A rose by any other name...

      25 years. Silver anniversary. Those sound pretty inspiring.

      Quarter-century. Gulp....that sounds  awful. I mean, a quarter-century! I've been married for a quarter of 100 years?? Hold on while I get my cane and toss my dentures into a foaming glass of whatever they use to soak dentures in, and then I'll turn on Matlock and tell you about life before the Great War..

    Well, I'm not so old as all that, but you know what I mean when I say 25 years sounds better than a quarter-century. 

     So my 25 year wedding anniversary was a couple of days ago. Stacey and I are pretty simple in our celebrations, not to mention that we are enjoying a rare visit from Pam and Marley this month, so we decided on a family dinner celebration rather than a fancy dinner reservation for just the two of us. We have had, do have, and will have plenty of time spent only in each other's company, but times spent around a dinner table with most of the family present are rare and valuable.

     In honor of the day, I stopped by the local florist to pick up roses. From a practical standpoint, roses are a terrible gift. They last only a few days before shriveling and drooping in a depressing metaphor for life's transitory nature, they cost more than other flowers, and the ones bred for their beauty generally lack the spectacular rose smell. But, for a once-in-a-while treat, they are unmatched for sheer gorgeousness and extravagance.  Is there a better way to say "I love you so much I blew about a hundred bucks on something beautiful that's only gonna last a couple of days?" 

     Errr....maybe, maybe not. So, anyway, I went to the local florist. You know, to get some roses. Because.

     The florist had two orders she was filling ahead of mine, but she went ahead and picked out the roses and the "filler" that also goes in the vase: The lacy white flowers and green sprig and twigs that bulk out the central roses. While she made the other orders in front of mine, I browsed around her shop, if browse means "walked around trying not to knock things over and trying to look interested in 70-year-old typewriters re-purposed into herb planters." This shop was more diverse than other little arty floral shops I've visited,  because it had a (tiny) Man Crafts section in the cobwebby front corner. The Man Crafts in question were a few spark-plug and hex-bolt motorcycle sculptures and three hand-saws hanging on the pegboard wall that had Texas Lone Star flags painted on them.

    My patience is well-developed; I was still feigning interest in the Depression milk-glass collection when she began to arrange my flowers into a vase. Looking through the selection of red and orange and pink roses, she picked out two of them that did not pass muster to swap them out for more vaseworthy specimens in the cooler. 

    By this time, I had looked over those flowers ten or twelve times in the interminable 15 minutes I spent orbiting the shop like a 747 circling round and round an airport hoping a landing strip opens up before the gas runs out. By now, those roses were mine. I admit my aesthetic standards are undeveloped, even primitive (is it rose-shaped? colorful? have a stem? some leaves on the stems? a thorn or two? okay, that passes my test!), and any lopsidedness or off-color was entirely outside of my capacity to recognize. And they were mine. I had been looking at them for a good 15 minutes. 15 minutes is an eternity when you have to pee or have to entertain yourself in a curio-and-curiosity shoppe, an eternity long enough to adopt a dozen slightly-imperfect roses as your own.
    To her credit, the florist didn't even wince or roll her eyes when I requested that she return the wretched ones to the vase.

   And the roses were lovely. And still are, definitely for another couple of days at least.

   You can't even tell which roses are less-than-spectacular. Tucked in between bunches of greenery and whitery, baby's breath and fern-ish sprigs and twigs, they are all stunning. Sometimes things just work out so that imperfections and blemishes are lost in the overall picture. I need to remind myself sometimes to step back and look at the whole bouquet, admire it rather than get caught up in the separate pieces.

    To just enjoy.

     I've sure enjoyed these 25 years. This quarter-century, even.

     

    

     

Still the best

     Some days make you want to sing at the top of your lungs. Some days you feel the sun on your face or the breeze in your hair and everything feels as gloriously alive as the first day of summer vacation. Some days invite cartwheels and poetry and the type of Carpe Diem foolish giddiness that would make Robin Williams beam in approval.

     But, you have to admit, some days just....suck.

     It was one of those days, September of two years ago, with a newly-begun school year. There's no rational reason why this was such a rotten day-maybe because the kids on the bus were still sorting out their accepted behavior. Maybe because  the blistering sun was heating the bus to well over 100, in our last year before the school district bought an air-conditioned fleet. Maybe because it was a Friday. Could've been a full moon for all I know.

     But it was awful, the kids were unruly and wild and unresponsive to requests, commands, demands, pleading, negotiating, bargaining, or any other hastily attempted tactics. I didn't get as far as wailing or sackcloth and ashes, but I was pretty close to gnashing of teeth. A normal 30-minute trip took almost an hour because I pulled over to the side of the road five or six times to restore safety and order, to stop the seat-jumping and standing up and leaning out the windows.  And then as I made each stop, I took extra time to ask parents to talk to their kids over the weekend about safety and order and rules blah blah blah blah.

     Blah blah blah. A whole lot of blah blah blah in the merciless Texas sunshine.

      Did I mention it was hot? No AC? That sound of bacon frying I heard all afternoon, by the way, turned out to be the sunscreen boiling off my left arm and the left side of my face as the afternoon sun glared in the window.

      By the end of my route I was totally demoralized, ready to go home and try to forget that worst Friday ever, and spend my weekend praying that Monday would be back to normal. So I pulled up to one of the last stops, with only five or six kids left on the bus, popped the parking brake out as I pushed it into neutral, hit the lights, and whooshed the doors open.

     And here came Juan. Juan was then a first-grader, one of the quietest kids on the bus. If there was a model for the description "a man of few words", it was Juan. He kept to himself, read his Pokemon book, and nodded to me on the way in and out of the bus every day. Even his seatmates didn't pay him much attention, preferring to holler across the seats to other classmates while he read.

      It is the quiet kids that get the least attention on the bus. I always know everything about the noisy or rambunctious ones, because one of the tricks of the trade is to engage the unruly kids I have moved into the "naughty seat" right behind me in constant conversation in order to distract them from the behavior that is driving everybody bonkers. So I always know more trivial tidbits about my very own Dennises the Menaces than I can keep up with anyway. 

      But about Juan, who sat quietly in his seat and never gave a moment's bother, who nodded mysteriously and silently each day, I knew nothing. Having just spent a solid hour of torturous effort on a whole busload of kids who had been bouncing around like a bucket of screeching ping pong balls, I felt ashamed that I had so thoroughly spent all of my attention and given him none.

     "Hey, Juan" I stopped him as he went down the stairs, nodding as always. "What's your favorite flavor of ice cream?"  Don't know why I grabbed at the subject of ice cream, other than perhaps I was fantasizing about diving headfirst into a half-gallon when I got home.

       Confused as to why I would ask such an out-of-the-blue question, he turned and peered at me uncertainly, then told me that chocolate was his favorite.

       Very sagely, in serious tones, I told him that chocolate was my favorite as well, then I told him one more thing:

      

       "Thank you for being such a good rider. You are the best kid on the bus."

       Do you think he smiled? Oh, boy, did he! A big ear-to-ear 6 year-old short-hair-cut jug-eared grin that showed three or four missing teeth that had not grown in yet. And his mama was there,  waiting to walk home with him. I told her how thankful I was that he was such a joy to have on my bus, and then it was her time to grin and laugh as she took his backpack on her shoulder and led him home, both of them laughing and waving as I pulled away.

     That was two years ago, and Juan is still the quiet kid on my bus. Still keeps his head in a book, Pokemon or Star Wars. Mostly nods to me, but we talk a little from time to time. Enough to find out his little brother will be on the bus next year. Enough to find out he is really looking forward to his cousin from Mexico coming to spend the summer with him. Enough to find out he agrees that Jar Jar Binks was the worst thing to happen to Star Wars.

    This past Thursday was the last day of the school year. A few of the kids draw me a card or write me a letter at the end of the year, maybe put it with a Starbucks gift card or something like that, Although I appreciate the gifts I get, nothing but nothing beats the feeling of getting a hand-drawn card made by a kid. 

      Juan gave me a card this past Thursday. On the front, a giant glowing star with rocket exhaust coming out of it, with my name on it. Inside, since he is after all, destined to become the mythical man of few words, just a few well-chosen words, in a neat childish print scrawled across the top:

"Thank you for saying I'm the best kid on the bus. Your friend, Juan."

Sometimes I need a reminder of just how powerful words are. Sometimes I need a reminder that the cost of a kind word is utterly cheap, but the return on that investment is the best one I can  make in another person. Sometimes I need a reminder that a sincere compliment can linger in a child's mind for years.

 Years!

Emerging mom-hood

       I read recently that the average age of first-time mothers nationwide has reached 25 years old. Just a few decades ago, in 1970, the mean age was 20, and this statistic is one of the underlying changes that have given rise to the trend in social science over the last few years to define the age from 18 to the mid-20's as "emerging adulthood". Emerging adulthood can be thought of as adolescents entering into adult life of career, relationship, children, and independence slowly rather than all at once.
     But this is a new trend which has been considered really only the last 20 or so years. As the numbers show, just a few decades ago the great majority of people settled down much earlier, started having kids at 20.

     Like my mom. She was 19 when I was born.

     Growing up alongside your mother means that the sitcoms on TV never rang true. I never had a June Cleaver or Carol Brady mom. All through the 1970's, Mom was a bleach blonde who wore halter tops and other groovy stuff. I had friends whose parents watched Lawrence Welk and listened to Neil Diamond, but I was more likely to hear Styx, Lynyrd Skynyrd, or the Eagles on the stereo.
    I'm pretty sure ours was the only VW bus pulling up to Opelika Junior High to drop me off in the mornings.
   
    Being only barely into adulthood herself meant that Mom was still finding her way, and maybe this explains why she was easy to get along with. Instead of being set in her ways, she was willing to see both sides of an issue. Instead of being authoritarian, she was good at listening. Sometimes I think we figured out what we were doing as we went, because she never acted as if she had all the answers. If I have to be honest, I probably acted like I knew everything more than she did.
    I and my brothers got a pretty good deal, a mother that listened to us, supported us, and didn't pass judgement on us all the time. As I got older and had kids of my own (erm, my own firstborn came when I was 19, by the way) I realized how easy she made it look.
    When you are in your early 20s and trying to find your place in the world and figure out just where you fit in, life can be chaotic. Add kids to this chaos? That's a crash course in learning patience. And wisdom. And sleeplessness...

    Mom just retired last year, and I am looking forward to some of the benefits of that. I'm looking forward to flying her out here to Texas to hang out for a week or two with us. We can sit around the kitchen table after dinner telling the same old stories over a cup of coffee, look at old photo albums, and watch all the chick flicks we want. Since we moved to Texas a few years ago, our visits have dwindled to just a couple a year, and we have some catching up to do.

     Happy Mother's Day, Mom. That card I put in the mail doesn't say half as much as it should about how much I appreciate and love you.
   
      They never do.