INTO THE FRAY

I was at Target recently.  Of course.  I traversed the familiar aisles, loading my cart with Kleenex and laundry soap and the usual collection.  But when I pushed my purchases outside, I was momentarily lost.  I didn’t know where I was.

With all Targets laid out in a similar fashion, I had been lulled into a sense of the familiar.  And when I walked outside, the familiar was gone.  I suspect my psyche was still looking for a Missouri parking lot, the one on Kirkwood Road, no doubt.  But it wasn’t there.

I shook my head, got the neurons firing, and I was back in San Antonio, but for a moment, I missed the familiar.

After eight months in Texas, I didn’t expect to still be acclimating.  And yet, I am.

I have acclimated to some things quickly.  I do not miss ice and snow and sub-zero temperatures, the awkward nozzles on St. Louis gas pumps, St. Louis-style pizza (cheddar cheese atop a pizza, really?), robo-calls from the school district, trucks blocking Blase Avenue.

But I miss the familiar, the familiarity of getting behind the wheel of my Ford and driving as if by remote control because I know the way so well, placing my coffee order at Kaldi’s, sliding into the back row of choir, laughing at old jokes, meeting up at the Galleria, scouring my brain for trivia and flexing my competitive muscles, spying a familiar face at the grocery store, inhaling the incredible smells at DiGregorio’s, recognizing names in the local newspaper, and knowing there was always someone to call in a pinch.

There’s something comfortable in the familiar, like an easy chair on a rainy afternoon. 

The unfamiliar is a challenge.  The unfamiliar has become my way of life.  The unfamiliar is not necessarily unfriendly, but it’s always unexpected, always a surprise.

But as Paulo Coelho writes, “…there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not yet ready.  The challenge will not wait.  Life does not look back.”

So I Google map my every move and plunge forward.  Ready or not, here I come!  Eyes wide open.

To quote T.S. Eliot, “If you aren’t in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?”

I’m feeling pretty tall…

WAITING FOR SUMMER

I miss our pool.

When we built our house in San Antonio, we put in a pool.  It wasn’t part of the plan.  It wasn’t even a plan for “some day.”  But somehow, we ended up with one. 

I wanted a water feature.  I wanted the calming tinkle-tinkle-tinkle of a gentle fountain.  So we met with the guy doing the patio and the landscaping to discuss a water feature.  The conversation grew grander and suddenly, for just a few dollars more, we were envisioning a swimming pool in our new backyard.

I agonized over this decision, even after it was made.  I especially feared we wouldn’t use it enough to warrant the addition, especially since I can’t swim – never have.  I float all right.  I enjoy getting wet.  That’s about it.  It seemed an outrageous extravagance, but if there was ever a city to have a pool in, San Antonio seemed to be it.

Even the prospect of caring for the pool didn’t sway us.  Immediately, we signed up for Pool School.  Our pool company would send someone to our home to teach us how to care for our pool. 

When we did our final walk-through of the new house, we ambled from room to room, making notes for the builder of what needed to be done yet and mental notes of what piece of furniture would go where.  When we went through the back door and gazed at the backyard that had been all theory until then, I was stunned.  The pool was lovely - three graceful arcs, hitting the water with gentle plops; the flagstone surround; the lush plantings; the alluring turquoise surface.

The pool became salvation during the weeks while we waited for our belongings.  We had no television, no games, no books, not even clothes to hang in the closets; but, we were amused by the pool.  John built boats out of milk jugs.  We floated and smiled (when smiles were hard to come by.)

We arranged for Pool School.  My sister-in-law Carla teased me about the pool boy who would be our instructor.  She winked about Speedos and 6-pack abs.  I waited with breathy anticipation for the arrival of the pool master, my pencil and paper at the ready.  Tom was…unexpected.  Tom was probably 60 years old and looked 80.  His white hair stood out from his head in wild tufts.  His company-issued shirt was unbuttoned, exposing a generous gut hanging over the waist of his jeans.  He pulled the shirt open further to show me the scar from his quadruple bypass, because, as Tom contends, “those cigarettes and tortillas will kill ‘ya.”  (Personally, I think tortillas are getting a bad rap, but I didn’t debate it with Tom.)  He wiped his heavily-perspiring forehead with a red bandana, as he puttered around our pool, muttering that “any idiot could take care of a pool.”  As we didn’t consider ourselves idiots, it became our mission to learn the ropes; however, I couldn’t seem to put pen to paper.  No notes appeared on the pad.  Instead, I gawked at Tom. 

He complained about replacing his cell phone every couple of months, because the phones kept falling into pools.  This comment was made as he slipped his current phone into the breast pocket of his shirt and bent over the pool to pull the Polaris from its depths.  I held my breath; sure another phone was on its way into the brink.  When Tom finally made his departure, we watched him go with dropped jaws, berating one another in quiet tones for not having taken a photo of this character.  (I hope my description does him justice.)

Despite dubious care instruction, we've managed to maintain and enjoy the pool.  Now we miss it.

Like the rest of the country, San Antonio is having the coldest winter in recent history.  Too cool for a dip.  But gentle sprays continue to break the placid water and I am reminded that summer will eventually return.

94 YEARS IN THE MAKING

Today is my grandmother’s 94^th birthday.

Marian Schulz is a marvel.  She is my inspiration.  She still lives on her own, in her own house.  She still drives her little SUV and talks state troopers out of tickets.  She had her knee replaced so she could continue to dance.  Her calendar is full of parties and appointments.  Her clothes are contemporary and her jewelry statement pieces.  She is quick with a laugh and equally quick at making the lowly quake with fear.  She is a rock, the core of our family.

Marian Arp Schulz, age 18

This Christmas, I missed celebrating the holiday with my grandmother and extended family for the first time in years.  We always travelled from St. Louis, despite weather and timing, but now the distance is too much.

When I was growing up, Christmas Eve on the farm with Grandpa and Grandma was something I looked forward to all year.  But as the family grew and changed, so did Christmas.  The farm is gone.  So is Grandpa.  But Grandma still invites her brood to gather for the holidays…all 60 of us!  She still brings her Southern Comfort punch, even if she can’t drink it.  (That was a lesson learned the hard way, when a couple glasses of punch made her defibrillator “zap” her one Christmas.  I imagine her cardiologist told her she shouldn’t drink alcohol, but that was one instruction she conveniently forgot.)

Even though I didn’t make it to the party, I received my Christmas gift from Gram.  It was a book.  Of her stories.

The book was the brainchild of my mom and Aunt Julie.  They sat Grandma down, asked her to tell them her stories, while they added ones of their own.  Grandma talks of growing up on the farm and becoming a farmer’s wife, of raising her children and losing a son.  She talks of hard work and heartbreak, love and laughter.  They are the stories of a life.  I have received few gifts as precious.

Gram, Julie, Mom

In this book, she also found a way to impart words that might have gone unsaid, words that might have waited for a better time and never found one.  These are hers:  “You can love your children with all your heart, rejoice for them, grieve for them, and try to help, but in the end, with luck, you are alone with the man you’d chosen to live with.  In the end, there is something to be said for the undemanding life that is compensation for growing old.  You had your regrets and disappointments, even a kind of haunting depression knowing that any day it could all end.  But mostly you give thanks for what you had in the past and what you hoped for in the future – for health and serenity, for yourself and the ones you love.  Life was more kind than cruel.”

Life has always been more kind with you in it, Gram.  Happy Birthday.

TREATS AND TREASURES

Even more than Halloween, the Christmas season has always been one of treats and unexpected surprises.  When I was young, it was the orange at the bottom of the stocking, the paper bag of nuts and chocolates from Santa when he came to our city park, or Santa peaking in Grandma’s window.

With age and time, the treats have changed.  Some are still small – sugared nuts from a neighbor or a bag of “White Trash” from a friend.  (If you’ve never enjoyed this particular snack, you’re in for a new “treat.”  I’m including the recipe below.)  But the treats that surprise most are those that have the strength to pull at your heart and not let go. 

Tim and I just returned from a trip to Iowa.  We collected our children from their respective colleges and ended up at my Mom’s.  It was a treat to eat pizza at Zeno’s.  Zeno’s opened in Marshalltown, Iowa in 1952, so essentially I’ve been eating there my entire life.  Even though my husband grew up in Chicago with Chicago-style pizza, he is a Zeno’s convert.  Nearly every Iowa trip includes a stop at Zeno’s.  It’s a treat – pizza and décor that doesn’t change. Memories emanate from 1970’s dark wood paneling, flood over the balcony, and fill the booths below. 

It was a treat to see aunts and uncles and my Gram.  Their lives are so different from when we spent every Christmas Eve on the farm, when the smell of pine and Grandma’s goose cooking filled each room and Uncle Leon’s laugh resonated above all others

It was a treat to see my brother and sister and their families.  I am reminded of Christmases past, when my siblings and I were young and we would tumble down the oak staircase in a furious rush on Christmas morning, when our children were young and Mom’s house was a swirling mass of babies crawling amid torn wrapping paper.  Now it’s a houseful of adults; when did that happen?

Tim, our children, and I have returned to San Antonio.  Having the four of us together is a treat. It doesn’t happen very often any more.  Life is taking us in new and differing directions.  When Molly joins the working world next year, our time together will be limited to corporate vacation time, but this year, we have a month and I am thrilled.  So I grab this opportunity to have my children in San Antonio for the holidays and hold on tight.  I want to enjoy this new city with them, to enjoy this new house, to enjoy being together.  I delight in memories of Christmases past – Molly climbing into her Little Tikes' car much like Fred Flintstone and John hugging his Lego Star Wars AT-AT kit like it was life’s most precious gift. – but new memories and experiences are equally dear.

Happy Holidays to you and yours from me and mine!

We have more holiday treats to come – a wine-tasting with new friends and a visit from Tim’s sister and her husband.  They are as anticipated as previous Christmases when we made road trips to Chicago because Tim’s family was anchored there or old friends filled our days with games, shopping and laughter.

Unexpected treats and treasured memories – the heart of the holiday season.  May you and yours relish these as I relish mine; they are what makes the season bright!

WHITE TRASH

5 c. Cheerios

5 c. Corn Chex

1 – 14 oz. bag of M&Ms

10-12 oz. bag of waffle pretzels

1 container cocktail peanuts

2 -12 oz. bag of white chocolate chips

3 T. oil

Melt chocolate and oil together.  Pour over dry ingredients.  Mix thoroughly.  Spread on to waxed paper (about 3-4 cookie sheets full).  Cool.  Break apart and put in containers.

LIFE IN HIGH CONTRAST

When I was growing up, our television set had a contrast button.  Unlike the high-tech video displays today that do the “thinking” for you, televisions of my generation had to have their brightness, tint, contrast adjusted manually.  I enjoyed watching shows with the contrast turned on full.  Now, I’m living a life in high contrast – Texas life as opposed to Midwestern life.

The differences surrounding holidays are particularly apparent.  I handed out Halloween treats, wearing shorts and flip flops.  I know this may seem like a small thing, but I remember trick-or-treating in Iowa wearing a turtleneck and long underwear under my costume or in severe years, being upset that no one would see my costume because a winter coat was covering it. 

As Christmas approaches, I am startled by the juxtaposition of Dickensian street lights dressed for Christmas standing next to palm trees and the snowman lawn ornaments gracing lawns that will never know snow, let alone men made of snow.  (Sean at the bank is moving to Chicago this month.  He figures he is in for a “real treat,” as he has never seen snow.  Poor guy, he has no idea what’s in store!)

San Antonio, like the rest of the country, recently experienced a cold snap.  There was no frost or ice.  Definitely, no snow.  As I peer out the window, the only indication of cold is the fact that the swimming pool jets are running 24/7 to keep the water moving so the lines won’t freeze.

My senses don’t know what season it is.  The trees, the grass, the plantings are still green.  There was no sudden frost, then a swirl of autumnal color, leaves dropping and drying in massive swarms.  A deciduous tree is rare here.  Sightings are reason to pull the car over to the side of the road and take a second look.  The flowers in my backyard are still blooming too, even the one that my mother announced, when she was here in September, would be considered a weed in Iowa.  Hey, with the heat and the drought of a San Antonio summer, anything that will grow is planted!

The high contrast, the yin and the yang of it all – life here and life there – the differences enthrall me.  There will probably come a day when they won’t.  I guess that’s the day I’ll officially be a Texan (egad!)

THAT GOETTSCH JAW

Before I could introduce my husband Tim to my father’s sister, he took one look at the woman and said she must be Aunt Gilda.  My jaw dropped.  How could he possibly know?  When I suggested he must have heard someone call her by name, Tim said simply, “She had to be a Goettsch.  All the Goettschs have the same jaw.”  The jaw in question dropped further.  What?  Tim shrugged, as if I’d surely noticed.  “That square Goettsch jaw.  You can’t miss it.”

Since his comment, I’ve become rather obsessed with the jaws in my family – comparing, contrasting - and wondering if all those jaws that look like mine, hurt like mine.

My siblings and I - for jaw comparison

With the culmination of the chaos that has been my life the last couple of years came a diagnosis – TMJ or temporomandibular joint disorder.  The jaw clenches or the teeth grind in reaction to stress.  While I’d been living with a couple of years of extreme stress, I suspect that I was aggravating my jaw even before the experiences of recent months.  I was always the typical eldest child – wanting to be in charge, taking on responsibility, striving for perfection in an imperfect world.  I had to excel or die trying.

If you’ve never experienced TMJ, in a word, it’s painful – brutally so.  Suddenly, your jaw feels like it’s made of lead.  Rather than a natural extension of your face, the jaw is heavy, moving awkward and painfully.

Since the diagnosis, I have seen a dentist, physical therapist, ENT, oral surgeon, and acupuncturist (not my best decision – ouch!)  After using drugs and exercises to alleviate the pain with limited success, the oral surgeon finally said that I needed to get control of the anxiety that was plaguing my brain and manifesting itself in my jaw.  I needed to find a way to master tension, rather than becoming slave to it.  With that in mind, I’ve started seeing a counselor.  I’ve never done this before.  I didn’t know where to begin and even after several sessions, I never quite know how to talk to her.  So far, it’s a lot of confirmation, “Geez.  You deserve to be stressed after all you’ve been through.”

Duh.  OK.  But now what?

She likes to remind me to “let go” of things that threaten to unnerve me.  Like Richard Carlson prompts:  “Don’t sweat the small stuff because it’s all small stuff.”  Intellectually, I know that; I’ve always known that.  But, like so many things, it’s easier said than done.  For me, it’s an ongoing battle I rarely win.

In hindsight, there are so many things I should have let go of before they became punctuated by stress and I lost sleep to them – grades, relationships, jobs.  Why is hindsight always 20/20 and the here and now 30/60?

Anxiety that I couldn’t talk myself out of or was too young to understand the needlessness of has taken its toll.  My health (most specially my jaw) is paying the price.  Some day, I will have to have surgery, but for now it means no more sub sandwiches or quarter pound burgers; I can’t get my mouth around them.  More importantly, however, when anxiety threatens, it’s a painful reminder to “let things go.”

WAVE THERAPY

Tim and I went to the shore last weekend.

What a weird thing for this Midwestern girl to say.

Lakes have consistently comprised the extent of my “shores.”  Growing up, the lake was Union Grove.  Actually, it was less of a lake and more of a giant mud puddle – the result of eroding black Iowa topsoil.  When I was in college, I must have passed all 10,000 lakes in Minnesota on my way to a summer job near Bemidji.  And during my years in St. Louis, when you said you were going to “the” lake, it meant only one thing – Lake of the Ozarks.  Plopped in the middle of Missouri, Lake of the Ozarks was situated equal-distance between St. Louis and Kansas City – a perfect playground for suburban boaters.

I’ve spent the majority of my life land-locked.  Lake shores were my norm.  Not ocean shores.  Having access to the ocean is a miracle of sorts.

I remember my first glimpse of an ocean, during a high school Spanish Club trip to Mexico; I was 17.  The bus rounded the peaks that surround Acapulco and there it was – the Pacific Ocean.  The blue expanse seemed to stretch forever – a vast turbulent mass.

Since that long ago trip, I have seen many oceans from many different shores, but the magnificence never ceases to amaze and enthrall me.

Tim on Mustang Island (He always looks a bit like Bill Murray
from "Caddyshack" in that hat!)

The shore at Corpus Christi is just over two hours by car from San Antonio.  The drive between encompasses acres and acres of nothingness – barren, dry and brittle.  The occasional steer and the fact that all this emptiness is fenced is the only indication of life.  The Gulf of Mexico is welcome relief.

For our first trip to this shore, Tim and I opted for a visit to Mustang Island State Park, foregoing the more commercial areas.  The park was pristine, quiet, unspoiled.  We picnicked on the beach, read from our lawn chairs, and walked and walked.  The water was too cold to get in, but there were a few hardy souls in the brink.  (Goosebumps tickle along my spine whenever I think of it!) 

Primarily, however, I just stared at the surf and marveled at its wonder - one white ruffle after another working its way to shore in an endless rhythm; a pelican dipping its enormous beak into an oncoming wave and emerging with lunch; shorebirds trotting along the sand, searching for treats that the sea has left behind; the vast blue swaths of sea and sky, like a Mark Rothko painting. 

Another shore - 2006 - Molly and John at the North Sea
(Noordwijkse, The Netherlands)

The combination of sea and sand was balm to my weary soul.  All the lakes of my land-locked past were forgotten in deference to the miracle of the next wave.

Packing up our belongings at the end of the day was bittersweet, but one more gulp of that salty air and I knew we’d be back.