Past Blogs

I learned in fourth grade how to be an “A” student. The assignment was to do a booklet on Wisconsin; state symbols, animals, history, maps, etc.

The good nun who taught us graded our offerings and did a critique of our work which is forever burnt into my brain. She stated to the entire class that one student was totally outstanding and put everyone else to shame. Bernadette’s booklet was “three inches thick”. All the rest of us had merely done the assigned work; saintly Bernadette had toiled for hours to amass the thickest booklet sister had ever seen.We were instructed to hang our lazy heads in shame.

Of course, all the girls did exactly that. The boys looked out the window. For the next seven years I toiled to produce at least three times more volume than was required for each assignment.

This strategy worked like a charm. I could get stars, top grades, stickers and love from my teachers and family.

By some miracle, I woke up my last year in high school and realized that quantity was not a substitute for quality. I withdrew from the “more is better” race.

A harmful variation of the quantity over quality mantra is afoot in our grade and high schools now. Park outside most any school and watch the kids leave. The ones aspiring to be super students have their backs bowed by the weight of their backpacks. They carry more than mules in a pack train. Carrying every textbook you own plus a few for good measure grants status as a top student. I fail to see how deforming your back is going to improve your brain.

I long for a time when educators and parents value critical thinking over critical mass.

This week marks the fifth anniversary of my weekly blog. To celebrate, I want to expound on the letter “X”.

“Why ‘X’?” you might ask.

A glance down my blog archives gives the answer. I’ve never written a piece with its one word title beginning with “X”. I have no excuse for this exclusion but will exorcise it expeditiously.

I’m a fan of abcdarians, children’s alphabet books, and I always check to see what the author does for the “X” word. After x-ray and xylophone the pickings are mighty slim or extremely erudite. Let’s face it, “X” likes to hang out in the shadow of its buddy “E”.

A similar problem presents itself when cities employ logic and name parallel streets with names in alphabetical order. I would love to live on Xerxes Avenue in Minneapolis or Xenophon Street in San Diego. If you know of any streets with “X” names, please share. Visiting all the “X” streets might be a fine project for me….I like to drive.

I’ve saved the best “X” for last. It’s the “X” that is put on the end of notes, cards and letters…xxx. What could be better than love and kisses?

When we moved into our current house, I knew it would be a wonderful home.We are located between County Highway X and County Highway XX. There’s always a kiss waiting just outside our door.

Those of you with sharp eyes might have noticed that “Q” is AWOL as well. “Q” will be making its debut next week.

My mother was an Anglophile. A child of the Seifert and Bronenkant families, her lineage was one hundred per cent German. Nevertheless, everyone she met was convinced she had just stepped off a boat from the British Isles.

She adored everything English; the Queen, British literature, tea, Gilbert and Sullivan, Wedgewood and Royal Doulton. The British humor magazine Punch graced our coffee table along with a green tin of Pontefract Cakes, an odd black candy stamped with little castles.

When I was seventeen, my mum persuaded my father to abandon his beloved Ford Motor Company and buy a British car, a Morris Minor convertible.

My father was a wonderful man, but he was completely unmechanical. He was also my mother’s chauffeur as she had given up driving. Unfortunately, the only way anyone could keep a Morris running was to keep a mechanic in the trunk.

After a year of complete frustration, my father bought a Ford and gave me the Morris Minor. I was sincerely grateful to get a car. But keeping that car moving was a nightmare. Its distributor cap was on the bottom of the engine. If I drove through a puddle of any size, the car died and had to be towed. Being stranded became a way of life, especially in Spring.

I was saved by love. My true love’s father was an ace auto mechanic and a good man. The Morris spent hours in his back yard being dried out and tuned up.

For our wedding present, my father-in-law generously gave us an almost new car. He had rebuilt a vehicle that had been totaled two weeks after being purchased.

Blessedly for all, it was a Ford.

This is a love story. And like all love stories, it is happy and it is sad.

I helped my Aunt in Albuquerque for six years following my Uncle’s death. While my Uncle (my mother’s brother)  showered his wife with material things, he was a bit deficit in other ways.

My Aunt related how he once left her on a park bench in London saying, “I’ll be right back.” She sat for four hours waiting for his return.

Two years before my Aunt died, I moved her to the best assisted living in town. For meals, she was seated at a table for four, and one of the diners was a gentleman named Gene. I use the term “gentleman” in the fullest sense of the word.

Gene was witty, kind and fun loving, and every woman there who was in her right mind (and some that weren’t) were after him. The ladies all wanted to sit at his table, share their desserts and invite him to their rooms. He politely and charmingly declined all invitations.

My Aunt, on the other hand, frequently told me that “one man was more than enough, and she was through with men.” But Gene would be his gentlemanly self and pull out her chair, inquire about her health and laugh at her stories.

Slowly, I saw love grow between them. When my Aunt would not appear for a meal, Gene would phone her room to see if she was all right.

When I would come to visit, the first thing my Aunt would ask me to do was see Gene. “He is looking peaked,” she would say. “Make sure he’s not ill.”

And then, on one of my visits, she uttered these words,”You know, Mary, there really are good men in the world.”

My Aunt died three years ago, but I continued to visit Gene. Last month I was in Albuquerque and stopped to see him. I asked the receptionist how he was doing.

“Oh, he died four months ago,” she said.

The world is a lesser place for the loss of this caring man.

My mother-in-law was a world class worrier. Her worst case scenario was: “What if a nuclear bomb is dropped which destroys the zoos and the venomous snakes all escape.”

On a scale of 1 to 10, I would rate the bomb a 10 and the snakes a 2. She obviously did not agree.

Another worry involved the collapse of the earth.

“We are just digging too much out of the earth,” she would warn. Perhaps living in Arizona, a big mining state, gave her some inside information on this topic. Anyone attending the huge Tucson Gem and Mineral Show might be inclined to agree with her that the guts of the earth are all being scooped out .

And then there was the terror of the left hand turn. According to her, left hand turns ranked right up with the snakes on the menace meter. She did, however, have a remedy for this threat: she never made left hand turns.

Tables in restaurants also presented a major threat.

“There is NO PLACEMAT,” she would rail. “You don’t want to think about the last time that rag the busboy is using was washed.”

I might actually rate this one a 7 myself. I offered to buy her a ream of place mats from a restaurant supply store.

A fish dinner presented a serious crisis. A fish bone might lodge in someone’s throat, and only bread could dislodge it. Since I came from a family that ate fish with gay abandon, I was dumbfounded when my husband didn’t eat the first fish dinner I served.

“But why isn’t there bread on the table?” he inquired as if I were contemplating homicide.

The above accounts are all true, but one critical fact has to be added. In a real crisis, my mother-in-law was one of the strongest and bravest women I’ve ever known. She could make any steel magnolia look like a shrinking violet.