Family resemblance

Have you reached the point in your life yet where you look at your hands, or your nose, or your what-have-you, and say to yourself, “Oh my gosh, I look just like my mother”? Or your father, or whomever you least expected (or wanted) to emulate as a kid?
Gather ’round, people, and behold! For I have seen my dear departed father, and he is alive and well in my own hands. Yes, that’s right. When I look at my hands, it’s as if my dad is standing right in front of me.
It happens especially when I’m driving. Luckily I didn’t also inherit his habit of straightening curves! I also get a touch of arthritis sometimes in my knuckles, just like he did.
On the flip side, I’ve got my Mom’s feet. I remember it like it was yesterday … Mama loved to tell the story of how she had flat feet when she was a kid. That is, until my grandmother sent her off to summer camp. The prescription? Grammy had a doctor write a note allowing Mama to go barefoot all summer to strengthen her weak arches on the lake rocks in Maine. I’m not sure about the validity of that theory, but apparently it worked; Mama’s flat feet never returned.
I, however, am a tenderfoot. Once I walked on an old tin can and cut the heck out of my heel – some summer vacation that was! So I still have the flat feet I was born with (a.k.a. “collapsing arches”). I also have bunions like Mama had, but I haven’t worn what I call “cruel shoes” for some time, thereby avoiding the surgery she had to endure. But every once in a while when the weather gets cold and damp, those painful little protuberances make their presence known. Oh yes, you better believe they do.
Thanks a lot, Mama. Actually, that’s a complaint department I wish were still open! But in this game of genetics, you play the cards you’re dealt. I’ve got a couple of pairs – a better hand than some.

The eeriest thing about being my parents’ daughter, and I think my sisters will back me up on this, is how I take after Mama and Daddy’s mannerisms. They’ll say, “you sounded just like Daddy right then!” Sometimes I catch myself shrugging my answer to a question, simultaneously conveying my ignorance of and apathy towards it – a pure, dyed-in-the-wool Daddy-ism.
I look in the mirror and see Daddy in my smile, my forehead. A friend of mine happened upon an old photo of him at 17 years old. She thought it was a picture of me at a costume party!

I feel sorry for folks who don’t know who their biological parents are, if only because they’ll never see that mirror image of themselves, warts and all, that could give them some insight as to who they really are and how they got that way. If I’m sometimes aghast at becoming like my parents, I just think what the alternative would be, and I’m grateful I know my heritage.
Playlist:
1. Family Tradition - Hank Williams Jr.
2. Seein' My Father in Me - Paul Overstreet
3. Daddy's Hands - Holly Dunn
4. Family Affair - Sly & the Family Stone
5. I'll Be Your Mirror - The Velvet Underground
6. Tell Me What You See - The Beatles
7. Living Together, Growing Together - Burt Bacharach
8. We Are Family - Sister Sledge
9. Watcha See is Whatcha Get - The Dramatics
10. Look At That Face - Barbra Streisand

Dad's Root Fear

The other night as I washed up the supper dishes, I caught myself scrubbing out a used sandwich baggie and realized that was something my Dad used to do. As I clipped it to a clothespin to dry, I chuckled, thinking the apple really doesn’t fall far from the tree.

OK, I’ll admit it. Daddy was a tightwad. And people say I take after him, so I’m sure I inherited some of his stinginess.
At any rate, there I was re-using this old baggie, and I started to ponder the roots of Dad’s crazy penchant for penny-pinching.
Victor Robert Schoen was born in 1929, living his first years as the Great Depression bore down relentlessly on America. As an impressionable child, what fear and desperation did he and others of his generation witness and absorb during that terrible era? I can only imagine, but I’m sure it’s something you never get over.
Maybe that’s why his whole life, despite his respectable bank balance and his standing in the community, he continued to do things like pull apart two-ply Kleenexes, carefully saving one ply for later. He also wore the same pair of jeans for decades until they were practically as thin as that half-a-Kleenex!
Maybe fear of being without is what compelled him to use out-of-date salad dressing and casually pull meat out of the freezer that’d been stored there for years.
I’ll never forget the time he came over for dinner, and I was chopping up some vegetables and throwing out the ends and rotten parts into the compost bin. He stuck his hand in the garbage, pulled out some pitiful scrap of something and said, “Look – it’s perfectly fine!” And ate it. That’s my Daddy!

“It’s perfectly fine” has become a catch-phrase for when I’m showing signs of becoming miserly in the extremis.
But don’t think I had Ebenezer Scrooge for a father! He had his generous moments. And being tight-fisted was only one of his many traits. He was also creative, witty and intelligent. And much of his thrift makes good sense to me now, especially in this age of re-use and recycle. Heck, I wouldn’t think of throwing out a pump-bottle of lotion without cutting it in half to get out the last remains. (Do you know how much is left in there? I’m on week two of “empty bottle.”)
We all make our own way in this world, but sometimes our similarities to our parents are hard to ignore. God forbid the economy ever gets as bad as it did back in ’29, but if it does, I hope that my instinct will be to act out of optimism and compassion, not fear of loss and deprivation.

Rest his soul, my father passed away just over five years ago. But every day I’m reminded of the little things he did. Not all good or all bad, just uniquely ... Daddy.
Playlist:
1. Daddy – Julie London
2. Thrifty – Napoleon Dynamite Soundtrack
3. Kid Fears – Indigo Girls
4. Patches – Clarence Carter
5. Cat’s in the Cradle – Harry Chapin
6. Daughters – John Mayer
7. Keep It Between the Lines – Ricky Van Shelton
8. Father and Son – Cat Stevens
9. Daddy Don’t You Walk So Fast – Eddy Arnold
10. Old Man – Neil Young

Who's The Boss?

We don’t have any kids, unless you count the four-legged kind. Pets are supposed to make you live longer and be happier, but sometimes I wonder who’s really in charge! I may pay the mortgage, but the pets actually own the place.
We’ve got a dog and three cats. Annie, our 13-year-old malamute/German shepherd mix, is still feisty and spry. Every night right after her supper, Annie requires a walk. And I mean rain or shine, sleet or snow, it doesn’t matter. Skipping her walk is not an option. She’s got us trained! One time we tried to calculate how many miles we’d walked with Annie over the past decade or more, and we figured it comes out to about 4,000. That’s a whole lotta sniffing and … so forth!

Every night, she marks her territory, leaving her scent at strategic points in our neighborhood like we humans check our e-mail. Approaching a bush of particular significance, it’s like Annie’s saying to us, “Hey! Max came by! Good ol’ Max. Let me just leave a message for him right quick. …”
For a year or so now, the only thing that will pre-empt Annie’s walk is an electrical storm. We finally broke down and got her some “doggie angst” pills to calm her jitters, but not before one stormy night that she actually crawled up onto the bed and tried to wedge her whole body between two pillows. This is a 70-pound dog, folks! It was an interesting night, but we all survived.

Annie will eat whenever and whatever possible. Doesn’t matter how gross it is – she’ll be tugging along at her leash, snarf up some horrible rotten thing and worry about its digestibility later (fun evenings). One time, she even got into some ant traps we had set in (we thought) hard-to-reach places. She turned out OK.
In the kitchen, it’s understood that anything that hits the floor is fair game. Although we don’t give her table scraps, let’s just say she “pre-rinses” the dirty dishes. It’s gotten so that she feels hurt if we don’t put a plate down for her to lick clean when we’re done (like if the food was spicy). But all it takes is a motherly scratch behind the ears and all is well.
Some might say that this dog is spoiled. We don’t think so – just because she has six beds (three that are exclusively hers), a temperature-controlled “day room,” and all-day access to a fenced pen. OK, I guess she found herself a couple of suckers!
Three felines round out our furry household complement: one older tortoise-shell sweetie, and two 6-year-old siblings whom we’ll forever refer to as “the kittens.”
The female, Ellie, is half her brother’s size but has at least twice his brain-power. She’s a little black scamp who gets her way by meowing as though she were criminally deprived – works every time. We call Ellie our own little Visa card – she’s “everywhere you want to be!”

Ellie’s gray, obese brother, Ernest T., is the poster-boy for the phrase “scaredy cat” and will run squeaking at the slightest sound. We’ve had pet-sitters to whom he literally did not show himself for a week. When we enter a room, he skitters off, and we imagine him saying if he could talk, “Help! That jacket you’re wearing scares me,” or “Aaack! The sound of your stocking feet is terrifying!”

Foibles aside, all our critters are endlessly entertaining and precious. Pick my favorite? How could a mother possibly do that? With all their faults, they’re my babies, and I wouldn’t trade them for the world.
Well, maybe the fat, stupid one I could live without, but somebody’s gotta love him, right?

Playlist:
1. Pads, Paws and Claws – Elvis Costello
2. Walking the Dog – Rufus Thomas
3. That Smell – Lynyrd Skynyrd
4. Day In - Day Out – Frank Sinatra
5. Treat Her Right – Otis Redding
6. I Was Made to Love Her – Stevie Wonder
7. Martha My Dear – The Beatles
8. All Night Thing – Temple of the Dog
9. Cat People (Putting Out Fire) – David Bowie
10. Spoiled – Joss Stone