Cute

When I was looking for a new car, I decided early on that I liked the Saturn Vue, but I was concerned about the risk of buying, rather than leasing, a car from a brand that might not be around for very long. My son, Josh, told me to look at other mini SUV’s.
“Look at the Ford Escape, Mom.” He said, “Ford is in pretty good shape, and it’s a nice car.”
I went online and goggled Ford Escape. I looked at the car that showed up on my computer and called Josh.
“I looked at the Ford Escape Josh,” I said, “I don’t like it. It’s not cute. The Vue has curvy lines, and its cute. I want a cute car.”

Some people might laugh. Some people might say that that’s not the way to pick a car. Some people might argue with me. Josh has known me all 37 years of his life. He just said, “Check out some others, Mom, and go drive the Vue if that’s the one you like.”

Cute is important to me. I like my cars, earrings, movie and TV stars, jockeys, and baseball players cute. My brother, Steve, thinks I like my politicians that way too. Well, it doesn’t hurt, but cute only goes so far when you’re talking about politics. It’s what they say that I either like or don’t like. Steve accused me of always being for the cute candidate in Presidential races. He bases this on my crush on JFK at the age of sixteen. A crush that sent me out into the streets of Cincinnati on a sound truck, and gave me the courage to make phone calls to strangers asking for their vote for this liberal Democrat in this most conservative of Ohio cities. I was sixteen. JFK was cute and Nixon, well, cute isn’t what comes to mind when I think of him. But as I got older I voted for what the candidate stood for not his looks.

Over the years, I had crushes on many actors on TV and in movies that I found attractive. As a teenager, when I attended Lady’s Day at River Downs racetrack with my friend, Bobbi, and her mother, who was willing to take our money and place bets for us, I never looked at those racing forms for statistics. I wouldn’t have understood them if I had read them. I chose who to bet for by horse’s name, the colors it and the jockey wore, and whether the jockey was cute. Sometimes I even won.

I remember sitting at the one World Series game I went to in my life. I was seventeen, and a senior in high school. The Cincinnati Reds were in the World Series, and Dad had gotten really good seats from someone whose campaign sign he allowed to be in his store’s front window. It was very exciting, and we were sitting right behind the catcher. His name was Johnny Edwards. I’ve remembered his name even though I’ve forgotten who won that game. He was nice to look at, and I watched him throughout the game, when he was catching and when he was at bat. We were supposed to attend the next game too, but my Physiology teacher announced a test. My parents decided I should go to school instead. As we walked into class, Mr. Lounds announced that instead of having the test that day, we would get to study with a partner while listening to the baseball game on the radio.
“Mr. Lounds,” I said, “I was supposed to be at the game today. I came here for the test instead.”
“Sorry about that.” was all he said.

The year before Jacobs Field opened, while the Indians were still playing at the old ballpark, Upson school had a get together at the ball game. I came with all three of my sons. I watched a short, stocky guy at second base, saw him field and hit, and turned to my kids.
“Who is that little guy?” I asked, “He’s cute.”
“Carlos Baerga,” said Dusty.
That was the beginning of the return of my interest in watching baseball. I watched the Indians, so I could see Carlos. He wasn’t drop dead goodlooking or handsome, but he was as cute as he could be. I liked watching him play ball.

In 1995, my sons were all very involved in choosing their fantasy baseball teams. They spent time reading statistics from baseball magazines, going online, talking to friends, and working hard to find the best players for each position on their teams. I would occasionally look at one of the magazines and pronounce a player “cute.”

One day, my youngest son, who would be leaving for college in the fall, turned to me, and said, “Mom, you ought to choose a team of your own, and call it the “Cute” team.”

That’s exactly what I did. I started with Carlos at second base, and went on from there, choosing pitchers, a catcher, first baseman, third baseman, shortstop, and outfielders. I didn’t want the worst players on my team, but I didn’t need a bunch of All Star’s either. They had to be decent players, but the most important trait they all needed was far more shallow than their skills. My choices had to be cute, and not “Hey, mom, Jim Thome’s not bad looking. He just looks like a big old country boy.” cute.”

“Jim Thome is not cute. He can’t be on my team. Find me another third baseman who is cute.” I demanded of my sons, who thought what I was doing was hysterical, and were busy looking for players who met their mother’s standards. I filled my team with Indians first, Paul Sorrento at first base, Omar Vizquel at shortstop, Kenny Lofton in the field, Dennis Martinez pitching. Then, I went on to other teams to fill in other positions. I can’t remember all of my team members’ names anymore, but I do remember that during that entire baseball season, I watched my players whenever they were on TV. I watched the Indians, and if they played a team that had one of my cute guys, I could be heard saying, “Oh there’s Ken Griffey Jr.. He’s on my team. Isn’t he cute?”

I paid more attention to baseball in 1995 than I ever did before or after. I watched the games. I went to one or two games. I bought an Indians hat and a Carlos Baerga tee shirt. I had an online friend who was a Seattle Mariner’s fan, and the two of us discussed baseball at online chats and in email. I loved watching the season unfold, cheered as they won the pennant, and was sad that they didn’t win the World Series along with tons of other Indians fans. I didn’t keep statistics on my “Cute” team. I didn’t invest money in my fantasy baseball team, and I wasn’t part of an actual fantasy baseball group, but having my “Cute” team gave me an interest in sports that made the summer lots of fun.

I formed another team in 1996, and continued to watch baseball. After all I knew all the players on the Indians, and my interest was strong. Then came July 29th 1996. I was driving home from somewhere that day when my radio came over with a major announcement. They announced that there were strong rumors that the Indians were going to trade Carlos Baerga. I couldn’t believe my ears. I drove as fast as I could without getting pulled over for speeding, and ran in the house, yelling for my sons. They assured me that it was only a rumor, but by that evening, the rumor was proved real. I was so upset that I cried.

We’d bought tickets to attend a ballgame later that month, and I went, wearing my Baerga shirt and my Indians hat, where I had written Carlos forever, #9 is #1 in my heart. There were lots of others in the ballpark, wearing their Carlos shirts, and I came to understand that I was not alone in my unhappiness with the trade. I continued to follow the tribe for the rest of the season, and into the next season, but I didn’t form a “Cute” team in 1997. Yes, Carlos could still be on my fantasy baseball team even though he was no longer an Indian, but somehow I just didn’t care enough to bother anymore. Carlos, as an Indian, had reawakened my interest in baseball, and once he was gone from the Indians, having a team of cute players didn’t seem like such an amusing thing to do anymore. After 1997, I stopped watching baseball regularly, and I no longer watch it or follow it at all. My kids have told me that I am a fair weather fan, and they’re right. But the Indians didn’t lose me, because they stopped being such a good team. They began to lose me when they traded away the heart of my “Cute” team, and lost me more and more as they traded away the others who made up that team.

I haven’t been to the racetrack or to a baseball game in years, and I don’t have any knowledge about the looks of any of the present day Indian’s players or any baseball players for that matter, but I still appreciate a good looking movie or TV star, and my Saturn Vue is, in my opinion, the cutest car on the road today.

Flip Flopped

The welcome meeting of the owners and guests at the Riptide Resort in Myrtle Beach was held on a Monday morning. As the manager, Julie, who didn’t seem to expect to do much that morning except welcome everyone to the first week of the summer season, was hit by questions and complaints about everything from parking, which is awful, and could have a piece all its own, to housekeeping, to the fact that they don’t have wi fi anywhere but the activity room, I, as a guest, amused myself by looking around at those in attendance.

My eyes fell on a heavyset blonde woman, somewhere over fifty, wearing a lime green and aqua two piece bathing suit with a lime green fishnet cover-up, which didn’t cover nearly enough. Since I’m no bathing beauty myself, I tried not to judge, but did find myself wondering in what world did this woman think that outfit was appropriate for someone her age, size, and body type? To keep from staring, my eyes moved down to her feet, where I found a pair of lime green flip flops with large rectangular flat shiny stones on the part that went between her toes and around the sides of her feet.

I looked at her feet, and then my eyes swept the room, at floor level, and that’s when I discovered that every person in the room, man, woman, and child, except for my friend, Karen and I, were wearing flip flops. Flip flops in red, in black, in brown, and in pink filled the room, and that was just the beginning of my revelation about the state of footwear in the U.S.A. in 2009.

The next afternoon we went to a shopping center called Barefoot Landing. As we walked along, I looked in the stores, at tee shirts, and souvenirs of all kinds, but every once in a while, I looked down and studied the feet walking along the sidewalk with me. There were a few pair of sandals, some children wore Crocs, and a guy or two had on athletic shoes without socks. There were even a few people who honored the location’s name by going barefoot, but at least 85% of the people were wearing flip flops. I saw silver flip flops, gold flip flops, green flip flops. It seemed every color and size were represented. Little girls wore Dora the Explorer flip flops, little boys wore Spiderman flip flops. Toddlers wore tiny pink flowered flip flops, or flip flops that lit up as they walked. I saw them in canvas, in leather, in rubber, in plastic, in plaids, stripes, and polka dotted, beribboned, and jeweled, and in every single color of the rainbow, some were actually rainbow colored. I saw child wearing a pair where one was orange with blue trim and one was blue with orange trim, and that was only the flip flops that had been sold to people.

There were racks and racks of these shoes everywhere I looked. At Barefoot Landing souvenir and apparel stores, at the discount and bargain souvenir shops, at shoe stores, and even in the kite store. Again I was amazed by the number of styles, colors, and sizes available. At a store called Del Sol, they had flip flops that changed color when warmed by the sun. I found myself wondering when this revolution in footwear began. After all, once upon a time, these kind of shoes were reserved for the beach and pool.

It isn’t just in resort areas of the South either. I’ve observed the same phenomenon here in the Cleveland area. One of my daughter-in-laws has an assortment of flip flops and she and her friends wear them all the time. While taking a tour of a friend’s new house, she opened the bedroom closet, and said apologetically, “ don’t mind the mess. That’s my flip flop collection. I’m addicted to them, and I think I have about forty pair.”

My nephew lives in Chicago, which gets cold even sooner than we do in Cleveland. Still when my friend, Karen and I visited that city in October to attend a wedding, he met us for Sunday brunch in flip flops.
“Except when I’m at work, I wear them until it snows.” he told me proudly. He’s a terrific young man, but his attitude towards these flat shoes with no back and a strap between the toes puzzles me.

I never wear flip flops, not in October, not in June, July or August. I rarely even wear sandals. I can’t stand any shoes that have a strap between the big toe and the next one. My big toe is bent in by a bunion, and hits against my next toe, but even before this deformity occurred, I didn’t like wearing that kind of shoe. The strap rubbed and a blister or sore was soon located between my toes. Besides most of the shoes are very flat and offer no support, and I need support. Until last summer, I also avoided backless shoes. I felt like my foot was falling out of them all the time, and was sure I would end up breaking a bone.

As a child, teen, and young adult, I wore sandals in the summer. Many times I also fell in the summer. I am very uncoordinated, and my big toe would hit something on the ground, or uneven pavement or a stone in the grass, and boom, down I would go. Because of my experiences, I never put my children in sandals either. They wore sneakers all summer long, and so did I. Last spring the bone spur on my right heel became very irritated, and I decided to try a pair of shoes that had no back. I wore them as often as I could, in places where I wouldn’t fall (generally around my house and my own yard), and found that I could walk in them. I got a new pair with a slight ridge in the back in the fall, and wore them all winter. Now I love them, and wear those kind of shoes all the time. So, yes, I guess you can teach an old dog new tricks, or a sixty something retired teacher how to wear shoes more exciting than the Reebok Princess style I’ve worn for the last decade, but flip flops, no I don’t think so. That style has flopped as a trend for me to try.

The Monster of the Neighborhood

The Bond Hill section of Cincinnati was a wonderful place to live in the forties and fifties. Both places I lived there as a little girl were off Paddock Road. Our family started out on Egan Court, a street filled with apartments and war babies, and moved to a Tudor house on Towanda Terrace when I was two and a half.

Towanda Terrace had a gate across the sidewalk at the Paddock Road entrance to the street, and I remember swinging on it once I was old enough to take a walk up the street alone. The house closest to the gate had a fishpond, and I loved to watch the huge fish swim back and forth. A girl named Marguerite lived in that house, and whenever her name came up, Dad would sing out “Marguerite go wash your feet. The Board of Health’s across the street.”

The song made no sense to me, but to this day I can’t hear the name Marguerite or look at a fishpond without it repeating in my head.

As you entered Towanda Terrace, a street ran off to the left. That was Cheyenne Drive. My friend, Janie, lived there, as did lots of other people I knew as a child. Towanda Terrace ran down a hill, and that’s where we lived. A few houses from us the street began the climb up the hill to where my best friend, and fourth cousin, Cinie, lived. Towanda ran to the left attached once again to Cheyenne Drive, and then attached to Elm Park Drive, the other street of the three street neighborhood. Elm Park’s other end was on Paddock Road.

Our street was a wonderful place to live. Children flourished there, playing Kick the Can, Red Rover, Tag, and Mother-May-I. At dusk we chased and caught fire-flies, which we called lightning bugs, in glass jars our mothers provided. Although our house backed up to the houses on Cheyenne Drive, the houses across the street had an apple orchard in their back yard. It was owned by someone in one of them, and when we climbed the trees and picked the apples, the man would come out and threaten us with his rifle. We didn’t tell our parents about the threat, because we knew we probably shouldn’t be picking the apples anyway.

Directly across from our house was a vacant lot, and behind it was a field that ran all the way back to Seymour Road. The field held a small shack that Terry Karp, the neighborhood bad boy, burned down one day when he was playing with matches.

Across Seymour Road and out on Paddock Road, like a huge Gothic monster or a dinosaur, trapped in the modern world, stood Longview State Hospital. Built in 1860, consisting of 12 three and four story buildings and filling the equivalent of three city blocks, Longview loomed above the neighborhood in more ways than one. It was part of our life. My parents voted there. The Catholic church, located on that property, was the place the young, Catholic girls that acted as our nannies, attended church, and I remember going there with at least one of them a few times. If you turned left from Towanda Terrace to go anywhere in that direction, you passed the huge, brick complex that was on the right side of Paddock and both sides of Seymour. Our school and most of the places we went were in the other direction, but we were always aware of the hospital and who was inside it.

The neighborhood kids knew that Longview was for “crazy” people, although our understanding of what that meant was pretty low. The words insane and mentally ill were not to enter our vocabulary for many many years. Until the Halloween night that three inmates escaped and killed a guard or maybe two escaped or maybe two guards were killed (I have been unable to find any information on the escape and I’ve been looking online for years), the fact that crazy people were inmates at the hospital that was our neighbor were only words to us. The interrupted Halloween, with the kids sent home by neighbors, and the radio announcer talking about Longview and our neighborhood, made it very real.

After the escape, I was afraid to walk on the vacant lot side of the street, and avoided the lot itself and the field behind it at all costs. Jan, the boy who lived across the street next to the vacant lot, was not living there at that time. His mother, who had married and divorced several times, had taken Jan and gone back to Elmwood to live with her family. His empty house might as well have been haunted in my seven year old mind. I was sure the escaped inmates were living there, although Mom assured me that they were probably in California by now when she found out about my fears. In the irrational way children make everything that happens about them, I lay awake at night, sure every sound was those escapees, coming to kill me and my family.

We moved the next year, when I was eight. I knew I would miss my friends, but I was eager to live in our new, big house, where I would have my own room. I didn’t know that I would come to miss sidewalks and the feel of a real neighborhood, but I did know I wouldn’t miss Longview State Hospital and the fears it awoke in me.

My last experience with Longview happened right after we moved away. We were living with my grandfather, Poppy, in his house in North Avondale and Mom or Dad drove us to school at Pleasant Ridge elementary each day. Then we took the bus home to our new house, which was in the midst of painting and papering, cleaning and organizing. We did our homework there and waited for Mom to be ready to take us back to Poppy’s house for the night. Mom did not want to take the time to register to vote in a new location, so she went back to Bond Hill to cast her vote. As I said earlier, she voted at Longview.

Mom parked, and went in to vote, leaving the three of us inside the car, doors locked, but windows partially down. I remember I was scared and asked her to take us with her, but she said, “I’ll be right back. There’s nothing to be scared of.”

Steve was five and Patti, three, but I was eight, and I knew there was a lot to be scared of. All those people I saw walking around, for one thing, and the ones we weren’t seeing, locked inside, just waiting I was sure to escape, and kill us on their way out. As we sat there, waiting for mom to return, a man came up to the window to ask us something. I rolled up the windows that were open as fast as I could. He was probably there to vote, but I wasn’t taking any chances. The moments till Mom returned were very long ones, and once we drove away, I hoped I would never get that close to Longview State Hospital again.

I had one other experience and it came a few years later in Girl Scouts. We were visiting a ward at Longview to do an art project with the patients. A woman walked over to us, and began to babble incoherently. I was ten, and I laughed. My friend, who lived down the street, hit my arm, and told me to cut it out, that it wasn’t funny. When I was a teenager, I found out that her mother had been hospitalized at Longview off and on over the years. Looking back, I am embarrassed by my ten year old self, but then again, looking back, I am shocked at the treatment of the mentally ill in the days when I lived in Bond Hill up until not that long ago, and by the misunderstandings and ignorance of that time that I remember in most ways as innocent and idylic.

Saving the Planet, One Cloth Bag At a Time

I’ve been recycling for a long time. When I lived in Shaker Heights, I filled up the trunk, and the back seat, then my youngest son and I were off to the recycling center. When I moved to an apartment, recycling was impossible, but as soon as I bought my condo, I took full advantage of Lake County’s curbside recycling. Ahh, the good old days. Now I’m back to stashing everything in the car, and driving to a the nearest recycling bin. Until recently, that was all I did to save our planet. Last summer I found another way to go green.

I bought those trendy cloth grocery bags that every store from Heinens to Marcs is selling. Actually, I almost bought one from every store I ever enter. I bought one from Target, two each, one insulated and one plain, from Heinens and Giant Eagle, so I won’t, God forbid, use the wrong bag at one of these competing grocery stores. I’ve been to Aldi twice, but they charge you for bags, so I bought a huge cloth bag there. It’s a great bag, but I haven’t been back lately to use it.

Using these bags is a way to help the environment . . . if I can just remember to bring them into the grocery store. People say, “oh it’s so easy. Just keep them in the front seat of the car, and I usually do. That’s usually where they are when I am in the store shopping too.

I walk into Target, grab a cart, and head for the Dollar spot. I love the Dollar spot, and buy lots of fun things there to use when my grandchildren are over. Right in front of the Dollar Spot, I recognize an old friend in the display of cloth bags. Look, it’s just like my bag . . .the one in the front seat of my car. That’s when I look outside, and if it is nice out, and I was able to find a good parking space, I return the cart, go outside to the car, and retrieve my bag. If the conditions are different, too cold, too far to walk, I keep going. I love those Target plastic bags anyway. They’re thicker than the average bag, and great for wet clothes after aquasize. At least that’s what I tell myself when I decide not to go back to the car.

At Giant Eagle, the bag display is not readily visible as I enter the produce department, where I stock up on my wonderful pink lady apples, baby carrots, and mushrooms. If I have forgotten my bags, I don’t remember them while I am busily reading the information on the organic cereals to try to find one that, when checked out on my wonderful handy dandy Weight Watcher calculator, has only two points a serving. I don’t remember them, while picking out the yogurt on sale that week, or the Weight Watcher Smart Ones or Lean Cuisine meals that make up the bulk of my diet these days. I don’t remember them until I get to the checkout counter, where Giant Eagle has their cloth bag display.

How long are the lines? That’s the first question I ask myself as I realize the position I have found myself in once again. I’m not going to go out to the car, if once I return, I have to stand in line for fifteen minutes. Then I consider the weather and the parking situation. If all the stars align, I push my full cart into the row with the movies or the one with the cards, and move quickly to the car, where I find my Giant Eagle bags, right there in the front seat, where I put them earlier, so I wouldn’t forget them.

The story at Heinens is much the same as at Giant Eagle, except that the bags are closer to the front of the store, and the return trip to the car is shorter. Sometimes at Heinens, though, I don’t see the display, because I’m looking at the produce straight ahead of me, and ignoring my peripheral vision. When that happens, a Heinens blue plastic bag or two is going home with me to spend some time in my bag bag that hangs in the laundry room, until it is recycled right next door into the bathroom waste can. I do mark some progress by the fact that I used to have two filled to the brim, bag bags, and now there’s just one, fairly emtpy one.


Using cloth bags at the grocery is a wonderful way to help save our planet, and I really want to do my part. I bought the bags, and I put them in the car, and I have the best intentions in the world, but when I find myself at the checkout counter, much of the time, those intentions are all I have with me. Those bags I bought to save the planet are in the front seat of my car.

Winter and Snow

I love the look of fresh snow, right after a snowfall. It is so white and clean, like someone has unwrapped one of those rolls of cotton or poly batting I see at the fabric store. It’s glorious to look out the window at a winter wonderland, snow on the ground, the street, the bushes. There’s even snow inside my screened in porch. Snow as far as the eye can see. The snow is very inviting, but I don’t like the cold, so I stay in the condo, hibernating with the cats in my warm bedroom, occasionally, looking out from my front windows or from the dining room through the temporarily white floored porch.

Then come the plows, clearing Liberty and Franklyn, picking up the snow with their plows and throwing it into huge mountains across the front of our yards. Once the streets are finished, they begin on the driveways. Scrape and throw to the side, scrape and throw to the side, until another mountain is formed, this one along the right side of my driveway, and the left side of the neighboring condo. Mine is always bigger for some reason.

Between the plows and the drifts, the condos in Franklyn Commons look like they are being buried in snow, and so do the poor little trees that are in our front yard. One tree per condo, sour cherry, or crab apple. My sour cherry tree is good to the birds, and I hang two bird feeders there to encourage them to come around even after the cherries are gone. It is such a tiny tree, always looking like it is struggling to survive. The summer before last, they trimmed the trees back, and one of the lawn service men told me that cutting off some of the upper limbs might help the tree to spread out and look less scraggly. It didn’t work, and now, the poor little thing looks cold and like it wishes it could dig out from under the plow drifts that reach halfway up its skinny trunk.

The plow men return. This time it is to clear the sidewalks that lead from the driveway to our front doors. We have no actual sidewalks in Franklyn Commons. Now my yard is ringed by white snow mountains, well maybe ringed isn’t the right word, since it is more like three sides of a square, around my front yard and those of all my neighbors. It looks sort of like the icing on a cake, sloped sides of icing, rising higher than the center section.

By the time all of the plowing is done, and the days go by with the streets and driveways getting multiple treatments, the snow is no longer so pristine in its whiteness. Instead it is starting to get gray around the edges, a gray that I realize, as I get closer, is really brown from the mud underneath the snow. There are some falling flakes, but not enough to cover up the dirty snow, and dirty snow looks just plain cold, and old, and ugly.

The temperature rises, some of the snow starts to melt, and there are puddles scattered, still a lot of snow, but the mountains no longer look inviting, and their edges are worn away to show the mud beneath by the street. The driveway is no longer clean, it has patches of muddy slush. That’s better than ice at least. They plow our streets, driveways and front walks, but they don’t salt them. Every year I say, I’ll buy some salt and put it down, but every year, I don’t do it, and every year I fall at least once, putting out or taking in the trash cans. It never fails.
When I was growing up in Cincinnati, almost any snowfall where the snow stuck was an opportunity to get out of school. Even if the district didn’t call a snow day, my dad did.

“You kids are staying home today.” he’d say, as he and mom got dressed to drive downtown to work.
“I don’t want you walking down that hill to the bus, and breaking a leg, and the bus drivers aren’t used to this kind of weather and could have an accident.”

Later when we could drive, he would simply inform us that we weren’t going anywhere in “our” car. It was afterall, really his car, and his insurance, and he wasn’t having any accidents.

Dad said that even when I was 21, a senior in college, living at home, and student teaching as far across town as you could go without leaving the Cincinnati school district.

He appeared in my bedroom, early that morning, and said, “You’re not going to school today. I don’t want you driving the car.”

I called the University of Cincinnati. Classes were not cancelled. I called the Cincinnati school district office. Classes were not cancelled. I called the school where I was student teaching to tell the principal that I was not coming in. She informed me that I’d better come in. I was expected, and not appearing would affect my grade.

“My dad won’t let me take the car.” I said. “He said the weather is too bad, and I live really far away.”

“You have to come.” she said, “all of the teachers have to come. Once you are teaching for real, you’ll have to go if the school is open, and school is open, and I expect you.”

I tried the dad thing again, but she informed me that I was an adult, and he couldn’t keep me home, since I had a job to go to. I had never thought of it that way. He was my father. I was living in his house, driving his car, and he was paying for the gas, the insurance, and oh yes, my tuition. I had to follow his rules, didn’t I? Umm, not according to the principal.

I tried another route,”If I was a regular teacher, I probably wouldn’t be living so far away.”

“Many of our teachers live far away. I, myself, live far away, but I here, they are on the way, and you need to get on the way also.” she replied.

I got up, and dressed, and called Marcia, the other student teacher from my class, who was working in the same far away community that I was. I had picked her up a few times when she had car trouble, but her house was sort of on the way, and mine was backtracking for her. She had called the school too, and was getting ready to leave. Her parents were not as protective as mine, and she agreed to come pick me up.

I arrived late, but I arrived. After that I always believed that snow or no snow, if the schools were open, teachers had to be there. Much later, teaching in Euclid while living in Shaker Heights, I learned it wasn’t necessarily true. There were teachers that everyone knew would be absent, due to “illness,” whenever the snow hit a certain amount and the schools weren’t closed. Although I lived as far away as those teachers, I almost always made it in.

I never really saw gray,brown, dirty snow, old packed snow, until I moved to Cleveland. In Cincinnati, when it did snow, it snowed, the sun came out, the snow melted. And although it seems to snow almost as much there as it does here, these days, according to the weather reports, that didn’t seem to be true while my children were growing up.

We would go to Cincinnati at Thanksgiving. There had usually been at least one snowfall here, so I would drag boots for all of us. It never snowed. At Christmas vacation, once again, we would drag boots. If it snowed, it was one of those quick snows, with the sun appearing the next day, and the snow gone before we hit the road home. I could always tell when we got near home though, the old, dirty gray snow was my first clue. It always seems to stay so long that it wears out its welcome.

The snow brings to mind what dad always said to us as we got ready to leave Cincinnati, particularly when my children were young. He’d give me a kiss and twenty dollars for gas, and then he’d say,” Bye, have a safe trip. I love to see you come, and I love to see you go.”

That goes double for the snow.

Every Snowy Day is a Snow Day Now

Almost every school in northeast Ohio was closed today due to snow. Once again my still teaching friends had a snow day. So, although this piece was written in February of 2007, the first winter of my retirement, it still reflects the way I feel on snowy days.

There is a cute little snowman hanging outside my front door. He has a blue hat, scarf, and mittens, and a painted orange nose that is supposed to look like a carrot. He has hung there for the last few winters, following the autumn leaves door decoration and preceding the spring frogs and flowers.

I like the way he looks, and the fact that he is large and colorful enough to be seen from the street, but this year he looks a little bit lonely to me. Several years ago at the first craft fair of the fall, I found a sign that I thought was very amusing, and I hung it from the snowman decoration. It was brightly painted and expressed the feelings of many people that I know, including mine. It said, “Please snow, I’m a teacher!”

It made me laugh a bit when the snow started to fall on a Sunday or a weekday afternoon, and I would look up at the sky, and say a little prayer that echoed the sentiments on the sign. Most years Mother Nature and the superintendent of the Euclid schools didn’t cooperate in spite of the sign and the prayer, but once in a while we had a snow day. When that happened, well, there was always the renewed hope that hanging the sign helped.

The last two years that I taught, there were no snow days. Our superintendent called one a few years ago that caused us to be one of the few districts closed in Cuyahoga County, and he vowed that it would never happen again.
“As long as I can get my car out of my driveway, school will be in session.” He was often quoted, when we watched the districts around us close while Euclid stayed open.

This year, when I took out the snowman, the sign was attached. I realized that since I wasn’t a teacher anymore, the sign was no longer true. I undid the twist tie that held the two decorations together, and hung up the snowman. I put the sign away. Perhaps I will give it to a still teaching friend or put it in a garage sale. I just know that I no longer need it, because for me, any day that snows is a snowday.

Thoughts on Inauguration Day

The day dawned bright and cold. January 20th 2009, inauguration day, change is in the air, and so is hope, and faith in the future. Here are my thoughts and feelings as I watched the inauguration of Barack Obama.

Those two little girls, so beautiful and so real. Michelle, our new first lady, so regal, so tall and lovely and poised. MY PRESIDENT, for the second time in my life, I feel so proprietary, so involved, so much a part of this historic occasion, and once again, here come the tears.

That crowd of faces, so full of hope, and joy, and the promise of a future, a future of possibility, after so many years where the hope and promise of our country seemed muted, although never completely lost. I find myself praying, “Dear God, take care of our new president. Keep him safe and strong, and allow him to bring our country back to where it belongs in the world, for the promise he holds, and for all of us in this wonderful country.”

Rick Warren, I feared his invocation, that it would be so Christian in nature that I would feel shut out, but he began his prayers with the English of the Shema, drawing me in, and he invoked Jesus at the end as his personal savior, being inclusive in a way that renewed my belief that this administration and all that are part of it will work for all Americans.

Aretha Franklin, big funny bowed hat, unbelievable voice, singing America the Beautiful in a different way, inspiring, and better than I’ve ever heard it sung before.

Joe Biden taking the oath of office as Vice President, a man I’ve always admired, because of his goodness, because he wears his heart on his sleeve, and because he often lacks the ability to filter himself. This makes him real, and real is important.

An amazing musical performance, Itzak Perlman, Yo Yo Ma, Gabriela Montero,and Anthony McGill , the full range of the American melting pot, yes it still exists, but now it is more like a stew, stirred together to form an American like our President and his family.

Barack Hussain Obama, the forty-fourth president of the U.S.A., a man who is always calm, cool, and collected, stumbled a bit on the oath of office, because Justice Roberts got flustered. The crowd, cheering, crying, full of love, waving American flags, and back here in Willoughby, a very strange sixty-four year old woman, jumping up and down, shouting, “yes, we did!” over and over, as both cats run out of the room.

Yes we did! Here we go . . .
I toast to the future, and am proud I helped make it happen.