Tensile strength to etch glass. Surprising delicate underpinnings. Secured in a row of imperfect squares. Striking from a distance; a stunner up close. Handcrafted from earth’s most precious resources: platinum and diamonds. Mirroring the hand that wore it for thirty-five years, the ring is rare indeed.
My mother’s hands were always in motion; knitting, weeding, eating, figuring, this ring flashing rainbows. Her bejeweled fourth finger disturbingly competing with the unfiltered Chesterfield she held firmly between her first and second. This one piece of jewelry is the only thing I ever saw my mother purchase for herself.
I knew my mother was a designer clothes and hats shopaholic. The evidence filled two walk-in closets. I had heard the tale of my mother shocking the shoe clerk at Marshall Fields when she bought seven pair of high-heals at once.
“Ma’am. Have you made your selection?” queried the weary though polite salesman.
With her arm majestically sweeping above the open boxes, she replied “Well, what do you think? I am buying all of them!”
In my minds eye, the kindly curmudgeon fell off his tripod stool as my mother waved her plastic card in his face.
It isn’t a part of the story, but I am certain all those shoes had been on sale. Even greater than
Mom’s desire for fine clothes was her delight in bargains. Our house was full of cut glass, rugs, statues and odd gadgets that didn’t match anything. Hunting a good deal is a family tradition, highlighted by my grandmother’s acquisition of left handed golf-clubs. (She asked my right-handed mother why she just couldn’t face the other way at each tee.) Although these items stuffed my childhood, they held little interest to me.
Jewelry was in a different category. Growing up, I stared longingly at the costume pieces and expensive jewels, housed in equal velvet covered compartments whenever my mother opened the top two drawers of her dressing table. “Look but don’t touch,” she always cautioned. These treasures seemed to appear just like other bric-a-brac, after one of my father’s business trips or an argument between my mother and grandmother.
When Mom’s hands became handicapped with rheumatism, she passed her jewelry collection on to me. I deeply love each and every bit, baubles and heirlooms alike. However, it is the filigree ring capped with three round diamonds set flat in platinum squares that touches the deepest part of my heart. I witnessed its birth into my family.
When the ring was new to us, it was already old, uncovered under the brilliant lights and thousand reflections of a Hot Springs Arkansas auction house. At twelve years of age, I was overwhelmed by the assortment of people and could smell their excitement. I perched proudly between my mother and grandmother, the only youngster in the huge gallery. The short, bald man on the raised platform began shouting fast and jumbled words. How could anyone understand him?
Before I knew what happened, my mother was holding a small satin box. As she lifted the lid my grandmother hissed, “Barbara, what have you done?” Seeming more shocked by her own audacity than pleased with her purchase, Mom showed me the antique. Out in the street, where grandma had shoved us, the ring looked smaller and duller than expected.
For a long time, I remembered this event with more worry than joy. For the first ten years she wore it, when it replaced her wedding rings, my mother feared she had been coned out of her hard earned money. Was the ring as bad a deal as the left-handed golf clubs? On the brink of retirement, after selling the house of my childhood and most of its contents, Mom took her one big indulgence to an appraiser. She kept the ring’s value a secret but from that point on, the Hot Springs exploit was recounted with glee.
The ring has been mine since 1995. I wear it with even more happiness than my mother displayed. Rainbows still flash, although my hands are less active. Reading, writing, manicuring my nails or moving a computer mouse, my most precious symbol of family history restores me.
In the next ten, twenty, hundred years, what hand will possess the circle of platinum and diamonds? With Pharaoh like intentions, I have been contemplating entombment. My ring whispers insistently, “Take me with you into eternity.”
Friday, July 18, 2008
Monday, July 14, 2008
Design on a Dime, 1969 (Revised for anthology)
Orange flounces and more orange flounces. Not burnt sienna or tawny suede, but basic orange as found in a Crayola box of five. It was a vision of attention getting boldness. I loved it. My mother hated it. She was an Eve Picone suited woman. Lace, ruffles and especially flounces were time wasters. Orange burlap irritated her sophisticated senses.
“But the orange flounced curtains match the orange flouncing on the skirt around the row of sinks. Matches the closet door covering, too,” I whined.
“I haven’t paid my good hard earned money for you to live in a basement. You’ll catch your death of rheumatism down here,” she countered.
“You don't get it, Mom. Leslie, Diana, Julia and I want to live here in Rood House. It’s the senior dorm. This suite was the last space available.”
“A suite! Is that what you call this dungeon? Your room has two window slits at the ceiling; your study area is the former laundry and the bathroom doesn’t have a proper tub.”
Once she got started, my mother was a steamroller. “Did you see the large windows in Diana and Julia’s room?” I parried.
“So what, I’m not their mother. Windows? Hmmmm, I did notice the door. That’s it, that’s why your so-called “friends” talked you into living in this cave. A nice back door so boys can come and go as they please. Well, I won’t have it. You are not living in a pit without proper supervision for what this is costing me. Dean Jean is going to get a piece of my mind, right now!”
I prayed that the Dean of Women, exhausted by parents’ visiting day activities, was already back in her own home, sipping Darjeeling from a Havilland teacup.
Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, Iowa was Brigadoon for my mother. She had earned her BA in night school while waitressing at my grandmother’s restaurant. Her only child, me, would have the ultimate coed experience she had wanted. We had toured many campuses before reaching the hamlet of Mt.Vernon. It was love at first sight as we drove around a curve and beheld the better than picture-postcard scene of King Chapel crowning the hill with ivy-covered halls of learning spread out below. At that moment, no matter what courses of study were available or how much it cost, Mom decided that her daughter would attend this college. Since Cornell had been selected for its beauty, it was more than ironic that I would spend my senior year in a musty cellar. My mother’s dreams were tarnished by orange flounces.
There was more to my choice than rooming with other seniors or my first opportunity to interior decorate. It was 1969, the time of flower-power and counter-culture. That year a peace rally replaced the homecoming parade. Kent State would occur that spring. One of the few chances I had to demonstrate my newly liberal self was to live in a basement. Besides, Rood House had history and character. Cornell, founded in 1853, was the initial college west of the Mississippi to grant women the same privileges as men. The first women to graduate college in Iowa had lived in one of the three boarding houses that were later joined together to become our senior residence.
Along with its women’s rights association, our “garden apartment” offered various benefits. The space shared by Leslie and I was so small that we had trundle beds. Leslie’s mattress was soft and lumpy, and mine, set perpendicular to hers, was hard and unforgiving. During the day, if we made our beds, one tucked neatly under the other, creating a lavish couch with mustard yellow pillows that coordinated beautifully with the orange flounces. Pulled out for sleeping, my Simmons Beautyrest fought with Leslie’s dresser for space. The result was an effective alarm clock. Spray deodorant had just become popular, so Leslie could leave a cloud of Secret to guarantee I would wake-up coughing. I built a bedside table with a triangle scrap of wood perched on a cement block. To contrast pleasingly with the room’s already rich color palette, I painted it olive green. This accent furniture taught physics. A glass of water, or a can of beer, or a paper cup of wine could never maintain its balance on the tri-cornered board.
Everything was perpetually cold and damp (despite the dehumidifier my mother insisted on buying). The bathroom was the worst. It was a blessing that we did not have a proper tub because we would have fainted from the rotten fish odors before we finished washing our toes. In the mornings, none of us shouted to be first in the bathroom, not because Dean Jean had taught us better manners, but because Diana’s cat spent the night there. Angel was no such thing as he hissed and charged the unfortunate victim who gave in to the call of nature. It wasn’t until April that Julia noticed the radiator bolted to the bathroom ceiling. We all bemoaned our needlessly icy winter. In truth, I had seen this heat-maker in September but didn’t mention it to my friends. I thought it was worth the chilly visits, if only Angel would freeze to death one night.
If you can picture the Twiggy era fashions, orange was very popular. The decision to anchor my scheme with the color of sherbet push-ups had two causes. The first was that orange is Cornell’s unofficial school color. The Orange Carpet was the focal point of the Student Union when it opened in 1966. Referred to as the "OC"it remains the place to be and to be seen. The second, and more significant reason was the sale price of thirty yards of flaming sunset tinted burlap. We established that anything orange would add to the décor. I bought an orange radio and an orange paisley wastebasket. Illinois orange license plates made great wall art because we overlooked the spatterings of black spots. Jack-o-lanterns provided silly grins before, during and long after Halloween. Stolen from food service, a case of oranges highlighted a dark corner even after their citrus scent turned sour. Every Hallmark Store from Cedar Rapids to Iowa City contributed mandarin colored candles. We became Syracuse, Oklahoma State, and Clemson fans and natives of Orange County California. We drank as much Tang as we did beer. If it wasn’t orange, we made it orange. Our teddy bear collections profited from orange accessories. We put family photos, calendars and pictures of Elvis Pressley in orange frames.
My carefully decorated dorm room was more than a forerunner of HGTV’s Design on a Dime. Remarkable events, during that all too turbulent school year, occurred within its garishly illuminated walls. Great philosophical debates and pecking out term papers on manual typewriters took place in the study room. Guys did come and go as we pleased through Diana and Julia’s convenient outside door. However, the real living happened in my orange, mustard and olive room. Diana was standing next to the bug-covered license plates when the mail girl delivered her acceptance to the doctoral program at the University of Chicago. Leslie planned the details of our anti-war sit-in while slouched on her lumpy bed. In front of an audience of stuffed animals with orange bows, I giggled self-conciously each time I practiced the creative writing I had to recite for part of my senior thesis. My first look at Diana’s real engagement ring and Leslie’s fake engagement ring was in the glow of the lamp with the orange shade. After days of staring at weeds through our window slits, I decided to go to graduate school at the University of Illinois, because my ex-boyfriend was there although I knew he would break my heart again. Julia trembled, hunched-over on our orange shag, when she revealed that her student-teaching advisor had sexually intimidated her.
The starkest image is the four of us huddled around my disturbingly cheerful radio. The numbers being announced sounded like drum beats. In 1969, the military began a lottery system ending draft deferments for college students. The randomly assigned numbers of the guys we knew and loved were tattooed on our hearts. As the earliest numbers were called, shrieks could be heard from every corner of Rood House. Those chosen first in the lottery were about to get one-way tickets to Viet Nam. Thankfully, I can usually block that memory by recalling the sweetness of orange birthday cakes, the fizz of Sunkist soda pop, the jolt of license plates falling off the wall, the crash of Diana’s cat breaking my orange vase, the stickiness of orange juice saturating the shag rug, or the dilemma of wearing a flower power blouse or a Clemson sweatshirt.
My mother’s criticism of orange flounces was prophetic. I do have rheumatism. I have never since lived below ground level. In home decorating and attire, I avoid any colors that even resemble orange. As far as I know, Leslie, Julia and Diana no longer consider buggy license plates acceptable wall art.
Actually, when deriding our basement situation, my mother coined our nickname. We were then and are still known today as the infamous residents of “The Pit.” The next year, Cornell replaced Rood House with a science building, denying future students the pleasures of subterranean living. However, in the most important way, my mother was wrong about “The Pit.” Living there was worth every penny she paid for it.
“But the orange flounced curtains match the orange flouncing on the skirt around the row of sinks. Matches the closet door covering, too,” I whined.
“I haven’t paid my good hard earned money for you to live in a basement. You’ll catch your death of rheumatism down here,” she countered.
“You don't get it, Mom. Leslie, Diana, Julia and I want to live here in Rood House. It’s the senior dorm. This suite was the last space available.”
“A suite! Is that what you call this dungeon? Your room has two window slits at the ceiling; your study area is the former laundry and the bathroom doesn’t have a proper tub.”
Once she got started, my mother was a steamroller. “Did you see the large windows in Diana and Julia’s room?” I parried.
“So what, I’m not their mother. Windows? Hmmmm, I did notice the door. That’s it, that’s why your so-called “friends” talked you into living in this cave. A nice back door so boys can come and go as they please. Well, I won’t have it. You are not living in a pit without proper supervision for what this is costing me. Dean Jean is going to get a piece of my mind, right now!”
I prayed that the Dean of Women, exhausted by parents’ visiting day activities, was already back in her own home, sipping Darjeeling from a Havilland teacup.
Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, Iowa was Brigadoon for my mother. She had earned her BA in night school while waitressing at my grandmother’s restaurant. Her only child, me, would have the ultimate coed experience she had wanted. We had toured many campuses before reaching the hamlet of Mt.Vernon. It was love at first sight as we drove around a curve and beheld the better than picture-postcard scene of King Chapel crowning the hill with ivy-covered halls of learning spread out below. At that moment, no matter what courses of study were available or how much it cost, Mom decided that her daughter would attend this college. Since Cornell had been selected for its beauty, it was more than ironic that I would spend my senior year in a musty cellar. My mother’s dreams were tarnished by orange flounces.
There was more to my choice than rooming with other seniors or my first opportunity to interior decorate. It was 1969, the time of flower-power and counter-culture. That year a peace rally replaced the homecoming parade. Kent State would occur that spring. One of the few chances I had to demonstrate my newly liberal self was to live in a basement. Besides, Rood House had history and character. Cornell, founded in 1853, was the initial college west of the Mississippi to grant women the same privileges as men. The first women to graduate college in Iowa had lived in one of the three boarding houses that were later joined together to become our senior residence.
Along with its women’s rights association, our “garden apartment” offered various benefits. The space shared by Leslie and I was so small that we had trundle beds. Leslie’s mattress was soft and lumpy, and mine, set perpendicular to hers, was hard and unforgiving. During the day, if we made our beds, one tucked neatly under the other, creating a lavish couch with mustard yellow pillows that coordinated beautifully with the orange flounces. Pulled out for sleeping, my Simmons Beautyrest fought with Leslie’s dresser for space. The result was an effective alarm clock. Spray deodorant had just become popular, so Leslie could leave a cloud of Secret to guarantee I would wake-up coughing. I built a bedside table with a triangle scrap of wood perched on a cement block. To contrast pleasingly with the room’s already rich color palette, I painted it olive green. This accent furniture taught physics. A glass of water, or a can of beer, or a paper cup of wine could never maintain its balance on the tri-cornered board.
Everything was perpetually cold and damp (despite the dehumidifier my mother insisted on buying). The bathroom was the worst. It was a blessing that we did not have a proper tub because we would have fainted from the rotten fish odors before we finished washing our toes. In the mornings, none of us shouted to be first in the bathroom, not because Dean Jean had taught us better manners, but because Diana’s cat spent the night there. Angel was no such thing as he hissed and charged the unfortunate victim who gave in to the call of nature. It wasn’t until April that Julia noticed the radiator bolted to the bathroom ceiling. We all bemoaned our needlessly icy winter. In truth, I had seen this heat-maker in September but didn’t mention it to my friends. I thought it was worth the chilly visits, if only Angel would freeze to death one night.
If you can picture the Twiggy era fashions, orange was very popular. The decision to anchor my scheme with the color of sherbet push-ups had two causes. The first was that orange is Cornell’s unofficial school color. The Orange Carpet was the focal point of the Student Union when it opened in 1966. Referred to as the "OC"it remains the place to be and to be seen. The second, and more significant reason was the sale price of thirty yards of flaming sunset tinted burlap. We established that anything orange would add to the décor. I bought an orange radio and an orange paisley wastebasket. Illinois orange license plates made great wall art because we overlooked the spatterings of black spots. Jack-o-lanterns provided silly grins before, during and long after Halloween. Stolen from food service, a case of oranges highlighted a dark corner even after their citrus scent turned sour. Every Hallmark Store from Cedar Rapids to Iowa City contributed mandarin colored candles. We became Syracuse, Oklahoma State, and Clemson fans and natives of Orange County California. We drank as much Tang as we did beer. If it wasn’t orange, we made it orange. Our teddy bear collections profited from orange accessories. We put family photos, calendars and pictures of Elvis Pressley in orange frames.
My carefully decorated dorm room was more than a forerunner of HGTV’s Design on a Dime. Remarkable events, during that all too turbulent school year, occurred within its garishly illuminated walls. Great philosophical debates and pecking out term papers on manual typewriters took place in the study room. Guys did come and go as we pleased through Diana and Julia’s convenient outside door. However, the real living happened in my orange, mustard and olive room. Diana was standing next to the bug-covered license plates when the mail girl delivered her acceptance to the doctoral program at the University of Chicago. Leslie planned the details of our anti-war sit-in while slouched on her lumpy bed. In front of an audience of stuffed animals with orange bows, I giggled self-conciously each time I practiced the creative writing I had to recite for part of my senior thesis. My first look at Diana’s real engagement ring and Leslie’s fake engagement ring was in the glow of the lamp with the orange shade. After days of staring at weeds through our window slits, I decided to go to graduate school at the University of Illinois, because my ex-boyfriend was there although I knew he would break my heart again. Julia trembled, hunched-over on our orange shag, when she revealed that her student-teaching advisor had sexually intimidated her.
The starkest image is the four of us huddled around my disturbingly cheerful radio. The numbers being announced sounded like drum beats. In 1969, the military began a lottery system ending draft deferments for college students. The randomly assigned numbers of the guys we knew and loved were tattooed on our hearts. As the earliest numbers were called, shrieks could be heard from every corner of Rood House. Those chosen first in the lottery were about to get one-way tickets to Viet Nam. Thankfully, I can usually block that memory by recalling the sweetness of orange birthday cakes, the fizz of Sunkist soda pop, the jolt of license plates falling off the wall, the crash of Diana’s cat breaking my orange vase, the stickiness of orange juice saturating the shag rug, or the dilemma of wearing a flower power blouse or a Clemson sweatshirt.
My mother’s criticism of orange flounces was prophetic. I do have rheumatism. I have never since lived below ground level. In home decorating and attire, I avoid any colors that even resemble orange. As far as I know, Leslie, Julia and Diana no longer consider buggy license plates acceptable wall art.
Actually, when deriding our basement situation, my mother coined our nickname. We were then and are still known today as the infamous residents of “The Pit.” The next year, Cornell replaced Rood House with a science building, denying future students the pleasures of subterranean living. However, in the most important way, my mother was wrong about “The Pit.” Living there was worth every penny she paid for it.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Not really a book review.
Sorry, this isn't completing the assignment but it is all I could get down tonight.
Being much older and louder, I hoped to intimidate the stupid teacher. I had carefully protected my son all his life and Mr. Frindle was going to apologize for defeating my efforts.
“How dare you show Pet Sematary to seventh graders?” I harrranged.
“Well, it is ed . . “ he blurted before I cut him off.
“If you are going to say that movie is educational, don’t waste my time.”
“But, you don’t understand, watching it was optional, “ he stammered.
“What does that mean?”
“Well, I told the kids that if they didn’t want to watch Pet Sematary or they thought their parents wouldn’t approve, they should just close their eyes and put there heads down!”
Of course, from that point on Stephen King has looked like Mr. Frindle to me. I shouldn’t have been surprised to discover how bright and engaging Mr. King reveals himself to be in Stephen King, On Writing, A Memoir of the Craft. He has made millions with his successful career and Mr. Frindle is still just a teacher.
Reading this part autobiography and part how-to book, I had to respect Mr. King’s professionalism. I had been prejudiced against the horror genre enough to think that he must have just scribbled down his nightmares after a hard night of partying and too much quacamole. I had committed a librarian’s ultimate crime, I had judged his books by their covers.
Being much older and louder, I hoped to intimidate the stupid teacher. I had carefully protected my son all his life and Mr. Frindle was going to apologize for defeating my efforts.
“How dare you show Pet Sematary to seventh graders?” I harrranged.
“Well, it is ed . . “ he blurted before I cut him off.
“If you are going to say that movie is educational, don’t waste my time.”
“But, you don’t understand, watching it was optional, “ he stammered.
“What does that mean?”
“Well, I told the kids that if they didn’t want to watch Pet Sematary or they thought their parents wouldn’t approve, they should just close their eyes and put there heads down!”
Of course, from that point on Stephen King has looked like Mr. Frindle to me. I shouldn’t have been surprised to discover how bright and engaging Mr. King reveals himself to be in Stephen King, On Writing, A Memoir of the Craft. He has made millions with his successful career and Mr. Frindle is still just a teacher.
Reading this part autobiography and part how-to book, I had to respect Mr. King’s professionalism. I had been prejudiced against the horror genre enough to think that he must have just scribbled down his nightmares after a hard night of partying and too much quacamole. I had committed a librarian’s ultimate crime, I had judged his books by their covers.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Design on a Dime, 1969
Orange flounces and more orange flounces. Not burnt sienna or tawny suede, but basic orange as found in a Crayola box of five. It was a vision of attention getting boldness. I loved it! My mother hated it! She was an Eve Picone suited woman. Lace, ruffles and especially flounces were time wasters. Orange burlap irritated her sophisticated senses.
“But the orange flounced curtains match the orange flouncing on the skirt around the row of sinks. Matches the closet door covering, too,” I whined.
“I haven’t paid my good hard earned money for you to live in a basement. You’ll catch your death of rheumatism down here,” she countered.
“You’re missing the point, Mom. Leslie, Diana, Julia and I wanted to live here in Rood House. It’s the senior dorm. This suite was the last space available.”
“A suite! Is that what you call this dungeon? Your room has two window slits at the ceiling; your study area is a former laundry room and the bathroom doesn’t have a proper tub.”
Once she got started, my mother was a steamroller. “Did you see the large windows in Diana and Julia’s room?” I parried.
“So what, I’m not their mother. Windows? Well I did notice the door. That’s it, that’s why your so-called “friends” talked you into living in this hellhole. A nice back door so boys can come and go as they please. Well, I won’t have it. You are not living in a pit without proper supervision for what this is costing me. Dean Jean is going to get a piece of my mind, right now!”
I prayed that the Dean of Women, exhausted by the parents’ visiting day activities, was already back in her own dining room, sipping Darjeeling from a Havilland teacup.
Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, Iowa was Brigadoon for my mother. At the end of the Depression, she had earned her BA in night school at Northwestern University while waitressing full time at my grandmother’s restaurant. Her only child, me, would have the ultimate coed experience she had wanted. Unfortunately, I disappointed my mother for three years, studying philosophy and literature instead of preparing for a teaching career. My dating-life was below par and my grades were lack luster. In my fourth year, I performed the ultimate betrayal; I chose to room with my best friends in subterranean heaven.
I knew my small liberal arts college, with its manicured lawns and pleasing mix of 19th and 20th century buildings, was my mother’s dream. We had toured many campuses before reaching the hamlet of Mt.Vernon. It was love at first sight as we drove around a curve and beheld the better than picture-postcard scene of King Chapel crowning the hill with ivy-covered halls of learning spread out below. At that moment, no matter what courses of study were available or how much it cost, Mom decided that her daughter would attend this college. Since Cornell had been selected for its beauty, it was more than ironic that I would finish my coed experience in a musty, lower-than-ground-level, suite. My mother’s dreams were tarnished with orange flounces.
There was more to my choice than rooming with other seniors or my first opportunity to interior decorate. It was 1969, the time of flower-power and counter-culture. That year a peace rally replaced the homecoming parade. Kent State would occur that spring. One of the few chances I had to demonstrate my newly liberal self was to live in a basement. Besides, Rood House had history and character. Cornell, founded in 1853, was the first college west of the Mississippi to grant women the same rights as men. The first women to graduate college in Iowa had lived in one of the three boarding houses that were later joined together to become our senior dorm.
Along with its history and character, our “garden apartment” offered various benefits. The space shared by Leslie and I was so small that we had trundle beds. Leslie’s half was soft and lumpy, and mine, set perpendicular to hers, was hard and unforgiving. During the day, if we made our beds, mine tucked neatly under Leslie’s, creating a couch with mustard yellow pillows that coordinated beautifully with the orange flounces. Pulled out for sleeping, my Posturepedic fought with Leslie’s dresser for space. The result was an effective alarm clock. Spray deodorant was invented in 1969 so Leslie could leave a cloud of Secret to guarantee I would wake-up coughing. I built a bedside table with a triangle scrap of wood perched on a cement block. To contrast pleasingly with the room’s already rich color palette, I painted it olive green. This accent furniture taught physics. A glass of water, or a beer can, or a paper cup of wine could never maintain its balance on the tri-cornered board.
Everything was perpetually cold and damp (despite the dehumidifier my mother insisted on buying). The bathroom was the worst. It was a blessing that we did not have a proper tub because we would have fainted from the rotten fish odors before we finished washing our toes. In the mornings, none of us shouted to be first in the bathroom, not because Dean Jean had taught us better manners, but because Diana’s cat spent the night there. Angel was no such thing as he hissed and charged the unfortunate victim who gave in to the call of nature. It wasn’t until April that Julia noticed the radiator bolted to the bathroom ceiling. We all bemoaned our needlessly icy winter. In truth, I had seen this heat maker in September. I thought it was worth the chilly visits, if only Angel would freeze to death one night.
If you can picture the Twiggy era fashions, orange was very popular. The decision to anchor my scheme with the color of sherbet push-ups had two causes. The first was that orange is Cornell’s unofficial school color. When the commons opened in 1966, the 25’ x 25’ orange carpet was its focal point. Known as the OC, the Orange Carpet has survived two remodels, and remains the place to be and to be seen. The second and more important reason for my affinity with orange is that I could afford multiple yards of orange burlap. We demonstrated that anything orange would add to the décor. Illinois orange license plates made great wall art because we overlooked the spatterings of black spots. Jack-o-lanterns provided silly grins before during and long after Halloween. Stolen from food service, oranges in orange bowls accented a dark corner even after their citrus scent turned sour. Every Hallmark Store from Cedar Rapids to Iowa City contributed orange candles. We became Syracuse, Oklahoma State, and Clemson alumni and natives of Orange County California. We loved Tang. If it wasn’t orange, we made it orange. My teddy bear collection profited from orange accessories. We put family photos, calendars and pictures of Elvis Pressley in orange frames.
My carefully decorated dorm room was more than a forerunner of HGTV’s Design on a Dime. Remarkable events, during that all too turbulent school year, occurred within its garishly accented walls. Great philosophical debates and pecking out term papers on manual typewriters (before correction tape) took place in the study room. Guys did come and go as we pleased through Diana and Julias convenient outside door. However, the real living happened in the orange, mustard yellow and olive green room. It was the best place to hear the signals of long and short rings announcing which one of us should charge up the stairs to answer a call on the nearest wall phone. Diana was standing next to the bug-covered license plates when the mail girl delivered her acceptance to the doctoral program at the University of Chicago. Leslie planned the details of the anti-war sit-in she organized while slouched on her lumpy bed. Julia sobbed while practicing for her senior violin concert in front of an audience of stuffed animals with orange bows. My first look at Diana’s real engagement ring and Leslie’s fake engagement ring was in the glow of the lamp with the orange shade. Julia was trembling on our orange shag when she revealed that her student-teaching advisor had sexually intimidated her. Staring out of the window slits, I decided to go to graduate school at the University of Illinois, because my ex-boyfriend was there and would break my heart again. Burning her hand lighting our orange candles, Leslie confessed she was failing two courses. When the military draft was reinstated, the four of us stood underneath the mobile of orange doves to scan the list of lottery numbers, seeing but not believing,
My mother’s opinions about orange flounces were prophetic. I do have rheumatism. I have never since lived in a basement or had a home with a basement. My son’s dorm rooms were on the third, eighth and seventeenth floors. My daughter’s first apartment in New York is the turret of a Queen Anne brownstone. In home decorating and attire, I avoid any colors that even resemble orange. As far as I know, Leslie, Julia and Diana no longer consider license plates acceptable wall art.
Actually, when deriding our basement situation, my mother coined our nickname. We were then and are still known today as the infamous residents of “The Pit.” The next year, Cornell replaced Rood House with a science building, denying any other students the pleasures of subterranean living. However, in the most important way, my mother was wrong about “The Pit.” Living there was worth every penny she paid for it.
“But the orange flounced curtains match the orange flouncing on the skirt around the row of sinks. Matches the closet door covering, too,” I whined.
“I haven’t paid my good hard earned money for you to live in a basement. You’ll catch your death of rheumatism down here,” she countered.
“You’re missing the point, Mom. Leslie, Diana, Julia and I wanted to live here in Rood House. It’s the senior dorm. This suite was the last space available.”
“A suite! Is that what you call this dungeon? Your room has two window slits at the ceiling; your study area is a former laundry room and the bathroom doesn’t have a proper tub.”
Once she got started, my mother was a steamroller. “Did you see the large windows in Diana and Julia’s room?” I parried.
“So what, I’m not their mother. Windows? Well I did notice the door. That’s it, that’s why your so-called “friends” talked you into living in this hellhole. A nice back door so boys can come and go as they please. Well, I won’t have it. You are not living in a pit without proper supervision for what this is costing me. Dean Jean is going to get a piece of my mind, right now!”
I prayed that the Dean of Women, exhausted by the parents’ visiting day activities, was already back in her own dining room, sipping Darjeeling from a Havilland teacup.
Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, Iowa was Brigadoon for my mother. At the end of the Depression, she had earned her BA in night school at Northwestern University while waitressing full time at my grandmother’s restaurant. Her only child, me, would have the ultimate coed experience she had wanted. Unfortunately, I disappointed my mother for three years, studying philosophy and literature instead of preparing for a teaching career. My dating-life was below par and my grades were lack luster. In my fourth year, I performed the ultimate betrayal; I chose to room with my best friends in subterranean heaven.
I knew my small liberal arts college, with its manicured lawns and pleasing mix of 19th and 20th century buildings, was my mother’s dream. We had toured many campuses before reaching the hamlet of Mt.Vernon. It was love at first sight as we drove around a curve and beheld the better than picture-postcard scene of King Chapel crowning the hill with ivy-covered halls of learning spread out below. At that moment, no matter what courses of study were available or how much it cost, Mom decided that her daughter would attend this college. Since Cornell had been selected for its beauty, it was more than ironic that I would finish my coed experience in a musty, lower-than-ground-level, suite. My mother’s dreams were tarnished with orange flounces.
There was more to my choice than rooming with other seniors or my first opportunity to interior decorate. It was 1969, the time of flower-power and counter-culture. That year a peace rally replaced the homecoming parade. Kent State would occur that spring. One of the few chances I had to demonstrate my newly liberal self was to live in a basement. Besides, Rood House had history and character. Cornell, founded in 1853, was the first college west of the Mississippi to grant women the same rights as men. The first women to graduate college in Iowa had lived in one of the three boarding houses that were later joined together to become our senior dorm.
Along with its history and character, our “garden apartment” offered various benefits. The space shared by Leslie and I was so small that we had trundle beds. Leslie’s half was soft and lumpy, and mine, set perpendicular to hers, was hard and unforgiving. During the day, if we made our beds, mine tucked neatly under Leslie’s, creating a couch with mustard yellow pillows that coordinated beautifully with the orange flounces. Pulled out for sleeping, my Posturepedic fought with Leslie’s dresser for space. The result was an effective alarm clock. Spray deodorant was invented in 1969 so Leslie could leave a cloud of Secret to guarantee I would wake-up coughing. I built a bedside table with a triangle scrap of wood perched on a cement block. To contrast pleasingly with the room’s already rich color palette, I painted it olive green. This accent furniture taught physics. A glass of water, or a beer can, or a paper cup of wine could never maintain its balance on the tri-cornered board.
Everything was perpetually cold and damp (despite the dehumidifier my mother insisted on buying). The bathroom was the worst. It was a blessing that we did not have a proper tub because we would have fainted from the rotten fish odors before we finished washing our toes. In the mornings, none of us shouted to be first in the bathroom, not because Dean Jean had taught us better manners, but because Diana’s cat spent the night there. Angel was no such thing as he hissed and charged the unfortunate victim who gave in to the call of nature. It wasn’t until April that Julia noticed the radiator bolted to the bathroom ceiling. We all bemoaned our needlessly icy winter. In truth, I had seen this heat maker in September. I thought it was worth the chilly visits, if only Angel would freeze to death one night.
If you can picture the Twiggy era fashions, orange was very popular. The decision to anchor my scheme with the color of sherbet push-ups had two causes. The first was that orange is Cornell’s unofficial school color. When the commons opened in 1966, the 25’ x 25’ orange carpet was its focal point. Known as the OC, the Orange Carpet has survived two remodels, and remains the place to be and to be seen. The second and more important reason for my affinity with orange is that I could afford multiple yards of orange burlap. We demonstrated that anything orange would add to the décor. Illinois orange license plates made great wall art because we overlooked the spatterings of black spots. Jack-o-lanterns provided silly grins before during and long after Halloween. Stolen from food service, oranges in orange bowls accented a dark corner even after their citrus scent turned sour. Every Hallmark Store from Cedar Rapids to Iowa City contributed orange candles. We became Syracuse, Oklahoma State, and Clemson alumni and natives of Orange County California. We loved Tang. If it wasn’t orange, we made it orange. My teddy bear collection profited from orange accessories. We put family photos, calendars and pictures of Elvis Pressley in orange frames.
My carefully decorated dorm room was more than a forerunner of HGTV’s Design on a Dime. Remarkable events, during that all too turbulent school year, occurred within its garishly accented walls. Great philosophical debates and pecking out term papers on manual typewriters (before correction tape) took place in the study room. Guys did come and go as we pleased through Diana and Julias convenient outside door. However, the real living happened in the orange, mustard yellow and olive green room. It was the best place to hear the signals of long and short rings announcing which one of us should charge up the stairs to answer a call on the nearest wall phone. Diana was standing next to the bug-covered license plates when the mail girl delivered her acceptance to the doctoral program at the University of Chicago. Leslie planned the details of the anti-war sit-in she organized while slouched on her lumpy bed. Julia sobbed while practicing for her senior violin concert in front of an audience of stuffed animals with orange bows. My first look at Diana’s real engagement ring and Leslie’s fake engagement ring was in the glow of the lamp with the orange shade. Julia was trembling on our orange shag when she revealed that her student-teaching advisor had sexually intimidated her. Staring out of the window slits, I decided to go to graduate school at the University of Illinois, because my ex-boyfriend was there and would break my heart again. Burning her hand lighting our orange candles, Leslie confessed she was failing two courses. When the military draft was reinstated, the four of us stood underneath the mobile of orange doves to scan the list of lottery numbers, seeing but not believing,
My mother’s opinions about orange flounces were prophetic. I do have rheumatism. I have never since lived in a basement or had a home with a basement. My son’s dorm rooms were on the third, eighth and seventeenth floors. My daughter’s first apartment in New York is the turret of a Queen Anne brownstone. In home decorating and attire, I avoid any colors that even resemble orange. As far as I know, Leslie, Julia and Diana no longer consider license plates acceptable wall art.
Actually, when deriding our basement situation, my mother coined our nickname. We were then and are still known today as the infamous residents of “The Pit.” The next year, Cornell replaced Rood House with a science building, denying any other students the pleasures of subterranean living. However, in the most important way, my mother was wrong about “The Pit.” Living there was worth every penny she paid for it.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
The Bully (Latest Draft)
He was a bully and also my boss. I would pace outside his tightly shut office door hoping to hear something relevant or observe the elite allowed to participate in discussions of great consequence. Once I caught a glimpse of rolls of floor plans, wonderfully cream colored, inscribed with fine blue ink. Messy piles of papers and poster-size abstract sketches on easels were also in my field of vision. How I wanted to be included and make that maze of documents even messier!
My supervisor was a short and slightly built tyrant. As the Dean of Academics, he held the superior position to my Department Chair of Library Services. His black hair, thick mustache and clipped New Delhi accent indicated a cultural background that differed widely from mine. Tehruen Singh (pronounced tuh-roon singed) rigidly believed that women were the lesser sex and forbidden to second-guess men. Therefore, it should not be surprising that, behind his back, the female faculty at the college called him “’to ruin’ your day.”
Having immigrated to America, solo at the age of fourteen, my great-grandmother became the matriarch of a clan of authentically liberated women. Following in the footsteps of my grandmother, who knew everything there was to know about operating a restaurant during the Depression, and the footsteps of my mother, who knew everything there was to know about educating handicapped children, I knew everything there was to know about librarianship. My goodness, I was a published professional with twenty years experience including selecting the menus for a four-day conference of the American Library Association.
Tehruen regarded the college library as unavoidable evil whose all-female staff did nothing to raise its stature. We proved our weak and limited characters by offering peppermints at the checkout desk and just-comfy-enough couches for brief afternoon naps. Proofreading for students and some minor ghost writing for professors was just part of our repertoire. Codling our clients brought the library recognition as the “best” department on campus but only mockery from my boss. We eventually heard, second-hand, that Tehruen had bragged, "My library ladies used every cent I gave them and now the library has the best culinary collection in the Southeast."
Tehruen’s background was hotel management and, like many administrators within the university, his education degrees were honorary. I championed ivory tower teaching philosophies, dedicating myself to causes like the “Right to Read” and the banishment of censorship. The Dean of Academics extolled financial conservation and lived for the bottom line. Tehruen calculated that it was sometimes cheaper to photocopy library books instead of purchasing additional copies and would ruin my day by demanding that I force feed the Xerox machine.
The man who wrote my recommendations and decided my salary favored leadership through coercion. Bi-weekly Dean’s Councils, attended by all department heads, were lengthy and loud. Tehruen jump-started each meeting declaring it would be brief since his goal was to “poke holes in all of your ideas.” Perched around the intimidating boardroom table, snacking on delicacies cooked by our culinary students, our stomachs knotted and I always achieved world-class tension headaches. Co-workers were occasionally awed by my outspokenness, but then, they had never met my mother or grandmother. Besides, as a woman who knew everything there was to know about librarianship, it was my duty to improve on Tehruen’s dictums.
Our battle of wills peaked when plans for the construction of a library for the new campus were in the works. My valuable suggestions for pleasant color schemes and attractive seating arrangements were unjustly disregarded. This was the arena of whip-cracking male architects and cost accountants. Information about the “big move” never appeared on Dean’s Council agendas. Tehruen, with his door tightly sealed, knew I was just as hungry for information as I was for the roast duck being prepared in the adjacent classroom.
After I yipped for attention endlessly, my master did throw me a bone. If I could produce a business plan in three days, he would reveal some secrets about the new campus. Knowing that I had no formal business training, Tehruen was tossing me a challenge rather than an opportunity. At the Midwestern College I attended in the late 60’s, women wore high-heals, but not slacks, to music, education, and literature (but never economics) classes. I was a librarianship theorist, not a practitioner.
My boss was soon to be astounded by the resourcefulness of his “library ladies.” We did have an array of reference materials and research databases at our fingertips. We could also apply uniquely feminine experiences to the project. Luckily for my social life and future business tasks, I had been a founding member and interim president of a new college sorority. Tehruen would certainly not approve of my acquiring planning and organizational skills a la Phi Sigma Psi but, then, he never presided over twenty-six sisters writing a rhyming motto or choosing, in the tradition of Solomon, dark blue and baby blue for sorority colors over purple and white.
With the zeal that would make my female forbearers proud, I lived a three-day cram course in business planning. Of course, I came to understand that the everything I knew about librarianship did not include essentials like load bearing floors and security systems. I was humbled to have taken for granted the financial foundation that supports library services.
Unexpectedly, there turned out to be a method to the Dean of Academics’ madness. When throwing down the gauntlet of the business plan, he advised me to begin with my philosophical goals and objectives, construct the program of services on those, figure what personnel, materials and space were needed to provide those services, and conclude with the dollars and cents to make it happen. Tehruen gave me the inspiration to create a remarkable theoretical and practical document. Mine was an otherworldly learning experience compared to that of a typical librarian.
True to his word, the business plan was my admittance ticket to Tehruen’s office full of paper piles, spreadsheets, and diagrams. Unrolling the cream-colored floor plans was as delicious as I had imagined. Predictably, my boss poked holes in most of my ideas but he acknowledged the need for attractive library seating. I didn’t even try to interest him in dark blue and baby blue paint treatments. How satisfying it was to be a member of the group in the center arena discussing the future of the college.
Tehruen and I have gone in different directions. He has been promoted to Vice-President of the relocated campus and is continuing to ruin the days for faculty members there. I chose not to move and am carrying other crosses in public education. Mutual acquaintances have told me that stories prevail about my Joanne of Arc escapades and that striking aspects of the new library have my touch. It seems that my boss, although still a bully, has come to regard me with some admiration. I miss him; I miss his challenges; and I miss being his “library lady.”
My supervisor was a short and slightly built tyrant. As the Dean of Academics, he held the superior position to my Department Chair of Library Services. His black hair, thick mustache and clipped New Delhi accent indicated a cultural background that differed widely from mine. Tehruen Singh (pronounced tuh-roon singed) rigidly believed that women were the lesser sex and forbidden to second-guess men. Therefore, it should not be surprising that, behind his back, the female faculty at the college called him “’to ruin’ your day.”
Having immigrated to America, solo at the age of fourteen, my great-grandmother became the matriarch of a clan of authentically liberated women. Following in the footsteps of my grandmother, who knew everything there was to know about operating a restaurant during the Depression, and the footsteps of my mother, who knew everything there was to know about educating handicapped children, I knew everything there was to know about librarianship. My goodness, I was a published professional with twenty years experience including selecting the menus for a four-day conference of the American Library Association.
Tehruen regarded the college library as unavoidable evil whose all-female staff did nothing to raise its stature. We proved our weak and limited characters by offering peppermints at the checkout desk and just-comfy-enough couches for brief afternoon naps. Proofreading for students and some minor ghost writing for professors was just part of our repertoire. Codling our clients brought the library recognition as the “best” department on campus but only mockery from my boss. We eventually heard, second-hand, that Tehruen had bragged, "My library ladies used every cent I gave them and now the library has the best culinary collection in the Southeast."
Tehruen’s background was hotel management and, like many administrators within the university, his education degrees were honorary. I championed ivory tower teaching philosophies, dedicating myself to causes like the “Right to Read” and the banishment of censorship. The Dean of Academics extolled financial conservation and lived for the bottom line. Tehruen calculated that it was sometimes cheaper to photocopy library books instead of purchasing additional copies and would ruin my day by demanding that I force feed the Xerox machine.
The man who wrote my recommendations and decided my salary favored leadership through coercion. Bi-weekly Dean’s Councils, attended by all department heads, were lengthy and loud. Tehruen jump-started each meeting declaring it would be brief since his goal was to “poke holes in all of your ideas.” Perched around the intimidating boardroom table, snacking on delicacies cooked by our culinary students, our stomachs knotted and I always achieved world-class tension headaches. Co-workers were occasionally awed by my outspokenness, but then, they had never met my mother or grandmother. Besides, as a woman who knew everything there was to know about librarianship, it was my duty to improve on Tehruen’s dictums.
Our battle of wills peaked when plans for the construction of a library for the new campus were in the works. My valuable suggestions for pleasant color schemes and attractive seating arrangements were unjustly disregarded. This was the arena of whip-cracking male architects and cost accountants. Information about the “big move” never appeared on Dean’s Council agendas. Tehruen, with his door tightly sealed, knew I was just as hungry for information as I was for the roast duck being prepared in the adjacent classroom.
After I yipped for attention endlessly, my master did throw me a bone. If I could produce a business plan in three days, he would reveal some secrets about the new campus. Knowing that I had no formal business training, Tehruen was tossing me a challenge rather than an opportunity. At the Midwestern College I attended in the late 60’s, women wore high-heals, but not slacks, to music, education, and literature (but never economics) classes. I was a librarianship theorist, not a practitioner.
My boss was soon to be astounded by the resourcefulness of his “library ladies.” We did have an array of reference materials and research databases at our fingertips. We could also apply uniquely feminine experiences to the project. Luckily for my social life and future business tasks, I had been a founding member and interim president of a new college sorority. Tehruen would certainly not approve of my acquiring planning and organizational skills a la Phi Sigma Psi but, then, he never presided over twenty-six sisters writing a rhyming motto or choosing, in the tradition of Solomon, dark blue and baby blue for sorority colors over purple and white.
With the zeal that would make my female forbearers proud, I lived a three-day cram course in business planning. Of course, I came to understand that the everything I knew about librarianship did not include essentials like load bearing floors and security systems. I was humbled to have taken for granted the financial foundation that supports library services.
Unexpectedly, there turned out to be a method to the Dean of Academics’ madness. When throwing down the gauntlet of the business plan, he advised me to begin with my philosophical goals and objectives, construct the program of services on those, figure what personnel, materials and space were needed to provide those services, and conclude with the dollars and cents to make it happen. Tehruen gave me the inspiration to create a remarkable theoretical and practical document. Mine was an otherworldly learning experience compared to that of a typical librarian.
True to his word, the business plan was my admittance ticket to Tehruen’s office full of paper piles, spreadsheets, and diagrams. Unrolling the cream-colored floor plans was as delicious as I had imagined. Predictably, my boss poked holes in most of my ideas but he acknowledged the need for attractive library seating. I didn’t even try to interest him in dark blue and baby blue paint treatments. How satisfying it was to be a member of the group in the center arena discussing the future of the college.
Tehruen and I have gone in different directions. He has been promoted to Vice-President of the relocated campus and is continuing to ruin the days for faculty members there. I chose not to move and am carrying other crosses in public education. Mutual acquaintances have told me that stories prevail about my Joanne of Arc escapades and that striking aspects of the new library have my touch. It seems that my boss, although still a bully, has come to regard me with some admiration. I miss him; I miss his challenges; and I miss being his “library lady.”
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
I'm blogging
My instructor has required blogging - so I am blogging! Now my words will last for eternity (or until the USA runs out of electricity).
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