Frogsong

Around February, something wonderful happens where I used to live.  The frogs in the ponds around my old house used to sing for their loves.  Every year, just like magic, the nights went from a silent, cold winter repose to a cacophony filled with the voices of lovelorn amphibians.  I knew this, I anticipated it.  The years it happened earlier were warmer.  The years it happened later, when the frogs sang in mid to late March, tended to be colder with snowy winter days.  I called this time “Frogsong,” and I would celebrate it like an old pagan celebrating anything that had to do with the seasons’ changing.  I was even known to bake a cake for it.

Right now my heart is a little frog.  It is singing for its friends.  It is singing for its home.  It is singing for Vashon Island. 

It sings for Angela, and it sings for Welch. 

It sings for my little pottery studio (even if I never used it). 

It sings for my surrogate sister and her family. 

It sings for Thriftway’s lunch room, it sings for the Deli, for sweet Bell and Judy; and Katie's shy glances.    

It sings for old apple trees and salty sea breezes. For all the babies booming like blackberry seeds.  

There are a thousand and one things that my heart is chirping for and I miss everything: lost deli brothers, and knitting Christmas hats; saxophone players, horse riders, and motorcycle mechanics; cupcake friends and clandestine trips to the mainland at night; a two mile dog walk around my old loop, and my little black cat back home on his stoop (he has to make do with city kitties now.  I wonder if his heart yearns for our old home, too). 

Maybe I need to make my heart a cake.  After all, I used the heart shaped pans to make the frog in the first place.  

Frank: a Fashion Icon

So Joseph and I were getting ready to go somewhere and I realized I was pairing a striped scarf with a striped sweater, and I thought it was pretty cool.  I threw my arms out and showed Joseph.

“This outfit says I love stripes,” I said.

“Oh,” Joseph replied dryly, “is that what it says?”

Everybody is a critic.  But it got me thinking about what we were going to wear for our wedding.  Joseph and I have very different styles.  He’s all flannel and I’m everything else. 

We know I am no stranger to a wedding dress.

But I really use it more as a costume. 

I used to knit everything.

Even socks.

Lord knows I can rock a pearl necklace.

I make my own hats.

I wear the poop out of store bought hats.

The poncho is a must have for walking dogs or growing tomatoes.

The storm trooper hoodie is chic and not at all invocative of white supremacists.  Okay, maybe it is, I apologize. 

I’ve been known to be a princess.

But I have my signature specks that come from Joseph and his military days.  I had my prescription put in to avoid bumping into things and looking like a dork. 

I’ve been draped in flowers.

What else could I possibly put myself into after all these years?  A purple turban, maybe?  Nope, did that. 

What should a fashion icon wear on his wedding day?  

Deb Rhinoceros

When Joseph and I moved to Vashon Island, we had a dream of living in a small town again, like each of us had before we moved to Seattle.  And the first year we lived there we struggled to commute, leaving the house two hours or more before we had to be at work to ensure we would make it on time.  A year into our new chapter, I had the privilege of getting a job at the Deli, and if you live on Vashon, or know Vashon, you know THE Deli. 

The people I worked with ranged in ages from kids still in school and dreaming of what life would be when they grew up to grandparents looking forward to hearing from their children to see how the first day of school went for their grandchildren.  These people quickly became friends.  It felt so strange how much I LOVED going to work.  I looked forward to it every day, and even though the work was hard and the days were challenging, I always came home feeling like I had had fun. 

I was making a burrito for a customer one day (THE Deli has a burrito bar which is arguably the best in the Puget Sound area) and all of us workers were talking and laughing and bantering like we always did.  My customer looked at us while I was wrapping his enormous burrito up, smiled, and told me, “It’s like Thanksgiving in there; you guys are all talking and cooking.”  And that’s when it hit me: these people weren’t just friends.  They were my family.  I enjoyed coming to work every single day because I loved cooking and talking with these people like it was Thanksgiving. 

I had my sisters who I could tell anything to (Angela, Judy, and Angela).  I had my wild aunts (Debbie, Shelly, and Deb).  I had my sweet uncles (Chris and Unkie Jeff).  And I had my wayward brothers who always seemed to be in trouble (the Ryans).  And of course I had a whole cast of cousins and characters that all fell under Norm who was our Grandpa and the owner of our little Thanksgiving kitchen. 

As I said, there were two Debbies, who were both called Deb, but never Deborah.  And one of those Debs had a last name that sounded a lot like rhinoceros.  One day, when I had a little more time on my hands than I should admit seeing as how I will now have to answer to Grandpa Norm and my Deli crew, I drew a picture of Deb as a rhinoceros and wrote under it “Deb Rhinoceros.”  Deb loved it dearly.  In fact, after I had made an anthropomorphic animal caricature of all the Deli workers, Deb had hers laminated and said that she took it home and treasured it forever, which made me smile. 

Deb Rhinoceros, the woman not the caricature, loved pink, and used to thrill the customers with her daring combinations of matching earrings, necklaces, and ponytail holders, not just in pink, but every shade of the rainbow.  I remember a four year old girl who used to get just as excited to see Deb as other kids would get to meet Mickey Mouse.  And Deb was a hard worker, who took control of the hot case and the comfort bar with a zeal that astounded the rest of us some times.  You always hear about those police officers, or firefighters, or EMT’s who should be lauded as heroes.  I don’t dispute that they are heroes, but people never stop to think how much of a hero someone like Deb was.  She kept the food temperatures hot and safe for consumption.  She made sure her sanitized water was always fresh and ready to go.  And if something came to her that didn't meet her quality standards, Deb had no problem sending it back.  Sure, EMT’s are the first ones on the scenes to save someone who collapsed, but people like Deb save others from food poisoning every day without a big fuss being made of it.  How many people have touched the last meal you ate at a restaurant?  I guarantee you, if they were half the workers Deb was, you had yourself a safe and sanitary meal. 

Whenever power went out at the island (and once my neighborhood was without power for nine days) Deb was at the front of the line feeding the masses hot meals.  The island can go from affluent, well-to-do people living in a scenic place to a refugee camp with one flick of the generator switch.  Those days were always demanding, with lines going out the door.  We were all exhausted and simply flooded with people who were grateful for a hot meal, and people who were outraged we didn't have more food to offer, and you never knew which person would be which type.  Deb served them all with grace and poise like any of us would do. 

Deb had me knit two hats for her granddaughters once.  She loved those little girls so much.  I remember, one hat was pink and one hat was lavender.  Both were made with stripes and ear flaps attached.  I made the pink one first, but waited a month or so before I knit the lavender one.  I was sad to discover that I made the lavender one too big; my gauge had slipped a little.  Deb was so sweet.  She assured me it would be okay, and gave the hats to her granddaughters anyway.  I was told the big hat is now used as a purse to carry dolls around.  Thank goodness it had ear flaps that could easily be made into a purse handle! 

Debs health began to fail her while she was working at the Deli.  Her heart or her lungs just couldn’t keep up with the job anymore.  And it was a crisis for all of us at the Deli.  Deb was having trouble keeping up with the demands of lunch rushes and customers.  It was a very hard and emotional thing for the management and those of us who had to talk to her about it to do to convince her it was time to put her own health first and retire.  And she took the advice.  When she left, there was a hole in our little world.  The corner where the hot cases were was never quite the same.  Many times I have heard one crew-member or another lament the fact that no one owned that part of the Deli like Deb did. 

But Deb was still with us.  She still came in to buy sliced meats and talk to us.  She still came by to show us pictures of her grandchildren.  And glory be to Facebook, through which, Deb was able to communicate with us whenever she pleased.  She read each and every one of my blog entries and commented on them all the time.  Even blogs that received very few hits had a comment from Deb, my biggest fan.  So, last night, when I was in a grumpy mood and arguing with Joseph, I went to look at Facebook and saw that Deb Rhinoceros was no longer with us.  Her sweet spirit has left us and all we have now are memories of her and an empty corner in a deli. 

Deb, I miss you.  I haven’t seen your face in a while, and I haven’t been on Vashon Island since May, but knowing you are not there fills me with such a void.  I love you. 

The Deli is still my family.  Those people are still my brothers and my uncles and my sisters.  But like every family, it grows and it changes.  Nothing can stop time.  Somehow I always think that the things I leave behind will stay the same, and they never do.  I wish so desperately I could hold those years in a bottle, keep them fresh and the same forever.  Deb wasn't just my friend.  She was a part of my life.  And my blogs will never be the same without her doting little notes on the Facebook links. 

Mermaids

I have loved mermaids so long in my life I can’t even remember learning what they were.  I only remember loving them.  My hometown, Sandpoint, Idaho, capitalizes on its winter weather every year in January to put on a Winter Carnival.  Part of the festivities is a snow sculpture contest and the artists and amateurs alike come out to compete.  Each year has a theme, and in the winter of 1981 or 1982 had the theme of mermaids. 

I remember being in Dad’s truck as he drove Mom and me and my brother Randy around to see all the sculptures.  Some mermaids slid down waterfalls in front of sporting good stores.  Some mermaids swam with dolphins near the grocery market.  There were mermaids with long hair, and mermaids with shells held to their ears, and they were all gleaming white in the winter sunlight. 

Once, another time, Dad revealed one of his coffee tins of childhood treasures.  Of course it was all junk, but he had four cocktail mermaids—you know the kind, those plastic mermaids whose arms link over the rim of a cocktail glass while their fins serve as skewers for fruit or olives.  I remember the thrill I had when I realized what they were.  Dad gave them to me, and Mom gave me a little match box she lined with cotton to serve as their mermaid bed.  There was a pinkish one, a red one, an orange one, and a green one.  I loved the pinkish one the best. 

One day we were fishing, the whole family.  Mom and Grandma were kind enough to fill up Grandpa’s thermos cap with water, and I put rocks in it to.  This became the pool for my mermaids to swim in while we fished.  Grandpa came along, saw that his thermos cap was full of rocks and water and cast the whole thing into the slough, mermaids and all.  I cried out for my friends and sobbed and sobbed. Grandpa felt pretty badly, and Grandma promised me there was a mermaid she would give me at her house.  This mermaid was a glass bottle with a metallic crown for a lid.  She could be filled with water Mom tinted with food dye and I usually made her pink. 

I used to use an afghan my Great Grandma owned to wrap tightly around my legs which had a lovely zigzag pattern that reminded me of scales.  This served as my mermaid tail for many under the sea adventures in my Grandma’s living room.  And when I discovered the story of “The Little Mermaid,” it was like a revelation to me.  It may go without saying, but my first tattoo was of a mermaid.  I drew her cupping her hands to receive a bubble with her blonde hair caught in watery currents.  I will always be a mermaid.