HomeSpunHealers

My children have grown up in a world of high technology.  Things always appeared easy to them as they were growing up because all they witnessed was always extremely convenient.  Very often, because I was pressed for time, and because it was just easier for me, I would drive by the bank’s ATM, lean out the window and get some cash, and then we’d head to a fast food place to again sweep through the drive-thru as dinner magically was served to us through the car window.  I hadn’t ever been asked about how the ATM worked or how the money got in there.  I guess my children just thought that was where all money came from.  I realized they had no idea that I had to work in order to get a paycheck, which was deposited in the bank, and as long as I had money in my account, the bank would allow me the convenience of driving by and having a serving of it from the comfort of my car.  I learned this one day when my son David asked me if I would buy him a fairly expensive toy.  I told him that I didn’t have the money to buy it, and that if he wanted something like that, he would need to ask Santa to bring it for Christmas.  It wasn’t the kind of toy one got just on any old day.  He just looked at me with confusion and told me, “Mommy, you don’t have any money in your pocketbook, but we can go beep some up!”

When we were first married, my husband Jim and I were out one Saturday running errands.  We wanted to get everything done at once so we wouldn’t have to come back out again.  We went from place to place and realized that it had gotten late, and we hadn’t had lunch.  And we were starving!  So, on the way home, Jim stopped by the closest fast food restaurant to order from their value menu.  They had double cheeseburgers for a dollar, and we both agreed that we wanted two of them for each of us, and we got one large Diet Coke to share because the drinks cost more than the cheeseburgers!  When Jim pulled up to place our order, he said, “I’ll have 4 double cheeseburgers and a large Diet Coke, and that will be all.”  The irony of that was so funny that we both burst out laughing.  When the lady asked over the speaker if we wanted fries with that, we were laughing so hard that Jim could barely answer her.  Maybe it was just because we were tired and hungry and punchy, but by the time we pulled up to the window to get our order, we were crying we were laughing so hard.  I’m sure the woman who handed us our order didn’t see the humor in the four double cheeseburgers with a large Diet Coke, but it just cracked us up.  We still laugh when we think about, and we have made that same order more than once!

Several years ago, when I was heavy duty into community service projects, I volunteered to allow members of my civic organization to drop off aluminum cans at my house to be stored on my back porch and later transferred to a recycling center where we could collect money for them to be used to benefit the community in some way.  I had huge plastic garbage bags of the cans on my porch in a relatively short period of time, so I needed to hurry them to the recycling center so we could still walk back there on the porch.  When I tried to load all the bags into my van, they wouldn’t fit, so I got the idea that I could decrease the size of the bulky bags if I just crushed the cans and rebagged them.  I already had all the bags out on my driveway as I opened one bag, dumped it out, and started stomping on the cans, one at at time.  It was taking me a long time to make very little progress, but I had another bright idea.  I could just run over the bags with my van, and the cans would be flattened with little effort.  So, I carefully piled up the remaining bags behind my van and backed over them.  Just to make sure I had gotten them all smashed, I ran back over the bags with my van in drive and then backed over them again.  I’m sure some of them got flattened, but a good deal of them just rolled out of the ruptured bags all over the driveway.  Still, I rolled back and forth with the van over the remaining bags again and got out to investigate.  Again, some were flattened, but most were just loose and rolling.  So, I stomped a few more and then got a shovel out and tried to scoop them all into a pile again.  Then I rolled over them once again and got out with the shovel to round the stray ones back up.  Of course, I stomped a few, too, while I was out.  I worked at this project for a good 20 minutes before I just gave up and bagged them again and put as many of the bags into my van as I could fit and went on to the recycling center.  I really hadn’t thought any more about my morning activities that day until a few weeks later when one of my neighbors had a party and invited most of the neighborhood to come.  I was in her kitchen with some neighbors chatting when I heard the folks in her den erupt into hysterical laughter.  The guffawing got even louder, so we all wandered in there to see what was so funny.  They were all watching the TV screen, and there I was on tape, attacking aluminum cans like some demented maniac.  It seems that my neighbor directly across from my driveway had just happened to look out as I had started hauling out the bags of cans and trying to stuff them into my van.  She was amused enough at my antics that she shouted for her husband to come and bring their camcorder.  They had the whole crazy episode on tape.  I must admit that I was funny to watch, especially if you didn’t know what I was trying to do, first stomping cans and then running them over with the car and then shoveling them up and stomping a few more and attacking with the van again.  I was happy to be the comic for the neighborhood, and I only got a little concerned when my neighbor told me she’d sent a copy in to America’s Funniest Home Videos.  She told me that she was just kidding about that part, but if she had, we might have both gotten rich!

Today is Father’s Day, and so I can’t help but think of my father, who has been deceased for almost nine years.  When I think of my father, I most remember his sense of humor and how he loved practical jokes.  His jokes weren’t always funny to everyone he imposed them on, but that never deterred him.  One that I particularly remember that still frosts my mother happened when we were vacationing at the beach when I was about ten years old.  My mother was very sensitive about having gained a lot of weight after I was born, and was very shy on the beach, choosing to stay to herself on her blanket and enjoy the sun and fun around her.  She had made herself a couple of new matching shorts and shirts outfits and was wearing one of them.  The shorts were simple with an elastic waist all the way around, so they were very easy to pull on and off, and Mother wasn’t happy that she had to wear elastic waist shorts yet she never did anything to lose weight either.  I can’t ever remember my mother on a diet until she was much older. 

While Mother lounged in seclusion, Daddy and I were playing as usual because my dad was a big kid who never grew up himself.  We had found some sand fiddlers, which look much like large bugs.  It was fascinating to watch them become exposed as the waves washed in, and then bury themselves quickly after the turbulent wave left the sand smooth.  I can still remember how cool it was to see them scrambling and burying, leaving the wet sand perfectly smooth as if they had never been there.  Daddy got the idea to pick some of them up before they could hide again, and showed them to me up close.  I didn’t like seeing them up close!  So, I ran up to Mother for safety.  Daddy came behind me, laughing and apologizing for scaring me.  “It’s okay, Deb.  Come on back and play.  I won’t bother the sand fiddlers again.”  So, I was hopping up to go back to the water with him when I heard my mother scream at the top of her lungs.  She shot off the blanket and ran down the beach, pulling off her shorts as she ran.  I stared in disbelief and looked back at Daddy to see what was wrong or if he was going to help her with whatever was wrong.  He did go to her, picking up her shorts as he did and delivering them to her.  She hit him repeatedly as she grabbed the shorts and quickly put them back on.  It seems he had slipped a handful of those sand fiddlers down the back of her shorts!  It was awfully funny to me and Daddy to see Mother just rip off her shorts in public that way, but it was not funny to her at all. 

I mentioned this episode to her the other day when we were having lunch together, and I could tell it still angered her that Daddy would humiliate her that way.  Of course, in all fairness, I don’t think Daddy knew that she would actually pull her pants off in front of everyone.  He just thought he’d give her a little shock.  I guess I just choose to remember the funny sight of my mother running and shedding shorts on that bright sunny day at the beach.

When my sons were little, David, who was three years older than Michael, took on a lot of responsibility for his little brother.  Whenever Michael would get in a little trouble, David would take care of him, but when the trouble was something David didn’t know how to handle, he’d say to Michael, “Go to Mom,” as he would guide Michael toward me.

One day, Michael had been out on the back porch with David, and he had found a piece of candy of the porch floor, so he picked it up and put it in his mouth.  What he didn’t realize before he did that was the candy was covered with ants.  Once the candy was in his mouth, he could feel the ants moving, so he went to David screaming.  When David saw the live ants crawling inside his brother’s mouth, he quickly escorted him to me in the kitchen.  I could hear David saying as Michael squalled, “Go to Mom; go to Mom,” in his most encouraging and soothing voice. 

When I saw the ants crawling in Michael’s wide open mouth, I knew I had to get them out, but I couldn’t think what to do.  He wouldn’t understand how to rinse his mouth and spit, so I decided that I’d get his toothbrush and brush them out.  He knew to spit out the toothpaste and not swallow it.  So, I quickly picked him up and took him to the boys’ bathroom to brush his teeth.  I was talking as calmly to him as I could, but it was kind of funny when you think about it.  Still, I did not laugh then because he was clearly terrified.  So was David, for that matter.  I brushed and he spit, and I brushed some more, and he spit again.  Finally, we had the ants out.  However, he was still crying.  I got him to look in the mirror and see that his mouth was clean and clear, but that didn’t calm him.  So, I held him and soothed him and just let him cry while I ran him a bath with Mr. Bubbles, which he loved. 

He finally was in the tub with his bubbles and I was bathing him, and his cries had subsided to a mere hiccup here and there.  I often bathed the boys together when they were young, so David crawled in with Michael.  David and I were singing songs and playing and laughing as we always did when they bathed.  I still look back on those times as some of my favorite times.  But Michael wasn’t joining in, and every time he started to think about the ants in his mouth, he would start crying all over again.

David, wanting so badly to help his brother’s fear said, “Look Michael.  There aren’t any more bugs,” and he opened his own mouth wide to show him.  Michael nodded and seemed comforted knowing that his brother’s mouth was empty of insects.  I assume he looked at David’s mouth as a mirror of his own.  In a few minutes, though, he had tuned up and started crying again, putting his little hand over his mouth.  David then said, “Hey, Michael, stop crying.  Mom got all the ants out.  They’re gone.  And they were just tiny little ants.  Now, if they had been alligators, you’d be in real trouble.”  Michael looked a little confused, but he stopped crying.

Later, when I was putting them to bed, Michael let me know he had continued to think about what his brother said as he started crying again.  “What’s wrong, Baby?” I asked.  He put his little hand over his sobbing mouth and said, “Izzigators.”  That was Michael’s baby word for alligators.  The poor baby had imagined alligators in his mouth, which was even more terrible than ants!  Finally, I was able to get him soothed into a sleep, and as far as I know, he didn’t have any nightmares about ants or izzigators.