Just For Fun

From time to time, you will find here random musings about things that make me smile.  Maybe they will make you smile too.  I hope so.

For Mom ...

I am six years old and my face feels swollen, my lips are dry, my tongue feels clumsy and my eyes are heavy, but no sleep will come.  I have a cold, a childhood cold.  My nose refuses to make room for air.  Lie to the left. Lie to the right. I can’t clear either side.  Little coughs rock little shoulders. I am hot and I am cold.

My mom knows how to make it better.  In her bag of tricks is a small blue jar of Vicks.  It is almost worth having a cold.  The sight of that jar is love made visible.  Two of mother’s fingers scoop out a healthy dose.  She pulls back the covers and the cool air gives me a sudden chill, but I don’t mind because I know what is coming.  She slides her greased hand up my pink pajama shirt and finds that spot in the center of my chest, just below the collar bone and instantly, my nose makes room as my chest welcomes her touch.  She moves her fingers and the Vick’s follows, spreading warmth and comfort like a fire that doesn’t burn.  When she finishes she returns the covers to their place, just under my chin, and though she leaves the room, I feel her touch throughout the night.  I can breathe.  I can sleep.  I can dream.  I am loved.  Thanks Mom.

In Honor of Baseball's Opening Day ...

Baseball cards, I kept them all these years.  In old shoeboxes.  Sorted by team.  1968 through 1972 give or take.  Half of them were won from my younger brother in a foolish child’s bet.  Mother sided with me.  Tommy turned them over.  I never gave them back.  Why would I?  They are treasure, good as gold.  Pictures, statistics and bubble gum stains.  I jumped from Ricky Miller’s front porch, four feet onto a gravel driveway, in bare feet of course, to win the right to own my very first, my only, Babe Ruth card.  It had made its way around town and had landed in Ricky’s collection.  He tortured my brother and me with it in the sadistic manner of a street-yard bully.  Wiped the sweat from his pubescent, hairy, armpit all over it.  Tossed it over the porch and down to the gravel driveway below and goaded us to “jump!”  No shoes.  No socks.  Bare feet.  I was always a shoes and socks kind of girl.  But we are talking Babe Ruth.  Throwing caution to the wind, I jumped with only a hint of hesitation.  Tommy didn’t move.  Babe Ruth was mine.

Of course I still have them.  Roberto Clemente, Willie Stargell, Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Manny Sanguillen and Tom Seaver, the whole lot.  Boxed up, but not forgotten.  Never forgotten.  My childhood in every card.  And I am not alone.  Lisa, my childhood best friend, partner in childhood crimes, has hers too.  Years have past.  We grew apart before we moved apart.  It has been thirty years or more, but facebook dissolves awkward distances and lo and behold, she has her cards too.

Lisa and me with Manny Sanguillen, summer 2011.