Kristie McEwan's Open Salon Blog

The Prom

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 18:06:56 -0400

Prom is a big deal to most high schoolers. It was to me. A bizarre right of passage of sorts. And I was damned if I wasn’t going to go. I didn’t have a boyfriend and pretty much figured I was not too high on the list of primo invitees. I didn’t have big breasts, genuine blond hair or a long-legged physique. I wasn’t particularly popular, nor did I travel in the upper echelons of the many cliques. So I decided that I would eat my pride (of which I had little) and ask a boy to be my date. I tried three.

The first two, who will remain nameless, were less than ideal romantic partners, but good guys. I think they were both shorter than I was. They were neither handsome, nor witty, nor charming. Their only redeeming factor was that I had known them since junior high.

They both turned me down.

Then, one day in my science class, I was sitting next to a very attractive guy while we waited for our fetal pig to defrost so we could dissect it. Maybe it was the formaldehyde fumes, but I bit the bullet and tried for the third time. This time the answer was YES. Though he was one grade younger, he was sweet, and, as I have said, quite cute.

Well, that little YES set the ball rolling. I had to get a dress. It cost $40 dollars and I think I bought it at I. Magnin in the Sherman Oaks mall. The dress was white, floor length and sleeveless. I honestly had no intention of looking virginal, but I guess that was the effect. And, if truth be told, it was true.

On the weekends and during vacations, I worked in the camera store at The Farmer’s Market—now better know as part of The Grove. My bosses were a childless married couple. He was Mormon and she was Christian Scientist--- which eventually led to her death. They were old family friends. The woman really got into my prom experience and lent me a beautiful white shawl. From somewhere or the other a pair of elbow length gloves appeared.

On the day of the prom, my friend Monica and I drove to the Sunset Strip to have our hair done at a fancy salon. The woman doing my hair used the word “groovy” and Monica and I looked at each other. “Groovy” was now déclassé. With enough hairspray to hold up the Leaning Tower of Pisa we left to don our gowns. My dad took many pictures of me in the living room at Angus Street.

When the doorbell finally rang, my date stood in an ordinary suit, not a tux. Though extremely handsome, I was a little disappointed. I don’t remember if he brought me a corsage like they did on “Father Knows Best.” I climbed into his forgettable car and we drove to Burbank and up the hill to The Castaways restaurant.

Sitting at the dinner table, I do remember. It was awkward. Dancing, I have no memory of. In the car, on the way home, he stated a “fact” that I knew to be wrong. I pretended to agree with him. But at that moment I made a vow to myself that I would never play dumb for a guy again. That was our only date.

He went on the become a very successful pop musician and then soap opera star on The Bold and The Beautiful, where he still works. He still looks good. I, on the other hand, have not had the benefit—nor the desire—for “help” from Hollywood…. if you get my drift.

I’m glad this was before the days of rented limos and post prom hotel rooms. I’m glad we just drove home and I learned a lesson about being the true me.

The STUFF of Life

Wed, 1 May 2013 21:05:02 -0400

I may have grown up in Silver Lake, but I no longer live there. I have moved many times from the house on Angus Street. And in a year, I will be moving again. This leads to the question: What do I do with the STUFF of life?

I am not a pack rat and purge belongings regularly. This was a necessity in the days when I could carry everything I owned from one country to another, and continued when everything I owned would fit in the trunk of a used Ford Maverick. Those days have gone. Still, Goodwill and Salvation Army are not unfamiliar with my drop offs.

BUT, there are some items that have come into my possession that have me wondering about the ethics of their final disposition. The item that has me the most conflicted is the American flag that draped the casket of my mother’s first husband. He died of polio during World War Two, and my mother saved the flag until her own death. She and my father would occasionally hang it on the Fourth of July and then stow the neatly folded triangle in a plastic case at the top of a hall closet. When my mother and father had both passed away, the flag remained. My sister didn’t want it, and nor did I, but I took it. I really don’t want to take it on my next move and I don’t know what to do with it.

Another item that has me in a quandary is a rather unattractive needlepoint pillow that my mother made from a kit. Once again, neither my sister nor I wanted it. To ensure that the pillow made its way out of her life and into mine, my sister sneaked it into my luggage. It now lives in my basement. Perhaps I should sneak it back to my sister’s house some day.

My husband’s father’s linen jacket sits in our office closet. My husband has never worn it and never will. It serves only as a memory of his father. I have my aunt’s Hong Kong made black and gold embroidered dress and jacket that will never fit me. And there’s the blouse that a well meaning friend gave me, the glass lobster brought back from a European trip by another friend and the beaded purse that was a gift from a visitor from China. None of these things are items I wish to take to my new home. But each has its clutches into memories and emotions.

What about the “challenged” clay art made by my four-year son, or the candles given to me by my mother that I’ve never put a match to? There’s the rather ugly gold-tone watch that my husband gave me as a wedding present because the name of the brand was “Corvette” and he’d heard me talking about Chevy Corvettes every time DALLAS would air on our tiny black and white television in Edinburgh. No one would want these things…and I don’t either. But I can’t quite part with them.

There’s the cookie cutter in the shape of my two year old’s hand, the masks given me by well meaning people who knew I collect masks, but not which kind, and the cups and saucers from some distant relative of my husband that someone somewhere might like to display on a wall. Just not me. What about all the high school senior portraits with heartfelt messages that I have acquired over the years as a teacher? Do I want to become one of those people who bring out a box of mementos every year to relive my life? No, not yet.

A few months ago I cleaned out the filing cabinets and got rid of five trash bags of letters of recommendations, school transcripts, contracts and virtually anything work related. No need for it now. If I ever decide to go back to work in education they’d be damned lucky to have me and a letter from someone who is probably dead isn’t going to help

Then there’s the holiday STUFF: the ornaments that are ugly and the felt stockings made by a deaf great-aunt in the 1950’s.

And lastly, there are the clothes of the babes. I am 62 and still have a yellow hand-knitted infant jacket that someone made for me. I have two sweet sweaters from St. Stephen’s Street in Edinburgh that I bought for my son. On has spit-up stains and the other has moth holes.

This is the STUFF of my life. It will eventually go. But how long that will take, I do not know.

Audience

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 16:04:13 -0400

On this blog, one that I care quite a bit about, there is a statistics page. It tells me how many people have read my blog and from what countries.

It seems that many people around the world are reading Silver Lake. Some of the countries mentioned in the ”Audience” report are: Germany, Russia, Turkey, France, Great Britain, Mexico, Malaysia, Australia, Slovenia, Nepal, Latvia, Canada, Sweden and, of course, the United States. Obviously, some of you are repeat offenders.

I would love to hear from you. Send me your comments and tell me what you think, and what you want to know.

Let’s make this a two-way street.

Farewell

Tue, 25 Dec 2012 14:12:08 -0500

When I was a small child, toddler, perhaps, one of the growing members in my vocabulary was the “word” mags-mags.” I have been an aficionado of magazines from early on.

Today I heard that NEWSWEEK would be biting the dust and I felt the compunction to send off the publication with a little tribute.

I remember coming home from school and seeing freshly received magazines on the round table in front of the fireplace. I loved going through LIFE and National Geographic. For a time, I found TIME and NEWSWEEK out of my realm. But I grew into them. TIME and NEWSWEEK, especially, became my friends when I lived for five years in a variety of foreign countries.

I still have a fondness for the 1970’s issue that had Joni Mitchell on the cover. It kept me company for many hours at Victoria Station in London as I waited for my train to a German Christmas. Or the time I used my sparse kroner in Stockholm to buy an issue to read on the journey to the Soviet Union (as it was at the time). Unfortunately, the cover picture on that issue was of recently exiled author Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Wanting to get my money’s worth I hid the magazine under my seat on the train as I crossed over the border. A guard came and inexplicably lifted my cushion and took the magazine. Big Brother WAS watching.

BUT, having done a quick Google search of these issues I now realize that they weren’t NEWSWEEK at all. They were TIME.

In any case, farewell to NEWSWEEK.

FEAR: In the aftermath of the Sandy Hook shootings.

Sat, 15 Dec 2012 13:12:04 -0500

Fear: Written in the Aftermath of the Connecticut School Shootings.

When I was a child growing up in Silver Lake I remember three distinct times that I was really afraid. Comparing those three times to the horror and fears that the students and parents of Sandy Hook Elementary School have experienced cannot equate.

I like to think that my five-year-old grandson’s fears consist only of me singing “Merry Christmas, Darling.”

I had never seen a dead body, nor had I even attended a funeral. My three fears were of a grasshopper in the back yard, the fact that my father—being much older than my mother—would die, and, thirdly, feeling terror at watching the scene in Ben Hur with the lepers. Each of these situations was dealt with by different means. With the grasshopper, my dad carried me outside to try to show me that the insect was of no harm. With my father’s age, I came up with a ploy that calculated his age and mine and that by the time he was in his 70’s I would be in my twenties and able to deal with things like death. I was 8 at the time and 20 seemed a long way off. And with the leper scene, I crawled into bed with my little sister.

I cannot image how the children and witnesses of the Sandy Hook killings will deal with what they’ve experienced.