The Wheels on the Bike Go ‘Round and ‘Round

November 5, 2018 ~ mstturpin ~ Leave a comment

I flipped through the glossy pages of a fashion magazine and there, alongside an article on how to dress for a summer party, I spotted a glossy ad featuring a slim model posed gracefully alongside her Schwinn. I thought about the pants in my closet that no longer fit, and turned to my boyfriend, Andrew.

“I want a bicycle,” I said as I tossed the magazine back onto the growing stack on our coffee table.

This idea had been building, spurred by a desire to find an exercise that required more enthusiasm than ability. I’d gone through hiking, tennis, and yoga, trying to find something I could do and still get out of bed the next day.

Andrew agreed this was a fine idea, then asked me, “Do you remember your first bicycle?”

I have trouble remembering where I put down my coffee cup each morning, but I had an image in my mind of that first bicycle.

“It had a white vinyl banana-shaped seat with peace symbols, rainbow streamers on the handlebars, and one of those plastic wicker baskets with huge artificial sunflowers on the front.”

“Peace symbols? Sunflowers?” Andrew looked skeptical until I reminded him that my childhood took place in the 1960s. I assured him I would not add any flowered accessories to my new bicycle, and we went that next weekend to the Bike Mart.

In the bicycle shop, I sucked in my stomach as I wandered through crowds of whip-thin men dressed in spandex shorts. There were rows and rows of bikes in racks spaced around the store and organized into sections–mountain bikes, cruisers, hybrid bikes, tandem bikes, and even some that included an electric motor, handy I supposed for people who weren’t trying to fit into the pants in their closets.

I followed Andrew as he went over to look at the sturdy grey and black mountain bikes. I tried not to look at the price tags too closely. Surely they had the decimal in the wrong place. I rolled one of the mountain bikes off the rack and felt a sense of accomplishment when I sat on it without tipping over.

“Can I help you?” A young salesgirl, blond and tanned in her Bike Mart polo, walked up as I struggled to put the bike back on the rack.

“Yes,” I replied, “I’d like to buy a bicycle, and I guess I need a little help to pick one out.”

The salesgirl nodded, blond ponytail bobbing. With one hand she took the bike from me and slipped it back into the rack.

“Where will you be riding?” she asked.

I should answer, “Oh, just around my living room, and on soft, padded surfaces,” but I had an image in my mind of shaded forest paths. I told her, “Mostly paved roads, but I’d like to go off-road now and then.” This caused the salesgirl to pause for a moment, her forehead wrinkled as though she were working out a calculus equation. I wondered if she would recommend one of those adult tricycles, or maybe psychiatric counseling.

We looked through the inventory and settled on a turquoise and white mountain bike with an aluminum frame. Lighter than the other bikes, it would be less likely to damage me when it fell over, and the color matched my shoes.

I imagined myself cycling through the neighborhood on my new bike, maybe ringing a little bell attached to the handlebars. I purchased a gel padded seat, a bag for the handlebars in a somber shade of black with no flowers, and a helmet.

The helmet made my head look gigantic as though my brain had expanded. It did not, however, make me appear more intelligent. After our first outing, I added a pair of bike shorts with a soft insert supposed to help ease any soreness from riding. They seemed to hold up well, and I considered wearing them at work, where I have to sit typing at a computer for long periods.

After a leisurely five-mile ride on our local bike path, Andrew and I discussed where we should go next. He suggested the White Rock Lake Bike Trail, and I looked forward to the adventure as I packed snacks and extra water for the eighteen-mile trek.

For most of the ride, I kept Andrew in sight as he pedaled in front of me. We passed small children and grandmothers pushing strollers and I gave them all a cheery wave as we rolled down the first nine miles, but on the return loop, my strength failed. Somewhere around mile sixteen, I realized that the difference between an eighteen-mile bike ride and a five-mile bike ride was not thirteen miles. It was, instead, the distance from here to hell and back.

The bike shorts, while appreciated, had limits. When we stopped at a shady underpass, I plopped down in the dirt and tried to catch my breath while Andrew poured lukewarm water over my head and neck.
“Can you go on? Do I need to get the car?” Andrew asked. “I’ve broken my sweetie!” he said.

I shook my head as I lay there in the dirt while scores of curious onlookers passed by, among them the small children and grandmothers I had floated past earlier.

“I’m sorry,” I replied, “I thought we were getting close to the end.”
“We are, just another mile. Remember, we have Gatorade in the cooler back at the car.”

“Gatorade!” No drink had sounded so intoxicating since my college days.
My heart rate slowed to a normal pace as a family with two toddlers pedaled past us. When an elderly man cycled by on a recumbent bike, I decided I would not be shown up by an octogenarian, and we got back up to continue the ride.

For the rest of that mile, I tried to ignore the white-hot rock that my nice cushioned bicycle seat had transformed into. I stood up to pedal to give my sitting parts relief, but my legs protested the extra work. My ass, not to be outdone, reminded me that, bicycle shorts or not, I would probably sleep facing down for the next few nights.

We got to the last one hundred yards of the route and the trail turned downhill toward the park where our car was waiting. I leaned forward into the warm wind and let the bike gather speed as I coasted. The spokes lulled me with a pleasant hum, and the sharp tar smell of hot summer roads rose from the path below. I drifted along to the sounds of children playing near the soccer fields and the tinkle of a bell from the ice cream vendor.

As the wheels on my bike spun around, I imagined rainbow streamers flying out from the handlebars, and a white plastic wicker basket with large, bright sunflowers on the front. Andrew waited at the car with an ice cold Gatorade as I rolled up, and I gratefully accepted his offering, ready for the ride to be over, ready for it to last forever.

The Summer of Lemons

September 7, 2018 ~ mstturpin ~ Leave a comment

I moved into my first apartment in 1979. The place came with shag carpet striped in an acid trip rainbow of purple, green, and brown. By the time my roommate Ann and I lived there the rug had collected a gummy overlay of tobacco and pot smoke, beer, and other substances we ignored. Our floral print couch had broken springs that sagged our butts toward the ground when we stretched out to catch up on Love Boat and Fantasy Island. The world’s biggest fan of the rock band Queen lived next door. He serenaded us every night with “Another One Bites the Dust” and if we pushed the couch close to the wall, it would rock us to sleep with the vibrating bass line. That apartment was the first place we had ever chosen all on our own, without help from parents or school administration.

Ann and I discovered our home in August, about three weeks before the fall semester would start at Texas Woman’s University. We drove over to Denton, Texas in her 1967 Dodge Dart. The car did not have air conditioning. We rolled down the windows and hung our heads out like dogs to catch the hot air blowing off the highway. By the time we made the hour-long trip from our hometown the backs of my legs stuck to the vinyl car seat with a tacky layer of sweat glue. We pulled into the parking lot of the first complex on our list and slumped out of the car, careful not to brand ourselves with the hot metal on the outside the Dart. In the full sun we stood there pondering the faded pink brick buildings. I imagined the rubber soles of my sandals melting into the black tar pit of the asphalt parking lot and I wondered if some later civilization would find my bones, preserved and still wearing flip flops.

“There’s a pool,” Ann said, pointing toward a shimmering patch of blue in the center of the courtyard. The sharp summer scent of chlorine hung in the air and we heard laughter and soft splashing coming from the lucky residents enjoying the water. We wiped the sweat out of our eyes, abandoned the car, and raced to the manager’s office to sign a lease for our new apartment.

We moved in over the next weekend, figuring to get settled in before classes started. We unpacked in air-conditioned comfort, without realizing we enjoyed the last bit of the previous tenant’s billing cycle. On Monday we woke to the end of that free ride. No electricity meant no radio, no television, and no air conditioning. Our friendly neighbor set down his bong and turned down the bass on his stereo long enough to explain how to go about getting our own account set up. A phone call to the utility company later, we had an appointment for them to come out the next day, Tuesday.

We opened the windows and the front door and spent the day at the pool. By early evening we were both the color of the Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill wine we had been drinking all day.

“Is there any more ice?” Ann asked from the couch where she stirred the hot air with the magazine she had been reading.

“No, maybe we should go to the store.” My voice was muffled because I had my head in the open freezer, waving the last of the cool air onto my face.

“We’re also out of wine,” I added.

Ann and I moaned about the lack of air conditioning, ice, and alcohol and decided, since we were heading to the store to get ice and wine, we would stop at K-Mart to pick up a fan–yes, an electric fan, a fan that would need electricity to run.

Most people would notice the glaring gap in logic this purchase presented. However, Ann and I, stunned from the heat like lizards, and brain damaged from inhaling chlorine fumes and cheap wine all day, loaded into the Dart and headed to K-Mart.

Once we arrived at the store, we discovered the fans displayed right at the front entrance. We walked through a wind tunnel of spinning blades and overlooked the cords dangling from the back and running to the hidden power supply. We pictured our fan set up in the living room, spinning cool air out of nothing. Fan chosen and placed in the shopping cart, we picked up cleaning supplies and added a bottle of lemon scented ammonia to our cart as we headed to the cashier.

While we stood in line, Ann picked up the cleaner. “I wonder if this really smells like lemons. You know, like real lemons or just some sweet stuff.” I took the bottle from her and read the label.

“It says ammonia,” I said.

I unscrewed the cap, held the container close to my nose, and inhaled a strong breath. A line of lemon scented fire raced up my nose and entered my brain.

“Well, does it smell like lemons?” Ann asked.

I couldn’t answer as my lungs seemed to have collapsed from the ammonia. Instead I waved frantically, hoping it would be interpreted as “Yes, but help!”

I held out the bottle toward Ann and before I could warn her, watched as she took the bottle from me and inhaled. There we were, in the line at K-Mart, gasping for breath and crying, passing that bottle of ammonia back and forth between us like two drunks sharing a can of Sterno.

We recovered enough to put the cap back on the bottle, then looked at the fan sitting there in the cart. The ammonia must have loosened something in our brain because we realized then you can’t run an electric fan without electricity. We traded the fan for a pair of flashlights and left the ammonia at K-Mart. We stopped for ice and headed back to our apartment, our home where the moonlight beckoned off the dark, still surface of the swimming pool and the night air smelled of chlorine and not lemons.

A Day Like Any Other

July 22, 2018 ~ mstturpin ~ Leave a comment

Oklahoma City National Memorial Photo by Terrye Turpin

168 bronze and glass chairs, arranged in 9 rows, stretched across the green field.

My fiance Andrew and I drove up to Oklahoma City the day before, a Friday, and spent an endless, tiring day at the car dealership where Andrew negotiated the purchase of used BMW. I fidgeted in the vinyl covered chairs in the customer lounge, read books and checked my email.

The dealership offered free sodas and I spent the afternoon wandering between the bathroom and the soda machine. Engrossed in the book I was reading, I knocked a full cup of ice and cola onto the floor then sat there as the puddle crept toward my feet. Andrew found paper towels in the men’s room and mopped up the mess while I glanced to see if anyone else in the sparkling showroom had noticed.

We went for a test drive in the car, a 2009 BMW 128i series in Montego Blue, a color so electric brilliant I felt a small static shock walking up to it. I settled in the passenger seat and watched the highway exit signs flash past, too quick to read. After the purchase I followed in my SUV as Andrew drove back to our hotel. The bright blue sedan weaved through stodgy trucks and cars like a songbird.

The next day we visited the Oklahoma City National Memorial.

The chairs represent the empty places at dinner tables for each of the 168 people who died in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. There are nine rows, corresponding to the nine floors of the building. Each chair is positioned according to the floor where each of the lost perished. There are five chairs in a separate row, symbolizing the five victims killed outside the building.

The West Gate and the Reflecting Pool Photo by Terrye Turpin

Looking out from the East Gate Photo by Terrye Turpin

Two gates flank the memorial grounds. The East Gate displays the time 9:01, just before the bomb went off at 9:02 am that day. The West Gate displays 9:03, the time immediately after, when healing and rebuilding began.

A reflecting pool covers the area that once was the street in front of the building. The bomber drove a rented truck down NW 5th street, past the tall apartment building, and parked in front of the doors on the north side of the building.

The granite walkway surrounding the field is constructed in part from rubble salvaged from the site.

The field outlines the footprint of the Alfred P. Murrah building. The jagged outcroppings in the south wall are parts of the original building. The only walls remaining are on the east end of the memorial, where slabs of granite bear the names of the more than 1,000 who survived that day.

A portion of the Rescuer Orchard Photo by Terrye Turpin

The Rescuer’s Orchard represents the more than 12,000 people who responded that day, many within minutes of the explosion. One nurse, Rebecca Anderson, lost her life in the aftermath as she collapsed while rescuing survivors. The bronze and glass chair etched with her name stands with the five others in the row at the end of the field.

At the east end of the Rescuer’s Orchard stands the 100 year old American Elm known as the Survivor Tree. It stood in the gravel parking lot directly in front of the Murrah building. Damaged in the blast and surrounded by burning cars, the tree was expected to die, but it recovered.

Inscription at the Survivor Tree Photo by Terrye Turpin

“The spirit of this city and this nation will not be defeated; our deeply rooted faith sustains us.” Inscription surrounding the Survivor Tree.

We walked around the grounds outside until the hot afternoon summer sun urged us into the air conditioned museum.

Inside the museum we watched video interviews with survivors, investigators, and rescuers. Glass display cases held items gathered from the site — eyeglasses, car keys, shoes, toys, and pens. One case held a dress worn by one of the survivors, a small tear the only damage to the fabric. The same case also held a plastic baggy bulging with bits of cloth pulled from the body of another survivor. Their location when the bomb went off determined the extent of their injuries. A trip down the hall to the restroom or a chore at the copy machine literally meant the difference between life and death for some.

We, the visitors, gathered in a small room and sat on a padded bench pushed against the wall. Across from us a tape recorder enclosed in a clear case sat on a wooden table. It was easy to imagine the people gathered there that day, shuffling papers and scooting closer in the government issued straight back chairs that front the table. We listened to a taped recording from the Water Board Hearing held that day. The Oklahoma Water Resources Board building, located directly across from the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, was damaged in the blast and demolished. The taped meeting, a record of the events from that morning, was preserved.

A female voice on the tape announces the time and date for the record, 9:00 AM on April 19, 1995, and calls the hearing to order. The plaintiff, a man seeking a permit to sell water from his land, speaks up to confirm his presence. Fluorescent lights buzz above us as the voices on the tape drone on with the minutia of a government proceeding. We, the audience, know what is coming. I hold my breath and count off the seconds, my heart rate accelerating as I think surely it is past the time. I anticipate the blast, but when it comes I jump. The roar of sound and the frightened cries of the people on the tape do not resemble any special effects I have ever heard. The screen behind the table holding the tape recorder lights up with the images of the 168 lives lost that day.

We left the memorial and walked four hot concrete blocks to the Oklahoma City Museum of Art.

“Art washes from the soul the dust of everyday life.” ~ Pablo Picasso

Jesus wept. John 11:35

We napped in the air conditioning of our hotel then returned to the memorial that evening.

The East Gate 9:01 Photo by Terrye Turpin

The memorial grounds are open 24 hours and are lighted at night.

The West Gate 9:03 Photo by Terrye Turpin

We strolled through the rows of chairs in their ghostly light. A group of people, a mother with short dark hair and her two teenage sons, stopped us to ask about the chairs.

“There are nine rows. They stand for the nine floors of the building and the chairs are placed according to where each victim was that day,” I explain. My voice carries over the still night air, rising as I grow absorbed in my description of the field and what we learned that morning at the museum. I wave my arms at the gates and tell about the reflecting pool that covers the street where he parked that day. I do not mention that the last three bodies were not recovered until May 27, 1995, 38 days after the bombing. We are standing on sacred ground.

“The smaller chairs are for the children who died in the blast.” My voice drops with this last.

“Children?” the woman asks.

“There were two daycare centers in the building,” I answer. The woman nods. The teenage boys stand silent and still. I do not tell her that several of the children had to be identified from latent prints lifted from their homes.

“You should come back tomorrow to the museum,” I add and she agrees.

Fence at the Oklahoma City National Memorial Photo by Terrye Turpin

At the West Gate there is 200 feet of the original chain link fence that enclosed the bomb site. The fence is preserved so that visitors can leave items for remembrance. Periodically the tokens are removed and stored at the museum, which now holds more than 60,000 of these items.

Inscription on the West Gate Photo by Terrye Turpin

We left Oklahoma City on Sunday and I followed the blue BMW until I lost sight of the car amid the flow of traffic headed south. Monday morning I returned to work, drank my coffee, chatted with coworkers, sent emails, made copies and visited the ladies room. A day like any other day.

For more information on the history and the site:

Oklahoma City Memorial

National Park Service

What Will Answer When You Call My Name

July 21, 2018 ~ mstturpin ~ Leave a comment

My son, Andy, told me about the stray cat when I stopped over at his house for a visit. The cat, a scrawny orange and white tabby, wandered over to him at the park near his home.

“I shared my snack with it,” he said.

The cat, hungry enough to eat a granola bar, held still and purred while he petted her. She either had a taste for sweetened oats or she hadn’t eaten real cat food in a while. He told me he would have taken her home if he could have figured out a way to get her into his car.

We always had pets. A hamster, cats, dogs, a gecko, fish — every branch of the animal kingdom was represented. The last of them, our cat Miss Tiggy and the dog Greta, died not too long before my marriage came to its own timely end. When I moved out Andy came with me to share an apartment. Now he lived in a house with his fiancé. I stayed in the apartment, alone for the first time in twenty-five years.

When Andy mentioned going back to the park to look for the cat, the appropriate response at this point from me would have been “What about your allergies?” or “Are you sure you’re ready to own a pet?”

But Andy had a house in need of a pet, and there was a cat in need of a home.

“I wonder if she’s still there?” I asked as I gathered up my car keys.

We piled into my Honda SUV and drove the four blocks to Finch Park. The pecan and oak trees in the park loomed tall and shady over the playground when I played there as a child, and years later they stood over my own boys. The donated land was a gift from Fannie and Henry A. Finch and the park carries their name. Fannie was one of the first women in Texas to be elected to a school board, not an easy feat in 1917. In fact, since women weren’t allowed to vote until 1920, she wouldn’t have been able to cast a ballet for herself.

We found the kitty hiding out in the bushes that ringed one side of the grounds. She strolled out to greet us as we stepped out of the car, waving her tail like a flag signaling surrender. We hadn’t given much thought to the logistics of moving the cat from the park, into my car, and down the street to Andy’s house. We surveyed the supplies on hand.

“I have a recyclable grocery sack, a zippered cooler, and a laundry basket.” I said.

The cat did not particularly like being stuffed in the back of an SUV and having a laundry basket turned over on top of her. We made the drive back to the house listening to the cat wailing harmony to Lucinda Williams on the CD player.

I stopped in the driveway and Andy hopped out to open the front door. Once the way inside was clear we cautiously lifted the hatch on my SUV. The term “catapult” does not adequately describe the velocity that an angry cat can achieve when she launches herself from the driver’s seat of a car and out the back, past the astonished humans who stood in her way.

We lured her within grabbing distance with a can of tuna and I scooped her up to carry her into the house. At this point the cat noticed that we were approaching an open door into who knows what, and she decided to attach herself to me like a large, furry cockle burr. I don’t know who was howling louder, me or the cat, but we made it safely inside.

I searched the bathroom medicine cabinet for first aid supplies while Andy treated the cat to the rest of the tuna.

“What will you name the cat?” I called as I poured antiseptic down my arm.

“How about Killer?” Andy replied.

I was in favor of Lucy, short for Lucifer. I contemplated the angry red scratches on my arm and considered the possibility that I might perish from some cat borne illness.

Andy replied, “Don’t worry Mom, if you die we’ll name the cat after you.”

I thought about Miss Fannie Finch and the park named for her, and decided that if worse came to worse I could accept a scrawny cat as a namesake. After all, it’s nice to be remembered.

The Things I Kept

June 14, 2018 ~ mstturpin ~ Leave a comment

I packed up my apartment in one afternoon, amazed at the amount and the variety of useless stuff I collected in fourteen months. Some of it I had when I moved in, but not the one hundred plus ketchup packets or the fifty little plastic sleeves of soy sauce. I certainly didn’t remember owning hundreds of clothes hangers. It’s funny the items you consider worthwhile when you are choosing which to leave and which to take. Two of my possessions I consider valuable enough to be the first on the “keep” list — a small statuette of a sad dog in a Boy Scout uniform, and my 1958 Barbie doll.

The ceramic dog was a present from my father. By the time I came along he no longer led a scout troop, but I liked the little statue and asked him for it. The Barbie doll might be worth some money if her feet weren’t marked with the imprint of my childish teeth. Barbie and the little dog were among the first things I took out of the home I left to my ex-husband.

The more stuff you own the more dusting you need to do. If I could, I would reduce all my possessions down to what would fit into a backpack. I could make do with a travois I guess and drag the lot along behind me. I fled a twenty-five-year marriage with just what fit into my car, plus a futon. A small price to pay for a quick retreat.

Three months after I appeared alone in court to finalize the divorce, my ex-husband’s sister asked if I wanted anything from the house. They were selling it in a last gasp effort to avoid foreclosure. I brought friends, boxes, and a pickup and arrived to find the front door of the house covered in plywood. Law enforcement had kicked in the door, looking for a man my ex had let stay at the house. We loaded up photo albums, dishes, books, odds and ends I thought I might want.

I wound up with a collection of novelty coffee mugs, a flock of ceramic roosters and chickens, battered pots and pans with loose handles, puzzles, games, blankets, paperback books and bookcases–it grew exhausting dragging it all along behind me. I decided to hold a garage sale. I convinced my son, Andy, that he should let me hold the sale at his house by offering to split the proceeds with him.

I’ve lived long enough to have suffered through several garage sales, they seem to come in ten-year cycles, like a plague of locusts. The day of the big event I set up in Andy’s driveway with a cup of coffee and watched the sun rise while our first customer arrived. The woman struggled out of the passenger seat of an older model pickup truck with a bed piled high with used furniture. She ambled toward me and asked “Is your lawnmower for sale?”

I explained that we didn’t own a lawnmower, let alone have one for sale, and she huffed, turned around, and walked swaying back to the truck. The treasure hunters appeared. They rummaged through the mismatched coffee mugs, torn sheets and worn out bath towels, boxes of puzzles with just one piece missing, and clocks that no longer worked. They turned to ask, “You got any gold or silver jewelry?”

I had my wedding ring, but I didn’t sell it. Not then. I kept it stashed in a wooden jewelry box for a year after the divorce. I sold it at a store front with a large black and yellow banner proclaiming “We Buy Gold! Silver! Top Dollar!”

Each item that sold meant one less thing to pack up and move. I felt lighter as the boxes of knick-knacks, throw rugs, and collections of paperback books left with each buyer. I had been carrying the weight of these things for years. By ten o’clock on the second day of the sale I was down to several dozen coffee mugs, some pots and pans, a used television antennae, and a warped dresser with loose knobs and sticky drawers.

Andy joined me on the driveway as we watched people cruise by, checking out the remnants from the safety and air conditioning of their cars. Our last customers were a pair of older Hispanic men who paid two dollars for a dozen coffee mugs. Before they left, they asked if we would like to buy some tamales. The men led us to their car, parked at the curb in front of the house. They popped the trunk and lifted a foil wrapped bundle from a red plastic cooler. The tamales were warm, fragrant with chili and garlic. My son and I closed our enterprise. We packed up the left-over goods to donate to charity and placed the bulkier stuff out by the curb with a sign that read “Free.”

I still have the Barbie doll and the ceramic dog. The other things I own do not all fit in a backpack and I doubt I could get it all into my SUV. The possessions we own and the memories they contain can weight us down and bind us in one place like anchors, keeping us from moving on toward a better destination. And sometimes our things act as ballast, giving our life balance, reminding us of where we came from and holding us steady on our course.

Here in the Dark Beside You

June 4, 2018 ~ mstturpin ~ Leave a comment

Carlsbad Caverns — Photo by Terrye Turpin

I hesitated in the candlelight in front of the locked metal gate seven hundred and fifty feet underground. The cave was slightly warmer than the inside of a refrigerator and smelled of mildew and the earthy scent of bat guano. As I inhaled the cool, moist air I glanced around me at the dark rock walls. My fiancé Andrew waited beside me, listening to the gray-haired park ranger give our small group last minute safety instructions. At the end of his speech, the ranger mentioned a story about a kidnapping in the cavern. Four armed men held several people captive for hours near the spot where we stood. Had I paid better attention, I would have heard him say this crime occurred in 1979. I was, however, busy calculating how long the candle in my lantern would burn before it left me in the dark.

I glanced at my fellow tourists and tried to imagine one of them pulling out a gun. The flannel clad young couple in running shoes had two small children with them, so I expected they would behave. The retirees from Florida, dressed in matching Hawaiian shirts, did not look menacing. I decided at the least I could outrun them if they turned out to be dangerous.

Andrew and I chose this tour from the comfort of our home, weeks before our trip to New Mexico, and we bought the tickets online. I don’t mind spontaneity, but my first love is a well-planned itinerary. I browsed the options listed on the Carlsbad Caverns website and rejected the “Spider Cave Tour” based on the name alone. Andrew lobbied for the “Lower Cave Tour”, but after spotting the words “crawling” and “rope ladders” in the description, I knew this would not work for me. When I was a child I broke my arm, swinging from a plastic jump rope tied to a tree. I didn’t think the experience would improve if I recreated it underground fifty years later.

“I wonder if they have a senior discount,” I asked, as I clicked through the Park Service website.

“Oh no, don’t fool with that, just pay full price,” Andrew insisted.

I am happy to accept any age related savings given, while Andrew searches for and plucks out his gray hairs each evening. I once offered to sign him up under my AARP membership, and you would think I had volunteered to donate one of his kidneys.

After some discussion, we agreed on the Left Hand Tunnel tour. It promised to recreate the caving experience of early explorers. The only warning listed described walking on uneven surfaces in dim lighting. I can find my way to our bathroom in the middle of the night, so I thought I would be okay.

When we arrived at Carlsbad, Andrew tried again to convince me I had the skill and flexibility to navigate the Lower Cave Tour. As we strolled along the paved path through the main cavern, the Big Room, we stopped to peer over the railing, down into the deeper portion of the cave. A narrow dirt path wound through stalagmites and disappeared through a dark opening in the cave wall below. Lovely formations like lacy curtains flowed from the ceiling, but I wondered how securely they were attached. “Crushed by beauty” might be a nice epitaph, but would be small consolation once I was buried.

“I don’t think I can climb down a rope ladder, and there are no lights down there.” I pointed over the side. In contrast, spotlights in the Big Room illuminated both the cave formations, and the paved trail with gentle lighting. There were no rope ladders in sight. Instead, people traveled up and down in elevators, dined at a snack bar, and relieved themselves in restrooms with running water and flush toilets. Still, it touched me that Andrew had this faith in me; that I could scamper down a rope ladder and crawl through bat infested tunnels in the dark. We pledged to grow old together even though I have a head start.

When Andrew and I first met our age difference didn’t matter. We seemed to be in that sweet spot of time between middle age and infirmity. However, I remember that I will retire eleven years before he does. I agonize over broken hips, and Andrew scoffs I am too young to worry about falling.

While we waited for the tour orientation to start, I looked at a photo display of early explorers to the caverns. The women wore their finest silk dresses and caps with feathers. I wondered how they managed the cave while wearing high heels. The men wore sensible loafers and looked dashing in wool overcoats and fedoras. All of them looked out of place as they dropped into the cavern in the large bat guano mining buckets used by visitors before the cavern upgraded to wooden stairs.

“How historically accurate is this tour? Will they lower us down in a bucket?” Andrew asked.

“No, I believe they phased that out,” I replied.

As we assembled in a small classroom, the park ranger who would lead the tour checked off our names. He asked us to affirm our ability to walk across a dim, rough dirt path. I felt confident about my “Yes!” until he opened a metal cabinet filled with hard hats, elbow pads, and head lamps, things a coal miner would use. When he took out a box of candles and left the crawling equipment in the cabinet, I sighed and sat back in my chair. We all lined up to select a candle, and I picked one with a fresh wick that looked like it would last until the end of the tour.

After the orientation, we rode the elevator down, and walked over to the Left Hand Tunnel entrance. We picked up our lanterns, and the ranger lit the candles placed inside. He warned us of the danger of spilling hot wax on our neighbors or the fragile cave formations and off we went.

As we entered the tunnel, my eyes adjusted to the dim light. I managed to spot my feet, fearful that I might wipe out a small, irreplaceable artifact with my sturdy hiking boots. We came to a slight incline in the path, a slick little hill about four feet tall, and the ranger offered a hand up and over to anyone who needed it. I hadn’t met my insurance deductible for the year, so I accepted. Everyone else–except the elderly couple from Florida — scrambled up and over the top as though they were stepping up onto a curb outside Starbucks.

The lantern did a fair job of lighting up a one foot perimeter of the cave around my feet, so I had a great view of the crushed rock on the dirt path. I kept my eyes trained on that path as the ranger mentioned the deep pools of water and the steep drop offs that we passed. I listened as he described other points of interest, the sparkling pyrites and ghostly pale calcium carbonate formations. When I felt steady enough, I lifted my gaze from my feet and focused on the backs of Andrew’s legs as he strode along. At one point we stopped and the ranger pointed out an area where an early visitor used a flare to burn their initials into the cave wall, proving that even decades ago people were assholes.

About halfway through the tour we came to a spot leveled out by thousands of tromping tourist feet, and we set down our lanterns. The ranger continued the kidnapping story he mentioned at the start of the tour. It turns out there was alcohol involved, which explains why the would-be terrorists thought it was a good idea to isolate themselves 750 feet underground and demand a million dollars, an airplane to Brazil, and an interview with a reporter. They got the interview, but not the money or airplane, and everyone came out of the cave without injury.

“With your permission, I’d like to do something exciting now,” The ranger said. I worried that here at last we would be asked to rappel down an underground crevice or scale a rock outcropping. I prepared to protest that the tour description failed to cover this.

“I’d like us to blow out our candles and experience the cave in total darkness.” When no one objected, he continued. “We will stand here in silence and then I will come around and light your candles.”

I breathed a sigh, standing still I could do, even in the dark. The cave dimmed as each person blew out their candle, and one by one I watched my fellow tourists disappear. The darkness enveloped me like a soft, thick blanket, and there were no sounds of trouble, no heavy breathing or whispers from a drawn pistol.

When the ranger suggested that we each hold up a hand in front of our face, I kept mine at my side, fearful if I couldn’t see it, then my hand would cease to exist. I knew my hand was there, I felt it dangling at the end of my arm, but it was disconcerting to know something was there but not be able to see the physical proof of its existence. This was the price I paid for a lifetime of reading scary stories.

A slight breeze brushed my cheek, and I heard a rustling, flapping sound that was either a bat brushing by or Andrew waving his hand in front of my face. I bumped him with my shoulder and he reached down to clasp my hand. My fingers intertwined with his while the ranger came around to each of us and relit our candles. We made our way back along the path, through the metal gate at the entrance to the tunnel, and dropped off our lanterns at the end of the tour.

When we stepped off the elevator at the surface, I left to browse the overpriced souvenirs in the gift shop while Andrew stopped to look over a table top diorama of the caverns. I came out to see him studying a map of the Lower Cave.

When I turned fifty, I traded in the recklessness of my youth. I chose my clothes for comfort rather than sex appeal. Then I met Andrew, and I took a chance on dating a man eleven years younger than me. Chance implies a risk of loss, but as we grew closer, I realized there was no risk here. The loss was in the years before we met. Here was a man who would find my hand in the dark.

I pointed over to the information desk. “Why don’t we stop and see if there are tickets for the Lower Cave tour?”

When we asked, the ranger informed us that there wouldn’t be another tour until the following week. “It sells out quickly” he told us, “It’s our most popular tour.”

“I’m sorry.” I told Andrew and tried to hide my relief. There is nothing like reaping the benefit of sacrifice, without actually having to make it.

“That’s okay.” Andrew said, “We will come back sometime. We can practice climbing up a rope ladder.”

I calculated how many years we would have to wait before I qualified for the National Park Senior Pass. I pictured a much older me, leaning on a walker with one of those cloth bags on the front to hold snacks and a book I was reading. I told Andrew I would be game to try the rope ladder, and he took my hand as we walked across the parking lot to our car. If the rope ladder doesn’t work out I thought, maybe they could just lower me down in a bucket.

The Rivers

May 31, 2018 ~ mstturpin ~ Leave a comment

We arrived in San Saba, Texas, the Pecan Capital of the World, in the hot late afternoon, in time to check into our hotel and stash the packs filled with what we thought we’d need for the weekend. My fiancé, Andrew, and I wandered down the small town street while I sipped a cup of coffee from a waxed paper cup. Our reflections cast back in mirrored glass and revealed a late middle-aged couple dressed in comfortable, travel wrinkled clothes. We stretched our legs and popped joints stiff from the three hour drive. We did our best to outwit the Texas sunshine by dodging along the shade cast on the sidewalk from awnings over businesses closed for the holiday weekend. I set down the paperboard cup at last to step through the doorway and into Harry’s Boots.

The store, established in 1939, seemed to fill half the city block. Shelves and racks lured shoppers with pearl snapped and buttoned western shirts in peacock colors or solemn, solid dyes. Sturdy denim jeans, in every size that man or woman might exist, lay neatly stacked and folded into cubbies along the walls. But the main attractions, and those which filled the space with the heady fragrance of leather and the clean, sharp scent of saddle soap and polish, were the boots.

Boots in sizes dainty through durable, made from every type of hide imaginable. Boots from alligator, ostrich, lizard, goat, buffalo, and rattlesnake. I would not miss this last, but I cringed to pick up a pair labeled “elephant.” We left after browsing through rooms crowned with hats, straw and Stetson, felt and ten gallon, fit for cowboys, cattle barons, and weekend tourists with money to spare.

Bridge over the Llano River, photo by Terrye Turpin

Too early for dinner, we cruised down the road to Llano, leaving the San Saba River behind and seeking the Llano in the city that bore its name. We hiked along the river bank and wondered at sculptures woven into the landscape, they seemed to have sprung up like the wildflowers, unassisted by human hands.

Back in San Saba we walked again, this time along a concrete trail through a park along a different river and through stands of pecan trees whose branches weaved overhead like lovers holding hands. Twilight came upon us while we bickered over which path led back to our car. Andrew held out his phone for a flashlight as we traced our steps back, past neon yellow bursts from fireflies waking to search for love. A family of deer lifted their ears and paused in their grazing to mutely ask what we thought we were up to, lingering so long near sundown.

Photo by Terrye Turpin — Pecan trees in San Saba, Texas

Safely back in our room at the Dofflemyer Hotel, I pushed back the curtains to look down upon a street I imagined traveled by horses instead of Hondas. We turned in early after a snack of pecans roasted in butter and salt and left for us instead of mints on the pillow. I dreamed of Texas, a big land for sure, to hold those whose faith and fitness drew them here. Like the pecan I am native with roots that tap to green river water. If others wonder why I so long linger here, I’ll take a breath to remember the scent of leather boots, the charm of fireflies at dusk, and the graceful bend of prairie grass to wind.

The Changing Room

May 26, 2018 ~ mstturpin ~ Leave a comment

The scar on my breast is a dark reddish brown, fading slowly at the edges. It is curved, like a parenthesis. There is a slight indentation, a flat spot under the blemish that shows when I stand in profile. The scar is hidden, even by my most revealing bathing suit. Most of the time I don’t even think about it, except when I’m undressed.

My usual routine when I can’t fall asleep consists of surfing the internet for cat memes and funny videos. The other night I sat up, bolstered on both sides by the collection of pillows my boyfriend and I have on our bed, and picked up my phone. The dark bedroom was lit by the tiny bluish glow from the screen, and I turned the volume down low so that Andrew wouldn’t hear and come in to remind me I had to get up early for work the next day.

I found a comedy sketch on YouTube that started with a woman entering a gym. Her dark hair piled on top of her head, she carries a gym bag over her arm as she walks up to the smiling young woman in a green polo shirt at the front desk. As she signs in an alarm sounds and the uniformed staffer stands up and congratulates the woman. The visitor has just turned forty, and the attendant leads her back to a special area that she is now entitled to enter. It is a changing room filled with naked women. They sprawl on benches and strut around the space without as much as a towel to hide behind. One of the women appears to be shaving her pubic hair. Another lifts her breasts and towels off underneath them. When the birthday girl protests that she’s not that comfortable with nudity, her clothes magically disappear and she’s left standing there, naked. She does, however, still have the gym bag over her arm. The other women gather around to welcome her to “not giving a shit at the gym.”

I have never been comfortable in locker rooms. I don’t like undressing in front of anyone unless they’re going to have sex with me or give me a medical exam. A changing room filled with other people has always necessitated contortions worthy of a gymnast or a Chinese acrobat. I can both remove and replace my bra without taking off my t-shirt. If I’m at the lake I can completely undress and put on a one piece bathing suit while wrapped in a beach towel. It’s not the scrutiny of strangers that bothers me, it’s being seen naked by someone I might encounter later at the grocery store.

Last year, I hesitated when one of my coworker friends invited me to come with her to a Korean spa. My friend is in her thirties, two decades younger than I am. She’s blonde, single, and a frequent shopper at Groupon, where she found a great deal on the spa visits.

“Isn’t there a lot of walking around naked at a Korean spa?” I asked her. It’s one thing to picture people without their clothes when you’re nervous about giving a presentation, but it’s another thing entirely to know exactly what they look like without their underwear. After my friend assured me that the mineral baths were the only area where nudity was required, I went with her, but I arrived later and undressed by myself in a different part of the locker room. I put on the baggy pink shirt and shorts assigned to me by the spa, and wore my bathing suit underneath.

When I told my son Robert about my visit, he encouraged me to go back and try out the mineral baths. “The nude part is no big deal, Mom” he said. Robert makes his living as a plumber, a job requiring both physical skill and tolerance for messy situations. My son is very comfortable with his body. One Christmas he arrived at a gathering of friends and family and announced “I have a new piercing!” I often wish I had his confidence, and that he had my tact.

I considered his suggestion, and I went back to the spa by myself. I decided I would take advantage of every area, including the mineral baths in the women’s locker area. I checked in with the twenty-something year old blonde girl at the counter, and paused before answering “No” when she asked if I would be consuming alcohol. She strapped the electronic device that looked like a watch on my wrist. It stored my credit card information, and I would use it to both open my assigned locker, and pay for any food or drink I might want purchase. It didn’t cover much of my body, but it did eliminate the need for pockets.

After I took off my shoes and socks, I stowed them away in the first locker area and then made my way barefoot down the white tiled hallway toward the changing room. I stopped to pick up the uniform I would wear after the bath. The friendly girl at the counter handed me a folded pair of pink shorts and a faded pink t-shirt and said “Have a good visit!” Because I was still fully dressed, except for my feet, I smiled back at her and said thanks.

After checking to make sure no one there was even remotely familiar, I undressed and stowed my belongings in my locker. Had I spotted my favorite barista from Starbucks the whole deal would have been off, but I bravely set off for the shower area. I discovered that walking naked through a crowded changing room required a degree of relaxed composure I didn’t possess. I couldn’t walk through the place with my eyes closed, but I didn’t want to be seen staring at someone’s nipples either. Direct eye contact is uncomfortable for me. Even if I am fully dressed I tend to look away nervously as if I’ve just stuffed a handful of collection plate money in my purse. I gave up staring at my feet after I almost walked into a column, and finally found that the area between the collarbone and the bottom of a person’s ear lobe is a nice, neutral area. I could avoid both running into obstacles and giving the impression that I wanted to have a conversation.

The glass walls around the mineral bath area were fogged with condensation and as I walked closer, I was greeted with warm, moist air that smelled like chlorine and salt. The first spa had just two women, an elderly Asian grandmother and a middle aged Asian woman who could have been her daughter. Their eyes were closed in blissful relaxation. I lowered myself into the hot whirlpool, and found that if scooted down on the seat around the edge of the bath, the churning water safely concealed most of my body. If I closed my eyes I could imagine myself alone, and not sharing a bath with naked strangers.

I haven’t been back to the spa since my lumpectomy. The mass in my breast was familiar to me. It was there, in the upper right quadrant of my right breast, a small, hard lump that had been felt, scanned, and needle biopsied in the three years since I first discovered it. But when I went in for my annual well woman checkup, my gynecologist, a young woman with freckles and shiny black hair in a ponytail, paused during the breast exam.

“Was this lump there last year?” She gently tapped her fingers over my breast as I lay on the examining table. I raised my head a little bit to look at her instead of focusing on the many pictures of babies plastered on the walls. Her usual smile was replaced by a slight scowl. We had discussed this same lump last year. I even had a follow up ultrasound, but I felt as though I had conspired to hide this growth from her, maybe tucked away under my shoulder or behind my ear, one of the few places on my body not exposed during the annual exam.

“Yes.” I replied, “But maybe it’s bigger?” At this my doctor nodded her head and sent me off to a mammogram.

“You need an ultrasound.” The female technician, dressed in scrubs patterned with small hearts, frowned at me after the mammogram. Her eyes squinted at the images pinned up on the lightbox. She pushed her glasses up and pointed to the black and white pictures on the lightbox. “You have dense breasts” she said, shaking her head and blowing out a little puff of air. This was not news to me, although her tune was new, I’d heard the same refrain throughout my adult, yearly mammogram life.

I took my dense, uncooperative breasts for an ultrasound, which led to a referral to a specialist, a breast surgeon. My familiar lump had grown from the size of a small pea to slightly larger than a marble in the space of a year. The radiologist, a young man with dark hair and serious, black framed glasses, told me the growth did not look like cancer, but I would need a biopsy to be sure. The diagnosis read “Intermediate suspicion of malignancy”, which I took to mean I should make the appointment with the surgeon soon.

The next month I had the first surgery and a biopsy of the tumor. The week after that I met with my surgeon, a slim woman with a slight southern accent and soft, sure hands. Her walls were decorated with reassuring accolades and degrees. I sat on the examining table at her office and listened while she looked over the incision on my breast and discussed the lab results. The paper on the table crinkled as I shifted position.

“You have a phyllodes tumor” she explained. She went on to say that it wasn’t malignant, but that sometimes these tumors can come back, and develop into malignancies. “They are nasty” she said. I imagined a face on my tumor, like the Grinch from How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Nasty. I could choose to have her go back and remove the rest of the tumor, and the margins of tissue around it, or I could wait and monitor it with screenings. I imagined myself crossing off the days on the calendar until my insurance would cover the next ultrasound. I knew that I would feel the need to constantly check my breast, fingers measuring the skin over the lump, comparing and wondering if it had grown. If this urge overtook me in the grocery store check-out line it might be disturbing to the cashiers, so I chose the second surgery.

The scar, like the memory of the surgery that created it, fades more each day. Like the other bumps, stretch marks, and wrinkles, it is just a punctuation mark on my body, the grammar to my life story. If I were naked, the scar might require an explanation. I’m not embarrassed by it, but by the assumptions that might come from its presence. It is a purple heart from a battle that I did not have to fight.

I pull the covers up to my chin and slip down in my bed. The sheets smell pleasantly of floral fabric softener and they feel softly worn against my skin. I queue up the video again on my phone, and watch as the woman enters the gym. Once more the alarm sounds and the smiling attendant takes the lucky lady back to the changing room. The light from my phone screen lights up my face in the dark as I watch the naked women greet the newcomer. They all seem happy and relaxed, like friends I believe I would like to meet for coffee. I hear their laughter echo against the metal cabinets, as though from a distance. I think that maybe I am getting closer to where they are, in that kind and accepting place where everyone is welcome, as long as they are at least forty. As I turn off my phone for the night I take comfort in the thought that somewhere there is a room, a place for women, where no explanations or apologies are needed, and no one there gives a shit.

Originally published in The Same.

Smoke Rings Like Halos

May 1, 2018 ~ mstturpin ~ Leave a comment

Sometimes I’ll strike a match, and the sulfur scent brings back that sweet tobacco taste from the first draw on a fresh cigarette. I remember the blue-white smoke curling in tendrils and the hot orange glow of embers illuminating a dark room like secrets shared. Cigarettes were a secret I kept hidden from my mother.

I picked up smoking in college. Away from home on the first lap toward adulthood, I embraced every bad habit I had once railed against. My mother didn’t smoke, but my father did. He wasn’t allowed to smoke in the house, and during my childhood, before their divorce, he sat in a metal glider in the backyard while I lectured him on the evils of nicotine. I accepted, however, the little brown and cream colored coupons from the packs of his Raleigh smokes. You could exchange them for prizes in a catalog, and I was saving up for a transistor radio.

My cigarettes were Benson and Hedges Deluxe Ultra Lights — menthol. Inhaling one of those was like smoking a breath mint. My path through higher education started while the legal drinking age was eighteen. Cigarettes were cheaper than alcohol back then so I exchanged my bottle thick glasses for contact lens and imagined myself in an old black and white movie. I played at cool and sophisticated while I tried and failed to produce a perfect smoke ring.

I balanced painful shyness with a desire to separate from my mother and went away to school a mere 52 miles from what I left behind. When I gazed at the view from my dorm room balcony, I saw the highway that led back to my hometown, a straight asphalt line like an arrow over the horizon.

College was an escape from my mother’s obsessive compulsive disorder. In my mother’s house each daily routine magnified into a complex ritual. Simple tasks like dusting became chores that lasted half a day because every ceramic bird or glass vase had to be removed then placed back in the same position. If they were moved even one quarter of an inch I would have to start the whole task over again.

Home on weekends and holidays it was easy to hide the smoke odor on my clothes. Each time I entered the house I had to stop, strip naked in the laundry room, and drop my clothes in the washer. I walked naked to the bathroom where I showered and scrubbed off the outside world. The whole process would have come in handy at a nuclear power plant.

One weekend my mother announced that she would come visit me on campus. I broke the news the day before her arrival to Ann, my best friend since elementary school, and now, roommate. Ann glanced around our dorm and asked, “Does this mean we need to dust?”

“No,” I replied, then suggested we open the windows and turn off the lights. Books, papers, food wrappers, and discarded clothing covered the surfaces in our room. There was a noticeable coating of dust on our bookcase, which held not books but an assortment of empty liquor bottles.

My mother showed up wearing a light blue polyester pant suit she’d had at least six years. That pantsuit, with easy to wash material and elastic waist pants, was her uniform of choice whenever she left the house. She had other clothes, but she chose the comfort of the familiar over style. I led my mom on a speedy tour of the campus, avoiding any place where I might be recognized. We picked up a pizza to share with Ann back at the dorm.

After we ate we all leaned back, drowsy the way you are after a large meal. The room smelled of pepperoni and as I pushed aside the empty cardboard pizza box, I thought about how much I would like a cigarette. My mother opened her bag, the size and shape of a small black leather suitcase, and bent over to fish around inside it. She set things aside, not looking at them as she searched through her purse. Out came a lipstick, a coin purse, her wallet, and right before she found the tissue she was searching for, she pulled out and set down a pack of cigarettes.

“When did you start smoking?” I asked. I wondered how she got around washing the packs before she opened them.

“Oh, it’s a bad habit I used to have, I’ll quit again soon.”

I wouldn’t have been more surprised if she had confessed to being a serial killer. I laughed and brought out my own pack, then asked if she wanted to step out onto the balcony.

From left to right — my father, mother and my Uncle Buddy

Years later I would discover old photographs, tucked away in albums and stashed hidden in a desk drawer, and in them my mother posed in high heels and dresses. It was hard for me to reconcile the woman she had become, the one who had to wash every grocery item before she stored it away in the pantry, with the smiling woman in the sepia tinted photos.

My mom eloped and got married at fifteen, worked as a cook on a farm cooperative, had seven children, and divorced my dad when I was thirteen. Back then I feared that I would become my mother. As though genetics would dictate I inherit not only her nose and her eyes, but her personality, her failings, her mental illness.

We drew on our cigarettes and stared out over the silent courtyard below. The lights from passing cars flashed along the stretch of dark highway that led back toward my hometown. I glanced over at my mother, dressed in her familiar pant suit as she stood beside me, the smoke from our cigarettes curling over our heads like wispy halos.

The Care of Cast Iron

April 14, 2018 ~ mstturpin ~ Leave a comment

My mother on the far left, cooking over an open fire.

I cannot find my mother’s frying pan. The one she gave me before she moved into the nursing home, before she died, and after she stopped cooking for herself.

Her hands were rough, large and knotted with arthritis. They shook as she held out the frying pan. “You want this?” she asked as she picked up the heavy skillet from the inside of the oven where she stored her pots and pans. I took it because it was one of the few things in her apartment that didn’t smell like pine cleaner.

Other people hold on to things. They remember birthdays and anniversaries, and know exactly who inherited their grandmother’s silver. I misplace my scissors and the remote to the television but you would think something large and useful like a frying pan wouldn’t just float off out of sight.

My parents started their married life as farmworkers. My father drove a combine, and my mother cooked for the field hands in the 1930’s. She didn’t speak of it much. I am left to picture her aproned and bending to tend to a wood fired stove and stooping to wipe the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand. After the farm job she cooked for her husband and children and then just for herself and me, the last in the line of seven offspring.

Her cast iron skillet had a surface polished mirror smooth and jet black from years of fried potatoes, scrambled eggs, pork chops, and scratch made pancakes with golden brown circles dotted with pale spots where the butter melted. I was in high school when my parents divorced and our meals changed to things barely recognizable as food.

My mom, with her eighth grade education, found work as a housekeeper. She spent long days cleaning and cooking for other people, so at home we had frozen pizzas, chili and soup from a can. Evenings we settled in front of the television and suffered through boil-in-bag meals, little plastic packets pulled from the freezer and dunked into boiling water to cook. We dumped the contents out and spooned up Chicken a la King or Salisbury steak over instant potatoes. The boil-in-bag meals had an unpleasant aftertaste, like you had licked a plastic bucket and decided to melt it and serve it for dinner.

Married with two children, I had a frying pan when my mother gave me hers. My cast iron skillet was new and not well seasoned, the surface still pitted with small imperfections.

I didn’t notice when my mother stopped eating. She didn’t trust food prepared by others. She quit attending holiday meals, refusing even the plates brought to her by family. She liked hamburgers from Wendy’s so I often picked up a burger and fries to drop off on my way home. I have worked in fast food restaurants, but I never mentioned that her meal had most likely been prepared by someone with tattoos and a nose ring.

The microwave confused her, and she never learned how to use the one in her apartment. On our weekly trips to the grocery store she bought whatever frozen meal she could cook in her toaster oven. I carried her groceries in and stood in the entryway while she took off her shoes. One by one she ferried the items to the kitchen counter where she washed each box and bottle in harsh cleaner before putting them away.

My mother’s mental illness went untreated for most of her life. The obsessive compulsive disorder that locked her into rituals of cleaning didn’t appear until most of my brothers and sisters had grown up and left her house. I guess it might have been worse for me, growing up in a home with easy to mop vinyl floors in every room. At least she wasn’t a hoarder. I had to strip my clothes off and toss them into the washer before I walked through the living room but I didn’t have to wonder if there was a dead cat hidden under the couch.

She lived alone, in an apartment complex for senior citizens. They had a concierge to carry off the trash, so I didn’t notice the empty peanut butter jars that stuffed the bags of garbage while unused dinners filled the freezer. She began phoning 911, certain she was having a heart attack. I made the twenty minute drive from my house, arriving in time to find her sitting up and flirting with the young, attractive emergency medical technicians. When I mentioned the dizziness and confusion to her doctor, he suggested that it might be caused by malnutrition.

My mother’s frying pan stayed stashed in the cupboard. I don’t remember packing it up when I moved out of our house after my divorce, but I must have. There’s a vague memory of giving it to one of my grown children, but when I asked they both could not remember anything about it.

“I have a skillet, but it’s not that old,” said one.

“I think I got mine at Goodwill,” the other replied to my text.

To properly season a new cast iron skillet you must first scrub it with hot, soapy water to remove the grime from manufacturing. You dry the pan, rub the surface with oil and bake it for one hour at 375 degrees. I wish I remembered what I did with my mother’s frying pan. If I made a gift of it, I wish I had given it with the ceremony and pomp it deserved. Perhaps then one of us would recollect where they’d last seen it. A seasoned cast iron skillet will last a lifetime, and heat and use will wear the surface smooth and brilliant and precious.

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