gibson at any moment. Certainly not kids. Definitely not kids in the same age range as my own children. But the language is not the worst of it. The taunts, the cruelty, the threats - there lies bullying at its normal. Bullies seek to attack your vulnerabilities. They want to put you in your place and in their minds that place is one of humiliation.


I was bullied. I know what it is to have people call me cruel names, and, threaten to beat me up, follow me home... you wonder if bullies are given a book, "How to Intimidate and Threaten". In fact I was beat up twice in one year. Once on the bus. Once while waiting for a late bus to arrive. After the second beating, my parents began driving me to and from school (No judgement - they had been assured it would never happen again. Three kids, two jobs - not sure I wouldn't have trusted the school, also).


Of course all that really meant was the bullies had to wait until I GOT to school to start. When I watched the video, our rising 9th grader watched some of it with me. He stopped before I did. You would think an Honors English student could come up with a better word, but he didn't. He called them "douche bags". Never have I been prouder of his language, though. I know that I don't KNOW everything our teens may say and do. But since they were young, I've discussed bullying with them. We have a saying, Momma is intolerant of intolerance. You are not to make fun of someone's appearance, religion, sexual orientation, mental capabilities... Of course, they're also aware that if I caught them....


I am at a loss as to what we can do, but these children need help. And society needs help, if it allows our youth to be this vile. Some of the people who bullied me are now your basic middle aged person not out to hurt anyone. So we can all change. As for me, being bullied taught me empathy. But it would have been nice to have picked up empathy in some other way without kissing the floor of the bus.

I Want to be on Summer Time

It’s the third day of summer vacation, and I hear the dreaded words: I’m bored.

Yay, I say, summer has begun, it’s weaving its spell. Go kill some flies on the porch, I say. He calls a friend down the street instead, who says, miraculously, I’m bored too. He comes down to swim, where they spend hours and then have a sleepover at the friend’s house. Thank God for neighborhood kids.

I was working from home that night so logged on at 4 p.m. in my raggedy sundress. At 10 p.m. the Dad of another friend calls inviting Dylan to ride go-karts the next day (his wife was out of town, he explained, sorry for calling so late)…clearly he didn’t understand the magic of boredom. I said sure, I’ll meet you at 9 a.m. with my ripe from sleepover kid. If I wake up.

I picked Dylan up at 4 p.m. the next day for a dentist appointment, after I’d spent the day with Dad. At some point work called, catching me off guard, and I agreed to pick up the night shift and log on from home again because the husband’s still out of town. At 5 p.m., the car overheated 30 miles from home. I am still not bored.

Dylan’s tired from no longer being bored and lack of sleep. Holding the popsicles the orthodontist doled out—yes, you read right—I pulled the steaming car into a gas station, wishing for the old-timey full-service stations where a mechanic was on duty. I bought a gallon of water and cursed my foreign car. Found a good Samaritan to help. Water gushes out as fast as we pour it in. Clearly the car is not driveable. Dad picks us up an hour later. The car’s towed to the mechanic. I’m home just in time to log on.  I want to be bored. Summer is fleeting and soon gone.

The next day, the husband finally gets home and I pull out my silent scorn and fling my pointy as a dagger cold shoulder his way. Dylan spends the morning catching flies with his hands like Spider-Man. I try to start the spare car in the garage. Dead battery of course. I am late for work that night.

I want to spend my summer time upside down on the couch watching Phineas and Ferb, playing MX vs. ATV Alive on Playstation, killing flies and time. No homework, no school bell, nowhere to be. A car that runs as it’s supposed to, a job that doesn’t expect me, a husband home where I left him. I don’t want “playdates” or dental appointments or to-dos. I want to be on summer time, where it’s endless, never runs out, flies on the wing, sifts through your fingers like sand on the beach.

I am spoiled by work-at-home summers. I wish everyone the joys of true boredom, time ill-spent, where BLTs constitute every dinner and a world where dentists dole out Fudgsicles. Just because it’s that magical out-of-school no-routine heat wave of summer. Summer well.

If fall is back to school and winter is cabin fever and spring is spring fever, then summer is none of these—the opposite, the life outside the box of space and time timelessness, the we-have-nothing-to-do how glorious.

“I’m so bored” means I summered well.

The next day all I had to do was buy strawberries and peaches and make shortcakes and buy Father’s Day gifts and help the boys pack the camper and visit Dad and be home by 7 for a meeting. Too much for a summer Saturday. Today I’m considering pitching that $150 worth of mulch they delivered as a Father’s Day gift and finish mowing. Summer eludes me. I still need to mop, clean the baths, get groceries, and make dessert. I’ll count on the endless hours of a summer day to grant me enough time to do that all.

But I just want to be bored.

Face Painter, Soothsayer or Quack?

There is nothing like a small town where everyone seems somehow connected. There is a certain pride of place, and the people of the town smile easily, wave readily and know the meaning of hospitality. The small town I live in is active in the arts and in the community. The beginning of every summer they have an art and music fair and come September, The Harvest Festival fills the main street with vendors, antique cars, music and more. There are so many positives to a small town, but the odd and strange live there as well.

Every year, our family makes it a point to go to the art fair and enjoy the local artisan’s wares, and a snow cone or two. My daughter entered the sidewalk chalk art competition and my son just enjoyed running free, and did I mention the snow cones? Anyway, we enjoyed the day, eating lunch with friends at the local pub while the kids enjoyed running in the sunshine. It was a perfect day, well almost.

My five-year-old son patiently waited his turn to have his face painted; the promise of a lollypop from the vendor had him sure to sit still. He walked away happy, a blonde version of Batman with a lollypop that he thoroughly enjoyed. We were listening to a local musician jam on the guitar, when the “face painter” sidled up to me.

She leaned in and told me that I “really, really ought to” have my child tested for Autism, she was studying to be a psychologist and she recognized that he worried three separate times over getting a lollypop, and that worry is one of the major signs of Autism. I didn’t know what to say. I was in shock, I was bewildered, and I felt the bottom dropping out of my heart. Had I missed something? To be sure I would know if my child needed attention? Before I could ask her anything more, she walked away and started packing up her kiosk.

My husband saw my face and asked me “What was that all about?” When I told him, it seemed as if a myriad of thoughts flashed across his face, along with disbelief and a good portion of outrage. I knew what he was feeling. I’ve been known to verbally eviscerate an individual when they’ve overstepped a line where my children are concerned, but this woman caught me completely off guard. I couldn’t think of a thing to say because I knew that SHE thought she was doing me a kindness. She had spent less than 15 minutes with my child and she diagnosed him as Autistic.

Being the worry wart that I am, I went home and Googled everything on Autism. The only benchmark/symptom my son had was worry…over a lollypop. That’s when I started to chuckle. What kid won’t worry the pants off a parent when it comes to candy? Think about the checkout line in the grocery store. I can’t even count the times that BOTH of my children have pleaded, as if their lives depended on it, over a candy bar or pack of gum. To top that off, how could the pediatrician that my son has been going to since birth have missed this diagnosis?

The following weekend, while getting my hair cut, I relayed the entire story to my hair dresser. About the time I finished the story, a little boy and his dad went to check out to pay for their haircuts. In quick succession the little boy asked, “Can I have a lollypop now Daddy? You said you’d let them give me one if I was good. I was good, wasn’t I Daddy? Can I have it now?” To which my hair dresser replied, “He must be autistic too.”

Every single child born is a gift, PERIOD. Those of us graced to be parents are just that, graced.  As parents we worry over our children regardless of condition, disabilities or society’s varying degrees of “normal.” It would have done me no good to debate with the face painter, because a little knowledge is such a dangerous thing. There is an old saying by Syrus; “Many receive advice, few profit by it.”  I say, beware of strangers giving advice.

How would you have handled the situation?

How would you feel if a stranger approached with an “out-of-the-blue” diagnosis regarding your child? Would you let it go? Would you pursue what the woman’s intentions were, or would you have just gone for another snow cone?

One True Love

The song “HardCandy” by the Counting Crows was playing on my iPod Friday as I was taking my lunch time walk. It stopped me cold in my tracks all because of the lines, “When you sleep you find your mother in the night, but she stays just out of sight. So there isn’t any sweetness in the dreaming.”  I was suddenly overcome by ridiculous snotty hic-ups from crying and trying to catch my breath. My Mama died over thirteen years ago, and there are moments where missing her washes over me like a rogue wave, splattering me down on rough sand, leaving me breathless and worse for wear.

The catch of loss hits, unexpected. The sun literally glints off of my son’s hair, and I suck in a breath knowing my Mother can’t share that beauty with me. My daughter walks across a stage without fear, and I wonder if my Mama knows. I wonder if she knows that every good thing I do comes from her. Every random act of kindness I have done is because she did, with little thought or effort, while my sisters, brother and I watched.

I feel her in the company of my sisters, and I revel in the gift of those moments. I miss her. I don’t live in the past, or rush towards the time to be with her. I long for that one true love. I know what I feel for my children, she felt for me, and if I am very fortunate my children will pass that gift on to their families.

I finish listening to the song. I walk on, changing tunes. I continue, slightly red-eyed and hic-upping, blessed for what I had, and hoping what I give measures up.