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Personal blog of christian
writer & fallible mom
Katy McKenna Raymond
in Kansas City, Missouri

Katy is represented by
Greg Johnson at
WordServe Literary

Read more Katy at
LateBoomer.net

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Recent Posts

• Try
• Becoming Brenda Starr
• Off Beat
• Scattered
• That’s It
• So I’ve Finally Signed With An Agent. Now What?
• The Spoon
• Sciatica
• Sweetheart
• A Woman’s Train of Thought Has No Caboose
• However much we own, we are all still living on borrowed time
• After all, when restaurants shrink portions, they don’t shrink prices.
• As with everything in life, balance is key.
• Slow down, you move too fast…
• Yeah, I know. I have issues.

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E me at katy @ ngenius.com

Memorial (#440)

"Let's hope the peonies last," my mother says. She is young and beautiful on most other days, but today she ages as she hunches over them, examining the brown edges that have appeared on a few, lifting the bent and rain-bruised blossoms skyward, willing them to fight for life.

"Just one more day," she says. "They'll make it, won't they?"

I do not answer, for she doesn't speak to me.

Peonies are only good for one thing. They bloom for a few short weeks, their useful life coming to an abrupt end on Memorial Day, if not earlier. If they survive that long, we go to the cemetary, my parents, and my grandparents, and me.

My childhood yard contains only a few daffodils, a short fenceful of morning glories, and a couple of rose bushes. But everywhere, it seems--separating us along property lines from regular, daisy-intensive families--are long, unending hedges of peonies. You'd think our next door neighbors would have a use for some of the dreadful, ant-covered blooms, but no.

Only my mother tends them, only my mother needs them. As it turns out, only my brother waits for them.

I am six, and seven, and eight back then, and I don't know much. Even so, I remember enough from peonies-gone-by to wish the horrible things an early demise.

"How are you today?" Grandpa asks my mother, cautiously. My mother's eyes are dry, then, so there is reason to hope. He and my grandmother exchange glances, and pray, and wonder. We pile into his car for the long, terrible trip. The peonies are put into the dark, cool trunk, their private tomb.

"Fine," she says, and out of nowhere deja-vu sets in. I hold my breath--motionless--for the annual ride, frightened with remembrance of graveside weeping and gnashing of teeth, hoping she really is fine this time, but certain now that she isn't, won't be--can't be.

Memorial Day comes early this year, and the peonies need little coaxing to live until tomorrow. But still, my heart can't help but cheer them on, in her honor, in his honor.

"Let's hope the peonies last," I say, when only I am there to hear. "Let's hope they make it one more day."

---

Read All Over (#441)

We've been working on my 81-year-old mother-in-law's house, room by room. She lives alone, and the house has gotten the best of her now, with its 33-year accumulation of Reader's Digests, National Geographics, and Price Chopper ads.

You read that right.

She's collected a lot of Christian books over the years, many on the subjects of faith and miracles and prayer and allowing Christ to change your life. She's still a strong believer--maybe stronger than ever--but she doesn't read much anymore.

One by one, I held up books for her to decide on: Keep, sell, or give away? She doesn't plan to fast, so that book could go. Larry Burkett's book on retirement planning would have been better applied 25 years ago, so forget it. And the marriage manuals were past their prime.

How about this one? I asked, as we neared the last of the pile. Would you like to keep it?

She read the title under her breath, looked me in the eye and--with a straight face--said, "It's getting a little late to change my destiny."

She's still got it.

---

Chicks (#442)

"Do you want to watch Charlie's Angels tonight?" Doug asks. "I've never seen it, but I think it's an action story without a plot."

"Hmmm," I say, "sounds like something I'm writing, only mine doesn't have action, either."

But the dialog is fantastic.

---

Early Warning System (#443)

I am completely deaf in one ear, unless I'm on the brink of a raging migraine. Then I hear everything. It isn't pretty.

Right now, my deaf ear is pointed toward the kitchen, three large rooms away. I can hear Doug chewing toast. Every nuance of the toast-eating process, from the silver knife first slathering butter across the rough-textured bread, then scraping off the excess, to the way his teeth perform the intial vicious tear through the crusty edge, to the sound of the crunchy bread mixing with saliva to become a doughy glob, resonates with an exquisite terror.

"Don't chew so loudly!"

He isn't chewing loudly, of course. I'm hearing loudly, and we both know what that means.

Oh-oh.

---

The Meeting (#444)

"Let's meet there," he said, and it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Because of where we live, and the nature of our work, and a hundred other factors like our kids and our mothers, we often arrive at destinations separately.

I'd never been there before, but he'd given me precise directions. He'd printed the details from MapQuest and--since I'm a word person--talked me through it. He'd be arriving first, but I could always call him if I needed help.

I can follow directions, thank you. It's road conditions I have a problem with.

The interstate freaked me out a little, but I hung in there with the wet pavement, the orange cones, the eighteen-wheelers, and the migraine.

Soon I'd be on a less-traveled stretch of road, where I could relax a little and enjoy the scenery.

Or so he said.

The idyllic farmhouses, red barns with Coca-Cola signs, flowering trees, and roadside irises never materialized. No one traveling in the opposite direction smiled or raised an index finger from the steering wheel to give me a little wave.

Now that I think about it, there was no opposite direction.

The farther I drove, the steeper and narrower the road became. Somewhere along the way, the lane going south had split from this one, leaving me alone on a desolate road which grew more treacherous by the second.

I could not turn around and make my way back down, not only because the path was too narrow to allow it, but because I'd be going the wrong way on a one way. So I kept climbing higher, edging ever closer to the crumbling brink of the road's narrow ledge. I shook with fear.

"Let's meet there," he'd said.

I thought of his words again as I saw a toll booth just ahead, one he hadn't remembered to warn me about. This was the first person I'd encountered in miles, a welcome sight. But he wouldn't let me pass.

I hadn't counted the cost, and the toll was too high.

Cell phones stop working in those parts. I had no way to reach him, no way to meet him there.

I wondered then how long he'd been waiting for me, how long ago he'd arrived alone and full of anticipation at our meeting place, and if this road had been a good one when he'd traveled it.

I awakened then, and he was still there beside me, in our same old place.

Or was he?

---

Wanted: Self-Starting Editor (#445)

"It is dangerous to leave written that which is badly written. A chance word, upon paper, may destroy the world. Watch carefully and erase, while the power is still yours, I say to myself, for all that is put down, once it escapes, may rot its way into a thousand minds..."
-William Carlos Williams (courtesy, this morning, of http://www.scottraymond.net)

"You keep an online journal?" the classy red-haired lady asked. We had just been introduced at a party, and were hitting it off. She's the type of woman you tell intimate details of your life to in the first five minutes of your acquaintance and then afterwards ask yourself, What was her name? I'm thinking I'm that type of woman, too.

"It's like a diary?" she wanted to know.

"Sort of," I said. "I write about little stuff that happens on a typical day, and give my take on it. I avoid any topics of a highly personal nature--"

Did her face fall with disappointment?

So she and I talked about subjects of a highly personal nature, comfortably, with my eighteen-year-old son standing right beside me, eyes wide and rapt with attention.

I got to thinking later about William Carlos Williams. Not him, exactly, but the idea he presents in this quote. Sometimes I wonder if the care I take in editing my written words wouldn't be put to better, and more eternal, use pre-screening my spoken words. Those are the ones that get me in trouble, the ones I so often wish I could take back.

This morning, I'm wondering how many of my spoken words, once they've escaped, have rotted their way into a thousand minds.

Still, there's nothing wrong with my mouth that a good Editor couldn't fix.

---

Parable of the Talent (#446)

Just for starters, I'm not technologically, mechanically, musically, or electronically inclined. My husband and kids are all that and a large, green Rubbermaid container full of cables besides.

Science isn't my thing, and neither are computers, which leaves me out of Doug and Scott's conversations. I'm happy for them, though.

I can't share Doug's bedtime passion for physics books and heady tomes on intelligent design, relativity, and expanding universes. So much for our love life.

My personal experience with sports has been so limited that my idea of a sports injury is a blister. I recoil from balls, bats, clubs, pucks and sticks, and that's just when I'm in the bleachers. I can swim, but only well enough to save my life--and even then, I'd have to be in the mood.

My thumbs are not green, and I always figure if I recover before the houseplants I receive when I'm hospitalized die, it's a certifiable miracle.

I don't live to cook--I cook to live. When Carrie assembles ingredients for her homemade cinnamon rolls or Kevin wants to impress the girls at school with a batch of his truffles, I hightail it out of the kitchen. Let's just say they're self-made chefs.

If I have a flat on the highway, I'm out of luck. We've got another new cell phone, and it's being mystically counter-intuitive about what it takes to turn it on.

Around the time the war coverage began, Doug thought getting a satellite dish was a great idea, so I went along. Now he tells me over and over that I'm not making any progress with the remote because I've got it on "TV." Since that's exactly what I'm trying to watch, what concept am I missing?

Somehow, though, against all odds, I've managed to learn to sew, embroider, needlepoint, quilt, and crochet. That sounds a little impressive, except that my husband and kids tend to lump together these unique talents (which require completely separate, highly developed skillsets) and label them, as an entity, knitting.


I wouldn't mind that they've so readily condensed my lifetime's accomplishments into a single word, really, if only I could knit.

---

The Robe (#447)

"No wonder I couldn't find my robe! Someone hung it on a hanger!"

I used my best accusatory voice to make this pronouncement, rolling my eyes toward the only suspect.

"I did that," Doug answered.

In my weirdly structured little universe, pajamas are hung on hangers and robes are hung on hooks. Pajamas are meant to be selected from among several organized choices. Robes are meant to be grabbed from a hook should modesty dictate or morning chill require.

Before settling for number two on a hook which routinely holds three robes--my current favorite being on top, of course--I scoured the entire house for the missing garment. Bedroom, living room, kitchen, laundry room, back to the bedroom, scanning chairs, couches, hampers, floors and chandeliers. Robes don't just disappear.

It's the first time in twenty-six years Doug has hung my robe on a hanger, and I hope it's the last. It was a nice gesture, but disorienting.

Still, there was a certain logic to it, and it made me think about what other important stuff might be located exactly where it should be.

---

One Way to Meet Your Neighbors (#448)

Not all the news is bad in Kansas City tonight, though they're already saying these are the worst tornados here since the ones in the late 1950s.

One man followed tornado precautions to a tee. He went alone to the basement of his home in Wyandotte County, never imagining--if he's like most guys in the basement--that he wouldn't be able to climb back up without help.

His home blew away. His neighbors came checking, and they pulled him from the debris without a single scratch.

"Those were the sweetest voices I've ever heard," he said.

Beauty from ashes.

---

The Hearing Earring (#449)

I can't hear a thing, I think.

I'm struggling to put an earring in my right ear, using one hand to insert the diamond studded post, and the other to screw on the back. I can't remember which direction to screw the back, so I'm fumbling first clockwise and then counter-clockwise.

To a hearing ear, direction is automatic. An operating ear discerns an efficient turn of the screw without the wearer of the jewels even realizing it. She doesn't need to stare into the mirror, paranoid of losing her treasure, or frantically rub her thumb and index finger along the post to see if the screwback really is moving in her favor. Her valuables are safeguarded and secured.

I do the deaf side first, leary, fumbling through it, eyeglasses on, fixated on the mirror. Several attempts before a shaky success.

The left earring goes in, and I begin to screw the back the wrong way. I'm instantly, imperceptibly aware that this ear's perfect hearing is not registering the metallic twisting into the tiny groove, so I immediately alter my course.

Ah, that's it, I think. My diamond will soon be safe.

I can't help wondering about the living, breathing jewels I love and care about. What if I don't really hear them half the time? Do I shrug off their priceless value and risk losing them, or do I mobilize all my remaining senses to compensate for my glaring deficit?

As I turn away from the mirror's reflection of my gleaming jewels, I raise both hands to my ears, running my thumbs in the grooves of the backs to make sure they're equally secured. One diamond is silent, and the other divulges all.

Both are my treasures.

---

Mental Chillness? (#450)

I used to think it was the low-carb diet that shifted my metabolism into the most efficient fat-burning mode of my life. I gave Dr. Atkins (may he rest in peace) the credit for my sixty-pound loss, and for the renewed vigor that gave me the strength to commit to the writing life.

Now I see the writing came first, and then the weight loss. And that the loss may not have come from a sugar-free lifestyle at all, but rather from a-hopefully-curable ailment called Lamott's Syndrome.

Named for its neurotic founder, writer Anne Lamott, Lamott's Syndrome is a condition which manifests itself in the aerobic activity of getting up and down from one's chair after the writing of every two words, give or take a couple.

It involves obsessive sink scouring, stain pre-treating, junk drawer organizing, suspicious-mole checking, and any other avoidance behavior known to writerkind, along with whatever self-bribery it takes to get back to the desk after these energetic spurts of non-writing.

And don't underestimate the calorie-burning capacity of the accompanying guilt, self-doubt, self-flaggellation, and beating oneself up coming and going. Believe me, it adds up.

I'll stick with the diet for sure. If I happen to put on a few pounds, though, you'll know it's because I finally succeeded in giving up the exercise.

---

Tiny Difficulty (#451)

My father's side of the family is filled with bonafide anorexics.

My Aunt Mary was a high-grade professional with the federal government her whole life, a single career lady. She had to shop in the little girls' department. At Eastertime, she'd snatch up all the little suits she could get her hands on, and try to make them mean business for the rest of the year. It wasn't easy.

My Aunt Cathy gave birth to five children, and bragged that she never gained more than fifteen pounds during a pregnancy. That weight was lost in toto on the delivery table, and she'd wear her regular pedal pushers home from the hospital. What's that about?

Cathy's idea of greeting me when she hadn't seen me for a few years was not a hug and a kiss, or even just a hello. It was to say, "I can tell you've really gained weight."

Cathy did high-impact aerobics until past age seventy. The Thanksgiving before she died, she informed her children that she'd just eaten her last morsel. True to her word, she held out until February, and died weighing 75 pounds, her personal best. By then, of course, she was in a nursing home, because all her vital organs shut down from sheer starvation.

My cousin, Cathy's daughter, told me after Cathy died that her mother had been a lifelong anorexic. You think?

My father was 5'8", not tall by anyone's standards, but tall enough to support more than 120 pounds. Yet that was his weight for years before he died, down from his all-time high of 160 or so, when I was a little girl. I remember him at this high weight--it was his prime. He looked fabulous and strong and whole. When he was too thin, his idea of a special treat was a chocolate chip. One chocolate chip.

He wore only heavy jogging suits the winter before he died in April, nineteen years ago. With all those clothes on, it was impossible to know the full extent of his hidden emaciation. He still had jowls, like always. It's the one enduring family feature that fools everyone. As it turned out, he didn't have much to hide.

At his death, he weighed 90 pounds.

Is it any wonder his last words to me were, "My God, your butt's getting big..."?

Now if I could just stop looking in the mirror and hearing those words every flippin' day.

---

Balancing Act (#452)

The caller to Dr. Laura had been living with her boyfriend for two years, and had found out through several people that he referred to her as his "friend from work." She was devastated.

"He doesn't think of you as a keeper," Dr. Laura said. "Why don't you leave him?"

"I'm scared to be without him," the caller said. "I'm scared to start over."

"Would you rather be permanently used or temporarily scared?"

This got me thinking about similar exchanges a person might be asked to weigh.

For instance, seven or eight years ago, I had several book proposals considered by publishers, and then had them subsequently fall through the cracks. The proposals, not the publishers. My ideas weren't formally rejected or completely accepted; rather, they were positively appraised before becoming irretrievably lost.

This process made me feel oddly invisible, a feeling I hesitate to reproduce by submitting my current book ideas to publishers today.

"Would you rather be permanently unpublished or temporarily invisible?"

I really hate invisible, but it's got to hurt less than unpublished, so that's my choice.

How about you? How would you fill in the blanks after the words permanently and temporarily?

---

Dry Humor (#453)

What is it about severe weather--in this case, thunder, lightning, hail, mudslide, and tornado--that brings out the "inner laundress" in the upscale women who live near me?

I was driving through a parking lot, nearly blinded by the storm, when I caught sight of a drive-thru Pride Dry Cleaners. It's like a drive-through bank, with an overhang sufficient to fully cover the car being waited on, great for inclement mornings like this.

But the neighborhood's inner laundresses are not patient. The SUVs lined up single-file, eight or ten deep, winding through the parking lot till they passed the HyVee and the Subway. A couple of women put their cars in park and ran in for an Americano, clearly exasperrated with Pride's iffy service.

The overhang lost its dry meaning as the establishment's employees skittered out into the ankle-deep hail stones to expidite their customers' orders. Windows were unrolled, homemakers were drenched, dry cleaning was wet.

But the homemakers of Johnson County were served exactly what they asked for, and all at once. Fifteen minutes later, the sun shone brightly. All the ladies pulled into their garages, closed the doors, and heaved a sigh of relief at a hard morning's work.

---

Role Models? (#454)

"Joel wants Jennifer to stay home and raise the children," said the young blonde in the black boots and short skirt. She lifted her latte to her lips and sipped.

"When are they getting married?" asked the other woman, in the belted pink sweater and gray slacks.

"July. And Jennifer doesn't even want to have children."

Joel, according to what I overheard because my one excellent ear was pointed right their way, was raised by a workaholic father and a stay-at-home mom. Jennifer's mother, on the other hand, had always earned more than her father had, and that's the way her family liked it.

"Jennifer and Joel are so great together," Black Boots said. "They like all the same stuff."

"What kind of stuff?"

"You know, furniture, jewelry, clothes, that kind of stuff. They had no problem at all agreeing on the engagement ring."

"Yeah, but I wonder," Pink Sweater said, "if it might become a problem that she wants to continue her career and never be a mother."

"Oh, that's just a little thing. About everything else, they're cool."

"Yeah, you're right." P.S. agreed, relaxing her standards along with her shoulders. "I wish I had a relationship like theirs."

With that, they sighed, finished their drinks, and went their separate ways. Back into the cold, hard world, to resume the search for Mr. Not Quite Right.

---

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