Back Off, World.

The picture below is not of a figure in a burqa. We don’t require burqa-wearing in our home. We have quite the liberal dress code, actually. The picture is of a blanket that is “hiding” an 8yo who doesn’t want to hear a bed time story.

The picture at the top is of the same 8yo, “hiding” under my bed skirt because he didn’t want to wear a particular shirt to school that I had chosen for him because it was chilly.

My 8yo has a sweet, happy disposition almost always. He’s the sunniest child I’ve ever known. When life gets frustrating for him, he doesn’t scream or cry. He hides somewhere, anywhere; in a closet, behind a couch, under a blanket or bed skirt. The invisible bubble over his head reads: “Back off, World. I’ve had enough!”

Frankly, I get that. There are many days I’d love to lay on my carpet, head under my bed skirt. Back off, World. I’ve had enough! (Do they sell burquas to women to wear on days when they’ve had enough?)

Hello, Fall

Autumn is here, and with it come my conflicting feelings. I'm a Summer girl at heart. Even my coloring is "Summer." Yet I do appreciate the changing leaves, the cooler nights, the demise of the mosquitoes. I enjoy apple-picking and making stews and soups. I love lazy Sundays of reading books to the low drone of televised football games and wearing cozy sweaters. So, if you cannot be Summer, you might as well be Fall.


An Autumn Greeting
"Come," said the Wind to the Leaves one day.
"Come over the meadow and we will play.
Put on your dresses of red and gold.
For summer is gone and the days grow cold."

Sisterhood

I was an AOPi Sorority girl in the days of Big Hair and The Mullet. The Preppie Look was popular; our collars raised north, though a few free spirits on campus dressed like Madonna. Blue eyeshadow abounded; the bolder, the better. We fast-danced to Michael Jackson, and slow-danced to Whitney Houston, piped from our cassette players. Reagan was president, times were peaceful, (Sing it, “We Are The World.”) and the future looked bright. It was a very good time to be a college co-ed.

Sorority Sisterhood was sweet. We had a beautiful newly renovated, newly decorated sorority house. We rotated rooms and roommates every semester, sharing class notes and padded-shouldered sweaters and heartbreaks. We’d primp together for parties while blasting “Paradise By The Dashboard Light.” In moods of sappiness we’d light incense, drink forbidden Riunite in plastic cups and talk about boys while listening to The Carpenters.

We attended numerous toga parties and barn dances and road-trip formals. We raided Fraternity houses for their composite pictures, built floats for the Homecoming Parade, and whooped it up at football games. And in between the fun we squeezed in Rituals and philanthropies, homework and classes, walking together the distance from house to campus while we shouldered heavy backpacks.

Having brothers back home, I relished the Sisterhood. We had each others’ backs. There was always someone around and available to join you in whatever you were doing, from watching the soaps to walking home from the library after dark. It was a unique bond and I knew it was special.

Yesterday I had lunch with five of my AOPi Sorority Sisters, with whom I’d reconnected through Facebook. We met at a midway-point restaurant. It had been over two decades since I’d seen four of them, but we caught up on our lives over pastas and salads. We reminisced and laughed at old pictures. I cringed at my hairstyle and wondered about the young man with whom my teen self was laughing. (Who was he?? I have absolutely no memory of him!)

Twenty-someodd years from college graduation to the present is a lot of living. It’s a multitude of hairstyles and hair colors and fashions. It’s fledgling independence and budding careers, marriages beginning and sometimes ending, and babies born and raised and launched. It’s a thousand relationships and experiences. It’s quite a bit to share between six chatty ladies at a two hour lunch. But we touched on the highlights; the marriages, the children, the jobs. And we plan on another reunion in two months, and making this a regular event.

On driving home, the song came to my mind that we’d sing as we’d pass around the Loving Cup.......
We'll pass the loving cup around
We won't pass a sister by
We all drink from the same old cup,
In Alpha Omicron Pi,
Oh you and I shall never grow old
While this fair cup is nigh.
Here's health, here's wealth,
Here's happiness......
In Alpha Omicron Pi

Ahhh......good times. Special times.

Entertainment For This Real Housewife

Everyone needs a little harmless guilty pleasure. Mine is watching The Real Housewives shows. I happened upon the New York one by accident last year. I was ironing and turned on the tv as background noise. Fifteen minutes into it, and I was hooked. The NY women were on a vacation of some sort, and arguing with one another. I listened intently and felt a bit scandalous, like I was eavesdropping through a backyard fence.

A few weeks later, the Real Housewives of New Jersey premiered, and I have watched two seasons of that “train wreck.” The DC Housewives are about four episodes along, and the Beverly Hills franchise begins in October. Oh, so many more episodes! Oh, so much more entertainment for my cerebral cortex to process!

Now before you judge me as shallow and slothful, let me say that I record the episodes and watch them while I workout. And I’m very purposeful with my time on most days. I have children who keep me busy, volunteer work, a program of spiritual transformation, and I’m writing a book. But a girl’s got to unwind, you know?

In reading some blogs about The Real Housewives, I see I am not alone in my fascination with this series. So what is the appeal? Personally, I find people fascinating. I love to study them and observe what makes them tick. And the Real Housewives series gives me an upfront, personal view right smack into their homes and personal lives. Some of the women are sadly dysfunctional with behaviors that make me cringe, and, money and notoriety aside, I wonder whatever possessed them to allow themselves to be filmed. From what I’ve read, the shows have caused stress cracks in already shaky marriages, and have set their children up for embarrassment and ridicule. But a few of the women are kind and giving and wise, and I learn from them by watching the way they relate to their friends, work out their conflicts, and own their stuff. It’s like free counseling.

Let’s call if science. I’m just doing my science, folks. And it’s a lot more fun than it was in high school!