A bit more about the hatchet

So, tonight I told Mom I was writing this stuff down in a blog and showed her how to look it up.  And in the spirit of helpfulness, after reading it, she thought I ought to know how we came to have a hatchet.

Mom is a lawyer, mostly retired.  It was a third career, after junior-high teacher and small business owner. She went to law school while her kids were in high school, which was an interesting process for everyone concerned.

As she tells me, one of her clients was an 85-year-old lady with a pig valve in her heart.  This lady was so impressed with Mom's lawyering job, she not only paid her bill promptly but also presented Mom with a small well-worn antique carpenter's bench and a hatchet as a thank-you gift.  The hatchet turns out to be a Marble Arms, made in Gladstone, Michigan, and happens to be (according to Mom anyway) very collectible.

Collectible hatchets...who knew?

The Botanical Enemy

Not only are we not fond of housework, we're also not much on landscaping.  When I give somebody directions to the house, I describe it as "tan brick with an awful lot of overgrown shrubbery."

The crowning jewel of the back yard is an enormous locust tree.  It does a lovely job of shading the house, no doubt lowering our air-conditioning costs.  It also has a nasty habit of sending up new shoots from the surface roots three or four months a year, which would become new trees if we left them alone.  The shoots are tough and sharp and a nuisance to remove - which led to the following conversation:

We are in the kitchen; I am pouring coffee and Mom is gazing out the back door.

Mom: "That damn tree is sending up shoots again."
Me (not really paying attention): "Okay.  What's the best way to get rid of them?"
Mom: "You have to pull them up. If you just mow them, they get all sharp and splintery."
Me: "Yeah, but sometimes the leaves just strip off and you can't get hold of the stem.  What do you do then?  Cut them with the pruning snips?"
Mom: "Well, then you have to use the hatchet."
Me: "Okay.  So, where's the hatchet?"
Mom: "In the bathroom."
Me (after a moment's pause): "You do realize, we're probably the only people on the block who keep a hatchet in the bathroom?"

And then we start laughing hysterically.  It's our latest catch phrase: "Where's the hatchet?"  Guaranteed laughs every time.

I've lived in this house since 1996 - how on earth did I miss noticing a hatchet in the bathroom??

To be fair, it actually lives in the half-bath off the kitchen (which is gray tile and fixtures, not pink), which we don't use as a bathroom because apparently the only way to keep the toilet from running all the time is to shut the water off altogether.  When we called the plumbing company about it, they sent out a kid who looked to be about 24.  He took the tank lid off, blinked at the interior a couple of times, and said, "I've read about these.  Never actually seen one."

We put a baby gate across the doorway for dogproofing, and it's become an extremely convenient place to keep the kitchen wastebasket, the compost bucket, the gardening wellies, a bit of the recycling, etc.  But still -  it's a hatchet.

Introducing our house

     My mother and I share a house, a stereotypical Midwestern 1950s brick ranch.  It retains a number of original features, some charming (hardwood floors, sandstone fireplace, crown molding) some not-so-charming (the original kitchen cabinets, cooktop, and wall oven are still here), and some downright odd (the bathroom is pink.  Very, very, tiled-four-feet-high-up-the-wall-plus-all-the-fixtures pink.  Apparently it was all the rage when Mamie Eisenhower was in the White House.)

We are not going to our graves with "Wish I Had Done More Housework" on our tombstones.  

I am standing in the kitchen, examining a long-lost soft binoculars case Mom has just fished out from under the couch.  It sports some remarkable dust bunnies and triggers this conversation:

Me (after wiping it off on my old jeans leg):  "You found it! Great!  What do you think...should I vacuum it?"
Mom (not really paying attention): "Probably."
Me: "Where's the vacuum cleaner?"
Mom: "I dunno."

And then we start laughing hysterically.   We, the dopes who can't remember where a basic household appliance might be found in a not-terribly-large house.

Brooms are just easier.

An unexpected gift

For one reason or another, my family is scattered for Christmas Day this year.  Anyone left in town usually ends up going for dinner at Denny's, which is the only thing open for miles.  Even the 24-hour MegaMart and the local McDonald's are closed.  This is a college town, and normally it's easy to find people out and something open at any hour.  On Christmas Eve, I drove around for awhile about 9:30pm and saw maybe six cars on the road and long lines of dark storefronts and parking lots.  It's surreal.

So today, my sister and I went to Denny's, which does an excellent business on Christmas.  It's also an interesting place to people-watch: several couples, one with a baby, a few grown children out with parents, some students stuck in town over the winter break.  In the corner, a fellow was out with his friend, or maybe his brother.  The friend appeared to be autistic, or maybe just a little slow.  The conversation was a little one-sided, and yet clearly, the friend was important to the talker, who was determined to engage him.  "I think we should travel," he said, and "You don't have to go to college to be important.  I think I'll teach you calculus."

My sister is mildly autistic (we spend a lot of time in companionable silence, including tonight), so I appreciated their conversation and tried not to stare.

And when we were nearing the end of our own dinner, our waitress told my sister and I that those two fellows in the corner had paid for our dinner.  They had finished before we had, and picked up not only our check, but also the check for another nearby party with a young man and his elderly parents.

I'm very touched by this.  They didn't know any of us, we didn't speak to each other, and we have no way even to say Thank You.  We can only remember and maybe pay it forward sometime.

It can be difficult to accept graciously.  It's too easy to say, oh no, you're too good, I couldn't possibly accept, please let me return the favor.  I am not worthy of such attention.  Sometimes the best thing to do, and the hardest, is to simply accept somebody's offering a help or a kindness, without insisting that it's not necessary or it must be returned. 

So, tonight, for the gentlemen who took me to dinner:  Thank you.   The world feels a little warmer tonight.

Why this? Why now?

Once in awhile I've tried keeping journals.  It hasn't worked well, as I usually forget to carry them or lose them altogether.  And this just seems more effective than occasionally rediscovering random scraps of my life scattered all over the house.