Past Blogs

My daughter is the universal woman. How did this state of affairs come to be?

Granted, our daughter is a woman of varied talents. Her first career was in hotel and restaurant management. She can feed 500 people and be nonplussed. This career ended on the way to the hospital when she was in labor with her second daughter. The owner of the B&B and restaurant that she managed repeatedly called her en route to the hospital with work issues. Clearly, when you can’t have time off to deliver a baby, a new career is called for.

Managing big box stores seemed more promising. The hours are brutal, but the behemoths do close for a few hours each night making a wee break possible.While managing Gap and Marshall Fields stores, our daughter became the universal woman, and it happened every Christmas Eve.

“The real desperate shoppers come in on Christmas Eve Day,” our daughter notes. “They have left everything for the last possible moment and don’t care what presents they buy. Anything stuffed into a box will do.”

With eyes glazed over, these last minute shoppers, mostly men, would ask our daughter for suggestions.

“What size does your lady wear?” she would ask.

“Why,’ the answer would come with lightning speed,”she’s your size.”

How amazing that our little girl grew up to be the universal woman.

No English phrase exists for the Japanese concept of wabi sabi. My favorite explanation is found in a children’s book by Mark Reibstein. This lovely book, entitled Wabi Sabi, is about an unassuming brown cat of that name.

When the cat asks her mistress and various animals the meaning of her name, they all reply,”That’s hard to explain.” Finally, a wise old monkey in a pine grove prepares tea for her and proclaims,”simple things are beautiful.” As Wabi Sabi sees her reflection in the tea bowl, she realizes that, although plain, she is beautiful as well.

I recently read Wabi Sabi to a group of fifty first and second graders and, to my delight, many of them grasped the idea.

Researching further, I came upon this description:

“Wabi sabi is the Japanese art of finding beauty in imperfection and profundity in nature, of accepting the natural cycle of growth, decay and death….it is underplayed and modest, the kind of quiet, undeclared beauty that waits patiently to be discovered.”

Wabi sabi had its origins in ancient China, entering Japanese culture with Zen masters. In particular, Sen no Rikyu of Kyoto built a teahouse with a door so low that even an emperor would have to bow down to gain entrance.

Wabi stems from the root wa which refers to harmony, peace and balance. A wabi person is one who is content with little and in tune with nature. Sabi pertains to the temporal nature of all things, the fleeting nature of beauty.

Wabi sabi can be found in weathered wood, the patina of old silver, rust, shadows and fallen leaves.

November is a wabi sabi time of year. The technicolor lushness of summer flowers and fall leaves has fled, yet the first glittering blanket of new snow has not yet transformed the landscape.

Bare umber seed heads
Silhouettes on leaden skies
Finches are busy.

Valueless things can have immense value. Our Montgomery Ward key chain is one of those objects. It resides in a desk drawer and holds the key to our neighbor’s house.   

We inherited the key chain from my late father-in-law. He was a good father, a good provider and a good neighbor. But he did have the misfortune of becoming drunk after two bottles of beer, and he rarely stopped at two. Despite a life long alcohol problem, he always showed up for work, earning top dollar as an extremely fast and skilled auto body man.

Money rolled in, but it also rolled out just as quickly. My father-in-law was generous. When his barber hit hard times and was in danger of losing his shop, it was my husband’s dad who loaned him the money that saved the business.

He worked pounding out cars into his seventies when retirement became a necessity. His nest egg was almost nonexistent.

This fact did not bother my father-in law in the least. He frequently told us how lucky he was. His small trailer and the lot it sat on were paid for. The electric bill was only $15.00 a month (some creative wiring may have been involved), and he did not have to pay any property taxes. In fact, due to his low income level, he actually got a rebate on the property tax bill.

“I’m so lucky,” he would say,”Uncle Sam sends me a check every month, and we even have money left over!” To this he would add, “And I get a free gift every month.” Each month he would go to his local “Monkey” Ward store for the free gift given to their loyal charge card customers. He was as excited as a young child awaiting Santa Claus.

So our key chain is much more than a place to park a key. It’s a reminder that some people can be extremely grateful when living on Social Security … and a monthly free gift.

I can’t think of a better Thanksgiving message.

Our son likes to get high. He is once again building a tree house. It’s his fifth tree house, and he is forty-three years old.

His first, childhood tree house was in our beloved willow tree. My husband built the structure, but young eyes were watching. By age nine, our boy wanted to be higher in the tree and was able to build an addition to the original structure by himself.

The next tree house, number three, was breathtakingly high and constructed when he was fifteen. We didn’t worry about the neighbor kids falling out of the tree, though, as no boards were nailed to the trunk for stairs. Years of tree house living had enable our kid to scale the trunk. Privacy was insured, but the squirrels did claim the platform for their nest location one year.

Twenty years later, the tradition continued and our son built a back yard tree house for his children in California. Everyone in our family seems to have a genetic throwback for preferring life in the trees.

His current tree house  is a work in progress. When completed, it will be a room in the trees set on carefully engineered beams and concrete piers. Our son’s media of choice is concrete. He is particularly proud of the spline he just completed. Since “spline” was not a word in my vocabulary, I needed to be enlightened. A spline is a curve that connects two or more specific points, or that is defined by two or more points. You will find his fine concrete spline in the following photos.

I wonder what will come next? I’m not excluding the possibility that he may someday leave land living behind and build his primary dwelling in the trees. He wouldn’t be the first to do this.

Click here for the female version of a tree house

I don’t subscribe to pity parties, nor do I favor unbridled nostalgia. But I do occasionally mourn (not wallow) for good things lost. The small pleasures that have disappeared from daily life are numerous.

In the distant past, I could drive into a filling station on a freezing, blustery day and remain in my heated car while an attendant pumped my gas and dipped the dip stick.

I did not give up this service without a protest. When full service stations started to disappear, I would pull in, look perplexed, pick up the hose and wave it aimlessly. Sadly, this ploy no longer brings an attendant running.

I miss travel agents as well. One phone call and a few days later a tidy packet of tickets, maps and itineraries would arrive in the mail. Does anyone relish the frustrating hours spent on a computer trying to be a do-it-yourself travel agent?

And then there’s the library. I always enjoyed chatting with the clerks when I checked out my books at the circulation desk. I am not fond of  interacting with a computer that may or may not allow me to check out my books. I can bypass the computer by getting a rental book, Friends of the Library sale book or having a fine. One lonely clerk will still take my money and check out the rest of my books as well. Unfortunately, she recently asked me why I don’t “run up an account”.

“Because I would like you to keep your job,” was my unspoken reply.

As of now, we don’t have to cook our own food in restaurants, but many cafes do expect their customers to bus the tables. Since we already pay a substantial part of restaurant employees’ wages (tips in America are no longer for good service, but to keep single moms from starving), not  busing one’s table might be a new, subversive simple pleasure.

Hotels have recently started the “no maid option”. Fore go maid service and get $5.00 taken off the bill.

No thank you. I’m the maid almost every day of the year, and it’s a pleasure paying for skilled housekeeper.

Click here for gas pumping insight