Anne Camille Jongleux's Open Salon Blog

Spring: Lyric Lament

Sun, 15 Apr 2012 16:04:12 -0400

I sat on the river rock bank

to watch samaras ride

ripples in the current,

bypassing the opposite shore,

running over flooded banks,

swimming around snags.

I composed two poems -- or was it three?

Perfect in meter, complete metaphor,

lyrical quicksilver stream,

whispered to the trees

and the emerald green bug

and the nesting robin for approval.

As I stood to leave, they hitched a ride,

were carried off downstream,

wild wordseeds on the wind.

An Unheralded Milestone

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 13:02:20 -0500

As a parent, there are milestones that nearly everyone seems to mark: when your child grew the first tooth, took the first wobbly steps, spoke the first words. As they grow older, other milestones loom on the horizon for a time, and then fade into the recesses of scrapbooks and memories: first day of school, first sports team, first recognition for something outstanding, first night away from parents, first time at summer camp, first crush, first job, first broken heart.

Each year is full of many such memories and they speed by rapidly. How many parents haven’t shook their heads as high school graduation approached and wondered how those 18 years sped by so quickly? As my friends’ children have left the nest, their paths and timelines have differed from my son’s. Even most of his friends have taken different routes, each exiting from the parental highway at different points, ready to travel their own adult byways. Most of my son’s high school friends had graduated from college by last year and all have landed some sort of initial, post-school job. My son, however, was in a five-year program and has had to plow through the last 18 months knowing that his goal lay a little further down the road.

Now, with only a few more page flips of the calendar, graduation will be here — and, just as quickly, will be gone. This signals big changes, both for my son and for me. Two days after earning his degree in Aeronautical Engineering at Purdue University, he will be commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the US Air Force. About a month later, he will report for active duty and will begin his aircraft training programs. Although I’ve known for five years that this was his plan – his choice, his path, his chosen career — it all became very real, full with a few moments of palpable anxiety when he told me last week that he had received his official orders. I know that the next two months will be full of milestones, big and small.

Yesterday, he was in town for a dental appointment. After the teeth cleaning and the saying of goodbyes and wishes of much success from our dentist, I drove him back to Purdue. Standing on the front porch of his stereotypical ramshackle off-campus student house, I turned to him and said: “Well, I guess I’ve fulfilled my parental duties as far as dental care goes.”

He smiled.

“And you have pretty teeth too!” I added.

“I still don’t — and won’t — smile showing my teeth. Animals see it as an act of aggression, you know. Domination,” he replied. We both laughed.

“You did a good job” he said. His freshly polished teeth gleamed in the bright afternoon sun. “No cavities. Ever.”

It’s a small milestone, one that will fade with time. All those little milestones have filled closets with mementos and my brain with memories, catches of small moments throughout the last 23 years. It makes me feel good, makes me feel proud, but with just a little bit of longing for that small boy who is now a man.

When I arrived home, I placed my keys and phone on my desk. Two of my favorite pictures of him have a permanent place on my workspace: one when he was 19 in which he looks quite handsome; in the other, taken at about 9 years of age, he is wearing a bright green shirt that made his hazel-grey eyes look like sparkling emeralds. He is smiling — big tooth-bearing smiles — in both of them.

I removed the back of the older frame to look through all of the other school photos. I laughed loudly, happy that nobody was home to hear. In all but two photos, taken during those surly middle-school years, you can see his teeth. I won’t tell him this. He might see it as a sign of motherly aggression and domination. Instead, I’ll just smile, proudly.

“No cavities” is not what I would have expected t0 usher in this last transition towards independence, but I think it will remain with me for while, reminding me that I’ve done a good job indeed, and that we are now at the finish line of one phase and at the start of a new beginning.

A Room of My Own with a View

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 09:01:59 -0500

Recently, I decided I needed to make a new creative space for myself. Although we have ample room in our home, I wanted a space that was my own where I could read, write, and edit my photographs. My son, now grown and out of the house, no longer needed the bedroom that has sat vacant for over four years, with vents closed, gathering cobwebs. It seemed the ideal location.

I had begun to tear off the wallpaper a few years ago, but seeing the state of the wall underneath -- prior dart board target and coloring board -- I was discouraged and quickly abandoned my plans to redecorate. Over the Thanksgiving weekend, my son convinced me to begin work again to finish the project. A few applications of skim coat and several coats of paint later, I now have a room of my own, painted in my favorite shade of pale blue, with my desk hauled up from the lower level where it has sat unused, and with bookcases relocated from various other parts of the house. In the corner sits a chair I bought years ago, one of the first pieces of "real" furniture that I purchased. Like the desk, it had been relegated to the basement, unused. I'm happy that it is now back in service near a favorite reading lamp.

Mostly, the windows in the house face westward, looking out towards a hill that rises sharply behind the house, topped with a 200 year old oak tree, so tall that I can spot it a mile away towering over the other trees. But, my new study, my own room with a view, looks towards the East. Though I have lived here for 14 years, I've never had the luxury of savoring the morning view until now. From the window I can look through the trees towards a creek bordered by a public greenway trail. When I bought the house, there were no homes across from the creek, but I am at a high enough elevation that I can still see the water, part of the trail, and the rising morning sun as it peeks over the creekside trees.

When it isn't morning, I can see birds in the trees. Or raindrops, gently rolling off of limbs after a storm. Ants climb up and down the ridges in the hickory trees just outside the window. And, when it is night, I can look at the knick-knacks on my desk, photographs taken over the years, and -- serving as a make-shift art gallery -- a metal lamp adorned with magnets I've picked up over the years at museums. This month's feature is Mary Cassat.

It makes me inordinately happy to have my study, my room of my own, a calm, creative space. And, not surprising I suppose, the chair that husband and son didn't like? It's become one of their favorite spots to sit when I am working at my desk. Perhaps I need to post visiting hours for what they have named "the woman cave".

Santa is just some guy in a cheap suit!

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 13:12:04 -0500

When my son Ben was a toddler, there wasn’t much that his father and I agreed upon, but Santa was one of those things that I was willing to be non-partisan about. While there were never packages under the tree from Mr. Claus, I never told him that there wasn’t a Santa. None of the presents listed a ‘From’; they just were ‘To’.

This scheme worked fine until Ben was in Kindergarten. Although he went to a secular school -- one that went to extremes not to mention Christmas or any religious traditions -- he still found out about Jolly Ol’ St. Nick. One early December day, he came home from a visit with his father in tears. “Daddy says that Santa Claus is just some old guy in a cheap suit!”

“There are lots of Santas,” I explained. “They dress up to represent St. Nick.”

What was I saying? I thought. I couldn’t believe the words I was offering as consolation to the little boy who suddenly questioned something that I had not known he had ever believed.

“That’s not true. It’s not. Santa is real! He brings me presents,” Ben cried.

As a hard-working single mom, I wanted to say “No. I give you those presents,” but I knew I would not be teaching the right lesson about freely giving to others out of generosity and love. So, I changed the subject.

The questioning and the disappointment, however, did not go away. “Daddy says Santa is a cheap suit,” he repeated to his grandmother.

“He is not!” she replied. “He will come down the chimney and leave you presents, but you have to be good.” I gave my mother the ‘look’. “Don’t start the naughty or nice bit,” I snarled to her later when my son was out of earshot.

A few weeks later, Mom called. “Would you like to come for dinner on Tuesday?” I didn’t believe her insistence that there was nothing special going on a few days before Christmas. When we arrived to find a Dumpster in the drive, left by a roofing crew, my suspicions were raised further. Home improvement projects were never an occasion for company in my mother’s book.

“Have you seen Santa yet to tell him what you want for Christmas?” she asked Ben.

I tried to signal to her to drop the subject.

“You need to be a good boy so that he’ll bring you presents,” she said, sending an authoritative mother look my way.

As soon as he was out of the room, I scolded her. “Don’t do that. You’ll just confuse him more. I’ve never told him about Santa but somehow he started to believe in it this year.”

“Every little boy needs to believe in Santa. All his cousins do,” she replied.

“But Mom!" I exclaimed. “It’s so commercial and I can’t afford all of the expensive toys he wants. I don’t want him to think that he isn’t good. Besides, there’s no point in trying to get him to believe now. His father has pretty much busted that myth.”

As we were finishing dinner, my mother tried coaxing my son to clean his plate. “Don’t disappoint Santa Claus. He’s watching,” she said. I rolled my eyes.

Suddenly, there was a noise at the back door, a rowdy “Ho! Ho! Ho!”. In walked Santa: white beard, black boots, and a clean, well-fitted, red velvet suit. “I heard you were here, Benjamin. I was just in the neighborhood.” With the bells on his belt jingling loudly, the jolly old man headed towards the dining room. Ben, terrified, ran into the living room to hide behind the sofa.

Undeterred, Santa followed. “I’m here to find out your Christmas list,” Santa said gently. Slowly, Ben crawled out from behind the couch and walked, hesitantly, towards Santa. Quietly he whispered something into Santa’s ear.

“It’s our secret,” Santa said with a wink. “Now I have to go. You be good for your mother.” As he reached the door, he turned one last time. “We don't want to frighten my reindeer, so you have to wait a few minutes to go outside after I leave.”

“Bye Santa,” Ben said quietly.

Ben came to me and gave me a big hug. “Did you see that, Mommy? Santa!” A minute later, he ran to the back door. “Where are the reindeer tracks, Mommy? Can I go outside to see now?”

“Maybe up on the roof,” said my mother.

“Look!” he said, pointing to a tool the roofers had left on the roof. “I think one of the reindeers lost part of the sleigh. I hope Santa gets home okay.”

As we drove home that evening, while flurries fell on top of old, grey snow, Ben said “Santa can’t keep warm in the snow if he has a cheap suit. My daddy just didn’t know.”

That year, there were similar presents, from an unidentified giver, under the tree for both of us: we each received a book, a sweater, and roller blades. After we opened our presents, I moved all of the furniture out of the great room and we tried out our new skates -- exactly what Ben had told Santa he wanted to do.

I’m not sure when he stopped believing in Santa, but it wasn’t until he was an adult that Ben learned that it was the neighbor on the other side of Grandma’s fence who wore his own warm, red suit every December.

Helen and the Rutabagas

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 00:11:12 -0500

The waxy yellow-purple vegetables would sit on the shelf of the fridge for about a week every November. “Those again?” my siblings and I always complained, pushing them aside to find something edible.

“It's not Thanksgiving without rutabagas,” my grandmother would say.

“They're for your father. It's a tradition.” My mother would never have added "from who knows where," but I think she may have thought it. My grandmother made rutabagas with turkey so my father expected them on our holiday table as well. For years, there would be one small rutabaga diced and left to simmer on the stove while the turkey roasted. My father or grandfather would be pressed into service to cut them. My mother always claimed that she didn't have the strength to wield the cleaver through the rock-hard roots. Before we sat down at the table, she would mash them. She always placed them in the smallest china serving bowl, set at the back of the buffet between Grandma's sweet potatoes and marshmallow mush and mincemeat pie -- all the things the kids didn't want polluting their turkey and dressing.

But one year, my older brother, younger sister, and I decided to try the rutabagas. We went back for heaping seconds.

“Where are the rutabagas?” my father asked.

“Right there, near the yams”. My mother turned to see my father holding an empty bowl. “Who ate them? You kids like them?” she asked incredulously. Resignedly, she said that she'd have to make more next year.

After that Thanksgiving, rutabagas became de rigueur on everyone's plate next to the turkey and dressing. If there were not significant amounts of the watery golden mash to go with leftover turkey during the holiday weekend, loud grumblings sounded throughout the house. As my siblings and I grew up and extended our families with spouses and children, rutabagas continued to grace our thankful tables. It was a rite of acceptance for a new partner to try the rutabagas. Skeptical questions of “What's that?” were always answered with “Try them. They're good.” I'm sure at least one of my brothers-in-law might have been told that they must taste them -- or else! -- and there might even have been a few kicks under the table if someone hesitated or showed dislike of the family favorite.

Rutabagas were not to be messed with. As Thanksgiving meals moved from our parents home to those of my sisters, we tried different recipes. Rutabaga slow roasted with apples and walnuts? Too FoodNetwork. Seasoned with ginger? There was a small revolt and it was years before I was asked to make them again.

The last year my father was alive, my sisters and I offered to bring various dishes for the family feast, as we had done for years. “I'll make the rutabagas,” my mother said. But, as Thanksgiving Day drew closer, she started to make calls asking if we had any rutabagas. “No, Mom, but I'll go buy some”.

“No. No. I've already tried. There aren't any. The produce manager at the grocery says that he'll get some in, but none yet.”

Mom went to the grocery several times looking for the shipment. “I don't even know what they taste like” the grocer said, “but, they must be good if you want them so badly. Would turnips work instead?”

“Turnips? Absolutely not! Nobody in my family would think of eating turnips! Rutabagas are delicious and we always have them with turkey. Would you call me if you get some late Wednesday?” my mother asked, handing him a piece of paper with her name and phone number.

But no rutabagas arrived. For a few moments, there were skeptical looks around the table on Thanksgiving Day. “No rutabagas? There weren't any to buy anywhere?” We all shook our heads and enjoyed the rest of the feast although our favorite root vegetable was not there.

A few weeks later, my parents walked into the store. The produce manager spotted my mother. “Helen!” he called. “Guess what? Go to that bin over there near the cabbage and turnips.”

“Thanksgiving is over,” my mother reminded him.

“Yes, I know, but I thought you might want some for Christmas. Go look.” he said, pointing towards vegetables.

My mother followed his directions. As she approached the bin, she started to laugh and pointed excitedly to the vegetables. “Look, honey” she said to my father. “They have them -- just for me.”

There, next to the turnips, parsnips, and squash, were several rutabagas. Above them, a handwritten sign: “HelenBagas”.

“They’re just for you, Helen” the grocer said with a big smile.

“It used to be just my husband who liked them” she said, “but now all of the kids and grandkids do too. I'm not really sure that they should be named after me.” Smiling, Mom picked up several and put them in the shopping cart.

This year, I’ll bring the rutabagas to dinner at my sister’s home. My husband will wield his favorite chef’s knife to cut them for me and he might complain a bit about how the ugly, waxy bulbs will dull the blade. I will boil them, then mash with unhealthy amounts of butter and cream. I might print a small table card to place near the glass serving dish. The Brits may call them swedes. Americans may call them rutabagas. My family calls them Helenbagas. They are as traditional as turkey in my family and synonymous with Thanksgiving love.