Category: Notes from the porch swing

I Don’t Feel Serious

Jane Carlile Baker, Author, Editor, Teaching ConsultantLeave a comment

And when I don’t feel serious, I write stories that I don’t plot. They just …

What if I were thin and could get a wet suit on without major surgery, and I just happened to be on Kauai.

She slid her right arm into the wetsuit, grabbed her board, and ran down the beach to the water’s edge (and for a 68 year-old woman with a knee replacement, that’s sayin’ somethin’). She dropped the board into the surf.

A golden-skinned surf bum yelled from beyond the ten-foot breakers. “You don’t know what you’re doing, do you?”

She yelled back. “First time.”

“You don’t need a wet suit in Hawaii. Water’s warm. Sharks will take you for a fish.”

She peeled the wet suit off. Man, she could have done this, thin or not. Think of the frozen yogurt she’d missed for nothing.

The surf bum scanned her granny swimsuit. “Lady, this is Hawaii, you don’t have to wear all the clothes you’ve got.”

She pushed her board out to knee-deep water and lay down on its shiny surface. “Hey, if you’re so smart. Teach me to surf.”

“Start paddling. Where you from?”

She was coming into the breakers. “California.”

“Duck your head, make sure your mouth and eyes are closed, and just hold onto the board.”

The breaker passed over her.

“Keep paddling. North, not south, right?”

“What?”

“California, north, not south.”

She paddled up next to where he sat on his board, legs hanging in the water. “Central, but the water’s pretty chilly.”

“Ok, first get on your knees.”

“I can’t, one of them’s artificial and won’t bend that far.”

“Man, you got a lot of guts, lady.”

“You only live once. How about if I just stand up?”

“OK, your funeral.”

She grabbed both sides of the board and hoisted herself up. And lost her balance and fell off. Eighteen times.

The surf bum laughed so hard he had to take a swim to keep from embarrassing himself. I won’t go into the details. (You may be wondering whether this story has a point, I certainly am.)

“If at first you don’t succeed.” She climbed back on the board, and lo and behold, wait that doesn’t sound like Hawaii, and hang loose, baby, she stood and didn’t fall, though she wobbled like a weeble.

“Hurry, hold your arms out for balance and bend your knees a little. You can do that, right?”

She really wanted to tell him what she thought of that remark, but she didn’t want the lesson to end abruptly. She stuck out both arms and kind of waved them the opposite direction of the way she felt she might fall. She stayed on the board and standing, until …

A wave rushed her high, and she was flying. Dude, she screamed toward shore, literally. A 68 year-old speed demon. “Kayabunga!”

The beach was nearly at her feet when she realized he hadn’t taught her how to dismount. So, she recalled when she learned to ride a bike as a child that she just ran into the neighbor’s Japanese gardener who happened to be pushing a lawn mower down the sidewalk  when she needed to stop. (Yeah, that’s a true story.) Maybe she could just run right off the board, hoping to land on the couple making out on beach towels.

The End (I be laughin’)

 

 

Breathing

Jane Carlile Baker, Author, Editor, Teaching ConsultantLeave a comment

Now that I’m retired, I have more time to consider things.

For example, Bake and I went on a cruise up Elkhorn Slough, down by Moss Landing the other day. We saw a lot of sea lions and otters and shore birds, even an egg yolk jelly fish. But my big takeaway was something the captain told us. He said, ” People think of the tide as either in or out, but it doesn’t really work that way. It’s in constant motion, either rising or declining.”

I nudged Bake. “So the tide is like the earth breathing, right?”

“Exactly.”

Well , that is a thought to ponder all by itself. However, today is Monday. Yesterday was church, and I had slides. Busy, busy, busy. Love it! Worshipping with and serving God’s people.

Today, I’m not looking for anyone to hang around with. I like catching things up around our acre (Baker’s acre, get it?). The weekend kind of throws me off schedule. I groomed the dog, fed the chickens and cleaned their house, cleaned up the kitchen, got the house ready for the Roomba (do I love multi-tasking, oh yeah!) Two parenthetial statements in one paragraph is a bad idea. I do know that. Anyhow, in the midst it occurred to me that I don’t need to see any people today, well, except Bake, who doesn’t really count, being my other half. More breathing.

So I posted something to that effect on Facebook. Sure enough, other people feel the same way. Some even more than I do. I would be ok with seeing people tomorrow, some people could give it another day. Breathing – people, no people, people, no people.

Now, I realize that not everyone gets the luxury of breathing that way. Take parents, therapists, teachers for example. I am truly blessed to be retired. However, since I have had time to realize this, please feel free to steal it. If you are one of those folks who don’t usually get to choose solitude, when you do, go for it, take a deep breath.

Once Upon a Time, in a Galaxy named for a Candy Bar …

Jane Carlile Baker, Author, Editor, Teaching ConsultantLeave a comment

Yes, children, it is time for a story. I love stories, don’t you? Must be the Irish in us. At any rate …

This young girl named Jenny who had dimples and auburn hair skipped toward the neighborhood grocery with $2.50 in her hand. The $2 was for milk her mother needed and the $.50 she could spend on whatever she wanted. Being a responsible youngster, she put the milk in her cart first. In those days you could enter the store in bare feet, but it was a bad idea. Somebody had spilled sticky something on the floor. Jenny felt it pull at the bottom of her feet as soon as she stepped into the liquor aisle.

She sat down and turned her foot up to look. What was that aroma? Her mother definitely would not like it, but she touched her finger to the bottom of her left foot and then to her tongue. Ummm, it tasted like caramel and something else. Jenny looked around her at the floor. There was quite a puddle of this stuff. She noticed where someone had shoved broken green glass under the counter. A label on a piece of the glass said, “ish Cream.” Jenny put her palm right into the sticky puddle on the floor and slurped up the yummy stuff, several times. After a while, she began to feel warm and the liquor aisle got a little fuzzy looking. She looked at all the bottles on the shelves to see whether she had enough money to get some Ish Cream, but she couldn’t find any.

About this time, a clerk came into the aisle. “Honey, are you all right?”

“I’m wondering whether you could show me where the Ish Cream is?” Why did her words slur?

“I’m not familiar with that product.”

“There’s a broken bottle of it there on the floor.”

“Oh, my dear, that’s Irish Cream. Here it is. But you aren’t 21, are you?”

She didn’t know what how old she was had to do with it, but clearly, she didn’t have enough money. What would be a good substitute? How about a Milky Way? She headed to the check-out stand, but her balance was off and she teetered into a display of pancake syrup. The bottles swayed crazily, there was a loud crash, bottle tops flew off the plastic bottles, and syrup went everywhere. Little kids, who had been obediently holding onto their mother’s carts, shouted with joy and came skidding into the syrup. The boys lay down and flipped themselves over and over, mouths open, tongues licking. Little girls sat at the fringe, scooping syrup into their palms. Mothers screamed and came running. Jenny tottered in the other direction.

The loudspeaker said, “Clean up on Aisle 4! 911!”

Jenny uturned around the end of Aisle 4 into Aisle 5. However, her trajectory was a little off and she ran smack into an old lady waiting for a prescription.

“Well! I never!” The old lady grabbed the end of the counter to steady herself, but missed and sent rolls of toilet paper flying through the air. One of them bopped a bald-headed man right on top of the head. Jenny had to laugh or explode. He picked up the toilet paper and threw it at the old lady, but he missed and hit a teenager with a nose ring. The battle was on. Jenny sneaked quietly away. She still had to figure out how to spend her $.50, after all. Her tummy was feeling a little woozy, so she nixed the idea of the Milky Way. How about a toy?

In the toy aisle a mother argued with her toddler about a toy he clutched.

The mother shook her finger at the child. “I told you, it has to be less than $1 or you can’t have it. That’s $3.50. Pick something else.”

“Me want this one.”

Mom attempted to wrench the toy from the toddler’s grasp, but instead her elbow flew back and cocked Jenny in the chin. Jenny did a face plant right under the spinwheels.

The toddler pointed at a spinwheel. “I like that one, too.”

The mother checked the price. “Good, I’ll trade you. Thank you, young lady, you just saved my life.” She merrily rolled her cart, toddler spinning the wheel, away, leaving Jenny to pick herself up. Jenny rolled to her left, but couldn’t find her balance. She rolled to her right, same thing. She rolled onto her belly, and just then her stomach heaved and she threw up on a clerk’s shoes. However, she did feel a little better and was able to get up.

Once she did, she noticed a young girl, maybe about her age, but thin and scraggly. Her hair hadn’t been washed in an eon, her clothes were dirty and torn, and her shoes didn’t have bottoms. Now you’re expecting Jenny to give the girl her $.50, aren’t you? That would tie up the story in a neat little bow, like on Facebook. However, that is not what happened. Jenny looked the girl up and down and said, “There’s some Irish Cream on the floor in the liquor aisle that will make you feel a lot better. I left you some.” Jenny bought a bag of Takis, and hot-footed it home to tell her story before the store could call.

More on Old Women

Jane Carlile Baker, Author, Editor, Teaching ConsultantLeave a comment

FB_IMG_1497906725097  Ok, so I saw this blog where an old woman who has nothing on me, she’s only in her 40s,  was griping her face off about being told older women should not wear hoop earrings. She even dropped f bombs about it. I don’t disagree that older women should be treated as intelligent adults, who can dress themselves. However, I hope at the end of this I do not sound to you as out of control as she does to me.

As I have developed the capacity to grow gray hair in ever larger quantities, I have noticed that there a lot of younger generation men and women who think the color of my hair gives them license to treat me like a child, specifically to talk down to me, as if my brain isn’t functioning. I find that confusing. Children do not have gray hair. What is the connection?

Perhaps the least offensive of these young people (and here I make a huge leap to respectfulness – the woman in the blog called these people “Toddlers”) call me and my husband “honey, dear, sweetie” when they serve us in restaurants and other public places. Now it is nice to receive terms of endearment from people to whom you are endeared, but I hardly know these people. What is their problem? It seems to me that if they want to be my sweetie, they should at least ask me if I’m ok with that first.

You may think I do not realize my memory and joints are not what they once were. I do, and I adjust. It does not necessarily follow that everything I ever knew went away, or that I should be told I shouldn’t have a large dog, walk too long in the heat, or get too far from a bathroom or any other comment that is none of your business. I am an adult, and I can figure these things out on my own.

Sometimes I think I may be better at remembering things than the younger generation. For instance, I remember that when you walk into a room you greet everyone there unless you’re at a convention. It seems to follow that when you are spoken to, you respond, even if you are texting the president. It also follows that when you receive texts, emails, etc. you let the sender know you received them, even if you aren’t ready with a response. One of those squirrely little smiley faces will work, and it’s fast. Isn’t that common sense? Apparently not.

Though I think I could be in danger of  being accused of a rant, I have one more thought. As we all attempt to appreciate each other’s differences, might the younger generation, to whom this present world does truly belong, at least right now, until they are moved along by the generation following them, remember that discriminating against older people comes in the form of refusing to take advantage of our experience. I’ve met a few fogies who insist on holding court ad nauseum, but very few. Most of us wait to be asked, and in many cases, we wait in vain. That lacks as much sense as assuming a family should be led only by the husband. That was never God’s plan, and if that’s so, we women can go do something else other being wives.

This has been very little tongue in cheek. I think it needed to be said, though. I won’t bring it up again, honest.

 

Family Parameters

Jane Carlile Baker, Author, Editor, Teaching ConsultantLeave a comment

I think, therefore I need silence. What? See, family means more than one, sometimes lots more. Each one who is added to the group ups the noise level. I remember when we had three kids in our house under ten. Someone always had something to say, or yell, or cry, or laugh. That is so good. Let it all hang out, I say. Rejoice in the cacophony. Thank You, Lord.

However, all us lunatics need a time out. A time when the only intrusion is a bird singing or the whistle of a distant train. Me and my old man, not the one I used to be, but Bake, my loyal spouse, made a deal. One Saturday a month was his to go be whoever he wanted, and one Saturday a month was mine in the same vein. Do you know how much better a mom I was because of that? People told me I was so patient. Well yeah, because I’ve been out looking at the fox holes in Del Puerto Canyon or down at the library with no goal except floating among the authors and knowledge. I came home empty and full, if you can get that, and opened my arms to those big and little people who depended upon me for love and guidance.

Just a thought. Enjoy your fam!