Less is More

As often as possible, I take George in the car with me, which isn’t easy now that it’s hot outside. In the winter he can sit in the car and wait for me wherever I go, but now we’re limited to air-conditioned travels through the Starbucks drive-thru and shopping trips to Home Depot. Riding in the shopping cart, he gets attention from all the customers and salespeople who sweet-talk him and pet him. (He can’t just be on a leash because he would happily pee on things.)

I can take George with me because he is an only-dog – if I had more than one, I know I wouldn’t be so quick to take them with me. But because he is by himself, we go to the park and on trips and to people’s houses and to the mountains, all because it’s easy to load him up and go.

Like George, I was an only dog/child. (?) I remember my mom telling me that she liked having only one child because it meant we could do more. She could afford more, therefore we went on trips together and I had experiences and opportunities that I never would have had if I had siblings. And Mom and I were so close that it’s hard to imagine the different relationship we might have had if there were someone else in the house.

Going through life as an only child, I often received criticism or assumptions from people with siblings. “Weren’t you lonely?” No, I’m actually more secure doing things by myself than most people seem to be. “Didn’t you miss having brothers or sisters?” Nope, except when my Mom died. Then, I could have used someone nearby to share what I was going through. “I bet you were spoiled!” Well, I don’t think so, but it depends on your definition of the word. Yes, Mom’s attention was focused on me because I was her only child, but I definitely didn’t always get what I wanted!

For this post, I looked up statistics regarding only children, and I found that my experience was comparable to the average only child: I did well in school, felt comfortable with adults, and easily enjoyed time to myself. While I wasn’t as social as those with siblings (like first-borns), I had the same amount of close friends as most people. And while I wasn’t involved in as many social groups or clubs, I was often a leader in those I did join. It’s always strange to me when I read statistics and see that I fit right in. The non-conformist in me wants to rebel.

My husband and I plan to have only one child, for many reasons. And I have to admit that I like the idea of having only one to focus on, having only one child to take places, having only one so we can do more, have more, be more. I can just see us now, jumping into the car with George, on the way to Starbucks, or Home Depot, or beyond. Christmas in Hawaii? Summers in Europe? Or just quiet nights at home, with us all doing our own separate things. Less is more, right, more or less?

Crazy Chicken

How do you handle stress? I have always felt I’ve been fairly good at it, ever since my Mom helped me deal with teenage stress when I was a kid. She helped me make a list of everything that bothered me, and then we went through it and decided what could be done about my stresses, if anything. She also taught me to keep a diary, and by now I have tons of them, some with happy entries, but many written when I needed to unleash all my anger or sadness or frustration, and I felt the tension release with the flow of my pen. A diary doesn’t judge or react; it just listens.

Other stress-relievers? I’ve found that attacking a home project, like pulling weeds or painting a room, can be fairly cathartic, and it has the additional plus of marking something off my To-Do list when I’m done. Another method is to create…to paint, write, draw, or do something to get into my work and out of my head. Sometimes I’ve gone to a movie by myself; being by myself with the characters on the screen is comforting. And finally, if all else fails, I could use another method Mom taught me…just go to bed.

I was pretty stressed this Sunday morning when I was out of the house early. The tension of recent events, combined with a fierce case of PMS, caused me to find myself in tears. I’ve always been a crier; it’s another good way to release tension – Mom taught me that, too. But this time, I had nowhere to go. We have a houseguest right now, so I couldn’t go home and cry. My husband was at work and unavailable, so I couldn’t call and vent to him. And faced with the prospect of just sitting in my car and crying, I called my girlfriend, woke her up, and asked to come over.

She greeted me in her pajamas and sleepy face, then escorted me to the kitchen for apple juice and Kleanex, and we spent the next hour on her back patio enjoying the breeze and the warmth of the sun on our feet that stuck out from under the patio cover’s shade. Thank God for friends.

Then as I drove away (I finally felt good enough to go write at Starbucks), I received a phone message from another girlfriend who moved away a couple of years ago. She mentioned that she had been “running around like a crazy chicken” and that’s why she hadn’t had time to call or write recently. Her phrase made me laugh, because I assume she meant “like a chicken with its head cut off.” And yes, lately I too have been a crazy chicken who needs to sit back, make a list of everything that is going wrong and stressing me out, and see what can be done. Then I’ll go to bed.

Happy Birthday

I hate cheesy, overly sentimental stories that are written solely to make the reader get all weepy, but this is the time of year when TV movies, shows, and radio programs pour on the sappy sweetness. In spite of myself, I have an appropriately heartwarming story for you.

My birthday was this weekend, and I reminisced about past birthday celebrations and tried to pick out my favorite memories. One of my favorites was when I turned 18 in London, and my aunt & uncle took my cousin and me to a Mexican restaurant in Leicester Square, where we celebrated my legal status with sugary margaritas and rides on the carnival attractions outside.

But the most touching birthday was when I was in high school and turned 16 or 17. My Drama Club had a Traveling Troupe that performed at local business clubs and organizations and took an annual trip to Madison State Hospital, a mental hospital where we met the patients and performed in each ward, sometimes with the doors locked behind us. We met shy teenagers who reminded us how lucky we were in our relatively-normal lives, sang songs in dingy rooms of senior citizens who joined in our choreography if they were so moved, and sometimes received marriage proposals from patients who hadn’t seen women in a long time. It was an eye-opening, meaningful trip for us privileged teens.

We happened to make that trip one year on my birthday, and we sang Christmas carols in a ward full of patients who had a tiny Christmas tree perched atop the piano. After our set of songs we mingled and greeted the patients, and someone happened to say that it was my birthday. This was great news to them. A man took a seat on the piano bench and played Happy Birthday while everyone sang to me. I sat on the bench next to him and smiled, surprised by the sudden attention.

Then a woman approached me and held out her hand. “Happy birthday,” she said shyly, and she gestured for me to open my hand. “Happy birthday,” she repeated, and she placed in my hand a shiny nickel. Surprised, I quietly thanked her and then watched her return to her chair by the window where she sat and watched the festivities in the room.

A nickel. It has to be the most selfless, meaningful, valuable gift I have ever received. I kept that nickel for a long time.

This year, to celebrate my birthday we went up to Mt. Charleston to build a snowman. He had curly “hair” on the top of his head, stones for eyes, and a small carrot for his nose, and we left him there in the forest to survey a nice view of snow-covered trees. He is probably covered in more snow by now, and I wonder if an animal has eaten his nose yet.

For my birthday, we also went to a movie, went out for high tea, and ate dinner at an expensive restaurant. But the simple snowman is what I’ll remember.

Yard Sale-ing

As a kid in rural southern Indiana, I was told that we lived in the second poorest county in the state. And I guessed it was probably true; houses in my northern Indiana relatives’ neighborhoods were bigger and newer, and it was harder to find trailers with couches on the porch when driving through their towns.

Yard sales were common on hot summer weekends, and sometimes I’d jump in Grandma’s big green car and we would go find the sales she had circled in the classifieds of the Paoli News-Republican. I loved going to yard sales and always saved up change to spend on little glass trinkets or new toys. Yard sales meant I could buy whatever I wanted, because it was so cheap, giving me freedom and responsibility and childish excitement.

My inner snob, however, had already begun to develop back then. After all, we lived in a town of 3,500 people, and you never knew if the sale you drove up to belonged to someone you knew. In that case, I walked around the tables embarrassed, not wanting to feel like a poor person who treasured someone else’s trash. Sometimes after we held a garage sale under Grandma’s carport, I would see a classmate wearing an old coat or dress of mine, and I felt sorry for her.

The best sales, I found, were at my aunt’s in northern Indiana, when her community held its annual sale. There, we walked from house to house incognito, and all their stuff was newer and nicer. I couldn’t help but notice the difference.

I’ve thought a lot about these sales lately, because my friend Laurie and I have initiated Yard Sale Saturdays every six weeks or so. They begin as early as we can stand to get up (usually 8am) when I jump in her bright red pickup and with a squeal of tires, we’re off. George is always left at the front door, pissed that he wasn’t able to go, too. The back seat is filled with water bottles and Ziploc bags of treats, and we follow every Yard Sale sign we come across.

We take Laurie’s truck for a reason: we often fill it up! But we don’t buy junk; we’ve found like-new patio furniture, lamps and bookshelves, novels to read on our next beach getaway, jewelry, and even brand-new shoes, still in the box, from a family whose shoe store closed. An example of what I buy, from this Saturday morning’s adventure: a book of Emily Dickinson poetry, an outdoor lamp to install under our patio, a concrete sundial & stand to put in our yard, an unopened 4th of July tablecloth, yards of fabric to make into a table runner for the dining room, and a cookbook.

I used the word “adventure” to describe our Yard Sale Saturday for a reason. It’s more about the fun we have than what we buy. High on Starbucks coffee, we suddenly swerve at random for every sale sign we see, yelling remarks to the signs we pass. “Crappy sign!” we yell at one that is written in pencil and tiny 16-point type. “Good signage!” we yell to the one that is painted on yellow cardboard with balloons attached. “Bastards!” we yell to the signs that lead to nowhere. We’ve discovered that half of the people who have sales never take their signs down afterward, leading us on many a wild goose chase.

These sales also give me the sense of community I’m always searching for in Las Vegas. What other opportunity are we given to walk up to strangers’ houses and be welcomed? And we’ve met some real characters, like the elderly man who was convinced that we needed to buy his fishing poles, and the deaf man who playfully pretended that we hadn’t yet paid him. At one sale, a woman gave us a tour of her oddly-shaped octagonal home after we complimented it. She explained that her roommate had passed away, and she gave us some of his potted plants, glad to give them to someone who cared. At another sale a group of kids sold Rice Krispie treats and a smiling chubby boy handed them to us with his sticky bare hands. Another time we went inside an Air Force pilot’s house to see a table he had for sale, and we stood in his kitchen for thirty minutes - his wife with a baby on her hip - and talked about his upbringing in rural New Jersey after I commented on a framed aerial photo of his childhood home.

Sure, my inner snob sometimes kicks in at these sales. I still can’t bring myself to buy clothes, and I’m often astounded by what people think has value. (Why on earth would I buy someone’s old electric toothbrush???) But you can’t put a price on the fun Laurie and I have, out in the sunshine, talking and laughing, filled with the freedom of a weekend morning. And by the way, if you’re in northwest Vegas on a Saturday morning, you might want to watch out for a little red pickup truck!