Patch Blog: Country Gal/City Woman--Blogging is All Fun 'n Games...NOT!

Dear Miss Editor:

Just wanted you to know that I think I am "coming down" with a case of "Writer's Block" and am wondering what the symptoms, treatment and prognosis might be for your average Blogger.

Is there a quick cure?  Is it something I should worry about? Perhaps not on the same scale if Janet Evanovich or Nora Roberts or Debbie Macomber suffered an attack..but my family in Iowa, Boston and Fort Collins check with arcadia.patch.com once in a while to find out if Auntie Betty Lou is finding "true happiness with her new career" in the Blogging world. 

I s'pose figuring out for themselves, if they see a recent Blog, that I am not serving time in the "hoosegow" which is one of the reasons I write...a place to stay out of, you know?  But "ideas" are becoming "scarce as hen's teeth!"...an Iowa Farmer's time-honored Proverb.  Which.worries.me.a.little.and.worries.them.a.lot.  By stipulation, I can only dig so deep in mining family folklore; hence, my predicament.

Relying on "old wives' remedies," I've tried "popping" Gummy Bears and Bite-sized Snickers to elevate the sugar levels...didn't work.  I've tried pedaling a couple of miles on my new NordicTrack bike, and that is not getting me anywhere...literally.  I am losing the "Calories" battle, and that is just plain demoralizing.  All of which may necessitate a trip to Kohl's before the daughters and I head for Connecticut to visit youngest grandson Cole for Parents' Day at Taft. 

I've even taken a peek at my Webster's Dictionary, and am up to "D," in hopes that a word will trigger a thought or two and, perhaps, yield a Blog of not "epic" proportions, of course, but of some reader interest.  Yesterday's bag of Doritos was tasty but a complete waste of time.  I dread tomorrow knowing I may have to demolish one frozen Regular-sized Snicker bar to overcome this lack of creativity. 

It's evident that I need the help of an expert as "Indecision" has cropped up as well this morning.  I'm second-guessing whether or not Blogging about "misplacing a little baby girl by the name of Peggy Ann" would be of some interest to you, as my Miss Editor, and to a new Facebook Friend, Samir.  I'll give it a whirl if you think it is.  Here's a bit of that story in a nutshell, and you can let me know by e-mail.

Peggy Ann is the daughter of my sister Trudy, and it is she who tools me around Iowa in her Little Red Saturn (aka LRS) when I return for a short visit.  She "tells it like it is" most of the time so am taking her word for it that this really did happen.  It sounds to me like it had to have been one of her favorite childhood bedtime stories, as 82 years have passed since the actual event, and it continues to bring her so much comfort and joy (and my chagrin) telling about it when family gathers around any table.

According to Peggy Ann, when she was just a wee babe (perhaps five or six months of age), her brother Bus and I were given the charge of taking this tiny little piece of humanity for a buggy ride.  Or, it could be that we two just "took off" with the buggy and baby while Trudy and Mom were busily canning sauerkraut or pickles that morning.  Come to think of it, "it" could have been the sweet red cherries picked off the tree in our backyard.

At any rate, according to Peggy Ann (again, not doubting her word, of course), we two little almost-five-year-olds went for that stroll with Baby Peggy Ann bouncing away, sucking her thumb, on her Very First Great Adventure, like around the block ending up in front of the Grant School on Cedar Street, across the alley and one block east of 210 Birch.

I don't have a clue as to what possessed Bus and me but we got so "distracted" that we found ourselves at home...without our precious 13-pound cargo!  Were we given the "third degree" by our Moms when we sauntered home sans that adorable black-haired babe?  Did we plead guilty to child abandonment?  Were we chastised?  In today's society, "child abandonment" is sufficient cause for Juvenile Hall Detention! 

I'm thinking a "Not Guilty!" plea was not even an option, no matter how "Innocent" we two delinquents looked, for sure.  Whatever demerits were given or punishment received left no physical marks, but residuals from this traumatic episode might explain why I am very hesitant to let Peggy Ann out of my sight when we are traveling the lengths of Des Moines and to unfamiliar (to me) places...Karma!

Now in that very small town of Atlantic, Iowa, neighbors really are good neighbors in every sense of the word.  And everyone knows everyone's business and where all the kids belong.  Like seconds after Bus and I arrived at the back door of 210 Birch, a broadly-grinning good neighbor came wheeling the baby buggy, complete with one (on the road again!) happy baby and all was well, the first of many great adventures growing up in that small country town.  Sometimes, dear Hillary, it does take a Village...

But, I am thinking, in telling you this much about that episode, you may think I am not "D-ependable".  I am open to playing Pogo's "Hawg Heaven" again if it will help me work through this incubation period prior to any imagined or real onslaught of W.B.  I'm at the "D-esperate" word right now!

Perhaps if I skipped to the "E's"...

I could tell you about an Epiphany of sorts that occurred on November 17, 2009, at 7:39 a.m.   Webster says that an "Epiphany" is a "spiritual event in which the essence of a given object of manifestation appears to the subject, as if in a flash of recognition."   On a more secular level, that would be "me," and this would be "it."

November 17 was a Tuesday usually reserved for bowling at Action Lanes in El Monte; however, a plea to drive the husband of my bowling partner to his doctor's office in Arcadia was the first priority that day.  The appointment was an early one, and the Epiphany of which I will tell you about in a minute happened while I was putting on "a fresh face" using a magnifying mirror to hasten the process.

Now a magnifying mirror is a wonderful asset as one grows older in the modest application of eye-liner, -shadow and mascara, but it is also one of the scariest bathroom accessories known to womankind ever!  It is downright frightening to notice a new line of "distinction" (formerly called a wrinkle) cropping up in areas that used to be "taut" and unblemished not that long ago.  A 12x-powered mirror ordered from QVC does nothing to assuage the prideful pain, but at least the eyes and lipstick are less apt to be smudged. 

So, I was standing there applying that "goop" called make-up and bemoaning the fact that my "once fresh corn-fed" look had virtually disappeared; I was awashed by the thought that I had reached the age that my Mom had reached in 1967, now so long ago....(you're counting?) (84 years!)

That was my "sudden flash of recognition," the begatting of another story that is fodder for telling if Peggy Ann's tattletales fall short.  But there is something I have to "get out of the way" while mulling over that decision.   And, that is: 

I so admire the late Elizabeth Taylor for her love for dogs and for her clamorous proclamation that she was "one broad" proud of every one of her wrinkles as she had earned them the "hard way"...by aging naturally, like a good cheese or wine!  

Miss Editor, if you have had the chance to read my first couple of Blogs, you will know that Dad and Mom were sometimes imperfect people, but I would have to rate them "top-notch" when it came to parenting.  With thirteen kids between them, they could teach Dr. Phil and Dr. Drew a thing or two like when to chasten and when to dote.  We Cranston kids got an even dose of both.  But...

...you know how kids can be at "that age" when they become a tad critical of people they love the most, depend upon but rarely appreciate until they become parents themselves. Harboring some of those feelings, at times I took to my bed-covers, wishing that I had young parents like the rest of my classmates had! (I know...bad!)

My Mom was 42 and my Dad was 53 when I was delivered at home by Dr. Greenleaf.  To top that off, my parents were grandparents to two grandsons older than I and how confusing that must have been, hearing my parents being called "Grams" and "Gramps" by the other nieces and nephews as they were added to the family by prolific sisters and brothers.  Is it okay to be vain about not resorting to thumb-sucking in all my bewilderment?

That could explain why I had blocked out all memory of our abandoning Peggy Ann in front of Grant School.  And took to nail-biting...

And so time marched on...Grant School, Jackson School, High School and it was about that time (perhaps a previous Epiphany) that I began to appreciate the fact that having "older parents" was exactly what that slightly-introverted lass needed as her life was unfolding. 

Other than the neighborhood kids playing all the usual games at dusk, nothing like the organized sports of today existed.  Parent participation was not a requirement nor needed to sort out the rules and regulations of softball games played in Talty's Pasture nor were forms required stating the ages of the parents.  All that "fretting" for naught...it is never too early to learn "not to sweat the small stuff!"

Employing a certain wisdom that, perhaps, a younger set of parents might not yet have learned, Mom and Dad encouraged my reading at an early age the Des Moines Register, the Atlantic News-Telegraph and every book in the Children's Section of the Carnegie Library.  Later, on my own, "True Confessions," and "Western Romances" and a few thousand Harlequin books, some with sizzling sentences that should not be read by the timid soul or the weak of heart and, certainly, not anyone over 70 years of age these days.  (And, yes, you should donate to Bargain Box that rascal of a book, "Lady Chatterley's Lover"...but remove your name first!)

Perky and tenacious bounty hunter Stephanie Plum is my heroine for today's read...her escapades I can handle as she rounds up dead-beats and crooks on a daily basis.   Author Janet Evanovich serves her up with a delightful sense of humor, a literary dessert after a heavy few hours of volunteer work or bowling.

My Mom was 60 years of age and Dad was 71 when I graduated from High School in 1943.  Dad passed away at the age of 72 after a long bout of cancer, and I treasure that last year of his life; I was 19.  On those days he was not hospitalized, we spent hours sitting on the front porch watching the cars drive by, neighbors stopping by to chit-chat, just being father and daughter even in silence.   Those special "times" were our "ageless" gifts to each other.  It was time to forgive myself for thinking those foolish thoughts of my tender years....

For "good" or for "bad," those two old standbys, Karma and its sidekick "What goes around comes around," eventually do come back to take a huge bite out of the ego, or better yet, the "backside" - whatever the case may be.  Trust me on this one.  And in ways even a highly imaginative writer might not think of.  For instance...

Karma could explain what took place on November 3, 1968, delivered in the form of a bundle of joy named Dana Jo to our South Arcadia homestead, to a not-so-young mother who had turned 43 the previous April, topping her mother by a full year in maternal maturity.  Dana's father was 44, not all that unusual but thought you would want to know.  Don't "chortle" too soon, any reader of mine...just saying!

Signing papers for the next 19 years of pre-school, school and for medicinal purposes would have us legally responsible for stating our ages correctly, found us ages 62 and 63 at the time of Dana's 1987 graduation from Arroyo High School.  Other than the Registrar of Voters, no one noticed or cared one "whit" all those years.  That's the way it should be.  However....

I must confess that I first took notice of my advancing age as one of the Band Chaperons at Arroyo; looking back now with the realization that I may have taken on (or been handed) the unlikely role of "Grams" for those youngsters, and how great is that! 

Some of them are now Facebook Friends as Karma would have it.  What surprised some of them, as well as myself, was that, walking the same route they did, I finished the Parade route the same time they did!  Every time!  Ms. Sandra Ragusa, Band Director, gave me (us) an appreciated Appreciation Certificate at the year's-end Awards Banquet, and her continuing friendship!  You have to admire and love a Band Director who goes out on the limb in choosing a chaperon past her prime. (Exclamation point.)

That's the way it will continue to be.  As the monthly calendar pages are torn off my 2011 Ronald Reagan Calendar, I count my blessings that my age is just "a number" to those precious names in my Address Book and Facebook Friends Lists.

I will say once again I am glad that a southern gentleman, poet and author by the name of Wendell Berry once wrote, "It may be, when we no longer know what it is we have to do, that our greatest and most important work has just begun."  Worthy of a plaque above every Senior's bedpost!  A signal, of sorts, to "Charge!" when it looks like a personal "battle" looms large.  It's a great "mantra" at any age, right?

In saluting the one and only (and I'm thinking at times a tiny bit misunderstood) Elizabeth Taylor who, it was written, took a good look into her magnifying mirror one early morn in her latter years and sputtered something a bit "bawdy" after discovering yet another "line of distinction," I say in the broadest and most affectionate sense of the word...there is truly nothing like a "Dame!" 

"Liz," may all of us so-called "dames" display your kind of inner courage when the "Mirror, Mirror on the Wall!" starts spouting back to us, in no uncertain terms, a remindful... "Remember, girl, the less make-up as you age, the better!"  And don't forget to blot....!

Miss Editor:  While awaiting your decision to my dilemma...a Super-sized Snicker awaits me!  Willing to share...

CG/CW