Encounters of another kind in the check-out lane

The woman ahead of me at the checkout has her hair set in vintage yellow perm curlers.

She has them in a row smack dab on top of her head with equal amounts of hair carefully wrapped around each one.

The row begins at the peak of her forehead and travels straight back stopping abruptly where the top of her head becomes the back of her head.

The remainder of her hair hangs in stringy strands down around her ears, reaching to the nape of her neck.

There is honesty about this woman that I like. Her shapeless gray hair. Her milky straight face. Her flowered smock top, wrinkle-free blue jeans, spotless white sneakers and those yellow perm curlers.

"You’re missing your dish cloth," the clerk gently teases the woman while scanning her purchases.

"What?" the woman squints at the clerk, looking confused as she reaches into her cart to place more items on the counter.

The clerk repeats herself, only this time speaking robotically, annunciating every word and syllable to make her point.

"You…are…miss-ing…your…dish…cloth."

Realizing that her comment still was not registering, the store clerk waits only but a moment before explaining herself.

"My grandmother used to do up her hair like that," the clerk says, gesturing toward the woman’s hair rollers. "Same type of curlers and all," she continues, her eyes fixated on the woman’s yellow perm curlers while her hands busily scan more items. "My grandma would take a dish cloth, wrap it around her curlers and then tie it off in the back of her head like a scarf."

"Oh, I see," the woman murmurs, nodding courteously with a half smile, yet no less emboldened about wearing hair rollers in public.

Traveling along the checkout counter, the woman follows her items as they move down the conveyor, her curlers flowing as a pragmatic crown.

Such a public display is a throwback to decades ago when women thought nothing of venturing out with their hair done up like this.

What necessity drove her to go shopping today with rollers in her hair? A wedding? A party? A dance? A baptism? A funeral?

Nothing about her is pretentious. Everything about her is in stark contrast to our nip-tuck made-up culture.

I sense a sort of peacefulness about the woman as she goes about her business with her hair set like that.

Yes, I like her instantly. Her shapeless gray hair. Her milky straight face. Her flowered smock top. Her wrinkle-free blue jeans. Her spotless white sneakers. And, yes, those yellow perm curlers.

2009 © Copyright Paula Damon. A resident of Southeast South Dakota, Paula Damon is a popular columnist and freelance writer. Her column writing has won first-place in National Federation of Press Women and Iowa Press Women Communications Contests. Recently, her work took second place in the South Dakota Press Women Communications Contests. To contact Paula Damon, email pauladamon@iw.net or join her blog at http://my-story-your-story.blogspot.com/.

Dump day allows us to brush up against "pack-rat-ness"

Today is Dump Day. Dump Day is when the city allows its residents to haul just about anything to a collection point at no charge.

This is one of those days that we allow ourselves to brush up against our "pack-rat-ness."

It’s not that we save everything. We simply hang on to what might be useful someday.

We also cling to items that instantly wrap us in an armful of memories.

Not quite keepsakes, they preserve moments of triumph. Maybe they take us to a place where we felt completely loved. They remind us of a time that we would buy back in a heartbeat if we only could.

Dump Day was never intended to drive a wedge between husbands and wives, mothers and children, brothers and sisters over what to part with and what to keep, but it does.

Drawing a thick chalky line of demarcation between us, Dump Day causes my husband and me to takes sides while keeping score of who is not letting go.

Everything from a drawer full of snarling AC adapters to a vintage leather suitcase that belonged to my parents tax our energy and patience.

We split hairs over little insignificant things that we passed over on last year’s Dump Day and stuff that has since become useless.

A portable TV antenna, leftover wallpaper rolls from a remodel 15 years ago, a broken vacuum cleaner and unused baking dishes.

A microphone stand from the boys’ garage band, old comic books, dog-eared children’s books, grade school art and the list goes on.

I had my hopes up, thinking that we would clear several full truckloads today, but we managed only one.

We both seemed to hit a wall of resistance to opening more drawers, cupboards, boxes and plastic tubs. The thought of it totally zapped whatever zeal we may have had.

It’s just that seeing and touching yesterday chased us back through time. Before we knew it, we were all tired out. The sudden jolt of the many days that had disappeared from our collective memory startled us.

All those decisions to keep or to throw drained us like pulling the plug on a fully drawn bath.

After Brian hauled our one truckload to the dumpsite, he played on the computer for a while and then settled in for a nap. I was feeling drowsy myself and curled up beside him.

I have come to think that Dump Day is just too overwhelming if a person is not in the right frame of mind. What is the right frame of mind? I do not know.

2009 © Copyright Paula Damon. A resident of Southeast South Dakota, Paula Damon is a popular columnist and freelance writer. Her column writing has won first-place in National Federation of Press Women and Iowa Press Women Communications Contests. Recently, her work took second place in the South Dakota Press Women Communications Contests. To contact Paula Damon, email pauladamon@iw.net or join her blog at http://my-story-your-story.blogspot.com/.

.

Part II Mother’s Bible - a geography in pen marks and food stains

A couple of years ago, I wrote about receiving my mother's Bible, which has served as a cryptic map of her interior life. Today, I continue my quest to know my mother….

Besides family photos, one of the things I value the most is my mother’s Catholic Bible.

Copyright 1988, it is entitled "Christian Community Bible." I have used it as my primary text since I received it after her death on August 30, 2005.

When paging through it, I find traces of my very private mother.

For example, on the inside front cover, she used a felt-tip pen to proudly write her name, Lillian Bosco. Below it, she wrote in pencil Healing - 2 Kings 20:5.

I locate second Kings in the Old Testament and make my way to Chapter 20, verse 5, which reads, "I have heard your prayer and I have seen your tears. And now I will cure you."

Mom's annotations are everywhere. Like an ongoing conversation with herself and with God, every marked passage offers clues to her life.

I wonder why she drew a line around Chapter 5 in Book of Wisdom, a passage which compares the godless to the godly?

On the next page, in Chapter 7, Verse 7, she marked with yellow highlighter "I prayed and understanding was given to me; I asked earnestly and the spirit of Wisdom came to me."

Even the coffee stains and food smudges appear expressive.

What kind of energy or hurriedness made her eat and read the Bible at the same time? Or was it simply that her Bible was open on the kitchen table while she passed vegetable soup, drank tomato juice and served pasta sauce that inevitably splattered the pages?

What was her intent with those brackets around verses 21 through 24 in Sirach 37? "A woman will accept any husband but some girls are better than others. A woman’s beauty makes a man happy and is all that he could wish for. If she is kindly-spoken and gentle he is the most fortunate of men. When a man marries he acquires a future, someone who understands him and who will help and support him."

I have concluded that my mother spent most of her time reading Psalms since so many are marked in one way or another. Psalm 91, subtitled "A night prayer," must have been her favorite.

Stained with coffee spills, oiled with greasy fingerprints, discolored by exposure to light, these passages must have been left open as incense for shelter and protection.

While venturing through Mom’s Bible, I work very hard to look beyond her markings to discern her calling, her searching, her rejoicing.

I hope for a glimpse of her bravery. I pray to see a healing of her brokenness. I wish to brush up against her love one more time.

It's not hard to see that her passing has been less about letting go and more about holding on.

Sitting here thumbing through Mom’s Bible, seeking God’s voice in my own life, I admit that I am listening for her and wanting her back.


2009 © Copyright Paula Damon. A resident of Southeast South Dakota, Paula Damon is a popular columnist and freelance writer. Her column writing has won first-place in National Federation of Press Women and Iowa Press Women Communications Contests. Recently, her work took second place in the South Dakota Press Women Communications Contests. To contact Paula Damon, email pauladamon@iw.net or join her blog at http://my-story-your-story.blogspot.com/.

I yelled for God, hoping my prayers would stick

He was 22 years old and sharing a room with my father at UCLA Medical Center in January 1994. The young man was being treated for gunshot wounds.

Misty-eyed, his mother, father, brothers and sisters spoke some broken English but mostly mumbled in Spanish as they stood around his hospital bed, forming a ring of hope to combat their fear.

It was difficult for me to look in their direction. The young patient's pale face was absent of any expression. Eyes closed, he appeared to be sleeping. There were no traceable signs of life except for the beep, beep, beep of the machine that was tracking his heart rate. His muscular arms and neck were motionless.

My father, on the other hand, was recovering from triple abdominal aneurysm surgery. Although we were not sure how he would hold up during the nine-hour procedure, Dad, age 73 at the time, came through it just fine.

While at Dad’s bedside, I overheard the sketchy details of the young man’s twist of fate.

By day, he was a college student at UCLA. He had been working evenings as a guard on a Wells Fargo security truck when he was shot in a hold up the night before last.

Now he had a 50-50 chance. Considering the number of bullets he had taken during the assault, he probably would never walk again if he did live.

I could not help feeling guilty as I drew the curtain around my father’s hospital bed. Pondering Dad’s post-op state, I concluded that he had lived a good long life. He had never faced gunfire, not even during his WWII service in the Navy.

All of his children were alive and doing well. Not one of us had stared violence in the face as this young man had less than 24 hours earlier.

While feeding my dad ice chips, I tried to block out the quiet heavy grief "next door." I thought hard about the young man, who really was just a boy.

I pictured him in a sea of white hospital sheets, tubes coming and going from his once virile body, a machine helping him breathe.

Anger and sadness grew inside me. He had been short-changed big time. He was on the cusp of adulthood, almost done with college, getting ready to launch a career. Now, he was hemmed in by the results of a lethal robbery during which the driver was killed.

He was about the same age as my oldest child was and I couldn’t help feeling the loss.

I wanted to push the reset button for him and his family.

I wanted to give them back what we all think we have: more hello hugs, a ton of "see you soon" phone messages, an abundance of weekend plans, a heart full of hopes and a life loaded with endless tomorrows.

I wanted the assailants, now roaming freely with stolen cash paid for with this young man’s blood, to be caught.

At that moment, I wanted to amass a whole host of miracles.

I yelled for God, hoping my prayers would stick. I wanted to let loose on him and his family an army of heaven’s angels.

I wanted to surround him with a hedge of protection. I wanted them to have what I thought I had.

2009 © Copyright Paula Damon. A resident of Southeast South Dakota, Paula Damon is a popular columnist and freelance writer. Her column writing has won first-place in National Federation of Press Women and Iowa Press Women Communications Contests. Recently, her work took second place in the South Dakota Press Women Communications Contests. To contact Paula Damon, email pauladamon@iw.net or join her blog at http://my-story-your-story.blogspot.com/.

Murder in first degree shatters Easter bliss

This is a story of innocence and vulnerability ….

The mercantile store clerk reached down into the large pen and with one unfailing swoop snatched the little chick that was destined to go home with us.

The year was 1959. My five siblings and I ranged in ages from 11 to two. I was in the middle, turning seven.

There were blue, green, pink and purple baby chicks. We chose a pink one. Their feathers were intentionally dyed for the Easter season.

At the time, having a live baby chick at Easter was a marvel to our brood. It was like bringing home a hamster or a gerbil.

We took turns holding "Peep-peep," which is what we named him after his chirping sound. One at a time, we reached down into his makeshift pen, which was lined with Sunday’s paper.

Our bodies quivered while we balanced that fluff ball of innocence in our hands. Our fingers curled ever so gently around his tiny body to keep him from certain death by falling on the hardwood floor.

Some part of having a new creature in our lives was the excitement of holding vulnerability in the palms of our hands.

Looking back, that was a cruel Easter ritual for Peep-peep, but one that brought us collective excitement, second only to having the Easter Bunny himself hip-pity-hop right through our front door.

The baby chick’s pen quickly turned into a playful shrine, which we visited and knelt at, watching for long spells, waiting, wondering even though he never once came around to our caresses or attempted kisses atop his miniature head.

Embedded in my elation was a certain sadness. For our benefit, his body was dyed and then he was removed from his home. His appetite soon gone. The fight in him failed.

We wanted him to play. We wanted him to respond. Maybe that’s why the youngest, Anita, age 2, held on so tightly the morning after his arrival.

At first, she was skittish about how he felt on her skin. Then, she became ecstatic. Her eyes and mouth widened. Her grip tightened while her fingers collected slowly around his neck.

"Let go, Anita!" I yelled; the others joined my cry. "Let go-o-o-o-o-o!" We ran screaming for our mother, leaving Anita alone, frozen on an island of desperate bliss with feathery soft Peep-peep still under her power. His eyes closed. His head limp. His body lifeless.

In the years that followed, Mother forbade us to have another baby chick at Easter or any other time, for that matter.

This is a story of innocence and vulnerability. Down through the years, why is it that my siblings and I are compelled to retell it during family gatherings and at Easter?

2009 © Copyright Paula Damon.

A resident of Southeast South Dakota, Paula Damon is a popular columnist and freelance writer. Her column writing has won first-place in National Federation of Press Women and Iowa Press Women Communications Contests. Recently, her work took second place in the South Dakota Press Women Communications Contests. To contact Paula Damon, email pauladamon@iw.net or join her blog at http://my-story-your-story.blogspot.com/.