The Late Arrival

The more I think about it, the more I think we’re all on that plane with William Shatner flying through the Twilight Zone, seeing a monster on the wing that no one else does. It’s one of the creepiest Twilight Zone episodes, not because the special effects were extraordinary, but because the episode tapped into our most primal fear and our most basic need: to be heard -- or at the very least acknowledged -- and the fear we won’t. Shatner’s character sees a creature on the plane's wing . At first he tries to convince himself it’s only a manifestation of nerves, and his fellow passenger and flight attendant assure him that’s the case. And he desperately wants it to be the case. Because he’d rather think he’s crazy then deal with the reality of the monster on the wing. The events playing out in Ferguson, Missouri on the heels of an unarmed black teen’s killing by a police officer convince me that in some way, all of us are riding along with Shatner on his Twilight Zone bo...

Hey, I know it’s summer and everything, but it’s getting late. Bedtime, kiddo. Georgia and I were watching Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs . She had seen it before, so it wasn’t like she was missing out. We said bedtime prayers, and I kissed her goodnight. The movie had sucked me in by that time and I wanted to know how everything would get sewed up in a tidy bow, so I went back to watching. It didn’t disappoint. I was entertained and nearly clapped as the credits rolled. The next morning, I told Georgia what a clever movie it was. You watched the rest of it? Seriously, mom? Now I felt stupid. Well, yeah. I got hooked and wanted to see how it ended. She and Jamie exchanged looks. Um, mom...you saw that movie already. At the movie theater. Don’t you remember? Listen, my brain’s memory chip has been deleting a ton of low-priority information lately. But an entire movie? Like, a swath of time and place that I completely blanked out on? Between you and me, I still contend ...

Call it a case of the Meandering Mondays or just go ahead and say I'm trying to kick a case of Writer's Block. Whatever you wanna call it, somehow I got stuck on banks. If you're old enough, you remember there was a time when people actually visited the lobby and talked to tellers. It usually happened Saturdays since banks closed at 5:00 weekdays, and most people were working and couldn't make it to the bank by that time. The banks were open on Saturdays, but only until noon; so everyone had to make it there before closing...and heaven forbid you had a kid in tow: Through tall glass double doors and into the lobby, traffic’s noise gives way to The Most Beautiful Girl or some other muzak. Everything there soaks up sunshine – from the navy blue carpet, to personal banker desks flanking each wall, to the velvet ropes and signs that instruct Wait Here for the next available teller. An intimidatingly tall oblongish table dominates the lobby’s center. On it are slips o...

Sometimes I think about it. Sometimes it's a fleeting thought in the seconds before I drift off to sleep and glance at his arm around my middle and my brown hand resting on his not so brown arm. It always looks like a painting to me. Simple and beautiful. Sometimes it's the rare occasion when all three of us are captured in a candid picture. Our daughter between the two of us, making the picture look as if we're posing in graduating skin colors, from lightest (his), to medium (hers), to darkest (mine). Her face, her skin a blend of both his and mine. Sometimes he thinks about it when I'm oblivious. Like when I give him a little extra room at a checkout counter, but am still within his personal space, and the clerk helping him asks if she can help me. He lets her know that "uh...that's my wife " in a stern, sharp voice before I can answer. He's my protector, a sensitive set of second eyes. But most of the time, I don't t...

Percy . I only called him “Dad” selectively, usually when I needed something. My friends marveled that I had the balls to call my dad by his first name. But it wasn’t an act of rebellion, my mom called him Percy and we just parroted what she said. He never seemed to mind. It’s taken years to piece together who Percy really was – and how that same Percy intersected with Dad -- a title I instinctively started using only after the picture of who he was as a man, as a father, became clearer as I grew older. *** “Shell- LEE !” I hear the smile in his voice as he bellows his pet name for me up the stairs on my birthday morning. I race from my bedroom to the top of the stairs.  He’s standing at the base, a shadow pitched against sunlight behind him and balancing a faded blue Huffy 3-speed that was my ninth birthday present – a surprise. It’s easy to hear his smile and see his broad white grin, a sharp contrast to his dark chocolate skin because Percy didn’t smile a lot. ...

Troops. Numbers. Percentiles. The more I consider the units of weights and measures, the more I'm convinced, it must be related to the counting. The "It" being the shootings, injuries by firearms and deaths. That "It." There's been yet another mass shooting , and a few days before that, a shooting that's left a little girl who's around Georgia's age clinging onto life by a thread. Both are tragic, as are other incidents around the country which didn't make national or local headlines. But this isn't a rant about gun regulation or about video games' influence or a culture of violence or services for the mentally ill or unemployment or any of the usual suspects. This isn't about beating our swords into plowshares , or the NRA or even gun regulation or communities taking back their communities. Maybe that's all part of It. But a big part of the It is in the Counting. The way we count ourselves . The way we count li...

Mothers are the Creators of Normal. It’s a heady, intimidating responsibility, but it’s what moms are and do by simply living, breathing, walking and talking. The Creators of Normal shape protocol for phone call behavior. Whatever your urgent news is, if Mom is on the phone you do not interrupt her conversation. Instead, you wait – wait I say – for her to say in this order : “Mmm, hmmm. (one beat) Alright…(one beat, two beats) Uh-uh…(one beat, two beats, three beats)” You’re almost home free now, don’t interrupt. “Alright (one beat)…BYE-BYE!” Click. She might roll her eyes and impatiently ask what you need. Go ahead and tell her. Tell her! This is important stuff. “I hafta potty.” The Creators of Normal dictate color. Which is fine, if the Creator isn’t one of the rare cases of a color blind woman. But if the Creator is color blind, then she may ask you to fetch her brown purse on any given Sunday as she’s prepping you and herself for church. Obediently, ...

"What's that, mom?" Georgia asked as she pointed at my forearm. It was a bump, a little mole that appeared when I was carrying her and has lived there since. Thinking about how my body changed during those nine months brought a smile to my face and I explained that it was a "present" she gave me before she even got here. A year or two later, someone else asked about it and I told the story. Concerned, the person asked if it had gotten bigger, or if it hurt. They suggested it might be worth having a doctor look at just to be sure it wasn't cancerous. Geez. I hadn't thought of melanoma. The doc checked it out and it was the harmless present as I first suspected. Even so, I began to play it safe and religiously slathered on sunscreen from that day forward. Now enter Donald Sterling - He of bazillions of dollars who flaunts a girlfriend while married and airs bigoted, heartfelt rhetoric, He who has been sued for housing discrimination - is like my m...

A little over one year ago for the kid barely in his twenties. A month ago for the forty-nine year old rock star’s girlfriend. Barely a week ago for the twenty-two year-old entrepreneur. Come July, it’ll be seven months for the thirty-some year old mom of little ones not yet in their teens. Sometimes death by suicide makes headlines. Sometimes, the loved ones drowning in its wake are the only ones who know about it. When it’s a headline, count on news anchors to assume a pseudo-sad tone as they report the tragedy with heads cocked to one side, staring through the camera’s lens and into the eyes of whoever is on the other side, and asking Why? …and then moving on to the next news bite for popular consumption. "There are such things as dumb questions, and in suicide’s shadow, Why is the dumbest of question of them all." Answers to Why are never productive. They don’t restart the heart, cause oxygenated blood to course through the body to...

But. It’s the lovechild of Truth and Denial , second cousin to Nevertheless . A simple three letter word that takes up less than a half-inch of nine point Arial font. Easily read and pronounced unlike the billion dollar, multisyllabic words. And so we use it a lot. Maybe the sheer convenience of But is why we default to it so often. At the same time, And - another short, easily recognizable word - is used sparingly. I can’t help but think the world would be a better place with less Buts and more Ands . With But , everything is a mutually exclusive event, and everything is an either/or proposition. This pot roast is good, BUT it needs a little seasoning. Can’t you just see crotchety Aunt Sally (or whoever is notorious for critiquing your meals) grimacing as her words mask her intent to say your pot roast is barely palatable and far beyond the help of a little seasoning? And , on the other hand, is a connector. In the land of And , things happen in tandem and mutually excl...

There is no perfect time. There isn't a certain time when things settle down or the pieces all fit together. Things are what they are when they are. The Mallard Duck Couple already knows this, as did all the other Mallard Duck Couples before them, I suppose. I only know this because I watched them as we walked by a narrow stream. Standing in the stream's current was a hip-wadered fly fisherman. Oblivious to water bubbling over rocks, gurgling past driftwood and moving through and around his hip waders, he gracefully cast and re-cast lines creating more ripples on which sunshine could dance. That's when I noticed the Mallard Duck Couple. They weren't faring well in the current as fly-guy was. Beneath the water, their little orange feet were visible, and paddling fast and furiously against it, even as their bodies couldn't help but bob and dance along atop the water to the stream's rhythms. But soon, their feet joined their bodies and gave in to the...

We needed paper plates. Not one thousand paper plates. Just enough to tide us through the days when we don't feel like washing dishes. That would be a quick trip to Walgreen's. From parking, to running in, to checking out, it'd be ten minutes. Tops. Which is perfect, because despite my near constant presence at The Store, capital "T" capital "S," I hate shopping. From making the list, to scavenging for items matching the coupons painstakingly clipped, to throwing the stuff in the cart, to waiting in the checkout line, to lobbing the stuff from the cart onto the conveyor belt, to stuffing it all into the car, to hauling it into the house, only to pack it away where it magically disappears into the cupboards, fridge and freezer: I loathe shopping, and also, especially The Store, capital "T" capital "S." Doesn't help that the place is one square block, and nine times out of ten, if I'm there for even four things, all four th...