Author Archives: Jennie

For Mary Lee: Love and Honor to Miami

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My first-cousin-once-removed-in-law is going to start her college years at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, on Sunday. Her parents are driving her and her stuff to campus and will be leaving her there to begin the rest of her life. Her mom will cry and her dad will carry on with a stiff upper lip. Normal behaviors — an important passage in every family’s life. So why am I writing about this?

Although I can barely remember the drop-off part, in the fall of 1970 a relatively naive eighteen-year-old from West Milton, Ohio, was delivered to the hallowed doors of Oxford College by her parents. Oxford College for Women had been converted into a Miami University dormitory in 1902 when women were first admitted to the university. In those days we didn’t come to college with microwaves and refrigerators. It was pretty easy to carry my meager possessions up the stairs to the second floor of Ox College, which at the time was 120 years old with windows and electricity to match — and no air conditioning. But the beautiful old building was picturesque and had a ballroom, for goodness sake! It felt pretty darn cool.

I remember the rest of it as if it were yesterday. I moved in early for band camp because I was going to be a music major and planned to be in the marching band. I didn’t know that the band was known as the Stumbling 100; I thought I was going to be spelling out script Miami on the football field and my high school friend Belinda was going to dot the “I” with her sousaphone (my parents went to THE Ohio State). I met the other two girls in my dorm who were also going to be in the band, and we trudged across town carrying our instruments for our first big day at band camp. Unfortunately, nobody had told us that we were supposed to request South Quad dorms if we were in band. Ox College was more than a mile from campus and going back and forth to classes and activities involved crossing through most of uptown and all of campus. The trek to campus became our six-times-a-day routine.

My younger readers are probably asking why we had to do this six times a day. You don’t know how good you have it now. In the olden days, there were no such things as meal cards and open dining halls. Students had to eat all of their meals in their assigned dining hall unless they had made elaborate arrangements to be a guest in another dining room. Linda, Nancy, and I had to go back and forth between campus and Ox College just to get our meals. Frankly, it was brutal, but that wasn’t even the worst part.

The only other women in the dorm were the counselors and the girls who were going through sorority rush. In those days, Greeks rushed before school started, and it was quite different from what it is today. Young women who were rushing still wore tea dresses and heels to rush parties and it was a pretty formal system.

Are you getting the picture yet? It is still crystal clear in my mind. During band camp, we would march in the hot August sun for 3-4 hours in the morning, return to our dorms for lunch, come back for four more hours of marching, and then go back to our dorms again. The dining hall ladies would hold dinner for the three of us as we straggled in at 5:55 pm with sweaty hair and lime up to our knees. The girls participating in sorority rush avoided us like the plague, and rightfully so.

It is here that the story gets better. Being in band was one of the best decisions I ever made. Although I’ve lost touch with Nancy, my first friend in band is still one of my best friends and lives a half-mile from me. Linda and her husband travel with us, and there isn’t much she doesn’t know about me. My friend Susan and I can have a phone conversation after a six month hiatus without missing a beat; she sometimes calls just as I am about to call her because we have this uncanny connection. I’d like to think these enduring friendships were forged in the cauldron of the southwestern Ohio late summer.

As for the Stumbling 100, we were blessed with new grad assistants and a new commitment to move past the label and become a better band. We quickly became involved with band leadership and we were all elected to the band honor sorority, Tau Beta Sigma, which was okay with us having lime on our legs and wearing shorts instead of tea dresses. We built the Miami Marching Machine, a wooden tank-like structure that we put over Dr. Clay’s Volkswagen bug and brought it on the football field with us. We got over (kind of) our envy of the people living in the brand new air-conditioned dorms that were just south of the marching field and the music building. We met men and other women from the band who understood our passion for music and our love of the camaraderie that comes from shared experiences. We learned that first impressions are just the beginning and we became friends with the lovely women who lived in Ox College. And we changed our living arrangements in our sophomore year to better suit us — the young adults that were growing up in the palms of Miami’s mentoring hands.

As Mary Lee starts her time at Miami and becomes a member of the Miami Marching Band, I want her to love it as much as I did. I’m pretty sure that she will quickly become involved and will also meet new people who will become lifelong friends. Miami is a special place; she already knows that because her parents have long-time friendships with people they met when they were students at Miami. It’s not the same university I went to, and it’s not the same university that Kevin and Sandy went to. It’s now Mary Lee’s university, and it’s an environment that will mentor her just as it did us. There will be a huge temptation to stalk her on Facebook, but I have learned that most of the time it’s not appropriate for her old relative to comment on her wall. I promise, Mary Lee.

And since I have you readers as my captive audience, I want you to know an important truth. It’s NOT Miami of Ohio. It’s Miami University, and we were a university when Florida still belonged to Spain. Don’t ever make that mistake again when talking to a graduate of THE Miami University!

Saint Elizabeth

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My mother passed away on June 29 after five years of grinning and bearing constant indignities due to living with a colostomy and fainting spells and memory problems because of a weak heart. She had to move out of her home, was in and out of hospitals and rehab facilities, and eventually lived in an assisted living apartment. My father, her partner of more than 50 years, passed away in 2009, after becoming more and more difficult to live with due to his own failing body and mind. Throughout all of this Mom was patient, funny, and a delightful companion. Her nurses loved her, her friends loved her, and her family called her a saint more than once.

It’s hard to know how grief will affect you, but Mom’s passing rendered me mute. I have had lots of ideas in my head, but very little ability to translate them to written words. Shortly after Mom’s death, we went on an amazing trip to southeast England. There are many stories to tell about our vacation but I can’t seem to get started. It took me three weeks to write a simple review on Trip Advisor about the beautiful bed and breakfast where we stayed for most of our time in England.

Because we decided to have her memorial service at the end of the summer after all of our family could make arrangements to come back to Ohio, I have spent the summer in a kind of grief limbo. The excitement of the trip to England dulled the initial pain, but then I returned to my day-to-day existence — an existence without my mom on the other end of the phone line or across the table from me on my trips to visit her.

It seems that the best medicine for grief was to hole up at home and get work done. The busy-ness of taking care of summer tasks that I can’t do doing the school year kept me going. My occasional foray into a social life was bolstered by my faithful and sympathetic family and friends who kept me from breaking down and wallowing in my grief. Even Facebook was a comfort — I heard from many old friends of my mother as well as friends and family from my own present and past.

My niece, the author of the Vanderbilt Wife blog, recently posted two tributes to her grandma. Reading them allowed me to break through my own writer’s block and begin to move on. It’s hard to imagine a life without the presence of my mom’s gentle, supportive spirit. I miss her wry humor, her understanding of my passion for music and performing, and her willingness to listen attentively to my long-winded stories.

Now that my house is clean, it’s also time to clean out and organize my emotions. It’s a new school year, and a new life without my mom — a new normal. The loss of parents is one of life’s passages that people my age endure; many of my friends have gone through this and I know that I will survive just as they have.

The next two weeks will pass in a whirlwind as we enjoy the annual reunion on my husband’s side of the family and then celebrate my mother’s life in her memorial service. It probably won’t hit me again until we get home and I start school, where another group of friends will offer condolences.

There’s still a garage full of boxes from mom and dad’s apartment to open and treasures to be savored and put away. Every box will contain more than one memory of my mom, and as I go through them I’ll remember that she was a human being with failings as well as being a positive role model for me. I know I’ll come to realize that she wasn’t really a saint, but a person to emulate all the same — and that’s a good start toward my new normal.

Book Club: The Fabulous Mr. Maupin and His Boys and Girls

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After I picked up an Armistead Maupin book from the “new book” shelf at the library and read it voraciously from cover to cover in practically one sitting, I learned that I was now part of an American subculture and apparently had been living under a reading rock.

Image via joemygod.blogspot.com

When I started mentioning this great book I’d read — Mary Ann in Autumn — friends would say, “Is that part of the Tales of the City saga? I read…” and they would tell me their Tales story. When I visited the famous City Lights bookstore in San Francisco and saw the number of Maupin books on the “recommended” shelf, I was probably already hooked. Then I read Tales of the City on the plane, and I knew I had a summer project. I was going to read the entire Tales of the City story this summer during my break from school.

Based in San Francisco, Armistead Maupin says that he was a gay writer when it wasn’t accepted to be openly gay. Now his books are slotted and designated on the trendy GLBT shelves, but they are so much more than that. I will warn you; the Tales story is mesmerizing and life-altering. As a straight-and-supportive reader, Maupin takes me several steps beyond what I thought I knew and loved. All of Maupin’s books are semi-autobiographical; the recurring characters in his novels carry fascinating stories from his own life and those of the people around him. The magic of Maupin’s tales lies in their basic humanity and compelling storytelling. The reader can’t help but be drawn into the web of the family at 28 Barbary Lane — and then there’s twenty years of San Francisco as a backdrop. I’m telling you, it’s hard to stop reading.

I’ve finished all but two of the Maupin novels (I ignored the short stories so far), and I’m going to the library today to see if they have the other two books and the mini-series starring Olympia Dukakis and Laura Linney. Once you’ve read the first book, it will be clear to you who plays which role, and that’s part of the fun of the Tales series. You never know who’s going to show up again and in what guise.

I hope that I’ve intrigued you enough to try a Tales story for yourself. It’s either your cup of tea or it isn’t, but I encourage you to try; I think it’s worth stretching yourself a little to enjoy the fabulous Armistead Maupin and his cast of characters.

Book Club: Sideways Two Ways

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As a lover of wine, everyone encouraged me to watch the movie Sideways when it came out in 2004. I watched it, enjoyed it, and bought it for my personal library. Then I ignored it for a few years.

Starring Paul Giamatti, Thomas Haden Church, Virginia Madsen, and Sandra Oh, the story follows the pre-wedding trip of two old friends to the Santa Ynez wine country in California. Miles (Giamatti) plans a laid-back week of golfing and wine tasting while Jack (Church) is looking for a final week of freedom before settling down in marriage. The two are clearly at cross-purposes and the story is full of poignant and hysterical incidents. Madsen and Oh are fabulous in pitch perfect portrayals as the objects of Miles and Jack’s romantic affection. Madsen’s pinot noir speech will convince you that you never want to drink anything else again.  

When school let out, I was looking in the library for something different to listen to in my car and found Rex Pickett’s original novel on which the movie was based. It was an excellent interpretation, but it was also amazing how well the reader (Scott Brick) matched the cadences and tone of both Giamatti and Church. Since quite a lot of the movie dialogue is straight from the book, I suppose it’s not surprising, but this book just seems to be destined to be a movie. In fact, some reviewers said that it made a better movie than a book. Director Alexander Payne and Rex Pickett worked closely together in developing the movie script, and it shows.

I think that both the book and the movie deserve a second look (or a first one if you’ve never read the book or seen the movie). The movie leaves out some interesting plot twists but compensates by deftly changing a few plot developments to make a slightly different story. Both versions are enjoyable. There’s a reason why the movie is rated R, including a lot of graphic sex and language, but it doesn’t feel gratuitous. It’s part of the story; just don’t watch it with your youngsters, including teenagers. (Talk to my daughter about how watching American Pie with her parents scarred her for life.)

Summer gives us an opportunity to relax and expand our horizons. I suggest you do it with a bottle of wine and Sideways. As for me, I’m looking for a copy of Vertical, Pickett’s sequel to Sideways that came out in October of 2010. I can’t believe my library doesn’t have it yet.

The Tyranny of the Jean

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There’s a reason why old ladies wear polyester pants with elastic waists. It’s not because they are old. It’s because they are wise. They figured out that the long-term fad of wearing denim trousers is a crock of you-know-what.

How did we get here? Jeans were originally used for heavy-duty work such as swabbing decks and cleaning out horse barns. They became required uniforms for prison inmates and factory workers. Their closely woven fabric protects the wearer and is practical. I get it.

Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke

My father-in-law, a farm child during the Depression, was adamant about not wearing jeans himself and he wasn’t particularly supportive of his wife wearing jeans either. He felt that wearing denim trousers belonged to his impoverished past, a past that he wasn’t eager to revisit. He never told me this personally — he was too polite to ever criticize what I was wearing — but mother-in-law Esther shared the story with us. After that, I tried to honor him by avoiding wearing jeans when I was with him.

What I don’t get is why we have adopted this particular clothing item as the American casual wear uniform. The jean really began its ascendancy during the 1950s as a symbol of rebellion against authority — think James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause. Throughout the sixties, the blue jean represented continuing changes in societal norms, bringing down the formal dress rules of previous generations. It wasn’t a negative social shift; it was time for the world to be less restrictive about dress codes. I get that too. I was part of it. I just don’t see that we have improved on our world by now making the blue jean the new norm.

Let’s count the ways that jeans are annoying.

  • Jeans are a bear to dry; we have to hang them because they take forever and they shrink in the dryer.
  • Jeans have to be bought in a size or more smaller because over time, they stretch during wearing. There is nothing worse than wearing a pair of jeans with the rise falling down to your knees and the rear dragging on your thighs.
  • It can take days or weeks to find the brand and style of jean that fits correctly, and then once you’ve found it, the manufacturers change the dimensions and you can’t replace the perfect jean.
  • Even with spandex or other stretchy material woven into them, jeans are just plain uncomfortable after a while. The waistband is restrictive and the thick seams can rub against tender skin causing chafing and sore spots.
  • You have to have jeans in several lengths to fit your shoes. In fact, the average American woman has seven pairs of jeans in her closet.

Every time I hear Stacey and Clinton on What Not to Wear tell a client that she must buy a dark wash jean for her wardrobe (and then pay money to have it tailored to fit perfectly), it annoys me. I know that I am swayed by what they say, and I’m not the only one spending valuable time in my life searching for the right pair of jeans and then paying LOTS of money to purchase it. As much as I think they are on the right track with most of their ideas, their superciliousness about “mom jeans” bugs me. Frankly, I don’t think the loose- fit jeans are particularly flattering and they could be replaced with other sorts of trousers, and that leads us back to polyester pants.

I feel like we’ve created an environment that feels like Animal Farm.  Jeans good: Pants bad. People comment that you are overdressed if you show up to a casual party in simple black trousers and not jeans. The sea of expensive blue jeans worn in the middle school where I teach is testament to the peer pressure related to blue jeans. I have actually seen 14-year-olds wearing 7 for All Mankind jeans to school, and one of my students had a pair of $150 jeans stolen from the gym locker room. There is a thriving resale market for used jeans, and jeans were a black market staple in several communist countries. REALLY? We’re stealing jeans?  How did we come to this?

As for me, I’m going to happily purchase a new pair of casual trousers to wear on my vacation. They will be made of a modern synthetic and “might” have a bit of elastic in the waist. I will be able to wash them in the sink and hang them to dry overnight. They will be exactly the same size in the evening as they were in the morning when I put them on. The seat won’t drag and the knees won’t bag.

The ladies at my mom’s nursing home know a thing or two about practicality and I’m ready to learn the lesson from them. How about you?

Weight Loss, a Toilet, and a Swiffer: A Marriage Made in Heaven

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I have lost eight pounds in the last month. That in itself is a monumental (pun intended) miracle and blessing, but I didn’t really understand how weight loss could affect my house cleaning rituals.

As a visual, I’d like you to imagine eight pounds of butter. On some of you, that might be a huge percentage of your weight, but not on me. Still, it gives you some idea of how much improved my mobility is with just a small weight loss.

Both weight loss and house cleaning are banes of my existence. I have spent most of my life trying to figure out how to keep weight off and/or lose it without giving up my favorite foods and drinks. The same applies to house cleaning. Giving up and simplifying my decorating would make life easier, but I just can’t make the jump to clear tabletop surfaces.

My dining room table rarely looks like this. Does yours?

While cleaning my bathroom for my house guests, I discovered that the loss of eight pounds of bulk on my frame allowed me to bend down more easily and clean behind the toilet. I also discovered a new use for my beloved Swiffer mop. I turned it upside down and used the handle to push the cleaning rag around, thus enabling me to mop behind the toilet and jump-started my floor mopping. Oh, Swiffer, how I love thee.

Unfortunately, since I can’t bear to buy the replacement mopping cloths — they can’t possibly be environmentally friendly and they cost a fortune — I have been using a rag attached to the Swiffer mechanism. This leaves a lot to be desired and kind of dilutes the fun of using a Swiffer. Thankfully, I have found a solution via the crafty people who hang out at my niece’s website.

Heavenly Homemakers sells crocheted Swiffer mop covers that Vanderbilt Wife swears by. You can pop them off and wash them in the laundry, they are 100% cotton, and you can use eco-friendly detergents that don’t kill the fish. What’s not to like?

This has very little to do with this post, but surely the irony of a house designed to look like a toilet has not escaped you. Really??

I hope you have enjoyed my foray into homekeeping over the last couple of days. Since I hate to clean and only can tolerate it in order to keep my sanity, you’re unlikely to hear about housewifey things in the foreseeable future. Wish me luck, though, as I tackle that garage. I will need it.

Summer Vacation, Toothbrushes, and Other Pithy* Comments

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Vacation? They call this vacation?  For the dedicated teacher, newly released from the constant demands of evening and weekend lesson planning and grading, the first week of summer vacation usually plays itself out in one of two ways.

The sane teacher, in an attempt to relearn who she is after ten months of being Mrs. %&#!!, takes a week off to go to lunch with friends and read before getting on the housekeeping assembly line.

The other teacher, the crazy one, spends the first week of summer vacation in a frenzy of housecleaning and gardening stemming from pent-up frustration with her lack of homekeeping during the school year.

Parolee Tracking Bracelet

Which one of these parolees do you think I am? (I went looking for an appropriate image to go with “parolee” and found lots of scary mug shots and this photo, which is actually hysterical and possibly a commentary for another day.)

Of course you know which one I am. I am the one who cleaned my two guest rooms for upcoming visitors by first carting all of the stuff I hadn’t used for months out to the garage for “sorting.” Then I cleaned the bedrooms — and by cleaning I mean I dusted, vacuumed, washed bedcoverings, and re-sorted the craft projects and spill-over clothing items that are crowding the guest closets.

Have you ever used that spray stuff for melting the dust off of silk flower arrangements, by the way? It’s magic, but I digress…

Now we get to the pithy part. With guests coming tomorrow night, I invited my new best friend, my contractor, to replace the vent fan in my guest bathroom, repair some plaster problems resulting from a leaky skylight, and repaint the ceiling and skylight well. Sounds good, right? Easily accomplished with a couple of hours of work.

Not so fast, buster. Imagine my horror when said best friend showed me the bungee cord that had previously attached my vent fan to the exhaust tubing. And then showed me that the tubing is full of insulation because, YOU GUESSED IT!, the tubing does not vent outside and is filling up my attic with lovely hot wet air and sucking fiberglass particles into my house. Now the couple of hours of work has turned into a couple of days of work and a “couple” of more dollars. The good news is that I trust my contractor and also that I was here to see the unveiling of the bungee cord. All will be well next week.

That brings us to toothbrushes. There is something really fulfilling about cleaning with a toothbrush. Lampshades can be denuded of lingering dust, crevices in carved furniture can be scrupulously scrubbed, and oh my, the sudsy miracle of erasing the caked-on soap from the soap dish. It’s the little things in life that count, my friends.

I’m saving the garage for another day. Nobody has to sleep or shower there this weekend.

* I’m not sure pithy is the right word, but I love how it sounds so I’m using it anyway. Here’s the definition from dictionary.com: brief, forceful, and meaningful in expression; full of vigor, substance, or meaning; terse; forcible.

Wordless Wednesday

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Is there anything more beautiful that the pristine perfection of spirea in spring? Officially it’s Vanhoutte spirea (S. vanhouttei), the classic bridal wreath spirea.

Image via Got My Reservations

This post is linked up to Wordless Wednesday at 5 Minutes for Mom and Wordless Wednesday. Be sure to visit and meet some new friends!

Garden Upgrades

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I feel like Frances Mayes today. In the last 28 hours, my garden has been transformed and all I did was follow the guys with the hammers and shovels around and point (and talk a little bit of bad Spanish).

Image via B&C Construction

“Frances: I’ll hire the muscular descendants of Roman gods to do the heavy lifting.”

Image via hookedonhouses.net

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