Girl Next Door

As I was growing up in the sixties, I had a very well defined idea of how I wanted to look.  My points of reference were pictures and articles in Fifteen or Seventeen magazines and ads for suntan lotion.  Back in those days, the desired look was that of a California blonde surfer girl,  British Carnaby Street model, or the all American girl next door.  I studied pictures of the models for everything from Sun- In to Bass Weejuns, trying valiantly to replicate whatever I could to bring me one inch closer to those ideals.

I had a few challenges along the way.  First of all, I lived in Illinois, so trying to adopt the persona of a sun kissed teenager with long, straight blonde hair and a perpetual tan was almost laughable.  Plus, I had plain old brown hair that had a natural wave and had a tendency to frizz up in the summer humidity. 

I couldn't even remotely mimic the style of the English rose with heavy eye makeup, pale lipstick and mini skirts like Twiggy or Jean Shrimpton.  That was so far off base from my reality that I didn't even try to co-opt that look as my own.

That left all American girl, which was by far the easiest look to emulate.  I stocked my wardrobe with the de rigueur kilts, wool shorts, vee neck sweaters, knee socks and loafers.  Ambush or Heaven Scent were my go-to colognes, dabbed sparingly at my pulse points - all tools to help create the look and aura I was after.  Just one big problem remained.  Thanks to my dad, I had a whole face full of freckles.  Not a cute sprinkling across my nose, mind you - full out freckles everywhere.  Conventional wisdom may have suggested that freckles would work well with the whole girl next door theme, but in my version of that reality, freckles were the biggest obstacle to being cute.  Freckles made me plain and pedestrian and I detested them.

In the back section of one of the magazines, I found an ad for Stillman's Freckle Cream.  The ad  promised that the cream would bleach away the horrid spots and leave my skin creamy and even toned.  It wasn't cheap.  I had to save my allowance for a long time before I could send away for the cream.  I reasoned that two jars would be necessary since I was cursed with such an awful case.  After weeks and weeks of scrimping, I was able to buy the Stillman's.  I can't begin to describe the joy I felt when I saw the package containing miracle creams had arrived.  I was on the cusp of a fresh, freckle-free look, and I could hardly wait.

Every night I faithfully applied the cream, following the directions to the letter.  After the first jar was gone, I thought I saw a minor change and was glad I'd had the foresight to order two jars to get the job completely done.  Again, I diligently rubbed the Stillman's in every night before going to sleep, confident I was just weeks away from a new face.

Those of you who have known me for years know that this experiment failed completely.  At the end of the second jar of Stillman's Freckle Cream, the only thing I'd lost was some of my allowance money.  As time went on I learned that make up could help cover the freckles to a certain extent and the burning urgency to get rid of them faded and eventually moved to the back burner. 

Once I moved into adulthood, something surprising happened.  Summers in the sun made my freckles multiply and get darker and I found myself kind of liking it.  My husband commented on it once, telling me my summer freckle explosion made me look so cute.  Cute!  That was, after all, what I was always after - having a boy that I loved think I was cute.  It was another curious life lesson - realizing that whatever bits and pieces that make up who I am are as much a part of my identity as my finger prints.  To be sure, I'm not a Pollyanna that puts a fake positive spin on   my tendency to flabby upper arms or ugly eyebrows. And I'm pretty sure that ten years from now I won't find those things cute but I try not to get my knickers in a twist over things that are what they are.

Now I live in Florida, where the sun is usually shining.  My freckles are in perpetual bloom, which is something I rather like.  And every once in awhile when I'm looking in the mirror and see them in all their glory, I find myself smiling and think "Huh, who would have thought..."

When Daddy Let Me Drive

I've always thought I've led a fairly vanilla life.  No apologies - it's pretty much reflective of where and how I was raised and I've come to terms with the fact that there haven't been a lot of BIG exciting things that have happened on my journey (so far).  There are a few exceptions, though.

When I was fifteen years old I was able to get my driver's learner permit.  I was signed up for driver's ed at the high school I attended and I fully expected my parents to let me do practice driving as often as possible. Wrong.

My dad was an over-the-road semi truck driver.  He made round trip runs from Chicago to Battle Creek, or Kalamazoo, Michigan five nights a week and saw plenty of car accidents throughout the years.  I'm sure in his mind he projected my face on to the identity of each of the drivers in those accidents.  My mom was a little more laid back on the subject of me driving, but she had already abdicated her involvement in my learning to drive to my dad who was a "professional."

We had a  maroon Ford Galaxy back then.  For some reason, my dad was a die hard Ford man and we always had some variation of one of their boring cars - Falcon, Galaxy, and so forth. Since my dad was nearly 26 years older than my mom, we had already missed the window for him to go through a mid-life crisis and buy a red Mustang or (gasp) even a Chevy.  I really hadn't thought about the car itself too much, because it was really only a means to an end - the vehicle that would help teach me to drive. 

I was doing pretty well in driver's ed at school.  The instructor we had, one of the school's science teachers, wore lime cologne and made us listen to country music while we drove, softly singing along to songs I'd never heard.   It made me a little car sick.  I was, however, a parallel parker par excellence.  The instructor said if they gave out medals for parallel parking, I'd be the first one in line to have one pinned on my coat - he'd never seen anyone do such a fine job.

I tried using that as leverage with my dad.  He relented a little and took me practice driving in the high school parking lot.  Round and round we'd go:  in the front entrance,  back to the pool entrance and all the way back around to the front again.  Over and over and over.  I longed for open road driving and constantly pestered my dad for a chance.  "Not quite yet," he'd say.  "Soon."

My sixteenth birthday was approaching in four short months.  I felt comfortable driving out in traffic because of driver's ed, so I was reasonably sure that my official driver's license was just a few months away.

Then, one mid-summer day, everything changed.  My parents had gone to trade in the Galaxy for the current year's model earlier in the day.  When they finally came home, my mom was smiling and my dad tossed the new set of keys in my direction.  "Want to take the new car for a spin?" he asked.  Never one to turn down a chance to drive - especially a brand new car, I grabbed my wallet and headed out the front door with him.

In the driveway, instead of another nondescript Galaxy, there stood a sleek and proud gold Gran Torino with a sporty fastback and (be still my heart) racing stripes!  I couldn't have been more surprised if I'd found James Bond's Aston Martin in the driveway.  This was ours???  And I could actually drive it?

We drove up and down the streets of my hometown that day and many more that followed.  I felt  special and noticed - feelings that were a bit foreign to me. Something in the magic of that car made my dad lose some of his fear that I'd get in an accident and he took me driving frequently. I really believe that car also gave me more confidence in myself.  It also made me realize that my parents still had the ability to surprise me, which was a bit of a surprise in itself.  

Yes, for the most part my life is still vanilla (unless you count two sets of twins as exciting...).
Oh, there have been some exciting times and memorable ones, too, but that summer day that I slid into the front seat of the gold Gran Torino and turned the key in the ignition ranks up there with the memories that I cherish the most.

Gone

I spent twenty six years of my life behind the counter at Triangle Camera at the corner of Broadway and Stratford on Chicago's north side.  I started out helping my future mother-in-law do typesetting for Chicago's Japanese newspaper, The Chicago Shimpo, graduated to counter sales and eventually became the store manager.  In between, I got married to Mike, had four children and lived in three of the apartments upstairs from the store.

We worked together, Mike and I, along with my mother-in-law, Jennie and my sister-in-law, Evie.  Though our staff changed frequently (as retail staff is prone to do),  the people that worked for us were like extended family.  They were there at our wedding, celebrated the birth of our children and mourned the passing of one of our co-workers and my mother-in-law.  Like many large, dysfunctional families, we had our disagreements and tiffs but they usually passed and we forgave each other.

When I met Mike, long before we were married, Triangle looked like the first picture.  The shelves were crammed with photo chemicals, paper and darkroom supplies.  Beautiful, intricate cameras stood proudly on stands that said Nikon or Canon or Leica.  There were several "groupies" who used to hang out there on Monday and Thursday nights when we were open until 9 pm, just to talk photo, peppered with stories of my late father-in-law and the days of Triangle's infancy.  I didn't know a thing about photography, I used to joke, I only married into it, but it became an integral part of my life.

How privileged I was to become friends with so many of our loyal customers, who chose  to have us develop their precious film  rather than  at the local drugstore.  We were there to see the pictures that created snapshots of their lives.  I still get Christmas cards and Facebook messages from a few of them - a sort of thread that connects my old life and new life together.

Our photo lab, a converted first floor apartment on the Stratford side, had pencil marks along side one door frame:  Brett and Ryan 6 years or Amy and Lauren 9 years -  moments in time preserved in pencil lead.  My children had the run of the store since we lived upstairs.  They knew all of our staff and many of our customers.  They would walk there after school and lay sprawled on the floor of the office in their Mt. Carmel Academy uniforms, diagramming sentences or writing reports.  Our dog, Pepper, was there too, standing perpetual guard at the top of the stairs, mostly sleeping, but rousing every so often to take himself out for a walk to the fire hydrant on Stratford.

Well, the whole photo industry changed, as you all know.  Digital photography replaced film and people weren't printing out their pictures.  Cameras were hard to sell when we had to compete with internet merchants who didn't have the overhead of a brick and mortar store to cut into their margins. There was a lot of drama as we coped to adjust.  Then, in late 2003, my mother-in-law passed away and the last true connection to the Triangle Camera of 1953 was gone.

We made a valiant effort to keep it going, but I think we knew, in our heart of hearts even then, that the time had come to say our good-byes and move on.  And so, the building was sold and Triangle Camera closed it's doors on December 31, 2005.

For many years, the new owner left the Triangle space as it was - a sort of hollow and ghostly monument to what used to be.  We moved to Florida and started new lives, but friends from the neighborhood or vendor representatives from our Triangle days would email us updates.  "Still empty", they'd report.  "Just like you left it."  Until now.

Someone emailed me a link to the photo gallery of the restaurant that finally opened in the old Triangle space.  It had been magnificently remodeled and bore little resemblance to the space that had begun as a modest camera store nearly sixty years ago.  I was impressed and very happy to see new life breathed into the building and the retail space that had lain empty for so long.  I showed the pictures to Mike and emailed the link to my children and my niece.  "Look," I said - "see how fabulous the old Triangle space looks!"  Everyone agreed it looked wonderful and oohed and aahed over the exposed brick and gleaming floors.

Later that night, as we were on our nightly walk, Mike said that seeing the pictures made him kind of sad.  He said that he had the fleeting thought that he wished it was still empty - with all of our lives memories preserved inside - rather than look beautiful and shiny-new, but as foreign as a place we'd never seen.  And then my daughter said the exact same thing and I started to think.  I thought about the pencil marks showing my children's height at various stages of their lives; the Christmas parties over the years; the typesetting room from my days as a young bride that morphed into part of our photo studio -  all of the reminders of not only my work life, but my whole life - suddenly gone as if they'd never been there at all.  Part of me was within those walls that had seen so much, heard so much, felt so much.

Just as I sent my children off to college and into the world, filled with excitement and hope for whatever the future held, so I knew the chapters of my life that had played out within those walls
had ended.  I hope that those beautifully remodeled walls will remember us and that whatever bright things the future holds for those that now work and live there, the laughter, tears and lessons learned by those of us that came before will become entwined with the joy of tomorrow's possibilities.

I refuse to call them resolutions

Tomorrow is New Years Eve, which for me has rarely meant dressing up and partying.  I have pretty much always been a homebody and this year will be no different.  Like millions of other people - especially those of us of a certain age, this is an occasion for taking stock of the past years accomplishments and shortfalls and coming up with a loose set of goals for the new year. 

I say loose goals, because, of course, they need to be realistic and attainable.  And, more importantly, I need to be able to move the line into the following year if I don't quite get everything on my list done by next New Years Eve.  Last year, for example, I had three clear cut goals:  lose weight (original, huh?), learn to make spicy pickles and bake bread from scratch.  I ditched the whole breadmaking idea early on.  Way too much work for me.  Even if I did manage to make a decent loaf of bread, I would probably eat it right out of the oven which would make the whole losing weight goal even harder to attain.  Easier to just scratch that one.  I'm actually pretty disappointed in myself for not following through with the pickles, though.  The recipes I found online don't look very difficult, but I had lingering fears about canning that I would poison both Mike and I with botulism.  Okay, that's a bit of a cop out.  I believe I'll be putting it back on my list for 2013.

I did lose about 25 pounds, which was a good thing.  My official reason for doing this was that it was better for my health and that I would feel better, blah blah blah.  My unofficial reason was that I was meeting nine of my high school girlfriends for a reunion to celebrate turning 60 this year. There is no incentive in the world quite like the prospect of being reunited with high school girlfriends to get yourself motivated.  And, honestly, there shouldn't have been any pressure or angst on my part - these are close, dear friends who wouldn't judge me or make snide remarks about my weight.  I've just come to realize that those teenage anxieties don't all ever really go completely away - they just lie dormant and blindside you when you don't expect it.  Happily, I was able to channel those feelings along with my desire for better health and drop the unwanted pounds.  One thing I know to be true (as Oprah would say) is that I am a stress eater, so if 2013 is a tough year, I may have to add this one right back on to my list.

So far, I only have a few goals on my list for next year, though the list is fluid and subject to my arbitrary whims.  I'm almost reluctant to write the first one down here as you'll probably look at it and say, "Well, that's weird!  I always knew she was odd!"  The other night, Mike and I were on our evening walk.  The sky was clear and cold and the constellations were breathtaking.  Suddenly, out of the far recesses of my brain, this old, half forgotten poem by John Masefield called Sea Fever pops out. 
 
             I must go down to the sea again,
            to the lonely sea and the sky.
           And all I ask is a tall ship,
           and a star to steer her by....

 Then, willy nilly, a few lines from Coleridge's Kubla Khan comes to mind and T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land (April is the cruelest month...) and more.  Crazy, huh?  I figure the message I can take from this is that I should make a point to re-read a lot of those beautiful poems that I haven't looked at since I left college, or that I've completely lost my mind.  I choose the former.

I have also started on my 26 Acts of Random Kindness to honor the 26 who lost their lives in Newtown.  This was Ann Curry's idea and I loved it right away.  I've only done one real one so far (being courteous in traffic doesn't qualify), so it might take awhile.  I want these acts to be spontaneous and not forced, so I may end up being just as surprised as the recipient(s) when they occur.  The whole pay it forward concept is quite appealing to me.  Hey, you could do it too!  Go ahead, put it on your own list!

There are a lot of little things that aren't exactly goals, just small accomplishments, that I want to tackle.  Stop worrying about money so much.  Look at the stars through a telescope.  Don't wait so long to get the dog groomed.  Stop eating so much candy and drinking so much Diet Coke.  Learn to say one full sentence in Italian.  Find some joy in each and every day.  Make peace with the fact that I now have a turkey neck.  Figure out Windows 8 (seriously??  No list of All Programs??). Re-do one of the guest bedrooms.  Stuff like that.

2012 was a pretty darn good year.  Lots of good things happened, though I realize, in retrospect, that many of these things happened to me, not because of me or anything I'd done to make them happen.  I want to go roaring into 2013, full tilt, savoring every thing that comes my way, both good and bad.  I will try not to lose sight of the preciousness of each day's possibilities as I babysit and grocery shop and fold laundry.  As imperfect as I am, regardless of the person I'd like to morph into in the coming year, I will try to love the woman I am and hope that lovely memories are spun daily, trailing behind me like the wake of a boat on a summer lake. 

The Latest Edition of Linda

Why is it, I wonder, that we are often afraid to tell people how we really feel?

From my own perspective, if I'm totally honest with myself, it's because of my own insecurities. I've found myself cringing at offensive comments or jokes that others make, but I rarely have the chutzpah to say anything. Instead, I'll excuse myself and leave or change the subject rather than have any kind of confrontation. This, I believe, is one of my worst shortcomings.

Cold comfort that it may be, I know that this lack of response is not mine alone and is also part of a greater problem. Haven't we all found ourselves, from time to time, biting our tongues and not saying what we really feel? Not only to friends and acquaintances, but to our own families as well?

There is an elaborate dance that we sometimes go through to make our feelings known in a passive aggressive way. I know that I have favored that approach in lieu of any really meaningful dialog sometimes because of the lack of confidence that I seem to have in verbalizing my feelings and convictions.

A perfect example is the relationship I have with my daughter-in-law. One of the things I really love about her is that she has always had the confidence in herself to say what she's thinking. I admire that so much and wish I was hard wired to do the same. Instead, I find myself passing things along to my son knowing that my message will eventually make it's way to her. At the time, it seems like the path of least resistance, but after some real soul searching and analysis I see that I am doing all of us a disservice.

I will tell anyone who asks that I love my two daughters-in-law and my two sons-in-law as if they were my own children. And I mean it completely. Each of us has gifts that we bring to the family table and those gifts of individuality make us all richer and more interesting people. We learn to accept and even embrace our subtle differences, knowing that by doing so we are weaving the fabric of our family quilt - one that will be a part of us for generations to come.

And part of that love - the part that means you belong to each other, come hell or high water, can only truly be honored by being able to tell each other how we feel. And knowing that the other person won't love you less or look at you with diminished eyes because there is full acceptance. To achieve that, my friends, is something that I plan to channel my efforts into full throttle. Life is too short for wasting one moment with hurt feelings or misunderstandings, especially with people I love.

To truly "walk the walk" I must be willing to understand that what I feel and what I have to say is not about confrontation, but about being true to myself. And that is a gift not only to my own heart, but to those around me. Linda 4.0 will have meaningful, loving and confident dialog from this day forward. Watch out world.... I may just have a lot to say!

Caroline No

Middle school, or junior high as it was known back then, was a bit of an anxious time for me. For one thing, 7th grade math scared the crap out of me. To be more precise, Mrs. Mead, the math teacher, terrified me even more than the elusive quotients and products did.

At the time, I thought Mrs. Mead must have been in her seventies, but I realize now that she was probably about the age that I am now. Possibly even younger, which is a sobering and disturbing thought. She was a New Englander - you could hear it in the nasally flat way she pronounced her vowels. More than that, she embodied that sort of Puritan work ethic. A kind of "take no prisoners" approach to teaching math. She was a little on the large side and quite imposing with her wire rimmed spectacles, no-nonsense black shoes and iron gray hair. She would brook no discord or monkey business on her watch and little escaped her watchful eye.

Oh, and I was beyond hopeless. Math was never my strong suit, but it was even harder to concentrate and understand what she was teaching when my stomach was churning and my knees were knocking for the entire class period. I didn't fail, but came perilously close. My parents decided that I should go to summer school to take another crack at learning the mysteries of 7th grade math. On the last day of school, I shyly waited for the classroom to empty and told Mrs. Mead that I would be re-taking math during the summer. I don't remember whether I was looking for approval or whether I was instructed to tell her, but I remember the surprised look on her face when she said "Oh, I don't think that's necessary. You'll be fine." I think it was the first time I ever saw her as anything other than my own personal nemesis and it shocked me a little that she even sounded nice. Nonetheless, leaving 7th grade math for the last time was a moment of profound joy for me.

Ah, have I mentioned yet that I was a late bloomer? Just writing that makes me laugh, because in some ways, I don't think I "bloomed" until about 8 years ago. In junior high I was skinny and inept. Back in those days we didn't wear makeup or jeans to school or try to look older than we were. My hair was dark brown and I never seemed to have a good haircut. My freckles were oh-so-plentiful. No cute sprinkling across my nose, not me! Oh no, I was blessed with big old dark freckles all across my face. My clothes were just okay. I always got a few outfits before school started every year, but truth be told, many of my clothes were hand-me-downs from an older cousin. I had friends and hung out with popular kids, but I was a bit on the periphery. If I wasn't present, I wasn't necessarily thought of. I'm not saying that in a "poor me" kind of way, because I never felt that way. I've just always been the type that blends in with the scenery and doesn't stand out or command much attention.

One of the really fun parts of junior high were the parties. One particular girl, a good friend of mine named Sue, would have parties periodically in the basement of her house. Pretty much the whole class would be invited and about 75% would show up. These parties were fairly simple affairs - Cokes and potato chips, a record player and dimmed lights. The exciting part - the truly exciting part - was not knowing if tonight would be THE NIGHT. Would one of the boys ask me to dance? Would that maybe lead to a slow dance? I knew the boys in my class pretty well, most of us had been together since first grade. But in a darkened room on a Saturday night, I could daydream most of them into interesting possibilities.

The 45's would be stacked on the record player. One by one they would drop and play. And the one I always remember because it got played over and over at those parties, was the Beach Boy's Caroline No. To this day, even when I hear it on my Ipod, I find myself in Sue's basement, hoping a boy would ask me to dance.

To be honest, they never did. The smartest girl in the class with the white blonde hair was always dancing with the most popular boy. And another girl disappeared into the laundry area with a boy with a dubious reputation and came back 2 minutes later going steady after an obvious makeout session. I was fascinated, jealous and repelled all at the same time.

In many ways, though nothing really remarkable happened while I was in 7th grade, I feel as if I learned some valuable lessons. I could be afraid of things I didn't understand whether it meant math problems or a budding relationship with a boy. These things seemed both within my grasp and completely out of reach and while I never got a B in Math or danced a slow dance to Caroline No, I never really failed either.

Under the Lilacs

At the perimeter of the back yard of my childhood home there were ten large lilac bushes all in a row. They grew to be over seven feet tall and in between prunings provided a safe, snug den for me at their base.

Like every child, there were times I needed to be alone - away from my younger sister, away from my friends, away from my parents. I could crawl under the lilacs and sit, knees drawn up to my chin, in a space big enough for only me to spin my childhood fantasies.

The branches, heavy with the weight of rain soaked flowers, would arch to nearly the ground, hiding me from the world. The scent of the lilacs were intoxicating and I could not imagine a more perfect place on God's earth.

I could hear the drone of someone's lawn mower several yards away, accompanied by the sound of an insect buzzing somewhere in the foliage. The screen door would slam as my mother made her way to the clothes line with a basket of wet laundry, unaware of my presence just a few feet away. My plaid PF Flyers, only two weeks old were already soiled with grass stains and dirt and my short set (a hand-me-down from my cousin) was already missing a button from the blouse.

But here, in my lilac hideaway, I was a world away. I could be Meg from A Wrinkle in Time or Sam Gribley's friend from My Side of the Mountain. I could be anyone - a poet, the best softball player at school, the owner of a beautiful black horse named Sabre.
But defintely not just a plain young girl with freckles in an ill-fitting short set hiding under the lilacs.