THAT SHELF in the Refrigerator - March 10, 2011

by Monica Hutchens Tipton

You know that shelf in the refrigerator that you spilled something on quite some time ago, and you told yourself you’d really clean later on? I just cleaned that shelf. It wasn’t a particularly unpleasant experience in and of itself. However, I found myself making a couple of rather startling discoveries.

First of all the “tempered glass” (that descriptor is printed in several locations) shelf is NOT attached to the plastic frame by the manufacturer. After I held it under hot tap water for a very few seconds, the plate of glass easily slipped away from the frame and nearly bisected itself when it hit the bottom of the sink. While I was deeply relieved that the glass did not break, I was equally dismayed to find that the adhesive was not provided by the factory. This made it much more challenging to find a solution that would effectively dissolve what was left of the golden brown substance that trimmed the edge of the framework. The gunk came off the glass easily with just soap and water; however, the plastic was another story. After scrubbing diligently and purposefully for a minute or more, using increasing amounts of dish soap as well as ever more intense levels of pressure on the sponge, the slightly sticky substance persisted.

My “go to” answer for most housecleaning problems is chlorine bleach. I keep a spray bottle of a 50-50 solution close at hand for just such emergencies. I sprayed the shelving generously, knowing in my heart of hearts that even if it didn’t come clean, it would be by God sanitized. It was sanitized, and the goo dissolved, as well as a small stripe of black dye from the front of my favorite sweatshirt. I suppose that is a small price to pay for toxic waste removal.

Another disturbing factor that became a blessing was the large amount of baking soda that had been dumped from a container on an upper shelf onto the floor of the refrigerator compartment. At first I was concerned as to how to vacuum the interior of the refrigerator without creating cascading damages from one appliance to the next. Once I applied a wet sponge to the small hill of white powder, I found that it quickly became its own scouring compound, and proceeded to scrub the entire area. The baking soda, combined with the remaining traces of bleach on the sponge, made for a sparkling clean fridge completely accidentally.

My friend Kelly would blanch at my generous use of so toxic a substance as chlorine bleach, but she would lose consciousness had she seen the condition of the refrigerator prior to bleaching. This is another reason I am glad I live alone. However, I’m expecting guests this weekend, including a new suitor. While my aunt and uncle would not have noticed or certainly wouldn’t have commented on the unsanitary and unsightly condition of the place where my food is stored, it is altogether too early to show my housekeeping hand to this new man.

My final discovery had to do with a puzzle that only had four pieces. Once the bottom of the fridge, the frame, the glass shelf, and the crisper drawer had been cleaned, it was time to reassemble the entire section. This should have been easy. It was not. Because of the position of my refrigerator in my tiny kitchen, the refrigerator door only opens to 90°. This means that removing the two crisper drawers traditionally has involved taking the shelves off of the refrigerator door. This time however, in my zeal to complete my unpleasant task, I had managed to twist what I thought at the time was a three-part component and cause the entire structure to collapse onto the floor of the refrigerator. Now faced with four pieces, insufficient space, and a powerful desire to end this entire project as quickly as possible, I was faced with two options. One, disassemble the shelving on the doors as was traditional; or two, force the pieces into place. (This by the way, did not consciously enter my mind as a decision until this very moment). Those who know me well know that I immediately opted for number two.

I have a corollary to this lesson: that which falls apart does not fall together. However, with a minor amount of adjustment, the drawer, the frame, the glass, and the small plastic divider thingy that holds the entire operation in its upright and locked position went together again. I stood back, marveling at what bleach hath wrought. I don’t even have to worry about what to do with the desiccated beets, papery lettuce leaf, or sprouted root potatoes: the first two go to the chickens and the last get tossed into the yard where they will no doubt first become toys for the dog, then supper for me. I repeat: it really is a good thing I live alone.

Having so successfully addressed this particular issue, rest assured that I will share any other household cleaning tips as they are discovered with those who are interested, and for those who read my Facebook page regularly, even those who are not.

Flowering Plum March 1, 2008

The tree outside my window has been talking about spring for about a week.

Today

It began to call out to the other green beings,

Opening hundreds of tiny white mouths facing in all directions,

Singing a gentle chorus to a warm March sky.

Untitled March 1, 2008

“Read these words to me so I can think.”

She held the page before her like a tray of precious stones.

“Read, so I can find the hidden things

And figure out the answers, solve the puzzle so I’ll know.”

The eager inquisition of her eyes,

Those windows to the soul, the shining lanterns of the mind.

I read, sharing that treasure sound by sound,

And word by word, to craft for her a crown she’ll never lose.

Gentle Season

Autumn surrounds us with a shawl of fog, fringed on the edges, plush and still.

Cold creeps in where the warm winds of Indian summer just danced.

Dog and cat, yesterday chasing leaves, lie motionless, curled against the chill.

I, too, am turning inward, soul quiet, mind calm, the mountain and the bay enhanced

By the autumn, by the fog, by the winter that lies to the north and west, waiting, waiting, waiting for December to call.

My Own Series

Tonight I was engaged in my usual Saturday night occupation, lying on the sofa watching PBS. I was enjoying the last minutes of American Masters, the subject of which was Garrison Keillor, when I realized that, although I was not wearing red shoes, I was being enveloped in a Lake Woebegon monologue on my own couch. There is a need for a bit of back story here. I am dog sitting for my daughter. She and her boyfriend have a JackRat terrier and a shaggy mini-dachshund who are both very well behaved. So is the boy friend, I might add, giving you some indication of just who is doing the training. While this evening it seemed that there was the need to fly out the front door barking with untempered ferocity at least seven times, there wasn't really anything unusual going on, other than the addition of the two dogs. One dog and one cat plus two dogs does not equal three dogs and one cat. It is a geometric increase that is hard to describe unless you are fully involved in the resulting product. Nonetheless, things had at last quieted down.

It began rather simply: Nick WhiteCat took his accustomed 10:37PM place on the end of the lounge section of the couch. Nick's ascent to the sofa apparently upset the animal aura, and order, in the room. I became vaguely aware of the thump-thump-thumping of the tail of a small dog against the leg of the coffee table. Fearing the worst, I looked down to see the shiny black button doll eyes of Ziggy Flash, the dachshund, staring expectantly from me, to the other end of the sofa, and back to me again. My response was a clear and decisive, "No!" immediately following which the other small dog, Holly Berry, jumped up to take the spot Ziggy was coveting. "No. Off!" No response except the continued thumping of a feathery mahogany tail against a thrift store table. "Holly, off!" Her undershot jaw created a smile. "I said, 'OFF!'"

The thumping stopped and somehow the 8" tall dog managed a sideways and upward leap of 18" in the blink of an eye. Holly curled up against me, Ziggy found his place against the far arm of the sofa, and suddenly the cushions wobbled precipitously as Diego planted all 72 pounds of his jealous self between me and the cat.

"No! Get down!" It was as though my ordinarily excellent oral communication skills were suddenly replaced by unintelligible squeals and grunts that, when interpreted by canines, became something like, "I wish you would join me up here on this already small apartment-sized sofa. I really love it when I'm surrounded by a shedding long haired cat, a dog with weapons-grade halitosis, a dog whose desire to romance the red sofa pillow is seemingly insatiable, and a dog who regularly belches like a fifth grade boy."

I was shocked at how quickly I had become one of those middle-aged women on some bizarre TV series on TLC: supine in flannel pajamas, a wayward piece of popcorn in my cleavage, unable to find the remote, my glasses, or my cell phone. Memories whipped through my mind of having been college educated, having raised wonderful children, having sophisticated and intelligent friends, owning several cocktail dresses, but it all seemed so distant now that I was trapped on a cheap microfiber sectional in my own home. I tried to move, but I was stopped in my tracks by a huge discharge of static electricity triggered by my poly-cotton-spandex granny jammies, the breathing pelts, and all those yards of microfiber. Usually when I yell at animals they DO something, at least look at me, but it had become very clear that I was no longer in control of the situation. Even the sofa was in on it.

A buzzing reminder timer went off on my cell somewhere nearby. The cat looked startled , letting me know that I had located one of the missing devices. Using this momentary distraction, I reached over Diego, grabbed the phone from underneath Nick, and moved one dog off my leg. The swift movement created the few seconds that I needed to regain my composure, break the horrifying image of myself that had rapidly developed in my mind's eye, and roll free of what had become quite literally a dog pile.

Working my way to a sitting position on the outermost edge of the sofa, I grabbed the remote from under the letter from the sanitation department announcing the rate increase for flushing, and I shut off the TV. All animal heads became attentive, focused on the now-blackened wall-mounted rectangle. EVERYONE KNOWS WHAT THAT MEANS. IT MEANS IT'S BED TIME. It means time to get off the sofa. It means time to wait at the bottom of the stairs until I set the alarm: beep-beeeeeeeeeep. It means saying, "Goodnight, boys," and hearing the cat yowl his feline blessings. It means following me up the stairs, circling four times beside the bed, and then harumphing down onto the floor. Holly went to her dog bed. Ziggy was supposed to be in his bed downstairs, but instead raced ahead of me up the stairs and was looking at me with a guilty stare, like some Beanie Baby come to life and feeling rather badly about it. It was time for me to complete my part of the ritual, to climb into the double bed, to take my proper place after the television is shut off for the night, but I could not.

It is possible that I am in my proper place, sitting at the computer writing some nonsense yet again. Stories sometimes need to be spilled out when they are fresh, then rearranged and remixed to create the image that exists so vividly in my mind, wherever that is. And now we will all be in our proper places. Now that the words are on cyber paper, I can sleep. And when I am asleep, Diego will make his way back downstairs and onto the sofa where the little doggies will probably join him. He thinks I don't know, but Nick told me. OH, DAMMIT. See? There I go again: I'm only a few more cat conversations away from my own series on TLC.

Many Memorial Days - May 30, 2011

Mónica Hutchens Tipton Every Thanksgiving for several years, my parents hosted enlisted Marines from Camp Pendleton for a day of food and family fun. The hope was to relieve the loneliness that may be overwhelming on a holiday that nearly everyone in the United States celebrated. For some of these boys, it was the last family meal they ever shared. I was a young, thoughtful, and immature teenager when this tradition began in our household. I remember the first year hoping that perhaps I’d meet some cute guy who’d hold my photo in his shirt pocket and return home a hero. What I found was that these were boys just two or three years older than me from far-off places like Nebraska, South Carolina, and Louisiana who had been forced into service on behalf of a country that I couldn’t even find mentioned in any of my social studies books. Most of these kids shared the bravado that six grueling weeks of basic training created in them. The first days were spent stripping the boys of their individual identities: same shaved head, same uniform, same underwear, same words spoken at the same time. Every aspect of their lives was focused on changing their perspective from “me” to “us,” and the process had a 99.9% success rate. The next weeks were spent on rigorous physical training as well as precision use of weaponry. Those boys from the hills and plains had no problem with that part. The guys from poverty-stricken neighborhoods in the inner cities reveled in the power and struggled with the discipline. After a remarkably short period of time, however, these recruits emerged as competent components of a war machine. Some of these guys stand out in my memory. One PFC from Arkansas began teaching us kids one of the semi-obscene marching chants that he had learned in basic. My dad quickly put a stop to that once he heard the chorus from the living room. Another young man hardly spoke, and it was hard to tell if he was enjoying his meal. He answered my parents’ queries, “More turkey?” “Yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am,” but otherwise spent the day on the sofa silently watching football on television. I thought that he was terribly shy, or perhaps slightly retarded, or maybe just very h homesick. Years later, as my adult self replayed that memory through the clarifying lens of an experienced high school teacher, I realized that what he was enduring was the numbing awareness of what was to come after that Thanksgiving dinner in the home of strangers. All of these young men went from Camp Pendleton to various stations in Vietnam to fight in once pristine jungles and on breath-taking beaches against an enemy that was difficult to identify and even more difficult to understand. While every red-blooded American child born since 1945 was well aware of the Threat of Communism to Our Democratic Way of Life, we really were only taught about the meaning of “threat” and very, very little about anything else. For me, that Threat became mixed up with the nighttime sounds of the training those boys were receiving over on the base. Concussions of the heavy artillery a few miles away rattled windows and my tender sensibilities. The thumping of Sea Stallion helicopters in formation like some terrifying flock of raptors seemed to take forever to fade into the distance. There was the constant presence of warships when we looked over the ocean, and the few days when those sounds and sights vanished signified the deployment of yet another thousand young men across that ocean, off to confront the Threat. I remember so very clearly the last of these Thanksgiving feasts. One of the guests that year was a dark-haired young man with black-rimmed glasses. I don’t remember his name or any other details about him, nor do I remember any of the other recruits from that meal or the preceding one. By that time I was a junior in high school and had for the last two years sat through anxious nights with friends waiting for birth dates to be pulled in the draft lottery. I had shared their agonizing decisions to enlist in a “less risky” branch of the service like the Navy or the Air Force, to wait to be drafted into the Army or Marine Corps, to quietly slip away to Canada or Europe, to register as a conscientious objector, to hope to God that the grade point average in college was high enough to qualify for a deferment. My own boyfriend’s birthday, December 4th, had come up fourth, a guarantee of a draft notice in the next few months. To refuse to serve was to embarrass one’s family and to be labeled a Communist; to earn a student deferment was a blessing or maybe a cop out; to be drafted was suicide. Later I learned that rich kids had other options, but ours was a working class town with an economy based at the time on the nearby military installation and on providing meals and lodging to those passing through on their way to Los Angeles or San Diego. The boys around our table had none of those draft avoidance options either. That particular dark-haired draftee with the glasses spent most of the day talking to my mother, a passionate patriot who wouldn’t let us watch “I Love Lucy” in the 1950’s because Ms. Ball had been brought before the House Un-American Activities Committee for questioning. Dark-haired Boy hung around the kitchen, not the television in the living room, so I paid little attention. I was my polite, plain, thoughtful self, making the expected small talk, relieved at the antics of my little brother and sister that took away the tension I felt in the presence of what I had come to dread as future ghosts. I could not understand why my parents didn’t see this. I did not understand how significant their generosity was. Mom corresponded regularly with the dark-haired young man for the next several months. I don’t remember if she told us the content of his letters and doubt that she ever shared her responses. What I do remember is the letter that arrived after an unusually long period of silence from the far side of the Pacific. “My son often wrote about how much he enjoyed having Thanksgiving with you and your family,” it read. “Thank you for giving him a taste of home before he shipped out.” Dark-Haired Boy had been killed in a firefight at a location they called Hill 937, better known later as Hamburger Hill. We were stunned. My thinly veiled anti-war sentiments burst forth, and I rebelled vociferously against the cause of what had been my great fear: someone I knew personally died over there for no good reason that I could determine. There would be others later whom I knew, blessedly few, but it didn’t matter if I knew them by their faces or their names. I knew them because they were of my generation of kids who had been raised in the dream of a perfect and painless world and had been duped. We didn’t host any more Marines after that. My mother tumbled into depression that lasted for years., I left home as soon as I could legally do so, and thereafter I met many young men who had returned alive but broken. I loved a 23 year old who had been a jungle survival trainer. He slept with a knife, and everyone had to speak clearly when approaching him from behind. I listened to the stories of a dear, dear woman who as a young Army nurse, dropped into battlefields by helicopter to triage the wounded and take away those who were most likely to survive. I worked in the theater with a couple of guys who didn’t say a word about their time in Southeast Asia, but were incredibly gifted comic actors. Years later I knew a man who described his week in “The Cage” kicking his heroin habit before he shipped home from Vietnam. Most of his unit had to do the same, he said, so his alcoholism was insignificant. Many of those sixtyish men now live under the bridges, along the highways, in the marshes, and in the concrete forests that resemble the places where they served their tours of duty, and that they later came to consider as their rightful homes. Their refusal to follow anyone’s rules is understandable in the context of the way they spent their late teens and early twenties. Today is Memorial Day according to the law and according to the calendar and according to all the flags flying and speeches being made and editorials being printed. Perhaps I am not alone, however, in feeling that there are many memorial days, official and unofficial, throughout the year. The one that hits me the hardest, that brings the most tears, that reopens the old wounds, and that reaffirms my commitment to a world without wars is Thanksgiving. To all who, like Dark-Haired Boy, never came home: I love you. To all who returned wounded physically, emotionally, spiritually: I love you. May the remainder of your lives be as painless as possible by whatever means necessary. To all who continue to send kids into battle for unknowable reasons and unwinnable causes in untenable circumstances for unethical gain: go to hell.

Big Life, Part 1 - May 30, 2011

Mónica Hutchens Tipton I’ve apparently had what a colleague described ten years ago as a “big life.” It’s not something you expect to hear when you are not quite fifty years old. I suppose that means my life is even bigger now and that it has every prospect of becoming absolutely enormous by about 2050. This seems ironic in light of the observation by so many hundreds of wise people that a single human life is completely insignificant when viewed from the cosmic perspective. The inverse of this, however, might be that individuals can have cosmic significance in a single life. For some time now, I have felt compelled to write about some of those people who expanded my universe and made my life as large as it is today. My life is spherical, and I have now enjoyed it long enough to know that no single point in it is unrelated to the others. I like that. It feels solid without having weight, somehow, so that every new addition doesn’t add to the mass, only to the volume, rather like a gas. One of my scientist friends will no doubt gently correct me later if I am mistaken in that simile. However, I treasure my big, spherical life as it continues bobbing through the cosmos. I started to write that whatever part of my body or spirit that holds this big life of mine effortlessly expands to contain it, but that’s not true. Some of the growth process has been incredibly painful, and there have been several times when I nearly let go of my big life because I thought that was preferable to continuing to try to hold on to it. I wrote some interesting poetry during those times, but I held on. The first contributor of cosmic significance who springs to mind is my 10th grade English teacher. He taught me to write. Granted, I had been storytelling since I learned to read when I was four, but he taught me how to manipulate those precious words, how to wring every priceless syllable out of my dictionary and thesaurus, and how to create for my readers the passion, the pictures, the poetry, and the pathos that I was feeling. Thanks, Mr. Isaacs. You gave me my voice. Each of my daughters taught me to be patient in two very different ways. One of them needed me to wait silently for the desired result, while the other showed me how to repeat and repeat and repeat for years to reach the objective. They also taught me to receive love from a distance. Where the elder was reluctant to share her affection for fear of alienating the other parent, the younger struggled to comprehend the complexity of the communication system that would finally allowed us to understand our reciprocal feelings. I also learned that to be sisters didn’t necessarily mean to have shared the same womb, but most definitively meant to share the same heart. We keep some secrets that no one else knows. Their lives are also big. My husband Jeff taught me to not fear death. This does not mean that I embrace death, and he clearly fought it to his last breath, but I do not let the inevitability of death disrupt my life. Before Jeff, I was a fearful person. My list of boogey men was pages long and included such things as bridges, elevators, car crashes, strangers, my parents arguing in the night, guns, the dentist, the sound of jets screaming overhead, losing my glasses, Sputnik, losing my mind, flying, bankruptcy, and the annihilation of the world by atomic bombs at the hands of the Soviets. While Jeff was dying of brain cancer, I found out that death wasn’t something to be dreaded, just an event to be postponed until it was itself the preferred option. Jeff and I love each other dearly to this day; it’s just that he is gone now. That’s death. It is part of a big life. I have learned so much from the students in my classrooms. I found out from one that Down Syndrome doesn’t preclude you from memorizing and performing a monologue on stage. One girl with cerebral palsy taught me that you could be a great stand-up while seated. I found out from another that living in a car with your mom and siblings doesn’t mean you won’t be successful in school and won’t grow up to be a wonderful mother yourself. I discovered that the cocky, pain-in-the-ass kid who saved all but two bites of his Jumbo Jack for his little sisters could grow up to be a military officer with a masters degree as well as a devoted dad to his own little girls. I also learned from several young students that mental health treatment and basic health care are criminally inadequate in our prosperous nation. And I learned that repeatedly submitting reports to Child Protective Services does not always save that child’s life. Sometimes beautiful young people die from drug overdoses and AIDS after having shown up on my doorstep, in spite of the best efforts of a platoon of professionals. Far more often, however, students thrive and grow and mature and become your Facebook friends. Some of them even learned something from me. My parents, of course, began my education on this planet, and I thank them for reading to me daily until I had mastered that magic. They were very young and always tried to do the right thing, but they made mistakes that were apparent even to my childish eyes. I ultimately learned that grown ups make errors, and that knowledge made my own errors more forgivable. My grandfather taught me to play “Malagueña” on the guitar, to read all books on religion and philosophy with an open mind, and to ask not only “What would Jesus do?” but “What would Buddha, Moses, Mohammed, Creator, or Krishna do?” My nana taught me to make tamales and to love every single one of your children even if they infuriated you or if you didn’t understand anything about them, and to always leave the door open for reconciliation and a cup of fresh coffee. My aunt Marty taught me to follow my heart, and my sister taught me to persevere and to laugh until it you pee your pants just a little. My brother taught me that a simple life could be the most joyful life. It doesn’t take much stuff to make me happy these days. My family, for the most part, makes me happy. Friends have added a huge part of my big life. I shared divorce wars, love affairs, broken dreams, two-day hangovers, tragedies, life-changing decisions, fulfilled wishes, and embarrassing episodes of idiocy with them. Many of them still love me, and I still love many of them. To say otherwise would be lying because some disappointed me or got distracted or just chose to walk away after sharing some time and space on this planet, and vice versa. I divorced a couple of those friends, literally, as I had confused friendship with love. A handful of friends have been with me for nearly fifty years, off and on, and other friends have only recently entered my sphere. Neighbors have become dear friends, and some friends have become closer to me than my birth family. A big life, I think, includes lots of friends, not all of whom are currently active, but are most certainly people who have added to girth of life. There are unknown millions of others with lives that are far larger than mine, and I want to get to know some of them. I wish I could have had a few hours with Joseph Campbell, for example, and a few with Theodore Sizer. I’d have liked to gain some material from knowing Aristophanes, Helen Keller, Jeanette Rankin, Samuel Clemmons, and Dorothy Parker personally, as well as Wendy Wasserstein and Thomas Jefferson. Thank goodness they wrote about their own big lives or wrote about the small lives of others and/or that others wrote about them. I feel that I do know Isabel Allende, Eckhart Tolle, Mark Morford, and Tina Fey because I read what they write. Writing makes a big life portable, able to travel easily even through time, and enables one to effortlessly absorb the colossal lives of others into one’s own. THAT’S big. Thanks again, Mr. Isaacs.