Grandmothers

Lately I look in the mirror and see my Grandmother Rock’s face (which isn’t a good thing since she’s been dead for more than 30 years). What’s remarkable about this is I don’t resemble her at all. I have my Grandpa Rock’s round face and temperament, and my Grandma Andrews’ sturdy calves, slender ankles, and shelf-like bosom.

But when I’m tired, the resemblance to my maternal grandmother, Violet Stubbe Rock, stares me in the face. The lilac shadows under my eyes and the hollows around my lips are hers.

Her remarkable fashion sense (she rivaled Imelda Marcos in number of shoes until she, like me, developed bunions) eludes me to this day. She also had a way with the rouge pot and knew exactly how to layer on scents (Tabu and Amber).

Playing dress-up at her house was one of my favorite childhood pastimes. Her flowery housedress discards, tucked into an old hardbound suitcase, were paired with real reptile-skin platform pumps (four-plus pairs: two ruby red, two emerald green, plus one brown pair of peep-toe).

The days I spent at her house (my grandfather died when I was ten) were dictated by routine: I’d get up and watch TV while munching on Pop Tarts or those marvelous 70s snacks: Space Sticks, reputed to have gone up into the stratosphere with the astronauts. Much later, she’d come down and have her usual breakfast: orange juice, coffee, toast, and a cigarette.

Later, we might go shopping at Sears Roebuck & Co. for clothes or the dime store for paper dolls. When I was younger she’d take me miniature golfing (my favorite) or to the Elks Club to swim. We also played countless hours of gin rummy or double solitaire for nickels. She loved to gamble. Often we’d ‘dine’ at Howard Johnson’s where I’d gorge on clams or spaghetti and chocolate milkshakes. Grandma Rock would order a ‘double bubble’ martini with her meal.

Evening time my grandma would knit and smoke, and we’d watch Twilight Zone re-runs or old Clark Gable movies. Also part of our ritual was the ‘midnight snack’ which consisted of M&M’s, miniature marshmallows, and sometimes cashews. This long-time tradition ended when my grandmother was diagnosed with adult onset diabetes. The summer of the Watergate hearings I spent time watching the proceedings at her house and  following her exchange plan ‘diet.’ I lost 20 pounds and went on to lose a total of 45 my freshman year of high school.

Eventually emphysema and alcoholism took their toll, and she moved into a nursing home in her 60s. She died five months before I got married at age 22.

Her IQ score was off the charts, and in the 1930s Violet headed off to college to study journalism with a fur coat and her own car. She dropped out and married my grandfather, who graduated with a pharmacy degree and later bought his own drugstore.

She loved to drive and, as chronicled here before, would take my mom and her siblings plus great grandpa on car trips all over the country. My grandfather could never leave his business. The only state that ever did her in driving-wise was West Virginia (birthplace of my younger son and ‘home’ for 15 years), pre-interstate highway.

Whenever I’m stressed I crave M&Ms mixed with mini marshmallows in a little paper cup.

And wish all of life’s problems that cause those lilac shadows under my eyes could be solved by a ‘midnight snack.’

Back to school

This morning my 16-year-old (for one more week) told me he graduates from high school in nine months.

This ‘revelation’ kind of took both of us aback.

He’s ready for school to start, ready for senior year, ready for what lies ahead…college...and beyond.

Me, I think I’m ready for the nursing home.

Also this morning I had a routine appointment with the surgeon who did my foot surgery last summer.  Earlier this summer I had a blood clot, most likely caused by hormones and a long car trip.  Since then I’ve been having shin pain, and the ‘good’ news is that annoyance isn’t  alarming. It just takes time for all the ‘vascular systems’ to return to normal after a blood clot.

But I also got some ‘not so good’ news. The nerve damage in my other ankle has worsened. Deep down I think I’ve known this as I limped along on my daily hour-long walks. Fortunately, I inherited my mother’s high tolerance for pain.

Unfortunately, high tolerance notwithstanding, this needs to be taken care of surgically so I can continue to be active into my declining years.

Which quite frankly have felt like this summer.

Now a disclaimer…

None of this is life threatening (well, except for the blood clot), it’s just annoying and depressing. Recovery won’t be nearly as extensive since I’m not having toes pinned, etc. as I did last summer. But the bottom line is I’ll still be inactive for a longer period of time than I’d like.

Exercise makes me happy. It keeps the endorphins flowing and prevents me from being pudgier than I am.

My ‘baby’ graduates from high school in nine months, and it took me ten years to lose the worst of the baby weight.

Another disclaimer: My mother says the statute of limitations is up on that area of blame.

Exercise also gifts me with excellent cholesterol numbers, keeps me off high blood pressure medications, and staves off the diabetes which runs rampant on both sides of my family.

So…if I want to be able to keep exercising I have to take time to have surgery and recover.

Time has a way of passing quickly though.

After all, in nine months my baby graduates from high school.

Dog Days of Summer

As I sit and write this in my air-conditioned-resembles-a-room-on-TLC’s-hoarders-office, I’m reflecting on yet another summer come and soon will go.

Good riddance to bad rubbish I say, or rather write.

My six-year-old niece is in the hospital getting hopefully her last EEG to see if she can be weaned off her seizures medication. Serious heart issues as a baby led to surgery as a toddler. Meanwhile, in Dorothy Gale’s home territory, my 44-year-old cousin is recovering from quadruple bypass surgery after a second stint in the hospital due to a blood clot in his leg.

His adorable wife says he was just trying to copy me.

Recently the ‘perfect storm’ of circumstances led to the diagnosis of a blood clot in my right leg, the kind that can cause a pulmonary embolism. Today I got the ‘go ahead’ to resume most normal activities (see aforementioned office in need of shoveling out) and the quest to regulate the drug I’m on continues.

Fortunately, we have excellent medical care. And everyone who’s ever been on blood thinners assures me this is the way it is with, well, blood thinners.

If not for Coumadin, we never would have met one of our oldest (not age wise) and dearest friends, Jean Holter. She was our neighbor years ago, as was her mother, Doris. When Doris, whom we’d never met, had Coumadin-triggered nose bleed, Ralph took her to the ER… it being the neighborly thing to do.

Since that day, even though we may not literally share blood, Jean is family through and through.

This morning I went into the clinic for bloodwork. Sitting across from me in the waiting room sat a man staring pensively at the ground. He had a port in his arm… chemo therapy for cancer? He also had a titanium leg… bone cancer? His posture said he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders.

Another dear old (not age wise) friend and I often ruminate on how feeling sorry for oneself is selfish because there are always others so much worse off. Conversely, we take turns reminding each other we can’t always adopt the attitude ‘There but for the grace of God go I (and mine)’ no matter how noble.

But at the end of the day, we know we are fortunate no matter what trials and tribulations (health or otherwise) life throws the way of us and our loved ones.

This summer has seen some crappy lows and some wonderful highs -- including time spent with those longtime (not old) friends and others. Instead of wishing the season away, I’m just going to enjoy every day – if not every bump in the road.

Recently on a steamy night, another friend, Elizabeth, and I (definitely not old…she was born the year I was a junior in high school) sat on my deck. She has two wonderful children, a pre-schooler and one about to enter kindergarten. It’s always hard to process when your first child is about to head to school. Me, the queen of holding on and letting go, is finding it hard to believe my ‘baby’ is going to be a senior in high school. I’d say it seems like only yesterday he entered kindergarten (God Bless Mrs. VanHorn) but in actuality it seems like an eternity.

Anway…I digress…as usual. My young mom friend told me I was the one who told her to enjoy the moment(s) with her children, and she’s taken that to heart. Her disclosure touched me.

No matter what’s going on in life, we need to enjoy and embrace every moment…and not let the sucky ones get us down.

The Web Comics Model - Guest Post

Here is a guest post from my husband, Ralph Hanson -- author of the textbook Mass Communication: Living in a Media World, with a collection of links that look at how web comic artists promote their work, both online and in print.  This is to go with a presentation I'm giving at the West Virginia Writers Conference June 8-10, 2012.

Please note that some of the links here go to comics that are "PG-13ish" and may have offensive language.  This is not my normal milieu!   

Web comic artists sometimes work together as a "co-op" of 5-15 other artists to promote their work and merchandise.  This provides a central place to sell books, merchandise, and t-shirts.  By combining with other artists, they can help build traffic to their site and their store.

West Virginia artist Danielle Corsetto (she lives in Shepherdstown), who draws the web comic Girls With Slingshots, works with Blind Ferret Entertainment for promotion and sales.

Web comic artists often self-publish books, and they travel to conventions many weekends to sell books and merchandise.

Jeph Jacques, who draws the enormously successful comic Questionable Content, gets about 400,000 readers per day, but he's an exceptional example.  He sells his books and merchandise through the online web comics store Topatoco.  He's even had plushy versions of his robot sidekick characters made for sale. (You can read more about the origins of Topatoco here.)

Comics artists often sell an artist edition of their books that is signed with a small drawing at a 50-100 percent premium over the cost of the basic unsigned books.

Even established mainstream comic artists, such as Karl Kerschl, work at selling their web comic material on the side. His "day job" is drawing comics for major publishers, such as the Assassin's Creed books.  His side project is drawing the adorable web comic The Abominable Charles Christopher.

A few web comic artists have become bestselling authors working with conventional publishers. Canadian artist Kate Beaton is an example, with her book of Hark, A Vagrant becoming a New York Times bestseller.  

Some have made use of the crowd-sourcing Kickstarter to raise money to pay the cost of publishing paper versions of their books or to buy enough time off from a day job to get work done on a project.  One person who has been doing this successfully is Gordon McAlpin with his movie-theater themed comic Multiplex.

Keep in mind that people trying to do this need to have an established following to begin with.

Finally, some very talented web comic artists continue to work full time while producing their comics and doing a limited number of convention.  One example of this would be Angela Melick, a Canadian engineer who draws the comic Wasted Talent (often done in watercolors).

Volunteerism….

I have vague memories of being a ‘Candy striper’ for a few moments in high school..or rather of the unflattering shirtdress-styled uniform. But I’m not really sure. Maybe it was my sister who was? A career in the healthcare field was never in the cards for me.

What I do have are vivid memories of my first volunteer experience at a nursing home when I was in junior high in the early 1970s. They weren’t called assisted living facilities then, and what those elderly people were doing there could hardly be called living.

In high school, I volunteered in a classroom of special needs children. Never had I considered being a teacher a career choice, either. I knew I would never have the patience to teach students with any needs, although I enjoyed my time volunteering with Special Olympics.

(Note to all my former college students: I did gain more patience by the time y’all and I were in the classroom together!)

Fast forward a few years, and my volunteer ‘career’ started in earnest: my eldest son went off to kindergarten. Oh the marvelous opportunities for mommies and daddies to be a part of the classroom experience. My first foray was to the pumpkin patch one sunny fall day to ride herd on a bunch of five and six year-olds as they selected their future Jack ‘o Lanterns with other parents.

And for the most part, for the last 17 years I feel I did contribute as a volunteer and did have my own life enriched. My favorite ‘job’ ever, paid or unpaid, was working in the North Elementary School library in Morgantown, West Virginia. My boys are nearly five years apart so I had plenty of time to spread my volunteer wings. Then-librarian Vicki Wilson remains one of my favorite people ever and that’s where I developed my adult love of young adult and middle grade books. Not to mention the joy (usually) of helping kids in a book CENTRIC environment.

Numerous highs, and the occasional lows, have occurred over the years. All the Read Aloud time in the classroom (which my husband participated in also), the homeroom parties (wrapping kids in toilet paper at Halloween to turn them into silent mummies remains one of my favorites), the middle school trip to New York City where one mom abandoned her group to go off on her own, which resulted in my group gaining one of my older son’s best friends still to this day, the list seems, well endless.

Until today.

Tonight is a sports picnic, which I’m marking as my final act ever of mom volunteerism. This year, along with a super awesome group of moms and dads, I was a ‘spirit’ mom for two sports.

Recently I finished three years of being involved with our church’s middle schoolers, two as a confirmation small group leader. I wanted to ‘pay it forward’ because we moved here when our youngest was in 8^th grade, and he received a warm welcome at this church. I had a wonderful group of girls, and the class as a whole was lively and engaging.

But it’s time to ‘retire.’ My youngest graduates from high school next year and heads to college.

I wouldn’t change anything about the experiences of the last 17 years, except maybe the accidental-crashing-glass shelves-laden-with-snow globes debacle that involved 5^th graders at a museum in Pittsburgh years ago….

Being a volunteer is not about ‘you’ (me), but I do cherish one memory above all else….

I’m in the middle of a crowded CROWDED ballroom at the student union at a university for a ‘don’t do bad things’ field trip with middle schoolers. All the schools in the county have sent their kids for this fun educational activity. The snow globes shattering woulda been preferable to this….

Somebody tells the kids to sit down for the ‘fun’ lecture so I sit down with them and look around. I’m the only adult sitting on the hard floor. So I say to no one in particular:  “Why am I the only parent sitting on the floor”?

To which one of my older son’s classmates replied “Because you care.”

I did care.

Of course there was the time as PTO co-president, I left a meeting rather than take a swing at the principal – verbally – and the counselor had to talk me off the ledge…but for the most part it’s been a great ride.

And I never lost any kids on any field trips…permanently.

Where the Wild Things Are Going

Image from Maruice Sendak's
Unreleased Drawings and prints

The inscription on our battered copy of ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ is dated Dec. 21^st, 1991 and reads:

Erik,

Happy 1^st Birthday!

May you always be the king of your dreams.

Lots of love,

Andrea Prior

 Andrea or “An-N-INA” – as our older son called her – was Erik’s first babysitter. Years ago her dad (a chancellor at an Eastern school who died unexpectedly this year) and her mom took my husband and me under their wing at Northern Arizona University. Andrea’s mother, Merry Lu, and I had both grown up in Michigan and shared a love of reading and a mutual disdain for

A. returning things (she always made my returns)

and B. making phone calls (I always made hotel reservations, etc. for her). 

With Merry Lu, I attended my first book group meeting and went on my first ‘faculty wives’ hike. From her I learned how to identify Indian Paintbrush and how to gently remove spiders from one’s house and take them outside instead of squashing. Sadly only the former took.

When Erik was born, Andrea became his beloved babysitter. The night my husband and I celebrated our 10^th anniversary we came home at midnight to find Andrea pushing our earache-plagued toddler outside in his stroller. She was a natural.  Erik has grown into a globetrotter, and both Andrea and her mom loved travel. Following in her parents footsteps,  Andrea chose teaching as a profession – one that took her from a reservation at the bottom of the Grand Canyon to Japan.

        

Last fall, Erik spent a weekend in Japan while on study abroad in Seoul, South Korea.  He enjoyed Seoul so much he returned for a second term and is due home the end of June. One more semester of college here in Nebraska, then he graduates and no doubt heads off to the world again.

 How you gonna keep ‘em down on the prairie after they’ve seen Asia and Europe?

Meanwhile, ‘little brother’ Andrew is approximately five days away from officially being a senior in high school.  We’ve yet to have a senior in high school since Erik bypassed all that, leaving home at 16 to become a foreign exchange student in Germany and then going to college early.

As chronicled before, Erik’s been going since he was a toddler…literally trying to head for the Mexican border (five hours away) during a moms and tots playgroups in Flagstaff while other children happily played in the sandboxes or swing sets.  I’m used to Erik going, to relishing the moments when he’s around, and knowing he’ll no doubt always live in some far-flung place.

So it’s taken me by enormous surprise to feel so discombobulated by the thought of Andrew going off to college in a year. At the closest he’ll go two minutes away, at the longest two hours.

But it’s not really about that is it?

The appointment for senior pictures is already made and on the calendar for this summer. Graduation party venues have already been discussed. A year is a very long time and yet, in this week that saw the death of Maurice Sendak, the beloved author of “Where the Wild Things Are,” I have two sons on the cusp of starting amazing new journeys and many friends in similar situations.

It seems like only yesterday the wild rumpus started….

This too shall pass…

… is one of the ‘mantras’ I’m trying to adopt for 2012. Another is ‘Just say no’ when you can. Lately, however, I need to admonish myself to ‘Just quit whining!’

This year I vowed to banish negativity from my life – when at all possible. Also, I promised myself this was my last year of volunteering – for anything.

The time has come.

My 21-year-old returns from studying abroad in Seoul this summer and has one more semester before graduating from college. My ‘volunteer career’ (as chronicled before here) started in a pumpkin patch when he was a kindergartner.

Another phrase I’ve embraced is ‘don’t engage’ as in when confronted by bullies, idiots, annoying people – let it go. There’s nothing rotten-to-the-core people dislike more than not having someone to spar with.

Life is simply too short to engage negative people.

But lately I feel I’m turning into a negative, whiney person and, whereas I’m not the Pollyanna my positive (and God bless him for it!) husband is… I don’t like being whiney.

Previously in this space I’ve chronicled the tale of ‘Whiney Girl Rides a Bike.”

When Erik was in first grade each night he brought home a text to read out loud to us. One story detailed the life of a cranky girl who did not like to ride her bike. It’s not quite the purple prose of the Dick and Jane years my husband and I endured (I went from Spot and Puff to Nancy Drew to J. D. Salinger and Stephen King, thank you very much). It does mimic that early reader style somewhat: “I do not like my red bike. I do not want to ride my red bike. Blah blah blah.”

You get the idea.

All three of us -- dad, mom, and first grader -- concurred this story should have been called “Whiney Girl Rides a Bike.”

We all also agreed whiney girl needed to get over it.

Me included.