What Color Is Your Sky?

 

  Grandma was the anxiety queen. She needed Paxil long before it was invented. She considered Grandpa to be the number one source of her anxiety, but I think eighty percent of her ranting came straight out of her imagination. Grandpa, for his part, was oblivious to most details of domestic life. It didn't trouble him that Grandma was oblivious to what he did at work all day to support her comfortable home life, yet somehow she felt vindicated directing her vitriol at him. Even as a kid, I could tell her logic train left the station without her.
  So Grandma worried, fretted, and complained every time she opened her mouth, then wondered why no one wanted to spend time with her. The sky was always falling in Grandma's universe.
  Grandpa buried his nose in books, collected antiques, and was completely unruffled by Grandma's occasional attacks on his character. "You never listen!" or "You don't understand!"
  It was true that Grandpa didn't understand Grandma, but he was at peace with his ignorance. The sky was always blue in Grandpa's universe. I couldn't blame him for seeking solitude in books. I think he would have loved to have a pair of earplugs to enjoy his books without the unpleasant background noise from the anxiety queen.

Art Appreciation 101

  "Art is not for the cultivated taste. It is to cultivate taste." ~Nikki Giovanni

  "What's that supposed to be?" Jaime muttered under her breath. "It looks like someone threw up on the canvas."
  "You're standing too close. Back up and you'll see what it is." I hated being stuck with Jaime for the museum tour. The bubblehead couldn't tell a Manet from a Monet and thought Van Gogh was a rock band.
  "It's not even framed." She sneered. "It looks like he used it to clean his brushes."
  I suppressed a sigh of exasperation, but after peering again at the Monet, I had a twinge of doubt. It did look like something that was rescued from a dumpster. I couldn't tell what it was and there was no title card to hint at what Monet had in mind when he painted it.
  Or threw up on it. Or used it to clean his brushes.
  Most of the paintings in the Marmottan had a similar vibe, although I would never admit that to Jaime, the poli-sci major.
  "I'm sure his good paintings are at the Louvre. Why don't we go there?"
  It was the first intelligent thing Jaime said all day.
  "The Louvre is air-conditioned," she whispered.
(Painting: Claude Monet
Le pont japonais)

Ten Things You Know to be True

  1) Politics is always a topic to avoid at family get-togethers.
  2) Money has never bought anyone happiness or lasting joy.
  3) Carbs do make you fat, especially when you don't exercise, but they taste good.
  4) Renovations are never completed on time or under budget.
  5) Kids can always find where you hid the Christmas presents or the Halloween candy.
  6) If it's cold and rainy, you will oversleep.
  7) People always get stomach bugs in the middle of the night.
  8) It's impossible to clean up vomit in the middle of the night.
  9) There is a God, He really does love us, and He sent His son Jesus Christ to atone for our sins so we could return to live with Him again.
 10) Life has a purpose and every life is precious. We are here on earth for a reason. Nothing God does is accidental, arbitrary, or up for negotiation, no matter what liberals say.
  

Night Visitor

 

    I felt a weight on my chest and woke in the dark, gasping for air. Two glowing golden eyes stared calmly into mine. It was my cat, Stormie.
  Stormie was a solitary creature, sort of a "feed me and leave me alone" feline, the antithesis of her name. For her to climb on me and wake me in the middle of the night was odd.
  I tried to nudge her off, but she dug her claws into the quilt and wouldn't budge. Her eyes peered into mine, never blinking. She wasn't purring, just gagging me with her fishy breath in my unprotected nostrils.
  I determined to move out from under her. I didn't care about cat communication, but I did want to get back to sleep. Maybe she needed water or the basement door was shut so she couldn't get to the litter box. What was Stormie trying to tell me?
  Then I heard a floorboard creak on the stairs.  I stopped breathing, listening for the sound to repeat itself.

Trends

  I wanted to fit in so badly in middle school and high school, but there was never money for the trendy clothes the 'cool' kids were wearing. I saved my babysitting money to buy a pair of white canvas Nikes with the trademark light blue swoops on the sides. I assumed these overpriced shoes would announce to my cynical peers that I had arrived.
  No one looked at my feet. They had no reason to because they wore the same brand of shoes.
  I still felt an overwhelming need to be accepted by the cool crowd. White canvas is hard to keep clean. Every weekend I scrubbed the Nikes with bleach and an old toothbrush so they always looked new.
  Still, no one looked at my feet. I hadn't arrived. I had sacrificed my uniqueness on the cold, impersonal altar of conformity.
  I outgrew the shoes around the same time I started to feel less concerned about fitting in. I realized I didn't need special shoes to impress the elitists who didn't accept me even when I met their dress standards.
  My first pair of tennis shoes in college came from Kmart and cost a whopping $5.00. I painted multicolor polka dots on them and wore them with pride.
  People looked at my feet and smiled.
  I didn't care if the smiles were from admiration or scorn because I wasn't trying to impress anyone. I wasn't trying to fit in or be accepted by those who assumed to set the dress standards. I became a trend-setter simply by standing on my own two polka-dotted feet.

Ode to an OCD Gardener

  The garden was my grandmother's pride and joy, more so than her own grandchildren. She took exceptional care of it: weeding, watering, fertilizing, and fussing. To this day I have no idea why she never planted anything edible, since she complained to no end about the cost of groceries.
  Grandma would proudly point out the different types of flowers to me. "Those are snapdragons, those are daylillies, stay on the path, don't pull leaves off the mint." (She never used the mint for tea or anything useful--she just liked the way it smelled.)
  It's ironic that the backyard flower garden she kept vigil over at number 12 Briarwood Road for 50 years was her whole life because the garden killed her, literally.
  Grandma didn't drive if she could walk because she complained to no end about the cost of gasoline, so she often walked to the hardware store to buy goodies for her flower children. One morning she walked there to buy fertilizer for her precious shepherd's purses. The smallest bag the store had in stock was 50 pounds.
  "We'll deliver it to your house, Mrs. Lang, for $5.00."
  Did I mention Grandma was a tightwad? She didn't even walk home to get the car, but carried the 50 pound bag home in her arms, which gave her a heart attack.
  From which she never recovered.

Vigil

  Anna wanted the Mormons to knock on the door. She was eager to hear about the prophet Joseph Smith and this gold Bible she had heard so much about down in the village of Palmyra.
  "Pa said they're sending the men out two and two on missions, to preach the word of God," she told her mother.
  "Come away from the window, Anna!" Ma said with feigned patience. "No one ever comes up this way to visit, especially no Mormon missionaries!"
  Anna would discreetly watch for them when she went out to feed the chickens, gather the eggs, and slop the hogs. When she walked down the hill to school in the village, she kept her ears open, absorbing gossip about the new church as she passed townsfolk going about their business. Most people didn't have anything nice to say about Joseph Smith and the shocking new religion he founded, but Anna was eager to know more. She hated Ma and Pa's austere Presbyterian church she was forced to attend every Sunday in nearby Manchester, NY.
  She thought there must be more to know about Jesus than what was in the Bible. "What about the other apostles, like Andrew?" she once asked Pa. "Why doesn't he have a book in the New Testament?"
  "Hush your mouth and don't talk nonsense!" Pa snapped. "Preacher says there ain't no other scripture 'cept the Bible!"
  Anna didn't dare utter what she was longing to ask: "What if Preacher's wrong? What if Jesus did restore his church to the earth? What if he did give Joseph Smith a golden Bible? What did they call it? The Book of Mormon, named for a prophet who lived here in America before Columbus?"
  The rumors fired Anna's imagination. She watched every day, hoping the missionaries--maybe even Joseph Smith himself--would come to call.