So my post today is accompanied by my home brewer son’s version of an IPA. He and a friend have been churning out some pretty good stuff of late. They certainly have an array of beer consuming pals among them to cheer them on…but the brews still have to pass the parent test.
As it goes, this one is not overly bitter, which makes the IPA grade for me. Regardless, he and his buddy are young. Unafraid of making mistakes and learning from them, because that is how one produces good beer. And a good life, right?
Ah, the young.
Today I was in our local nail salon, getting a pedicure. This lovely soaking, massage and scrubbing is the one thing I treat myself to somewhat regularly, partly because it’s one time of the day I can get distracted from the gnawing ache in my shoulders. And taking a break from my writing of the great American novel. I have to tell you though, that I have sat there wondering the entire time, f the Vietnamese technician’s shoulders and neck ache at the end of their day from the perpetual bend of their head. The only thing that has stopped me from asking is that their English is usually limited to, “pick your colah,” and “watah.”
Here I am so busy justifying why I was there, I am getting off track.
So this very young, maybe nineteen or twenty, attractive young woman was next to me. Slim, with perky boobs (of course) in a tight white tee. I do think she had on one of those padded push up jobs on, but I didn’t want to look like a wierd old lady staring, so I can’t be sure.
Anyway, her technician happened to be a little more comfortable conversing, so she asked the girl: “So, what you do today?”
Girl: “Just going to the gym.”
T: “You go to beach?”
G: “Nah. I live right next to the beach. I can go anytime. No big deal.”
The girl kept looking at her Apple watch, and the technician asked about it.
Girl: “It’s not that different from the phone, really, except you can’t make a call. It’s really kind of pointless.”
T: ” It’s nice colah though.”
G: ” I know. I like the blue. It’s really sort of useless, but it’s cool.”
T: “Yes, cool. Like this colah I put on toes,”
G: (silly laugh).”Yeah, I know. I like it because it makes me look tan.”
At this point, I am striving not to cast a scathing look in said girl’s direction. Dear God, I think, was I ever this vapid and clueless? Even at my most vain and self-involved teenage level? Did I EVER take the lucky proximity to our beautiful lakeshore for granted? I rack my feeble brain.
I do remember liking and wanting nice things as an adolescent, but I honestly think it was pretty simple stuff. I asked for Love’s baby soft perfume at Christmas, and records. I remember coveting Izod and Ralph Lauren polo shirts, but having to work my ass off to buy even one.
If this girl had worked a day in her life, nothing would surprise me more.
I know these attitudes are a function of youth and our insane get more, have more, be more, culture. But the fact that she acknowledged having this overpriced gadget was “useless” and “pointless”, but worth having anyway because it was cool, says volumes.
At least my polo shirts provided covering for my body, right? And I was the one who bought the damned shirts, not my parents. 

Sigh. How best to give a mouthful of reality to this silver spoon?
I have heard various prominent people over the years advocate for youth to perform mandated military service of one year.
I think this could work, but I wonder about depositing their soft candy rear ends in the middle of a third world country for a few months. Seriously. Where they are sleeping in dirt huts and have to walk for clean water, fighting malaria, eating unknown food and Internet access is a distant dream. I wish someone had made me do something similar. Really, it wouldn’t even take a third world country to rattle their perspectives. We have more than enough poverty and different ways of living right here, to open their eyes. In the world according to Ellen, they would be forced to work in homeless shelters and live in the Appalachian mountains, and/or visit inner city schools, while mentoring fatherless children desperate for stability, love and decent food.
Isn’t it scary that we are in danger of raising a generation full of young people whose biggest concern is obtaining the newest Apple creation? They claim to be so much more open minded and accepting than us geezers, but they are also the most entitled-minded and narcissistic. Millenials admit to having very little to no spiritual commitment, and this is a shame. I understand the divide, because organized religion has effed it up for so many inquiring, eager minds. But when you look at doing the tasks I listed, this is the work Jesus would do, and did. Serving others is not in many a young one’s radar, unless it serves them.
I know that every generation bemoans the one before them; parents of the sixties’ flower children thought the world was coming to an end through drugs and rock and roll. But what scares me is that many teens of today view social justice as something to devote two weeks to, to be able to put on their college application.
If they can give up their beach, gym, and nail days, of course. 

No use going into the myriad of reasons why, but we can each do our own world according to Ellen with these misguided souls. So along with non-voluntary services of some sort, all twenty somethings must learn about making beer, and provide free, copious samples of their best to their stressed-out parents. All that sampling will get the crankies out, and the students can learn all the hands-on science they should have learned in high school. 

Today’s ranting aside, I am grateful for my hard working, caring sons, nephews and nieces who give me hope. I am more optimistic than not, but these incidents make me pause and fear a future of iPhone, addicted robots. And with that weary thought, another home brew is in order. 

Friends, cheers to you and the young people in your life…if they can’t bless you with a homemade concoction…may they at least gift you with a pedicure. 

My last post alluded to dealing with some writer’s block.
Well, it comes and goes.
I’m just going to tell myself if I’m writing it’s all good, even if isn’t on my novel. 

Today’s brew is Closure, an over-used word that I like because it means everything is neatly tidied up. Which happens in reality, like, never. Oh well. We can dream a condition like this exists, anyway. 

Today is also the day my mother in law Mary passed away due to cancer two years ago, and this hardly seems possible. Thinking about her passing, and my parents’, is like what they tell you about raising kids: the days seem long, but the years pass so quickly.

I suppose it’s true that when people die, they become sanitized and lionized by those left. But when I write that Mary was as a pure a soul as I have ever known, this isn’t exaggeration borne of grief. She did have that heart of gold that stopped beating too soon, the line that is in all of the memorial cards. 

One of my earliest memories of her graciousness was when I became unexpectedly pregnant, unmarried, with her grandchild. Both she and my father in law were head over heels in love with their new little red headed addition to the family, but it was a stressful time. I was trying to work a new job with a newborn, living at home, and trying to make a relationship with their son all at the same time. 

She never once said to either of us, “how could you let  this happen?” Or gave one hint of disapproval, ever, although to a strict Catholic family I’m sure this wasnt a high point in their lives. Instead, she did everything she could to encourage us to stay together. Not just then, but always. 

Many times, she would pick our infant son up from day care so he didn’t have to stay there all day. After I picked him up and took him home, I would find forty, fifty dollars tucked into the pocket of where his bottle was, and I would call her. “Thank you so much, but you don’t have to do that,” I would tell her, even though I desperately needed the money for diapers and everything else a baby entails. “Oh yes I do. Anything for little Seanie.” The nickname that had been christened upon this little angel of hers, who brought endless joy to their lives. 

And that is how it went for all of her precious grandsons. Anything for them, because they were truly the jewels in her life. In particular, when she lost her mate and the light went out in her beautiful eyes temporarily. They were a salve to her loneliness, and they were with her almost as many nights they were at home.

She was not a mother in law that intruded and gave unwanted advice, unless asked. She was not one to call and whine that her son never did anything for her. Indeed, she never asked for anything, ever. In fact, I used to lecture her that she did too much for people, that they took advantage of her. And, it happened. We used to call her a bum magnet, but she’d laugh it off. “Oh,” she’d say. “So and so is harmless, or so and so just needs a friend.” They certainly found a good one in her. As did I. 

She hated being a widow and being without a partner, and dipped her toes into the dating scene at midlife. Which takes a fair amount of courage, because here’s a news flash: it doesn’t get any easier after high school. ” It’s still all about the looks,” she would tell me. “They all want the tiny belly, even if you have horrible wrinkles.” Well, she didn’t have a tiny belly, (does anyone, after twenty five?) but she had beautiful skin, and she did attract her share of suitors. Oh, the stories she would tell me. We would laugh and laugh at the junior high antics of these middle aged men, and then she’d have a crush on one and they would break her heart. And that was hard to hear, because I wanted her to be happy and find someone worthy.

For Mary, family would always come first, and most of the men she met couldn’t handle that. So as time went by she just enjoyed her line dancing and hoped to maybe find a companion. And never stopped cheering on her kids and her grandkids, no matter what the endeavor. 

She began having symptoms that something was very wrong the summer before her death, but anyone who knew her well, knew that she and medical procedures did not mix. The only doctor she trusted was our hometown hero, Doc Rambo, and I think the main reason she liked him is because an exam would last approximately three minutes. “Whaddya think is wrong with ya?” he’d ask. You could self diagnose yourself, even probably ask for the drugs you think you needed. The best part? “He doesn’t tell you to get on the scale,” she’d say. “Why the hell do these other doctors have to know what you weigh, when you go in to see them for a cold? They just want to lecture you.” 

I laughed, but she may have been right. 

In any case, Doc convinced her to see a gynecologist for her symptoms. Told her it was serious…and we began to worry.

Tests confirmed she had a rare uterine carcinoma, and this is when things got really scary. I asked him for the exact name and scribbled it on paper to look it up online, later.   She really only wanted to know how long she had, in order to make whatever time she had count. 

And nobody, except for that gynecologist, would be straight up with her. Even he was vague, but at least had the decency to tell her to have her daughter come home and to do the things she wanted to do. 

Meanwhile, I discovered the diagnosis was as lethal as they come, but I said nothing. Mary knew I had looked it up, but she said she didn’t want to know. It’s in God’s hands, she said. And her faith was as deep and true as her heart was good, and it carried her through the following months. 

I wished I  had even a quarter of her faith, but I was busy being angry that the doctors would not tell her the truth. It was all, ” Well, nobody can predict the future,” blah blah blah, and since nobody can predict I might as well earn a few hundred thousand dollars by recommending a surgery that won’t give you a chance in hell at living one bit longer.”

Ah, yes. Cynical was I but I kept my mouth shut because these things had to be her decision. But it was very difficult seeing someone so doctor-phobic, suffer, even though it was relatively short in duration. 

And I still get angry at the unfairness of it all. Why her? Why so young, because when you’re staring down fifty, seventy is young. 

I’m not so angry anymore. No, I feel lucky. I feel so blessed to have known this kind, generous, funny, loving soul. I thank her a thousand times over (and I think I did while she was still here), for loving my boys unconditionally, for the way she cherished them every minute of the day, for being there when we parents just didn’t cut it. I feel lucky that we were never the picture our culture gives of mother and daughter in laws, that of being catty and interfering.

How I do miss the talking to her, though. So do a lot of people who knew her gentle listening ear. 

But I miss laughing with her the most, because I never knew anyone who could poke fun at herself the way she could, and take the pokes from others too. She used to laugh at something one of us would say about her mannerisms or such, and she’d say, “I don’t know what you’re all going to laugh about after I die,” and laugh some more.

And, she was right. 

Because when we gather for family functions, her absence is still so painfully evident. We do reminisce, and laugh about some story about her, but the gap in our lives seems unfillable at times. They say that one’s grief for someone is made all the stronger by the love that was felt, and I believe that. I also believe that God puts certain people in our lives for many a reason. 

Whatever that reason was for me, I am a lucky, lucky girl to have had Mary Cassidy in mine. 

Cheers to whatever is lucky in your life, friends.