The Royal Treatment

I unwittingly stirred up a hornet's nest this week.  Perhaps you noticed.  I made the (apparently ridiculous) statement in one of my classes that there were no fairytale princesses .  This happened when we were discussing Realism in literature and why it followed the Romantic movement. Romantics were dreamy, creative, imaginative, and a bit bizarre---Poe was a Romantic, for example.  The Realism movement came along in part because of the Civil War.  The way I explained this to the class was that just like we outgrow the Disney movie stage of our lives and move on to more realistic, grown-up topics, the Realists took over as the Civil War traumatized the country.  No more Disney princess, a lot more scary movies or action movies.  After all, everyone comes to the realization that they won't become princesses.

Well.  

I was widely informed by a number of girls that they most certainly were princesses.  They had always been princesses.  They would always BE princesses.  They were the princesses of their parents or of their boyfriends, or even both.  And I could never claim that they would never be princesses.

This is what I've feared all along with the princess clothing, princess furniture, princess attitudes, and Toddlers and Tiaras phenomenon.  There is an overwhelming attitude of entitlement from so many kids that I find by turns heart-rending and infuriating.

But this comes from a very simple place:  the one that I was brought up in, the best raising I could ever have asked for.  For the rest of my life, I will wonder at the great wisdom my parents had and how they did such a reasonable job of bringing up my brother, my sister, and me.

We could have had a lot more things that we did as kids, but we never lacked for the things we needed.  Mom and Dad taught us to appreciate what we had, to be gracious and thankful, and never to expect things to be handed to us.  This wasn't cruel; it taught us a work ethic.  There was NO entitlement.  I remember the perfect example:  the Christmas that I was twelve and my brother was eight (this was before Sheri was born), we got checking accounts.  We had our own checkbooks and were expected to keep them up-to-date.  From then on, we were paid for any work that we did on the farm or at the business, Dad's grain elevator and feed store.  From the money we made, we bought things that we wanted, such as records and (I have to admit my age) 8-track tapes, clothing we especially wanted (concert t-shirts, for example), books for me, ammo for my brother, things like that.  We still had all our basics covered, of course, but we learned money management early and with the protection of still being young and at home.  Some of the people I've told about this think is sounds a little cruel or over-the-top.  But what is cruel about teaching your child how to survive?  It seems much more cruel to me to NOT teach this to children.

Here's another example.  I've written before about how I loved music from my earliest memories.  By the time I got to be in fifth or sixth grade, I really wanted a stereo for my room.  I was old enough that I liked to barricade myself in my room and read whenever I could, but the only stereo was in the family room.  Maybe Mom suggested it, maybe Dad; I don't remember.  But every fall I would help Mom pick up pecans, sometimes for weeks in a row.  I decided that I would pick up enough pecans one fall to buy a stereo---the kind of system we'd have, back in the 70's, with a record player, 8-track, and AM/FM radio all in one, enormous speakers included.  And I did it; with a little boost from my grandparents contributing an afternoon of their picking, I sold enough pecans to buy my first stereo.  It was the most glorious thing imaginable to me!  I remember the look and feel of the burlap covering the speaker fronts as though it was still in my room today.  The heady scent of the plastic hinged lid to the record player was intoxicating.  That was my most precious possession for many years, from junior high to making the ritual trip to my college dorm rooms each year, until it had to be updated for cassette tapes.  No other stereo compared to that one---except, perhaps, the first one I got with a CD player that had a remote to it.  And I paid for that one, too.

How many "princesses" learn the joy of working and earning things?  How can they become responsible if they are treated and pampered as royalty?  What happens to them when they are pushed by whatever circumstance into the real world, where no one will recognize their eminence?  Will they know how to support themselves, and heaven forbid, their children, if life goes horribly wrong?  These are the things that plague me about the Princess Complex.  These are the reasons I pray the little girls in my own world will never think of themselves as princesses.  Instead, I want their strength, confidence, and wisdom to come from true experience and ability, not over-protection from the vagaries of life.

Life is for real, not for royalty. 

Wisely Spent

Spring Break is quickly winding up, and I have done none of the projects I planned on accomplishing during this lull before the last two crazy months of school.

My taxes aren't done.

My house isn't clean.  (But who am I kidding with this one?  My house is never all clean all at the same time.)

My closets aren't emptied of all the things I can't wear anymore, nor are the multiple bags of things I've already culled delivered to Goodwill.

My paperwork that I need to have done before I go back to work on Monday isn't even started yet.

I wasn't always this way.  There was a time when I was the first to get things done that needed to be done (well, except for the housework, if I'm honest about it).  It was that first-child overachiever syndrome: get it done first and get it done right.  I was most obsessive about being on time wherever I went---in fact, I was driven to be at least five minutes early for anything.  When there was something to be completed, I was certainly not able to take a nap....such as the three-hour nap I took this afternoon. 

But as I've written before, life changes us.  My concept of time and priorities changed when I lost my best friend.  Suddenly achievement didn't seem all that important anymore.  Time was relative.  My understanding of relationships was broken open, revealing that people had been, would always be, more important than blind objectives.  Work would always be there; people wouldn't.

So where did my time go this week?

I fed and held my newly-minted nephew Ty, formerly known as Elvis, marveling at the perfect miniature he is of his sister Allie, touching his long fingers and tracing his little ears.

I bathed and read to Allie, shared yogurt with her, tickled her, tried to coerce her into using the big-girl potty, and laughed at her drama. 

I spent a little time with my Texas niece Emeri, whose spring break is always the week before ours, chatting about her big STAR tests coming up---the Texas version of high-stakes testing, even for elementary students like her.

I attended my childhood church with my family.

I visited four of my doctors to avoid missing days at school.

I had a couple of delicious couch naps, snoozing away to the television, but stayed awake to watch and delete some of my DVR programs that stack up so fast.

I spent an afternoon and evening with dear friends who are, like me, much consumed with living life as fully as possible, but wanting to share every minute.

I had lunch with, or fixed lunch for, my wonderful guy every day this work week.  He works second shift six to seven days a week; it was a luxury to spend that much time with him.

I made quiche and mini meatloaves to freeze for the frantic end-of-school weeks.

I went to water aerobics.....once.  (Insert rueful grin here.)

I swept a winter's worth of dirt and salt out of my garage. 

I tried to do things I just WANTED to do, instead of things that had to be done.

It was a most successful spring break, I realize now---not time well spent, necessarily, but time wisely spent.  You understand the difference, dear reader.  I hope I'm always wise enough to spend my time on the people and things that matter; taxes and housekeeping will never make that list.

In Good Taste

I have a confession to make:  I love, absolutely LOVE, Cool Whip.  I keep it in my fridge all the time now to mix with my yogurt, and since I know I'm not going to be sharing it with anyone, I usually scoop out a spoonful into my yogurt cup...and then another (heaping) spoonful just to eat.  I know it's trashy---trashy behavior, and to many, trashy food.  Purists insist that only whipped cream is fit to eat. But I just can't help it; that light, creamy goodness is reminiscent of childhood and a world of recipes that I grew up with that featured it.   I've come to realize by dint of Cool Whip and other assorted delicacies that I just do not have the most sophisticated palate.  I'm OK with that, but it takes me down several pegs in the eyes of some of my more urbane friends.

It's more than just growing up on good Southern country food (fried, buttered, and oiled up in every imaginable way), although I have built my body on chicken-fried steak, Crisco, potatoes, and cheeseburgers.  No, this comes down to a few simple culinary rules:  (1) anything good will almost always be better with Velveeta in it, and (2) fat and sugar make even completely non-food items tasty.  I'd use a Twinkie as an example for that last one, but I loathe and despise them.  However, I feel pretty confident that there are no natural food products in them, yet their fans are legion.

Velveeta:  if you aren't a believer in this "processed cheese food," I don't know if I can ever truly understand the workings of your mind.  I think I've mentioned before that I didn't even know there was such a thing as macaroni and cheese in a box until I went to college, where Kraft mac and cheese is the foundation of the food pyramid along with Ramen noodles.  No, I only knew macaroni and cheese to be made with pasta, Velveeta, milk, butter, and a little salt and pepper.  It was my favorite vegetable for any meal.  Maybe it's not strictly vegetable, but it's closer to that than it is to meat.  I can't count the number of casseroles I knew how to make when I was younger that featured Velveeta as a main ingredient, accounting for my great love of casseroles even now, though I don't make them anymore.  Nachos?  Use Velveeta.  Crockpot full of cheese and Ro-Tel?  Velveeta.  Hashbrown casserole?  Velveeta to the max.  Anything Mom made with it, I would volunteer to cut it up so I could sneak a few cubes, since we weren't allowed to eat it just by itself.  Bad for ya?  Oh, yeah---I estimate I have approximately 23 pounds of Velveeta in my arteries alone.  Still, that melting, bubbling golden nugget of oily deliciousness will draw me in every time.

Fat and sugar:  witness my family's favorite cake, the chosen birthday cake of almost all of us, the red velvet cake.  We do NOT denigrate this food of the gods with cream cheese icing, though we love that, too.  No, the frosting for this cake is the original recipe, a cooked-pudding frosting of Crisco and milk that has to cool before you mix in the sugar and create a pure crystal-fluff blanket of lard and sugar to complement the not-so-sweet cake.  Nothing compares to it!  My best friend's mother used to get her to eat brussel sprouts by pouring sugar on them.  How much did the green accomplish with the sugar along for the ride?  I will myself only really stoop to eating vegetables---okra, squash, tomatoes---if they're coated in cornmeal or flour and fried in a good oil.

I know that at the very least, my tastes in food are childish, and at best, well, they're better than when I was a child.  I know I'm a country bumpkin and not stylish in my choices.  I know I have no business at a meal that uses more than two forks in the place setting.  I know I'm never going to be a culinary pioneer.

Just bring me a corndog and shut up about it already.  BTW, don't eat out of the Cool Whip bowl in my fridge.

Hello, Goodbye

Hello, time-stealing day of the year, coming to change my circadian rhythm and throw the whole country off-kilter and on edge for the next week.  I know there are many who love you, but I don't see why.

Goodbye, normal day- and night-time; you must be sacrificed for the sun-worshipers who need their hour in the evening instead of the morning.  These are the people who have never worked all day on a farm or in a pasture, building fence or painting a house in the brutal heat of a summer day.  They just don't know the joy of that cool early hour in the morning.

Hello, slapping the snooze button one or two extra-fierce times in the morning, muttering words that I hope Santa and Jesus never hear from my innocent tongue.

Goodbye, snuggling gratefully under the covers when I realize I've awakened a half-hour early and can dream blissfully for just a few minutes more. 

Hello, sleepy students wandering into first hour exactly as though they've stumbled out of a Walking Dead episode---with just about the same amount of brain function.

Goodbye, bright morning sunlight pouring in the glass doors of the east wing, just past my classroom, greeting students who are awake enough to have fed and dressed themselves in (mostly) reasonable clothing.

Hello, research, you old so-and-so, bane of my existence, my spring torture and torment, destroyer of worlds and god of chaos.  Oh, how I loathe you.  Though I have mostly defeated your extended reign this year by tackling you early, I get alllll those papers this week, just in time for the long evenings I need to grade you.  You are the suck-tastic ruin of all my glory in the classroom.

Goodbye, easy winter grading with, let's just say it straight out, NO FLIPPING RESEARCH.  EVER.  

Helllllo, testing.  Spring = testing.  Testing = agony.  Therefore, spring = agony.  I cannot make the case any simpler than this.

Goodbye to you, winter, the gift of time to cover all those bazillions of objectives to be introduced, practiced, mastered, tested, reiterated, and left for dead when the next series comes along.  No, of course we don't leave them.  We take our roadkill with us, knowing the State will come looking for evidence of it.  It will be properly tagged.

Eventually, of course, I will adjust.  We all will adjust and (though you sure couldn't tell it by the weather here today) we'll welcome spring with mostly open arms.

Hello, being able to drive home from the gym in the amber evening sun, burnishing the whole Oklahoma landscape to a bright gold.

Goodbye to getting home in the dark, ready for bed at 8 p.m.

Hello Bradford pear trees, and daffodils, and jonquils and lilacs and honeysuckle.  Hello, beautiful soft green grass.  Hello hay fever, allergies, and Allegra---oh, Allegra, we are so happy to see you again.

Goodbye to frozen drippy noses, peeling skin, and cracked fingertips, and Kleenexes in every pocket of every jacket.  (I have become my mother and my grandmother, with tissues even tucked in my sleeves at times.)

Hello, sunshine.  Welcome, warm breeze.  Goodbye sleet, sneet, snizzle, snow, thundersleet, ice, black ice, and everything broken or wrecked by such as these.

Hello to short sleeves and capri pants.  Goodbye, sweaters, gloves, scarves, coats, hats---surely this must be how a snake feels to shed its skin!

Hello, Spring.  We thought you might never return. 

Spring Forward?  Spring on!

Oh, Brother!

The first good friend I think I really had was my little brother.  I don't remember when he was born---I was a few days short of four years old---but I've seen the pictures:  a long, bright-red baby with a  shock of black hair.  That's a far cry from the boy I remember.  My first vision of him goes back to a sturdy little tow-head with a burr haircut, his summer style that Mom gave him every year, and perfectly round, blue-blue Welker eyes.  He was sweet and smart and an outrageous story-teller; now, at 46, he isn't really that much different, if you know how to look for that little boy.

The first spark of memory I have of Bo is vivid and scary.  He was scarcely more than a toddler, and he came in the screen door of our little house in Skedee with blood running from one hand.  My beloved little terrier, Frisky, had somehow gotten into a fight with the old heeler dog, Blue, from across the street.  Bo tried to separate them because he was trying to protect my dog from his much bigger opponent.  Few people might know it, but that is completely typical of the tender-hearted little boy I knew who has grown into a strong, thoughtful, often brilliant and sometimes headstrong man who still has that tender heart. 

Grandma Brown liked to tell how Bo would go to the grocery store with her during our summer visits with our grandparents, how he would ride in the cart pointing out things and saying, “Cathy likes that,” not to get what HE wanted, but to truly point out what I liked.  He set himself up for his own family by being so selfless, even at such an early age.  A few years ago, when I was feeling despondent, he told me what kept him from feeling that way:  “When you have kids, you feel like everything will be all right as long as they are OK, as long as they have things a little easier and better than you did.”  Everything I've observed about his adult life as a husband and as a father to four proves that he's lived that motto.

Katie's (his only daughter) wide-eyed, storytelling, sparkling full-of-wonder personality reminds me so much of the tall-tale-telling boy Bo once was and often still is.  He always caught the biggest fish, saw the longest snake, knew the funniest story, and told the most ridiculous lies about all of it with those great round blue eyes full of innocence.  I think some of the customers at the elevator came there hoping to see him as much as they came there to do business.   I have a vague memory that he was so known for telling fish lies that when he really did catch The Big One, his legendary fish that was longer than he was tall, in Canada when he was 5……no one believed his story!

I have a million memories of that comical boy:  feeding him a mud pie when he was barely more than a baby, telling him it was a hamburger and the sand on it was salt, and for years after he refused to eat hamburgers with salt; his asking any time we passed a drive-in if we could stop at “the stop and eat”; the way he straggled and staggered in his cowboy boots like he was a little bitty drunk old man; his refusal to take naps, so that Mama had to convince him to “just close your eyes for a while to get the red out” (he also, inexplicably, would get drunk-looking bloodshot eyes even as a toddler!); singing special songs in church; playing around the construction at the new house, where there were worlds of treasures laying around.

As we got older, our world expanded and so do the memories.  We seemed to do everything in tandem with Danny Thomas; riding motorcycles stands out, as does sledding.  Bo was probably still in grade school when he and Danny started hunting and fishing together.  I remember one night hearing him talking in his sleep and going into his room to see what was wrong, and he yelled, “It won’t fly, Danny!”  He couldn’t have been more than 8 or 9.  We both loved to play games at this age, too.  We gave the pool table a workout and could sit in the floor for hours, legs bent out to each side and backwards, playing Life and Operation and, oh, that game with the long toothpick-looking things and the marbles in a tube---Kerplunk!  That was it.  I remember Saturday mornings in the winter, haying the cattle with square bales in the pick-up, seeming like we were 20 feet up in the air.  I have a very distinct memory of being in South Dakota the summer he was 8 and I was 12, and we were coming back from the field one day in the Scout with Dad and Gene.  Dad said it was time I learned how to really drive by myself, and Bo made fun of me because I didn’t drive by myself yet, and he did.  He was still so short that he would have to half-way stand up to drive, but he was fully in control of things.  He could already, at that age, run much of the equipment there.  I don't think it ever left him less than cool-headed, even when the farm drama got tense, such as the time the combine caught fire as he was running it, sometime when he was a teenager. 

Things speed up so much after that, and not just because we were both mobile.  By the time I was in high school, he was so busy with farm work and fishing and hunting, and I was involved in music lessons, reading, and helping Mom with Sheri and the house.  The time we spent together was family time, meals and vacations and church.  But unlike so many families both then and now, we were not distracted by a million activities that kept us from seeing and knowing each other.  Mom insisted, thank God, that we all sit down and have dinner together at night.  We weren't allowed to read at the table or eat in front of the TV.  We might have the radio on in the car, but we didn't tune each other out.  What we did, we did together. 

I've only come to love and respect him more as we've grown older, though we only see each other a few days a year now.  His dry humor cracks up everyone who listens.  You never know when some straight-faced silly observation will fall into your lap and after a second, the whole room starts laughing.  There is NO other person on earth who has the card-playing mojo that he has; I swear he cheats, but my sister-in-law says he's ALWAYS like that, so I guess he just attracts good cards like static electricity attracts cat hair.  Thank God he isn't a gambler, because he'd be completely dangerous.  He has an earnest thirst for knowledge that makes the teacher in me so proud.  Everyone thinks when we are in the same place, at his house or the ranch or at mine, and we stay up half the night talking, it’s because we are arguing politics.  It might start out that way, but more often he just amazes me with his observations, wisdom, and stories about life and history and the world in general, and those are the only times we really get to talk.  We're infuriatingly opposite in many of our beliefs, but I'm so proud that we still communicate well enough to have our discussions. 

I am in awe of my brother.  I love his strength of character and his work ethic.  I aspire to have his knowledge of history, geography, and the Bible.  I envy his wit and cool demeanor.  I respect his beliefs, even the ones I don’t share.  More than I can ever say, I love him and am so very proud to call him…..my baby brother.