The Griddle

At the local library, I’ve been taking a class in memoir-writing led by a local author. She is quite organized with a free workbook for each of us and each session has helped stimulate more recollections into stories for me. Our first optional assignment this week involved putting a memory together from a list of prompts.

         Of the prompts, the words frying pan jumped out at me – it reminded me of the griddle incident from long ago, and I put the following story together.

In my grade school days, my parents both smoked. Their brand of choice for a while was Sir Walter Raleigh cigarettes because each pack had a coupon. My folks were saving the coupons to redeem for a griddle. When the griddle arrived at last, Dad enjoyed using it for cooking Sunday breakfast. The griddle had a ridge for the grease to collect. So Dad would fry the bacon, collect and drain the grease, and then fix the eggs or pancakes on the still slick cooking surface.

         One Sunday, I was the only one up when Dad started frying. He finished the bacon, and I watched as he lifted the griddle to drain the grease. For some reason, the griddle tilted at the wrong time, and the hot bacon grease ran onto Dad’s forearm! The moment seemed so unreal! Dad calmly set the griddle down and walked to the bathroom to run cold water over his arm and check the medicine cabinet for something else to put on it. The pain had not yet set in. I guess he was in shock.

         Dad came out of the bathroom and called my Aunt Rita on the phone. She was a nighttime nurse at the county jail. He told her what happened and asked if he should rub the arm with butter? Aunt Rita said, “NO! – you do not put grease on a burn!” She told him to keep the arm under running cold water as cold as possible for as long as possible.

         The pain, severe, serious burn pain, set in. Dad kept his arm in the kitchen sink with the cold water. He watched the blister form along the entire length of his left forearm. A while later my Aunt Rita called and asked how he was doing. The blister had not opened, and skin was not shedding off of his arm. Aunt Rita felt confident that Dad’s arm was going to be all right – but she was surprised – from what he had described, she thought there would be skin grafts at the least, some loss of arm function at the worst. But Dad had kept his wits about him during the extreme emergency and he had done everything just right. Through it all he endured a heck of a lot of pain and a long recovery. And when everything was healed, there were no scars! Well, that was Dad!

011 20180228 The Griddle Incident

Wanting Mom

Theo at the piano

         Yesterday I got to spend a few hours with my grandson, Theo, in his home. This semester he and I get together on Monday and Wednesday afternoons in the nursery of the church where his mother has her piano studio and teaches lessons. But yesterday we had to meet at their house instead because Theo’s car-seat was in Dad’s car instead of Mom’s, and Dad was at class, so Theo had to stay home while Amanda went to teach.

         When I walked in the door, Theo was standing at their upright piano, and Amanda was close by, making sure he didn’t fall and whack his head on the wood of the piano. They both smiled when they saw me, but then Theo’s face scrunched up and he wanted to cry. He has learned to equate my presence with his Mom’s absence – if I was there, then Mom was going to leave- just like at the studio. And, truth be told, Theo would much rather hang out with his mother.

         Amanda gave him a kiss and said, “I always come back!” As she walked out the door, Theo started the waterworks. He let me hold him as he cried. And the tears didn’t last long because Theo was distracted by the piano again, and I sat close by as he reached up with both hands and pressed the keys. Theo liked that. Then he pointed to the right end of the keyboard – I helped him move over, and he pressed the keys – the high notes. Theo cocked his ear, looked at me and smiled!      

         Oh, to be able to hold that moment!

         My stories about Amanda present and past usually focus on her independence. I have been known to say that the moment Amanda was born it was as if she looked at us and said, “hey thanks for everything up till now, but I can take it from here!” And Amanda has always totally amazed me!

         There were a few occasions, however, when Amanda was as attached to me as Theo now is to her. And how I hold those moments too!

         When Amanda was born, we were living in Oklahoma and attending one of the Presbyterian churches in town. Usually it was just two-year-old Sarah and me going to church, and the women there asked if I wanted to drop Sarah off at Tiny Tots during the week?  It was in the church nursery on most weekdays – preschoolers past the age of two could come and do crafts and songs and give parents a break to go for groceries or etc. As I recall, I think it went from 10 in the morning until 2:30 in the afternoon, and we could just show up!

         At first I was not going to take advantage of the offer of childcare for church members, after all, I had waited for thirty years to have kids, why would I be eager to be rid of either of them for any part of the day? But then, of course, it occurred to me that it would be good for Sarah to mingle with other kids and learn a few things without me. And it would also be nice for me to go shopping with only Amanda to worry about once in a while.

         Then the women of the church said that Tiny Tots would also watch younger-than-two children if the parent was involved in something going on at the church at the time. Well, I had been attending the women’s group at the church before Amanda was born. I have come to realize in all my years since then that I am not comfortable in most women’s groups at the churches we’ve attended. Not anyone’s fault but mine, of course – my own social awkwardness mostly. But I have fond memories of the women’s group in Bartlesville, and so when they invited me to keep coming to their meetings after Amanda was born, I thought I’d give it a try.

         One Wednesday morning, I took both girls to Tiny Tots, signed them in, and then walked upstairs to the women’s group meeting. About an hour went by. And then suddenly the teacher from Tiny Tots was at the door of the room with a hysterically crying Amanda in her arms!

         The teacher said she did not want to disturb the meeting or disrupt my morning free of children, but Amanda had been crying from the moment I left the Tiny Tots room!

         Oh my gosh! Oh the teacher was so apologetic about not being able to calm Amanda down. And I was busy apologizing for putting the teacher through so much – for a whole hour! It would have been no problem to have brought Amanda sooner, say five minutes or even less! No one had done anything wrong; it was just my little one wanting her Mom.

         Eventually Amanda realized that her mother always comes back. And eventually, at age 4 and a half, we even got her a piano!

10 20180206 Wanting Mom

Love-Bites

         When my Mom shredded cheese on the grater back when I was a kid living at home, there was always that bit of cheese left over – you know, that chunk of cheese that if you keep shredding may get your finger too close and cause injury, but the chunk is too big to really put into the dish that the shredded cheese is going into. So Mom had this habit of giving that bit of cheese to whoever was nearby- usually me in the television room resting before being summoned to set the table or make the salad.

         That bit of cheese was always so good! (Mom also did this with leftover tuna fish when she made the sandwiches on Thursday nights for lunches at school on Friday – the tuna/mayo mix might have not enough for a sandwich leftover, but too much to throw out, so Mom would spread it on crackers and oh how good tuna on crackers tasted in front of the TV!)

         Last week I was grating cheese for taco salads.  Usually I put that last unshredded chunk of cheese into the refried beans I have on the stove, or I just throw it into one of the salads. But Mike was home. He was sitting in his chair in the living room, in the dark, listening to NPR as he likes to do when he gets home and the sun goes down. And as I finished shredding the cheese, I took that last chunk and went into the living room with it – I pressed the cheese to his lips, and Mike got a little nervous – it was dark, and I was forcing something on him that he could not see! When he realized it was cheese, he ate it and enjoyed it very much – he made noises to let me know. Later in the week, I repeated the gesture, again with cheese, although I don’t recall what was being made. Again, Mike liked it very much.

         I got to thinking about my Mom and the cheese and the tuna and crackers and how small things can get to be so fondly remembered.

         Yesterday morning, Mike and I sat in the dark living room together, he on his phone and I on my ipad and listening to NPR. Then Mike decided to make waffles for breakfast, so he went to the kitchen. A minute or so later, I heard Mike make a slight cheer, and he walked into the dark living room and pressed something to my lips. I was nervous because I did not know what he was expecting me to eat. Then I realized it was a bite-sized bit of pumpkin pie!  Oh gosh did that taste good right then!

         Just two days of training with the cheese, and Mike is feeding me pumpkin pie for breakfast! Life is good. Thanks Mom!

9 20180205 Love-Bites

Red Echo

         Well it was Super Bowl Sunday yesterday. Mike and I had no plans to watch the game or go to a Super Bowl party. In fact, Mike had volunteered to make a barbecue run for the emergency room of the hospital where he works during the game so he would not be tempted by any party invitations. The afternoon was chilly and overcast, and as I was doing chores around the house, a remembrance of a past Super Bowl Sunday came to mind.

         In January of 2003, on a day that just happened to be Super Bowl Sunday, Amanda and I went to a Toyota dealership to look at Echoes. Bodie was a sophomore in high school at the time, and it had recently come to our attention that she would be redistricted to the new school for her last two years starting in the fall. If she wanted to stay at her current school, Amanda would have to have her own transportation to and from.  There were very good reasons for Bodie to stay at Collins Hill rather than move to Peachtree Ridge – mostly they involved the advances she had made in the music department and the fear that Amanda would not be as loved or her talents as recognized or as appreciated starting from scratch at a new school. So, what to do for transportation?

         My work hours did not at all coincide with Amanda’s school schedule, and Sarah was off at college, so neither of us would be able to give her a ride. It became apparent that Amanda would have to get her license and drive herself to and from class every day. Not an easy conclusion to come to for a mom who had been very reluctant for either of her children to learn to drive at all and a mom who abhors the whole car-buying scene, and a mom who wondered what we would do without in order to fund an automobile?

         And after much thinking about it, my conclusions were that I would be most comfortable with Amanda driving a new car rather than going through the headache of searching for a used car that was both mind-calmingly dependable and not a rip off; we should get the car soon – in my mind, dealers were probably anxious to get rid of their 2003s in January of 2003; combining a few accounts together, I could actually pay cash for something that was not more than $10K; and a Toyota Echo seemed like our best bet at the time.

         We plotted our course. There were two Toyota dealership locations we were familiar with. We would definitely go to both – we would not be talked into something at the very first place. We wouldn’t. But we didn’t get to the second dealership. Once we arrived at the first one, and a salesman started talking to us, we did not know what he knew; he was not going to let us go without a sale.

         Amanda and I casually checked out the Echoes. I don’t think there was a big selection. The salesman approached and quickly heard what we were looking for. For the next couple of hours, he was doing a hard sell on a red four-door Echo with a spoiler bar. The price was too high. He kept up the gotta talk to my manager routine for a while – coming back each time with a slightly lower offer. I kept saying no. Amanda and I were trying to leave, even though it was so tempting to just buy it and be done with it – why go through all of this at another dealership, and maybe another and another? Jeepers.

         Just as we turned to leave, the salesman pleaded with us to stay, and with a pitch tailor-made for that afternoon, he said that no one else was out buying cars that day – the Super Bowl was on TV – he was not going to have a single sale unless we bought a car! So that’s how I remember when we got Amanda’s Echo – it was a Super Bowl Sunday and the salesman said no one else would be buying a car that day!

         He finally got the car down to the price I had in mind – but – I had to agree to give the dealership the rebate offered on the car. We signed all the papers, and I was wondering how to get it home since we were in my Saturn, and Amanda did not have her license. No problem! That Echo was getting off the lot come hell or high water! The salesman followed me home in the Echo, and a saleswoman followed him so he had a ride back to the dealership and the Super Bowl on a TV there, most likely.

         It wasn’t ‘till we got home that Amanda realized that what was sitting in the driveway was the two-door red 2003 Echo and not the four-door red 2003 Echo that we had been negotiating for. I explained to her that the two-door is the one that was offered for the price I could afford. She was a little ticked about that. I realized I should have had her do all the talking with the salesman and his invisible manager – she would have ended up with the four-door Echo and the rebate and probably even a thousand dollars left over!

         But since it was me doing the talking, Amanda got the two-door Echo, and we both got the feeling of having been ripped off.

      

Amanda and the Echo on way to high school graduation - 2005

   Amanda drove the Echo for thirteen years. It got her through high school, college and her masters. She and the Echo had adventures from Missouri to New England, Buffalo to New Jersey, and Florida to all parts of Georgia. It served her well for many miles and many milestones and with a minimum of complaints. Except, you know, four doors would have been nice.

         Super Bowl Sundays will always be reminding me of the good times Amanda had in her Echo, and the uncomfortable time we had buying it on a chilly overcast day in January of 2003.

8 20180205 Red Echo