The Invisible Grandfather

Hello friends, thanks for coming over to the Charmer Blog. I don't write many poems but last week one came to me after visiting my grandfather (Milford Mork Sr.) for the first time in many years. The format is extended Haiku, as I call it. Each verse is 5-7-5 syllables. I think. It's a draft. Here goes:

The Invisible Grandfather

99 years old,

he rolls to the locked front door.

Knuckles knock for out.

Others sit content.

He wheels forward, forward.

Hands, feet clumsy sync.

Food placed on his lap

where he might see. Head bowed down

perpetually.

As if he’s sorry.

Sorry he can’t lift his face.

Sorry, no muscles.

Who is this old man?

The teenage caretaker knows

more than I, his blood.

For I don’t see him.

He doesn’t hear me. We are

both nonexistent.   

Thug on the bus? No.

There are violent protests in Cairo.

There is death in Benghazi.

There is one stupid movie that is probably a proxy motive.

There are extremist Christians and extremist Muslims playing their parts.

There is at least one U.S. presidential candidate commenting before facts unfold.

And there is a mother in Des Moines, Iowa, who is worried because her 13-year-old white boy plans to ride the city bus home from school today for the first time. 

She realizes that her worries are perfectly silly, and minuscule, but this is the thing. She's not worried he'll get lost. He's a master at bus routes. She worries because her son has moved into the scrubby teen boy age. His hair is long and covers much of his baby face. He wears undead t-shirts and clunky sneakers. He doesn't talk much, even if you hazard him a "hello." His own mother mostly doesn't know what he's thinking, let alone other passengers on the bus. She's worried that others will think he's a hooligan.

When Trayvon Martin was shot and killed in a Florida suburb while returning home with a bag of Skittles, I heard my friends-of-color talk about their fears for their own teenage sons, for how they might easily be mistaken for a thug. I saw the statistics that backed up this worry. (Statistics, by the way, that are on my side.) I'd never considered this fear before. But as my son grows older and loses his obvious adorability, as he fumbles to figure out how to chat casually with people around him, as he tries his hardest to appear bad-to-the-bone, as he seeks to sow his wild oats -- and yes, for him, taking public transportation is his version of freedom -- I worry. 

I worry because the world seems too quick to shoot accusations, and so slow to listen. So quick to hate, and so slow to listen. So quick to call a press conference and slow to . . . let's all say it together: listen.

My thoughts and prayers go out to all who were killed in Benghazi, including the ambassador and the staffers, and the Libyans who were injured while trying to protect them. And I urge all of us, including all candidates for political office, to get the facts.

I can't help but to offer kudos to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Obama for their spot-on handling of this delicate situation. My thoughts and prayers go to all public officials, citizens, and candidates.

If you happen to see a kid on the bus with death mask images on his t-shirt, don't worry, he's harmless. Like most everyone, he wants to go home.

With love, T

School Office Conundrum

One of her toddler dresses was the color of watermelon. Green and pink with white zig zag piping and black dots like seeds. It had a matching hat. I miss those cute little girl smock dresses my daughter used to wear. We pass through a department store children's section and I still long to buy another one today. She was cute then.

But you know what? She is fun now. As it turns out, the teen years offer as much innocence and inadvertent humor as the pre-school years when my girl would wonder about things such as, "Why are we going the right way?"

These days the funny material comes from her newest thing: working the principal's office during first hour in school. Answering the phones. Helping the secretaries. Filing paperwork. Coordinating students. Typical office stuff. My interest is surely self serving because I've done so much office work in the past 20 years or so. But still, she cracks me up with reports like:

"Mom, they gossip a lot in that office."

and

"Mom, people call crazy mad about the bus company and I have nothing to do with the bus company."

and

"Mom, we had to pass out student ID's this week and it was a madhouse."

and

"Mom, it took me a while to figure out how to transfer calls and I think I hung up on some people."

Sounds pretty normal to me. I have mixed feelings about her office work. On one hand I'm glad she can get the experience. On another, I hope she gets a dose of it then runs as fast as possible in the other direction. I'm reminded why I rarely answer my own phone anymore. My tenure of office work plum burned me out of answering phones, never knowing what the caller was going to say, always knowing that I had to figure out on the spot a way to answer even if there wasn't really an answer. You spin a response on the spot. Receptionist linguistic Olympics. I think I've really made it because I don't have to answer the phone in my current job. For my daughter it goes something like this.

Her: "Roosevelt High School, student speaking, how may I help you?"

Caller: "The bus is late! I want to talk to the principal!"

Her: "The principal is on another line with the bus company."

Caller: "The X@#!% bus is late, I want to talk to the principal now!"

Her: "The principal is on another line resolving the issue with the bus company right now. Can I put you into her voice mail?"

Caller: "The X@#!% bus is late, put me on with the principal!!!"

Her: "But if I put you through, the principal will have to discontinue her conversation with the bus company and thus, not resolve the issue, which is probably the very same issue you are calling about." (OK, she didn't really say that but just thought that response out loud to me.)

That was her first day answering the phones, also her first day of 11th grade.

The only problem is she answers phones during first period, which is the same period that I usually call the school to say that my kid will be late (most always because of me being late in getting her there). Do you see my conundrum? My kid is now the one answering the phone line you call when your kid is going to be late. And the reason your kid is late is because you had to pour another cup of coffee, feed the cats, change your shirt, sleep five more minutes, check Facebook, or whatever valid reason.

The other day my daughter told me that one of her classes was discussion non-verbal communication and political speeches. The teacher showed convention speeches of Paul Ryan and Bill Clinton. They observed the uses of hand gestures and eye contact. "Those guys like to point," she said. But towards the end she was loosing interest in the long speeches, she said.. She was falling asleep in class and apparently wasn't too impressed by Clinton's spellbinding command of relevant factoids. I admit to unabashedly watching every minute of the Democratic National Convention I could, like an idealistic big-eyed puppy who cuddles up close to the we're-all-in-this-together mentality.

Since my daughter and I were on the topic of convention speeches I mentioned that Iowan Zack Walls would be speaking. "He's the one who testified at the Iowa legislature about having two mom's," I said to my speech-analyzing daughter. "Remember, it went viral on You Tube."

She said Paul Ryan was charismatic and could really hold a crowd. "Paul Ryan talked about marriage a lot," she said.

And then it was a slow motion moment. You know, when you see something click. When the air shifts and the person you're with stops and thinks "wait a minute" in a cartoon bubble above her head.

"Wait a minute," she said, "What do they say about marriage?"

As in who can and who can't, who's legitimate and who's not, who's in and who's out. As in, she got to that glorious place beyond the non-verbal communication and wanted to explore the real communication. What are they all really saying? She knows and loves gay cheerleaders, got a good dose of anti gay bullying talk at the ELCA Youth Gathering, plus we watch Glee and have friends at church in committed relationships. So civil equality genuinely holds her interest.

I think in that moment, she realized that a single word can mean two things, depending on who says it and what their record is. Details matter. Marriage on prime time this week was way different than marriage on prime time last week. And I didn't even get a chance to chat with her how different again marriage is in the Bible. (Put it this way: definitely not one man, one woman.)

My lunch break was going long and I had to rush back to my office. I would've loved to continue the conversation because for that moment, she was into the discovery.

I remember another adorable toddler dress. It was light blue denim and had layers of ruffles. Like a denim wedding cake she wore with sneakers. The dress was play-in-the-dirt sturdy so she could rough around while still looking cute. She always was that blend of girly and its anti. A be-ribboned cheerleader who slobs around on weekends. She used to painstakingly dress up her Barbies and then methodically rip off their heads. Presently, we have a box full of decapitated dolls in the garage. We have a house full of dilapidated hair paraphernalia tucked in corners and drawers.

Who knows what children think or how they'll turn out? I have a lot of hopes, but really I have no idea. For now I'm simply enjoying the ride, grateful for every moment. These days when I need a little laugh all I have to ask is this: "So how was the office today?" I might get a some gossip, the transcript of a nutty phone conversation, or I might hear something like this:

"Mom, I like office work but I don't think I'll sign up next semester. I'm taking a class instead."

Huh? It took me decades to get to that place.

Thanks for coming over to the Charmer Blog. Wishing you all the very best. xoxo

Cheers, T