Tiny Pockets- From Short Pants to Self-Reliance

And Who Doesn't Love Dahlias?

Welcome to Pocketful of Prose, a community for sharing stories. Each week I include an audio version of the post, if you prefer to listen rather than read. This week, I am trying something different. I am sharing several tiny pockets, that I hope will make you chuckle. Pocketful of Prose is free for everyone, but if you want to support my efforts to make you laugh, you can do so by becoming a paid subscriber. Please stick around for the comments and share some tiny pockets of your own.

Shorts

Speaking of shorts, my son referred to shorts as short pants when he was a toddler. He still uses this phrase as does most everyone in our family. In one of her Writing in Company posts, Julie Hester explores the concept that there are unique phrases and made-up words that belong to each family, words that are theirs alone. In my family, these words include short pants, basagna (a Hungry Thing moment when my son couldn’t say lasagna but somehow managed to eat almost half a tray) and snoogle, which is just how we like to say snuggle. These words make me feel flahoolick.

Flahoolick is not a made-up word. It is a word I learned from the writer Amy Kraus Rosenthal who learned it from another writer. Kind of like the game of telephone, which is actually quite flahoolick. Flahoolick is an Irish word meaning “openhanded, generous and expansive… Anything can be flahoolick under certain conditions…Lemon squash can be flahoolick if you are nine years old or inordinately fond of lemon squash…Draught beer is flahoolick…long nightshirts are virtually always flahoolick.” Eating half a tray of basagna before passing out with your head on the dining room table is indeed flahoolick when you are three or forty-three years old.

Amy Kraus Rosenthal

Speaking of Amy Kraus Rosenthal, she wrote an incredible memoir called An Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life. I have mentioned it before, but it’s worth mentioning again. It is also a series of short snippets or stories about her life in alphabetical order, not all that different from what I’m trying to do in this post except for the whole alphabetical bit and the fact that I am not a famous author (yet). Here is her entry on Nothing. “Death is the ultimate nothing. We are petrified of this nothing, yet we spend a great portion of our lives trying to create a state of near-nothingness. We spend the day hacking away at our to-do lists so finally, when the dishes are done and the kids are in bed, we can sit on the couch and do nothing.”

Last week, I wrote a little about seeking nothing. I was jealous of my neighbor and all the nothing that was happening on the other side of the window as he read his morning paper. The urge to do is the white noise of my life. This is not necessarily a bad thing. But, I’m starting to consider how radical it would be if I allowed myself to do nothing even for just a few moments a day.

On a different note, nothing is also what I carry in my bike basket on my morning commute. I love my bamboo bike basket even though it is not good at the one thing bike baskets are made for. Carrying shit. I have tried to fill it with too much stuff on more than one occasion. Thus, it has broken on more than one occasion, and I have had to repair it. My bike basket reminds me not to carry too much. It is a beautiful notion, but currently, it is mostly aspirational. What really ends up happening is that I carry just as much but instead of putting everything in my bike basket, I carry it in my backpack on my back.

The S Word and Four Letter Words

Speaking of four letter words, our society seems to have grown more comfortable with cursing. Yet, in last week’s post, I stop short of using a four letter word in the title. I write Searching for the Blue Supermoon and finding something else instead when I almost wrote Searching for the Blue Supermoon and finding a lot of shit instead. What stops me?

Yesterday, in my office, Ani Di Franco’s song “Untouchable Face,” comes on. There are no students in the office as it is the end of the school day. It is just me and my colleague, Dena preparing for next week. Sometimes, I have a Spidey sense about people. When Ani’s song comes on, my back stiffens a little and the hairs rise on my shoulders, as it occurs to me that Dena might not be down with these non-PG-13 lyrics. Out of respect for Dena or maybe fear, I don’t do what I normally do when I hear Ani, which is to belt the lyrics at the top of my lungs. But I also don’t lower the volume or turn the song off. I have loved this song for the past twenty something years, ever since I sang it loudly in my dorm room to a boy who wasn’t actually there because he was never going to see me the way that I wanted him to. “Who am I…I bet you can’t even tell me that.”

“Are they cursing?” Dena asks, after the fourth F bomb is dropped. It’s not so much that Ani is attaching the F word to everything, it’s more that F you is the literal chorus of the song.

“Yes,” I say. “They are most definitely cursing.” I still do not offer to turn the song off. I wonder if this makes me kind of an a-hole, that my loyalty to Ani is greater than my concern for my Dena’s feelings.

“That is not cool,” she says, to which I say nothing, which feels like the best response.

A few minutes later, Amanda, another colleague walks in. “How are you?” I say as I turn the music off before Ani offends anyone else.

“I’m so fucking tired,” she says. I can hear the karma gods singing along with Ani, and the sound is so sweet.

Maybe I am an a-hole, but I can’t help but think the only mistake I made in this situation was turning off the song before it reached its rightful finish. Maybe Amanda could have used a song like that today, a chance to say F you to her day, and all the things that made it so fucking hard. Amanda walked into my office having taught five classes in a row after waking at 2 am the night before and not being able to get back to sleep. This same day, she learned that our school spirit competition was happening earlier than normal this year. As the class advisor and someone who actually gives a shit about our students, this will seriously impact her winter break plans. On most days, my life would be better if the F word I chose to use was flahoolick, but sometimes the other F word is really fucking appropriate.

Cursing

Speaking of cursing, I let an F bomb out in the car in front of my daughter and her two friends. I usually try not to curse in front of teenagers and children that are not my own. But something has gone horribly wrong in our car, and all of a sudden it feels like we are riding the Timber Terror at Silverwood, which is a rickety wooden roller coaster designed before there were safety standards. We have just gone off the tracks, folks, and it is truly terrifying. “What the Fuck?” I whisper. I somehow manage to have just enough decorum to avoid shouting the profanity while I grip the vibrating wheel between my hands.

“What is happening?” Anna says.

“I think we have a flat I say,” as I try to steer us safely off the Interstate. We pull over and get out of the car to check things out. I make sure everyone gets out on the side of the road that is not facing the cars speeding by us at 70 miles an hour. Our front tire is completely shredded. I have never seen anything like it. It is a shell of the tire it once was.

The girls and I are then tasked with the decision of calling AAA or fixing the tire ourselves. We choose the latter, maybe because the girls seem to want to do this, and I don’t want them thinking that they can’t do anything they put their mind to. However, at one point, when one of the girls puts her head under the hood, it occurs to me that there are a lot of things that could go wrong in this situation. I know enough to teach the girls that no body parts should under any circumstances be under the hood, or at least I know enough to request their immediate removal after said body parts have been placed under the hood, but I am not an expert on cars or changing tires. I have successfully changed a tire once, in a situation where AAA was a real long shot due to lack of cell service and our remote location. That was a positive experience in my memory which ended in feelings of self-reliance and partnership. The day also ended like most good days do, with ice cream. But, in that situation, Dan was with me, so I was not the sole responsible adult. I am usually up for an adventure, but this feels different. The realization that something could happen to one of these people whom I love, in a situation that could have been managed better by me, is more terrifying than the tire blow-out itself. With the help of friends and luck, we make it through, but I am once again revisiting my priorities. Perhaps, taking care of things in this situation might mean recognizing that I pay my AAA membership dues annually for the sheer advantage of receiving roadside assistance when I need it. Maybe the lesson I can teach these girls is that it is not always weak to let someone assist you. Maybe I can be a self-reliant person who also knows when it is time to ask for help.

Self-reliance

Speaking of self-reliance, in one of my parent teacher conferences last week, I meet with a mom who used to teach at the Salish school of Spokane but now works as a doula who advocates for Indigenous Birthing Rights. (How freaking cool, right? And yes, it was very hard for me to refrain from just directly saying to her, can we please be friends?) She and Robert, her son, sit next to me in my office. I can tell by the way that they banter back and forth that there is a genuine respect between them. Robert is a senior who is almost 18, and we are discussing the classes he needs to graduate. At one point, his mom looks at him, and says, “This is all you. You’re almost out.” The tone of her voice does not imply that she is shaking her hands of him but rather reminding him that he is responsible for his future.

“Are you moving out?” I ask Robert.

He is smiling widely as he nods his head and tells me that he will be moving out next month to a neighborhood adjacent to the one I live in.

His mom tells me that in the Salish community, teenagers often go to live with aunts and uncles because at this time in their life, they are seeking more independence, and this results in friction in the home, lots of arguments etc. I nod my head. I am the mother of two teenagers after all.

My son the one who used to wear short pants while eating basagna is thirteen now. He is taking Geometry this school year. Because his middle school does not offer Geometry, our plan is for him to take Geometry during first period at the high school he will attend next year. After his class ends, he will ride the city bus from the high school, which is on the bottom of the hill, to his middle school, which is way up on the top of the hill. (It’s a big hill.) I learn that four other 8^th graders are also taking math at the high school. One of the moms, who lives on the top of the hill, reaches out to the rest of us, asking if we want to create a carpool. Her plan is that each parent would take a day, a mid-morning of a workday, mind you, and drive the kids from the bottom of the hill to the top of the hill after math class. The other parents respond to the carpool invitation with extreme excitement. They pipe in that they also have vehicles that will allow them to transport five children at once. I refrain from sharing that I do not have such a vehicle. Nor do I share that I have job that makes this plan unfeasible. I also hold back from suggesting that the city bus is a vehicle that can also transport five children at once because Seabass thankfully decides without our input that he will take the class online at his middle school instead.

I can’t help but feel relieved by his decision. I also think we all could learn a thing or two from Robert’s mom.

School

Speaking of school, I have a backpack that I bring to work each day. See Nothing where I shared how I abuse said backpack to protect my bike basket. Every year, I wear my backpack down until it is basically held together by a thread. It never really occurs to me that I could replace it before it falls apart. It probably should occur to me more that things like backpacks, tires and even bike baskets should sometimes be replaced. Recently, I started misplacing things even more than usual… my Ibuprofen, my Chapstick, my headphones. Gone. I search for them in the pocket where I put all my essential things, but I find nothing. This is not the good kind of nothing. This is the kind of nothing that drives you insane. Finally, I solve the mystery and realize there is a giant hole in my essential pocket. All the things I thought I had lost had fallen to the bottom of my backpack. Everything I needed was always there, I just didn’t realize it. Maybe it’s a metaphor for life. Maybe it just means, I should get a new backpack and stop making things harder for myself.

Making Things Harder

Speaking of making things harder for myself, I took Mateo’s training wheels off too early. When he came to live with us, he came with a bike that was clearly too small for him, a bike that still had training wheels on it. He loved riding that bike. I couldn’t wait to teach him how to ride without training wheels. I had Dan remove the training wheels, and for weeks the bike just sat on our porch. In the midst of all the other things we were trying to teach Mateo, learning to ride took a backseat. I should have just let him have the training wheels for a little longer because that bike brought him joy. I think I just feared that like those parents on the top of the hill, I would forget when it was time to take the training wheels off.  

When Anna was two and a half, I desperately tried to potty train her over the summer. Everyone said it was so much easier to do this in good weather, and I had the summer off because of teaching, but Anna refused. I begged and pleaded and bribed, but she continued to just pee in her short pants if she didn’t have a diaper on. I finally gave up. I figured if she was going to be a ten-year-old in diapers, so be it. Three months later, on a fall weekend, she learned in three days, when she was good and ready.

Fall

Speaking of fall, it is so close, I can taste it. The cusp of fall is a time of feasting in my garden. The sunflowers are the generous hosts who have brought everyone together, the squirrel, who climbs up the tomato trellis to chew off an entire spent flower. The warbler family who takes turns diving down to the sunflowers, eating upside down while another family member keeps watch from a safe distance. The neighborhood cats who rest beneath the sunflowers, sleeping the day away and occasionally chasing the birds and squirrels, hopefully just to remind them who is boss. So far, there have been no bird or squirrel causalities to my knowledge.

September is the month where my dahlias start to put on a show. Recently, I noticed dahlias displayed at The Grain Shed, which is a local Spokane establishment that makes me feel flahoolick. The Grain Shed is “a brewery & bakery bringing neighbors together to break bread, drink beer, and rebuild what we’ve lost.” I go there weekly to pick up our farm share, and this week when I visit, I notice the dahlias. Earlier I mentioned my Spidey sense. It is tingling again as I immediately know that someone has cultivated these beauties in their home garden, and there’s a story behind them. It’s a slow afternoon at The Grain Shed, so I ask the guy behind the counter about the flowers. He lights up when I ask. “They are from Phil, one of our patrons. He comes in every day. He drinks his coffee and eats his crumb cake and reads his weird right-wing newspaper and he brings us dahlias.”

In ways I can’t fully explain, I am so moved by the story of Phil and his dahlias. Phil and the barista might have different politics, but they can break bread together and agree on the beauty of the dahlias. Dena and I might have different taste in music and different opinions on the use of profanity, but we can agree on the beauty of the dahlias. I bet those parents on the hill and Robert’s mom both love dahlias too, just not as much as they love their children.

So, these tiny pockets turned into my longest post yet. If you all are still with me, I would love to hear from you. What resonates with you today? What’s blooming in your garden? What are your thoughts on well, anything, I guess? I would love to continue this conversation in the comments.