Column

I grew up when people wrote letters in longhand on pretty stationery. Going to the mailbox and finding a letter was a whiff of Christmas morning.

Many Sunday nights, as a young girl, I wrote to a great aunt who was a retired schoolteacher. You mind your p’s and q’s when you write to a teacher. She wrote wonderful letters back, often with original and amusing poems about life. When people ask how I got my start writing, I say, “Letter Writing 101.”

When our children were young and we lived in the Pacific Northwest far from family, my mother wrote wonderful newsy letters every week in her beautiful cursive penmanship. I did not have beautiful handwriting, which is why she asked that I type my letters. Mom saved the letters I wrote in a three-ring notebook and gave them to me many years later. There’s nothing monumental in them, just a litany of everyday happenings—all the small bits and pieces of life that tumble together and create a marvelous three-layer cake.

It is rare to find a personal note in the mail these days. Were it not for junk mail, some days we’d have no mail at all.

Today we received a letter from a southern politician asking for support for one of his favorite non-profits. Anticipating a favorable response, he included the recipe for his maw-maw’s Louisiana gumbo. We’ll decide whether to support his non-profit depending on how the gumbo turns out.

We also received an offer to give our air conditioner a tune-up, an alert that our plumbing may be at risk, a dire warning that we need more insurance, an offer to spray for termites and—drum roll, please– an opportunity (offered only to a select few) to make some big money before the economy collapses.

Most of our mail is addressed to somebody named “Current Resident” and his kinfolk who all go by the name “Resident.”

The husband nixed my suggestion we place the trash bin directly under the mailbox. He says the answer is to replace the mailbox with a shredder.

We’ve opted for email communication in every situation possible, but there are still some pieces of snail mail we could not survive without—handwritten thank you notes from grandchildren.

“thank you for the wallet. I relley Love it. (Happy face.) I also Love the gift card. (Another happy face.)”

A few months ago, I wrote a note to a friend I haven’t seen in years who recently lost her husband. Last week I received a beautiful blue and white notecard in which she wrote, “Thanks for your note. It helps to know others care.”

That’s mail doing what mail once did best—shortening the distance between two hearts.

Just taking an informal poll today: What were you eating when you cracked a tooth?

My top three answers, which correlate to three new crowns in recent years, are: toffee, a crunchy taco, and broccoli cheese soup.

The milk chocolate toffee may have been worth it—probably because I’ll never ever eat toffee again. The taco I have forgiven and, besides, a foodie can always move from hard-shell tacos to soft tacos.

The soup one is unbelievable right? Literally. The recipe is titled Best Broccoli Cheese Soup Ever. And it is.Several years ago, our youngest daughter cracked a tooth eating a blackberry. The pit inside did it.  My sister-in-law cracked a tooth playing Twister as a child and, as an adult, pulled out a crown eating a Tootsie Roll.

Now in the process of having yet another new crown, I’m thinking I probably should be addressed as Her Majesty. I wouldn’t mind if certain people curtseyed and bowed now and then either. Come to think of it, a robe would be nice. A scepter could come in handy, too.

Sorry, I got carried away. Probably because my wisdom teeth are gone.

My mom once lost a tooth eating corn on the cob. She and Dad were on the screened-in porch one summer night having dinner. She said to him, “You have corn on your chin.”

He said to her, “That’s nothing. You’re missing a tooth.”

My brother and I had a lot of fillings as kids. The dentist we went to let us choose a plaster of Paris figurine from a special box after every appointment. The figures were of the 12 disciples—or so the dentist said. It was hard to tell, as the figurines were only about 3 inches tall.

The disciples in the Bible were all from the Middle East where people are usually dark-skinned, but these were chalky white which came off on your hands. You could paint them. So then the disciples were blue, green, red, purple, you name it.

It took years to straighten out my theology, but I’m good now and all my permanent teeth came in fine.

Going to the dentist is not nearly as scary as it once was. The pain management aspect has improved immensely. Our dentist is king. I know this is a fact because his bills are royal.

I should make him a little “plaque” with a crown and sign it from Her Majesty.

I just finished a book on AI and its impact on humanity. It was billed as nonfiction but read more like science fiction. I don’t mean to spoil the ending, but here’s a hint as to who wins dominance—it’s a short name with two letters. First letter: A.

The future appears jaw-dropping, amazing and bone-chilling terrifying, all at the same time. I wonder what the next generation will do for jobs? Will a single teenager ever work fast food again?

Will there be a smart dryer one day that folds clothes while they’re still in the dryer for us? Will a smart toothbrush one day brush our teeth? Will our arms and hands eventually atrophy and disappear from lack of use?

Our brains may already be on the way out. Take a guess as to two of the most frequently asked questions on Google. Ready?

“What time is it?” and “What day is it?”

Our son and family have had one of the early “smart” vacuums for years. It is like a miniature UFO on wheels that rolls around the house bumping into furniture and knocking into pets and walls while picking up dirt. They emptied it a while back and sent a picture of the contents. It had rolled over a newspaper with my column and picture in it and tried to eat my head. And they call it smart.

One of our neighbors has a small robotic lawnmower. It, too, is like a miniature UFO on wheels randomly roaming across their lawn, cutting their grass. Or at least nibbling and ripping clumps of it. Are the neat lines of a push mower suddenly relics of yesterday?

On the amazing side of AI is a smart watch that can detect skin changes that precede epileptic seizures and alert wearers of an oncoming seizure.

Jaw-dropping is the Ghost Murmur technology used to locate the ejected U.S. serviceman hiding high in a mountain crevice in Iran. The technology can detect electromagnetic signals such as a human heartbeat over immense terrains while AI filters out background noise.

Sometimes when I start to answer an email from a reader, several bubbles pop up with possible responses such as “Thank you,” “Thanks,” or “I appreciate this,” already crafted for me.

They are all appropriate choices, but I would feel like a slacker answering a personal email with an AI prompt. So, I navigate past the prompts and keyboard in, “T-h-a-n- k  y-o-u.” I often let a few typos slide so recipients will know it was written by a human.

Amazing as technology is, there are some things AI will never rival. No computer program can rub noses with an infant, dry tears, hold a trembling child in a thunderstorm, sustain eye contact with a loved one, or hold the hands of the sick and dying.

Maybe humans will stay in the game after all.

My desk drawer is a mess. It’s always a mess. Even after I tidy it up, it reverts to a mess as soon as I close the drawer.

I think it’s because I do things quickly. I move fast and mess things up fast. But even if I slowed down, it would still be a mess, just a mess on slow bake.

My desk is considered communal property in that it sits in the family room, which means it is a grandkid magnet. You try saying no to 11 sets of big pleading eyes. All they want to do is play office, school, stage a musical, or set up a bank. (Their lending fees are criminal!

The old rolltop desk has two side trays that pull out, a main desk drawer with a maze of small dividers, eight pigeon holes, and six tiny drawers beneath the two cubbies holding letter-size paper.

Wedged in the corner of the desk is an acrylic cube stuffed full of comics the husband has clipped from newspapers. They are like potato chips. You can’t laugh at just one.

The desk is furnished with a 3-hole punch, colorful rubber bands in an old Ball jar, scissors, assorted Post-its, tape (regular and double-sided) and numerous pens, some of which actually work. There’s also an X-acto knife, glue sticks and a monogrammed letter opener that was a gift from our son’s eighth grade language arts teacher for talking to her class. I should have been the one gifting her.

The desk is also home to one of those big red Staples buttons. You push the red button and it says, “That was easy!” We got it for our daughter to punch after she had open heart surgery on her 25^th birthday. These days we save it for other momentous occasions like losing a tooth, finishing every book in the Hardy Boys series, or smacking a wiffle ball into the neighbor’s yard.

Sometimes I’m tempted to say, “The desk is off limits; you’re messing with Grandma’s office.”

I would if I could, but I can’t.

I remember going to my dad’s office as a kid, sitting in his big desk chair on wheels, pulling open the middle desk drawer and gasping in wonder. Ballpoint pens galore. Paper clips. Yellow No. 2 pencils—with erasers even! He had an electric pencil sharpener and his very own stapler! So this was the privileged life of grown-ups.

The most jaw-dropping wonder was the adding machine. The adding machine made a racket as you punched in numbers. The paper chugged and chugged, then the contraption fell silent with a final tally. The machine was right. Every. Single. Time. Tell me again—why did I have to go to school?

Somedays I open the middle drawer of my desk and flash back to prowling in my dad’s desk drawer. Maybe one day these kids will have memories of ransacking Grandma’s desk. I’ll bet two glue sticks, a pair of safety scissors and a jumbo blue crayon on it.

I’ve rotated our cold-weather clothes with our warm-weather clothes so many years, I could do it in my sleep. From the looks of some of our clothes, I may have been doing it in my sleep.

Neither the husband nor I are clothes horses. We’re more like clothes turtles.

I could use some new pants, but I’m waiting until the styles change. The big trend in pants is exactly that. Big pants. They call them wide-leg. I call them big enough for me and a friend.

I’m happy for those who can wear wide-leg and barrel pants. I’m just not in the “in group.”

One of the hazards of being short is that wide-leg pants can quickly turn you into a virtual square. That said, elephant-leg pants do not make me look like an elephant. More like a baby hippo.

Women who can wear wide-leg pants glide, float and move with grace as they sweep across the floor. Yours truly in wide-leg pants is more like a push broom that can’t gain traction.

Palazzo pants are long, wide, flowy and shout, “Gondola ride in Italy, followed by cannoli.” I can’t wear palazzo pants; but I love the name. By the way, “palazzo” is Italian for “palatial building.” Why, yes, I think I’ll buy some palatial-building-size pants today. “Oh miss, do these come in the Trump Tower size?”

It doesn’t help to pull big pants up higher. A waistband around your neck tends to draw attention, and not the flattering kind.

Sorting our winter and summer clothes from his and her boxes, I hurriedly grabbed a pair of navy blue chino shorts and slipped them on. The weight loss was shocking. They hung below my knees. I’d lost a dramatic amount of height as well as weight! Then it dawned on me that I had dumped the tubs holding his clothes and my clothes into one big heap. I had grabbed his shorts, not mine.

All thoughts of an extra-large pizza and intentions of adding ice cream to the grocery pickup order immediately vanished.

My husband has no interest in shopping for clothes or buying clothes. To his knowledge, he has not bought more than three or four shirts, two pairs of pants and one sports jacket in our entire marriage.

I buy his clothes and quietly replace the old with the new. He thinks he’s easy on clothes and I let him. Why spoil 47 years of wardrobe happiness?

I love a clean car—no trash on the floor, no empty plastic water bottles rolling around, no fossilized fries smashed into floor mats. A clean car makes me happy.

Sometimes, if the car is clean on the inside and the outside, I’m so happy I throw it in park at red lights and car dance like crazy.

Not really. But I’m car dancing on the inside.

You see advertisements during gift-giving holidays with women gazing doe-eyed at expensive jewelry and wrapping themselves in designer clothing. I volunteer to be the woman in the ad nuzzling the booklet of carwash tickets.

In the greater scheme of family, I stand somewhat alone in my fanatical love for a clean car.

Not to name names, but our son and his family drive a minivan that’s basically a Walmart on wheels. There’s fruit, snacks, drinks and coffee cups in the grocery section; stray socks, mud boots, work boots and hoodies in clothing; power tools, fishing gear and a large medical emergency kit (because with five kids you just never know) in general merchandise; and a violin, mandolin, banjo and guitar are crammed in the rear storage area in the event of a spontaneous bluegrass jam.

If you need it, they’ve got it.

Self-checkout is in the front passenger seat.

Our youngest, who teaches preschool three days a week, drives a vehicle that is a craft and entertainment center on wheels. She could raise the tailgate and do pop-up craft centers. What’ll it be? Glitter glue or popsicle sticks?

She never leaves home without an array of card stock, safety scissors, pipe cleaners, and wide assortment of sing-along-CDs and books on tape. Oh, and educational flashcards: presidents, states, animals, vegetables and minerals. I’m pretty sure she keeps a laminator and paper cutter in the back storage area.

As for medical emergencies, she’s equipped for anything from motion sickness to small cuts requiring bandages with cute woodland animal pictures on them.

Because she hauls huge piles of teaching supplies in the front passenger seat, if she picks you up to go somewhere, it’s always a question of, “Do you sit on all the stuff or does all the stuff sit on you?”

Overcome with a renewed commitment to keeping a cleaner car, she recently gave it a thorough cleaning. One of her nieces came over that same day and ran into the house yelling and screaming, “The door to your van is open and there’s nothing inside! I think you were ROBBED!”

A document detailing our healthcare expenditures just arrived in the mail.

“Shocking,” I said.

“You mean the cost of healthcare?” the husband asked.

“No—documentation that we are officially fixer-uppers.”

There it was, right before our eyes. Three months of physical therapy for a back injury from lunging into the far back of an SUV to retrieve a coffee cup.

Did you know strong glute muscles are key to a strong back? Well, now you do. That’ll be $4,000, please.

The lengthiest charges are for steroid injections and three months of physical therapy for the man who thought removing the roots of a 40-year-old maple tree by himself would save us money. Who would have guessed swinging an axe seven hours a day for five days would mean two frozen shoulders?

There was a lot of picture taking featuring x-rays and scans. Our modeling fees are exorbitant.

On the upside, our bodies may hurt from time to time, but our knowledge of medical terms and anatomy has never been better. Hip bone connected to the back bone, back bone connected to the credit card.

The door to the linen closet is the only thing between us and an avalanche of  prescription meds and over-the-counter remedies: vitamins, painkillers, nasal sprays, allergy meds, eye drops, antibiotic creams, bug bite creams for the grands, cough syrups for infants, toddlers, and adults, some artificially colored and some dye-free, all in the fruit flavor of your choice.

Even the kitchen screams, “Send help.” There are protein drinks and mineral waters in the ‘fridge and a 4:1 ratio of large blue ice packs to food in the freezer. There’s an XXL ice pack in the freezer in the garage, big enough to cover an entire back.

Pink 2-pound weights that make our Army veteran son-in-law laugh out loud sit on my desk. The laundry area is where you’ll find the rice-filled neck wrap you heat in the microwave, then sling around your neck when you can’t turn your head.

The husband just came home from the gym and flipped on the TV. “There was a show on HGTV where a crew tried to restore a 100-year-old house and the whole thing collapsed. Want to watch how it turns out?”

“No thanks. The concept hits too close to home.”

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!”