NOTHING TO WEAR....

Nothing to wear but clothes

To keep one from going nude.

     -- Benjamin Franklin King

I give up.

          I’ve spent lots of time lately dashing about town, checking out different clothing stores, trying to find a good blouse I can wear to an upcoming graduation. (In this part of the country, everyone needs at least one outfit for cookouts, a second for funerals, a third for weddings, and a fourth for those events that are a couple of notches above the first, yet a peg below the last).

For years, I’ve been comfortable in my clothes; everything fit well, everything moved when I moved; everything moved with me.

But something has happened.

Now, clothes cling to me like food wrap. Everything is tight through the shoulders, the chest, the midriff, the hip; everything binds and outlines.  

Everything now has, I have learned, what we call “a more feminine fit.”

         

Spare me!

I thought I’d found it: A classic white pure cotton number that was beautiful to look at and could easily be dressed up and/or down for those “in between” events.

          A sales associate led me to the dressing room.

At first glance in the mirror, it looked wonderful.

But when I raised my arms and lowered them again, the front of the blouse stayed up, riding high between my breasts and my chin like the front of a westward-bound Conestoga wagon.

I came out of the cubicle and turned to the sales associate, who looked to be about twelve years old.

“Yikes,” I said, raising my arms again.  “This is too small!”

          “No, it’s not,” she contradicted, reaching out and pulling the blouse down for me. “See?”

          I raised my arms again, lowered them: Again, the blouse billowed high up over my breasts.

          “Too small,” I repeated.

          “It’s fine.” She reached forward, pulled it down for me again.

          “Why does it stick like that?” I asked.

          “Well,” she chirped, “it’s a more feminine fit. You want to show off your cute curves.”

          I looked at her, astonished. “Mywhat?” I asked.

          “Your cute curves,” she repeated, a little less brightly this time.

I tried one last time – arms up, arms down – and looked at myself in the mirror.

Three of us in a line, I thought, would look like a wagon train.

And I turned back to her.

“I’m sixty-six years old,” I snarled, “and I’m not interested in showing off my curves – cute or otherwise.”

         

She wisely backed out of the dressing room and disappeared.

A NEIGHBORHOOD AFFAIR...

My north neighbors and I are exhausted.

Between our houses is a stretch of picket fence followed by a convenient gap (for quick and easy visiting) and, after that, a buffer hedge consisting of ten-foot high hemlocks.

          They’re pretty thick, those hemlocks, and near the top of the tallest, Mr. & Mrs. Cardinal made a nest.

         

We followed the construction for some time.

There were preliminary runs with twigs and small sticks; the real work started after that – flight after flight of other building materials, including some short pieces of yellow yarn that I had draped over some bushes in my back yard and something that looked like old shredded newspaper. Both birds would alight on an outward branch, then disappear like magic into the thickness of the hedge!

So I went upstairs, opened my north gable window, and leaned out. From up there I can look down onto the hedge, and from that elevated viewpoint, I could see the vague, brown shape of the nest.

At any rate, they did a fine job, and the nest is tucked in beneath some hemlock overhang. When it rains, most of the water follows the lines of the overhanging branches, runs to either side of the nest and drips off the last of the new growth. Pretty clever.

We didn’t see much of the Mrs., but Mr. Cardinal spent all his time flying from my front yard fence to the side fence (where he perched on my neighbors’ blueberry sign), across to their garage roof, back over into my yard. He sometimes stopped to rest on my back porch railing before making the return trip.

He was on guard: called out constantly – a short, piercing call – that clearly declared his territorial rights to the hemlock hedge, and everybody stayed away, including the neighborhood cats.

The Mister was constantly in motion, doing what he could to protect his brood. By the end of the day, he must have been pretty tuckered out.

My neighbors and I did all we could to help: we used our side doors less, our front doors more; we limited our trips down the side walkways, sometimes opting for marching through the house and out the back door rather than disturbing those youngsters.

We even parked our cars on the street instead of in our driveways!

Like Mr. Cardinal, we were on full alert: watching carefully, listening to little cardinal peeps, keeping an eye out for interlopers – especially crows and strange cats. We warned both paperboys (who kept a respectful distance) and the mailman, who started asking for progress reports – it’s a neighborhood affair, this raising of children.

They fledged yesterday, and all is well.

THE FACE...

This beauty is Fanny Edna Applegate Howell.

She was born in Dayton, Ohio, on March 25, 1869, the second child of Selah and Nanny Applegate Howell. Her younger brother, William, was my grandfather.

Her father had left college (Antioch) to join the Union army; he drove an ambulance for the Sanitary Commssion during the Civil War and was in the thick of it during the Wilderness Campaign. After the war, he finished his Antioch degree (a history major), married Nanny Applegate (daughter of the manager of the Antioch farm) and started a family.

By 1880, the family had moved to Watertown; by 1900 they were in Roxbury, where Fanny’s father taught history at Boston Latin School.

         

Her father kept a small diary; on August 5, 1902, he wrote, “My darling daughter was married in Jamaica Plain at half past two in the afternoon to Prof. H.O. Hofman.” (Henrich Oscar Hofman was a professor of mining and assaying at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.)

She was a widow by 1924; she raised her two children as a single parent.

I remember Fanny Edna Applegate Howell Hofman, but I knew her as Fantine, a nickname given her by her father (who was a Victor Hugo devotee – think Les Miserables).

         

This snapshot was taken in 1952, when I was six years old. Fantine was older than rocks and dirt to me – and slightly scary due to her age – but always sweet. I remember that she smelled of lilacs and had a great smile and laugh.

         

Fantine died on August 5, 1958 in Boston, Massachusetts.

For other Sepia Saturday Faces, go to http://sepiasaturday.blogspot.com

KIDS ON A FENCE...

I interrupted my Domestic Drudgeries yesterday morning to search through a couple of old photograph albums and a box of loose pictures in an attempt to find something that I could legitimately use for this week’s Sepia Saturday prompt.

I found plenty of children – on tricycles, on scooters, on regular Schwinns (some of whom I did not know); a few kids in bathing suits; a crowd of them sitting at a picnic table with great hunks of watermelon...but no kids on fences or in parks, and certainly no kids upside down!

Well, I thought, there are some Saturdays when the Sepia Theme leaves me stranded – and this is one of ‘em.

No matter: I always enjoy looking at what others contribute (we Sepians are an amazing bunch, aren’t we?).

So I went back to my housework: finished cleaning up the kitchen and dining room from the previous night’s casual gathering of friends; bunched up the napkins and tossed them into the washing machine with some sheets.  When the Whirlpool cycled through its last spin, I filled the basket and went outside to hang the laundry; crossed the yard (white and purple violets all over!) to the line...

...and there it was, right before my eyes!

I didn’t catch it at first – I was too focused on children hanging every which way on a fence – but there was something that demanded my attention, and when I recognized the pattern of the clothespins on the laundry line, I just smiled.

Sometimes I get too closed in, too limited by my own perspective (am I the only Sepian who gets this way?), but then something like this happens and I’m filled with a sense of gratitude that I’m still capable of thinking outside that proverbial box. 

Serendipitous Sepia Saturday to you all!

Take a look at what others have found at http://sepiasaturday.blogspot.com

MOTHER'S DAY...

My parents were both dog lovers; they were both raised in dog families: terriers on my father’s side (all of whom were named “Tech,” by my grandfather in honor of his MIT experience and, of course, to avoid confusion) and cocker spaniels on my mother’s. My mother’s family showed far more creativity with names: the ones I can recall were Booboo, Tinker, Dusky and Cricket.

My father used to tell us that the main reason he married my mother was to get her dog – a black and white spaniel named Ferdinand. (My brother and I believed him – seemed like a perfectly logical reason for getting married to us!)

I remember walking with my mother from our house on Fletcher Street in Portland, Maine all the way down to the Dudley-Weed Drugstore on Pine Street for the Sunday paper. That was the early 1950s; I was about seven years old.

          And then there was the day Ferdy had to make The Last Trip to the vet’s office. My father, tears in his eyes, lured him into the back seat of the Chevrolet wagon with Oreos; Dad couldn’t even look at an Oreo after that, let alone eat one.

But we weren’t dogless for long; neither of my parents could live without them!  They soon got the first of their many springer spaniels; they named him Dudley (after that same drugstore in Portland). From that time forward, we had at least one – and up to three – dogs at a time, although my father used to complain that with three, he felt like a hotel doorman; all three dogs were always on the wrong side.

Abner, Matilda, Rufus, Martha...those springers padded and wagged their ways through our lives (they alternated sexes and colors: male/female; liver-and-white, black-and white but, alas, never a tri-color).  As my parents became older, though, the number of dogs in their household dwindled – it was just too much for them to manage – and soon they were left with just Jim.

“I can’t stand it,” my mother complained. “There just aren’t enough of them with only Just-Jim.”

And so, for one Mother’s Day many years ago, my father presented her with Beau, who graced their front porch, their gardens and their lawns – wherever they happened to move him – with his sweet face and gentle demeanor.

When my mother died, Beau came to live with me; today, this Mother’s Day of 2013, Beau sits beneath one of my lilacs.

In remembrance.

SEPIA SATURDAY: BLACK CAT....

I confess: I’m a reformed smoker.

“There’s nothing worse,” people say, “than a reformed smoker.”

I’m not so sure about that. I can think of a lot of things worse than a reformed smoker (a radical anything, for example) but it’s too soon for me to veer off point.

So, back to the beginning: I’m a reformed smoker. The Sepia Saturday photo intrigued me, for I’ve never in my life seen a vending machine that dispenses a lit cigarette – how did they do that, anyway?

I never smoked a Black Cat, but I sure do own one...

This is Howard – Howard Paine Gould, to be formal about it all. I always name my pets after my forebears; Howard is named after a great-uncle of mine, one who thoughtfully left me some money (I figure that anybody who leaves me money deserves the honor of having an animal named for him)! My great-uncle was a bachelor; this Howard is, too, although I suspect for entirely different reasons.

He’s a domestic longhair (maybe a bit of Coon) with absolutely enormous feet, impressive ear tufts and a magnificent ruff. He’s solid black – at night, when his eyes are shut, he’s nearly invisible.

He’s lived with me for nearly twelve years now, providing just enough interaction to provide companionship while maintaining (fiercely) his independence.

He has his own door (one of those nifty pet doors cut into my dining room wall – it opens out to the back porch) so comes and goes whenever he wishes; I secure that door only during blizzards – I don’t want him wandering around when the snowplows are active.

He used to bring wildlife back home through that door, but has calmed down a lot now that he’s older! He used to sort his prey: things that could fly went into the toilet bowl; things that crawled went into the bathtub (from where they could not escape, you see, thus providing hours of entertainment...). I tried everything to curb his enthusiasm: different harnesses and even a bell, but he learned to trap the bell underneath his chin to prevent the noise.

He has several daily chores: he rearranges all the bed pillows every day (I am not questioning motive here), keeps gray squirrels off the back porch, watches my neighbor’s rabbits, helps with the weeding in the flower gardens and warms the east end of the living room couch in the evenings.

And he’s there each and every morning, snoozing on his window seat, waiting for his breakfast.

So there’s my Black Cat, one that’s far better for me than the smoke-able  kind, don’t you think?

To see what other Sepians have to offer, visit http://sepiasaturday.blogspot.com

FIVE-DOLLAR FINDS

I admit it: I’m a flea market/antique store hound.

There’s something about prowling through a shop or wandering the aisles of a flea market that intrigues me. It’s the element of sweet surprise, I think; about the finding of something unexpected, something that absolutely speaks to me on a level I’m not quite willing to analyze – what is it, after all, that compels me to sort through the leftover objects of other lives, other times?

I have a self-imposed limit on those days: I buy things that cost no more than $5.00. – if it’s tagged at $6-10, I might try to haggle it down to $5, but that $5.00 is a firm limit!

Here are three of my favorite $5.00 items!

I found the baby head in a shop in Brunswick, Maine. She was looking straight at me from the end of a tall bookshelf; her eyes were open, penetrating, and I was so startled I jumped a foot off the floor, then burst out laughing.

I bought her on the spot.

$5.00 on the nose.

And what a nose! She’s just lovely when you look closely, even through all the cracks and imperfections. She now lives on a bookshelf in my living room (once a bibliophile, always a bibliophile!).

Some people are totally freaked out by her, others grin in delight...

The little camera came from the Rockland area. I picked it up to look at the detail work on the lens – it was heavier than I anticipated; turned out to be solid metal. The bellows don’t move, of course, but it’s intriguing. Imagine my surprise when I turned it around and found that it’s really a pencil sharpener – you insert the pencil through the bottom, and the sharpening blades are inside the box.

And then there’s this metal cage. I spied it about four years ago at a huge flea market in southern Maine – one of those places that has at least one hundred tables arranged in rows; it’s so enormous you can spend an entire afternoon walking the aisles!

I saw the cage near the front, but didn’t want to carry it around with me, so I took a chance – I left it there and went on.

It was still there when I finished, which I took as a positive sign from the Flea Goddess, so I handed over $4.50 and headed home with it.

Sometimes I wonder what I’ve done – whatever would I do with this thing? It sat outside on my back porch for a few weeks, and then I stuck the pot of ivy inside...

...the rest is history.