Words to Drive By

 My sole passenger is six years old and strapped into his child car seat in the rear seat of my car.  As I start to back out of my driveway onto the highway, I see him in my rearview mirror craning his neck to check the traffic and hear him say in a confident tone, as if he's done so many times before, "Okay, you're good."  I catch myself, look for myself:  he's right, nothing is coming.  But you can't do that, can you, rely on a six-year-old's assessment of traffic flow?

Running with Scissors

   Today the boys and their mother were running around with scissors, clipping wildflowers and assorted foliage. Their Fair entries for the Garden Department were due:  a hanging spider plant, a vase of wildflowers, a miniature log cabin arrangement, and an entry in the Unusual Container Dept., the container being a Lego-eater. 
    Cookies were entered yesterday:  oatmeal, chocolate chip, chocolate, sugar, snickerdoodles, peanut butter, molasses, and butter cookies.  All seem contenders for prizes, except the butter cookies would not roll out, and so were dropped on the cookie sheet like the rest of the cookies.  It doesn't seem butter cookies are meant to be treated this way, because they reciprocated by turning into solid blobs of dough, even baked.  Pity the judges, but occupational hazards exist in all areas. 
    P.S.  All 8 of the cookies received some award, most a first or second place.  Several were entered in 2 age divisions, where they received firsts in one category and second in the other.  The butter cookies were entered in both the under 12 and over 12 categories,   They received blue ribbons in each division.  I thought they were really bad, had considered throwing them out before entering them, when Ben valiantly tried to roll them out, but had to abandon that idea as they were way too  sticky.  But since I'd already paid the entry fee entered them anyway, hoping the judges wouldn't poke too much fun at them.  We ate every one of the cookies baked from the leftover cookie dough, except I did toss the butter cookies out the window. 

Sweet Memory

   On August 24, 2014, 2:00 P.M., Theodore Ronald David Schroder was baptized at St. Mary's Church in Holliston, Massachusetts.  Godparents were Nikola Smy and Daniel Schroder, in whose absence Dave Schroder Sr. acted as proxy.  The ceremony was lovely and enjoyed by all, but I couldn't help but think how happy, and yes, relieved, Theo's maternal great grandmother would have been, and indeed, I hope is, in another plane of being.  I say she would have been relieved because Theo was eight months old, not the eight days she would have preferred.  Hers was the time when the belief was that unbaptized babies who died were consigned to Limbo, not Heaven, so the idea was to baptize as early as possible.  Back in the day, infant deaths were frequent, and  therefore the reason for haste. 
    "David's son."    
          My mother used to collect grocery stamps, mostly S&H, I believe.  She acquired a great number of them as she cooked for a lot of people and in generous amounts.  She would redeem the stamps for merchandise, and when the grandchildren arrived, it was her pleasure to spend her stamps on items for them---youth chairs, toys, tricycles, little 2-wheeled bikes with training wheels for the very beginners.  The first five grandchildren were spaced a year apart, so hand-me-down items were usual.  Some of the outgrown items eventually disappeared, either worn out or given to another family.  But there was one item my mother did not want to part with: A red tricycle, very sturdy and in very nice condition after passing through the five stages of use.  She put it away, in the small room at the top of the stairs.  She said she was "saving it for David's son."    David was probably about nine years old at the time, and why she specified his son, I don't know.  The tricycle remained in that room until after my mother died; what became of it is lost in time, but she did anticipate the time that David would have a son.

Another NYC Cab Ride

   We're at a cab stand wanting to go to the Planetarium.  There are other people around, but we're not paying attention to them; some are farther down toward the end of the block.  A cab pulls up beside us and we  load the kids in the back, and Dave, as asked, gets in the front passenger seat.  A middle-aged man approaches, protesting that  he was waiting longer, and it should be his cab.  The driver ignores him, and Dave turns toward the driver as he closes the door.  No one wants to confront  his probably righteous indignation.  I'm watching him though, and as the driver starts to pull away, the man runs alongside the cab.  The driver and Dave don't want to deal with him, but all of a sudden I notice that the man's hand is closed in the door.  He really wanted that cab.  I yell out, that his hand is in the door.  The cabbie brakes as Dave opens the door, releasing the hand, then closes it and the cabbie takes off, leaving the man standing there, wringing his hand.   The cab driver said only, "He should know better than to approach a cab when there are people in it." 

Lesson in, Law

   The family was in NYC, taking a cab, to somewhere, I'm not sure where now.  The cab driver had David, about 10 years old, sit in the front seat with him.  Traffic was heavy, and the driver cut through some area to avoid the tie-up.  Suddenly, the loudest sound I'd ever heard, the amplified voice from a police car ordering the driver to pull over.  He did so, and was confronted by a cop angrily telling him he knew better, that it was not a through passage.  The driver, who was some "minority" but I don't recall which, agreed with the officer in a most subservient manner.  He was let go with a warning to never repeat his transgression. 
    As soon as the police car drove away, the driver turned to David, in the passenger seat, and, most likely relieved but still agitated from his brush with the law, delivered a lecture in a stern and serious tone:  "Did you hear what I said?   I said Yes, Sir, and No, Sir. That's how you talk to the police. I didn't try to explain or argue with the police.  And that's what you should do.  Remember to be polite, agree with them.  Remember that!"  

Suicide 2

   I think this is true.  If you are in the midst of mortal physical agony,  nothing else matters.  A woman in labor can not care if her house is burning down, it doesn't matter if she wins a million dollar lottery.  She is obsessed only with  finding a way to ease the terrible pain which wracks her body.  A suicidal person is likewise oblivious of  everything else in the world, including loved ones.  Everything is put aside in a desperate search for a way to end the pain of living.  Nothing else matters.  The deeply primal force that urges a newborn infant to cry out, as the only mechanism it has to assert self,  is the same force that propels one into doing whatever is necessary to assert self at the other end of the spectrum of life.  Nothing and no one can outrank the concept of self. Witness how parents love their own children more than any others; the children, as other loved ones, are an extension of self.
     We hear sirens, harbingers of potential tragedy, and our minds race as to where our loved ones are, and, once their safety is satisfied, to the hope that nothing bad has befallen anyone we know.  Our priorities are in direct proportion to their impact on our lives.  How very selfish of us.  The saying goes that you can't love another until you love yourself first.  With love or not, self is all any one of us has.  Everything else and everybody else can and will ultimately leave.  We are, each of us, alone.

The First Time Ever I Saw the Cape

      It was a long time ago, and it was summer, one of those hot summers.  I don't remember how it came about, but Barbara drove, I think it might have been her Mustang convertible, but I could be wrong. I remember riding along, carefree, with the radio playing "Hang On, Snoopy"  and perhaps, Dean Martin's "Houston."  We were there for probably a week or more, and went to several of the towns, but what I remember most was the trip to Truro, way far out on the Cape.  It seems we drove to the very end, into the dunes, until we came to a lighthouse on the edge of a cliff, pretty much deserted. It's hard to believe now, but back in the 60's, no one carried water with them, not even in their cars, no one we knew anyway.   Bottled water was yet to be invented, (except for glass quart bottles of Saratoga Vichy) , and people didn't eat and drink as often then anyhow.  Most likely, telephone service was not even available, and of course no one had ever heard of a cell phone.  Isolation was possible in those days. 
     For some reason, we decided to descend the dune, by the abandoned lighthouse, down to the ocean.  We made it down okay, and probably dipped our toes in the water, but the climb up almost killed us.  I speak for myself, but it must have been true for both of us.  The climb, for that's what it was, was long and steep,  the day was blazing hot, and we were parched.  I remember trying to gain purchase on the side of the cliff, and just grabbing a handful of sand.  There must have been a reason the place was deserted, and I think if we'd died that day our bodies could still be there.  
    Years later, on a family trip to the Cape, we decided to explore a little, and to revisit the scene of my near demise, but the road to that part of the cape was closed off, permanently I understood.