Snapshots with No Flash

Rummaging through my parents' basement-- my son salvaged this bag.

I grabbed a thousand of these.

They're not all otters, but there are many Lenox Annual Woodland Issues-- the kind of stuff I'll probably have to sell at a yard sale this summer. It's that or create an e-commerce store for plates.

Plates Used to Be Us? Plates Was Us?

The Peanuts Mother's Day Plates are going to be a big hit, I can just tell. They're selling for a whopping $9.99 on Replacements., LTD. My mother, always the realist, asks, "Why would anyone want a Peanuts plate from 1972? 1973? 1974?"

"If they don't sell," I say, "I'll start using them. I mean eat on them. I like the expression on Snoopy's face."


1.

One of my kids says to me, "You're really not so into blogging anymore!" But I feel it's not true. I am into it, even wrote a few things, just haven't posted.

"Why not?" -- the question of the day.

Don't know.

Next day we're celebrating my nephew's engagement at my mother's. It's really a day-after-the-party visit, very informal. We all happened to show up at Mom's around the same time to see how she's doing. The engagement is only a day old, so the wedding's on our minds, as is the sheer exhilaration of the proposal, the ring, it's marvelous. I want to be excited, and am, but feel I'm not showing it, push a little to do that. That's wha' cha' do, you know.

The kids are going through some of the junk in the basement, things of my fathers that he would have wanted them to have, golf balls, tools. FD finds a foot massage machine that doesn't work, takes it home to fix it.

Later in the evening I tell him how nice this is, that he has fixed the switch, that the thing works, how proud my father would have been that he even bothered. Maybe it will help my mother's neuropathy.

"The remarkable thing?" he exclaims. "Is that I did it in record time, didn't waste all night on it."

Uh huh.

2.

I'm downtown today at the corner of Michigan and Randolph, watching the people buzz by, note how many tourists we have, maps sticking out of pockets, interesting cameras, big lenses. It's really cold, although the sun is so bright that most Chicagoans aren't dressed for it. A young couple with two kids, probably 5 and 4 are ahead of me at the stoplight. She's holding hands with the little girl, he's holding onto the little boy. She calls to her son, concerned:

"Honey, are you okay? Are you cold?"

The little guy's dad (it's clear this is his dad) sweeps him into his arms and holds him tightly, all I see now is his head on daddy's shoulder, peering down at me.

I kvell. (rhymes with gel, means melt, just how quickly he's in his father's arms. But the kid's not smiling and I think, "He's sick, somehow, not cold." And that felt bad.

3.

I'm driving home, think about an exchange I heard at work, a common power struggle, the kind of thing any couple's therapist has heard a thousand times.

It's an argument over something that's making both of them very anxious. He wants to solve the problem his way, but his way makes her worse. She says to him,

Do it for me. Can't you just once, do it for me?

"Sure, I can just do it. But it feels like you're cutting off one of my . . . That's what it feels like."

That line, or any other line that refers to a guy's masculinity, usually ends the argument. Most women don't want to castrate their spouses. So the job of the therapist, obviously, is to play devil's advocate, say, maybe,

Did you really want them all for yourself?

4.

A friend listens to me describe some of the latest drama going on in my life. She tells me, slow down, play with your fish. Watch more TV.

I'm ashamed to tell her that I haven't got the patience for teev lately, haven't watched in months. I don't recognize the names of the movies in the theater, either.

And my fish? It's a miracle they're even alive, I haven't attended to them in so long. Usually I change water every two weeks.

I know I have to do it, take a couple of hours, get out the siphon, the salt, begin to stir up an instant ocean, and do this Sunday night.

They look a lot happier, that's all I can say. Now if I could only remember to feed them :)


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