Cicada Time

Bob was sitting on the picnic table the other morning, smiling and pleased with himself. He’d been out dancing in the moonlight, even though it was unusually chilly over night. I was sitting on the bench, patting him. He seemed entirely happy, kneading air with his paws and showing me his spotted belly, playing at being a Domesticated Animal.

The first cicadas are starting in our area, the genetic misfits who awaken on the far edge of their particular Bell Curve. They don’t sing much and flame out early. When one fell from a nearby maple, buzzing like a clockwork toy unwinding, Bob leapt from the table with a bound which would have done a cougar credit and made short work of it.

(It’s humbling, the way he can tune me out. Snap! Gone on cat business!)

I suppose he ate the poor confused thing, like he does everything else. Cicadas, with heads that are pure fat, are one of Mother Nature’s most sought-after crunchy snacks. Birds adore them. I’ve even seen squirrels eat them, these winged, green-armored Doritos of the insect world. I would think the wings and feet would make for an over-ridingly icky mouth feel, but not coming from an insect-eating culture, I’m not the one to judge.

I love cicadas. When I was small, some imaginative family member told me that their wings--see-through, gossamer, etched in green--were fairy wings. I guess what I really love is their deafening song, which can be as loud as 120 decibels up close. They are one of the few noisy things in which I take pleasure. It’s Nature, after all, like waves crashing on shore. The males on my trees start; the neighbor’s cicadas shout out an answer. With the trees arching green overhead, it’s my favorite sort of chorale.

The Great Sammu

“Pica” is defined as a “depraved or perverted appetite … for unnatural food, as chalk, clay, etc. common in chlorosis or pregnancy…”

My mother used the word in a way which stripped it mostly of those dire connotations, simply to describe cravings, like the classic chalk or pickle cravings of the old time malnourished pregnancy. I’ve often thought of the word when describing some of the odd foods my many felines have enjoyed over the years.

One of the oddest cravings I’ve ever seen in a cat were those of Sam, a.k.a. The Great Sammu, a large apple-headed Siamese who adopted us when we lived in Hendersonville, Tennessee. (The name “Sam” slowly morphed into “Sammu” because he was fat and sleek, like Nammu, the Whale). Sam had been living next door with his boy and his boy’s family. They had fallen on hard times, and had moved in temporarily with an aunt and uncle. A dog already lived there, and although this dog was a mellow character, Sammu’s nose was out of joint. He began to show up on our doorstep, rub on our legs and converse with us in his most elegant Siamese. He was a gorgeous seal point, with dark blue eyes, very intelligent, and skilled at getting his way. Finally, he spent so much time mooching at our house that his boy simply gave him to us.

Sammu lived happily with our family for about four years, until something happened to him, about 2 years after our move to PA. We never found out what. One day, while I was deathly ill with bronchitis, he just didn’t come home. Although I hobbled around the neighborhood coughing, searching alleys and garages, I never found his body. My dearest hope is that someone catnapped him; he was beautiful and personable.

At any rate, we learned from the boy next door that Sammu’s family had found him behind a Mexican restaurant in Arizona, where he was scrounging the dumpster for his supper. This must have been where he came by his pica, which was for “Mexican.” In the ‘80’s, making Nachos out of corn chips covered in bean and burger chili, layered with cheese, salsa, guacamole and sour cream was the latest thing. I soon learned I could never produce one of these meals without fixing a little plate for Sam. It was quite amazing to watch him eat, because he’d just start at the top and work his way straight through to the corn chips at the bottom. Cats aren’t really equipped for handling this kind of food, but he would sit there and chew away at the corn chips until he’d got most of them down. He seemed just as fond of the beans and guacamole as he was of the more predictable sour cream and hamburger. After he finished, he sat there, sides bulging, cleaning his face and long whiskers with one elegant, dark chocolate paw. We always wondered whether we should offer him a little dish of cerveza to go with it.

Vertigo & The Battle of Saratoga

The Schuylerville Monument commemorates the surrender of General Johnny Burgoyne to General Horatio Gates at Saratoga, a battle which was a turning point in the American Revolution. The British, who’d hoped to split the colonies in two with this invasion, started from Canada. The British gentlemen who took part were promised the lands of the American planters, Dutch descendants like Major General Philip Schuyler, who owned most of the upper Hudson and Northern New York. Gentlemanly Johnny Burgoyne set out with German noblemen and mercenaries in tow, anticipating a cake walk through ineffective Colonials, but what they got instead was a summer of guerilla warfare launched by Vermonters and the New York back country boys who’d been mobilized by Schuyler to destroy existing roads, fell trees, burn bridges, destroy crops, snipe, and generally mess up what seemed like a simple plan. The battle was fought near my family’s home place. They’d built a homestead in 1745 with Mohawk for neighbors, out in what was then the back of beyond.

Mother believed in pilgrimages to the old home place. She’d spent many summers on the farm with her grandparents, running barefoot, in periodic terror of an enormous rooster who patrolled the path to the outhouse. I went to a lot of battlefields and graveyards during my formative years, but one of the places I learned to dread was the Schuylerville Monument.

There are 184 cast iron steps inside this old stone tower leading to the top. Here, hardy souls are rewared with a commanding view of the beautiful upper Hudson countryside. Three bronzes figures decorate the crown: Horatio Gates, who politicked his way into commanding the Continental army for the actual battle, Philip Schuyler, who successfully prepared the ground for success and Daniel Morgan, whose riflemen played a large role in the victory. The fourth niche, for Benedict Arnold, who fought heroically at Saratoga and was seriously wounded, is empty.
The cast iron steps are why I still experience anxiety when I think of this place. Lovely, 19th Century, ornate--and to my vertiginous brain--filled with holes, holes through which I could see the descending spiral below me, through which I could see the bottom. I remember walking, then crawling on my hands and knees. Mother’s brown legs raced ahead. I sweated. I trembled. I sat down and laced my fingers through the holes. Despite the calls of “Come on! Hurry! Don’t be silly! Don’t be such a ’fraidy cat!” I began to back down, clinging to each stair. I can still see the flowery pattern, how worn and thin and frail the ironwork seemed. I imagined them bending, giving way, and then saw myself falling. I remember resting my forehead for a time against the cold metal, getting up the courage to keep backing down.

I was perversely pleased when I looked the monument up on the internet, and it said: “DO NOT attempt if you are acrophobic.” I guess I’m not the only one who has chickened out while attempting to get to the top of this venerable Victorian tower!

Serial Bob

We have a bulkhead next to a small extension at the back of our house. Between bulkhead and laundry is about a foot and half of pavement. This has become the place where our local serial killer lays out his victims. I tend to let cats in and out at this back door, where I’m sort of tucked inside, facing the patio and a fence. This is often the first view of my yard I have in the morning, but I’ve learned not to look around the door at the area between the bulkhead and the house until well after I’ve had my coffee.

Our ex-stray cat has decided that this is the place to leave displays of his night’s work. Right now, fortunately, he’s apparently on hiatus, but earlier this spring when everything was young, tender, and frisking with joy, he was busy. The “work” that always impresses us most is the squirrels, full grown ones that he lugs in for us to admire. He used to eat them whole back when he was on the lam, but now just the head seems to be satisfactory. What’s the zombie joke? “Brainssssss!”

Anyway, he caught four squirrels this spring, great big plush grown-ups who should have known better. I don’t feel too sorry about them, because we’ve got a ton of squirrels who are up to no good with my bulbs and gardens. I do mourn the bunnies and chipmunks he catches, but what purely I hate, what I yell about, are the song birds.

Worst and most heinous of all his crimes, he ate my adorable jazz-master catbird in his fine, gray Wall Street suit. He crunched house finches around the bird feeder like potato chips, so that I gave up putting seeds into it. He brought me a darling Carolina Wren in his mouth, held so carefully that when I coaxed it away from him, the wren took flight straight from my hand. I hope very much that his/her rattling little bold scolding self survived the ordeal. This cat of mine could give Sylvester a bad name!
Web Site: Juliet Waldron

A Birthday Memory

My oldest was born in the summer of ’65. We were living in a basement apartment in Allston, outside Boston. I had hand-me-down pregnancy clothes from Aunt Judy, the 50’s kind, with floppy tops and belly cut outs. My mother-in-law helped too, whipping up shifts on her Singer. Those were the days! I didn’t go to a doctor until 6 months in, and what we could afford was the Boston Lying-in clinic. I rode there on the bus every few weeks, answered questions that were part of a long-term survey, and saw a group of young doctors and nurses—a different set every of time.

It was the hottest spring in 90 years, super oppressive for this country girl. It was also the spring of the Boston Strangler, and a pregnant 19 year old in the basement apartment alone in a strange city felt pretty anxious sometimes. My husband worked at a bank running an IBM 1401 mini-computer, one of those new gizmos that were being bought by businesses everywhere. We were both hoping to return to college in the fall, but didn’t actually have a clue about how.

For the day I went into labor, we put aside taxi fare. I packed a bag. However, as the due date approached my hands, feet, legs and face swelled, and my B.P. soared. The clinic staff said this was “toxemia,” which I looked up in my bible, Dr. Guttmacher’s "Pregnancy & Childbirth." Two days later, I collected my suitcase, caught the bus and rode to the hospital. The whole thing seemed, after all those movies with hysteria, hot water and ripping petticoats, an anti-climax.

They never gave me the drug, though, as I obligingly went into labor after the embarrassing prep that was de rigeur for OB in those days. Husbands were not welcome, either, so mine stayed at work. Natural Childbirth – I might have been poor and young, but I was not uneducated – “Only works for European women, who are so much stronger than American women.” (I’m quoting the supervising Obstetrician I’d asked.) Because this was my first, the staff pretty much ignored me until a nurse noticed the top of my son’s head. Hospital rules required anesthesia, in this case a saddle block, but it was given so late it didn’t take until well after he was born.

Baby arrived to thrill a room full of neophyte students. He was seriously pissed off about the rude ejection. Quickly, though, he stopped crying, and began to gaze around wide-eyed with a “Where the HELL Am I NOW?!” look on his face.

A stout, gray nurse approached with a needle, but I had the La Leche League handbook memorized.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Just to dry up your milk, Honey.”

“No thank-you. I’m going to nurse my baby.”

“You’ll be sorry!” Her lips set in a grim line. She checked the chart, too, even argued a little with the resident, before she went away.

Later, I talked to my husband on a phone at the nurses’ station. Visiting hours were over. He would be allowed to see us tomorrow afternoon.

The family survived all this long ago hospital rigamarole. My son grew up, got married, and had a lovely daughter of his own who is now in college.

This all happened a very long time ago, but when his birthday rolls around every year, I still think about it. I guess that's a Mom Thing.

Summer, 1949

Looking over the backseat of a ‘36 Chevy is an early memory I have about cars. I stood, holding onto the back seat and peering over it, across my parents’ shoulders. We were probably on our way to my Grandpa’s house in our small Ohio town, the place where all the family I had still lived. The actual year is cloudy; perhaps it was 1949, just post war. The car had probably been grandpa’s. It was the sort of hand-me-down + all-in-the-family cash-deal that people did a lot of in those days. So many young men were back from the War, and jobs -- and cars -- were hard to get.

“Hold on,” Mother always said. Maybe she’d repeat the story about the inattentive kid who got his teeth bashed out when the car he was riding in stopped suddenly. This reminded me to pay attention to what was going on as we traveled. In 1949, that was good mothering, sufficient unto the day.

We probably never drove faster than 25 mph to get to Grandpa’s because we went through town. With a small thriving college there, the streets were always busy with an odd mix of farmers and students from big Eastern cities.

I remember a tall stick shift protruding from the floor, and the strength it seemed to need to move it. My Mother could manage shifting as well as Daddy, though, a thing which gave her potency in my eyes, even though she was a small woman. She put a cushion in the driver's seat for height, and she drove like a champ. I remember her small, broad saddle-shoed feet stomping on brake or clutch while she shifted with great dispatch and authority.

Even as young as I was, I knew it was bad form to grind the gears, although I heard a lot of others do it. Not my parents! As the car had been Grandpa’s it was probably in perfect shape. My Father, who painted houses and studied to be an engineer, was every bit as good at taking care of things.

It was summer, so I think we might have been going to a picnic at Grandpa and Grandma’s house. They had a big white four-square along wide Xenia Avenue, which still had trolley tracks running down the middle. Behind the house was a spacious red brick patio that Grandpa had laid himself. It was flat and smooth and surrounded the largest, shapeliest sugar maple in town.

It was a lovely shady spot, always cool and filled with birdsong. Sometimes my Aunt Jeanie and her husband, Richard DeWine, would be there with Cousin Michael, who was younger than me, but fun to hang out with anyway. If it was a special occasion, Richard’s parents, George and Alice, might be there, or maybe our Aunt Judy would have come home from Ohio State. Mike and I both liked our lively, attentive Aunt Judy.

A table with a checkered oil cloth waited for whatever was about to be served, a lot, if I’m remembering correctly, of fried chicken with either biscuits or homemade bread. I'm sure there were pickles, coleslaw, potato salad and baked beans, but like most kids, I didn't eat that stuff. For dessert, there was certainly homemade cake or fresh fruit pie. If there wasn’t, the grand finale might have been Grandpa’s ice cream, which was so sublime that even kids knew it didn’t have to be chocolate.

Another Nirvana-like childhood dining experience came the day Grandpa and George DeWine served us morels. These I’ve never had since, but I’ve never forgotten them, either, the Holy Grail of Mushrooms, fresh, fragrant, and lovingly fried in sweet butter.

"Nowadays”

This term was defined by Dr. Eric Berne in the 60’s in his popular psychology book “Games People Play.” I heard “nowadays…” from my elders all the time. I’d nod, 20 year old wise- acre, and note the complaining and fault finding that always followed such a preamble. “Nowadays…” was categorized by Dr. Berne as a fairly harmless pastime of old folks—if not too vitriolic. Otherwise, it was a “game,” inviting others on the same wave-length to agree and add their own stories of what used to be a far superior way of life. Whether “pastime” or the higher ante “game,” “nowadays” was labeled as an inauthentic way to relate to others.

Well, I’m now in my 60+’s, and despite Dr. Berne, “nowadays…” pops out of my mouth with some frequency. For instance, last week, I was at my local feed store, and a young gal who works there was talking about her new baby. All winter we shoppers had been chatting with her about the coming blessed event. Now baby had arrived, and here she was, hardly missing a beat, and back to work. It wasn’t easy, though. This was her second child, and, of course, two are always a heck of a lot more work than one. Unfortunately, the new baby had “colic.”

Well, as I listened to her anxious recitation to another shopper, it wasn’t colic, it was allergies. Baby was allergic to his formula—to soy formula, to corn oil formula, and apparently to all the other expensive substitutes that Nabisco and all the other pharmaceutical/agri-businesses have devised. She complained that her milk had dried up, but I could tell by the way she said this that her own milk hadn’t been given much encouragement. The first baby, she explained, had taken to canned cow straightaway like a champ.

The young mother is now near panic; I can hear it in her endless rambling. Her six week old baby is at home with Nana, screaming and puking. She’s an emotional wreck and not getting much sleep. But where is she? Behind that counter, at work--at least, sort of. Here's “nowadays” for you. Young marrieds think they have to have it all right now—the big house in the ‘burbs, the SUV for Mommy, a diesel truck for Daddy, the newest washer/dryer, fancy kitchen, freezer, flat screen TV’s, Cable + movie packages, riding mowers, gas grills, etc., etc. They are only doing what TV taught them to do—owe their souls to the Company Store.

I felt terribly sad as I listened. Like most women of my age, I wanted to say something helpful, to give some useful advice that would soothe her, maybe, even, bring relief to the suffering baby. (Imagine starting life in constant pain. In no future I can imagine will a kid with this kind of awful start be a “happy camper.”) It’s not just the raging consumer madness that drives the young couple, but the inability of the mother to simply do as Nature intended--without shame, without pressure, without having to get to work on time, without her husband or her relatives being embarrassed by an “animalistic” display--and give the child of her body the comfort and nourishment of her breast. This, after all, is the perfect “formula” for that particular small new individual’s tender stomach.

I'm glad my husband and I were too dumb to do anything except what came naturally. We were 19, married, and living pretty much hand to mouth. I was a part-time student and a very part time waitress, but I was lucky enough to be home in our 2 rooms/1 bath apartment--mostly. Milk that came from me was a heck of a lot cheaper than formula, so that was what my babies got. I washed clothes at the laundromat and hung them out in all weather to dry. Our prize possession was a VW bug, but if my husband needed the car for work or school, I walked to wherever I needed to go, pushing a stroller. A new book or a record was a big treat.

Yes, we had some occasional help from our folks, but then we didn't even have a credit card until some years later. Sometimes we had to scrounge in the couch cushions for coins to go to the laundry or gas up the car or buy oatmeal, but we got by. We longed to have "stuff," sure, but we knew that acquiring all these things, for plain middle class folks like us, would take time.

Don't take this wrong. A woman must have education and/or job skills with which to support herself. Otherwise, she ends up a victim. I don't know--and I wish I did--what the answer is for that distressed young mother, but I am sure that it's not the best of all possible worlds when a paycheck is more important than taking care of the baby.