Happy Mother's Day!

It's Mother's Day, as if motherhood were a state of being that occurred but once a year. Still, Hallmark aside, it serves as a lovely reminder of the three occasions I was able to play God and bring my children into the world.

Each of their birthdays is a special Mother's Day for me. If I had never accomplished anything else in my life, I would feel that I succeeded magnificently because of them. My children have grown up and become the people they were meant to be. It happened much too fast, but watching the whole process has been miraculous.

My memories of them at all the ages they have been so far give me great joy and sometimes, laughter. It's been the ride of a lifetime, and continues to fill me with wonder. I raised my own best friends, and I am truly blessed.

Wow!!

This is a channel-bridge over the River Elbe and joins the former East and West Germany as part of a unification project. It is located in the city of Magdeburg, near Berlin.

It took six years to complete at a cost of 500 million euros, and is 918 meters long.

The photo was taken on the day of inauguration.

Playing Well With Others

It was an uneventful day. I did not win a Pulitzer Prize. I did not win a Nobel Prize, or even a Booby Prize. I was not chosen (again) for Miss America. It's getting old, this not being chosen. That ain't no way to treat a lady.

There is a thong on the floor of the lobby in my building. It has been there all day. Somebody was in a hurry. It is brown. A brown thong.

I didn't know that Sheryl Crow lived here.

If I got to choose my neighbors, some of them would not make the cut. Princess Leia would be plying her wares elsewhere, and a young man whom I usually refer to as "Dickboy" would be gone, too.

He has the charming habit of leaving his garbage outside the door of his apartment, sometimes for days at a time. I have concluded that he is waiting for the Garbage Fairy to come and take it away, perhaps leaving a few quarters under his doormat.

I parked in the driveway for less than a minute while I unloaded some heavy bags, leaving my motor running. Dickboy drove up in his giant SUV and leaned on his horn, even though he could see what I was doing and assume that I did not plan to leave my car there all night, blocking admittance to his obscenely large vehicle. Although somebody should.

I have lived here longer than he has, so if anyone has a right to be a territorial asshole, it would be me.

He rarely bothers to click the garage door shut, which upsets me because we keep our mountain bikes out there, attached to a pillar with a flimsy chain. Our helmets were already stolen once, so we now keep their replacements in the apartment.

He slammed into the garage after me, removing a section of the door frame he missed last time with his fender and strewing large splinters everywhere. Once I had gathered up the rest of my parcels, he had already entered the building.

A huge trash bag was blooming right in front of the door. The drawstring was not fully closed, so I peered inside at soda cans, beer bottles, empty potato chip bags, cigarette butts and other garbage which had clearly come from his car. (So comforting that he drinks beer while driving.)

Dickboy was too lazy to carry it upstairs and throw it down the garbage shute into the dumpster. I extracted a postcard with his name on it.

After hauling the heavy, leaking bag up four flights of stairs and placing it against his door, I propped the postcard on top so he would know that the Garbage Fairy didn't just make a wild guess as to whose trash it was.

I am not his frickin' mother. I already raised my children. They turned out fine. I do not care to raise him, too. I don't even like him.

I'm sure he was raised by rabid weasels. It's nearly Mother's Day. I hope he takes his mother some fresh roadkill on Sunday.

Today, I got an e-mail called a PajamaGram. "Mom Deserves To Be Pampered This Mother's Day," it proclaimed in big bold letters.

It advertised All Women's Pajamas Delivered With Free

*Keepsake hatbox
*Lavender sachet
*Do not disturb sign
*Gift card

Who thinks of this stuff anyway? Will they bring back housedresses next?

Apparently, lavender and old lace are alive and well. Does anybody under the age of 70 even know what a sachet is? And who uses hatboxes? I have never owned a hatbox in my life, but if I did, I would keep cat litter or crayons in it.

Women who use sachet and hatboxes most certainly have no use for "Do not disturb" signs.

A billboard offering some kind of freebies might be more useful. Maybe Tuesday Twofers. Or hummers.

Tomorrow may be the day I win a Pulitzer, Nobel or beauty crown. But in the meantime, I got to live another day, and it was good.

Betty & Veronica Fist-Fight Long Distance

I've been pondering friendship today.

I have an old friend, in fact she is the friend I've known longest, and for that reason I cut her more slack than I might someone newer to my life. Our mothers knew each other, and our daughters are friends. In fact, we know each other because our parents met when her family moved to our town, and my mother volunteered me to introduce her to other kids. It felt like a blind date, something I always avoided, but we hit it off well enough. That was a long time ago. We haven't been 18 in years.

She means well. At least I think she does, but she treats me like a moron. No matter what I do, she criticizes me and demands that I do it her way. For my own good. Of course I ignore her. I have always had a problem with authority figures as I dislike being told what to do. I certainly don't make friends with them. Friendship by definition is a relationship between equals.

She has sometimes been there for me when I needed a friend, but the cost is high. She is bossy and abrasive, and seems to consider herself my self-appointed life coach, while I do not believe that I need one. If I did, I would not choose her for the job. After all, I have survived many hardships and I am still here. I have not lost my compassion for others or my sense of humor. My capacity for joy is alive and well. I have become stronger because I had to, and I like myself better now than I ever have. So why does she persist in treating me as if I'm stupid? She is a Special Ed teacher, but this behavior predates her teaching career by many years.

Strangely, perhaps, we have never had much in common. We have vastly different value systems. She has only been involved with wealthy men because they provided well, regardless of how they got that way. We do not want the same things out of life. I have never liked any of her other friends. Our own relationship survives mainly because of longevity. She does not care for animals. She is the kind of mother who eats her young. And her plants die.

This morning on the phone, she started again. Her voice took on a familiar hard edge as she reminded me that it was stupid for Flip and me to live in San Francisco for reasons I can barely remember. Let's just call them blah, blah, blah, and blah. I told her very calmly that she treats me as if I'm stupid, and I am not. (I saw Flip's head spin around like Linda Blair's, smiling. He has wanted me to address this for years.) She denied that she thinks I'm stupid, but continued to push her superior plan for my life as if it justified her behavior.

I said that she couldn't possibly respect me since she thinks I make poor decisions. I pointed out that I have done quite well in handling most of the crises I've been dealt, and demeaning me does not match my definition of friendship. I know that nothing will change, but I feel better for standing up to her. And I've bought myself a week or two of tranquility while she sulks. I just read a post on Another Tangential Thinker in which CS responds to five interview questions. Here is what she says about friendship in Question 5.

I would like all my friends to be more like her.

How Not To Murder Your Wife

The owner of a manicure shop next to the launderette I patronize was murdered a week ago Sunday. Mai Banh was found dead in her workplace, where she spent 10 hours a day, six days a week, so she could give her children a better life. Her two sons, ages 4 and 8, were placed in the custody of Child Protective Services after her estranged husband admitted to bludgeoning her to death. He had reported her missing, although they no longer shared a home, and was also the one who "found" her body. Jeff Nguyen led police to her shop at 10 p.m. on April 15th, telling them he had found her dead on the floor. The victim's uncle had also arrived and was sobbing uncontrollably while her husband acted as if nothing had happened. Suspicions aroused, the police recovered his wife's wallet and jewelry from his garage. His vehicle also yielded evidence of his involvement in the crime. He is being held on one count of murder.

I hope their children have relatives who will raise them and love them so they don't have to be farmed out to strangers as they have now lost both their parents. It's impossible to understand why someone would murder his spouse, the mother of his children. The end of a marriage should not mean the end of life for one of the partners. Nobody has the right to determine when another's life ends. How hard a concept is that to master?

Years ago, I managed a domestic violence shelter in North Carolina. It was my job to counsel the clients as well as to keep the building running. The hours were long, and I often had a police escort home after midnight because of death threats. Some men were displeased that I stood between them and their human punching bags.

The officer would follow me home and check out my house for intruders before allowing me to enter. Since I lived on a remote dirt road in the country, it would have been easy to attack me after he left, but we went through the charade anyway. It made him feel safer.

To work in the domestic violence field is to have your heart broken every day. One of my clients was a woman whose two daughters, ages 11 and 13, had watched their father string her up above a wood stove and beat the bottoms of her feet with a hose, then burn her breasts with a blow torch. He raped her with a bottle while they screamed for their mother. The rope broke and she fell onto the stove, where he left her. A relative brought her to me. Most of our counseling sessions concerned her intense feelings of guilt because it was her fault he'd been arrested. His whole family was mad at her.

I tried to make her understand that she didn't deserve to be abused, and she finally agreed to be relocated to another state with her children. A month later, she left the shelter I had sent her to, bailed her husband out, dropped all charges, and returned to domestic bliss with him. He murdered her that night.

Another client I still remember was cute, blond and pudgy, a young Natalie Maines look-alike. She arrived at the shelter on Christmas Eve with three small daughters, a diaper bag, and a large plastic shopping bag filled with wrapped presents. She asked if I had any band-aids because "Stretch marks bleed if you get hit on them."

My eyes filled with tears, and I looked down at the toddler in my lap. "Cindy, I have to ask if you have any drugs or weapons with you," I said. She shifted the baby slightly and dug into her shopping bag. She extracted a package wrapped in bright green paper with Santa Claus hugging Rudolph all over it, carefully removed the paper and handed me a .38 Special. "It was the only way I could get it out of the house," she giggled. "It's my husband's. I was afraid he'd shoot me if I didn't take it."

When I took her and the children to their room, she proudly showed me a tattoo on her butt of Garfield raising a beer stein. It said "BOTTOMS UP" in large letters under the picture. Later that night, I called the police because her husband climbed onto the roof while his mother and two brothers stood in the street hurling rocks at our windows.

Another client asked me if I had ever been beaten by a man. I told her that I hadn't. She regarded me with pity, her big, dark eyes filled with sadness. "But you're so sweet and beautiful," she said. "I can't believe that no man has ever loved you enough to beat you."

Stealth Miss(ile)

When I am bereft of flowers, I go on the prowl.

A few days ago, I saw pink jasmine growing near the Palace of Fine Arts, so under cover of darkness, I headed out tonight. I walked up and down streets near the Bay, unable to remember where I had seen them as I hadn't thought to make note of it. I didn't know I would need to. I have scruples. I never steal flowers that grow on stems, nor do I take my clippers as that would be lacking in spontaneity, even crass. Premeditated. I do not ever take them from private property, although public areas are fair game. Purchased flowers are always welcome, but sometimes I just crave the home-grown variety.

On one corner, an official-looking sign was attached to the street marker: "Suspicious activity will be reported to the police." Those Neighborhood Watch types never give up. Some garages had heat-sensors that set off spotlights when someone walks by. Those houses didn't even have flowers to steal. What were they protecting? A few dogs barked from inside. I barked back at them. They barked louder. So did I. I am a very good barker. I always have the last word.

Flip refuses to accompany me on these excursions. He does not have a clandestine bone in his body, and considers me a criminal because I do. The wind was whipping and it started to rain. I don't know why Chicago is called the Windy City, probably because whoever claimed that title had never been here.

I grabbed a bough twig of pink jasmine from the grounds of an elementary school and headed home, hair plastered to my head.

It had been awhile, but the body remembers. Like riding a bicycle. I know I should hate myself, but I really, really need flowers around me. I need them in a vase by my bed so I will have sweet dreams. it can't be a bad thing as I have never heard of a 12-Step program for flower thieves.

Still, it seems that I have not reformed, as I imagined. I just didn't need to pilfer flowers while I had a backyard full of them. Now that I don't, I'm back in operation. Old habits die hard.

A Rose By Any Other Name

Flip has found a widget that offers Homer quotes.

"Ohh," I thought. "The Iliad and The Odyssey. How interesting!"

He read me one.

"Homer no function beer without well."

Ahh, the Simpson's Homer.

Well, that's different.

Never mind.