How NOT to plan an OCD family vacation

"This must be the turn, H.J....why don't you just stop and ask this man? H.J.?"

Many people -- organized, orderly people -- take vacations in June, when summer's warm kiss is still new and humidity is still a rumor. These are the same folks who plan daily itineraries, comparison shop for sunblock, and highlight driving routes months in advance. Not me. I believe in improvisational getaways, which means I usually take to the open road along with all the other procrastinators during the sweltering heat of July and August.

When you plan too much for a vacation, all the joy of packing up and hitching your wagon to a star is lost. If I wanted to sit around obsessing over details, I would stay home and live my everyday life -- it's cheaper and no bathing suits are involved. A vacation should be filled with new adventures, unknown destinations and impromptu lessons learned along the majestic American highway.

My vacation philosophy is not unprompted; I learned it from my father. Dad was the King of Spontaneous Vacations, but it was from necessity, not design. For decades, my mom and dad owned a business that manufactured burial vaults and septic tanks. People have a tendency to drop dead or lay a lateral line whenever they damn well feel like it, and this fact limited Dad's recreational availability. He was extremely reluctant to go off and leave his shop for even a handful of days.

But occasionally, if he felt absolutely sure that business was at a standstill, he would call Mom up on a Friday afternoon and announce that vacation time had come. We were instructed to have ourselves ready to go when he came home from work, usually around six hours later.

This may seem like complete chaos to the average bystander -- and it was -- but my sisters and I thought it was fun and exciting. My mom, who scrambled together socks, undies and Pepto Bismol for the whole clan at a moment's notice, surely held a different, more colorfully worded opinion.

Other fate-trusting philosophies guided these "hurry up and get there" getaways. For example, Dad didn't believe in reservations of any kind. He would rather cruise around for hours amid glaring neon "no vacancy" signs than call ahead, which meant we usually checked in long after dark. He also refused to ask anyone for directions, and he refused to allow my frustrated mother to ask for help, either.

Spontaneity also applied to mealtimes. Dad refused to stand in line to eat and would rather endlessly drive up and down the restaurant strips, cruising like a giant steel land shark, in search of a sparsely populated eatery. Late hotel check-ins usually meant room service was our last chance at a nighttime meal, and that was the grandest treat of all. Staying up late, scarfing club sandwiches or fried chicken on a "Magic Fingers" bed while watching Johnny Carson seemed the whole purpose of a vacation: wonderful, footloose indulgences we never engaged in at home.

The reward for abiding all this chaos was significant. Because we weren't held to prearranged schedules or check-in times, we had the freedom to stop in at any roadside attraction we liked. We became pros at fruit stands, reptile houses, petting zoos, fireworks outlets and truck stops of all kinds. If we wanted to peruse an alligator wrestling pit along Florida's A1A coastal highway, we did just that. If we wanted to view Walking Tall Sheriff Buford T. Pusser's "death car" in Pigeon Forge, Tenn., we did that, too.

From a real-life replica of the Flintstones' Bedrock City somewhere in Arizona to a John Dillinger mock morgue in Nashville, Ind., we soaked up America's roadside culture by the bucket. We stumbled through historically accurate sheep poo in Williamsburg, Va., carved up a watermelon on the way to Colorado's Pikes Peak, and took Polaroids of each other with Johnny Cash's "One Piece at a Time" car in Nashville, Tenn. We once had a brush with greatness in Gatlinburg, Tenn., when cigar-chomping star Archie Campbell of TV's "Hee Haw" rear-ended our 1977 Mercury Marquis in Pigeon Forge. We were all so excited, Dad didn't even get mad. Of course, my family was still a little shell-shocked from my earlier fistfight with a spider monkey at a petting zoo. (Hey, he tried to steal my Grand Ole Opry souvenir hat; he had it coming.) 

Despite the pandemonium, these ad hoc adventures created years filled with excellent stories we now share together during every family function. Dad passed over 10 years ago, but when we talk about those trips today, it's like he's laughing at the end of Mom's kitchen table once again.

Our family vacations taught us important lessons, aside from the difference between state fair donkeys, jackasses and mules, or how far you can drive a loaded-down sedan on a quarter tank of gas. My sisters and I learned by our parents' example that when on vacation, as in life, our destination is not necessarily the only important element. More often, it's the road that leads us there.

My life with Johnny

A friend challenged me today to write about the word "witty." Although I could devote epics to re-runs of I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners and The Dick Van Dyke Show, I have to go back to the beginning of my comedy knowin's. Johnny Carson.

As a child, I lingered in the yard after humid darkness fell and the stars came out. I hid in the bank of forsythia with my dog. Sometimes I perched  on the precarious vault of our roof alongside our television antenna. The stars shimmered in the heat, and I would pull my knees to my chin in frank admiration and awe for their size and distance.

In the country, desolate though I was, I felt most peaceful when completely alone. I never remember having a bedtime like other children. I had no siblings close to my ever difficult age. I had my dog, many books, and The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. I worshiped Johnnny Carson.

In the summer, I would come in when I heard his familiar theme song drifting from my mother's window. She never missed his monologues, but I never heard her laugh. I just recently explained to her Dolly Parton's visit on the panel portion.  She sat in a a bright blue velvet chair, chewed ice cubes, and chain smoked Silva Thins with a look of complete emotional forfeit. She smelled of White Shoulders and ashtrays when I kissed her drowsy cheek good night.

I watched Don Rickles, Jonathan Winters, Bob Newhart, then later Robin Williams and Jerry Seinfeld. I watched Roseanne Barr for the first time with Johnny. I watched Ellen Degeneres and Stephen Wright for the first time with Johnny.

Mom stopped calling for me to come in most times when I was eight, satisfied instead to turn up the volume during Tonight. She knew I could be flushed out like a quail with a blare of trumpets and a flourish of Technicolor curtains on the screen. 

One summer, I moved all our outdoor furniture around in the yard to simulate my private outdoor living room, centered around my mother's bedroom window. I could sit in a faded lounge chair beneath a sky hung with stars, then watch my hero's dry, witty exchanges and faux golf swings. We were undisturbed by my parents' shouts or, worse, wretched silences. I sometimes mixed make-believe cocktails of grapefruit juice and horsd'ouvres of dill pickles, the only party food my mother kept on hand. 

Over dirty feet propped on a pretend coffee table, I laughed at Johnny's mature humor, most of which I got later after much thought -- and then I belly laughed. Many nights I slept right there, and I woke to mornings covered with dew and bug bites.

When Johnny went off the air, I lay in the yard and cried. I was 21 years too old. I was too big to climb onto the roof or fit into the shrubbery, and my mother had cable by then. My dog was buried in someone else's backyard and so was a piece of me. Today, I am astonished when I notice stars at all.

Johnny and his shows molder in a vault somewhere. I sit inside on summer nights, chain smoke and pray for his return.

Of roots and roosters

It's true that we grew up in the country, but that's still no reasonable explanation why the rooster walked into our front yard. Furthermore, no one would have predicted that one of God's lowliest and most delinquent creations could gain star billing in my own family's folklore. Strange things do happen, sometimes most especially on a day when nothing's happening.

It was the summer of 1979, one of those long hot days when the sparkle of summer vacation had long worn off and tired mothers ordered their progeny to "get outside and play." Back then, that meant literally going outside and finding something to do sans electronics or equipment. I was eight. My nephew, Clint, was spending the day with us. He was four years my junior and more like a little brother then than now. 

It was the shank of the afternoon, and we had already exhausted a half-hearted game of "H-O-R-S-E." Neither of us had progressed past "H." We sat on the fence by the road and bet which color car would pass next; we poked around in ant hills with sticks. Each envoy into the house ended with my mother shooing us out of the cool, lemon-Pledge-scented living room and into the hot, breeze-free outdoors. As the heat pressed down, we finally flopped on our backs in the front yard, bored past arguing and worn out with childhood altogether. Today, two kids lying prone in a front yard would at least illicit a phone call. Back then, it was no biggie.

My dog, Charlie, observed our visitor before we did. Clint and I were, after all, staring at the sky with frustrated eyes and furrowed brows. Mine was a frantic dog, so his sudden stillness was unusual. Sitting up, we saw what interested Charlie, and our uneventful summer ended at once. Had a spaceship landed on the lawn, we could not have been more surprised.

Coming up the driveway with a light snick-snick of talons was an ugly, scrawny mess of black and white feathers, a lopsided red shear of comb and waddle, and two intelligent, spiteful golden eyes. Granted, I have never personally known many chickens in my life, but I don't believe they typically make eye contact with dogs or humans. This one did. Turns out he was a Dominque rooster, which my family pronounced "Dominecker." He might have been a poor specimen of the breed, but what this rooster lacked in looks he made up for in spirit -- a vindictive, fearless spirit.

The rooster highstepped into the short grass and made a beeline for our dog. Although our backyard butted up against a cattle pasture, Charlie had never met a chicken. He was naturally intrigued, provoked to the point of a living statue. The rooster went beak to nose with him, unblinkingly commenced to stare the dog down, then proceeded past him. Clint, who was also typically frantic, sat breathless and sweaty at my side. After a silent moment, the spell lifted, and we both sprang to our bare feet. Charlie seized this opportunity to give chase. 

That summer, my parents had an ongoing argument about our perpetually wet basement. Mom was convinced our house's foundation was cracked. Dad, perhaps sensing the cost and bedlam such a reality would provoke, had shoveled out a spot at the corner of the house to reveal what he surely hoped would be sturdy, solid concrete. A pile of soft earth still stood at the edge of the house; the argument remained unsettled.

The rooster, as though he carried reconaissance information, gathered up his feathers and ran straight for the moist dirt. Charlie followed, but he was outpaced by a chicken, who, once he hit the dirt, began to dig. I'm not talking about the kind of scritch-scratching observed around a coop. I mean digging as though he had tiny spades strapped to his talons. Clouds of dirt flew behind him, blinding Charlie as an afterthought.

Right away, it became clear that, although Charlie held all the cards in this fight, for some reason he wasn't about to attack the rooster: bark, yes; bite, no. When the rooster dug, Charlie dug. When the rooster rested, Charlie rested. My dog was as stunned as we were. Perhaps he didn't wring the rooster's neck because he had been just as bored and didn't want to end the diversion. 

Clint and I ran around the yard like a firecracker had jumped up our shorts, screaming "There's a chicken under the house! There's a chicken under the house!" Elderly neighbors puttering in their yards were either uninterested or stone deaf, for none even glanced in our direction. Mom, inside behind the roar of our single window air conditioner, couldn't hear thunder and so was completely oblivious to the loud, dirty, public display in her own front yard. All the while, dog and chicken burrowed together a long tunnel downward and sideways, along the foundation.

Clint believed adult notification was required, but we were loathe to leave the scene. Finally, as the duo sheared the roots of Mom's azalea bushes, we slammed into the kitchen and screamed our news. "Granny, did you know there's a chicken under your house?" Clint asked. At four, he unfortunately had already earned a reputation for spinning wild yarns. His chicken statement was not beyond his usual narrative realm. Mom dismissed him several times in pursuit of the dirt we'd tracked on the avocado-green linoleum. When Clint's story did not waver after several retellings, she finally looked at me for verification. "Come on, Granny, you're gonna miss it!" Clint yelled as he leaned out the storm door.

Clint and I raced back to the dig site; Mom took her time. Perhaps she believed our boredom had pushed us into the dangerous territory of parental practical jokes. But Charlie, chicken and dirt remained as we'd left them -- all stock still like a picture postcard. The rooster seemed unconcerned; Charlie kept jockeying for a better position from which to do still nothing. Mom was thunderstruck.

She stared at our tableau for a moment, then said not a word and went straight to the house and called my father. His shop was a couple of minutes away, but she seldom called him during the day to intervene into matters at home. Usually, she phoned him only when a situation involved snakes, bats or damage to the car. On this day, an agressive, digging chicken warranted such a call. Sure enough, in a few minutes my dad rolled into the driveway and emerged from his pick-up covered in concrete dust and sweat. No one had to lure him in our direction.

Dad grew up on a small farm. Although his knowledge of horses, mules and dairy cattle was complete, he was no chicken man. Whatever his farming duties had been, they were most certainly not the wrangling of poultry, as we soon discovered. His first theory, that the chicken was in fact dead of a fear-induced heart attack (hence the lack of movement), exploded when the rooster leapt to its feet and commenced to cantering around the yard. 

Charlie followed the rooster, with a great flurry of clucking and barking, and we followed Charlie, announcing loudly to my parents our whereabouts whenever the duo paused: "The chicken's under the clothesline," "The chicken's under the forsythia bush," "The chicken's on the breezeway." That bird seemed to have preternatural knowledge of our property's boundary lines; he never strayed beyond our fence.

During sprints through the front yard, I began to pick up that somehow my parents' best-laid plans of chicken and men were degenerating into a familiar fight about the foundation. She had rejected Dad's suggestion that Mom drop a clothes basket on the rooster while he rushed him into a corner of the garage. The leaky basement was a hot issue on my mother's mind, and a conversational line need not be drawn straight from the chicken to the crack. 

Amid all the shouting and yelling and crowing and howling, my sisters arrived home -- along with most of the husbands in the neighborhood. It was nearly suppertime, and the level of activity at our house had reached a level even the most disinterested neighbors could not avoid. Dad began to follow us about the yard, as if his proximity to the problem would force a sensible solution. No dice, but we did have a good-size chicken train going on by then: one perplexed father, one curious teenager, two ecstatic kids, one spastic dog and one wily rooster. Mom went into the house, and she emerged triumphant that she'd found "a home" for our guest. My grandmother agreed to offer him asylum on their small farm, and Mom was less than thrilled to learn that the bird remained to be caught.

Our neighbor across the road wandered over to offer assistance. Unfortunately, he knew less about chickens than even my dad, but the pair of them brought up the rear of our party. They mulled over blindsiding the bird with a tablecloth over the head or somehow tapping into Charlie's obviously lacking skills as a sheepdog. Finally, they combined prior ideas of herd and capture and decided to arm themselves with brooms, corner the rooster in the garage, then subdue him. They were right to arm themselves; the rooster made it clear by Dad's fifth or sixth try that he would not go quietly into that good night. Finally, Mr. Edwards jumped at just the right time and apprehended our rooster. This would have been the end of the line, except neither Dad nor Mr. Edwards had thought past capture. We had nothing to put the chicken into for transport.

In a display I have never seen repeated, Mr. Edwards voluntarily held onto that rooster while Dad devised a plan. Our neighbor was a small, wiry man with a nervous twitch and a nose-clearing tic. He was already hot and sweaty from catching the hateful bird. Now, he stood dripping from fear and humidity in our tiny, stuffy garage while our rooster beat him with his wings, clucked and bawk-bagawked at him, all the while fixing Mr. Edwards with his ruthless, amber stare. Perhaps a fellow chicken had suggested eye contact could hypnotize humans. It seemed to have just the opposite effect on Mr. Edwards. Although he managed to contain the bird for a full five minutes while Dad scrambled, our neighbor sneezed and convulsed and hopped and twitched, all the while punctuating his movements with the cleanest repetition of oaths he could imagine: "Oh, my stars!"

Since our family didn't own a vessel for chicken transport -- or a cage of any kind -- Dad acted fast. He came back to the garage with a big cardboard box. It had no top, but it was the only box he could find on short order. He overcame the missing top with a series of crisscrossed strips of masking tape. He had opened the bottom of the box, so he theorized to Mr. Edwards that he could drop the box over the rooster, quiet him down, then seal up the bottom of the box. The rooster would think the strips of tape were a cage and wouldn't try to jump out of the box. Done, and done.

Amazingly, the first and third step went without a hitch, and Mr. Edwards quickly went back across the road to retire into a nervous breakdown. However, the bird didn't quiet down. If possible, he grew louder, more furious, and the glee Clint and I had felt at first now coldly progressed into genuine fear. With every crow, he seemed to be looking up at us, saying, "Just you wait until I get out of this box."

Dad put the rooster's box in the bed of his truck, my sister jumped up front, and I hopped in the back. It wasn't far to my grandmother's house, so we all assumed we were in the last chapter of this very odd afternoon. Dad backed the truck around and pulled out onto the highway.

At this precise moment, either the chicken realized the tape was not a cage, or his carefully plotted revenge scheme came to fruition. The rooster jumped straight up into the air through the masking tape and the truck's sliding rear window, then landed on the gearshift just after Dad dropped it into first gear. He slammed on the brakes, and both he and Jayme jumped out of the cab. I cautiously peeked through the rear window and saw the vengeful rooster perched on the round gearshift knob. He had us, or so he thought.

A clever bird brain is still a bird brain, and since roosters have little parental intuition, he could not have known the limits of a father during life's little hiccups. The chicken could not have known how badly Dad did not want to retreat home to my mom and admit that he'd been defeated by a bird, not to mention he would have to go through the whole capture scenario again, this time in the middle of Hwy. 421. 

Dad ordered Jayme to close her window and get in the back with me. Dad got back in the cab, rolled up his window, carefully slid the rear window shut, and proceeded to drive all the way to my grandmother's house in first gear, both hands squarely on the steering wheel the entire way. Since we surely couldn't have been going more than 20 m.p.h., a string of honking cars quickly amassed behind us. Charlie, determined not to give in, chased us the entire way. 

The rooster was oddly silent, his head cocked to the right while he glared at my dad, who refused to take his eyes off the road. This was Dad's last, best chance. We arrived at Momaw's house, and Dad came roaring out of the cab, leaving his door wide open. The rooster didn't leap out and run away as hoped. Dad had to poke him with a garden rake to dislodge his fearsome grasp, then knock the feathers out of the cab so we could make the drive back home.

All summer long, the rooster literally ruled the roost at my grandparents' farm. He was crafty and plotted his "Dawn Patrol" attacks to occur at just the moment our mutual guard was down. On Sunday afternoons, we'd all be out visiting in the side yard, talking about church or something, and out would come the chicken and jump onto anyone who seemed relaxed. He flogged each of us at least once in turn; oh, yes, he got his revenge. The rooster seemed to take particular joy stalking my grandfather. Papaw stooped down to pick green beans, and, wham! Here came the rooster! He stretched out in his lounge chair with a wet hanky on his head to listen to the Cincinnati Reds on the radio, and, wham! Here came the rooster! 

Finally, in August, my grandmother had enough. She was a pink, plump and perpetually smiling bundle of all things sweet and sturdy. One day, she watched from the kitchen window while that cunning bird attacked my Papaw, who was trying to start the lawnmower. Mamaw marched outside, grabbed the old rooster by the heels, swung him head-first onto a maple stump in the yard, and whickety-whack: no more rooster. Like any good farm girl would, she plucked and cleaned the him: waste not, want not.  As a thoughtful gesture, the next time my mother visited, Mamaw pulled a plastic bag out of her deep freezer. "What's this?" Mom asked. "That's your rooster," Mamaw said with a twinkle.

We all knew he had it coming. Mom took the package home and put it in our freezer -- and there it stayed. As much as we all hated that damn bird, none of us could bring ourselves to eat him. It was a dishonorable thing to do. It was enough to destroy such a worthy opponent; there was no need also to devour him.   

Charlie may have held a different opinion.

Heart-shaped boxes

Ah, here comes Valentine's Day! That clever invention of the greeting card industry designed to turn us romantic, fizzy-headed and loose with our money. This sensation often leaves us despondent with our heads buried in a pint of Haagen Dazs the next day or pirated heart-shaped boxes of mysterious filled chocolates we buy for ourselves when no one's watching. What a holiday! Woohoo! Hang the crepe paper and bunting!

All cynicism aside, I was more than bummed out when I learned Owen's second grade class isn't having a Valentine party this year. I've been saving cool shoe boxes, tissue paper and oatmeal boxes since autumn so he'd have a selection to choose from and build his totally awesome Valentine "mail box." I look forward to making the Valentine box more than scarfing all the chocolates in the world. We have a blast (well, I have a blast and Owen enjoys watching and listening to me have a blast.)

The fact that they're not having a party is also a polite hint that parents are not welcome. That's a damn shame. Despite modern education's attempts to equalize everyone at Valentine's ("every boy and girl must give a card to every other boy and girl") it's still a great sociological experiment watching the kids pass out their cards. Sometimes you can tell from beet-red boys tucking envelopes into a certain box that one or two of them already admire a sweetheart from afar. Some of the girls push sweaty red-and-white envelopes into boys' boxes with hopeful eyes cast down above a nervous smile. 

Owen hasn't announced any potential sweethearts since we moved here, so I was looking forward to watching him for any indication of who the lucky gal may be. Is it my business? Of course not, but I'm a mother. I'm hopeless when it comes to potentially sweet and/or embarrassing moments when my kid's involved. 

Valentine's was a bittersweet time for me every year. Although I was a lovely little girl, somewhere around third grade I blossomed into a tall, hefty gal with broad shoulders and big meat wrapped around big bones. That year, Mother whacked off my long hair -- once long enough to sit on -- into some horrible hairdo reminiscent of 1976 Dorothy Hamill meets 1977 Marie Osmond. 

Needless to say, I was very seldom anyone's boy toy until I got to college. I would watch the pretty, petite girls rack up Russell Stover mini boxes and solid chocolate hearts in elementary school, teddy bears and single carnations sold by the student council in junior high, and florist-delivered roses during class in high school. I learned to play it off with cool detachment and outward cynicism, but secretly I held my breath every Valentine's Day in hopes that someone saw the real me and admired her, for whatever the reason -- at least enough to buy me chocolates.

Although my dad was a slouch when it came to most holidays, he always went overboard on Valentine's Day. My sisters and I would find little heart-shaped boxes of chocolates on our pillow the night before Feb. 14, and the florist always brought Mom scarlet red roses on V Day, whether Mom and Dad were speaking to each other or not. Sometimes he would send us girls carnations, pink and red. Looking back, I think it was his uncharacteristic display of emotion that caused me to secretly root for Valentine's Day, to champion the cause of romance and affection. It was one of the few times he wore love on his cuff, like a drop of rain on the desert.

When Chris and I got married, I instantly dropped my cynicism toward the holiday altogether, smothering him in romantic cards, decorating the house with paper hearts, etc. It took him, a fellow cynic in his own right, a couple of years to understand that I physically need flowers and chocolates this one day of the year above all others. I even told him why.

Now, I welcome the day, no matter who devised it as a money-making scheme or cruel joke on the singles. And maybe my reversal on the issue is why I get so into Valentine's for Owen. Whatever the reason, I'm just relieved I can stop pretending I don't care and join the fizzy-headed throngs crammed into two short aisles at the Hallmark store next week. Sometimes it's a relief to no longer stand out.

Better dead than read

"I like him so much, and he is so cute.
His eyes are soft and brown, just like a dog's ears
If the dog's name was Velvet Ears."
 -- Julie C. Ball, excerpted from Milton Elementary Love Sonnets, 1981

Aside from watching your own pants fall to your ankles in slow motion, few moments are more keenly embarrassing than discovering old love poems, especially odes we penned before we ever were truly in love. 

It's hard to describe the sensation. It's a bit like being caught eating an entire tub of Cool Whip with your fingers, or someone interrupting your private bathroom-mirror dance club. You feel like the cow at the State Fair with windows through her hide to show how cud passes between all four stomachs.

"Stale ashes linger
On the corner of the bed;
My soul pyre burns yet." 
-- Julie C. Ball, excerpted from Ridiculous Love Haikus, 1999

Upon resurfacing, our forgotten attempts at verse reveal our true inner selves. A light shines suddenly on our souls, at least the regions therein that spawned such fruity, flowery verse. Left long unread in a notebook, a candy box, a hope chest or a Trapper Keeper for months, years, decades or scores, these poorly-stitched literary Frankensteins emerge with mortifying boos. They're palpably painful, undeniably comical, and we cannot look away.

"To show my ruined heart to the light of day is
A luxury I cannot yet afford.
The dog needs breakfast and
Her cold nose brings me back to reality."
-- Julie C. Ball, excerpted from Ludicrous Love Free Verse, 1997

A couple of friends ridiculed me lately because I mentioned Owen is ready for some straight talk about the sexes. My pals cited that he's eight and too young. I disagree. I don't remember when I had my first crush, but I'm pretty sure it was in kindergarten or first grade. 

I wrote early, so it wasn't long once I grasped writing rather than speaking my deepest emotions that I began to nervously scribble how I felt about my crushes. Granted I was so afraid my older sister would find my writings and read them out loud on the school bus that for about a year I would write down how I felt on notebook paper, then almost immediately tear my words into hundreds of pieces. At that time, it was enough just to pin words to my emotions, even at the risk of swift sibling ridicule. 

"When you look at me, I feel like I'm riding a tornado. 
Your glasses make you look so smart and sexy." 
-- Julie C. Ball, excerpt from Ode to an Unrequited Nerd Vol. I, 1984

For my 10th birthday, someone gave me a little orange-bound diary with a lock. Problems solved. Here, I could devote myself to the futile sport of perfecting love poetry. Just who I thought would read these spectacular declarations in the future, I have never been too certain. Lord knows I would rather have been keelhauled than admit they existed, much less forward to the intended party. I ran across my cardboard-bound ego bomb last year when we moved, and I honestly blushed. Who knew a little girl fresh from her first read of "Gone With the Wind" could wax romantic with such complete confidence on the page, yet so little in the flesh?

Eventually, I got knocked around by love, and cynicism rose at last in the poet's breast. My unrequited and/or bitter romantic experiences were somehow the best. These venomous gospels remain the most breathlessly readable of all. Like the others before, these were not read by the intended parties, either -- as God is my witness, I hope that was the case.

"I love you so well, I forget about it.
You belch without a thought.
You eat the last of the waffles right in front of me."
-- Julie C. Ball, excerpted from Angry Graceless Breakup Poems, 1998 

When Chris and I began dating in 1999, I had no way of knowing here was the man about whom I would pen my most honest and heartfelt prose. For the first time, I actually shared my lovey dovey poetry with the fellow who inspired it. Flat-footed disclosure proved a whole other experience and worth decades of my own expectation. 

"Your love is my life's greatest gift..."
 -- Julie Ball Hambrick, excerpted from Truths My Husband Taught Me, 2001

Did this new sense of completion with Chris make me want to go back and share my earlier work with earlier guys? Quite the opposite is true.  Once I realized what true love, honesty and a lack of embarrassment can mean when they all happen simultaneously, I thanked Heaven that paranoia of first my sister's opinion, then everyone else's, forced me into literary seclusion. 

Better to have loved and lost? Probably, but keep -- don't send -- both copies, and above all, burn your notes.

Debriefing our parents

No matter how lenient or savvy our parents were, we all got away with things as juveniles that Ma and Pa Ingalls still don't know about. In the interest of full disclosure, especially once we ourselves have also become parents, we often get the itch to crack open a bottle of wine and share laughs with Mom or Dad about our teenage monkeyshines.

I admit I fell from grace many times in high school and college, almost always with comical consequences and none too serious. Granted, the tricks my friends and I pulled rivaled frequent plot devices on "Happy Days": underage beer, fast cars, the opposite sex and our secret post-sundown maneuvers to get them all. I don't know everything my own mother and dad did before they married, but I gather it was similarly colorful. 

It's been two decades since I finished college and I've been a mom myself for eight years now, so I assumed the time had come for some straight girl talk with my mom. Truth be told, I looked forward to it and plotted the right time for our chat. I finally decided this past Christmas would provide ample opportunity for a warm and only slightly wicked (I envisioned) retelling and rewriting of our mutual history.

Let me break in here and give a bit more insight about my misadventures. Following my own corruption, I went on to corrupt a few other novices along the way. No names, but know this: no one ever saw the inside of a jail as a result of my devices. There remains the matter of an unsolved 1988 destruction of private property case, but I'll simply repeat what I told the police at the time: "I did not play mailbox baseball that night." The fact that no one asked me who was driving the alleged car was an error on local law enforcement -- and, therefore, not my problem.

I don't think Mom saw my line of conversation coming at her. I waited until we'd both watched enough of the "White Christmas" marathon and wrassled enough pies into and out of her oven. We were both exhausted and retired to her unheated garage for a smoke. Not exactly a warm and fuzzy International Coffee moment in front of the fire, as I'd imagined, but I pushed on undeterred. I wanted it. 

I'd worked myself up for this talk the whole four hours it took my little family to drive to my mom's house, during several last-last-minute trips to Wal-mart for forgotten and/or ultimately unnecessary holiday items, and through hours of FOX News that blared from her bedroom at all hours, including through the night until her TV sleep timer snicked into merciful silence at the refreshing hour of 3 a.m. I needed a warm, enlightening, funny talk that was meant just for the two of us, to shed light on the girls we'd been and the women we've become. Don't start humming "The Way We Were" just yet, though.

My in came soon. Between Pall Mall puffs, she was telling me how one of my uncles recently told her he drank moonshine (granted, we're Kentuckians, but it was still news for our family.) I laughed with her and began. "That reminds me of a funny story. Remember Stan Starling, who was in marching band with me? Remember how I would take him home from practice? He never had any gas money, so he paid me with a quart jar of moonshine once." I laughed as I told her.

Now, if this had been a "Happy Days" Christmas reunion special, Mr. Cunningham would have turned to Richie and a) admitted he'd always known about it; b) clapped him on the back and told him a similarly funny/inappropriate story about his Army days; or, c) put his arm around Richie, smiled at him, then wished him a Merry Christmas. Life doesn't always imitate art. And yes, I consider "Happy Days" art.

It took a few moments for me to recognize the next sound. It was her silence. I looked up to meet her eyes, then I saw and heard two phenomena I hadn't experienced in at least a decade. She said my name, but my whole premarriage triple name "Julie ... Carol ... BALL!" And the look she gave me resembled the one I got when she caught me frying a grilled cheese with the plastic Kraft singles wrappers still on at age 7. 

I realized too late I would never be old enough for what I imagined would be a warm exchange of little white lies. Some mamas never want their babies to lie to them, never not never ever, and they do not appreciate the news that they've been laboring under a huge web of deception, which spread further and further as the story came out. 

What followed this tidbit was a strict line of questioning, which she controlled ("What did you do with it?" "We drank it" "Where?" "In my bedroom" "When?" "At the slumber party" "Who was there?" Names omitted to protect the innocent. "Where was I?" "Asleep" "Julie ... Carol ... BALL!") 

She pumped me for further information, further unknown incidents. I opened my mouth and out spilled a garbled, graceless wad of repressed truths with no comedic context to soften the blow. I realized what I knew as a teenager. As long as I continued to maintain eye contact with her, I was sunk. I jumped out of my chair and pretended to adjust her trash can liners. Then, she began lobbing guilt grenades at my head, "where had she gone wrong," "parents can't be everywhere you know," "I just did the best I could," etc. 

I turned around to her, threw out my hands, and admitted I was sorry for keeping all this from her (which I most certainly was NOT) and that I had imagined our little talk going differently. I had hoped we'd just talk as women, as friends, about mistakes we made as kids and how we got through them without our parents' knowledge. She didn't say anything at first, then she snuffed out her cigarette and stood up. I waited for her to say something fit for a holiday special. She did not disappoint: "Some things are better left unsaid." How true.

"Now, come in here and help me with this damn ham," she added. At this last, I danced to life. I was transported back to when I was a kid and her vengeance was swift, but never long lived, and I felt all warm and fuzzy. Does that make sense? Not unless you know my family, and luckily, I do. 

So instead of a Cafe Vienna moment, us girls shared Folgers and cigarettes. It was a more comforting moment, after all -- that and the knowledge that she still cared enough about me to get mad and use once more all three names with which I entered her world. 

Happy days -- at least one -- indeed.

Birds, bees and what lies in between

Unlike many fellow survivors of allegedly enlightened 1970's childhoods, I did not get a nighttime visit from my mom to learn about the birds and the bees. I found out about sex from a black-and-white doctor's hygiene pamphlet ... with illustrations that resembled something best observed from beneath a microscope.

So when our son began asking questions about where babies come from, I made sure from an early age that I told him truthfully all he needed to know, in simplest terms, to walk away satisfied. That strategy served me well for years, until this year ... 2015 ... the year of the elephant (in the room).

It has become evident that Owen has become extremely curious about the differences between boys and girls. Stupidly, I somehow assumed I would have more warning, like they'd send home a notice from school in a few years that "it's time for THE talk, parents!" I don't know if this recent curiosity coincides with his new bus-riding routine, but it matters not from whence it comes. It's here now.

I've recently endured many a probing question and an unfortunate incident when Owen pantsed a lingerie mannequin at JC Penney to find out what lies beneath. That's why Chris and I have agreed that this is the week for the initial true and real sex talk, and we've both begun to craft our talking points. One thing is clear at the get-go: the kid wants the truth, and he wants visual aids.

Where do you start, besides the obvious? It's an overwhelming thought, and you only get one chance to do it right. You consider that how you reveal this great mystery to your child could shape his worldview for the rest of his life. Few moments are so clearly defined and recognized as this. I don't want to bore him with clinical talk or fool him with vanilla-coated allegories, nor do I want to pull him too fast and hard into the realm of adulthood, for once that seal is broken, it cannot be pasted back over his eyes.

I want to ensure he understands the importance of love, trust and respect. Chris wants to make sure he doesn't go out and educate his entire class with new-found knowledge. I agree. None of us want to be the parents that get that phone call from the teacher because their kid is interjecting the word 'genitals' into the second-grade lexicon.

Unfortunately, we live in a time when our children's innocence has become progressively fleet. Gone are the carefree days when sexuality didn't really become an issue for young ones until they were on the cusp of that wondrous change. Now, if parents want to control the conversation for their child, they have to initiate it far sooner than Nature, or other strangers will.

Chris thinks Renaissance paintings will provide a positive visual aid for Owen. I think I'm okay with that, especially when I consider the alternatives for enlightenment. And I'm willing to risk a lifelong obsession with scarves and grape leaves to provide him a lovely first look. More to come.