My father’s teeth were hard and well-formed, rarely needing dental work, and my mother’s just the opposite, soft and full of crowns and bridges and fillings. She claimed it was from growing up poor. Root canals were a huge ordeal back then, and her jaw would bruise for days after each one. With fillings, she never had Novocain, claiming to not like its effects, but really it was just that she had a high pain tolerance because of her alcoholism. Most of her fillings were gold, and when one needed to be replaced, we’d take the old gold nugget to a place called Montana Assay and she would get money for it.
When she was 75, a dentist advised her to get dentures. I lived three hours north by then and I swear that this news was more devastating to her than when, two years later, she would call me to say she had just a few months to live. “I feel I have no choice,” she said, about the dental advice. She was newly divorced from my father, something long overdue, for all the unhappiness she had caused him. Fiercely reserved, she rarely shared her innermost feelings, but she did keep me apprised of each appointment. I could not imagine what it must have been like for her to sit in the familiar dentist chair, awaiting the removal of her teeth.
The dentures were a good fit and natural color, she had selected well. She didn’t take them out at night, trying to simulate real teeth. A month after she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, she called me to say goodbye, declaring her end was near. I cried for an hour, shocked and also moved by her openness. In the morning, she was still alive when I arrived, but barely conscious. I relieved her caregiver and took up residence. She lay like an upturned, very-wounded bird on her narrow twin bed. Breathing was laborious, but the noise that filled the apartment was the dentures clacking. When the hospice nurse appeared for her daily check-in, she told me to take the teeth out, it would be easier on everyone. I suppose she was reminded of the wind-up gag teeth sets. I knew my mother would be mortified to think she lay in my view with her mouth sunken, skin folding in where the teeth should be, her face distorted. It took all the courage I could muster to remove them. I’d never seen her without teeth. The silence was peaceful, and soon after was permanent.

"Let that be a lesson. In the future, be more careful from whom you accept free lemonade."

One of the many famous Adam West quotes. As Batman, of course. On the TV show. Adam West 1929-2017.

My godfather, Fitz, managed the Windjammer Hotel at Gearhart, Oregon, in the 1960s. My dad had the advertising account and helped him get the job. The Windjammer, sadly gone from this location, had been The Sands of Gearhart at one time, but a new owner had come in and refreshed it all. There was a slightly curved main building, simple in its design, the lobby centered. A separate box of a building to the left for the restaurant, fine dining but no chicken (the owner didn't like chicken), and a separate glass building below the rooms, for the big swimming pool, and a mezzanine with a fireplace above, for the bored adults. The lobby was big with gold carpet, scattered with chairs, my mother in one pretending to read, in the brochure my dad made. Quite an elaborate brochure, us free family models posing. My favorite part was the defunct coffee shop, hidden across from the lobby, with its sunken bar, so the server would be level with the counter-sitters. All the dishes were still there and I got to play restaurant every time, serving my dad empty cups and cups of coffee. 

Adam West was a frequent visitor to the Windjammer and he and Fitz became friends. We never seemed to time our visits when he was there, but I was always asking. My dad and I watched the TV show together all the time. Though my dad wasn't much on silly shows, certainly not on super-hero series, he liked seeing the old actors like Cesar Romero and Vincent Price playing the villains, and he liked the canted camera angles and "POW!" cartoon words coming at you.

On my seventh birthday there was a call for me in the kitchen of our Portland home. I took the harvest gold receiver from my mother and said "hi," uncertain, because I didn't get a lot of calls, and a voice said "Happy Birthday Martha. This is Batman." My stomach fell to the floor. I thought of the autographed Adam West head shot framed above my bed. Then I thought of the masked man in the TV show. And of Bruce Wayne and how I liked his voice as he issued trusted orders to Alfred and always attended his galas with a pretty woman on his arm. I didn't know what to say. But I will not forget that Batman called me. That Fitz must have been standing beside him, having dialed, with his usual infectious grin filled with love.

 

                                                    If the Shoe Fits


I drove to Eugene on a weekday morning for a writing award. Sort of. The award was more of a bridesmaid, rather than a bride, but that doesn’t mean it was even second place. Maybe it was more like a flower girl, or the person who mans the guest book. But it was important to me to travel the five hours for the hosted writing workshop, and attend the winners’ reading. Working full time is hard on writing, so any chance you get to pull away and immerse in the craft, you should take.

At home, I save some clothes, ones I think have the chance of being appreciated as “vintage” sometime in the future. A few pairs of shoes. Sometimes I write about them. A couple tops have been stashed so long, they’re in style again. Once, in the mid-90s, I splurged on a pair of red shoes I accidentally saw in the fancy shoe part of Nordstrom the day after I received a bonus check. The shoes were keepers for the vintage future, so when four years later styles had changed, I packed them among the mohair sweaters and miniskirts, where they stayed for at least a decade. I can’t be sure exactly how long, because a couple years ago I had a notion it might be time for the red shoes to be in style again. But when I looked, they were gone from the place I remembered putting them. I clean and re-organize often, but the red shoes had disappeared.

 

The trip to Eugene gave me a night in Portland in the way home, a chance to see the parents. Saturday morning I was in the car by nine to capture at least a decent half of my weekend when I got home to Seattle. I drove the surface streets of northeast Portland to I-5, and saw the Goodwill store my friend and I like, so I stopped.

When I’m in a Goodwill mood, there are a few sections I go to and skip the rest. Glasses, sweaters, coats – trolling for vintage coolness. This particular Goodwill is not a huge place and I know exactly where my aisles are. But without conscious thought, I went directly to the shoe section, which is arranged by color. The black shoe aisle was stroller-filled so I went to the next – lime green, white, and red in the center. Without any cohesive thought or focus, my eyes went right to a pair in the middle of the reds. I took the pair off the shelf, already sure they were my 6.5 size, because they were my red shoes of the 90s. I knew it as if I’d been given a map. The magnitude of coincidence hit me as I held them and my breathing faulted for a few seconds. Turning the pair over, I saw the plastic taps added to the outside of the heels, where I always had the cobbler set them for the way I wore heels down. I had been a venerate heel protector back in the day. I doubt anyone even remembers “taps.” Now we just replace the heels, at three times the cost.

 I can’t prove they are my shoes, of course. Or how they travelled to Portland. At the same time, I know they’re mine. Bought on a Goodwill whim stop on a short-notice trip, coming home.

 
      It was the first night of eight days of tennis lessons. We had scheduled ourselves to play in our first ever tournament and were trying to get out every chance possible, despite June’s usual amount of rain. A parks and rec class could only help.
     My husband wanted to warm up, so we arrived a half hour early. The high school was old, and the parking lot was vast, with cracks in the concrete that weeds and grasses grew in. Even the courts had this. The young teacher was pulling back the tabs on new cans of balls, setting them free into the practice baskets. An elongated, low-slung black dog roamed the lot. You noticed strays now, with so much leashing in the  laws.
      We hit a few balls back and forth – mostly forth and off against the fence or into the net. We were not warmed up. We’d eaten too much dinner after work, and too fast. I picked up a ball on the side line at the fence. When I stood, a lady was near, asking me a question.
      “What?” I said. I was busy thinking about tennis and she hadn’t come right up to the fence anyway.
     “Did you drive here, or walk?” she said.
     A cynic’s mind rushed in to say “who wants to know?” But instead I told her we drove. It seemed so obvious, just our car and the teacher’s in the upper lot.
     She looked about seventy, overweight in odd places but not obese. But mostly what I saw was the scabs on that piece of skin under the nose, and her chin. Scabs in odd places. “Somehow I locked my keys in my car. I didn’t think you could do that anymore. I live about seven minutes away. I need a ride.”
      My selfish knee-jerk reaction was wishing her to disappear. I was here to play tennis. I was thinking of the word nuisance. But she needed a ride. Then I thought of Jim, who’d been insistent on coming early, adamant about practice, and not keen on strangers. I turned to him. “She needs a ride.” As he neared the fence, she repeated what happened. She wasn’t overly ingratiating, but I guess we weren’t either. 
      “Can you wait an hour?” he said. “We have a lesson.”
      She nodded and said sure. You could tell she’d wait how ever long it took, she needed a ride.
     We still had twenty minutes till class started. “I’ll take her,” I said. I put my racquet away and grabbed my jacket. “You can stay here,” I said to Jim. Then I realized he wouldn’t have anyone to practice with. As I walked to the car, he trailed me. Then I remembered I didn’t bring my license. I could see how this was going to go over; no practice, now he had to drive her, because I’d committed us.
     We got in the car and she got in the back, telling us some vague directions as she did, not closing the door and the stray dog had come over to make friends with her and wanted in. I reached back as if to swat the dog out of the way. “No,” I said to it.
     She shut the door and the dog jumped around timidly outside the car as we started to pull out. “It’s not your dog, is it?” I said.
     “Well, yes,” she said. “I suppose she might try to follow the car.”
     “Let her in,” Jim said.
     We pulled out and the woman mumbled instructions for turning. Then she said, “I’m Nancy Gassner, I guess I should have said that in the first place. And this is Maggie.” We’re always so good about introductions, why hadn’t we been this time?
     We said our names – first only – and listened to more directions. Her voice was modulated and somewhat sad. Sad that a newish car – which we never really saw – would let her down and swallow her keys. And maybe sad about something else, like where she got the scabs.
     Jim and I were sitting stiffly, not like we usually sit in our own, familiar car. I thought about her having a gun tucked under her shirt, about a scam worked out with a boyfriend to get us to the house, about all the paranoid things that have nothing to do with helping a human who needs a hand. Maggie sat sweetly beside her owner. Nancy asked about our tennis lesson in her hesitant way. But we’d done nothing to make her feel welcome. Our personalities had left us, but not for good reason.
        When we got to her street, she told us we could drop her off mid-block and they would walk the rest of the way. So we did. We hardly glanced at her or acknowledged her thank you, which was not profuse. Is that what we wanted, her to be warm and friendly and talk of grandchildren and elaborate on our good deed?
            On the ride back to the school, we told each other we’d been good Samaritans, but it didn’t feel that true. We pondered why she didn’t want us to take her the last stretch to her house, if it was purely to save us those few seconds of time, or because there was someone angry at home, or the home was unsightly. We’d done nothing to connect with her.
     Back at the courts, a lone man was using the school wall for a backboard while he waited for class to start. We still had ten minutes to practice.             
      The class was hard, in a good way, and we lost our thoughts over to serves and baselines. We bonded with the strangers in the class, laughed, and noted each other’s good shots out loud. Dark clouds had gathered by the time class ended, but we had escaped any rain. We gulped our brought water as we walked back to the car and said “see you tomorrow” to our new friends. We threw our equipment and unnecessary jackets into the trunk with abandon.
        On the hood of our car was a single lily. White. The flower was near perfect, and set diagonally across the left side of the hood. The stem was unmarred, sturdy and green. Sturdy, that’s how I’d describe Nancy. The flower was a haunting symbol, and if she was in trouble, if those scabs were something we should’ve asked about, I’d never forgive myself.

     I bought the cheap Target dress, then realized I hadn’t checked the fit enough in the cramped red dressing room at the new location on Figueroa. Business trips can make you rush everything, so I took it to a tailor back home.
     I’d recently discovered the alterations hole behind the Taco del Mar, after spending too much paying Nordstrom to do the few I needed. No way was I turning loose their Asian fleet on my Target purchase. And even though it’s just a cheap dress probably
made in China by children (of which I don’t approve, of course), I liked it enough to put a few extra bucks into it so the bodice fit right.
      The tailor was Russian – elf-like height, bald, with a white beard, some missing teeth on the lower, always in a pressed shirt. His shop featured more than alterations, it included the sale of men’s consignment – racks of sport coats surrounded the three-way mirror and shoes were lined up neatly on shelves below. He worked behind a louvered swing door, like a saloon. I’d brought him a more expensive dress to alter last month and I’d liked the results.
     This alteration gave him more pause, though it was essentially the same alteration, my late dawning of how short-waisted I am and frequently in need of a hike on the shoulders. He hemmed and hawed a bit, I offered to forget it, given its cost, the Mossimo tag glaring out from the neckline. It wasn’t like I couldn’t wear it, just me noticing. Then he said “I’ll figure something out.” He waved his hand in the air, pulled out an unbent Calvin Klein tag off some other garment, and scribbled my phone number. A Russian calendar was on the counter and he gestured to it, asking when I wanted the dress. I told him to pick the day – the weatherwouldn’t be warm enough to wear it for weeks. “Ookay zen, May 8th,” he said. Then he clucked, tapping the date box with his pen, “My birthday,” and I saw my first glimpse of an eye-twinkle.
      Wednesday rolled around, of course, like the future does, and I made sure I had time in my work schedule to pick the dress up. Before that, I went to the grocery store and bought a tiny green striped pot pre-planted with a bright orange flower. I had no idea if it would grow over time, but it was festive. 
      In the shop, the Russian was on my side of the counter, straightening some clothes. I was glad to not hand him his birthday gesture across a counter. It seemed less of a
transaction not to. “Happy birthday,” I said, fleetingly wondering if he’d made up his own holiday, because I was just a stranger after all. I held out the flower pot.
        His normal stoic Russian-ism drained from his face and his eyes became circles of disbelief. What does that exactly look like? I don’t know if I can describe it more concretely and though I’ve seen it in movies and read it in books, I’d never witnessed it
overtake someone’s face so completely. You’ll know it someday when you see it. He smiled like he hadn’t yet in my presence, and stammered nonsense. I think “oh,” “I can’t believe it,” and “oh” a few more times were in there. He went around the counter, shaking his head. “Not in twenty years, has someone…” Then chuckled, adding, “Of course no one has known.” He couldn’t take his eyes off the gift. I had the cash with me to pay the amount he’d quoted. In his fluster, he didn’t know which dress it was, and there was no reason he should be memorizing my clothes and me. I pointed out the dress, and wished him well on his important day, leaving him the flower. I was flooded with joy.
      This is not to toot my own horn about how thoughtful I am. It was, in fact, a very selfish gesture. I felt so good afterward. Joyous acts can last for hours and while I didn’t do a dance all afternoon, somewhere in my day the pleasure of our transaction was with me. Not just one person was pleased in a day, but two. Be selfish. A nice gesture, whether a thing or an act, is happy impact. You're both the beneficiary.

http://www.actionforhappiness.org/      just do it

Growing up we had one pink light bulb on one string out of the ten we
put on the tree. Every year we watched with anticipation as the string
containing the pink bulb was tested before placed it on the waiting branches.
We always made sure it was findable in the front. No one knew where it came from, and there was no replacement lying in wait. It lasted 22 years. 
 
Christmas trees are erected and lit in the houses you’re invited to over the
holidays. Doug Firs, Scotch Pines, Nobles, sometimes aluminum trees.
Often the front doors welcome you with swags or wreaths. A wreath might have a wired-in sprig of holly, the swag a velvet bow, but oh those trees, nothing can match the ornamentation of family culture and history. The history may be this year’s trip to Michael’s craft store, or it may be the fourth generation string of half-broken beads. Either way, it’s all sacred. 
 
Next hot-toddy party you’re invited to, next potato pie supper, next egg nog slog, take a look at the tree and its ornaments. Ask about one that grabs your curiosity. After all, someone took a great deal of time to pick the tree, unbox the ornament
boxes buried under the old stair, and place their favorites on the tree just so. 

Our tree this year has a brown teapot from 1950, a German troll with a pierced ear,
and a contemporary orange spiral we call The Sperm.  
Every ornament has a story, untold unless asked.