Signs

All my flowers are blooming. The first one that came up was my mother’s. It’s a tulip. Jamie’s boyfriend Lou’s mother gave it to her when she was first in the hospital. She wasn’t allowed to have any plants or flowers in her room so she gave it to me because she knew I wouldn’t kill it. No one else in my family gardens. I carried it down to Virginia in its pot covered with crinkly pink foil. It was carefully wedged between a suitcase and a cooler filled with pork roll and cannolis from the Italian bakery. I planted it next to my back steps so I could see it all the time. It died right away. I thought that was a bad sign. And I was right. My mother died too.

The following spring I fixed up that little area by the back steps. I put mulch down and made a border out of Kelly’s collection of glass insulators. The colored glass looks really pretty when the sun is shining. I put an old tin watering can there that my neighbor from Jersey gave to me because she knew I liked old things. I put a metal sculpture of a grasshopper there that my mother bought for Kelly’s room when she was a baby. I added a couple of pretty rocks that I found, one with white streaks of quartz in the shape of a cross (I considered selling that one on eBay—“Woman sees Jesus on a stone!”), and another rock shaped just like Jersey. I put a dot on the spot where the winery house would be with black Magic Marker.

Then, when I was in Peebles, they had one of those fake rocks for sale that you hide your house key inside. I would never hide my house key in one of those because everyone knows what they’re for. Might as well hide it under the doormat if you want to be stupid. But I liked it because it had a copper plate in the middle with a picture of a butterfly on it. My mother loved butterflies. So I bought it and I put it right in the middle of the little plot of earth by my steps. Every time I go up and down, I look at it and think about my mother.

Last week I was on my hands and knees weeding when I spotted something green sticking out from underneath the fake rock. I picked it up. It was the tulip! Two springs have gone by since it died and here it was again, nosing up through the mulch, muscling its way from underneath the fake rock that was on top of it.

I took that as a sign. I really don’t know what kind of sign it is. Hope? A sign that my mother lives on even when I thought she was gone? A simple sign of spring? I don’t know. But it’s something good.

Big Dogs, But Not That Kind

Since my daughter Jamie, the artist, took pictures of her cute little feet in cute little sneakers for her blog (they had polka dots or daisies or something on them, that’s how cute she is), I figured, why can’t I? I have something interesting to say. But before I get to that, here are my feet.



I know. They’re big. They don’t smell or anything though. One time, a friend came over to my house who refused to take her shoes off. I’m still traumatized over that. Everyone knows I’m OCD about my floors and I can’t stand it when people come into my house with their nasty shoes on. It’s not like you can throw your carpet in the washing machine and then hang it out to dry. What? Now I’m supposed to lie down on that carpet and tussle with the dog or sprawl out and watch a movie with the kid after you’ve been walking around in the Wal-Mart parking lot in your new penny loafers? And then you want to come into my house and walk all over my straw-colored sisal, soft as the sheepskin collar on a leather jacket and made out of recycled bottle caps or something? Nah. It’s disgusting. You might as well just keep going and lick the ground while you’re at it.

It never entered my head about smelly feet. My friend started sweating bullets and ignored my carefully and politely worded plea to please just humor me when I asked wouldn’t she rather leave those muddy shoes by the door? She sat there at the kitchen table and I watched her mouth move but I didn’t hear anything she said. I was too busy thinking about the puddle forming underneath her chair. (Believe it or not, there was carpet in that kitchen. It wasn’t actually the kitchen. It was the dinette area; close enough. Hey, we weren’t the ones who installed it—the previous owners put it in. If we would have stayed there, that would have come out with the brass fixtures in the bathrooms and the wallpaper border with the blue geese on it in the spare bedroom.)

Later, someone told me that my friend has stinky feet and you will never, I repeat, never, see her with her shoes off. They’re cute little feet any self-respecting foot fetishist would jump at the chance to massage but that is neither here nor there since you will never see them bare. Like you’ll never see my breasts bare. Which is probably why they stink, if you ask me. Not my breasts. Her feet. They never get any air. And if they’re constantly encased in that cheap crap they try to get us to believe is leather that comes from China but looks like plastic, sometimes called pleather, well, no wonder.

Which led me to the conclusion that there are a lot worse things than having big dogs. Clodhoppers, banana boats, hoofs, puppies, whatever you want to call them. But I digress. The point of this story is to show you my new Converses. It appears, at 48-years-old, I am still happening. I told the salesgirl to bring out two pairs—a seven and a ten, one for Kelly and one for me. Kelly has big feet too. The poor kid doesn’t have a chance. Kurt’s a size twelve and I’m an eight but nine’s so comfortable I buy a ten. Alright, that’s not entirely true anymore. There have been occasions where I found a ten-and-a-half and bought them. Once I even happened upon an eleven and when no one was looking, tried them on. Suddenly, birds were singing and horns were blaring. They were comfortable!

I heard your feet, nose and ears never stop growing. They even keep growing after you’re dead. If that’s true, I would hate to be one of those people who have the job of exhuming bodies when the cops suspect the wrong person is buried there. Dead people with big feet, noses and ears has got to be a horror story. What kind of sick joke is that anyway? The things you want small, keep growing? Why can’t my breasts keep growing? Or even my hair? (Did you know that after a while, hair gets old, breaks off and won’t grow any longer depending on things like genetics and diet? It looks like it stopped growing but it’s actually just breaking off at a certain spot. My hair has never gotten past the middle of my back no matter how much I wanted to be a blonde Crystal Gale when I was sixteen. I had visions of swinging it to and fro and brushing it back with my pinky but no go.)

At any rate, I felt like the Converses took ten years off me. I told the salesgirl I’d wear them home and put my old grandma shoes in the box. Then, feeling cocky, I went into Hot Topic. But you’ve got to draw the line somewhere. I don’t think lime green corsets with black lace edges and skulls-and-crossbones designs would look good on me. I just don’t have the skin tone.

The Artist in the Family

The new look of this blog was created by my daughter Jamie Ferraioli, aka Green Girl, who stuck to her dreams and is an artist now. It’s so good to have an artist in the family!

Now if only Kelly would become a car mechanic or a vet, we’d be all set….

Please check Jamie out at: www.magicbeanbuyer.etsy.com or www.greenlovesyou.blogspot.com

Jamie's Lil Dumplins

Jamie hit on something really good! Her Lil Dumplins are selling like hotcakes! And no wonder--look how cute they are! She takes custom orders too, so if you want a Lil Dumplin with something special on its head, just let her know. If you want to see really cute stuff from my cute girl, go to her sites:

www.GreenLovesYou.blogspot.com
www.MagicBeanBuyer.etsy.com