It started out in 1973 as a perfectly normal Jeep Commando.  Well, I say “normal”, but there was nothing normal about the plummeting quality and design that Jeep experienced in the 1970′s.  It was similar to the hideous debacle of  AMF taking over Harley-Davidson.  Never have two more supremely cool, stylin’ companies fallen victim to  some penny pinching brown suit looking to increase the likelihood that you would be buying a new car/motorcycle within 2 years, but missing the obvious downside of that brilliant marketing ploy–that no one would ever, ever, ever, buy their crummy cheap unstylish dorkerized tin tuna can ever again!!  Gratefully, these two icons of American Pie were wrested from the death grip of the philistine and pundit and taken back into the loving arms of passionate drivers/riders—back into the loving arms of FORM OVER FUCTION FOREVER!!!!!!!  or at least some semblance of form…but I digress..

(PS.  It NEVER looked as good as this ad makes it look…talk about airbrushing..)

We  were somehow the proud owners of a lemon yellow Jeep Commando– a paragon of American nongenuity–the year before they rescued the brand.   I say “somehow” because it occurs to me as I am writing this that we never actually bought a car that I know of.  They were all somehow convoluted  hand me downs–usually from our grandparents  (not  a bad deal to be sure..They were usually  2 year old Cadillac Sedan De Villes  with torpedo tail lights and the grill of an adolescent rapper with braces–talk about form over function!)…but I digress again…

Sooo…This lemon yellow Jeep.  Let me just first point out that the color was no random choice.  I am convinced that after the first test drive they picked out the appropriate color for each Jeep, and this one was definitely a lemon from the get go.  The vinyl bench seats, the wheel base of a lawn mower, the towering height of a really, really, towery tippy thingie, and the curb appeal of a mollusk.  A yellow one.  But these were just the attributes of every Jeep Commando.  Our little Lemon one was additionally blessed with extra gaps, faulty u-joints, incontinent cooling systems, and a voracious appetite for 10-40 motor oil.  It probably didn’t help that my dad poured his ample cleaning attentions on this little wonder.  He compulsively cleaned, polished and armour all-ed that box until the yellow became the pale pulpy shadow of the lemon it once was, and the seats were so slippery from the armour all that you had to hold on to the steering wheel to keep from ending up in the passenger seat on a left hand turn, and the steering wheel itself required those rubber dotted milking gloves to keep a grip on it.  This was WAY before seat belts had anything to do with human bodies.  They were tidily tucked and snapped into place under the seat…after the application of yet some more armour all.  Did  mention that my dad was a firm believer in armour all?  The wheels were so shiny they not only bedazzled the other drivers  like the precursor of the spinning hub cap, but they cut the drag to the tune of 2 miles per gallon.

I have to claim some responsibility for the way in which it sidled down the street sidewinder style.  I don’t think it came that way…but now that I think about it…it very well could have….or it could have been that I took it on a little journey up to ski one afternoon when the teachers at my high school needed a break from me, and uh…sort of ..uh..well,  I was driving down the canyon at a rate of speed that would get me home when school was getting out for those students the teachers did want to see…so mom wouldn’t worry about me (such a thoughtful child)…when  that silly jeep just rolled right over and played dead.  Right in the middle of the street!  Can you believe what a lemon!  It took two pick ups and a winch (or a wench if you are my niece whose name I won’t say…but if I did it might be Carly) to pull the thing back up so I could drive it home (not that I remember the drive, but I’m sure I was watching a little more closely for it’s over correcting issues).  It seemed to be about that time that the Jeep started to come at you from the front and the side at once… a little disconcerting, but people got used to it..it was even charming in it’s own way.  I think all of that needed to be said before I describe what ultimately happened to the Lemon Lemon Jeep Commando.  It’s what they call “mitigating circumstances”.  I won’t list the little things that went wrong, but the culmination of dad’s unusually attentive maintenance was that this jeep, which should have been dead and buried years before, had somehow outlasted even the most optimistic of it’s engineers (a situation most of dad’s patients found themselves in as a matter of fact).  The floorboards were non-existent…they had rusted completely away leaving just a highly over armour all-ed floor mat spanning the empty space under your feet.  And ..well, the rust issue really applied to every other surface on that jeep as well.  I don’t think they spent a lot of time with undercoatings and actual steel on that vehicle.

The upshot was that my Uncle Con, who was a never ending fount of innovative (crazy) ideas, decided that the way to “fix” the rust issue on the jeep was to cover it with stucco.  Yes,  I said stucco.  My family have never been ones to give up on a vehicle just because it is bad, doesn’t work, or is completely worn out.  We are famous for tripling the value of the car by getting new tires put on.  I really think that Uncle Con had purchased this stucco that claimed to stick to anything, was curious to see if it would really live up to it’s claims, and decided to use the Jeep as his guinea pig.  Whatever the convoluted logic, they brought down the bucket o’ stucco and we slapped it on. A nephew donated a stegosaurus for  the hood ornament (was that you Christian or Michael?) and thus the name Stuccosaurus Wrecks was born! Sadly the lemon lemon color turned to abominable snowman white, but when we looked at it, we all still only saw lemon.  I know you don’t/can’t  believe me, so I’m including the actual newspaper article about it.  (not that you can read it…which is inconsequential I assure you).

The Stucco was a success !!!…except…..well… it’s not like the engineers really sat down at the table with any cohesive plan during the whole process of designing this jeep in the first place, but they definitely didn’t account for the additional weight of stucco on the already under-designed suspension system.  So, as with all mechanics and doctors, the cure ended up also being the death knell for our little lemon abominable  stucco jeep. I think when the final heroics had been performed and the last rights given, the jeep was donated to the Kidney Foundation which sold tickets to finish it off.    Apparently there are a whole  bucket load of people who have enough pent up frustration at automobiles or life in general, that they will pay good money to pound away at a car with a baseball bat.  who’d-a-thunk?  Well as long as somebody gets a new kidney out of it…then there was some higher purpose to the life of the yellow jeep…and that’s what we’re all looking for right?..  provide comic relief and transportation during our life,  and then leave a kidney behind when we go..What more could you ask for?..really…except may be to never be reincarnated as a vehicle owned by my family…

It was about 12 or thirteen years ago that dad stopped writing poetry.  I always counted on him to mark time, immortalize events, or celebrate birth and deaths with  a little “po-tree” and doggerel verse (as he, in his always self-deprecating way, put it).  His observations put a parentheses around those moments that we all rush past– the falling leaf, a commentary on the comparative ugliness of trees, or the  noting of the  ”thrill of speed overcoming the fear of death” on a downhill ski run.  I can’t approach autumn without hearing his lyrical descriptions or his life-cycle “autumn metaphor”…the metaphor that resembles me more and more– sadly autumn is closing in on summer.  He had a particular bitter sweet, nostalgic, shifting-sunlight kind of way of looking at and writing about fall.

His poems have definitely colored my perceptions of the seasons.. and of love that “stands round about me as a forest of tall pines”, and of the not so gentle aging process “the sloping drift of slow decay”. He marked time passing and bodies failing like a cross between Lewis Thomas and CS Lewis.  He even wrote about me..  and trust me there is nothing  a girl finds more irresistible than being written about..even if it isn’t entirely complimentary:  ”I hear your laughter/And I can not quite imagine /such a somber side of you./A time to hide our weeping selves/And only those whose hearts /Lie out like road kill/On the streets of life/May view–/the self we see/In you./Behind that laughter,/All the meaningless/ Uncertainty of life/Lies hidden;/Bidden to the surface/In those harsh long lines/Of color,/Better left unseen/Too harsh–/Too real–/ Too you.”

It was my favorite treat when I would come home to visit from my travels or school and he would invite me into his study, carefully push the door closed and pull out his yellow legal pad, flipping over the pages to his latest piece of writing. He would first set the stage by telling the story surrounding his poem…his motivation, his inspiration,  and for that moment I got to be with him and experience through his descriptions the world he saw.

His writing was the outpouring of all his years of experience from gandy dancer to paratrooper to cowboy, to his years of doctoring. Especially his years of doctoring.  Taking care of those flawed people he loved and cared for gave him a deeply tender view of the frailties both psychological and physical. He brought those worries home with him like a granite backpack and emptied it out on the pages of his yellow legal pad.

But like I said, it all came to a screeching halt a few years ago.  Why you ask?  That is what I am really writing about.  It’s the strangest thing I have ever seen.  The deal is…my dad’s heart “ain’t broke no more”!…They went and fixed it and cut the poetry thingie right out of it!  Whaaa??  How did that happen!!??..  and who can I sue?  It would be like Cindy Crawford going in for a chemical peel and coming out without her mole!  They just went too far!  I know that he needed to bypass 5 or so arterial thingies so we could keep him around.  Sure, I’m all for that part, but somewhere in the process the poetry got slaughtered.  Dad claims that it is not unusual for people who undergo general anesthesia and this kind of hugely invasive thoracic surgery that involves pick axes and circular saws to have bits of them change….or go missing altogether.   I guess that given the options of which part of dad we would be willing to sacrifice, we might have agreed on that bit, but I doubt it.  We probably would have all heartily and selfishly agreed on losing something that only affected him and not all of us…like …oh, I don’t know…like the rest of his taste/smell?  He has already lost flavors and is down to being able to taste sweet /sour /bitter/salt ..why not take the rest of it and he could go crazy with his famous textural combo “ketchup on ice cream”  getting skinnier and skinnier, and we would still have his beautiful and brilliant word casseroles to feed ourselves and get intellectually fatter and fatter?

May be the Greeks were right in counting the heart, not the brain,  as the seat of thought and personality and intellect…and so one little slip of the knife and.. Oops! There goes the limerick! .. Awk!  I accidentally got the sonnet!..  Whoops!  so much for the haiku!.  And why not the pun?  I would have sacrificed the pun!  Those things are like the mimes of poetry– only sightly amusing and always thoroughly irritating (see title of this piece). Or how about dad’s ability to calculate compound interest, or write story problems…or sudoku!   I would have more than happily forgone one and all of those dubious talents to keep the one immortal one…the one we can have even when the writer is gone…the poetry.  But I am so rarely consulted on topics of real importance.  So…there you have it…as The Mother would say…”so what’s your point?”.  And to that I would answer..”How long have you been reading this writey talkey-talk-thingie?  and have I made a discernible point yet?  Do you really still have that expectation?  huh…well, hope springs eternal.  The point is: I miss my dad’s poetry.

For years my Sister Robin held the title.  It was a hard earned and well deserved title.  The Title:  Queen Shut Eye….and I don’t mean Queen of Sleep..although coincidentally, she does tend to do that regularly in public places..

All I can say is thank heaven they’re sleeping!!!

Our family photo ops have a kind of familiar repetitiveness..it’s comforting in a way…It always goes something like this:

“Ok everyone ready… say cheese!”  flash.

“Cheese”

“Aw…Robin’s eyes are closed..let’s try it again…Ready everyone again.. on three.. one, two, three!”  flash.

“nope..uh..no Robin’s still got her eyes closed.  OK. let’s try it again”

“What is wrong with her?”  ”I don’t know…just take it on ‘two’ and tell her your are counting to three…”

“OK, on three..ready…One, Two…”   flash!

“Still?  You are Kidding me!!”

“OK Robin, just close or eyes and on “three” you open your eyes right as we take the picture.  right?  ok ready…one…two…three.” ..flash!

“Whaaaa??? Nooooo!!!!  It’s like she’s nocturnal or something..”

“Will someone get the dark glasses for Robin?”

“OK ready everyone? smile!” flash

“Perfect!..we’ll paint eyes on the outside of the dark glasses.”

At least that’s how it always used to be…Robin was undeniably the undisputed Queen of the photographic eye clamp… the duchess of dark glasses..our lady of the orbiting orbs …and THEN….the coup that dethroned her uncontested reign..the diabolical duo of The Mother and The Keo.  Ahhh..The Queen is dead!  Long live the King!…and Queen Mother…

It all became apparent to me at Bear Lake this fall when I was simply trying to get one tiny little shot of The Mother with Keo.  A little something for his scrapbook to prove that before her precipitous decline into a life of crime and debauchery, his grandmother (THE Grandmother) had been a lovely every-day kind of  read-you-a-story and fill-your-mouth-with-piles-of squirt-whipped-cream kind of grandma.  Sure, she may have had a few twenty-two shells go off in her pocket inexplicably, and crashed a few motorcycles in a target fixated catatonia, but by and large the watermelon seed spitting wars at  the dinner table and hairbrush breaking head whallop were all strictly contextual and didn’t detract from her story very much at all.  So back to getting a picture of a vampire.  An easy task when compared to the one of snapping just one itsy bitsy photo of Keo and The Mother with both of their eyes open. Impossible!!

Let me illustrate with a little photo montage:

I cannot fit the entire collection from this session and trust me when I tell you that there were DOZENS taken this evening.  Suffice it to say…it got ridiculouser and ridiculouser until we all threw in the towelette.  I did  see a definite propensity for the shut-eye from Keo early on.

This is a genetic mutation that harkens directly back to the Mother with a slight sidestep through The Aunt Robin.  He definitely didn’t get it from me.   I studiously avoid the business end of a camera unless the mother commands  a perfect stranger to take our picture–usually in a crowded restaurant, … or I am being paid gobs of money to take my clothes off and pose naked nudey (ps never has happened)…(pps never will happen).  He didn’t inherit it from Tane either.  Tane tends to keep his eyes just a little bit too wide open…

and…I’m not sure how to top that visual. so…to quote a famous wise woman who happens to be my mother (The Mother),” There you have it”.

The first child.  Some call them the pancake child because the first pancake never turns out right.  My mom used to always say you should be able to give your first one back because you make all of your mistakes on that one, but in my experience those first ones are the ones most worth keeping. Shelley my oldest sibling being the shining example of everything good and brilliant and talented and selfless and beautiful and true and pure and …well, you get the idea. She’s so truly good that we don’t even hate her for being so perfect and for begging the odium of comparative analysis.  There must be something to that overcoming  parental adversity thingie. At least I hope there is, because there isn’t one of my children more effected by my lack of parental skills and inability to even fake it (which is btw what I think every single parent out there is doing now that I figured it out) than my first anointed  Kate the pure, the nurturer, the bossy, the beautiful, the one that just turned 12 in May and decided to try her hand at being a teenager…almost.   She went from child to young lady almost overnight.

The thing about that first child is that you don’t change your lifestyle with them too much.  You can still fit and force them into yours.  And that is just what we did with Kate.  Poor Kate.  We were not fitting her into anything close to a normal lifestyle either.  I was a nocturnal, motorcycle riding, world wandering artist, and Tane was…well…Tane.  We dragged her everywhere with us…San Francisco, Denver , Florida, Sturgis, Santa Fe, Las Vegas…if we were going, she was coming with us.  One of our favorite things to do  in the hot summer nights pre-kids was walk all over the city all night long, and having Kate didn’t stop that strange behavior.  We would just strap her in the stroller and off we’d go..from midnight to 4 am, from north Temple to 13th  South, from downtown to the University  we would just walk and talk and chew Big Red gum and look in people’s windows…with an occasional stop to feed the baby.

Because  art galleries were my career venue, they became Kate’s second home.   I was either having an opening for my work, or going to other openings of my friends or curating some show, so Kate was well versed in art galleries and all sorts of art…and  I do mean ALL sorts.   She was a trooper, but at some point I devised a game to keep her diverted at these long and tedious (for her) evenings which  would also be arguably educational.  I would take her around the show and she would tell me what she liked or didn’t like about every piece, and then she would have to tell me which piece she would buy if she had all the money in the world, and I would tell her which one I would and why.  It is a game all of my kids continue to this day with variable success.  Keo’s picks sometimes lack the aesthetic and lean toward the topical–(tanks in a landscape win every time no matter what the quality of the work.)

I tell you all that to tell you this.  The first Friday in December we curated an invitational group show at a gallery with some great artists.  I dragged the kids as usual to the opening and in between attacking the food like a horde of locusts they played our “what would you get” game….or at least Kate did.  Zoe was busy with the chocolate fudge brownies and denuding the gift shop and her wallet at the same time buying Christmas presents for everyone in the family in a one for me-one for you kind of way.  Ian and Keo were involved in a cat and mouse game of survival finding every haunted passageway in the old train station where this gallery is located.  So really, it was just Kate and I playing our game.  In the final analysis. I chose a beautiful painting by an artist I love named Heather Barron.  I already own two of her paintings, but this one was a tiny painting that was just a little jewel.  It was a portrait of  beautiful little red cheeked girl filled with hope and innocence.  I thought and thought about  it, but it was kind of pricey for what I wanted to spend right before Christmas on myself, so I  carried on with the evening trying not to be bugged by not getting this beautiful little painting.  The next day after not being able to forget it, I concocted a perfect solution.  I would get it for my dad to give to my mom and then I could be able to enjoy seeing it at their house, so to this end I called to see if I could buy it.  Nope.  Already sold.  What?  Really?  aaaargh!. … well, you snooze you lose..dang!    But one of my especial talents is to move on through disappointment and forget about it…so I did.

Flash forward to Christmas day. ( I know I am probably the only one that is dense enough to not see this one coming.)  After all the presents are opened. Kate brings out just one more..for me.  All the kids gather around and I open it to …you got it….find this very painting.  Kate had single handedly enlisted my sister’s help in holding that painting, then she went home and gathered all the money she had saved  from countless hours of Keo sitting and regular babysitting, and presents, and hard earned allowance. (my abused kids have a pretty full list of chores),  and then….then she was still short by a couple of hundred dollars.  Undeterred,  Kate used her formidable skills in persuasive argument to brow beat her siblings into  tossing into the kitty.  So Ian chipped in $180 or so; Zoe  had just spent all of her money on Christmas presents for everyone, but she gave what she had left; and Keo…well.. he gave whatever Kate took to finish up the round of fundraising.  She then secretly delivered little wads of cash by the handfuls to my sis who picked it up, wrapped it for  Kate and had it delivered to the underneath of our Christmas tree 40 miles away by my niece.  This amazing orchestration brought to you by a 12 year old with no phone (and no way of getting one since she spent all of her money), no credit, and no previous successful attempt at keeping a secret.  I was flabbergasted!  I was gobsmacked!  I cried ..and cried…and cried..

Needless to say, that painting is the most precious painting in my collection..by far.  I also felt overwhelming  pride  as a mother that I had been able to  instill the 3 critical and sound financial principles in my perfect first child  : #1. Never touch your principle;  #2. Sell high, buy low;  and  #3. Spend all of your money and more on ART!!!  Go into debt for it!  Beg borrow and steal for it!! Yea!  That’s my girl!!…doomed.

Kids not only come with their bags packed as The Mother is wont to say, but in Zoe’s case,  the bag is stuffed a little fuller than most….with clothes..and accessories.  She would be the equivalent of that diva leaving for an overnight trip with two steamer trunks, three suitcases, a garment bag, and a carry on …and a gigantic purse.

Not to compare (because as my soon-to-be-translated-for her-perfection sister Shelley says, “comparisons are odious”) but certainly to contrast, and ultimately to absolve myself from any nature/nurture responsibility for any and all aberrant behaviour on the part of my children, my husband Freud, or myself, I have to tell you, my other three children have no inclination toward anything remotely resembling fashion…or even fad…or even taste.

Kate, now 1,2 is just now starting to be concerned about her clothes.  She has some basic parameters of likes and dislikes, but they ultimately all come down to what is comfortable and whether the caps sleeves are some exact length that I have yet to figure out.  We have been the happy and grateful recipients of the most wonderful array of hand-me-downs.  Some from the eighties, the nineties and a few creep into the realm of recent history, and Kate has been perfectly happy to wear whatever is there– provided it is not to frilly girly and it feels good and lets her play a mean game of kick ball at recess…yep…that’s my girl!…

Ian has not willingly worn clothes since he could voice an opinion at age 1.  He peels off real clothes faster than my awesome manager can think up a new IPhone app.and/or Apple product. The only acceptable attire as far as Ian is concerned is  pajamas.  Ian also is the lucky receipient of some gorgeous hand me downs from my sister -in-law and they are all pristinely folded and sitting on the shelf good as new.  When he is forced to wear clothes, he tends to wear the same brown shirt or green shirt and wranglers for days on end until I can peel them off of his body and put them in the laundry.  He is a big fan of wrangler jeans for his extra slim boy body (also manna from the heavenly Wyoming cowboy clothes goddess aka Muffy)  and will  wear those until they can stand up on their own.  Ian views clothes as a necessary evil and shuns them at every turn.

Keo is all about “what did Ian used to wear?”…which because of their extremely different body types is not as distantly separated as their 5 year age difference would suggest. Keo pretty much fits into it as soon as Ian will relinquish it.  As much as Ian shuns the clothes, he also has fierce attachments to too-small shirts, holey socks, skin tight wranglers, and completely shredded shoes, so by the time he gives them up, Keo is ready to put them on– much to Keo’s delight. The one thing Keo does insist on is altering them by putting his knee through them as soon as possible.  He not only loves the noise of ripping cloth, but the air-conditioned legs are a plus in his world.  We finally gave up stitching them up and just started drawing faces on his knees, or just cut them off completely,  and called it macaroni.

But Zoe…. oh Zo!!!   The sun rises and sets with the myriad of unlikely combinations (secret and not so secret), the unsuspecting pattern arrangements,  the surprise attack of an unforeseen scarf tied like the  intricate windings of a opium eater’s stream of consciousness.   Her  fashion sense is on a different level than we mere mortals can ever hope to appreciate.  It would be like trying to describe De Kooning’s work to the artistically unwashed at a “Landscapes of the American West” show….trust me on this–not easy.  Of course, when faced with such genius, one is naturally curious about the ultimate result, or as The Mother puts it,  ”I hope I live long enough to see how THAT turns out”.  I have speculated that given Zoe’s  particular inclination toward less is more on the top, and more is more on the face, and more is less on the bottom, well…let’s just say I have considered giving up and installing a pole in the basement and letting her support the old agedness of her parents by doing what she does now, but just in a professional setting–dancing in an evocative manner accompanied by constant costume changes–it’s every mother’s nightmare, but hey, if you can have a child bring home the bacon using her natural talents, then who am I to stand in the way of making a buck off of her..after all , it’s not really THAT  bad I guess…you know,  working for the Polish National  Folk Dancing Troupe.   Huh??.. Stripper??!!?Wha??  That’s just wrong…wrong pole, wrong dance, wrong wrong wrong.  My husband Freud will now be forced to come and sock you up…so anyone who was thinking stripper, please fess up in the comments and if you could include your home address that would be helpful.

So back to my sweet little girl with a penchant for an ice capades aesthetic.  The Mother purchased a group of about seven or eight silk scarves all in different colors with which all the grands and great-grands  could play dress up.  They all played with them as you would imagine..They became capes and long flowing hair, and belts, but when Zoe got ahold of those scarves they were transformed into the tools of  a frustrated non-sewing high fashion designer.  Zoe is the only one of my kids I have had to constantly and consistently have the talk about appropriate and inappropriate attire for the occasion.  She seems to have no internal governor about different situations calling for different clothing.  For her all the world’s a stage and she’s the unusually coiffed and costumed star. 

 She does not confine herself to only her own attire.  Whenever she can find a willing or even partially willing participant, she will dress them up.  She has occasionally used her not insignificant powers of persuasion to lure Keo into being one of her models…and I can now say that I am prepared with material for his bachelors party if I am ever called on to produce embarrassing and incriminating pictures.

..the before and after of Zoe’s coaching and behavior modification of Keo.  If you know Keo,  that is no mean feat….ahhh, the power of Zo.  Mostly, however, Zoe concentrates her formidable powers on her own beauty regimen with results ranging from the sublime…

*note even at age 5 Zoe had accessorized her new nightgown and done Kate’s hair.

to the ridiculous…

to the ridiculouser…

Sadly I have no photographic evidence of Zoe’s more creative ventures, and since Keo dropped my camera, I have no new photographic evidence at all, but it may be for the best.  To protect the innocent…ish…and this way Zoe may eventually forgive me for writing this about her….and give up trying to get me to bedazzle  my black polar fleece jacket…I do have designer reflective tape on the back..doesn’t that count?

Vive La Fashionista!!!

I look old.   I feel 19 .  I don’ look it.   It’s weird.  I tend to avoid mirrors like a vampire on her period…I don’t really know what that means, but as far as avoiding looking in mirrors at yourself it is easier than  you’d think.  I never get my hair professionally cut in a salon, I only look at parts during application of mascara (one eye at a time)etc., and I keep to myself in public bathrooms and avert my eyes whenever possible.  The hardest part is training people like dentists not to do you any favors by grabbing a mirror and shoving in your face without warning to show you your beautiful new smile.  AAAAArrrrrgh!!! Nooooooo!!!  He doesn’t ever do that anymore (and he is healing nicely and will be as good as new in  a matter of weeks) which is one of the main reasons I still drive 40 miles to go to him.

 The problem is…once in a very great while I get talked into being on film for one reason or other, and the regret begins almost immediately.  Sure it’s a good cause…Sure I want to do my part, but REALLY!!???..do I have to look at my own self talking?  And it’s not just the looking.  ooooooh  man!  the voice!!!  what is that voice??  I do not sound like that!!!…do I?  I would like to take a moment and apologize to everyone I’ve ever talked to in my whole life who has been subjected to that voice…eeeeuuwww. Like a 13 year old boy going through puberty having smoked 2 packs a day for a couple of years, whilst trying to only let sound come out of his nose just for kicks….ugh.  I can’t even decipher the words that are coming out and their meaning I am so mesmerized by the weird sound emerging.

http://media.kued.org/mediaPlayer.php?filePath=media/contact/videos/con10063.m4v&title=Contact+Interview%3A+%22Under+One+Sky+-+Embrace+the+Arts%22+%2805%2F18%2F2010%29&vWidth=640&vHeight=376&mk=video&showEmbedCode=yes

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Because of my unparallelled technicalistellar internetiary skills, I have no real hope that that link will take you anywhere near the offending interview, but my description is a vivid and accurate portrayal in every way….except…. I guess I did fail to mention the bizarre Carol Merrill gesticulating I was doing with my hand the whole time I was talking (if you can call it that)….and the head bobbing.. and the eye rolling..and …well, I don’t want to give too much away, but I have to say it’s amazing to see that many nervous tics crammed into a 2 minute spot.

And my point is?…..uh…besides being a cathartic self loathing session?….uh…well…the apple don’t fall far from the tree, the creme always rises to the top, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it , always make new mistakes, when in doubt fall back on spewing aphorisms until nobody remembers what you were saying and they are just wowed by your enormous wisdom….It works for The Mother, so……never look a gift horse in the mouth or lead him to water, keep the shiny side up,  and above all….uh….always wear clean underwear…if you wear any…which you should…for sure…if you do..do…yes. OK.

The thing about memory is that it is entirely personal.  I have realized as I write stories about my childhood, that I generally don’t ask my older siblings or parents about a memory and how accurate it is, or even about their memories of the same events.  I am truly and solely interested in my own  interpretation…after all,  fact is stranger than truth…and so….uh…I’m not sure what that has to do with anything, I just like to say it.   Actually,  I think truth is stranger than fact…or do I?…where was I?..Oh yeah.  Well, all that was just a great big excuse for me to forge ahead with the random and inaccurate memories of a 5 year old about our years cutter racing.  Cutter racing is basically the Ben Hur type chariot race where the driver stands in a little “chariot”  (which in our case as I recall was a 50 gallon drum cut in half with two bicycle wheels attached to it)  which was pulled by two horses on a dirt quarter mile track.  

Every weekend we would load up and drive what seemed like hours (20 min.) to the track where we would watch a grueling array of horses and races and mostly you would watch the track waiting for the next race to start. ..and wait……and wait…..and wait..and oh. my gosh!!!there they go!! 26 seconds of thrilling powerful horseflesh verging on disaster…and then wait…and wait…..and wait…for the next 26 seconds of pure little girl joy.   What I overwhelmingly remember is being cold and having to wade through mud.  As I recall,  two to three feet deep mud ruts and snow/mud mixed with horse apples in enormous berms surrounding the track….It’s funny though, how memory depends on how old you are.  The older my siblings were at the time,  the  smaller the ruts and berms were that they remember…but I’m not interested in their flawed memories…I have my own. 

Most teams consist of two beautiful matched pair thoroughbred horses–long and lean and made to run.  Our team consisted of one of those beautiful thoroughbreds–a rangy brown named Billy Comet, and a beautiful black/brown quarter horse named Jazzy Hawk.  My first memories of riding were hanging on for dear life to my dad’s belt loops riding behind him on the back of this jet powered bundle of muscle and power.  Hawk was my dad’s riding horse, but he was so much more that.  He was one of those horses that is so unbelievably beautiful that people would come just to watch him move around the corral.  They would stop my dad while he was riding and just look at Hawk or beg to have a ride.   I still gage every horse I meet against the standard of Hawk and I have yet to find one that is even close to him in beauty or power.  There is a picture of my dad in his riding Levis,  wearing a trophy belt buckle and holding Hawk.  They are both the embodiment of youth and power and the speed of flight – it is my favorite picture of all time.  The picture  elevates them both to icon or symbol status.  I guess it is obvious that  Jazzy Hawk was my first love and I haven’t gotten over him yet.  He was pure power and speed  they somehow decided to pair him with a thoroughbred, hitch him to a chariot, and race with him.  I don’t know who’s idea it was, but it turned out to be not only the  most oddly matched team, but also the fastest team in the regional Wasatch Slopes Championships–and then at the National Championships in Oklahoma..until one of them threw a shoe during the race.   The thoroughbred was my horse technically (and since I was only 5 at the time it was truly a technicality).   His name was Billy Comet and I would sit on the wooden fence rail and gaze at him in wonder and awe and I somehow knew he was mine as he flew around the corral, and I knew he was mine even when he started eating all the wooden fence rails..and then he was undeniably mine when we found him hooves-up one morning.  My beautiful Billy Comet–though I only knew him as Boob…I don’t know why….and I suspect it was a reference to him being a big baby and not referring to an unattainable body part.  No one quite knew what had happened..was it the intense adoration of a 5 year old?  was it the hot souped up high energy race horse food?..was it the high stress lifestyle of an unbelievably coddled and pampered champion race horse??  or was it the gallons of ”bute” my grandfather shot him up with to help with the aches and pains…and aneurysms..apparently…regardless..this was the death knell not only for Boob, but also for our racing career.  Hawk remained in my fathers stables to thrill and amaze little girls  with his amazingness…and Boob went to wherever really fast horses go..

This all came back to me in a rush when I took my kids to the national championships a couple of weeks ago that were held in my home town.  I haven’t been to a cutter race since we used to race (and for those who are keeping score that was nigh on 40 years ago).  So I called my mom and dad knowing they would be as excited as I was to relive the glory days, and after twisting their arms begging and cajoling, they agreed to come out with us.  It was a beautiful sunny bluebird day in March–couldn’t have been more perfect for a horse race.  Right away we noticed some differences:

#1 It was dry.  The track was dry, the day was dry, WE were dry. 

 #2  the track was not a rutted mess of mud.  They had a spray truck lightly watering down the dust on the track while a big  brand new John Deere tractor graded and smoothed the track over and over in between heats.  wha????   

 #3  The charriots were no longer 50 gallon drums cut in half, they were some sissy-pants titanium platform thingie with alloy wheels and racing tires weighing all of about 5 lbs with some anorexic jockey with a death wish perched on the back. 

#4  They had covered grandstands to sit and watch in comfort…along with vendors selling pretzels, and churros, and every horse trinket imaginable to a horse crazy 11 year old (that would be Kate) or a fashionista (that would be Zoe) or a weapons specialist (that would be Ian) or a foodie(that would be Keo).

#5  All the horses were tricked out with racing goggles, and worse…some of the horses had spray glitter on them…no comment. 

There were also some noteworthy similarities to 40 years ago.  There was a lot of waiting between races.  Shockingly though, with all the physical and technological advancements, the speeds had only gone down from an average of 26 seconds to an average of 22 or 23 seconds….I guess that’s quite a bit for a quarter mile, but you never saw the mud!!!!  Did I mention the MUD?????  There was 6 feet of it!!!!!!  on a good day!!  and it was always freezing!! …and my mother always wore a fuschia fake fur coat with rhinestone encrusted cat eye glasses!!!! and it was all so scarring!!!  Everything has become so civilized, I can hardly hold out any hope at all for this upcoming generation.  They are so lacking in having to address basic survival skills, that they are focusing on braiding parts that shouldn’t be braided and  glitter spray.  I personally think the sign of a corrupt and deteriorating society is the rampant use/misuse of glitter…but I digress…

The end of this goes more like this:

We shunned the grandstands and stood at the finish line like the good old days… without the mud…(did I mention the MUD?);   in between races Kate bought pretzel after pretzel until we all foundered,and then she somehow ended up in the winner’s circle getting her picture taken with the winning team and their owners;   Keo picked all the winners  just as they crossed the finish line (a technique I would recommend if you are ever inclined to bet on a horse race and don’t like the “pick the prettiest one” method that I personally employ..and usually lose);  The Mother commented again on how she not-so-fondly remembered the waiting between races part, and took off for the horsey flea market where she bought my Husband Freud a T-shirt for his birthday which proudly declared him a  ”Rank Bull”;  dad and I stood at the rail eating up every race and studying every team that paraded by, and eventually had to be pulled from the track by the unrelenting whining of everyone else …well, ok,  it was mostly The Mother who had inspected each and every horse ashtray and horse lamp,  and was done with the waiting already.  We relented and took everyone home, but I for one was still basking in the glory of those championship days with Jazzy Hawk and Billy Comet…..and mud.

One of the lessons I learned  and learned and learned as a child at my mother’s knee (or the business side of her hairbrush) is the elbow point. I’m not sure exactly when I learned what a personal comment was, but I know it was very early in my socialization.  Not much later I learned  that “personal comment” included pointing at someone with your finger.  I’m not sure why The Mother thought  that elbow pointing was more acceptable .  It was supposed to be a more subtle way of surreptitiously pointing someone out.  Of course, we turned that into a blatant affront in no time.  Our gesturing elbows were far more offensive than any finger ever dreamed of being.  Still, I was conditioned somewhere along the way to refrain from personal comments including, but not limited to:   body size and shape, body piercings/mutilations, hair color, skin color, clothing choices, weird looking dogs, spouses–or lack of, babies–or lack of, and smell–good or bad. 

I went with Keo’s preschool class on a field trip to Sweets  Candy Company.  It was a thrilling adventure in sugar and corn syrup..the cornstarch molds being an especially riveting feature of the tour.  We sampled, we observed, and we purchased from the lovely gift shop just off the lobby which is open to the public.  Just after our substantial purchases were completed and we were waiting  with all the other preschoolers and their respective mothers or fathers in the lobby, it happened.  To Keo it was the equivalent of  having his own personal circus or monster truck rally or air show dropped in his lap.  He had hit the four year old jackpot!  In through the door walked just about the most enormous man I have ever seen.  His unique and beautiful body shape was not only tremendous in scope and breadth, but he was skyscraperly tall as well.  He was a vision for even the parents to gaze at in wonder, but for a lobby full of four year -, he was a magnificence worthy of either awe and silent reverence, or prolific and personal commentary.  Without much hope of evoking a surprised outcry of shock and dismay from my gentle readers,  I have to report that Keo chose the latter.  I know, I know…..eveybody has a “hey mommy, that guy is fat!” story, but it was a little worse than that….in fact, it was substantially worse than that.   Keo has never been the most verbal child, but he is the absolute king of pantomime and sound effects…and what he lacks in clarity, he makes up for in volume.  So while there were quiet gasps and mumblings and shushings coming from the other preschoolers and their parents, from Keo there was the most gleeful display I have ever seen outside the confines of Lagoon Amusement Park. 

 The first phase is a full body dance/running in place thingie reminiscent of Flashdance– without the water scene.  Phase two adds the alternating ecstatic cheek slapping and finger pointing (not elbows).   Phase three is the eye popping wide open mouth “Oh oh oh ohhh!!!!”  and the Final phase: a high pitched squeal of delight, hysterical laughter, and “oh my dosh!!  LOOK at that BIg Fat Man!!!  HE’S SOOOOOOOOOO  FAT!!!!  OOOOO HO HO!!!  MOM!! LOOK AT HIM’S BELLY!!!!! “  (still dancing from foot to foot, still slapping his cheeks and pointing in delight, and still very, very loud).  aaaaaRRRGH! NOOoooooooooo!!!!!!! This was much worse than the time that my husband Freud asked a woman who was not pregnant when she was due…he never danced and pointed at her belly.  Well, OK,  he did dance a little….  and there was  some inappropriate touching, but still, this somehow topped that for sheer volume and enthusiasm.  I quickly tried to temper his enthusiasm with a little mom lecture series about how we all come in different shapes and sizes and how we don’t make personal comments, and ……etc.  etc…(I am talking about Keo now, not Tane), but what soon became obvious was that far from ridiculing him, Keo intended to congratulate the man.  He was so impressed he just couldn’t wait to gather around his idol and worship.   If you have ever shared a meal with Keo, you know that this must be his ultimate goal.  The boy never saw a meal he didn’t love, and he never wants to be left out from any eating opportunity…serious or social.  He would have lit a candle at the man’s feet if he could have gotten his hands on one.  When he got  ahold of my camera, this is what he took a picture of:

   Thankfully, the man had perfected the art of not hearing unspeakably rude preschoolers and he just continued on his way through the parting sea of preschoolers and into the candy shop.    I’m guessing that next time, however,  he might conceivably time his visit to the candy store NOT during a preschool field trip.   It’s kind of  the same way that most women try to time their visit to my house NOT when Tane is home and naked…good luck with that one.  But,  if you do happen to see him, please,  please point only with your elbow,  avoid direct eye contact (as with all wild animals), and refrain from all personal comments…at least the ones about his poor wife.

There is a rift in the seamless fabric of our idyllic family.    It is a schism reminiscent of the North vs. South , Ford vs. Chevy, or  Mayo vs. Miracle Whip.  It’s a take no prisoners fight to the death Lego vs. Playmobil…with an occasional Polly Pocket/Pretty Pony monkeywrench thrown in by Zoe.    I kind of expected the dynamic of my children to mirror the nearly cinematically perfect childhood I enjoyed at the hands of my three older brothers.  This is my vivid memory of  it in a nutshell:

Julie follows Seth and Mark  around trying to do everything they did.   *note* Although David counted in the all around “fear factor” of the triangle of terror that was my brothers, early on he conditioned me to avoid  his circle of influence (arms reach) by  introducing me to the business side of the sofa cushion and the physical properties of pillow compression created by his bottom.  Message received.  I rarely messed with David’s groove. ..Meanwhile….back at the farm….   Seth and Mark ditch Julie.   Julie whines, nay keens to a completely uninterested mother about how Seth and Mark are being mean,  they won’t let me play blah blah  etc. etc.   The Mother tells her to solve her own problems or she will punish everybody  because if we didn’t do something this time there was probably something she missed in the past and it would all even out in the end.  Julie abandons maternal retaliation plan.  Adopts “sneaky Velcro” plan involving sneaking up on their game and sticking to them like Velcro (thus the “sneaky Velcro” plan)…  Seth gets the old reins.  Mark finds the bandanna gag  (as in “gag”…not as in “joke”).  Julie  wakes up two hours later gagged and tied to the pool table,  head  swimming,  the faint smell of gunpowder residue,  and two chimps named Butch and Cookie..  well….It’s MY memory…write your own writey talky talk thingie if you have some variant reality you want to promote.  I have very few retaliatory options left.  Writing history first is the best revenge…right David?

Did I just digress???  huh??? ME??  soooooo,  oh yeah,  Legos vs Playmobil.  Kate LOVES Playmobil and spends hour after hour setting up elaborate scenarios almost never getting to the point of actually playing with them.  Ian LOVES Legos and  spends 1 minute building some unlikely looking plane/ship/tank and spends the next 2-3 hours dive bombing Keo’s toy soldiers with it. Keo is all  action–it doesn’t really matter whether it is Playmobil or Lego, it is all about blowing up and shooting with juicy spit-flinging sound effects.  Zoe, on the other hand, is kind of like a Stalin Mussolini burrito.  She watches the way the winds blows and then comes down on the side of the most politically advantageous.  Straight out of the Yalta handbook, she tries to work Kate against Ian and Ian against Kate just to see what comes of it, and usually it is the beginning of a long and tedious Cold War, and occasionally she ends up hanging upside down in the town square–metaphorically speaking of course…hmmm now that was a weird metaphor..but…I’ve written worse.   soooo….where was I?   oh yeah…Playmobil vs. Lego.  Kate and Ian log their time to the nano-second playing the other person’s game so that they can insist on the same amount of time  being spent on their own game.  They are the “rule keepers”,  so that works for them.  Zoe and Keo…not so much…they require a little more “encouragement” to keep their Playmobil/Lego commitment.  I don’t understand all the nuances of their games, but they are chock full of rules of etiquette.  Kate is in charge of enforcement, and from what I gather (whilst studiously trying NOT to listen to any of it), Ian often ends up on the short end of the Lego stick…and he finds some way to blame Zoe for the whole thing,   and Keo..well…he opportunistically swoops in and crushes everything and everybody taking no prisoners…unless you count the neighbor’s cat.

    The dynamic with my kids couldn’t be more different from my childhood.  It is so backwards that it throws me for a loop.  Instead of the “Mom he/she/it  is bugging me and won’t leave me alone–get her out of here!”,  it usually goes something like this:   I am upstairs writing self validating notes on my forehead, when any one of my children starts wailing from the basement about how any one  of one of  my children (Zoe) will not play with them.   They continue to bemoan the fact that that particular one child (Zoe) promised to play Legos or Playmobil with them and how she is now refusing to do so. 

Wha???  They are crying because one of them WON’T play with the rest?   where is the duct tape?  Where is the ditching??  Where are the clandestine night ops with prison camp heirarchy?  Where is the psychological scarring that will require years of therapy?  What wimps!  So I punish them all (because all of them have done something wrong even if it is just tattling to me about their sibling doing something vaguely wrong—or they will do something soon enough).  

Curiously unfulfilled and baffled,  they all go back downstairs and trade notes on how their mother is nuts and compare how many years of therapy each one will require to get over me, and then they happily start playing again. And then it occurred to me… I  am the stumbling block!   The system, starting with preschool and moving all the way through church, sports activities, and school, has so civilized my children that I have been forced into the role of tormentor/inhibitor/obstacle/ big brother.    After all,  they  have to overcome  something.   It’s my duty to tease them!  Tie them up…leave them at the side of the road to walk home…rearrange their toys..steal their candy…test all their good food to see if it’s poison…the usual.   They are all so programmed to be nice to each other (on pain of ostracism or suspension)…. that I feel obliged to step in and mess with their practically perfect and painless world a little bit and give them a story to tell when they are old enough to make up their own history…and I do mean “make up”  because it will be all lies  and hopeless exaggeration ..I have no idea  where they get that…must be Tane’s side of the family.

I’ve heard tell that  piano recitals are  dry, rather tedious affairs that lean toward the “severely boring” on the boring scale…at least for some families (the “normal” ones no doubt…whoever they are..).  Ours–not so much.

So…how far back can I go on this one??  Hmmmmm  It has to start with the moment I started living that mini van dream..ahhhh those magical memories..the sliding doors..the back up camera (and I don’t mean the second one in case the first one breaks either)..the automatic napping feature (that may actually be a special order item..or it may just be that I  found that my van runs just fine all by itself.. for short periods of time ..on the freeway..while I nap..not technically a “feature” probably…and not recommended by any uh, sane person..though it does refresh and revive with a big jolt of adrenaline when you wake up!.but don’t do it..the lack of endorsement is deafening on this particular point…) sooo…where was I??  Oh yeah,  the many features: did I mention the burl wood?  the push button hatch back?  and of course the run flat tires Whaaaaaaa??? (sound of screeching tires –camera zooms in on  the bulging and incredulous wha??? eyes of someone else who has been saddled with the worst idea in tires since  Fred said to Wilma, “chip off a piece of this granite –it should work just fine!”).  Not the dreamiest part of my mini van dream…these tires are bad in every conceivable way, and they wear out in 20,000 miles  leaving you the pleasure of buying another set of outrageously expensive crappy retarded tires that will last another 20,000 miles- if you are lucky and rotate them every 3,000 miles and NEVER DRIVE ON THEM!!!ARGGGGHHHH!!.   But, I have gotten ahead of myself…as usual..

The recital…ah yes, we were on our way to the recital which was held in a town about 10 miles to the north of us on a Sat. late afternoon at 4:00.  We veered onto the freeway with Kate’s stomach churning from nerves, Ian cringing in the backseat before the spector of his very first public performance of the musical variety, Zoe all dressed up and directing traffic when she could get a word in edgewise between Tane’s incessant backseat driving from the passenger seat, and Keo–unusually quiet.  Also in the car with us was the voice of my dad (bless his soul) in my head telling me that he would love to buy me some new tires ..whenever I could get around to it…the sooner the better…have you done it yet?  So as we entered the freeway and proceeded to accelerate to freeway speed..BANG!!!THUD THUD THUDWOPWOPWAPWAPOTHWACK!.. 

… ”I think something’s wrong”.

…”ya think?” 

 I thought some low flying large boned Canada goose had plowed into the side of us Kamikaze style, but unsure of that, I pulled out on the next exit and we had a little look-see. Well, the one rear tire did look a little uh…shall we say torn all apart into two separate pieces held together only by a little steel belting and some sidewall.  But, after all, they were run flats …and “the show must go on” even if Ian was interpreting it as an act of God to keep us from performing in the recital.  We intrepidly drove on, noting all the car tire places that were available on a Saturday night…not so many.    Did I mention that Tane had his suitcase in the car because we had to drop him off at the airport to make a flight right after the recital?  Oh…it just gets so messy and icky from here out, let’s just suffice it to say that Tane had to call all the tire stores and beg to get one to stay open until after the recital…We had to reorganize the recital so that we could go first so we could fix the car in time to get Tane to the airport, and yes, I did say “we” because I was also playing a duet with Kate in this recital–something I have managed to avoid ever since I became an adult, not realizing that adult privileges are revoked after having children who can sniff out hypocrisy.  We finally made it to the venue with seconds to spare and sounding ” like a freight train” according to Keo ( and he should know).  We were all a little frazzled, but the recital went relatively well……until Kate and I played our duet at which time some idiot’s phone…ok, it was MY phone started ringing and ringing and it rang all the way through the entire duet.  My favorite part of that is Tane completely nonplussed, sat right next to the ringing purse in the audience and never scrambled to find or silence the phone, and then has the audacity to glare around the room at the rest of the audience as though one of them was the culprit.

So, the recital completed, we limped to a tire store where we were informed that BOTH back tires had blown and that was the choo choo train effect we were feeling as we were wheeling around on them.  Keo was thrilled…we were not.   Soooo,  four new tires later, we were on the road at breakneck speed to get Tane to the airport on time, which is the only part of the story that is seamless—at least we got him there on time with no accidents or incidents-(the strip/cavity search was self inflicted and doesn’t count).

Lest you think that the story ends there, do not faint kind reader, but carry on to the end, because mama is a big fat glutton for punishment and decided that after all that we’d been through, and because Tane who never eats out was on a jet plane, and because it was by now 7:30pm and no one had eaten anything since noon, we decided to go to a real restaurant-where you go inside and you have a waiter..kind of—Sizzler!  So we approached the Sizzler in a celebratory mood and ordered with hope and determination.  But in the spirit of “no good deed goes unpunished”….I apparently got the mayosalad bar; Kate  and Ian got the kid steaks which they prepare with about a pound and a half of pepper and make sure no red is showing anywhere; Zoe ordered, but deigned to eat the chicken thingies; and Keo got something, but just really wanted to eat all the broccoli/mayo salad I got along with the pasta/mayo salad and the peas and mayo and cheese salad….and then…..and then…just as things are looking up…Keo does the technicolor yawn all over the table…well actually, I caught it on my plate, and then his plate and then a spare plate….you get the picture.  I just kept replacing  as he refilled the plate underneath him until I was pretty certain he was on empty.  But meanwhile, an unnatural hush came over the Sizzler crowd punctuated only by an occasional “Ohh.” or “eeeewww”. 

 I left an enormous tip for the waitress (what I refer to as adding salt to the wound), and hied we off to Kolob..or home …or whatever.  We just needed the piano recital day to finally come to an end.  And it did. Finally.