Lori Borgman

We have a long-standing affection for courtroom dramas. “Perry Mason” set the standard years ago. He’s still questioning witnesses, introducing dramatic pieces of evidence, and consulting with Paul Drake and Della Street in black and white, albeit in the wee hours of the morning on local channels.

When Andy and Barney finished corralling jay walkers in Mayberry, they were given new life in “Matlock.” Murder mysteries were often solved in a courtroom by a man with a southern drawl whose quirky next-door neighbor, Les, was once known as Barney.

And who got through school without reading or watching “12 Angry Men” or “To Kill a Mockingbird”?

We like mystery and we like justice: “Boston Legal,” “Law & Order,” “The Practice.”

In every courtroom drama there’s always the telling moment with the penetrating question, the new piece of crucial evidence or the unexpected testimony. The best stories have surprising endings.

Perhaps the most-watched-real-life courtroom drama in our lifetime was the O.J. Simpson trial. “If the glove doesn’t fit, you must acquit.”

At Easter, Holy Week revolves around a trial as well. Jesus, beaten and bloody, stands accused before Pilate. There was no attorney for the defense, or surprise witness to cinch a favorable verdict. Pilate found no fault in Jesus. He had healed the sick, fed the hungry, encouraged the downtrodden, taught of the love of God and raised a man from the dead.

Pilate asks the mob, “What then should I do with Jesus who is called Christ?”

“Crucify him!” they screamed.

Pilate’s question lingers these many years later. “What then should I do with Jesus?”

C.S. Lewis framed possible answers in terms of “Lunatic, Liar or Lord.”

It’s a good question. What then should I do with Jesus—when the bottom falls out, when test results are bad news, when prayers bounce off the ceiling, when grief and darkness threaten to swallow you whole?

What should I do with Jesus in the grind of the everyday, the busy years of raising family and holding a home and a marriage together, or the unexpected twists and turns of retirement? What should I do with Jesus in small everyday choices between right and wrong?

What should I do with Jesus in the breathtaking wonder of new life, the beauty of spring and the faithfulness of dawn breaking over the horizon each morning?

As for me, I choose “Lord”—and belief—in good days and in hard. I choose faith in ultimate victory over sin, and in trials and tribulations. I choose hope for today, tomorrow and for life after death.

Grandma is close at heart. Literally. And permanently.

A picture was in the paper of a young man proudly showing off a tattoo of his beloved late grandma on his chest, along with a quote from her.

Sweet. Very, very sweet.

Naturally, with 11 grands, I ask myself, “What are the chances?”

At this stage of the game, the best I could hope for is a wild drawing of myself made by two 7-year-olds in possession of Sharpies.

The only experience our grands have with tattoos is the temporary press-on kind. They weren’t all that temporary. A set of fiesta tattoos left some of the grands plastered with tacos for weeks.

Truthfully, I don’t want my face tattooed on anyone’s body. Over time, skin thins, loses elasticity, succumbs to gravity and sags. A tattoo that looks like grandma today, may look like a giraffe 40 years from now. It could even be a guessing game: person, place or thing?

I was once in a line at the bank, standing behind an older woman wearing a cropped top exposing a large tattoo of an American flag on her lower back. Let’s just say the flag was waving.

It’s important to consider the long-range consequences of something as permanent as a tattoo. Will a tattoo of Grandma on your chest be a conversation starter at the pool? What happens when a romantic interest sees a tattoo of an older woman on your body and asks, “Who’s that?”

Plus, how do you rationalize a tattoo of Grandma and leave out Grandpa? A lot of grandmas and grandpas work hard at keeping things even between all the grands. And you’re not going to keep things even for them?

If you add a grandpa tattoo, won’t all the aunts and uncles bellyache because they weren’t included? Next thing you know, your entire body is covered with aunts, uncles, first cousins, second cousins and first cousins twice removed.

There is also the matter of choosing a quote to accompany the face of the beloved. I can only imagine what our grands would highlight from my repertoire.

“Come down from that tree NOW!”

“Who trashed the bathroom?”

“No frogs in the house!”

Or maybe, just maybe, they’ll remember me saying, “I love you to the moon and back.”

No need for a tattoo of this grandma. Just think of me when the moon shines bright.

In this Age of Review and Return, almost 93 percent of all shoppers read reviews before making a purchase. Even though we review before we buy, we often return the purchase after it arrives.

There was a time when making a return was a rarity. Oh, there were exceptions, but you had to face a stern clerk, who often consulted a stern manager. Now, you just drive by a designated Amazon drop off and hurl your return out the car window. Instant refund.

I am big on the review part of the Review and Return equation. I search items by review ratings so often it has become a habit. I was putting together an online grocery pickup order and saw that milk had more than 110,000 reviews.

Who reviews milk? Who reads reviews on milk? Apparently, I do. I clicked out of curiosity. The first review advised not to leave milk sitting out on the counter. Good to know.

A granddaughter is in the process of buying some pet fish. Being a savvy 10-year-old consumer, she is doing online research before spending her hard-earned money.

She made a chart of different stores that sell fish. Her comparison metrics are how many reviews each variety of fish received, whether the fish look overcrowded in the photos, whether they appear fed, whether the water is cloudy and whether any fish are floating upside down.

Proprietors with fish floating belly up are automatically ruled out. Dead in the water, so to speak.

Two stores were eliminated due to cloudy water. One of those earned an additional demerit because there were no reviews for the variety of fish she is interested in. No reviews, no sale.

She checked the overcrowded box for all the stores she reviewed. She’s a free-range fish kind of girl. You don’t crowd fish. It’s bad enough that fish have to spend their entire lives in schools. At least they should be in schools with big rooms.

All her sources received satisfactory marks for feeding the fish. I’m not sure how she determined the fish had been fed, but I don’t know fish. Well, other than tuna, salmon and cod. But those are in a pan, not an aquarium.

Our grand announced she finished her research  and is about to spring for some fish. To which we said, “You go, gill!”

I can catch a plane, a ball, a cold and the flu, but the one thing I can’t catch is home improvement skills.

I recently painted a small bathroom cabinet. The project took three days, not including 11 trips to the big box hardware store.

Meanwhile, on six different cable channels, people with home improvement skills ripped out small half-baths and replaced them with master baths featuring double sinks, heated floors, lighted mirrors, saunas and walk-in showers large enough to wash a team of Clydesdales. What’s more, they did it all in under 60 minutes.

This week, my inner home-improvement self was prompted to redo the shelf paper in the kitchen cabinets. I upped my game thinking I could try peel-and-stick vinyl tile. I asked a clerk if it was hard to cut vinyl tile. He guffawed and said all I’d need is a knife.

The man in the blue vest lied. After leaving a small trail of blood from the kitchen to the bathroom medicine cabinet, I returned the vinyl squares and bought peel-and-stick shelf paper.

Peel-and-stick lives up to its name. You peel and it sticks—to you, your clothes, your scissors, your hair, the sides of the cabinets, the tops of the cabinets and to every other inch of peel-and-stick in a 3-mile range.

My skill set deficiencies are not new. In seventh grade, girls took home economics and boys took industrial arts. Boys made projects with hammers and saws.

Girls learned how to sew a shift. A shift is a dress resembling a pillowcase with an armhole on each side and a zipper in the back. Our teacher Miss Grove, the first person I ever knew to wear contact lenses, made me rip my zipper out and put it in again. Miss Grove blinked her eyes a lot.

The fourth time Miss Grove told me to rip out the zipper and try again, I had to buy a new zipper. Miss Grove’s eyes blinked faster and faster each time she checked my work. Eventually, the entire left side of her face began twitching wildly.

Being that our school was progressive, for one week the boys took home ec and the girls took shop. I was sure I would do well in shop. My dad knew how to build; my brother knew how to build. Surely, I could build, too.

We made letter holders—three pieces of wood, nailed and glued together. At some point in the process, we were to put the letter holder in a vice. I crushed it.

Literally.

The shop teacher had me try again with new pieces of wood. As he watched over my shoulder, he took the soon-to-be letter holder from my hands, finished it, put it in the vice and said I could watch the glue dry.

Those sorts of experiences might set a lot of people back, but not me.

I remain a home improvement visionary—albeit without the skills or tools.

It happened at our oldest daughter’s place. I rang the bell, peeked in the side window and saw an ill-defined, furry mass lumbering toward the door.

My mind flashed back to my days in the Pacific Northwest when Bigfoot sightings were common. Was it a Bigfoot sighting? Here and now, in a sprawling Midwestern suburb?

As the creature drew closer, I could see facial features. It was not Big Foot; it was our oldest daughter wearing a thick, plush throw. She’s petite, so it was more like Little Foot, if you want to get technical.

Throws are all the rage these days. A throw is a soft, fuzzy, cuddly blanket, which apparently you can never own too many of. We have received throws as gifts and have thrown throws as gifts. We are one more layer on an ever-growing trend.

A throw is home décor and fashion accessory all in one.

Once a throw leaves a sofa or chair and is wrapped around your winter-weary body, know that it does not add pounds. It adds cubits. Perhaps even an invitation to play for the NFL.

The throw our daughter was wearing was basically a sleeping bag with sleeves. It is a throw that allows the wearer to stay warm and read a book at the same time, which for most of us is the short road to a long winter’s nap.

We were given a large, soft electric throw recently. Think XXL heating pad that could easily cover a family of five. When the grands come over, it’s the most popular item in the house (outranking even homemade chocolate chip cookies).

On a visit to another wing of the family, one of the grands, looked at me and said, “Grandma, you wanna throw?”

It took a few seconds before I realized she meant a fuzzy blanket, not a ball.

The grands are often wrapped in throws. Not only in their own homes, but in ours as well. We have become an extended family of human burritos. Somebody, pass the chips and salsa.

This season of the Great Coverup makes me anxious for spring. I hope when everyone unwraps we all still recognize one another without all the extra bulk and padding. It will look like the weight loss of the century.

 

 

Our garden is always at its best in mid-winter when I nestle by a fire and linger over seed catalogs. I have yet to tuck a single seed into the ground which is now granite.

As of page 3 in the catalog that arrived two days ago, I have visions of deep red tomatoes piled high in bushel baskets. Page 10 adds pole beans gracefully winding around beautiful trellis structures. Page 13 gives birth to green peppers so gorgeous they should be on display in art museums.

I read the words “you’ll never be satisfied with grocery store again” and pump my fist in the air.

The herbs in my imaginary garden cover rolling hills (never mind that the backyard is flat) with thyme, rosemary, lavender and oregano. Waves of basil reach for the sun.

I drool over seed catalogs the way other women drool over jewelry. “Could I see these seeds under a magnifier, please?”

“Look! It’s a 14 carrot!”

In hopes of maintaining some connection with reality, I propose that seed catalogs come with a black box warning. CAUTION: Seed catalogs may produce wild dreams, grand delusions and unrealistic expectations.

One of my favorite seed companies is offering the Martha Washington Kitchen Garden Seed Collection to commemorate the nation’s 250^th anniversary. I’ve read several Washington biographies but apparently missed the parts about Martha gardening. I’m not quite able to picture Martha wandering about Mt. Vernon hoeing garden beds, planting seeds and pulling weeds.

My sources say George Washington oversaw most aspects of managing the grounds and there is “evidence that Martha Washington was involved in dictating what was planted in the kitchen garden.”

Ah, a kindred spirit. Dictating is my forte in gardening as well. “I’m only asking you to move this giant hydrangea (for the third time) because you’re a perfectionist and I know you want the spacing right. I’m doing this for you, Honey!”

The seed names are mesmerizing. They are descriptive on a par with women’s cosmetics. Martha’s seed collection offers “Blue Curled Scotch Kale,” which is puzzling and captivating all at the same time. “Amish Deer Tongue Lettuce” is perplexing. Was the lettuce a favorite of Amish deer, or does the lettuce taste like the tongue of an Amish deer?

“Armenian Cucumber” hints of theological disputes sure to kick dirt any garden. I added “Early Scarlet Globe radish” to my cart without even looking at the picture. On the other hand, “Georgia Rattlesnake Watermelon” was a hard pass.

Many gardens are at their peak in the dead of winter, for when the ground is frozen and the air is frigid, imagination grows wild.

 

Against our daughter’s better judgment, she sometimes asks if we can homeschool her youngest when she has a scheduling conflict.

Her concern is not that we don’t cover the material; her concern is that we modify and augment the material or sometimes deviate entirely from the material.

We call it enrichment.

The last time our student was here, she asked me to check her work on a metric conversion problem involving kilo, hecto, deca, unit, deci, centi and milli.

“You know the mnemonic for metric, right Grandma?” she asked. “King Henry Doesn’t Usually Drink Chocolate Milk.”

I told her all I knew for sure about metric is when the obstetrician says, “You’re at 10 centimeters,” the baby is coming real soon.

She gave me a puzzled look.

Instead of doing a lot of conversion, I suggested King Henry swing by Walmart and buy anything he wanted in pints, quarts, 2-liters, six packs and cases of 24.

The look on her face said this was not helpful and that I was going to be reported to the principal.

To my credit, I excel in language arts. I do good with grammar (well, sometimes), and specialize in pronouns without antecedents, my favorite example being: Susan told Emily she was looking old.

Our occasional student also has been covering all the major body systems with wonderful charts, graphs, and overlays. I did well on the cardiology unit, probably due to being of a certain age and knowing a lot of people with heart issues.

This week, when our student was going to do her schoolwork here, her mother sent an early morning email with the subject line, “Urology Test.”

The email said, “Mom, would you mind printing this at your house? I’m currently out of paper. She needs to take this test. You can attempt it, too, if you want.”

Maybe it’s because I just had a physical, but I was flummoxed. I called our daughter to clarify that the urology test did not involve anybody taking strips of paper and little plastic cups into the bathroom.

When she finally finished laughing, she confirmed that was correct. The only testing would be with pen and paper.

Whew. Close one.

It’s a game of hide and seek a lot of women play. You hide the last bite of something delectable for yourself, not because you’re selfish, but because you are a visionary.

Based on personal history and past performance, you know with certainty that soon, maybe in the next week, day or next five seconds, you may feel depleted, exhausted and in need of a small pick-me-up.

You need a bit of encouragement. Or a bite of encouragement.

The key to keeping a small private reserve is knowing where to stash it.

For years I kept a couple of Hershey Kisses in a buffet drawer with the cloth napkins. It was a great hiding place. Not once in the history of our family has anyone ever said, “You know what would make this meal complete? Cloth napkins!”

The napkin drawer was such a great hiding place that I often forgot about it myself. I rediscover my small stash each year at Easter and Christmas, the only times we use cloth napkins.

Another strategy is tossing a couple of miniature candy bars in the freezer for later. Later comes when someone goes to the freezer in search of butter, digs around and pops out yelling, “Look, old Halloween candy! The kind only Mom likes!”

If the treat is something no one else likes, you can leave it in plain view. Dried apricots are safe here, so are nuts and fresh dates.

It’s easy to quietly consume something sweet that you saved for later, but crunchy snacks do not lend themselves to stealth. Chips can be heard from outside the house at the far end of the driveway. Small children have been known to awaken from a deep sleep by the crunch of a single Cheeto. Fritos smell. For days. Weeks maybe.

Hiding things has a cascade effect. Whenever we go out of town, I hide my ancient Rolodex with old addresses, defunct landline phone numbers and home repair contacts. Like someone is going to break into a house and say, “First thing we look for is an old Rolodex!”

“Look! I found the ID number for her library card!”

If they only knew what was hidden in the napkin drawer.

I’m not sure why there is a stash of anything delectable anywhere. Whenever we have something special, the husband refuses to eat the last piece or the last bite. He saves it for me. I don’t even have to hunt for it.

Love is sweet.

I was puzzled when the husband announced he was going to burp the house. I asked if he thought it would need a diaper change, too.

“You know, burp the house,” he said with an air of disbelief.

I didn’t know. I couldn’t get my head around patting a two-story house on the back.

He said burping a house is based on the German practice of “lüften” where you open all the windows, so cross ventilation lets the inside air escape and the outside air enter.

It sounded like spring cleaning – or what I do after we’ve had fish for dinner. He said when you air out a house in the winter, it’s called burping.

He was surprised I had not heard about burping a house. I was surprised he had heard about it. He’s not exactly what you’d call a domestic by nature.

When we were dating, he invited me over for dinner, but all the dishes were dirty and piled in the kitchen sink. He’s come a long way, but still. Who was this man? How and when had German domestics infiltrated his head?

I nonchalantly pointed out that the ground was covered in 10 inches of snow and the outside temperature was 5 degrees.

“Even better,” he said. “The furnace has been running and running and who knows what we’re breathing. Burping the house releases trapped, moist air from cooking, showering, and breathing. It also reduces condensation and prevents mold growth.”

I married an infomercial.

He threw open all the windows. The warm air was sucked out of the house and bitter Arctic air blasted in. I grabbed my coat, scarf, gloves and the book I’d been reading and dashed into the utility closet to stand next to my new BFF—the furnace.

I saw the husband shoot back and forth from one side of the house to the other a few times, monitoring air flow. “It’s getting awfully cold in here,” I shouted. “Are we about finished burping?”

“Not yet!” he said. “Two more minutes to go on the timer.” It was a timed burp. Perhaps one times burps in adolescence, but here? Now? Us?

“I’m going upstairs, where it’s warmer,” I shouted over the roaring furnace.

“Fine,” he said, “but I’m burping the upstairs next.”

The man was showing a domestic side that has been hidden for many years. I liked it. Only a fool would resist.

 

Three of our grands have their learner’s driver’s permits, but somehow, I seem to be the one receiving instructions on how to drive.

“You probably should have waited ‘til that car passed,” advises our oldest daughter, as I pull into traffic. She’s my front seat passenger and mother of twins with drivers’ permits.

“Excuse me? I pulled out just fine, thank you. And, by the way, I’m not the one with ‘Please Be Patient: Student Driver bumper stickers plastered all over my vehicle.”

I always wondered who put those stickers on their cars. Now I know. She’s sitting next to me, scrutinizing my every move. I won’t be surprised when she pulls out a clipboard and begins taking notes.

“Brake!” she snaps.

“Seriously, girl? You’re going to tell me how to drive? Even your father knows not to do that.”

“Well, I’m teaching two teenagers to drive, so I’m practically like a real driver’s ed instructor now.”

Sure she is.

“I taught you to drive, didn’t I?” I ask.

“No,” she says. “Dad did. Remember, you taught J to drive, so neither of us girls wanted you as a teacher.”

Great. I know where she’s going. One time, one time. OK, maybe two or three times. “But I taught your brother to drive a stick shift in a Ford 150,” I say.

“Yeah, and every time he killed the engine you punched him in the arm.”

“It was reflex,” I say.

I come from a long line of impatient driving teachers. My grandfather taught my mother to drive a stick shift. She got in, shut the door, started it up, let out the clutch and killed it. “Lesson over,” my grandpa said. He got out, slamming the door, and my mother didn’t learn to drive until she got married.

I’m not sure the kids need to know that story. Come to think of it, they absolutely do not need that story.

My driver’s ed instructor and I grab fast food for lunch and use drive-thru. Two very long lines wrap around the building and then merge to exit.

“Zipper, Mom. Zipper.”

“I’m going to merge,” I say.

“No, you zipper. The car in that lane goes, then our lane goes. You know, like a zipper.” She holds up her hands demonstrating how two sides of a zipper go together.

I may have gotten my license in the last century, but I don’t need hand motions explaining how a zipper works. What I might need are stickers on the back of the vehicle saying, “Please Be Patient: Dueling Driver’s Ed Instructors in Vehicle.”

For the record, I merged then, I merge now and will continue to merge.