Last Valentine's Day

I pass an elementary school on my walk to work and thus encounter a few crossing guards along the way.  One acts as though she can barely be bothered to return a hello but eventually mumbles one in response as she marches her charges across the street.  Another ignores all pleasantries outright.  "Good morning!" I'll greet her with a smile, adding "You must be so happy it's warmed up!"  She will stare back as though I've offended her and then mutter, "Okay, walk now."  ("Chatty gal!" Elaine would sarcastically comment on "Seinfeld.")  Mike passes the same women the days he walks to work, so he knows. . .and when the subject comes up between us can usually be counted on to say something like "I wouldn't even bother.  You know she's not going to be friendly.  Just cross the street!"  I would rather know that I made an effort even if it went unappreciated, so we agree to disagree on that.  Also, the older I get, the more I seem to possess a perverse determination to be especially nice to people who seem annoyed by it.  One of the local crossing guards makes up for the others, though, taking the time to talk about the weather and traffic and pointing out any icy patches she knows I'll pass in the next block or so of my walk after she guides me across "her" intersection.  Such cheerfulness and thoughtfulness in a job that requires her to be outside and on her feet in all kinds of weather!  When either Mike or I have an anecdote about our walk to work, we know to whom "The Nice Crossing Guard" refers when we say it.  She's just one of those nice people in the neighborhood.  

I didn't have to work last Valentine's Day and finished buying Mike his traditional sweets that morning.  A peanut butter cup heart would have been enough to make him happy, but I added a few other things to my stash for his little treat bag:  A small packet of peanut butter cookies, a chocolate-covered marshmallow heart, and whatever else.  As I headed toward the apartment with my bag of candy in the drizzly cold, I realized "our" crossing guard was likely still at her post, and on the spur of the moment, I decided to find her and wish her a happy Valentine's Day.  When I reached her, I suddenly felt shy and stupid, wondering if she would think this a bit over the top or odd since we only knew each other as crossing guard and pedestrain.  I handed her the marshmallow heart and said whatever I said to wish her a good day, and she was so touched and got such a kick out of it.  "I always take a break mid-morning and sit in my car awhile with coffee I keep in a thermos," she told me as she tucked the little red foil package into a coat pocket.  "Today I'll have something to eat with my coffee!"  Hearing that made me feel better again--in the vein of "Whew!  I'm not an idiot!  She understood and just enjoyed it!"--and even now, a year later, it is one of only a few Valentine's Day moments I've ever experienced that are memorable.  

I am neurotic enough to wonder as I write this if maybe the bolder and more generous act would have been to surprise one of the two cranky crossing guards with the marshmallow heart, and if I had, how that would have played-out--"What happened then?  Well. . .in Whoville they say, that the Grinch's small heart grew three sizes that day!"--but giving it to "The Nice Crossing Guard" seemed the right thing to do.  I found a quote awhile back attributed to writer Robert Brault that I love:  "Inner beauty, too, needs occasionally to be told it is beautiful."  That's my defense.  :)  The crossing guard is pleasant to everyone she encounters every day, and that alone is beautiful and marshmallow heart-worthy to me.  

Chocolate Sommers Day

Today is my friend Sommer's birthday, and in her memory, I've baked a small batch of what she, my mom, and I called "Chocolate Sommers," a cookie Mom used to make that Sommer loved.  Our junior and senior years of high school, Som would come home from school with me in the afternoons and, more often that not, find a sheet of them freshly-baked for her.  "Cool!"  she would shout when she heard that Mom and I had come to jokingly rename the recipe "Chocolate Sommers."  "I've never had a cookie named after me before!"  A box of chocolate cake mix, two eggs, and and 1/3 cup of vegetable oil:  So simple, and yet, such a goofy thrill for her, my friend with the Cheshire Cat grin. 

The photo above captures Sommer exactly as I always picture her, and you get a pretty good idea from it of what opposites we were too.  There I sit shying away from the camera somewhat, knees together, hands clasped, and there's my girl beside me. . ."being Sommer."  Our teachers and students who didn't know us well were always shocked to learn that Sommer and I were best friends.  She would come to class late, if it wasn't a day she'd decided to let herself have off in the first place.  She could change her own tires before most of us her age even knew how to drive.  When she felt a teacher was being unfair to her or others, she practically growled and would defend herself and anyone else who needed it.  She got kicked off the bus her junior year of high school because she had told off the driver who was letting, day after day, a young boy on the bus be bullied.  After days of intervening on the kid's behalf, fighting with the bully harassing him, and trying to get the driver to deal with it, it was Sommer, not the bully, who was told not to ride the bus anymore.  She was positively sputtering by the time she was recounting the story to me on the phone that night, and when I told her I was sorry and that yes, it was unfair and wrong, she replied that she didn't care about having to drive, she was just worried for the poor boy.   (I don't remember how that ended, but I know she raised more hell about it, as was her way, and I'm thinking parents and/or others must have talked with the driver or school personnel.)  Her heart, I always said, was as big as her mouth.  She applied for a much-wanted job in a car repair shop when she was sixteen, and when the owner made it clear that he'd feel better with a man working there instead, she argued with him about the injustice of that.  She had a wall calendar in her bedroom featuring the hunky model Fabio; Mine at the same time was probably Quotes of Comfort or Mary Engelbreit.  She remains the only person I've ever known who could walk into a room and instantly have everyone's attention.  I had always thought that idea was just a kind of writerly way of describing an outgoing person, but then Som and I became friends and I got used to seeing it happen:  She had an energy about her that made people look up, watch, and wait for her words and actions.  She had burgundy-dyed hair when we met.  She was aching to get a tattoo, but her deal with her mom was that she had to wait until she was older if she really wanted one.  "Well!" cried out our senior English teacher when she ran into us in the local mall's Hallmark store one afternoon.  "There's a dangerous duo!"  That still delights me, although now it's more because I was half of this sweet duo and not because someone teasingly deemed me edgy.  She was born just four months before me, and we were close enough in shape and weight to share clothes, but I always thought of her as being the older one and as one of the protective forces in my life.  It was easier making my way through high school as a studious introvert when I had this purple-haired  ball of fire beside me, if only because she paved the way a bit.  I was strong and capable in my own ways, of course, and helped her along, as well, although exactly how we quieter ones do that is never as obvious.  In most of our pictures together, I am positioned off to her side and a bit behind her or am otherwise unconsciously trying to hide myself a bit.  Never Sommer.  She faced the world head-on, she stood up, she stepped forward, she burst out, she led the way.   

A month or so after Som died, I was talking about this attraction of opposites friendship with another girl in our senior class, and she said that she too had always thought it was strange that we were friends.  "But," she concluded, "You could always make each other laugh.  You guys got each other hysterical."  Yes.  It breaks my heart to have to say that while I remember her speaking voice, nineteen years since I last heard it, I no longer remember the sound of her laughter.  I pause as I type that because it hurts so much.  If you woke my mom in the middle of the night and asked her what she remembered about our friendship or the time we all shared with Sommer, she'd likely instantly respond, "They were always laughing together."  One day after school, Som and I stopped at Wal-Mart and were looking at hats--I lived in hats and baseball caps in high school, so funny the phases we go through--and my mom, who had stopped there on her way home from work, heard us laughing long before she saw us.  She just followed the sound of our laughter until she found us in the store.  In one of the sweestest dreams Mom had soon after Som died, Sommer came over to the house and ran upstairs to my room and shut the door and Mom stood at the bottom of the stairs in shock saying to my dad "How can she be here, Gene?  She died!" and listening to us as we laughed together again.  " I couldn't make out anything you were saying," she told me later, "I just heard you both laughing."  The few precious dreams I've had since she died in which we're laughing at something together are amongst my own favorites.  In one, she and I were back in our junior year American history class and our teacher's lesson for the day was depressing in that it seemed to be a recitation of sad and sobering things that had occurred in the nation over the years.  After he had mentioned the umpeenth war or famine or other historical crisis, a classmate muttered, "Didn't anything good ever happen in history?!"  And Sommer, ever the smart alec, replied, "Yeah!  I was born!"  As we all giggled, I teased back, "What about me?!" and Som quickly said, "Yeah!  Val was born too!"  Nightmares and sad dreams of her death plagued me for years, but that silly dream made up for more than a few of the rough nights.  "I was born!"  Indeed, she was, my sweet girl, and oh my goodness, am I the better for it.  I would have preferred a lifetime of sharing that laughter and not just the couple years we were blessed with, but I'm old enough now to know that not everyone gets a Sommer in their life at all.  That she had to go on ahead of me, almost seems now like it should have been expected.  I have to follow her, it has been decided by something bigger than us, as I always did, combining the best of her with the best of myself as I make my way through the world that she's already finished with, and I look forward to our hug and laughter-filled reunion.  As ever, she makes it easier for me by having bounded ahead and paved the way.  

I'll catch up to her someday.  In the meantime, life goes on, and I continue to try to live mine with as much kindness and enthusiasm as I can.  It is milk with Chocolate Sommers for dessert tonight here, in honor of my mischievous and colorful friend.  She would be touched by this but would laugh, as Mike and I did this morning, over these cookies that look like they were frosted by someone who'd never decorated a cookie before.  :)  Turquoise and peach were her favorite colors--she was not a pink gingham, patchwork, and roses kind of girl, of course not, no--so that partially explains the odd frosting.  Being in too much of a hurry to let them cool before frosting them is the rest of my excuse.  Ah, well!  A heart-shaped cookie and glass-of-milk toast now for my friend.  She would be thrilled to know that Chocolate Sommers are still being baked and that she continues, in this way and others, to make life sweeter.  

Goofball at the Grocery Store (or Shy Val Strikes Again)

I have a knack for getting myself into the most awkward situations, and the latest is that, in a poorly-thought-out attempt not to embarrass a grocery store employee who obviously had me confused with another shopper last week, I seem to have agreed with his assumption that I have children.  "You dummy!" Mike laughed when I finally, after a week of suffering privately over my socially clumsy interactions with this man, told him what I had (and hadn't) said to this kind and good-intentioned person.  "Why didn't you just correct him?!"  Yes, well, that would have been an easy fix, I see now, more than a week into my repeated almost-daily attempts to try to avoid him.  

This man has worked in the store the entire six years I've shopped there, and we always exchange hellos and make small talk.  He is, as Mike and I have noted numerous times, undoubtedly among the two nicest staff members in the entire supermarket.  Those of you who have worked retail know just how amazing his kind of constant pleasantness with the public is.  I have never been there with children, but for whatever reason, this employee greeted me last week with a cheerful "How are your little ones?" and because I knew ("knew") that he would realize his mistake the second I walked away from him and I didn't want him to feel embarrassed, I simply said, "Oh!  Fine.  Thank you!" and wished him a good day and kind of scampered off.  Strike One.  It threw me off, and I clearly wasn't graceful in my quick getaway, but I thought nothing more of it.  

Until the next time it happened, when he said my "little ones" sure must keep me busy and then asked me if they were in school yet.  You would think that that would have been the moment I'd have corrected him and that we'd have had a good laugh about it and that would be the end of this, but it was not.  Apparently, the words "little ones" set off the Shy Person Panic Alarm in my head, for I felt like I was rooted to that spot of the store aisle and my mind came up with nothing except "Uhh, no."  And I raced toward the checkout lines, leaving this man looking puzzled by my uncharacteristically curt response.  I have been trying to tell myself that surely ("surely"), I must have at least called a more-gracious "Thank you!" or "Have a nice day!" over my shoulder as I ran away, but I don't think I did.  Strike Two.  

And now, more than a week later, because I know the jig is up and I need to correct him--which we all know will now be more mortifying for me than my having corrected his error in the first place would have ever been for him--I have been avoiding this man altogether, unable as of yet to steel myself for what can't help but be a sink-through-the-grocery-store-floor-in-embarrassment moment.  Gah!  The only even somewhat intelligent explanation I have been able to think to offer this person--and it is flimsy at very best--is that I work with children and thought he meant that "my little ones" at work must keep me busy, but. . . flimsy, like I said.  It is all I have come up with, though--Mike is enjoying my predicament too much to be of any help--so one of these days, I need to bite the bullet, seek out the employee (so he doesn't catch me off-guard and throw me further off my game with an inquiry about my kids' names or birthdays or something), and explain (with a fair amount of charming laughter at my own expense, if I can muster it) our "misunderstanding."  I try to tell myself that nice people are nice people and that they're not going to stop being nice just because I have something embarrassing to tell them, and I know the entire encounter, when I do ultimately brace myself to have it, will only take a few seconds, but I am just not ready to deal with this yet, and day after day, I have not been ready.  And that, dear readers, is why I have been doing my food-shopping between 6-7 a.m. this week.  I am actually typing this right after returning from my latest quick-get-to-the-store-before-this-man-starts-his-shift-at-work grocery store jaunt.  How do I get myself into these stupid situations?!  

A Giveaway and Six Years of Pretty Little Rough Patches

Six-Year Blog Anniversary Giveaway  ~  Click to enlarge pic.

This month marks six years that I've been writing here.  It was only a mere six months ago, though, that I made the blog public and findable by online search engines.  I Struggle with Shyness:  A post for another day.  :)  It was especially fun and rewarding this past fall and early winter, then, to find comments from new readers in my email inbox--I have all comments emailed to me--and to notice each time another person had found the blog and hit the "Follow" button.  When I learned that big-hearted at Vicki over at 2 Bags Full would be hosting an online blog party today, right before my blogging anniversary, to express her thanks for what blogging has brought into her own life and to help other bloggers meet, I asked to be added to the virtual guest list.  Blogging, even if I've done it quietly and kind of under-the-radar for so many years, has been a sweet thing in my life too, and I share her appreciation of it.  Thank you to Vicki ♥  and welcome to everyone who's visiting here via her party.  :) 

You know how people joke about visiting someone only to have to sit through his/her slide shows of vacations, pets, and family outings?  I'm a person who is thrilled by such things.  Tell me about your best friend from elementary school, your best friend now, the first person who broke your heart, the work you do and the work you want to do, the language you'd love to learn and the lesson you need to learn, the last movie you loved and didn't want to end and the last book you hated too much to finish, the flowers that most remind you of your grandmother, the birthday cake you always bake or buy for your wife, your funniest memory of your grandfather, the dress you'll save forever because you once had a perfect day wearing it, those songs that take you back to high school, that one dog who was your Best Dog EVER, the craziest neighbors you've ever had, and the kindness a stranger showed you the day your child died.  Give me your tired, your poor, your fridges covered in magnet-held family pictures and your scrapbooks bursting open with saved mementos. . . . ♥  Where did you find the piece of driftwood shaped like a seal?!  I love it.  ♥  Is that photo you and your sister when you were kids?!  ♥  Oh!  Your dog by the fireplace Christmas morning!  Look at his FACE!  ♥  Is that sketch of the house that you told me about?  ♥  That has to be your mom's photo above your chair--You look just like her.  ♥  My seventh-grade English teacher always had us spend one class period a week writing journal entries that we would hand in to her to read.  She said that we could write about absolutely anything and that that there was really nothing she didn't think was interesting.  I remember thinking, when I heard her say that, "Well, yeah, I'm the same way."  I hadn't known it until she articulated it, so that realization stuck in my memory.  And now I live in the Age of the Internet and get to see your slide shows and hear your stories this way, and every day, I find someone--and something--else that interests me.  And I love that. 

To celebrate six years here and to thank you for following along, I'm hosting my first-ever giveaway.  Everything (but my beloved old green check tablecloth) in this post's photos will be packed-up and shipped to the winner after I draw his/her name February 1st.  I had fun shopping for all the prizes and love putting care packages together, so this has already added some fun to my own week.  ♥   

The winner will receive: 

• Real Simple magazine's hardcover book Celebrations:  Easy Entertaining for Every Occasion, a big book that's full of ideas for gifts, meals, parties, invitations, and just thoughtful ways to make "everydays" into holidays and "special" occasions even more special
• one of my favorite books, Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn  ~  If you've read it, you know what a treasure it is, and if you haven't, I envy you the fact that you still have your first reading of it ahead of you.  Follow Francie as she grows from an eleven-year-old girl to a post-high school young woman.  I love this girl and her story.  
• the "love issue" of Sandra Lee's magazine, filled with recipes, tablescape and party ideas, Valentine-ey thoughts, and the most beautiful photos  ~  Her magazine is always a feast for the eyes and heart.
• a little book of 23 friendship-related stickers 
• 20 paper napkins covered in cupcakes-decorated-with-hearts
• 8 heart paper plates, also perfect for either Valentine's Day or any day
• 48 pink and red floral die-cut cupcake wrappers
• 4 packets of hot chocolate, each a different flavor
• 3 thinking-of-you-type cards with envelopes 
• 3 Valentine cards with envelopes 
• and 2 red-ink pens because, as some of you guys already know, I add red hearts to almost every piece of personal mail I send.  It's not just a "blog-thing."  ♥  :)

To see larger versions of the photos here, just click on them.  A reader mentioned the other day that it would be helpful if my blog's photos were bigger, but when I post extra-large versions of photos with this blog design/layout, their sides get cut off a little bit--and I really love this design/layout.  (I tried, Jenny!)

To enter, just leave a comment on this post--and please make sure that either your comment or profile gives me a way to contact you if you should win.  Any comment with a date of January19th-January 31st will count, and I'll randomly choose a name and announce the winner here on February 1st.  You don't need to "follow" to enter.  I hope you'll follow if you want to, though, of course.  :)

Good luck!  And a truly warm welcome to you new readers and an equally-heartfelt thank you to those who have been with me either from my very first post in 2007 or since earlier this week.  I've loved sharing the past six years here.  Keep telling your own stories.  Make time for your friends.  Finish and mail the letter you keep meaning to write.  Offer a piece of gum to the person sharing the elevator with you.  Keep putting yourself out there.  Say thank you.  And remember that even when it's rough, life is good and beautiful and worth the effort.  Ride it out.  Find the silver lining.  Go hug your cat.  ♥

xox♥, Val

Photo Booth

Something at work last night reminded me of my and my younger brother's tradition of taking photo booth pictures at the boardwalk arcade on our summer vacations in Ocean City, Maryland as kids. We would beg quarters for the machine off our parents all week to get enough together for our picture-taking sessions. I keep a favorite of these photos in a frame on one of my bookshelves, and it always makes me smile. And sure to make me laugh is remembering how one of our many photo booth ventures was thwarted. I don't remember if the booth was just eating our coins, but it wasn't working, and after a few disappointed seconds, I parted the pleated curtains to go find an arcade employee who could fix it. While my brother waited outside the booth, I nervously approached a group of men gathered nearby and told one of them the photo booth wasn't working. They stared at me in silence for a few seconds while I looked up at them, certain I was impressing my younger brother and all proud of myself for acting like such a grownup. The man I had bravely chosen to address finally spoke up. "You know," he said, "I don't work here." Mortified, I nonsensically replied, "I know." (What?!) I made my way back over to Brian, and soon we were quoting me and laughing as we relived my embarrassment. Clearly, I am the smooth one in the family. :) We were soon howling with laughter, the line becoming funnier each time we said it, and we were still saying it hours later back in our motel room with our parents and older brother. "Yeah," we would chortle to each other, setting off another giggle fit, "I know." And now probably twenty years later, I still can't look at any of our photo booth prints without blushing and laughing.

It Began on My Answering Machine Ten Years Ago

Before my fall 1998 semester of college began, I spent a week or so--knowing how involved I get in these types of projects, probably more than a week--planning a re-do of one of my department's designated informational bulletin boards. I was the new president of the department's club and academic honorary that school year, and it meant a lot to me that we have an awesome-looking bulletin board in our building's main hallway. I spent who-knows-how-many hours that summer both writing and typing-up my favorite quotes that applied to our department and our club's goals and then "laminating" them with clear contact paper, searching out relevant words and phrases and pictures in magazines and newspapers and then cutting them out and gluing them to/bordering them with colored paper, making photocopies of cartoons and illustrations I'd saved, and creating informational posters and meeting-notices. When I'd amassed what I considered a big enough and good enough collection of items for the bulletin board, I packed it all into a backpack and a couple of other bags, along with a stapler, staples, colorful thumbtacks, and strong tape, and walked it all over to campus, about a half-mile from my apartment. Once there, I enjoyed a near-empty corridor as I created the bulletin board: no summer classes were in session that day, I guess, and I only encountered a few faculty members as I worked. It was a fun project, and I was thrilled with the results. The bulletin board looked so colorful and so creative and just so completely different from every other bulletin board I'd ever seen hanging on any wall in any department. I already knew, though, that while the bulletin board would obviously draw attention, no one would really share my delight in it, and I was okay with that.

The next day, there was an odd message on my phone's answering machine that went something like this: "Hello, this message is for Val. Val, this is Marylou [Last Name]. We met a couple times last school year, but I don't know if you remember me? Anyway, I just wanted to tell you how AWESOME your bulletin board in the department's main hall looks! I was in there the other day to meet with [So-and-So], and I saw the board and found out you'd done it, and I was just BLOWN AWAY by your talents and your creativity and your obvious enthusiasm, and I just CAN'T WAIT to see what you have planned for the club and department this school year! Really, you just did such an incredible JOB with it! You should be very proud of yourself! It really looks GREAT! Anyway, that's all I wanted to say! I just wanted to let you know! I hope you're having a good summer! Okay. BYE!"

I was stunned--and not only because this person had somehow gotten my phone number. I had never before had someone who was a stranger, basically, take the time to show me such incredible kindness. It was the sweetest feeling. I played the message over and over, sitting on the floor smooshed into one of my roommates' beanbag chairs. After listening to Marylou's message a bunch of times, I managed to write out her message on a scrap of paper so I could keep it with my other saved letters and important notes. I still have that scrap of paper with her exact words on it, and every time I've come across it while looking through my treasured papers, it's touched me again. That a stranger took the time to cheer me on with such kind words, even--or especially--over something as seemingly small and insignificant as a bulletin board, has always meant so much to me.
 
Although she was a graduate student finishing her thesis-semester and I was still an undergrad, Marylou and I ended up working together and sharing a class together that fall, so we saw each other frequently enough at school. Still, my shyness kept getting the best of me, and although I kept trying to tell myself to approach her and try to talk with her more--You KNOW she's nice! She called and left that nice message! Be brave! Strike up a conversation!--it took me at least a couple of months to psych myself up for an attempt at a friendship with her. One morning at work, though, I overheard Marylou telling a couple of the other grad students something she was sad about that day, and it struck a chord in me, and I sent her either a card with a note inside or maybe just a short letter that shared my own experience with what she was talking about. I don't remember how the next steps were taken, but we have been friends since.

Marylou and her husband and children were in town yesterday, and we all met up for supper. It was the first time Marylou and I had seen each other in seven years. Our 2001 visit found us both facing the challenges of what I remember as the Year from Hell, and yesterday's visit--well, every year, and every friendship, has its challenges and sees its ups and downs, but it was quite something to touch base again in-person, knowing it's been ten years now since that answering machine message. ♥