Y’all have seen this Polaroid snapshot before, but it demands a repeat look. It’s perfect for Father’s Day. Check out the two Colonel Sanders-type Bow Ties o’ That Day hanging on the wall.
This picture was taken at my M.I.A. 1976 Daddy, Daughter Date night. It was held in the gym of the long-demolished Delta 2nd Ward church. I remember square-dancing with Dad and Grant Crane. When I look back on that night, except for a few moments of Grant, I remember only Dad. Somehow, it seemed no one else was there.
Bow Tie o’ the Day is brought to you courtesy of my oldest sibling, Mercedes. Her given name is Betty Rae, but she’s not fond of it. It’s mostly the “Rae” part that bugs her. And it bugs her bigly! She is known as B.T. (her initials) to most people. But I call her the exotic name, Mercedes. She is definitely exotic, in a Pleasant View, UT kind of way.
Anyhoo… Mercedes sent these photos to me yesterday. The decorative tiger used to be in Mom’s living room but now it lives with Mercedes and her husband, Nuk or Floyd or Kent. Yes, Kent also has “other” names. They are groovy enough people that a single name for each one of them can’t cover their bigly personalities.
I wasn’t surprised to see these bow tie photos show up on my phone. I wasn’t surprised my sister, Mercedes, took the time to cut the tiger’s cardboard “costume” pieces out of the Popsicle box they were printed on, then dress up a fake tiger for a picture. I was amused and appreciative.
I present the photos here to prove that I am not the only person on the planet who does weird stuff with bow ties in order to snap a photo which will then be sent out into the world for others to see. I present them as evidence my sister and I share the characteristic of doing odd things for no apparent reason whatsoever, except the fun-factor. To be honest though, I know Mercedes set up the entire scene just for me. So I guess her stunt truly had an actual purpose: Mercedes wanted to send me some love.
Pillow o’ Dad’s Regular Attire is something I’ve posted photos of before. And I’m sure you will see it again, probably this Sunday on Father’s Day. I’m appreciative someone thought to craft his overalls and workshirts into pillows for us. It is a comfort to me to be able to still touch, hold, and lay my head on Dad’s clothing, even over a decade after his death. I wish the fabric still smelled like him. I miss the man more and more, the longer he’s been gone.
Bow Tie o’ the Day is yet again another sign, coincidence, connection, etc.–whatever word you wanna call it. Bow Tie is the selection my non-wood bow-tie-o-the-month club sent me two days ago. I don’t get to choose what bow tie the club sends, and somehow the perfect specimen showed up in the mail for me at just the right time. My dad was a superior deer hunter who slayed many a trophy buck. How serendipitous is it that buck Bow Tie o’ the Day came to me just when I needed a piece of new neckwear to wear for my huntin’ Dad’s birthday?! Deer, his birthday, Father’s Day, and a buck bow tie I didn’t get to pick out have all come together to help me honor him this week. Everything’s connected, folks. We’re all connected too. You can read the signs.
Bee Bow Tie o’ the Day gives a big Swarm o’ Bees salute to Dad for his birthday. Dad would have been 89 today. He made it to 77, which wasn’t nearly long enough for us. For him, it was sorta two years too long. He was in tremendous pain the last couple of years of his life. He endured it as long as he could, to stay with Mom. He didn’t want her to be alone. He finally listened to her when she told him it was okay for him to let go when he needed to. She told him she’d be okay because all of us would take care of her. He told me (and probably others), a few months before his death, that he’d had 75 great years. The last two years, he said, hadn’t been worth shit. He made it a point to never swear in front of women, so I knew he’d be leaving us soon.
This photo was taken at one of Momo’s birthday parties when she lived at Pleasant Acres. Dad’s in his Ronald E. Wright Uniform of beige workshirt and striped overalls. Mom is being Mom, complete with her just-done hairdo. My late grandma Wright, Momo, looks radiant with her pure, elegant white hair. My late Uncle Wally, who I miss too, is the other fellow. And I remember Momo’s birthday cake was yummy.
Tie o’ the Day is uncanny. It always knows what I’m thinking. I was cogitating about whether to address this topic in this morning’s post, and Tie voted GO AHEAD, before I even asked the question.
I’ve mentioned it before here in TIE O’ THE DAY posts, but I can’t remember ever saying it straight out: I’m a recovering alcoholic. I’m not proud of it, but I’m not ashamed of it either. I say it with humility, not out of humiliation. Those are two absolutely different things.
Today is the 12th of the month, and it’s also the 12th anniversary of my last beer. My sobriety birthday doesn’t always fall on June 12th. I go by the number of days (365 x 12= 4380), not the date I quit. This year it just happens to fall on the 12th.
And then there are AA’s 12 Steps. It is amazing how far you can rise just by taking 12 Steps. I’ve discovered I will have to take some of those steps over and over again for the rest of my life. I am careful with my sobriety, but it doesn’t stop me from living an expansive life. My sobriety is my Faberge egg. I must handle it with utmost care.
I can still be in bars or wherever alcohol is served. It’s not a problem to me that there is always a slew of wine bottles and champagne in our fridge. In fact, it’s actually one of the things which helps me not drink. When I open the refrigerator to grab a Diet Coke, I look those bottles of alcohol straight in the cork and walk away. Some alcoholics can’t do that, but I’m not the only one who can either. We’ve all got our individual ways of dealing with the baggage we carry and the wreckage we caused. And we’ve all got our lines we know we can’t cross if we are going to remain clean and sober. How we deal with our drinking problem is individual to each of us. I’m the only one who can keep me sober. I’m the only one who can keep me honest with myself.
Today, my lucky number seems to be 12. Today, I am clean and sober, just like I was yesterday. But today, I also know it’s dangerous to me if I get ahead of myself and start thinking it will be easy to get to 4381 days. That’s pride, in the worst sense of the word. That bad kind of pride lurks inside every soul. The best we can do is to get more skillful about keeping our negative pride to a minimum. (That’s meant for EVERYBODY about the pride thing, not just those with addictions.)
I still have to tell myself each day, “I can have a drink tomorrow.” So far, that little sentence has worked. “Tomorrow” hasn’t shown up yet. So far, it’s always “today.”
Bow Tie o’ the Day and I are Delta Rabbits to the core. Today we wanted to show you the antlers from the trophy buck I killed when I was 16, on my first and only deer hunt as an actual hunter with an actual gun and an actual deer hunt license. (Dad mounted the antlers for me. What a thoughtful man.) I haven’t explored every nook and fissure of the planet yet, so I can’t say for sure whether or not jackalopes exist. I can only say I’ve never seen one. But I am a jackadeer in this photo, and I exist.
Rabbit + deer = a jackadeer. Or, in my case, a jackaspike. Or, a jackaCaliforniatwo-point.
Hey! Look what I rescued. It’s my ties-themed 100 oz. mini-keg, which was my go-to sip cup for a couple of years after I bought it. Although it cracked inside last year, I never had the heart to throw it out. Its flex straw had a slight crack in it too, and the lid doesn’t fit tightly either, but its tie graphics are too perfect for me. 7-11 doesn’t sell the tie design anymore, so I can’t go buy another one. What’s a girl to do with a cracked 100 oz. ties mini-keg? For the last year it’s been mocking me by sitting in the garage whining out its jealousy of my new, differently designed. I was about to finally toss the battered, cracked mini-keg over the weekend. And then I had a genius idea I can’t believe I didn’t think of last year: DUCT TAPE. I’ll tape the inside cracks and let you know how it works out.
As I searched for the duct tape, Tie o’ the Day and I were contemplating the weirdities of my life. I don’t care who you are or how straight-laced and “normal” your life has been, you’ve found yourself in surreal situations here and there, when you wonder how you got in the predicament, and how you’ll ever get out of it. You didn’t set out to be in the situation. The scenario is so outlandish you couldn’t have purposely concocted it if you had wanted to. And you’re positive no one will believe you when you tell them the story.
Because I am I, I have a zillion of ’em. Because I am I, everyone knows my improbable tales really occurred. I call these odd goings-on My Greatest Hits. One of My Greatest Hits is courtesy of the 7-11 in Takoma Park, MD, in the mid-90’s. It doesn’t star a 7-11 mini keg, just a 7-11 Super Big Gulp cup.
Interstate 95 is the main N-S route on the East Coast. The traffic usually runs at a pretty good clip. I used to drive it every school day morning from Washington, D.C. to Baltimore’s inner city where I taught middle school. My drive to work usually took about 35 minutes.
But one morning, when I was just about to exit the freeway and head into West Baltimore, all lanes of the I-95 traffic going my way came to a halt. That was rare for that particular area of the freeway. Rarer still, an hour later no vehicle had moved a centimeter. Something bigly was surely shutting down the road. (It ended up being a many-car accident.) By that time, I had been sitting in the car for more than an hour. For me, that’s venturing into MUST PEE NOW territory. I had finished my Super Big Gulp of Diet Coke, and I needed to get rid of it. I don’t mean I needed to throw away the cup. A half-hour later, all drivers were still sitting in the precise same place we first were stopped. I was beyond desperation. I had no choice except to do what I had to do.
As a middle school teacher, I learned to always have back-up clean clothing in the car. Out of nowhere, middle schoolers can create unheard of messes, and it’s not uncommon for those messes to end up on the teacher– whether you were anywhere near ground zero or not. It’s nice to have clean clothes to step into. Anyhoo… In an attempt to make myself invisible in my car for a minute, I used my spare clothes to cover my front, side windows. I pulled down the visors. With my empty Super Big Gulp cup, I strategically did what had to be done. The contortionist skills I learned as a teenage mooner came in quite handy. Mission accomplished. Almost.
I extremely carefully got my pants back where they belonged. I opened my door and emptied the cup, which I didn’t want to keep in the car, but I don’t litter. I “baby wiped” my hands. (It was the pre- hand sanitizer era.) Although we had all been stuck going nowhere on I-95 for almost two hours, I felt much better.
As I took my back-up clothes down from the windows, I heard a knock. I was sure it was a cop who would soon give me a ticket for Public Urination or Public Indecency or some such charge that would put me on the Sex Offender Registry. But it wasn’t a cop. It was a soccer mom from the van behind me. She asked, “Can I borrow that cup? I gotta go too.” I said, “No, you may not borrow it. You must keep it. Please, for the love of all that’s holy, keep it. Take these Wet Wipes too.”
I kid you not. Soccer Mom was not the last person to use my cup. I watched my Super Big Gulp cup and the wipes travel up, down, and across a handful of the halted lane,s as we sat parked on I-95 whittling away our time in the pre- affordable cell phone era. The cup that almost ranneth over had a somewhat bonding effect on those who were there that day. That cup was the founder of a different kind of Relief Society. Those of us who got relief became friends for life, even though we didn’t talk to each other and we would never see each other again. We shared a similar moment.
I do not know who ended up with the Super Big Gulp cup and baby wipes.
BTW Speaking of my Delta, teenage mooning career, I once mooned a worker at the Taco Time drive-up window while driving and wearing overalls. Now that is a true and rare skill set. (Yes, young-un’s, Delta once had a Taco Time. And an A & W and an Arctic Circle.)
Sometimes all we need to do in order to have a great day is to see two orange Bow Ties o’ the Day framing a photo of Mom and her just-done hairdo drinking her Pepsi o’ the Day while sitting on her porch in her underwear after just knee-mopping her kitchen floor.
BTW I purposely didn’t use commas in that sentence cuz I wanted it to run on and on. If you’re not sure what effect I’m going for, read the sentence out loud without pausing anywhere.
I cleared out more files yesterday and found these two gems. I figured I could combine them for a two-fer: Bow Tie o’ the Day and Tie o’ the Day. I must say I have no clue why I was attempting to climb into DHS through a classroom window. Nor do I have a clue who was there to take a photo of me doing it. But seriously, who breaks IN to high school? And look at the minuscule amount of weight I was lifting in P.E. How in the world could lifting that not-heavy amount of weight make my armpit sweaty? It’s a mystery.
The neckwear thing was merely a sometimes passion during my years at DHS, but that can be explained by the fact that teenagers are, by definition, not so bright. Teenagers’ brains haven’t caught up with their growing bodies. I was too stoopid to know I was in love with neckwear. I remember I usually wore clip-on bow ties on my baseball shirts to play church softball, but other than that, the wearin’ o’ the neckwear at events was sporadic for me. Still, it’s obvious the whim-seed was there and maturing right along with the rest of me.
Most people mature. They grow up. They learn to think beyond the next two hours. Some people do not. I remember there was a time I was young enough to know all the answers. I’m glad I grew out of being confident I was right all the time, before I did irreparable damage to my life. People who know everything haven’t matured, and often their knowing everything causes them to screw up their lives– and sometimes others’ lives. (Add examples from your own life here.) Successful, content human beings can admit to being wrong and making mistakes. They can admit they will always have much to learn from others and from continuing to participate in new experiences.
As I grow older, I can admit I know less and less about everything. And it’s a tremendous blessing. The pressure is off. I can roll with the world as it is, and I can also try to make it a more loving place in ways I believe in– knowing I don’t have to be right. “Right” lives next door to “perfect,” and I am not perfect.
Being intelligent is one thing. But deluding yourself that you, and only you, know all the right answers for every problem and every human being on the planet is a bigly, arrogant burden for a person to bear. Knowing the right questions to ask oneself and others– and to be content to wrestle with those unanswerable questions– is one of the secrets of living in joy.
Of course, I don’t know all the answers, so I could be wrong about everything I just wrote.
Most TV commercials are lame, but I love my funny Flo commercials. She makes me snicker. I want a Flo bobblehead, so I hope somebody out there makes such an item. Maybe Suzanne can craft me one while sitting at her Ultimate SewingBox, which she does 23 and 1/2 hours per day.
In this magazine ad, Flo looks outstanding in her Cape o’ the Day, but she needed a Bow Tie o’ the Day to top off her style. I was glad to help her out. Now her attire astounds the eyes. Her cape and bow tie seal the deal: Flo’s an authentic superhero.
This morning, I gathered my Suzanne-made capes, and I put them away until Fall. I was sad about it, but capes and summer heat don’t make a pleasant pairing. Suzanne says she will make me a summer-y cape out of a very light, perhaps sheer, fabric if we find some material I approve of. I’m thinking she should make me a cape out of mosquito netting. Such a creation would be incredibly useful when I’m out on the patio or deck. And it would look snazzy. No one else would have a cape even remotely like it. But I’m sure it would start a seasonal trend.
