Letter to a Summer Bully

Oh Texas.  Twenty years in and you still disappoint me every September.  I have slowly learned to calibrate my expectations of you.  I know that it will be hot the first day of school as well as the thirtieth day of school.  I know not to rush you with my needs for cooler weather because I only end up making you angry and you act like a hurt child and keep summer going through October.  I know.  But Texas, I forgot that you can be so cruel.  This year you gave me a little tease of autumn on the first calendar day of autumn and I thought this is it!  Sweater weather!  Open windows!  Fall is upon us with all of its glory!  But no. It was just you, playing with strings of my heart, giving us just one cooler day and then BOOM.  Here we are in the high 90's again and all I got was a cold. 

Please Texas.  We had a very nice summer and I thank you for that.  It was not until the end of August that I found myself so weary of sweating and tank tops and heat that I contemplated moving and fantasizing about wearing comfy pants again.  This is usually a June occurrence, so again, thank you.  But please, I need fall.  I need open windows at night and I need the smell of crisp air in the morning.  I need temperatures that dip into the 50's and don't get above 78.  I need the trees that do change color to start changing.  You know you only let them shine a day or two before they dump all over the ground.  I need to see all those resplendent reds, orange and yellows and not just in front of HEB with its anemic pumpkins and sad, wilting mums.  I need to take a walk through leaves and hear the crunch of them beneath my feet and smell the sweet decay that rises up.  Please, I would like my electric bill to go down for a month before the gas bill rises to take its place.  And I would really like to hold a cup of coffee and enjoy the warmth of it spreading through my hands rather than the sweat pouring down my face.

Not to call you out Texas, but Buffalo does fall WAY better than you.  Yep.  I hate to be the one to tell you, but Buffalo, NY has this fall thing down.  Glorious you could call it.  Autumnal splendor some would say.  Cool nights, warmish days.  People up there are reveling in the majestic colors of the trees already.  They are drinking their cider and crunching through their leaves while wearing their cozy clothes and not sweating.  Fall fests up there are enjoyable - a celebration of summer's end and the pause before the onslaught of winter.  Fall fests here are just more kettle corn and hot, sweaty people wondering why they thought calling it Fall Fest would make it seem more like autumn.

Glorious, right?

Oh Texas.  I have tried so hard all these years to explain, please listen this time.  Autumn is just so special to me.  It holds my birthday month, it reminds me of years playing field hockey, or the year I spent making donuts at the cider mill.  Yes, I know my complexion was a mess but that $4/hour was a princely sum.  Fall is football games and crisp nights and huge harvest moons taking up the sky.  It is walks at night and mugs of tea and perhaps a light blanket as you sit on the couch.  It gives you time to prepare for winter.  Not that winter here is especially cold or harsh, but fall is a time to get your crops in, tighten up the house, bake to warm up the kitchen and a time to get your mind right. 

Please Texas.  Please give us some fall before you throw us into winter.  We need that pause between seasons of two extremes.  You are starting to act like a bully Texas, and I just won't put up with it anymore.  Well, I will but I will pout and whine to all who listen and eventually you are going to get a bad name for yourself.  They might stop flying your flag as high and stop making kids pledge their allegiance to you, Texas, in schools.  C'mon Texas.  Do it.  All the cool states are doing it.  What's a little cooler weather between friends?  Bring on the fall Texas and I will open my windows and doors and publicly declare you the best, ever.  I promise.

The F Word

I am looking it straight in the face.  It is out there, it is waiting for me without mercy.  I have watched so many friends fall victim to it this year; one by one they have crossed over, never to return.  Forty.  F-O-R-T-Y.  The ultimate "f" word.

The first person I remember turning Forty is my dad.  My mom rented a big light up sign that said "Happy Birthday Pete, U old fart".  I remember it vividly because our entire front yard was lit up, I was allowed to stay up until my dad got home to see it and because my proper spelling mother substituted "U" for "you".  Right there I learned that Forty was special: it was to be acknowledged loudly, proper spelling and grammar were to be thrown to the wind and you should immediately mock anyone turning Forty.  Valuable life lessons that were a million years away from applying to me, until now.

Me at the time of the "U Old Fart" sign

I have a friend who just turned Forty and being a go-getter, set goals to do something new each month of her 39th year.  She tried new things, went new places, even went back to work as one of her new things.  I admired her but knew better than to try and set something up like that myself.  I like to take the ostrich approach to change and bury my head in the sand until the last possible moment and then let the adrenaline and crisis coping skills take over.  I will admit that Forty is not one to be shunned and it kept showing up in my random thoughts throughout the year.  Ridiculous thoughts such as "did you see that baby....you'll never have a baby again....look how big your kids are..you'll never be seen as a young family again...if you went back to school now, you'd be twice as old as every one else in class....how can you have wrinkles and pimples at the same time....you should learn to knit."  Forty clearly has some issues.

Looking for inspiration, I typed "forty is" into the search engine and the first thing I got back was "Forty is the old age of youth".  Ouch.  I also got "forty is fabulous".  I don't like that one either.  I don't use fabulous to describe people (other than drag queens), places or things so I find it annoying.  "Forty is fearless."  Please.  I worried my way out of the womb and through the last 39 years, that will not be changing any time soon.  Then there was this book title that was something about women turning Forty and coming into their fullness.  Insert gag noise here.  Or Forty is the new twenty.  Is it?  Who says?  And why? 

Uninspired by the results of my internet search, I was forced to finally confront Forty and this is what I have found.  Forty is fit.  I am in much better shape now that I was turning 30.  No, it does not count that I was 5 months pregnant when I turned 30, I am still taking it as a win. Forty is family.  We are in the thick of the crazy years with one kid in high school, one in middle and one in elementary.  We are exhausted and stressed, but we have been blessed in abundance with these three.  Forty is factual.  I have been around, I know some things, I can share this knowledge, but I can still learn new things.  I know that the kid at the grocery store is carding me for my beer purchase because he is new and scared and not because he thinks I am underage.   Thirty year old me would have prided herself on her youthful appearance.  And finally, Forty is feisty because I am feisty and that is how my tens, twenties and thirties have been, so why not?  Forty will not be the old age of anything for me.  Do not go gently into turning Forty!

That said, I do ask that you do not put up a lit sign in my yard for my birthday as my son will quote from it like he quotes commercials and forty will get old very fast.  Or toilet paper my trees because my children will be so embarrassed when I take it down and bring it back in to use.  Forty will be acknowledged, it will be honored and it will be feted, but it really is just a number and we all know I was never very good at math.

For My Mom

Tomorrow is my mom's birthday, she will be turn something between 60 and 70.  As I tell my son, we never press a woman for her exact age or weight.

My mom was born to loving, devout, strict German Catholic parents.  She was one of twelve children, number four down the line.  The guy who wrote the birth order book would have his mind blown trying to say where each of the twelve fit in the rankings he created.  My mother had the misfortune of immediately following my super genius uncle and while she always got good grades, they were not as good as his.  Don't think too poorly of my grandparents, this was a time where children were sat in the corner with dunce hats on in school as well. 

given the awkwardness, I would put her age 12 here

My mom got good grades, graduated and went off to work a variety of crappy full time jobs because my grandfather did not believe women needed a higher education.  Ouch.  She met and married my dad and had my sisters quickly after and settled into being a policeman's wife.  My brother and I followed and after awhile she went back to work, working a variety of crappy jobs because by this time you needed a college degree to get good ones.  But my mother is nothing if not persistent and she found her niche in commercial real estate appraisal and did well.

The older and more hormonal my children get, the more I realize what an amazing mother my mom is.  The venomous looks my daughter gives me now makes me want to call my mom and apologize for my miserable teenage self.  She raised the four of us pretty much on her own as my dad worked a lot of nights and third shifts.  She carted us to various sports practices, plays, band and anything else we were in and she was at almost all of our games, our concerts and events.  We did well in school because she knew we could and it was important to her that we go to college.  I am an excellent speller because she made me look up words in the dictionary rather than telling me how to spell them.  Her inability to go to college really left an ugly wound in my mom's psyche and she raised her girls to think and know that they could do anything.  The world was as much theirs as it was their brother's.

My mom is an excellent baker and she made sure we all knew how to bake.  We did not have a lot of money and the good food (junk food) ran out quickly with four kids, but somehow there were always enough ingredients to put together to make a cake or cookies or something sweet.  My mom is also a good cook...when she follows the recipes and doesn't wing it or add things in she has lying around.  Ask me about the hot dogs, potatoes and peas....or, God help me, hamburger pie.

My mom is a do-er.  If something needs to be done, she is your woman.  Need a pancake breakfast organized?  Mary will do it.  Need a dozen cookies for a bake sale?  She will make you two dozen.  Need an arm or a leg?  She has two and she will gladly give you one.  Even pure exhaustion from caring for my dad going through chemo didn't stop her from taking care of others.  We spent two hours chasing down a wheelchair for a sick friend who needed it.  That is my mom.  Do and help and go until you just can't anymore.  I have had to tell her to stop being a Martha and to just be Mary: to take care of herself, to say no every now and then.

 She is an excellent Grammie and delights in her grandchildren.  She throws them Cheeto parties and lets them paint walls in the basement and make it a clubhouse.

She taught us all how to value family, how to be a part of our community, how to work hard and achieve our goals.  We are confident, mouthy and driven because of her.  We love our kids and expect good things from them because of her.  We are opinionated, purposeful and busy because of her.  I am so grateful for my mom, so proud to be her daughter. I know how much you value college Mom, but I learned more from you about the world than I ever did there.  Now on your birthday, go be Mary - not Martha.