Meri's Musings

Did I ever mention that I'm a bookworm? When I was a wee one, my mother worked in the library when my father was in graduate school. On rare occasions, I got to go to the library with her and hunker down in the small section of children's books. The smell of books and their heft in my hand never fails to enchant me. I love the semi-mystical feeling of losing myself in a great story.

What a strange thing divorce is. It terminates the legal construct called "marriage,"      but it fails to sever the string of memories you carry around, memories tucked neatly away in some mental suitcase until something unpacks them. Yesterday, I was sitting in Jason's hair studio, sipping tea and watching the "trim" turn into a major shearing, when the oldies station played this piece of Fleetwood Mac history. And the memories of falling in love and its particular soundtrack came flooding back. There was a little bar across the street and down the block from the law school.  It was a bit schizophenic: a lunchtime hangout for law students and professors, an after-shift blue collar bar,  and a post-class study place  for night law students  after the doors were officially locked for the night. There was a jukebox, playing through all the changes in the cast of characters. Some of the songs it played  are forever embed...

Oprah ran her last "Favorite Things" show today, giving away lots of fabulous gifts to her audience. At the end, Johnny Mathis appeared and sang. That was one of my favorite things in the show. He's old, I know. It seemed like he was pretty old even when I was young, but that may be the addled perspective of youth. All I know is that the Johnny Mathis concert I went to in the 90s with "the-love-of-my-life" (at that point, anyway) was one of the most romantic, sublime concerts I've ever attended. We took another couple with us and everyone glammed up -- the guys in tuxedos and the ladies in glitzy dresses or jeweled tops and handkerchief hem skirts. You know the look I mean -- though I'm not sure whether I was in a I-think-I'll-be-a-redhead phase like in this picture or going for the God-given dark ash blonde jacked up with pale blonde streaks so carefully painted on so I'd have hair that looked sun kissed. But enough about me. Johnn...

Pitchers. This image makes me laugh because it reminds me of my days in law school. You see, I went to law school in the days when the barriers to women in law (overt or covert) were just beginning to give way. The class two years before mine was 2-5% women. The class a year ahead was 25% women. My class had 40% women. So the makeup of the student body had changed a bit, but facilities lagged behind. There was a women's locker room on the first floor with a small "ladies room,"  which as I recall might have had two small toilet stalls and two sinks. But the second and third floors of the building had always had two mens' restrooms, no women's. Realizing that would be a problem with greater numbers of  those of the female persuasion, the powers that be decided to screw up a sign that said "Women" on one of the men's room doors on each floor. So we got our ladies' rooms, complete with functioning urinals. Now they did seem to realize tha...

Seeing the adorable Anna Banana in her role as "best supporting actress" as a flower girl in Jessica's wedding I am transported back in time to the night that my aunt married and my cousin and I were flower girls in taffeta gowns. I felt so grown-up. My cousin felt miserable and feverish. She was about to bloom with a bad case of chicken pox. I'm happy to report that Anna Banana was just fine. As you can plainly see. 

Are there some images fixed in your mind, a photo-catalogue of the imagination, of events that had significance in your life? Those split seconds where you noticed something amazing, or in which everything was changed irrevocably? The instant in which something changed your life completely: everything once whole was broken or everything broken restored to wholeness The moment a birth changed you from just a person to "parent," the Moon Landing, the days in which Space Shuttles exploded either coming or going, a horror that was replayed in video over and over again until you were numb but the images were indelibly impressed in your psyche? the assassination of political leaders (JFK, Bobby, MLK, Benazir Bhutto) a first kiss news about the death of someone close to you a marriage proposal 9-11 catching site of the Eiffel Tower for the first time knowing FOR CERTAIN that your prayers have been heard and answered even if in ways you never anticipated It seems like our lives are...

When I was a little girl, in kindergarten and first grade, I lived only three blocks from school. But -- much to my mother's dismay, I'm sure-- it often took me an hour or more to walk home. That's because I took little meanders I called "shortcuts." Off I'd go, looking for new things to examine. Even though I'm a big girl now, I still love to meander, especially when my camera leads me astray. That happened Saturday evening, after I left the family gathering. I pointed my car toward home and then. . . . deviated. Here's some of what I saw while I was taking my "shortcut." Evidence someone is building a city of gold. The lid to the Space Needle with little teensy people inside. Roses gone wild. Telephone poles asserting their importance in a wireless age. Cool reflections against the top of my car, a car that smelled like pineapple, strawberries, and mango because I was taking leftovers home with me. Mother Nature painting the sky with pastel...

Springtime 1996. Being in Paris for the first time with someone I love truly, madly, deeply (even after we've been together for more than two weeks already, driving all over Italy and France, having a great time even though everyone said that more than three weeks of constant togetherness would make us both crazy ) Romance. Sidewalk cafés and wonderful little restaurants. Staying at The Royal Monceau, dining in the restaurant there and stealing sideways glances at Omar Sharif and his two lady companions, both elegantly dressed and of a certain age. Being delighted that the French were so friendly despite my rusty French language skills and the many holes in my vocabulary. (I could make myself understood in the present tense -- at least most of the time -- be polite, and order food for both of us. Merci beaucoup Mrs. Fletcher, Ms. Smith, and Mrs. Forrest, you taught me well.) History. Art. Musée d'Orsay   on Mother's Day when I know the kids are safe at ...

Back in the good old days when I was a sweet young thing, I spent a short time teaching in an early childhood program in the Denver Public Schools. It was an innovative program, federally funded, in a largely working-class neighborhood. I was blessed to share the classroom with a full-time teaching assistant who was working as an assistant only because she was updating her teaching credentials after taking time out for mommy duty for several years. The two of us were responsible for teaching morning and afternoon classes of about fourteen children, mostly four-year-olds and some who had turned five too late to enroll in kindergarten. The children attended class Tuesday through Friday. Monday was reserved for home visits. The assistant and I would schedule about six visits each Monday, meaning that we managed to get around to each child's home about every five or six weeks. We'd bring books and learning games into homes that often didn't have money to spend on things t...