What I Learned As the Mother of the Bride

Yes the wedding was beautiful. When I have processed some more you can hear about it. To see it look at my facebook page. 

I really had a great time and I am so glad Jesse is in our family now.

I hope Kathy Littleton has gotten some rest. She threw quite a party!

Jesse and Margaret are hiking now. Not my idea of a honeymoon. Of course my idea of exercising is to read a book on the porch swing. I mean, you have to move at least your foot to keep it going right? That's enough for me. 

Margaret's address is the same, she moved upstairs from where she used to live because Jesse's apartment is bigger. She can still look out the window and see the Roundout Creek flowing by.

I will never forget how beautiful they both were and how happy. Jesse cried. He was adorable. They're going to have some beautiful children.

I think I like this kid getting married stuff. Four years ago we got wonderful Jen. Now we have Charming Jesse.

Hooray!

I will write you more when I can think again. This mother of the bride stuff is exhausting.

What I Learned From Hand Me Downs

What I Learned From Hand Me Downs 

I have an amethyst ring that belonged to the mother of our neighbor back in Clarion when I was a little girl. I got the ring because I was the only one my neighbor knew that was born in February, the same month as the mother of my neighbor.

I called my neighbor Aunt Snoonie, everybody else called her plain old Snoonie, or Louise. Her mother was Grandma Mock.  (No comments out there about last names. Kroh to Clapp---after all!)

Anyhow, Grandma Mock used to come visit Aunt Snoonie and I would go over and play with her. I used to be Wagon Wheel. I put on my six guns, and my cowboy hat, climbed on my stick horse, and I made everybody call me Wagon Wheel. That was my rootin'-tootin' cowboy name. 

So Wagon Wheel would go play with Grandma Mock when she came for a visit. I was too young to understand when she died, but one day I noticed a ring box on my mother’s living room book case.

“What’s in this pretty box, Mom?” I said.

“I will show you, but it’s very special,” my mom said. She got the ring box down and snapped it open to reveal a gold and amethyst ring. “Do you remember Grandma Mock?”

I did. My mother explained that this ring had been hers and it was now mine but I couldn’t touch it until I was a big girl.

I remember looking at it once in a while when I was growing up. Then I got old enough to wear it to homecoming, to prom. Then I took it with me when I got married. 

It is part of my childhood and I plan to wear it at Margaret’s wedding Saturday. (Yipes!) I want to remember all those people that were at my wedding but will not be at my daughter’s. 

So ask me on Saturday to see Grandma Mock’s ring. It stands in for all the people in Clarion who would wish Margaret and Jesse well, and eat my pies, and clink their forks on their glasses, and dance the night away with all of us young and old.

What I Learned From Being Dave Clapps Mom.

Happy Birthday David.

Thirty years ago today is the day my life changed most and i didn't even know it.

I knew I'd have to change diapers and learn how to nurse somebody, but it never really hit me that a person was coming along until somebody handed me a baby boy. A skinny, crying, red-faced kid that right then, in that second, claimed a permanent place in my heart. 

It really never occurred to me what a responsibility it would be to raise, feed, train, love and let go of another person. I really like the way Dave has turned out. But I would credit God, Roger, Jen, and Dave himself for that, more than my seat-of -the pants mothering.


Some things that I got all hot and bothered were silly. Yes, you could go trick -or treating now. Other times I should have paid more attention.

I still remember when Dave was a week old and my mother and father went back to Clarion. They left me alone with a baby! I sat and looked at David and cried because I didn't know what to do with him.

I did more logical practical research when we bought our car than I ever did when I decided it was time for me and Roger to become parents.

And I've learned an awful lot about myself being his mom. I've learned an awful lot about God, an awful lot about boys, some stuff about drums, and that soccer players like chocolate chip cookies best. (David likes Ranger cookies best.)

Becoming a mom has been great for rooting selfishness out of my life, but I'm still glad nobody explained parenthood to me before it happened. I never would have been brave enoguh to start.

Hope you have a great day, Dave. Thanks for making me, your old mom,  a good person.  I love you.

What I Learned From Jeff Miller

What I Learned From Jeff Miller

When I was a kid Jeff Miller lived across the street. He moved away when I was in elementary school. Before he left, I asked my mother if we could have a surprise going away party for him.  All the kids came to the party and we waited for Jeff to show up. 

His mother brought him across the street, I remember them walking down the sidewalk and up to our door in the rain. Jeff’s mom held the umbrella over both of them. 

She brought him to the door.

I said, “Come in.” 

 Jeff came in and all the kids yelled, “Surprise!”

Jeff’s mouth dropped open. He turned around in a circle, first looking at him mom, then back to me. He looked at the kids over my shoulder, then at me and said, “It’s really raining hard out there.”

His mother and my mother laughed, I thought it was a weird comment, and the party rolled on.  

I don’t remember if we had fun (I’m sure we did) or when Jeff actually moved away, but I have never forgotten the comment. 

I asked my mom why Jeff talked about the rain and she said sometimes people just don’t know what to say when they are surprised.

I submit to you that people don’t know what to say when they are very emotional. Like now. Like two weeks until the wedding and if you asked me, “Are you____?” and put in any emotion, I’d say, “Sure, I feel that.”

For instance if you said, “Are you excited, happy, thrilled, joyful, scared, terrified?”  

I’d say yes (I am just a little terrified that I’ll fall down the stairs holding the train of  Margaret's gown.  That would be a SNL wedding skit, right? Or National Lampoon?)

 So if I say something strange in the receiving line just remember my old friend Jeff Miller. 

Maybe I should make Jesse and Margaret read this so they will know what to do when I say something totally unrelated to what is happening around us. 

Good old Jeff was full of emotion and didn’t know what to say.

I know just how he feels.

What I Learned From A Fitting Room

Two weeks ago it all got real.

Margaret really is going to become Mrs. Jesse Littleton, Margaret Elaine Clapp Littleton. She is going to walk down the aisle in a white dress and be delivered to a charming handsome man who has somehow swept her off her feet. 

I know the feeling. Roger Clapp still is Superman and 007, more handsome than George Clooney or Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke. Smarter than Indiana Jones.    

But how can Margaret feel that way about Jesse? (Or Dave feel that way about Jen? Or Shayna feel that way about Bobby? ) 

I keep telling myself that my kids are grown men and women, but when I saw Margaret come out of the fitting room in the dress she borrowed from Aunty Judy, I was not ready to be blown away. A woman stood there in front of me. Someone who could take all the ups and downs of living in relationship for the rest of her life. 

But I saw Margaret when the doctor said, “It’s a girl.”  I saw her in my favorite yellow gingham baby-dress, in Judy’s rain coat at the zoo. I saw her quilting, knocking over girls on the soccer field, walking down the street carrying her cello, waving good-bye as we left her at Path Of  Life Camp, or in her dorm in Texas or Kentucky, or in another apartment in New Paltz. 

I saw all the Margarets I’d known—from the one who kicked me constantly while I carried her—to the one who stood wearing that fabulous dress and grinning at me as I cried.  

Maybe this is real reason the bride’s Mom gets to see her in the dress beforehand.  On August 25^th, I just might be able to smile and greet people, to walk and talk. But please do me a favor and bring me a hanky.

The Diner Part 3, the finale.

( so here is part 3 of 3, look in the two blogs before this is you need 1 and 2.  I will get back to my life next week, but here is my favorite of my own writing.)

And, during that time, if you were there when the Harley roared up you could see her cringe. You could see her wince and her bottom lip tremble. If you timed it just right, or, more likely, just wrong, you could hear an argument hotter than the grill, erupt in the kitchen on the other side of the swing door. 

One day, after words with her not so dreamy anymore, dreamboat, Phyllis ran to the ladies room. Patti, another The  Blue Plate girl followed her in. When they came out a while later, their orders had backed up a little but Phyllis smiled and got to work like the trooper she was. Puffy-eyed with fresh make up on, she charged from table to table before the good food got cold.

And she stayed past her shift, not talking too much but quiet in the corner with the local paper and untouched pie. So she was still in the diner when the cops, Sergeant Banner, and his young faced deputy told her that the Harley had missed a turn down on 92.  It had crossed the tracks and plunged into the April cold river. 

It doesn’t pay to look too much like James Dean.

And that’s the third time anyone could remember Phyllis missing work, the day of his funeral. The diner even closed and it hadn’t been closed since VE day. After his dry-eyed service, she went back into the diner.  Everybody had been at the funeral, now they too, drifted toward the comfort of the diner. 

Bob, the owner and the one who made such greet pie, let the town in for free for a couple hours that afternoon. Soon, before anybody could stop her, Phyllis had her apron on over her black dress and was pouring coffee and collecting sympathy. That was the only day the regulars poured more than Phyllis. She poured coffee and they poured back well wishes.  It was a great day.

And after that day, little Jenny Wren, Phyllis’s daughter, no bigger than a wren came to work, too. When she wasn’t in school or Girl Scouts or 4H she was on the stool closest to the ladies room. She did her schoolwork there, brought her friends there after school or a dance or a movie. The regulars could tell when college breaks were because Jenny came back to the diner instead of gadding off to Fort Lauderdale like the shallow co-eds. 

And when Jenny grew up, she couldn't leave. She came back to the diner, even with a college degree. She came back with a more reasonable husband than her father had been.  He took her old stool and she put on the pink The  Blue Plate shirt and went to work. He kidded his mother-in-law something awful but you could see some of that old look in her eyes when he came into the place. You could see her begin to grin when his old truck came into the parking lot. You could see her eyes gleam when he came blustering in and kissed her cheek, while everyone watched.  

And you could see a duet then. The reasonable husband sitting on his stool, all the regulars in their booths, and Phyllis and Jenny dancing from the counter to the tables before the food got cold. Phyllis was a little slower, maybe, but still full of Honeys and Sweethearts, and never spilling a drop of The  Blue Plate good coffee. 

And, all things being equal a diner is a diner. But we have both Phyllis and Jenny and maybe that’s why the food at The  Blue Plate is so darn good. 

The End.

I wrote this from a prompt at my writers group, "all things being equal," but I had been thinking how much i love local diners for a long while. It all came together with the prompt. What do you write?  

(Part 2 of  The Diner story. . .  I started where I left off. . .  I wonder if Dickens did it this way?)

The coffee wasn’t as good. The pie was stale. The sugar jars were never full and there were ketchup fingerprints on a window or two. It seemed that the whole place was flat, like soda pop left open too long.

Then one day, she was back. She seemed shy at first, and too thin. There were dark circles under her eyes. She lost a little zip. But The  Blue Plate and Phyllis were good for each other. Soon the glass sparkled and the days got bright again. She laughed and joked with everyone again and danced like a hummingbird.

The good old days were here again. And the coffee flowed in rich brown rivers and the meringue perked up on the top of each key lime or lemon or coconut pie. Everybody came to The  Blue Plate for the food but, like they say on the Food Network, it was all about the presentation. And back then, Phyllis was the presentation. Buffalo china, chrome, and a squat round coffee pot were her medium. Each big smile and bigger tip was its own reward. 

But the Harley riding James Dean look alike husband of hers didn’t like his woman working.  That’s how he said it, ‘his woman.’ As if she wasn't a national treasure, like she didn’t belong to every hardworking hamburger eater in Rogers County. 

And, during that time, if you were there when the Harley roared up you could see her cringe. You could see her wince and her bottom lip tremble. If you timed it just right, or, more likely, just wrong, you could hear an argument hotter than the grill, erupt in the kitchen on the other side of the swinging door.