I have decided to channel my inner Mary Roach today.
Side Note: If you do not know who Mary Roach is, shame on you! She is the author of one of my favorite non-fiction books, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. Unfortunately I have been less enchanted by her books that followed: 1) Spook: Science Tackles The After Life (slightly less interesting than the book Stiff, but still a good read). 2) Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex (a book on sex that I was so bored with that I couldn't even finish - now that is a truly sad statement!) 3) Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void (More interesting than the book Bonk, slightly less interesting than the book Spook. Hopefully Mary is on a literary upswing again. I still read everything she writes.)
When I say I am going to channel my inner Mary Roach, it means that I am going to add in some snarky footnotes to this blog post. One of my favorite parts of her book Stiff was the hysterical footnotes. I'm not a big footnote reader, but if you read the book Stiff without reading the footnotes you are missing out big time.*
My friend DEG (a.k.a. Mr. Hot-lantan)'s father ("Mr. E") was in a golf cart vs. SUV accident last week. Unfortunately, Mr. E was the golf cart. The SUV sent the street legal golf cart (and my friend's father) tumbling end on end. Mr. E was "ejected" from the golf cart. No seat belts, no air bags, no passive restraint system, no crash protection, no helmets. If a golf cart is street legal, shouldn't it have some level of safety equipment or requirements? A rollerblader with helmet and pads has more safety gear than the crew of elderly roadsters whizzing along in their street legal golf carts. (Please Senior Mafia, do not email bomb me for that last statement. I live in Florida where old people outnumber me 8 billion to one.**)
Now if Mr. E hadn't decided to take his golf cart out that day and if an SUV hadn't decided (consciously or subconsciously) to try to knock out a senior citizen***; then DEG would not have had reason to race down to Florida last weekend. If DEG was not in Florida, I would not have had the opportunity to do dinner in the retirement city (Republican stronghold enclave) "The Villages."
It was during this dinner in "The Villages" (which bills itself as "Florida's friendliest retirement hometown/city"****) that DEG told me that the 1940 U.S. Census results are now available to the general public. DEG has been looking up members of his family in the Census results. He told me in an almost romantic tone that reading about his family was like opening a window into the past. DEG had this very thoughtful look on his face as he recounted that for one moment in time, you know exactly what your extended family (most who are now long dead) was doing on the day of the Census. You know who responded to the Census taker and what they said. You know who was living at the house at the time. Plus this was pre-political correctness, so some of the census questions from the early 1900's include such questions like whether you can read and write. And other questions that they wouldn't dare ask today.
Sitting across from DEG at the retirement city's version of a Japanese steakhouse, I just nodded as he talked about looking up his family in the Census. Yeah, yeah, that's interesting; but what do you think about this chicken teriyaki? Little did I know that DEG had slyly implanted a time bomb in my brain.
So if Mr. E hadn't been in a golf cart vs. SUV accident, DEG would never have seen me to plant a time bomb in my brain and I may have spent the past three days writing blog posts for LilyOnTheLam ... but here's THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT ... DEG's time bomb exploded and I have spent the past three days on Ancestry.com tracing my family tree back to the 1700's!*****
A few days after my dinner with DEG, I discovered that my cousin and her family had moved into my Grandmother's former house. My Grandmother's house was built in the late 1890's. My Grandmother - the 13th of 14th children - was born in the small 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom brick home. My father, uncle and aunt were raised in that home. My Grandmother babysat my cousins (who lived locally) in that home. And every now and again, the youngest, most beautiful and most snarky grandchild(* x 6) would also come from a 3 1/2 hour drive and visit.
Generations of family playing hopscotch down the long sidewalk. Hundreds of thousands of loads of laundry hung from the clothesline in the back yard. When my father was young, there was a candy store 2 doors down from my Grandmother's home. When I was young (* x 7), there were no candy stores but instead there were four bars in walking distance. My cousins and I would buy those windshield wiper fluid looking freezer pops from the local bar. We suck on them with a fury that left our faces, lips and tongues bright neon blue. Then we would spin on the nearby playground's whirly spinning thing (* x 8) until we felt nauseated. Ahhh... good times.
Thinking back upon my childhood and my cousin's recent move in to our Grandmother's house, made me stop and marvel at how our family has an almost 125 year old house. Our family members have been the sole occupants for generations.
I remember watching the changing spectrum of the neighborhood as my grandparents grew older. Their block used to be filled with old ladies who would pay me a dime to bring them back the church bulletin on Sundays. The old ladies would remark that they were too old to handle the stairs at the church. (Even though the church had long before put in ramps and elevators.) They said that since they were physically incapable of attending the Service, to please bring them back this week's Church bulletin. I remember thinking I'd gladly pay a dime to not go to the long Sunday Catholic masses. I wanted to say "Just because you read the church bulletin, Old Lady- doesn't put you right with Jesus!" Instead I said "Thanks for the dime." Or "What is this? A nickel? The old lady down the street gives me a dime! Yeah, that's right - look in your coin purse again, sister!"
My family's church is still one of the most beautiful churches I have ever seen and now at the ripe old age of ... ahem 24 years of age (* x 9) ... I have seen many of the world's most beautiful churches. My heart still belongs to the first church I have ever known. The one I was baptized in, as the two generations before me were as well. I wonder what the going rate for church bulletins are today.
As I entered my early teens, the numbers of little old ladies who would pay me a dime for a church bulletin diminished. My Grandmother's neighborhood block began to fill with young, low income families. I remember my cousins and I would stand guard over my Grandmother's phone while she took her daily nap. This nap would occur after both an intense viewing of the soap opera "The Young and The Restless." and after the episode, would come a much less joyous making and serving of lunch for a grumpy husband and three not so appreciative grandchildren. Lunch would be "goulash" which in my Grandmother's definition was elbow macaroni, ground beef and canned tomato sauce. Dusted with that Parmesan cheese that comes in the green can. Or if my Grandmother didn't feel like cooking - thick slices of summer sausage and Velveeta on white bread.
Our family had discovered that the "early 20 something" year old (but already a mother of three screaming children) woman who lived next door had been sneaking into the house while my Grandmother was napping to make long distance phone calls from our Grandparents' telephone located in the kitchen. The woman's phone had been shut off due to non-payment. Unfortunately, my Grandparents had not realized what was going on until they received their telephone bill.
Breaking into my Grandparents home while my Grandmother napped wasn't a particularly difficult feat as I never recall my Grandparents' door ever being locked or even shut. The door was always open with just the screen door closed. The lock on the screen door wasn't engaged either. In fact, I can't even recall if they actually had a front door since there was always someone home! My Grandmother did not know how to drive and would rarely leave the house. When my cousins and I heard about what had been happening, we were so outraged at THE CRIME, with a ferocious intensity that only young teenagers can have.
My Grandparents never used the house's front door that was located in the front of the house and opened to the living room. They instead used the side door that opened into the kitchen for the main thoroughfare of entrance and exit. On the boring summer afternoons when my Grandmother would go for her like clockwork daily nap, my cousins and I would hide in the kitchen. We would position ourselves so that someone approaching the kitchen screen door would not see us. We'd cover our mouths to keep ourselves from talking or giggling as we would wait in silence. Eventually like a rat to the trap, the young 20-something neighbor would dart out of her house. We would watch her very gently climb up the front steps, carefully avoiding the creaky step. My cousins and I would exchange pissy, outraged glances - how did the neighbor know about the creaky step? This is one mastermind of a criminal!
At the precise moment that the ultra-sneaky neighbor would start to reach for the screen door, we'd jump out and start talking loudly. The neighbor would run back to her house like she was on fire! No more free long distance calls on our watch! We were our own vigilante task force! Only once the neighbor was safely behind the closed door in her home, would we let our laughter and praise of each other's crime blocking skills erupt. In our early teenage notion of the world, this was justice. This was our family's ancestral home and we would fight to defend it! As long as "fight" meant hiding in a kitchen and then scaring off some dumb neighbor woman.
It was in my Grandmother's house that I was reared on a diet of soap operas - both on television and in the "real world." Which may or may not be the origin of why my life seems to revolve around DRAMA. (Odds are on "may" versus "may not" on that particular statement!) In addition to the daily viewing of "The Young and The Restless" (my Grandmother's favorite "story"), my cousins and I had a real world soap opera to watch as well.
In the mornings, my two female cousins and I would sit in the kitchen and watch through the screen door as our real world soap opera would unfold. It always began the same way - the young 20-something neighbor's industrious 20-something husband would kiss his wife "goodbye" on the way to his long hours job. Their three children, usually clothed only in dirty diapers and snot-covered faces, would scream incoherently. The husband would look at the wife with a guilty face as if to say "I know your job is much harder than the 60 hour weeks I have been putting in at the factory." The wife would then give a look of exhausted martyred diligence, as if to say "Yes, my job raising YOUR three children is much, much, much harder than your job that brings home a paycheck. But I am a better person than you and this is what I must do because I am the world's best mother, wife and human being." Then the husband would leave for work.
This scene went on every single morning. What the young, hard-working husband did not know is that every day after he left for work, about twenty minutes later his "loving wife" would gleefully welcome with a squeal and a large hug - her boyfriend. In a split second, she'd go from looking like a harried, beleaguered mother to this "jumping up and down with glee and delight" teenybopper. She would look 10 years younger just with one look at her adulterous lover. It was like she jumped into a time machine - before she had three children and a husband. For a short time, she could forget about her husband and kids and just be a crazy young girl "in love." Or perhaps it was in lust, because the wife always looked very disheveled at the end of the visits.
Every now and again, our adulterous barely out of her teens neighbor would catch us watching as she would joyously embrace her lover. She'd shoot us a look of death before dragging him inside the house. While we had no problem playing barking pit bulls to keep the neighbor woman from our Grandmother's phone; it was an unspoken agreement between my cousins and I to keep the adulterous neighbor's rotten secret. We knew in the core of our being that if we spilled the beans, we'd probably end up stabbed and thrown in a ditch to die a slow, sad death. My young brain reasoned that any woman who had no qualms about entering a sleeping elderly woman's home to scam free long distance was obviously also capable of murder.
However the "unspoken agreement" not to squeal, did not extend to childhood boasting. As my cousins and I would watch the adulterous neighbor woman and her incredibly doofus looking boyfriend skip into our house; our commentary (worthy of any Jerry Springer audience member) would begin. We made snarky comments about how the loser boyfriend did not have a job and that's why he was able to come over during the day. We would stir up each other's outrage that the poor husband was working so hard thinking his wife was working equally hard. And then came the tirade about the woman's parenting skills. The judgments were flying fast and furious!
While the neighbor and her lover were inside the house, the dirty diapered kids were left to fend for themselves in the yard. My memory is fuzzy but I think the kids were 2, 3 and 4 years of age - all naked except for diapers. I had done enough babysitting to know that at least one, if not two of the children were way beyond the diaper stage.
My cousins and I would announce that this situation was so terrible that we were absolutely going to tell the young, industrious husband about his terrible wife's adultery and child neglect! But even as we would triumphantly proclaim our plans to end this injustice, we knew our words were hollow. We knew we would never tell the husband. We had watched enough of "The Young and The Restless" with our Grandmother to know about the age old tradition of "shooting the messenger." Besides, who would believe three young teenagers out on summer vacation? It was like our own version of Hitchcock's "Rear Window."
The three toddlers, with diapers so strained to maximum capacity that they threatened to fall off, would eventually stop screaming. They seemed to know that once their mother's lover came over, there would be no attention paid to them. My cousins and I would keep an eye on the kids in the yard from our kitchen vantage point. We did not want to be unpaid babysitters or be complicit in the neighbor's adultery, but we also didn't want to see one of the kids escape and get run over in the road like a stray dog.
Usually by mid-afternoon, while my Grandmother was napping; the adulterous neighbor's lover would sneak out. The neighbor woman would stand in the doorway, clothes crumpled and hair in 800 directions, looking so incredibly forlorn. It was like her life force was being sucked away with each step the lover took away from her. The three kids were still in the yard, now even dirtier. Those toddlers seemed to have accepted that they'd always be in diapers overloaded with feces. I recall thinking it was sad that at such a young age these kids had already apparently made peace with the knowledge that they could not rely on anyone.
After standing mutely in the doorway for at least 5-10 minutes watching the vacant space of air where her lover had once been, the neighbor would turn back from giddy teenybopper to frustrated, depressed, harried mother. The transformation was amazing. She'd slowly gather her dirty children from the yard, ignoring their chortling. She acted as if she was on a death march.
Before dinnertime, the neighbor's husband would arrive home from work looking incredibly weary. The wife would bring out the kids - freshly bathed, clean diapers and bright smiles. The husband would embrace the children and kiss his wife. Then usually the wife would ask where dinner was. The husband would look sheepish and mumble how he thought his stay at home wife would have made dinner. The wife would then counter than she had worked all day slaving over the children. My cousins and I would give each other an eye roll at the notion of this woman slaving over anything. The husband would then launch into how they could not afford to keep buying take out. The wife would then stomp her feet and pout. We were mesmerized that the husband would visibly be distressed when his wife would pout. It was clear that the husband was hopelessly in love with his wife. My cousins and I believed undeservedly so, unfortunately. Inevitably after much arguing, the pizza man would arrive and calm would be achieved.
This was the soap opera of life in my Grandmother's neighborhood. We would watch this entire exchange happen on a daily basis. Every day the husband would go to work and every day the lover would arrive shortly thereafter. My cousins and I would fantasize about what would happen if one day the husband came home early from work. We'd stare at the children in the yard and try to figure out if they looked like their mother's husband. We'd talk in hush tones that definitely the middle child didn't look like the husband at all. We were compartmentalizing a sad situation by only evaluating it for entertainment purposes.
Every now and again, my Grandmother - drinking instant coffee, chain-smoking cigarettes and listening to the radio for the daily cash call - would tell us to stop watching the neighbor. My Grandmother knew what was going on next door, but she declared it was none of our business how other people lived their lives. But in small town, southern Minnesota for bored summer vacation barely teenagers; this was the most interesting thing going on. Which we recognized was truly sad.
As an adult, in retrospect, I may want to spend some time to discuss how this young neighbor was probably so overwhelmed with her life that adultery was her only temporary distraction from a nervous breakdown. But honestly, I still think the whole scene is as disgusting now as I did when I was a young teenager. Some morals do not blur with age and experience.
My childhood was definitely not modeled after a 1960's television show, but it was all I knew. My Grandmother was a crusty, mean, old, chain-smoking fiend who cursed like a sailor and I loved her so very much. I remember once telling her as a very young child that I was glad my Grandmother was not one of those sweet stereotypical Grandmas on TV. I told my Grandmother that she was mean, spunky and feisty and that's why I loved her. My Grandmother just chuckled. As the only child of the favorite son who died young as well as being the youngest grandchild, I didn't spend much time censoring my words when I was at Grandma's house.
Every now and again, my Grandmother would try to quit her chain-smoking ways. She had a large cookie jar of starlight peppermints strategically placed behind her kitchen chair for whenever the nicotine cravings started. I'd sneak a peppermint from time to time and secretly wish that my Grandmother would use Reese's peanut butter cups to stop her smoking addiction instead. Peppermints were just not as fulfilling as a melty chocolatey and peanut buttery morsel. Long after my Grandmother had passed away, I'd smile whenever I would see a starlight peppermint.
Perhaps maybe ten years ago, I was spending time with my once favorite Aunt. When I was a child, my Aunt P. was like my fairy godmother. She would rescue me from a boring, impoverished existence and for one day I'd be showered with gifts and anything I wanted. For a child who had to continually go without, my time with my Aunt was magic.
Unfortunately when you live your life solely focused on making other people happy and do not safeguard to make sure you are your top priority, you tend to get ... well, let's just say it - bitter. My happy-go-lucky, don't worry about me- it's all about YOU- Aunt had given away so much of herself and made everyone else her top priority that what was left after so many decades of this behavior was an angry, bitter shell. Here's the cautionary tale, ladies and gentlemen - be selfish when it comes to making sure your needs are met first, because if you're not happy with your life how can you help anyone else?
I was visiting with my now bitter, bitter, bitter Aunt, when I saw some starlight peppermints at the restaurant where we were having lunch. I recounted with joy how whenever I see peppermints I think of my Grandmother and her attempts to try and stop smoking. My Aunt - unfortunately in full bitter mode by this time - snorted at me with ridicule and disgust. "She wasn't sucking on peppermints to try and stop smoking! Her dentures never fit right, so she had to suck on peppermints to keep from constantly gagging on her dentures! That's why she was sucking on them all the time! Geez!"
It's funny how a couple short sentences can completely deflate one's soul. With a derisive snort, my Aunt had blasted through one of my favorite memories of my Grandmother. I felt like we were skeet shooting - I sent out a clay pigeon of my warm, fuzzy memory and my Aunt joyfully grabbed her verbal shotgun and annihilated it. I seriously would pay a hypnotist to erase this memory from my head. The "gagging on dentures" information is just too much for my little brain to bear. (* x 10)
Because of exchanges like the one with my Aunt, I try to focus on the good childhood memories of life with my Grandparents. The discussion with DEG on the census, started to get my wheels spinning. I realized I didn't know the names of my Grandmother's parents who had first built my Grandmother's home. I went on Ancestry.com and started poking around, not sure of what I'd find.
Well, I figure that in the past 3 1/2 days, I have spent at least 18 hours on Ancestry.com tracing my family tree. I was unaware just how much information there is out there. Each nugget of info, led to more and more and more. The first night I sat at my desk from 7 p.m. until 3 a.m., busily researching and building the family tree. Time flew! For a nerd like me, it was intoxicating. I didn't know the names of my great grandparents when I started and now I can trace my family tree back to the 1700's!! Other members of my long, long, long extended family have uploaded pictures of distant relatives to Ancestry.com as well. Words cannot describe the feeling while looking at pictures from the 1800's and knowing that no matter how diluted the blood, there is a shared lineage. I suddenly felt very connected with the world, when I usually am embracing being a loner.
I sent DEG a text cursing him for mentioning the 1940's Census to me. I now truly understood what he meant when he said it was like going back in time and seeing a portion of my ancestral family's life. There is so much I have learned about my family that I didn't know just a few days ago. If you are wondering why the Lily On The Lam blog posts have been light (or nonexistent lately), you can blame DEG. Or better yet, blame Mr. E and his golf cart vs. SUV accident. I think the opportunity to blame a hospitalized senior citizen with cracks in every rib and a bruised lung is always a smart move. (* x 11)
It may be that I am a tremendous nerd (* x 12), but I have really enjoyed tracing my family history back in time. I wish I could go further back than the mid 1700's, but that would probably require a trip to the Ukraine, Poland, Russia and Germany to look for paper records. (By the way, did I mention I am popular in the Ukraine?) [* x 13] I doubt I will ever be that curious into my lineage to start knocking on doors in Poland, but I am amazed that sitting in my home office I was able to track down and organize 250 years of historical records (all during a 14 day free trial of Ancestry.com too!) without ever leaving my chair. The internet is an amazing tool. (* x 14)
If you are a closet nerd like me (* x 15), I would recommend you check out some of the many genealogy tools available out there on the internet. It is amazing what records you can find out there. Channel your inner detective and check it out!
Thank you for excusing my foray into nerd-dom and I promise I'll try to write more frequent blog posts in the future. As always, thank you for reading! (* x 16)
LilyOnTheLam's first footnotes:
* By the way, if you think my snarky footnotes will be better than Mary Roach's snarky footnotes in the book Stiff; you will be sadly disappointed.
** The "facts" in LilyOnTheLam.com are usually not accurate. Consider yourself warned.
*** OK I'm exaggerating here. The SUV probably wasn't intentionally trying to kill a senior citizen. Maybe.
**** Normally I would vehemently disagree with such a sweeping generalization statement, but I gotta say The Villages is pretty darn nice if you are into Stepford communities. I normally would not advocate a Stepford existence, but did I mention it was pretty darn nice?
***** So you can blame DEG's father, Mr. E, if you have been missing new Lily On The Lam blog posts. Not my fault at all. 100% Mr. E's fault.
* x 6 If you don't know who the youngest, most beautiful and most snarky grandchild is - well, I just can't help you.
* x 7 I'm still young!
* x 8 Yes, that is the technical term.
* x 9 I'm actually 23 years old. I just like to make myself sound older. And if you believe that, I have some gator-infested swampland to sell you for use as a children's playground.
* x 10 Yep and now I have introduced to the entire world that my Grandmother would gag on her dentures on a daily basis. Sorry Grandma! But if my Aunt has to burst my bubble, I am going to preemptively burst all your bubbles too! Yikes, maybe I am becoming my bitter Aunt. Definitely one of my "wake up in the middle of the night screaming" fears!
* x 11 But of course, I am cruel and selfish. Oh Lord, I am becoming my Aunt!
* x 12 Sad but true.
* x 13 I will NEVER stop saying I am popular in the Ukraine, so get used to it!
* x 14 It's not just for PORN!
* x 15 OK maybe I'm not a closet nerd, just a nerd - out in the open. I'm here, I'm a nerd, I'm proud, I don't know how to write effective rally chants ... get used to it!
* x 16 Lily On The Lam - guaranteed to make you NOT gag on your dentures!
(* x 17)
* x 17 Um, OK, when I say "guarantee" I don't really mean it.
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