Pink Slip: Not a Garment

I was staring down a frozen computer screen at my third computer of the morning, engaged in deflective patter with a customer as I waved an arm at the Watcher to come help me.


"We've already ticketed this computer to be fixed," the Watcher told me. "Maybe it's you that needs a ticket."


Liz told me later that this was an attempt at wry humor.


Another customer berated me for shipping costs, and refused to supply me with her phone number.


"I don't give my phone number," she scolded. "I'm a lawyer, and I know what happens."


"Okay, ma'am," I said.


 I was cheerily urging someone to purchase an epilator to go with his nose and ear hair trimmer, when my supervisor appeared and deftly pushed the "make busy" button.


"Let's go talk," she said.


We wound through the building until we found two chairs in an area surrounded by merchandise: sock monkeys, chattering chimps, xylophones, boxed chocolates and soaps nesting in gift boxes.


"So," she began. 


I sat erect in my folding chair surrounded by puppy pajamas and bathrobes on hangers trying to assume a position of dignity in my squishy Uggs and jeans, but I felt as she explained numbers and the unfortunate circumstance of over-hiring based on last year's projections, like a chastised school girl.


The words "laid off" were used. 


"I don't want you to go home thinking this has anything to do with your performance," she said.


"It doesn't?"


"Oh, no, you were... " She smiled and swept the manilla folder in her hand in an encouraging upward arc. "On the upswing."


"Did you have a chance to use your 50% off?" she asked.


"Not yet," I said.


"Oh, that's too bad, because we don't really have a way of tracking..."


I was to be stripped of my 50%. I considered racing up the mountain, going straight to the company's flagship store, and using it before the system noticed I was terminated.


"But, you will be invited to return next year," she added. She showed me a paper with a little box that had been marked with a hasty blue inked check. It read "re-hire."


I reflected upon my brief, not quite brilliant career. It felt as though I had mostly been in the center of a disturbance: computers freezing, taking three weeks to master the digital punch, hired on at the very end of seasonal hiring and therefore missing the final training. I had faxed paper punches to the wrong department. At night I had begun to awaken to imaginary beeps in my mind. My dreams were haunted by frantic conversations to do with oilcloth tablecloths and fruit cake. There had been, perhaps, overly frequent calls to CS and Product. I still "hunt and peck." I had dropped a call or two. 


No sooner had I punched back in from lunch than the Watcher appeared.


"What time did you punch out?" she demanded.


"At 2pm," I said.


"You took an hour for lunch?"


"I did," I admitted. "I had a very bad morning, and then I was let go."


"What a terrible last day," someone said mournfully.


"Have a cookie button," someone else offered.


"Would you like to stay for the rest of the day," the Watcher inquired, "Or would you like to go home now?"


"I think now," I said. 


I handed in my white, credit card sized fob and my name tag and shook hands with my supervisor.


"I'll miss your smile," she said.


"Don't worry about being fired, " Dick said trying to be helpful. 


"I was laid off," I explained.


"Well, call it what you will," he said, "But, it's just great. In fact, I'll check back with you in exactly a year from now and you'll be shocked to see how things will have opened up."


"Hm," I said. 


"Basically, they looked around the room when it came time to cut and saw you," was my daughter's comment.


I've already started the search for future gainful employment at findtherightjob.com. There are some intriguing possibilities: Foreign Trainer for Disney in China, Gas Plant Operator, Clinical Dog Specialist, Central Intelligence Officer.

Don't Call Me

Today was a difficult day on the phones.


I was in the middle of taking an order, keying information like a fiend, peppering my conversation with  deferential, oft-used "yes, ma'am's," my voice occasionally adopting a southern lilt or a western twang to match my customers. ("Da, S RazhdestvOm!" I responded to a Russian woman from West End Avenue in New York.) Then, without warning, between screens, passing from shipping to credit information, a large red ERROR flashed across everything, and all that carefully pecked out information vanished. Gone. 0 items in Shopping Bag. 


"Whoops," I muttered inadvertently.


"Oh, no," groaned the customer from Bad Axe, Minnesota.


"I'm so sorry, sir, but I'm going to have to transfer you to customer service."


"Why?"


My thoughts raced. I'm not supposed to admit to any deficiency in our system. Where was my script? I pawed through catalogues. I dug through forms.


"Sir, it's taking a moment to access...."


"Oh, fine, then just transfer me."


"Yes, sir, and I'm so sorry for this inconvenience."


This happened 7 times before my mentor, L, pushed the "make busy" button on my phone. I removed my headset like a defrocked queen.


"Let's go through this again," she said.


"I don't think it's me," I said, a whit away from a whine.


"We'll see."


"Did you move your mouse?" she demanded.


"I did not move my mouse."


"Did you double click ship?"


"I did not double click ship."


"Did you enter the credit card type before you entered the number?"


"Yes," I said. "I did."


She gave me a few technical suggestions, keys to push, items to shade, things to paste. I was to press Control C, then V.


I went back to my headset, I dutifully noted the time spent in my Daily Log: .25 minutes under OTHER.


Three orders later, ERROR!


Someone seized my headset. I was instructed to log out. 


"We're going to take your cookies," they said.


"You are?" I asked. I had already missed the plate of Luscious Lemon Cake. Was I to lose out on lebkuchen?


"Your system is in default," I was told.


"Oh," I said.


"Don't worry, this won't count against you," L said.


"What a relief," I breathed. I don't need things counting against me.


After they fixed it, and I had logged back in, I was conversing with a gentleman from Louisville, Kentucky. He dictated his email, stressing that it be in upper case.


"Thank you, Mr. Wide Glide," I said. "Have a happy, healthy Christmas." Then I froze.


L poked me. 


"Did I just hear you call your customer Mr. Wide Glide?" 


"Whoops," I said. "I guess I did. I-I-I-I..."


L shook her head and turned back to her screen in silence.


L passes me notes: Suggest other items. We're upselling tufted chair pads today. Don't use the word "intersperse," our customers will get confused. Our customers don't need to know that your mother has a house in Florida. 

At the end of the day, I spent .50 minutes with a gentleman from New Jersey. He changed his order three times, twice after I had keyed his credit information. He added boysenberry jam. He subtracted cherry jelly sticks. He forgot to mention the promo code for free shipping.


When I had wished him a good rest of his day, I sat back and moaned, "Man, what does that guy think, that I have all day to wait around while he thumbs through his catalogue?"


L swiveled toward me.


"Yes," she said, "You do. It's your job."

I'm Seasonal

I'm sitting in front of a computer screen, hand on my mouse, my personal "foamies" on the headset I'm using. I glance nervously at the phone. The LED display is blank. An infinitesimal beep sounds. I pounce.


"Hi, this is Amy, " I chirp. "How may I help you today?"


"I'd like to place an order."


I"d be delighted to help you with that today," I say enthusiastically. "May I have your first item number?"


As the customer tells me her first item number, I click on the "search" box in the top right hand corner on my company's web page. 


I am live.


After completing my day and a half of training, during which we had practiced taking orders while our instructors role-played being customers with a variety of requests and gift cards and additions or subtractions from their orders, we were ushered into an area called "nesting." 


I had notes. I had catalogues. I had shipping information. I had a button on my phone labeled CS, for customer service, which meant if there was any sort of situation other than me feeding information through a variety of screens all the way through to checkout I could, with extreme courteousness, pass my customer along.


"Ma'am?" I had been instructed to say, "I am so sorry, but may I place you on hold for just a second? I'm going to put you through to Customer Service. Thank you for your patience, and again, I apologize."


There was another button I could push should I need information on a product. That button was labeled, as one might imagine: Product. 


In "nesting," I had a red flag I could wave if I got stuck, or panicked, or if the screen froze mid-order and I lost everything. That first afternoon, I waved that flag like a seaman on an aircraft carrier. I stood and gesticulated until one of the instructors came to my rescue.


I was certain that my first call was a test. Or a prank. How had one of my friends gotten through and how clever she was at imitating a little old man from the midwest hunkered down in his Laz-Z-Boy, thumbing through our catalogue.


"Hello, Amy? I'd like to place an order, uh, uh, oh, damn, I gotta go turn that durn television set off."


Who talks like that?


A little old man from the midwest. From Anamosa, Iowa, in fact.


"Amy? You still there? I nearly got the durn thing off, uh, oh, I just gotta sit back down." I hear a muffled rustle and then a thump. "There, all set now. You in Vermont?"


I picture cornfields and a surrey or two. Perhaps chicks.


"Yes, sir," I respond. The customer needs to hear the smile in my voice. He is a potential friend, and I am a storekeeper, selling nostalgia and occasionally, an "intimate solution."


The first time a sweet little old lady from Tennessee sneaks an intimate solution into her order sandwiched between rum balls and a Lanz nightie for her granddaughter, I am astonished to see something that looks like the neon mouth guard my son used to wear playing hockey pop onto my screen. I spend a few seconds pondering the practical usage of this item.


"Yes, ma'am, we do have the Dual Pleasure Intimate Massager in stock. And how would you like that
shipped?"


When we graduated from "nesting," our instructors clapped their hands together vigorously and cheered "Bravo."


"You're gonna be okay," said the instructor I accidentally smacked with my flag.


"I know," I said. I felt proud.


I'm live all the time now. I'm a TSR, a telephone service representative. I have two 10-minute breaks and a half-hour for lunch during my 8-hour day. I field about 100 calls a day. 


"Amy, I like you, I do," a lady named Billie from West Virginia tells me. "I thank you shorley can shoot 
the shit."


"I shorley can," I answer. "But, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention our holiday fruit cake, made from the finest ingredients right here in our bakery."


That's the up-sell.


"Why, honey, I thank I'll take one."


"Why, yes, ma'am," I say. "And y'all have a wonderful day."

Beauma Goes to Florida

When my daughter, Katherine, first invited me to The Breakers in Florida to babysit for Tripp, I imagined dipping his tiny toes into the ocean, or sitting on the edge of one of the four pools and gently splashing his chubby legs protected by SPF 60 sunblock. I figured we'd drop in at some of the activities my daughter was orchestrating  - perhaps wave "bye-bye" at the dock as the catamaran adventurers set sail, observe a croquet match, peek in at dinner. I pictured us strolling lazily up and down Worth Avenue.


Not.


Tripp is five and a half months old. The wind blustering off the ocean took his tiny breath away. There would be no toe dipping, nor would an ounce of chlorinated pool water mar his perfect skin.


On the first day, as we unpacked and opened our sliding doors that gave onto the ocean, admiring our sumptuous adjoining rooms and marble baths, Katherine glanced at my clothes hanging in a color-coordinated row in the closet.


"Why did you bring all this?" she asked. "You're not going to be seen."


"I'm not?" I asked. "By anyone?"


"No, remember, your job is taking care of Tripp."


The schedule was rigorous. The door between our rooms opened at 6:00AM the following morning.


"Rise and shine, nanny," my daughter sang. This didn't mean "rise and shine, Nanny," as in dear beloved Grandmother, this meant "rise and shine, nanny," as in servant. Well, to be honest, a servant with room service privileges and pretty much carte blanche.

After feeding the baby, Katherine disappeared to attend to a myriad of tasks and organizational details to do with the arrival of approximately 60 women who had earned a deluxe three-day, all-expenses-paid vacation at one of the most luxurious resorts in Florida. Tripp and I were left to ourselves. 

We read the cloth edition of Goodnight Little One.

We played with our red dinosaur pull toy.

We explored the hotel and discovered where Beauma could purchase her three daily cups of cappuccino. We strolled along the brick boardwalk by the ocean, and through the gardens by the raised herb beds with little signs proclaiming: "Pardon Us, We're Germinating." We found cozy corners under porticos, we gazed at expanses of flower-bordered lawns. If we were lucky, one of us napped.

Katherine and I kept in constant text communication.

Me: "When will you be back?"

Katherine: "In a few hours."

Me: "Can I have my break then?"

Katherine: Long sigh. "We'll just have to see."

My break consisted of racing to the gym, working out for slightly less than an hour, flying into the shop to purchase a smoothie, and speeding back to my tiny charge.

"It's about time you got back," my daughter would say. She had Things To Do: 60 goodie bags to pack and make sure were delivered, meetings with hotel personnel to attend, schedules to plan, menus to oversee, transportation to and from off-site events to coordinate. I just had the baby.

At night we took turns reading verses from the onomatapoeic oeuvre Roadwork. We invented a game. First Katherine chanted, "Plan the road. Plan the road. Mark it on the map. Hammer in the marking pegs. Bing bang tap!" Then, I would repeat the refrain, "bing bang tap!" in Donald Duck. Tripp caught on fast. He would turn to look and listen to Katherine, then swivel his head to me. In case you didn't know, "bing bang tap!" in Donald Duck is howlingly funny. Just ask the baby.

One day, Tripp and I were gazing out to sea at fishing boats and trawlers when a line of dolphins leaped and dove and leaped one behind the other right in front of us.

"Tripp just saw his first dolphins!" I texted my daughter.

"He saw his first dolphins with YOU?" she texted back.

"He did," I replied.

"Don't even think of taking him down to the ocean," she told me later. "I want him to see his first ocean with me. I'll smell his feet and I'll know."

I sang "Edelweiss" to my grandson, and held him in my arms for hours and hours and we engaged in long one-way conversations. While to the casual observer I might have appeared to be a dotty woman under an enormous sun hat in Ray Bans talking to herself in a dreamy, singsongy voice, Tripp listened intently. 

He learned about palm tree bark.

And magical shadows.

And color.

And when his mama had finished all her work and all the ladies had gone home, he was very very happy.

We kept the fact that he had glimpsed his first parrots to ourselves.

The End

Fried

A few days ago I had surgery to excise two areas containing basal cell carcinomas from my face. They had appeared as tiny - smaller than the tip of a pencil eraser - scaly little patches that would scab over but not completely disappear.


I had a pre-op interview by phone as I slurped a low-fat cappucccino minutes before boarding a plane from San Francisco to Boston. As I replied with a series of no's to questions about the health of my heart and lungs and alcohol consumption, and tonsillectomy at age 6 to a question regarding previous surgeries, I became confused. I was just having two tiny little rough patches removed, a simple, 15-minute procedure, right? Why all these annoying intrusions into my medical history?


"Are you sure you don't have me confused with someone else?" I asked.


"No, you're the right person," a nurse reassured me. "Height? Weight? Are you a smoker?"

"This is unbelievable," I groused to Juan the Gardener. "They want to give me anesthesia for this." 


"Hospitals are big business," he said.


At a little after 8AM the following day, I was lying on a gurney in a super-sized purple paper johnny, with purple socks on my feet, an IV in my left hand. The anesthesiologist told me I would be given something to help me relax and then some medicine would be injected at the sites, which my surgeon had carefully outlined in black marker.


"But, this is just a little procedure," I protested. "Right?"


"We want you to be comfortable," the anesthesiologist murmured.


"Oh, all right," I said. "Bring on the drugs."


During the surgery, I woke once to hear everyone discussing chipmunks. Someone was patting my lip and the area between my eyes.


"I like listening to you," I heard myself say. "Are the margins clear?"


"Oh!" someone said.


Then I woke up in recovery, dimly aware of gauze and a headache.


Juan the Gardener came in, and gave me a look that might best be described as startled.


"How are you?" he asked.


"Okay," I said. "How do I look?"

*

Mom was right. I would ruin my skin if I baked in the sun. Spring, sophomore year of high school, we lay on the roof holding reflectors made out of cardboard covered with tin foil to our chests and faces, slicked up with baby oil and iodine. Tan was best, the darker the better. Some girls turned brown, but I burned. Peeled. Burned again. Freckled. My friends and I lay on chaises on my deck at home, flipping every half hour like fried eggs, gossiping, cranking up the tunes, drinking Tab and Diet Coke. We wore white to emphasize the glow, spent hours in the sand at Jones Beach, checking our tan lines. 

At home, I'd hold a sunlamp inches from my nose, achieving a swollen, scarlet visage.

"What's the matter with your face?" my mother demanded.

"Nothing," I muttered.

"You know you're simply going to ruin your skin," she warned.

"Mmmhmm," I would reply, heading to the drugstore for another tube of Bain de Soleil.

In photographs taken during the summers in my 20s, 30s and 40s my skin looks unnatural, my smile too wide. At my sister's wedding, I am swarthy in a pale pink bridesmaid's dress. My two sisters look pink and healthy; I look fried.

Years of sun. Decades. I wasn't comfortable in my paleness. What I really mean is I wasn't comfortable in my skin, period. A tan, I thought, made me better - prettier, more desirable, hid the me that didn't quite fit, glossed over the anxiety.


I've had a few basal cell carcinomas removed in the past couple of years and  a squamous cell carcinoma the size of a lemon slice carved from my belly. I've applied Effudex, with results approaching an outbreak of leprosy, angry lesions and all.

*

"Is that something you intended?" the owner of the food co-op blurted when I made my black-eyed, steri-stripped appearance earlier today to buy some bread. 

Everyone gaped.

"No," I said. Then I had to explain.

"Do you need me to help beat someone up?" a woman acquaintance asked.

"No, I'm good, but thanks," I said. 

Suffice it to say, I'm basically done with the sun. These days I seek shade and sunblock with high numbers and I take cover under beach umbrellas. 

I still love the summer sun,  I just don't need to fry.

Why I Won't Be Playing Racquetball Anymore

It happened like this: I was running backward, back pedaling, chasing the nasty little blue rubber ball. I was going to pivot and flick it or flick it and smash it. I forget. I was dreamily aware of Juan the Gardener to my left. It seemed, as I glanced off him, that I flew through the air.


Smack! My tail bone hit first. CR-R-ACK! A thundershot, as my head flew back and bounced off the wooden court floor. Hmmm, I thought, lying there. That smarts.


"Are you okay?" Juan the Gardener asked, peering down. "That was a nasty sound."


"I don't know," I said. 


Then I grunted, "Ice."


"Ice?"


"Ice."


I moved parts of my body incrementally. Other than a wicked headache, everything seemed okay. Sore. Juan came back with a plastic bag filled with ice. I sat up slowly and held the ice to the back of my head.


"Do you think you can finish the game?" Juan asked, half grinning. He had been winning.


"Absolutely not."


For the next few days I just wanted to lie on the living room couch and be still. Light seemed to pierce my eyeballs, and I couldn't concentrate enough to read more than a sentence. I slept. The headache intensified. Finally, the two of us looked up the symptoms of concussion.


I don't know why, but whenever I am sick or injured I have a hard time believing it. I need hard evidence. Sensitivity to light and noise. Check. Headache. Check. Confusion or feeling as if in a fog. Check. Fatigue. Check. 


"I think you should go to the hospital," Juan the Gardener said. 


"Okay." My mother had pitched face first onto the floor recently and had sustained a tiny bleed in the brain. It made sense to check it out. I still felt a vague sense of guilt, as if I were wasting someone's time.


"Or, we could wait until after the Red Sox play and go this afternoon," he teased.


I had a CT scan and some x-rays of my lower spine, and it was determined that I had sustained a concussion and cracked the tail bone.


"You need to rest both your body and your mind," the friendly ER nurse explained. "The symptoms could last for weeks."


I actually did as I was told. I lay on the couch, my feet propped on a pillow. I listened to a CD called Radical Acceptance: Guided Meditations by Tara Brach. I read selections from Wherever You Go, There You Are by John Kabat-Zinn. I skimmed a forgettable novel. I stared into my phone at the changing expressions on my new baby grandson's face. I slept. Other than occasional forays out to the garden to pull a weed or two, I mostly did nothing. 


Juan the Gardener cooked, and treated me with great gentleness. As I rested, I began to feel drifty, as if rising and falling on draughts of air that breezed in through the screen, and then, surprisingly happy. A touch of bliss. Without the driving lash of my thoughts exhorting me to get up get going get moving get doing, I began to relax completely. The present moment, foggy and out of focus though it was, was where I resided. What arose, as they say, was appreciation.


I began to suspect I had brain damage.


"I really like you like this," Juan the Gardener commented. "I mean, of course I love all of you," he hastened to add. "But," he wondered with his usual sense of tact, "Do you think you'll come back?" 


He meant the compulsive, obsessional me whose nose wrinkles in disgust when ant scouts scurry across the counter tops, or the me that washes our sheets every two days; the me that ferrets out sources of complaint.


"I don't know," I said.

*

"No, you don't have brain damage," my learned friend (well, okay, he's my therapist) Andy laughed. 

"No, I don't think you have a brain tumor either."

He didn't even think the concussion accounted for my unfamiliar state of mind.

"You mean I feel like this because I succumbed to being concussed?" I asked.

Yes, he did.

I pondered how it had happened that about a year ago, a proverbial portal had opened and I had been guided to a therapist who wanted me to focus on the present moment, upon perception and sensation, rather than the past. 


The moment, to paraphrase Kabat-Zinn, as it blooms.

How strange that the past few years of practicing meditation, and reading some dharma and engaging in long philosophical discussions with Juan the Gardener and listening to Buddhist teachers should lead me to this.

Bouncing my head off the racquetball court did cause me to stop. I ceased struggling against life - my life. Stopped battling and scrambling. I surrendered. What I found in my mind's foggy corridors was peace - moment upon moment.


It's not if the struggle resumes, it's clearly when. I like floating in my cirrus-filled thoughts. But, I do have a point of reference: a comfy couch in a sun filled room, a vase of flowers, luminous light bouncing off cream-colored walls, birdsong, humming insects, my grandson's beautiful face, Juan the Gardener checking in, kissing the top of my head.

Cereus Magic

We were sitting at the dinner table at our friend Tune's house, finishing off a mixed berry pie, tart and sweet. There were vases of flowers, lovely as paintings, arranged around the sun room that glowed in hues of yellow and salmon. Through the windows we could see gardens and rocks like giant dorsal fins rising from the earth. Wendy brought her dog, Ben, who was happily tethered outside in the cool summer night. Tune's mom discussed books and her recent trip to Tanzania.


Next to our places, small pieces of paper had been placed, face down. When it was time, I opened mine and found a question: Describe a time you spent with one of your grandparents.


"First thought best thought," Tune said, meaning don't take time to think, just respond.


"I remember sitting on my grandfather's lap on a porch, probably at Saranac Lake in the Adirondacks. We were in a rocking chair and he had his arms around me. I felt safe. He died soon after of Parkinson's."


Someone else was asked to describe an earliest memory. Wendy remembered sensations and light and being outside on grass that was parched white from the sun. Tune told about taking a match and trying to light her younger brother's trundle-bundle on fire, just to see if she could. Juan the Gardener remembered sitting in his dad's lap, picking splinters out of his dad's face.


"Splinters?" We cried.


"His beard was scruffy. It must have been a weekend and he hadn't shaved."


I remember climbing out of my crib using my teddy bear as a stepping stone to reach the bureau, and having the bureau tip over on me so that I was holding it up with two hands, like a baby super child. Now I realize it was a co-mergence of memories. At a later time I had climbed up the bureau by pulling out the drawers and it had tipped over and I had to call for help and Arnie, the nanny, was not amused. I had to climb: up into closets, into kitchen cabinets, up into the dancing tops of trees.


Juan described being at a party at his parents' house. He and a little girl were running naked from one end of the room to the other, laughing as they passed, not touching.


"So, that's the origin of our special game!" I laughed.


"Do you think it's true that men are led around by their peckers?" Tune's mom asked.


Then Tune said that tonight might be the night when her night-blooming cereus, a sprawling spineless climbing cactus opened its buds to produce pure-white flowers.


"It's so amazing," she said. "It only opens once all year and the fragrance fills the house."


"Maybe we ought to check." I said. 


Tune quickly left the table and we heard her exclaiming,"Oh! Oh! Come see!"


We raced into the den, and there framed by the window, dangling from snaky, green, glossy stems, two enormous white buds had begun to open; a magnolia-like fragrance spilled out into the room. 


We murmured ooos and aahhhs, and examined the flowers from underneath, from behind, from outside; we shone a flashlight into their creamy depths; we inhaled their perfume.  

"Oh!" Wendy called from outside where she was walking Ben.


"What?" We answered. On a mid-summer night like this, anything was possible.


Suspended in the silky near-darknesss, visible between pine trees, round and pumpkin-orange, was the full moon.

I realized as we stood together like rapt children all grown up, that to truly connect, one must dare to open from the heart bud, to open constantly, to burst into flower like the magical night-blooming cereus. 


After that, anything is possible.

Sinking Ships & Desperados

"Hello! Hello!" My mother sang out, opening her front door to admit Tripp and his mother and me. She led us into the living room for iced tea and cake with white frosting and pink flowers. Vera, one of my mother's aides, leaned in to view the baby.

"I wasn't here for his first visit," she said.

"Well, Tripp meet Vera," my daughter smiled.

"So, you're a great-grandmother," Vera told my mother.

"I know that, Vera," my mother said crossly.

"You're GG," Vera said. "Little boy, that's your GG."

"We call my grandmother Gogs, and Tripp will too," Katherine explained.

"Oh, why not GG?" Vera asked. "I like GG."

"Vera, would you pour the ice tea?" my mother asked.

"I did," Vera said. 

Vera lingered, eating cake, and then disappeared into the kitchen. 

"Thank you, Vera!" Katherine and I called out. Vera is charged with keeping my mother safe, which includes guiding her to bed at a reasonable hour. Although she will grudgingly acquiesce, mostly on her own terms, Mom will often sneak out of her bedroom and back to the pale azure lure of the computer screen.

"What did you do today?" I asked as Tripp slumbered in his car seat, emitting the occasional uh  or guh. 

"Well, I went to the beach for lunch with the Sages, and on the way back in the car Andy and I suddenly broke out into song."

"Song?" I repeated, fork in hand.

"Song," my mother laughed. "I used to sing it you and your sisters," Mom said to Katherine. 

"I think you mean to me and my sisters," I corrected.

"Well, it goes like this:  A big bold man was this desperado from Cripple Creek way out in Colorado, and he came to town like a big tornado and everywhere he went he gave his WA-HOO!"

As my mother sang, gesturing with her hands like a band leader, I remembered.

"Wasn't there something about how he came into Chicago just to give the West a rest...?"

"Yes, I think so."

"Wasn't there a song about the Titanic?" Katherine asked. "You sang me a song about it," she said to me.

Without pausing a beat, my mother and I immediately launched into the Titanic song: "Oh, they built the ship Titanic to sail the ocean blue, and they thought they had a ship that the water would never go through, but the Lord with his mighty hand said the ship would never land. It was sad when that great ship went down..."

"It was sad," Mom sang.

"It was sad,"I echoed.

"It was sad when that great ship went down (to the bottom of the) husbands and wives little children lost their lives..."

"More cake, Katherine?" my mother asked after the last verse.

"I'd love some, Gogs, thanks."

"Oh, look, the baby is waking up!" Mom exclaimed, brandishing the cake knife.

Katherine lifted Tripp in his car seat throne as he stretched and snuffled, and brought him close to his great-grandmother, who touched his tiny feet.

"They're so soft," she said, gently tickling them. "Ticky ticky." 

Conversing with Little Gobblets

We were all hanging out in the kitchen: Yeh Yeh (Grandpa) was making his special blueberry pancakes breakfast with yogurt and fresh berries and maple syrup, and Oliver had pulled himself up onto the kitchen island by his elbows to explain the finer points of a game called Gobblets, a game of strategy not unlike tic-tac-toe.


"First, we do rochambeau to see who goes first," Oliver said. 


"Okay," I agreed.


"Once, twice, thrice," I chanted, as my mother had taught me a good fifty years before.


"It's not once, twice, thrice," Oliver corrected. "It's rochambeau." He shook his head, as if having to explain something to a child much younger than himself, say a three-year-old.


"When I learned, it was once, twice, thrice," I said, feeling ancient, "But, let's just say rochambeau."


We counted off and I threw rock. Oliver instantly formed something that looked like a peaked roof with his hands raised at eye level.


"Volcano!" he crowed. "Volcano beats everything."


"Volcano? What do you mean volcano?" I asked. "There's no volcano in rochambeau." 


"Well, let's say there is."


"Let's say you throw lava," Oliver elaborated, making a wavy motion with his hands. "Volcano would beat lava."


"Or dinosaur," Maggie suggested. "Volcano would definitely beat dinosaur."


"I see your point," I said. "Why don't you just go first, Ollie."

*

"How about a game of I Spy?" I suggested later as we drove towards the politically themed Bread and Puppet Museum in Glover, Vermont. "Maggie can go first."

"I spy with my little eye something blue," Maggie said,

"Is it in the car?" asked Oliver.

"Yes, it's in the car."

"Is it Yeh Yeh's shirt?"

"No."

"Is it Maggie's fleece?" I guessed.

"No."

"Is it the cover of the Map of Vermont?" Yeh Yeh tried.

"No."

"Is it the sky?" I said absently.

"No, in the car," said Maggie.

After a few more rounds of incorrect guesses, it was determined that what Maggie had spied was a thin line of blue writing on an envelope just barely visible poking out from behind the sun visor on the passenger side.

"Are the puppets we're going to see scary?" Oliver wanted to know. 

"I think some of them could be scary," I said, "But, I've never actually seen them. They're pretty big."

"How big?" Maggie asked.

"I'm not sure," I said, not realizing that some of the puppets are actually 15 feet high, described as some of the largest puppets in the world.

"What if I don't actually want to go in?" Oliver asked a few minutes later.

"What if I just want to peek inside from the front door to see if they're scary, and not actually go deep into the heart of the museum?"

"That's fine," said Yeh Yeh reassuringly. "You don't have to go in at all. You and I can wait outside while Maggie and Amy go in."

"But, if I change my mind, can I still go in?"

"Of course," we said.

"It's okay, Ollie, if you don't want to," Maggie said.

"Just because I don't want to doesn't mean I'm not brave," Oliver said emphatically.

"Of course not," we said. 

"Because I am brave."

"You're a brave warrior," said Yeh Yeh. "Like me."

We all peeked inside the entrance of the Bread and Puppet Museum which was housed in a large old barn with a wide-planked wooden floor. An elderly woman, her long white hair pulled back, wearing an apron, long skirt, faded lavender blouse and black shoes greeted us and suggested we might particularly like to see a flying pig puppet. She had wisely deduced that some of us might be feeling a bit timid.

"See?" she said, as she rapped gently on a large puppet face. "They're all made of papier mache - paper. There are some interesting ones down this aisle," she smiled at Oliver.

The puppets were thrilling and frightening and brilliant. The Bread and Puppet troupe, which performed in New York City during the Vietnam Era, travels throughout New York and Vermont, participating in parades and performing live theatre. We found the flying pink pig and then Ollie and Yeh Yeh waited while Maggie and I tiptoed upstairs to where the truly GINORMOUS puppets were.

"It's okay, Ollie," Maggie called down to her brother. "They're not too scary. You can come up."

So, Ollie and his grandfather joined us, Ollie safely ensconced in his grandfather's arms, and we explored and touched cautiously and imagined what it all might mean, and told stories. We spied George Washington and Benjamin Franklin and the Devil.

"Let's go now," Ollie said.

"We were all brave," said Maggie.

"We were all brave warriors," Yeh Yeh echoed.