The weather at my dad’s has been crummy all week: torrential rain alternating with overcast days so humid I felt as though I were swimming instead of walking. Today the sun came out and the breeze picked up and I had the chance to do something I rarely get to do:
Editor’s note: A version of this post (written by me) originally appeared on MSN Money’s Smart Spending blog.
The older I get the more I miss my mother, who died eight years ago this month. Geneva Hanes was the youngest of 10 kids born to an uneducated Tennessee couple who eventually pulled up stakes and moved north for opportunity – that is, to work in South Jersey factories and vegetable fields.
Despite hunger, poverty and violence, my mother became the first in her family to finish high school. Mom owned two dresses (“one on, one off”) and never had a square meal or a bath in a real tub until she married my dad right after graduation.
They had four kids in five years, which sounds impossibly grim by today’s standards. But we didn’t seem to notice that we were poor. Everyone we knew pinched pennies. Nobody did it like my mom, though.
Kids all over the country are in mourning, having seen “back to school” signs and adverts since early July. Today’s circulars included deals like 1-cent manual pencil sharpeners (Office Depot), 25-cent crayons (Kmart), free-after-rebate yellow highlighters (Staples) and $9 backpacks (Target).
It’s not time to buy yet, though.
You’ve got to love a blogger who can work the phrase “Cartesian dualism” into a post. In this case the blogger is my daughter, Abigail Perry, and the article is about us both. (But mostly her.)
Don’t let the title “Glorifying my mom (who’s glorifying me)” fool you. It’s not an exercise in mutual admiration, although I do admire the hell out of her. The post is about her re-reading “You can’t even tell perfect bodies apart,” a post I wrote about Abby’s near-fatal illness, and then reflecting on who she was then and who she is now.
Often we hear about boomerang kids, or middle-aged “children” who keep asking their parents to subsidize them. But what happens when Mom and Dad hit you up for a loan?
Aunt Bea died this morning. Chemotherapy had tamed the stomach cancer for the past year, to the point where she was getting around with a walker and even eating a little bit again.
But a few days ago she was suddenly unable to rise from a chair. She started sleeping almost all the time. When my cousin e-mailed this on Friday, I knew I probably wouldn’t see my aunt again on this Earth.
On Saturday, my cousin put the phone up to Bea’s ear so that I could talk to her. All I could say was that I was thinking about her and praying for her, that I loved her, and that I thanked her for everything she’s done for the family. I heard her struggling to reply, but ultimately she couldn’t.
After hanging up, I spent the day struggling with memories of my mother’s death, back in August 2003. Losing Bea is like losing Mom all over again.
Earlier this week I went hiking with my niece and her two boys. On the way to the trail another hiker told us to be alert: Bears had recently been seen in the area.
We can now attest that the bears are still in the area.
MJ is the winner of the box o’ Christmas oddities, courtesy of RetailMeNot.com. I just returned from the post office. Maybe there will be a Christmas miracle, i.e., it will get there on time.
A whole bunch of you sure liked that bling mug, aka the “2 Carat Coffee Cup.” If you’re interested in getting one of your own, start your shopping here — and be sure to look for a coupon code, too.
In other news:
The retail industry treats Christmas as one big countdown. This year has been the worst yet: Black Friday seems to have lasted the entire month of November.
But right after Thanksgiving the real fun began: “Only 26 more shopping days until Christmas.”
I think it’s because as a nation, we love to be nagged. The phone company reminds us to call home on Mother’s Day. Florists fuss at you to buy flowers for Secretary’s Day. Jewelers warn men to buy bigger and better diamonds for each year’s anniversary.
Nagging works, too: The phone system is overwhelmed on the second Sunday in May. Administrative assistants smile as they load up the vases (even if they’re inwardly wishing they’d gotten gift cards, or raises). And wives all over America decide to hang in there for another year because the big lug actually remembered.
But this is not a cynical post about the commercialization of sentiment. Not this time, anyway. It’s about why “(however many) more days until Christmas” is too vague to be of any use.
That’s because it’s not a warning — it’s a snooze alarm.
One harried late-October evening, I rushed through a store’s costume section in a frenzy of last-minute preparations. To my horror, the reds and greens of Christmas cards and wrapping paper beckoned from a nearby aisle.
“Oh, spare me,” I said aloud. “I haven’t finished feeling guilty about Halloween yet.”