SEEING STUFF

An American Traitor

Traitor's Gate, The Tower of London

The educated young people at my college, when asked about what they want to do when they grow up will inevitably say, “I want to travel and see things.”

It’s a fine aspiration. Traveling is good, is fun, is educational . . . is great for the tourism industry. It’s the “seeing” of things that worries me.

The same educated young people and, for that matter, old people and the in-the-middle-people talk about “seeing things” like it’s a skill that you don’t have to practice before you arrive at your destination. Once you get to the Tower of London or the Wailing Wall or wherever, your eyes will snap open and your brain will start processing the scene like an android high on gigabytes.

“Boy, I’m seeing some stuff now!” 

The problem with this expectation is that it’s crap.

My husband travels—a lot. Once in a while, I drag along with him. Recently, in the Delta Crown Room in Boston (a giant holding pen for nerds set up by the airline so the nerds won’t wander off and fall into ditches) I watched the mating dance of the young and newly enhanced. My husband, the world traveler might as well have fallen in a ditch.

“Babe, are you seeing this?” I hissed, nodding toward a beautiful, blond girl sitting at the bar. “She has picked up and moved three times since we’ve been here.”

“Urg, slurg . . . harrumph,” he said, tapping away at his smallest machine. “Seeing what?”

The other nerds tapped away at their machines, of varying size and power usage.

“That girl, watch her. When she gets up and moves. She faces the room, bends over and displays her lovely . . . bits in a showy exhibition of availability and then relocates. See those two guys?”

Two of the younger nerds had been drawn into her wake and had begun to follow her migration around the room.

“Seriously, check it out.”

The girl stood, bent, displayed, and then moved to a new nesting area.

I finally had my husband’s attention.  His eyes bugged out of his head.

He glanced at me and said, “Good grief, how do you see these things?”

“Practice, lots and lots of practice. That and I don’t know how to text message.”

The Tower of London was historical and interesting, but the trip from Reading, England on the train was where the real sight seeing happened. It was the young girl crammed into the stairwell of the train with her six-year old as she went into hard labor. Auburn haired and pink cheeked she looked like one of my daughters. Her little boy pretended to be Spider Man, shooting his webs at my husband, while his mother’s belly convulsed with a contraction every two or three minutes. I tried smiling at her, but she warned me off with a death glare.

No wedding ring. No one to help her. Hurting and alone on a crammed train, heading for London and sitting on a suitcase, she began to shake and cry. Her little boy reached out to her swollen body, touching her belly gently, shyly.

“You won’t forget me then, while I’m gone,” she said. I don’t know if he heard her. The train’s roar swallowed conversation.

Everyone else tapped away at their machines—sending and receiving, while the drama played out at their feet.

That’s the problem with real life drama verses this notion of “sight seeing.”  Drama frowns and cries and does unpredictable, uncomfortable things—unlike sights, one travels thousands of miles to see, where all the tears have dried and the bodies are long buried.

Looking is not the same thing as seeing.

My best travel advice is to practice “seeing stuff” right where you are. Turn off the machines. Open your eyes. Because the sights are happening, probably right at your feet.

Linda (Eyes Like Headlights) Zern 

   

 

  

    

   

Nice Things: For My Grandchildren

The couch in the living room was purchased at Disney World’s version of a garage sale. It cost seventy-five bucks. The dining room table was a scratch and dent. Dead people gave us a lot of the rest of our furniture.

Once, I bought a cheap version of a fancy chaise lounge and a grandkid promptly peed on it.  It was “nice” for about a month.  I cleaned it, but there’s a stain under the fringed brown throw. It’s still pretty, if you keep the pillows arranged just right.

There’s a boarder of dirt handprints of varying heights throughout the house and a gouge in the floor where yet another grandkid busted my antique ceramic pitcher. I have magic markers the color of wood to scribble in the gouge marks.

I don’t really have “nice things.” I have used, re-covered, thrown-up-on things. It’s not so bad, because I have other things I like better. I have grandchildren . . .

Well, I have Zoe Baye (9) whose first word was “Wow,” when she noticed wind blowing in the tops of our trees. I hadn’t noticed the way the wind danced in the treetops for a long time, not until Zoe. I didn’t even realize I’d stop noticing until Zoe reminded me.

Emma Sarah (8) came to us as an instant grandchild, funny, tender, and deeply intellectual. Just don’t ask her to drive the Fisher Price Dune Buggy, because she’ll drive it straight up the trunk of the big pine tree in front of the barn, gas pedal to the metal, until she flips the whole thing upside down on top of herself. She actually did this and looked like the Wicked Witch of the West when the house fell on her, tennis shoes sticking out, toes up. Emma didn’t hurt anything too badly except her future insurance premiums.

Then there’s Conner Phillip (7), who can imitate a man having a heart attack and someone doing a Mexican hat dance. He’s also famous for his commentary, like when he told his Sunday School teacher, “Sista’ [C]Tassidy, you have big boobies.” She later confessed that she was so shocked by his comment, all she could think of to say was, “Why, thank you Conner.”  He was four at the time.

Kipling Sherwood (4) can drive that Fisher Price Dune Buggy with one foot on the gas pedal, one foot on the hood, while steering with one hand. It’s like watching the trick rider at the circus doing the Roman Ride, where the rider rides two horses, one foot on one horse and the other foot on the other horse. If Kip could get someone to drive one dune buggy and someone else to drive another, he’d give it a shot. He came fearless, which can be confused with crazy.

Sadie JoLee (4) screeched herself through infancy and then became a queen, skipping the princess phase entirely. When her big sister, Emma, worried that monsters might be real, Sadie informed her, “Thems is real. I sees thems at night, but thems melt in the morning.” Sadie’s sister remains skeptical but cautious.

He has the build, carriage, and voice of a thirty-five year old Olympic wrestler and can bench press a number ten can of hard red winter wheat and lives for farm chores. Zachary Jon (2) doesn’t get mad, he gets even, plotting revenge for hours, sometimes overnight. In a pinch, he bites. He can drive circles around Emma in a Fisher Price Dune Buggy.

Reagan Baye-Love (2) refuses to listen, obey, bring, fetch, or come when called. She’s more disobedient than a cat. She’s also as unsinkable as the famous “Unsinkable Molly Brown” and has an irrepressible sense of joy and fun. In a pinch, she bites—mostly Zach.

Griffin Henry (1) gives every indication of being a grouchy muppet with a permanent frown, except when he’s smiling and laughing at Zoe, or Conner, or Kip, or Emma, or Sadie or any combination thereof.

Hero Everdeen (5 months) watches the world go by with big eyes and a gummy smile. She likes to be held, and talked to, and fed—a lot.   

Scout Harper (newborn) is a rose and gold promise, wrapped in a pink blanket. Inside that little body with the spidery arms is a spiritual being come to earth to have a physical experience, and we wait her growing up with delight and expectation.

It’s true that I don’t have nice things. I have a nice life, filled with dazzling people and babies about to become dazzling people. They can throw up on my fancy, cheap stuff any time.

Linda (Ten Little Indians) Zern

       

         

  

    

Judging and Not Judging Mammary Capacity

CHICKEN WITH CAT

GOAT ON RABBITS

We are hobby farmers. Hobby farmers live in a relative rural setting, dabble in various kinds of “farming,” and have the knowing of a lot of fascinating farm facts. Or as my son-in-law observed, “ Farming means buying animals that poop and then moving the poop around.”

True.

Poop moving accounts for approximately seventy-three percent of time usage on the typical hobby farm, and clever, new uses for poop or the moving of poop is always exciting news, proving that hobby farmers are inquisitive people eager to know new stuff.

Knowing new stuff is ninety three percent of why a person would take up farming for a hobby in the first place.

Over the years I’ve learned a few important life lessons because of my hobby:

EVERYTHING THAT GETS ITSELF BORN ENDS UP IN A NEATLY DUG BACKHOE HOLE IN THAT BIG PASTURE IN THE SKY—EVENTUALLY. Life is transient and precious, so kick up your heels when spring finally shows up and the sun finally shines down.

MOTHER NATURE IS A B*TCH.  When a mother rabbit gives birth to a deformed, three-legged baby, she will calmly carry it to a far corner of the cage and abandon it—or eat it. Mother nature does not waste time, energy, or resources on diversity.

MOTHER NATURE IS A B*TCH.  And we human beings are not animals. We may have hair, warm blood, and mammary glands, but we also have wheel chairs.

EVERYTHING POOPS.  So stop pretending that you don’t.

ROOSTERS DO NOT LAY EGGS.  Hopefully, this does not require an explanation.

FENCES MAKE GOOD NEIGHBORS. Except when you try to help your neighbor corral his rampaging steer by vaulting the communal gate, dislocate your knee, and wind up without important ligaments in your knee. Then fences are like Mother Nature.

LIFE IS NOT ONE LITTLE BIT FAIR.  Even after doing everything right, the pony still colic’s and dies, the coyotes still carry off newborn lambs, oranges still freeze back to the rootstock, and cutworms still invade like a Nazi panzer tank division cutting the tomato plants slap down to the well mulched ground. It’s possible that without divine help and assistance we are all dead men.

AND SOMETIMES LIFE IS A 1^ST PLACE RIBBON AT THE OSCEOLA COUNTY FAIR, because your Nubian milk goat has a “mammary capacity that cannot be denied. We have our grand champion!!” And that means that you own a goat with the biggest teats in twenty-three counties, and life is good.

So let’s recap. Hobby farming gets us off the city streets, out of the rat race, and back into the fields where we belong. Otherwise, we run the risk of thinking that chicken eggs are created in Styrofoam egg cartons in the dairy section at Wal*Mart.

Linda (Scooping Poop) Zern