My Mom Knew a Girl

It was dangerous to know my mom.
Cautionary tales about the sad ends of young women in her acquaintance littered my childhood.
We could not play with balloons.
She knew a girl who inhaled a bit of popped balloon and died.
We were ordered not to pick pimples.
She knew a girl who picked a pimple on her nose and died.
Dishes had to be washed in water so hot our fingernails shriveled.
Mom knew a girl who ate off a dirty dish, got salmonella and died.

Guess what happened to the girl mom knew who went on a hayride?

No balloons dance through my childhood memories (not that my steam-sopped fingernails could have poked a hole in one anyway), and I still believe touching a blemish on one’s face will lead to immediate blood poisoning and certain death.
And though I spend every hayride with my head swiveling fore and aft, to and fro, on the alert for approaching danger, I trust my dishwasher and Cascade to protect me from dirty-dish diseases.

But one sad end has affected my life as a vehicular passenger.
I still can’t stick my hand out the car window to enjoy fresh breezes wafting between my fingers.
My mind’s eye recalls the visual I always conjured up for the story of
The Girl who Stuck her Arm out the Train Window.
This story and the stupid girl who engendered the story stole from my childhood the clean joy of air pressure suspending my arm out the window in a state of wobbling, wind-forced bliss.
Even now as I inch my fingers out the window my mind’s eye recounts the story:
I picture the Girl waving her arm merrily out her window, oblivious of the train hurtling toward her on the next track. As it zips past– WHOOSH!– it takes her arm right along with it.
I picture the Girl, no longer able to wave because her arm is being borne in style by a fast-moving passenger train heading the opposite direction.
I picture the look of utter surprise on her face.
I do not picture any blood. My mind’s eye never conjures up gore.
My mind’s eye never bothers to question how the heck long the girl’s arm was.

My mind’s eye simply does the job my mother always meant it to do.
It yells, “Don’t stick your arm out the window because Mom knew a girl who...”

Bring me back my 4th

My mother-in-law worked in the school system and always said that once 4th of July is over, summer goes by at top speed.
June draws out its bit of summer and arranges each moment in slow succession and for utmost enjoyment. July picks up momentum and by the time August gallops on the scene entire days are tossed in a compression chamber and emerge on Labor Day as a sun-and-heat-weary blur.
If the drought continues in my neck of the woods, it's possible that July and August won't go by fast enough.
But still.
This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

Flowers in the ditches are oblivious to drought

Hay made while the sun shines

Patriotic in-laws

Patriotic kids

More patriotic kids

Patriotic doll.

My husband wore an orange shirt for fireworks and thus is banned from the album of the 4th.

We usually sit here for fireworks. It was closed off and firetrucks surrounded it

The Road Runner showed up

My favorite: the bursts that turned into fireflies. Although they look more like aggressive constellations here

What happens when an inexperienced photographer changes the settings on her camera

My July baby waiting for his already damaged cake to burst in air.

  May your summer 2012 be worth the remembering.

Music, Maestro

One of my mom's prize-winning creations

 My mom could make knitting needles sing. Each design had its own melody, each type of stitch its own tone. She was so expert with the needles and yarn that the song of the shawl or sweater or cap never hit a false note, never fell flat, never screeched into dissonance. The yarn kept a natural rhythm in the interval from a round ball to woven composition.
She could unite a trio of disparate skeins in perfect counterpoint or harmonize dozens of
leftover odds and ends into a serenade of love.
The needles used to create the masterpieces were metal. When she was absorbed in a project we would fall asleep to their accented refrain and wake to it the next morning.

Because metal needles were the needles of choice for my maestro mother, they had to be the best, the only needles worth having. So when, at an advanced age, I decided to take up knitting, I asked my mom if I could use some of her needles. She said certainly, as long as I didn’t want her to try and teach me how to knit. Again.

I tried to teach myself. The needles didn’t sing, they screeched. I didn’t create masterpieces, I created discord. I took my formless mass to a friend. Her first question was, “Why don’t you try wooden needles?”

I looked at her with silent outrage. My mother used metal needles. How dare this upstart question those instruments that had conducted hundreds of classic creations?
I gathered up my knotted mess and coldly informed her that I could take it from here, thank you.

The next time I visited my mother she hurried me to her living room.
“Look what I bought!” she said, flourishing a pair of wooden knitting needles. “I wish I’d had these years ago! You can keep those metal ones honey. I won’t be needing them.”

My shapeless mass of knotted yarn is still in a bag in the bottom of my closet. But I did find a use for my mom’s metal knitting needles.