Meth is Death

A few weeks ago I was in the checkout line at Rays, one of the two grocery stores in our tiny town where really one would suffice.  You can’t throw a rock without hitting a bank in our town but if you spotted the average Waldportian, you’d probably elect them “least likely to be found making a deposit.”  Unless it’s in the can and bottle recycling machines outside of Rays, that is.  Which do, indeed, boast the longest lines in town.  If you want to eat out here we have Vicki’s Burger Bar, The Flounder Inn (which is really a watering hole), The Salty Dog (also a watering hole but with decent grub to soak it up), or the proverbial Pizza, Chinese, and Mexican restaurants.  And that’s all folks.  Except for fried chicken and Jojos at Rays.  If you want to window shop along main street, windows are mostly what you’ll find.  There are a few occupied stores with names like Knives and More but mostly there are just windows.  Windows with signs that say “for rent” or “for sale” or “Meth is Death.” 

I stood in line, ice cream in hand, waiting for the two scruffy guys ahead of me to buy their groceries.  Being a compulsive reader, I scanned the tabloid headlines for the latest weight loss accomplishments of airbrushed women and the news of all things Hollywood while I waited my turn.  I was distracted by all that life-altering information until I realized the normally hyper checkout guy at Rays was huffing and puffing and talking to himself a bit more vociferously than usual.  Looking up from People, I switched to the real life drama unfolding in front of me and caught the gist of the plot, which was that the scruffy guys ahead of me didn’t have enough money for their already bagged items.  Mr. Huff and Puff was getting ready to unbag their few items and they were turning to go make a deposit outside or something by the time I tuned in. 

When I was a young lass grocery shopping with my mother at Starr Market in Middletown, Rhode Island, I dreaded the checkout line. I never saw a credit card or check book emerge from the depths of my mother’s purse in monetary emergencies so I have to assume they were nonexistent for the average housewife of the 1970’s.  Cash was king.  And my mom was not a gal for numbers.  Or calculators, also not standard 70’s pocketbook stuffers.  Until we hit adolescence, it was our lot to remain parked in the station wagon with our grandma, Mimi, playing the color game or Quaker meeting while Mom ran into the store for “I’ll be right back, I just need a couple of things.”  Mom would emerge an hour later with a full cart while we whined and poor Mimi searched her mental closet for another game from her career as a PE teacher. 

But once we hit double digits, we weren’t falling for that trick anymore.  We hit the aisles with Mom, pushing the cart while she planned her weekly meals, starting with the meat and ending at the ice cream with a trail of “no’s” scattered in our wake like breadcrumbs from our every request for whatever new cereal we’d been brainwashed to want in between Speed Racer and H.R.Pufnstuf.  When not uttering monosyllabic responses, Mom was occupied with keeping a running total in her head, muttering with each new addition to the cart like Mr. Pufnstuf at Rays.  By the time it was our turn at the checkout line, Mom was trapped in a whirling dervish of numbers.  She bravely stepped ahead to monitor the cash register, facing her demons while we emptied the cart onto the black belt.  Inevitably, by the time we got to the meat section of our cart, Mom was in a panic. 

Time slowed down. 

These were the days before my brother’s college friend invented some UPC scanner something or other at his work-study job and retired as a bazillionaire before his cap and gown had gathered a layer of dust but I forget exactly how the prices were entered.  I do remember the nifty conveyor belt which transported our groceries through a doggy door for curbside pick-up, however, and as our already approved groceries filled the bins which were destined for the belt, Mom began her ritual of selecting from the stragglers.  She asked the cashier to add one packet of meat at a time, checking the total with each new addition and comparing it against the bundle of bills clutched tightly in her fist, sometimes searching the depths of her purse for more volunteers.  And this was right about the time I started wishing I was out in the car with Mimi playing, “I’m thinking of something . . . green.”      

While Mom struggled to reconcile the cashier’s total with the bills in hand and the cashier struggled to maintain her calm, I struggled to maintain my persona of adolescent cool.  “Okay, subtract the steak and add the chicken,” was something Mom might say while the line of impatient shoppers huffed and puffed behind us and I enlisted my peripheral vision to see if I knew any of them.  We lived on an island.  So usually I did. 

Mom’s checkout game continued until she’d completely revised our weekly menu including a yellow and green vegetable for every night right there at the register and I was left with the rejected pile of meat in front of me which we suddenly weren’t having. 

“Kelly, go put those back,” Mom would say, completely oblivious to the fact that Doris Nally, the gum-snapping-most-intimidating-“colored” girl in middle school was in line right behind us and now also knew what I’d be eating all week.  And what I wouldn’t.  I didn’t yet know about Harry Potter and his invisibility cloak, but I sure wished I had one anyway right about then.

“Excuse me,” I mumbled, clutching packets of meat the color of my shame and squeezing past the impatient islanders behind us, avoiding eye contact with Doris, only too aware that I was the sole fish swimming upstream. 

As a result of all this drama, to this day I have what I call “checkout line anxiety.”  I stuff my purse with checkbooks and credit cards and some amount of cash and still I have a small moment of panic when faced with a cashier.  And so it was with great empathy for my fellow scruffy shoppers that I stepped up to Mr. Huff and Puff at Rays and started to say, “Oh, I would have paid for . . .,” indicating the items he was reaching in to remove from the bag in front of him.  Like Santa, H&P spoke not a word but went straight to his work, removing the groceries and placing them next to him to be reshelved.  I was feeling bad that I’d been distracted by the magazine rack and was about to finish my sentence when I had my first gander at the items he was removing.  Little Debbie Strawberry Shortcake bars, generic Strawberry soda, Swiss something or other that was definitely not from Switzerland, and a few other food-ish things whose first and last ingredients were sugar.  “. . . those,” died right there on my Good Samaritan lips while I secretly murmured my thanks to Jessica Simpson for her baby fat.  There was no way I’d buy any of those things for those guys or myself or anyone else.  Meth heads, I realized. 

Meth is Death, like the sign in our empty store windows say.  Ours is a community that has been poisoned by meth.  One in four kids at Bella’s school are homeless.  Many are being raised by their grandparents, who are questionably good candidates since they also reared the previous failed generation.  Too many folks on the coast here are like barnacles, clinging to the edge of the continent in serious danger of being washed out with the next turn of the economic tide.  Kids come and go with such alarming regularity in Bella’s school that they really should install a revolving door.  Two kids in Bella’s class moved last week, which was two weeks before school gets out.  Just today Isaiah’s friend mentioned a boy whose name I didn’t recognize.  “Is he new?” I asked.  “No,” he said, “he’s been here since April.” 

On Friday, Bella brought home her weekly packet with a notice that free camp will be held all summer for all kids with free breakfast and lunch included.  The notice read, “Over half of Lincoln County students qualify for free or reduced lunch and over 80% of Waldport’s grade school students are considered economically disadvantaged.  About 400 students in the district are considered homeless.”  Lincoln County is 1000 square miles, which is the same size as Rhode Island.  Lincoln County has 5200 students and Rhode Island has 14,000.  Yet they both have roughly the same number of homeless students: 400, 420. 

The school notice also read, “Oregon has higher than national average rates for hunger and food insecurity.”  Food insecurity?  I thought.  A new term for me.  But then I remembered my Starr market days.  And I got it.

A Field Trip with Grandma

On Monday I chaperoned Bella’s class field trip to Yaquina Head, a point of land jutting into the Pacific featuring a lighthouse and tide pools.  It used to be an easy diversion for whale watching or tide pooling and we stopped there many times but now it’s an outstanding natural area run by the BLM which translates to $25 per car if you want to find some sea stars in your spare time.  Sigh.

Normally I drive my own car on these school trips given my aversion to that timeless classic—99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall—but with the price of gas, I relented.  Bella was thrilled and we settled into a seat near the front of the bus like good girls with Logan, the three of us enjoying the freedom from seat belts and car seats that school buses afford, since they are so automatically safe or whatever.  Not to mention the unlimited texting.  As our bus plus another filled up with the three classes of first and second graders, I turned around and noticed another chaperone sitting by himself right behind us.  He had long scraggly gray hair and looked like Uncle Sam fallen on hard times.

“Morning,” he said with a snaggle-toothed smile. 

“Hi,” I managed, trying not to betray my shock at his appearance and quickly turning back around in my seat as the teacher began her lecture about bus etiquette—back to back, seat to seat.  Welcome to Waldport, I thought, repeating the mantra which often comes to mind around here and settling into my seat to seat with Uncle Sam a few feet behind me.  Even with my cold, I could smell the stale cigarette smoke drifting across the aisle from the clothing of the little boy sitting there.  Ah, the smell of the coast, I mused, stale booze and cigarettes.  I’d actually contemplated canceling my commitment to attend this trip, coughing as I was into week two and thinking perhaps I should be going to the doctor instead.  But Bella’s teacher had asked me more than once if I was sure I could chaperone because they are always desperately in need of parent volunteers for these trips and were cancelling it if they didn’t find enough.  So, there I sat.

Back in Portsmouth, RI, the Stepford Moms all jockey for position like thoroughbreds at the starting line when the field trip permission slips hit the backpack express and there were always many more eager volunteers than were needed.  Out here on the left coast, the problem is the exact opposite due in large part to the pesky criminal background check and Safe Schools training course required for volunteers which a) you need to complete and b) you need to pass.  I suspect it’s this latter part which is largely responsible for dearth of volunteers.  So, even though Uncle Sam was not exactly a perfectly turned out Stepford Mom, at least he had passed the test. 

The half hour trip north was uneventful and soon we filed off the bus, bundling up for yet another typical cold, windy, foggy spring day at the Oregon Coast.  I could feel my chest tightening up and patted my Kleenex stash like an addict.  This was our second field trip to Yaquina Head this year as part of a marine education program and these kids know their sea stars.  The mighty Pacific was having a minus low tide and we were the first lucky group who got to climb down the hundred plus stairs to explore the extremely exposed tide pool critters.  My group consisted of Bella and her friend Jersey, both easy, Josiah, who is very smart but never stops talking in a very high, whiny voice, Sam who is disadvantaged but adorable with a speech impediment which caused me to ask him to repeat everything he said at least three times, which he did without complaint, and Gabby, the smallest girl in the class and the only first grader in our group. 

Clutching our laminated color charts, we slipped and slided over the sea weed and rocks, trying not to step on muscles, barnacles, and anemones, seeking out the purple urchins and sculpins pictured for our scavenger hunt.  The instructions for the trip stated that we’d be doing a LOT of walking and to wear comfortable walking shoes.  This made no sense to me as I knew we were going to the tide pools which equals water which equals hundreds of little wet feet.  Why on earth they didn’t say to wear boots is still beyond me. And as a result, I held Gabby’s hand while her sneakers slipped and slid on all that exposed slick seaweed, rescuing her from falling for a wet conclusion over and over again.  Sam had informed me three times while we descended the stairs until I finally understood that his shoes were a size one and too big for him and so he fell in a pool and was wet up to almost his knees, his too-big shoes squeaking with water for the rest of the day.  We found everything on our charts except a lemon nudibranch, including a huge purple sunflower sea star with white polka-dots at least two feet across and a gigantic gumboot chiton the size of, well, a boot before they called us to change stations. 

Then we sloshed back up the hundred plus stairs to a platform overlooking the tide pools and had a snack before walking to the lighthouse where we realized that there were thousands of sea birds, mostly common murres, dotting the water and colonies of them crowding the tops of the rocks while mating and nesting.  We watched them in the cold wind while the sun tried to burn through the eternal sea fog and then we had our turn in the lighthouse, climbing another hundred plus stairs up and down again to learn about the life of a lighthouse keeper and the lens and light pattern unique to this lighthouse.  The view was spectacular and we could see the tide creeping back in to cover the places where we’d been standing earlier.

We spent another half hour or more at the restroom while over a hundred kids went potty, leading me to conclude that field trips are all about leaving school, going potty and washing your hands in a variety of restrooms, doing some other things in between potty trips, and then heading back to school where the first thing you will probably do is go potty again.   

Climbing back onto the bus, Gabby begged me to sit with her so I moved a few seats back and across the aisle to sit with her and Morgan.  Gabby was definitely my number one fan by then and I attributed this to my excellent navigational skills which prevented her from bringing home the tide pool in her shoes.  Before we could depart, the teacher had to mediate a critical bus seat dispute behind us, which inspired Gabby to say, “You’re a teacher,” insinuating that I could have handled the situation myself. 

“No,” I said, “I’m not a teacher.” 

“You’re a mom.” 

“Yes,” I agreed, “I’m just a Mom.” 

Mediating bus seat disputes was clearly best left to the trained professionals, I was thinking, when she piped up again, “An old mom,” she said.  “Or a Grandma.” 

“I’m not a Grandma,” I said, feeling suddenly feeble and also quite defensive, even though most women my age around here are, indeed, Grandmas already and I am the exception, not the rule. 

“But you probably will be one,” Gabby said sweetly then added with great certainty, “Soon.” 

She began happily singing Jingle Bells, showing me the lyrics which she had written down on a piece of paper.  Fingering my wrinkles and cursing that worthless Retin A creme, I willed Bella to need me for something, anything, that would rescue me from the innocent torment of Gabby, who had now moved on to chirping the ABC song.  So it wasn’t my excellent navigational skills she’d admired after all, it was my grandmotherly image.  Probably her own Grandma was 50 too.  Welcome to Waldport, I started to chant again when Morgan intruded.

“That’s my uncle,” she said with a second-grade sneer, pointing diagonally across the aisle ahead of us at Uncle Sam, who definitely looked like he could be her Grandpa. 

“Well, why don’t you sit with him?” I asked, still looking for a graceful grandmotherly exit.

“Because I don’t like him,” she said matter-of-factly. 

“But it’s so nice that he came today on your field trip,” I said in my best milk and cookies imitation.  She looked back at me like a teenager.  I shut up. 

The bus doors closed and we were finally on our way to the lunch stop.  Above the general clamor, I detected music.  Without turning around, I realized it was coming from the seat right behind us where another chaperone was listening to Christian rock music on her I-phone.  As the bus accelerated so, too, did her excitement and she became increasingly moved, singing and thumping the back of my seat for emphasis.  I willed that bus to move faster with a sudden impatience I’d never before known for the Cheetos and Uncrustable that Bella had packed for my lunch. 

Finally we came to Rock Creek Park and disgorged again to eat lunch near the porta-potty.  One of the other classes had reared steelhead from eggs to smolts and they were ready to be released so after lunch the hundred plus kids got in line by the creek, ready to do their part for the fish.  The teacher began scooping them out of a water-filled bucket and I watched while the first student accepted the clear plastic cup containing a 2 inch smolt, stepped up to the edge of the bank, and unceremoniously dumped it into the creek from a height of about 6 feet.  This did not seem right.  And I am a fish biologist.  So I propped myself up in the creek with one foot in the water and one foot out, helping each student navigate the short but increasingly slippery muddy embankment to the water’s edge, telling each and every one of them the same thing, “Now, put the cup INTO the water and let the fish swim out.”  I said that same sentence with minor experimental modifications for clarity over a hundred times and still some smolts were dumped in from a grand height, some were poured in from a few inches, and one or two were spilled into the mud.  It was a fascinating exercise in following directions, which maybe 10% managed to do.  The last girl, Opal, slid right down the embankment, flinging her entire cup of water up into my face. 

“Can I please sit with you?” I begged Bella as we loaded back onto the bus for our journey back to the school restrooms.

“Sure, Mom,” she said.  I snuggled up to my eight-year-old and searched through my purse for Opal’s smolt.  Some day I’ll be a Grandma, I thought, but hopefully not soon.

K3

PS  Happy Birthday Hannah Amelia!

Some days chicken . . .

. . . some days feathers, as my Mom is fond of saying. And that is how I found myself cursing both the electric company and my husband this morning.

The hardest thing I have to do each day is get up. I am not a morning person. I abhor alarm clocks. And I am not fit for conversation until at least one sip of coffee has burned my tired lips. But each morning as a single parent with a husband, I make myself get out of bed, hit the cold floor, struggle to pull my UGGS on, shuffle to the stove, turn on the flame beneath the kettle by giving it a little blow to connect the gas with the pilot light (a tiny idiosyncrasy which takes morning breath to a new level), wake up the kids, skip to the loo, and crumple up school papers and AARP bulletins to start the fire in the wood stove. By then, the kettle is screaming at me and I commence the ritual of making Tico coffee--pouring hot water in the opening of a sock stretched around a wire frame into which I have already scooped what remains of my Costa Rican coffee stash, then witnessing with delight the miracle of clear water going in the top and coffee pouring out the bottom into the waiting pot below which used to belong to my Gringo coffeemaker until it broke.

In the meantime, I heat the milk and slice bread for toast or throw a couple waffles in the toaster for the kiddies. By the time they emerge from their yurt, their breakfast is ready and I am savoring the first sip from my bowl of coffee in lieu of an IV and greet them, pretending to function, while the caffeine infuses my bloodstream. I gulp down as much as I can before we rush off to catch Isaiah’s car pool, drop Bella at school and I drive back home, slowing to admire one or two elk herds along the way, where the mudroom is now warm and the yurts are all mine. I heat up another cup of kindercoffee, stuff more wood in the stove, fire up my computer, and savor the caffeine and silence while the world wide web warms up at my fingertips. The morning is mine, usually. The afternoons are not. Nor are the evenings.

And so it was this morning. As usual, I perused my email for things that needed doing, searched the web for issues from my morning NPR fix, opened Facebook and checked my Words with Friends, scanning posts for need-to-know items like what my FB friends are making for dinner (which is always better than anything I’ve planned, like Top Ramen) opened my latest book project, and began to multi-task for the morning between all these things and more.

By 9:30 I had already looked up the author of a book like mine (except that his is published) as well as opening an email message box to him while pondering whether or not I should actually write to him and, if so, what I should say as well as checking the submission requirements of his publisher. I was in the middle of six games of Words with Friends and was actively playing with two of them on and off. I’d read the morning email trail which included a potential afternoon field trip I might want to go on today. I was in the middle of writing a press release and had my book project open and had jotted down some ideas for that. I’d noted that there was an earthquake in Alaska but no tsunami was expected. Good. And noted that there was an office depot order tracking email in my inbox for a Kelly Kittel-Roby on an order I definitely did not place under an alias I've never used for something called Premium Protection and Optimization, $77 and, of all things, Internet Security Service at an additional $12.50.

I had a row or two of documents open on the bottom of my screen, effectively in the middle of at least eight different things and just getting started on all of them, really, when the power went off. The computer screen went black. The yurt became silent except for the crackling of the wood in the stove. Just like that.

“What the *&%^?,” I said out loud.

Now, the last time I checked, the Oregon coast was not considered a part of the third world. But this was our third power outage in two months and the last one was just last Tuesday. I looked out the window even tho I already knew it was an unusually stellar day because they’d been talking about it all week like they were expecting the second coming—sunny, no wind, warming to the ‘60’s no less. After snow and temps in the 30’s the past few mornings, it was rather like a miracle. Clearly, the weather was not to be blamed. But perhaps that solar storm I'd heard about on NPR? I double-checked, but no, I had not somehow forgotten that I'd moved to Costa Rica either.

So I ran around the yurt unplugging all major power cords with fun solar storm NPR facts running thru my head like "a solar Katrina traveling at 2.7 million mph" and "interplanetary magnetic field" and, my personal favorite, "coronal mass ejection." And besides all these fun phrases, when the power came back on after the first outage in January, it came on with a vengeance that blew out two different power outlets and we don’t have many to begin with here in the "simple" life.

Then I plugged in the old-fashioned dial phone we got after the January outage when we went with no phone or power for three days.

Then I found my colorful cheater glasses and looked up the power company number in one of our 50 phone books which are all slightly different but with equally tiny text and arrive weekly in our mailbox like some kind of collusion between the phone company(-ies) and postal service to justify their outdated existence in a changing world. "See? You still need both of us to deliver these weekly updated phone books!"

Then I proceeded to call the wrong company (because here in the third world we have three electric power providers for this great service, don't ask me why), calling and pressing one three times as well as entering my phone number and whatever else the recorded voices asked with no success, possibly because I was calling Central Lincoln PUD and later I found out our provider is Consumers Power. Who knew? (More on that later.) So, I called the local number and left a scathing message asking the likes of why on earth on a sunny day I had no service and had I forgotten to pay my bill or was it the solar storm and this was the third time this year and on and on until I ran out of breath and hung up.

Then I did what I should have done in the first place. I called Andy. Except that I didn’t call him first because I knew if I did he’d ask if I’d called the power company to report the outage and I knew this because that was what he'd said last Tuesday when I called him first and had to admit that, “no,” I had not, conditioned as I was to living in the tropics with regular outages and simply waiting it out. This time I could reply, “why, yes." In fact, of course I had. (Later I would receive a nice message from Terri at Central Lincoln PUD saying that I must have dialed the wrong number. Andy, of course, as usual, being the guy "who knew.")

“Good morning, honey,” he said unsuspectingly.

“Do you know why we don’t have any power? Again?” I asked. (I might have said "hi," first, I forget.)

“Oh, ah, yeah, they scheduled an outage for this morning from 9 to 11, they called last night and left a message on my cell phone and I got it this morning,” he said.

Do I really need to describe to you my reaction upon hearing this “news” from my husband of 23 years who asked me 8 years ago why I couldn’t read his mind yet and who was happily going about his power-filled day three hours away in Portland? What did he think I did all morning anyway? What if I wanted a piece of toast?

“Yeah, well,” I began, “why on earth didn’t you call and tell me? This is the third time the computer has had a hard shut-down,” I began, the lecture I’d received from our computer guy about the perils of a “hard shut-down” beginning to scroll through my head.

“Oh, the computer . . .,” he said, after which I began to unleash the torrent of my fury on him and he said, “I have to go,” and hung up.

That was helpful. I hoped he could read my mind right about then.

And so that is also how I came to be sitting in my car at the Waldport Laundromat wasting my sunny day waiting for our clothes to wash while listening to NPR who was finished with solar storms apparently and had moved on, informing me that today is International Women’s Day which is celebrated in a variety of lovely ways around the world and that, for example, in Italy, right then, men were giving the women they love bouquets of flowers. And I was sitting there eating a maple bar. Which I could barely taste because I have the second of what will hopefully be only two colds in succession but I was eating it anyway because I could recall how it tasted and because I am just plain sick of soup. Plus I wanted to chew on something sweet to pair with my salty frustration.

The only thing that might have made me feel even less celebrated (besides having selected the bavarian creme-filled maple bar) would have been if I’d glanced down at my lap and realized, not for the first time, that I was still wearing my Grinch pajama bottoms. As it was, I sat there licking maple frosting from my fingers in what was rapidly becoming way-too-warm black fleece pants and an equally unflattering thermal shirt while picturing the signoras of Italy flouncing about in lovely floral print designer dresses and equally colorful shoes, happily receiving matching spring bouquets, Grazie!, while lunching at outdoor cafes overlooking ancient fountains, sipping chilled wine and sharing forkfuls of fresh pasta and arugula with their adoring lovers. Who may or may not have been their husbands. Probably not, I thought, crumpling up my donut bag.

K3

Happy Birthday Monkeys!

The ides of February are upon us, meaning we are poised in between the birthdays of Christiana and Bella. Christiana turned 20 last Thursday and Bella is counting the days until she turns 8 on Friday. From American Forestry books to American Girl dolls, as their birthday presents indicate and as I’ve come to think of them lately. (Except really what I think is from birth control to Polly Pockets but I’m not going to write that here.) It was only when Bella brought home the obligatory second grade Chinese Zodiac wheel that we realized she and Christiana, being 12 years apart, share the same symbol – the monkey. Now, probably much like any old zodiac regardless of what language it speaks, you could find traits of yourself in every one of the twelve Chinese zodiac characters. But I can say with some certainty that the following monkey traits do, indeed, fit my second and last girls: motivator, improviser, quick-witted, inquisitive, flexible, innovative, problem solver, self-assured, sociable, artistic, polite, dignified, objective, and factual.

I have long described Christiana as one who knows her mind and sets out with a purpose to achieve her goals. I learned a long time ago that when she stepped her self-assured self up to the ice cream counter and decisively ordered pink bubblegum ice cream, no amount of me trying to talk her out of that hideously artificially-colored flavor would work and that, indeed, she would eat every last blaring bit of bubblegum before concluding with a fuchsia-tongued smile. In short, she taught me at a very young age to heed her word. Because she was true to it. And so it was that on her big day last week we headed to the valley to take her to dinner and she chose the restaurant, announcing that she wanted a piece of fresh fish and that is exactly what she ate down to the last little flake.

Meanwhile, back here in yurtville, Bella has planned her own party. And she has already drawn and colored the pictures of she and her guests cavorting happily at the event, even though they haven’t even RSVP’d yet. She is organized and artistic and doesn’t forget a thing, which is why she is the keeper of the grocery list. Last year she went to Automercado with our friend, Wendy, after a sleepover and informed her on every aisle what she needed to buy until finally Wendy said, “Bella, you don’t even live with us.” “I know,” Bella said happily, not skipping a beat, “but you do need apples.” And they did. I have long said if anything happened to me, Bella would take right over and never miss a beat.

I try not to compare my kids and had never really drawn a Venn diagram around these two, but that monkey thing got me thinking. They do, indeed, have a large circle of commonality. Both are very creative and can/could be sent to their rooms to “clean” them and stay for an entire afternoon playing, happily emerging hours later having never picked up one single thing. Bella is the only one wearing my high heels and dresses around here or fully taking advantage of my handbag collection. Recently she emerged from her yurt dressed for work at her new Home Depot job wearing an orange apron that used to belong to Christiana and sporting a giraffe nametag from her summer Bible school - Wild about the Bible or something equally exotic. She was toting Hannah’s new pink tool kit left out of the post-holiday carry-on luggage, a screwdriver being a threat to our national security and all, and sporting plastic high heels to match. When I asked for some remodeling advice, she informed me that, sorry, but she was on her lunch break. And so, as with her sister before her, I just follow along and try not to get in the way, letting my two monkeys plan their own parties, pick their own ice creams, and find their way. From the second year in elementary school to the second year in college, they both stride through life with confidence and a big smile and so far that is working just fine.

K3

PS Yesterday Bella received her birthday card from Grandma Moore and read it to me while we were driving to ballet. 'For a Granddaughter who's amazing, talented, fun-loving, a great sport, a shining star, and most of all . . . a super sweet girl who's loved very much!' "That Grandma sure knows how to pick the perfect card," she said, clearly agreeing with every American Greetings word.

Never Buy a Cat on Sale

I’ve been shopping for over four decades now like every good Born-in-the-USA consumer and I should have learned by now that there are some things that are not a bargain at any price. Apparently, I have not. Since losing Duncan in July we have been half-heartedly scouring Craigslist and the like in search of a new faithful companion. Not a replacement. There aren’t any of those. And so it was that I found myself at the Safe Haven Humane Society one rainy night in November with Bella and Christiana, both of whom are overly sentimental shoppers who say things like “Awww” at every cute thing they see, living or not. Cute, or not.

The first “Awww” creature we encountered at Safe Haven was a fluffy white Malamute puppy with sad brown eyes and a heart condition. It was impossible not to love him, handicap and all. We were drawn into his enclosure like it was our destiny, digging our fingers into his irresistible down and dreaming of wrapping him around us and taking him home. Until one of the many shelter workers roused us from our reverie with a good dousing of cold water words like grooming and mud and every-time-we-take-a-walk. We considered all the dirt as well as the creek that surround our yurt, picturing all that snowy fur turned brown and tangled like March in New England, then gave him one final pat and backed away from all that adorable temptation.

Entering the long kennel room we passed easily by the chihuahuas and every kind of pit bull mix known to man, including the ones named Bella, until we came to rest in front of a cage full of black and white exuberance, three or four puppies tangled up and tumbling over each other, all SO happy to see us. We swayed. Vicki Vale (of Batman fame) quickly became our favorite and when we picked her up she snuggled into our embrace like she was home already while her siblings, Bruce Wayne and the like, chewed on our shoe laces and peed on the floor. We took turns holding Vicki, admiring her serenity and markings, took photos on our phones, and sent them to Andy. He said no. The comic book puppies were an unknown blend of husky and lab and whomever else Trixie, their Mom, had entertained. Trixie, yet another shelter worker informed, was also living at Safe Haven but was currently at the vet being fixed. So we couldn’t get any more information from her on the puppy paternity. We called Andy and his unsentimental voice of reason prevailed. Being any part husky meant they still had a strong hunting instinct and we live with resident herds of elk and deer who regularly sleep and eat in our pastures. Andy was right. We conceded that Vicki was not to be ours and we all parted ways with a whimper.

Next we braved the elements, venturing outside in the rain to check out the older dogs. Nothing we wanted to live with. That left the cat room. Now we are not cat lovers and people who call me Kitty are the bane of my existence, so why we ever even opened that door is questionable. But in we went, dutifully examining the lines of cages along the wall with no real intent and a few errant lower-case “awws.” And that’s when we spotted an attractive sign proclaiming in colorful double letters, “Great Barn Cat.”

Now, back in June when we’d returned from Costa Rica to the yurts, we discovered that we had what you would definitely call a “Great Barn Cat” living somewhere in the stacks of wood piled up in our lower barn. This cat was vaguely Siamese looking but we never got close enough while it lived to know it well. It demanded nothing of us except to be left alone. Our kind of kitty. And clearly “our” cat was, indeed, what this colorful shelter sign also boasted, “A Great Mouser,” as we never fed or watered it even once. We had no particular fondness for each other, that cat and us, our only encounters being a blur of cream-colored fur whizzing by whenever we ventured into our barn to retrieve a gardening tool or a bike. Still, we felt some degree of sadness when Andy discovered it lying near his saw mill one morning in August, dead. Having just lost Duncan, we felt a little bereft. And even though we never invited what we now knew was a he into our lives, his absence left a kind of blurry void.

So seeing that carefully lettered shelter sign posted on the cage of the last cat on the left got us to thinking. And it was on sale.

“We have a barn,” we said to each other.

“We have mice,” we reasoned.

“We’ll take it,” we announced.

Perhaps we were a bit hasty. Perhaps we should have asked more questions. Like when the shelter workers’ eyebrows raised uniformly upon learning that we’d chosen Molly, the Queen of the Cat Room, as they now informed us she was known while processing an inordinate amount of paperwork for one discounted cat. Or when they told us we had one week to return her if things didn’t work out and then let it slip that she’d been returned once already. Or when they hesitated over who would put her in a box and bring her out to us. Or when they warned us not to open the box until we arrived home. But we were committed. And anyway, why should we care? She was going to live in the barn and require nothing from us like her independent predecessor. We paid our $15 and left.

We drove the remaining hour home that dark and rainy night with our new barn cat in her box on Christiana’s lap, complaining loudly. And when we arrived home, Molly sprang from the box and immediately began making herself right at home. “She’s fat,” we said, finally getting our first good look at her. “Is that normal?” we wondered as her belly hung low in front of her hind legs, swaying to and fro as she walked. We knew very little about cats and wondered if it was a tumor. “Ah well, she’ll be getting plenty of exercise soon,” we said while visions of Molly mouse hunting danced in our heads. She was pretty, a tortoise-shell they informed us, with white feet and light green eyes. They’d told us to buy the purple bagged cat food at Costco and sent us home with a starter kit, warning us to feed her only ½ cup a day or she would eat and eat. “No wonder,” we now said, seeing her feline equivalent of a muffin top. And later when I dutifully purchased said Costco-sized bag of food it never even dawned on me just how long that was going to last at ½ cup per day without, say, a whole cat room or a bull mastiff eating it.

They also told us not to let her outside for a couple weeks until she knew her boundaries. But what we quickly discovered was that Molly, the Queen of the Cat Room, had quickly reinvented herself as Molly, Queen of the Yurts. She had no interest in the great outdoors. Or our very nice, mice-filled barn. Neither would she soon forget where she lived. First of all, she was too fat to catch anything except maybe her own tail. And second of all, we had to move quickly ourselves to catch her and toss her out the door if she was ever going to get some fresh air. Molly was perfectly content to stay inside the yurt. Forever. And when we did manage to capture and evict her with encouraging words about our barn, she sat underneath the yurt and meowed. All day. Loudly. Until we let her in again. Or until someone opened the door. Then she was suddenly motivated to move at lightning speed, flashing past us like her predecessor.

Now you might think that upon meowing herself hoarse, Molly would simply accept her fate and head for the barn. She does not. Instead she tries to find a way back into the yurt. Like jumping up on the front door and attempting to turn the door knob. Or leaping up at one of the two mudroom windows and hanging by her claws from the screen. I kid you not. None of her persistence is appreciated by people who live in a canvas house. In fact, people who live in fabric houses should probably not own pets with claws.

The questions we probably should have asked those nice Safe Haven folks are these. How would they know if Molly was a “Great Barn Cat” or a “Great Mouser” if they’d only known her as the Queen of the Cat Room where she’d spent her lazy days indoors eating the Purple-bagged Costco Cat Food? Did they ever hear her sighing and wishing aloud, "If only I had a barn and some nice fat mice to catch?” How did they determine that 1/2 cup of food was enough? Because the purple cat food bag has been shredded by Molly's attempts to increase her portion. And why exactly was Molly brought in the first time? Too noisy, perhaps? How about the second? Customer dissatisfaction? Did she scratch her owners? Refuse to go outside?

Hannah hates cats and threatened to boycott Christmas but relented, keeping a watchful distance. Micah became very good at catching and evicting Molly while he was home for the holidays. We tried to pass her off as Isaiah's birthday present but he was having none of that. And Andy keeps threatening to teach Molly to swim.

"Maybe she’ll go outside when it gets warmer," I reason. "And besides, Bella likes to play with her," I say, even though Molly often switches moods and scratches her.

"Bella can play with her Littlest Pet Shop cats," Andy counters.

"Well, at least wait until all that cat food is gone," I say. That ought to take us to 2013.

One thing is for certain. Molly was no bargain.

K3

For The Love of Money

I never loved money.

But I grew up surrounded by it.

My impressionable adolescent years were spent on my island home in an environment created largely by the rich and even richer—blue bloods who made their living off the imported sweat dripping off the backs of folks like my Irish ancestors who crossed the Atlantic and then criss-crossed our nation with steel rails, guided by the black smoke marking their manifest destiny and filling the New York city coffers of my neighbors. They carved their summer cottages in the graven images of Europe, palatial knock-offs in gold and marble which lined the Bellevue Avenue of my youth where I pedaled my bike beneath the graceful dreadlocks of giant weeping beech branches. Imports, all of us.

So it wasn’t easy for me to be impressed by ordinary wealth—new money, as they call it.

Still, for a time, I was.

I grew up, parked my bike, and headed north to a small, liberal arts college where there were a lot of rich kids. And I fell in love.

I first encountered John Senior when I was sitting on a covered bridge watching orange and red leaves swirl below me in the currents of the Contoocook River which threw its watery arm around our campus like a protective lover. My reverie was interrupted by a rhythmic wooden sound and I turned to see a boy striding towards me with a chunky, carved walking stick I would soon come to know as Half-Step marking his progress. He wore a funky knit hat and a broad, confident grin.

“Hey,” he said, passing by me.

“Hi,” I said, turning back to the blinding sun in my eyes and then around to watch his retreat. In and out of my life, just like that. And that might have been the end. But it wasn’t. Not yet.

I saw him loping around campus but not up close again until one day when I was out running along a wooded path that followed our river and there he was again, his long brown hair unmistakably swinging my way with Half-Step setting his pace.

“Hey,” he said again, his grin closing the gap between us, “What’s your name?”

“Kelly,” I said, slowing to a jog to answer.

He might have asked me what dorm I lived in, I don’t recall, but I do remember the knock on my door soon afterwards and a voice, “Phone’s for you.” In those days we had one hall phone for everyone that hung on the wall—no booth, no privacy.

“Hey, it’s John,” a voice said, “from the river?”

“Hi,” I said, my heart flipping around like the coiled phone cord in my hands which delivered his voice again to my ear.

“Do you wanna go to the movies Friday night?”

Yes, I sure did. I don’t remember what movie we saw, but I do remember there were some scary parts that had me diving for the safety of his shoulder and we exited the theater with his arm wrapped around me like the river.

From there, our romance marched forward in full steps and soon I was spending much more time in his dorm room than in my own. When his room-mate failed to return to school after Spring Break, we put the twin beds together and I took his place more or less permanently.

John was the life of the party—the kind of guy they warn you not to marry. His crooked grin charmed everyone he met and his confident charisma made him the center of attention, always. When he turned his wide smile and deep brown eyes on me, there was no escape; his dark eyebrows blocked all exits. John was outgoing and generous, attracting a large circle of friends. There was no capturing him, even though I became his number one girl. He was all kinetic energy, always on the move, always ready for fun. Even when he sat down, his foot shook incessantly, ready for its next move.

I fell hard for him and there would be no easy way back up. He wrote me poetry and played songs with lyrics intended for me. We were young, strong, and smooth-skinned and I loved the feeling of his long fingers entwined in mine. Half-Step was our constant companion while we ambled through the forest, kicking our Bean boots along woodsy trails which soon filled with snow. When winter released its icy grip we threw open the sunroof and drove the countryside in his blue Honda like we'd just been born. John introduced me to Tanqueray and tonic and was rarely without a beer or drink in hand.

Our freshman year ended and we parted ways, he back to his home and me to a summer waitressing job in my neighboring state. It was too far and soon I moved over to his state and into the sprawling suburban home of his mother. John came from a trust-funded life of privilege, a boarding school brat from a world I had encountered on my own island but did not know intimately. I studied it like a refugee from my firmly middle class background. He was purportedly an heir to a Poppin-fresh fortune that would make any dough boy giggle. New money. His friends liked to party. Hard. It was the late 70’s and recreational drugs were not uncommon. We spent the last carefree days of summer swimming in his pool, hanging out with his friends on their estates or at Lake Quassapaug, and hosting a wild birthday bash for him. His last.

School bells threatened and we choked out tense and tearful goodbyes as I flew off for a semester abroad in England where I was summoned out of my very first class—a Dickens seminar. A phone call. For me. “Kelly,” his mother said, “Johnny’s dead.” On Labor Day three hired thugs had kidnapped him, shot him three times, rolled him in a rug, and dumped him in the East River as part of a convoluted criminal-plot-gone-bad drama. For a few hundred bucks, rum-drinking strangers had casually killed him. “Wrapping up loose ends,” they explained. Indeed. Any love of money I ever had evaporated.

I was 18 years old and cried the proverbial river until the innocence of my youth swirled away from me in the currents of distant memories. I mourned for John, for myself, for the We that we’d tried to be. I mourned for the smooth body I'd loved so completely, violated so cruelly, so violently; it broke my heart. I managed to keep up my studies but quietly switched my major to mourning John Senior. Walking for miles and miles thru the English countryside, I became a shadow of my former self, sitting for hours in damp stone churches which were always blessedly open and empty. My fingers clutched at empty-handedness while I wandered through the ancient graveyards marking their exits, wondering at all the stories, all the broken hearts which lay buried beneath my feet. I spent a lot of time gazing at the sky and pondering the meaning of life. I could almost believe that John’s unbounded energy and zest for life were a sign we’d missed that he was not to be here for very long—live fast; die young. But it still hurt.

I finished the semester with John’s Cheshire grin filling my thoughts and his death enshrouding me and when I returned home, I transferred schools and began a new field of study.

One day, John’s mother came to visit.

“I brought you a present,” she said. I followed her out to the parking lot where she led me, smiling, to a brand new silver car shining there in the winter sun, orange letters printed across its front doors proclaiming it to be “Le Car.”

“This is for you,” she said. A car? I translated silently.

“Um, thank you,” I said, understanding the French but not fully comprehending this unlikely gift.

She hugged me and said, “I didn’t get you the stereo package; maybe your parents would like to buy that for you.”

It was so surreal. My parents had two kids in college and two more at home and no interest in buying me a car stereo. But I nodded, yes, maybe they would, because my parents would definitely want me to be polite. I could not even fathom telling them that I’d just been given a new car, much less asking if they wanted to provide the soundtrack. I was saddened that somehow she thought this all made sense, this for that, but I guess in her world it did. Le Car was definitely a step up from the red ’64 Dodge Dart with black and white checked bucket seats I manually steered around my island home when not riding my bike. I was thankful to have a sparkling new car instead. But still.

Weeping, John's mom handed me the keys and said, “Thank you for loving my son.”

I did not love cars. I did, however, love that John Knowlton Senior. But nobody needed to thank me for that.

~ K3

Fifty is the new Forty

I’ve been 50 for an entire day or so now and therefore, like many Americans, am ready to start dispensing the wisdom of my decade even though I am basically unqualified and inexperienced. Fifty is the new forty, I’ve decided. I never felt 40 when my calendar flipped from 39 but now I am ready to embrace it fully, hindsight being what it is and all. So here is what I know thus far.

You know you’re fifty when:

1. The Fred Meyer check-out gal asks if you qualify for the Senior citizen discount. And the only thing worse than that is that you don’t. And when you tell your mother about it she informs you that it’s because you have “The Moore” wrinkles.
2. Getting a couch for a birthday present excites you. A couch. For sitting on.
3. A man at the Laundromat informs you while you are loading the dryer that he is “legally blind” and looking for a live-in “helper” and that he lives in a very nice one-bedroom house and is hoping to find someone who is 50. Or 60. And you don’t even realize he is hitting on you until you tell your husband about the encounter later. And you actually compliment him on his vehicle. Which is a wheel barrow parked outside.
4. You start universally hitting “I accept” to all terms and conditions on all electronic devices because you simply can’t read what it says and life’s too short anyway and you don’t feel like getting up to find your cheaters (which are yet another thing.)
5. You quit reading “50 things to do when you turn 50” after one essay on aging gracefully and accepting your new wrinkles followed by another encouraging a little nipping and tucking entitled, “Put your best face forward!”
6. Your AARP card comes in the mail and you start eyeballing motor homes and reading up on the national parks.
7. You should be outside taking a walk but it looks cold and you are in the middle of an exciting Words with Friends game and you are attempting to take advantage of your free app download for your Blackberry (I accept, I accept…)
8. You spend more time watching salmon spawn than, well...
9. You stop buying in bulk.
10. You have the flattest tummy in the OB/GYN waiting room and you’re not necessarily thrilled by that.
11. You apply on a vacancy for the job you once had and are told you are no longer qualified.
12. You actually think Words with Friends is exciting and justify your addiction by thinking it will help boost your brain power, which is another thing you suddenly think about.
13. Your wedding ring band has been worn so thin it can't be repaired one more time.
14. You have friends who are 60 and 70 and even 80 and your 20-year-old friends are your daughters.
15. You post a blog (or email or make a phone call), get in the shower, and think of at least three things you forgot to say, including that you know you're fifty when you have washed your hair with body wash and washed your body with conditioner...
    

K3