Warm, safe, proud and weatherproof in the Crystal Mall

 

  Published October 17. 2016 10:11AM 

My first child, Becky, was an October baby.
As parents of fall babies know, once you’re out and about early winter weather becomes a big player. Dragging a two-month old out for a breath of fresh air in December is like making snowballs with your bare hands and liking it.

Because I was one of those mid ’80s stay-at-home mothers, who traded a briefcase for a diaper bag, it was important to stave off mashed potato brain by interacting with other moms as often as I could. I was fortunate because almost all of my friends were stay-at-home mothers. Each week one of us would host all the moms and kids for lunch and playgroup. The kids ate, we played.

Even though I had a wonderful network of friends to lean on there were times when I simply wanted to take Becky out for a walk alone. I called it exercise but actually I needed to walk down the street with my baby and take in the world outside the confines of our four walls. I needed for just the two of us to breathe outside air, fresh or otherwise. But it was too damn cold.

Because I was an inexperienced mom, I only babysat once in my life, (my mother helped), I needed to prove to myself that on my own I could pack up and head out with my kid, without my husband, my mom or a friend as backup. But where? Where could I go to build my mom-confidence? It was below freezing.

I found the perfect place.

It was with great excitement, and only a little nervousness, I filled Becky’s diaper bag with a two days’ supply of every baby item needed and packed my car with a month’s worth of baby camping supplies. How I fit our ATV sized stroller into our Le Car is still a mystery to me. We were only going for a couple of hours but if I am anything I am prepared.

Got the car warmed up and off we trekked to the new mall in Waterford.

The Crystal Mall in Waterford, no I am not getting paid to write this, was the first BIG inside mall for us along the shoreline. Not only was it, and is it, a great center of commerce, it was and is, a great year round Main Street kind of place to walk and push a stroller.

On the first day Becky and I went to the mall I was a pack-horse mom lugging it all. I walked and stopped to gaze in the windows and loved when little old ladies peered in the stroller and smiled.
A short distance from the elevator, on a bench in front of what was originally a cookie store, I fed Becky her first mall bottle. When I think back to that moment of how warm, and safe and proud I felt and how lucky we were to have a place the two of us could go and enjoy the outside world, inside, it brings me to tears.

That day became the first of many. Eventually I went from the ATV stroller to an umbrella stroller to my little girl walking along side and following just as fast as her little legs could go. When our second baby Rachel came along I was a pro. Our supplies, a baby bottle and an extra diaper in my purse.

Just the other day I took my soon to be 3-year-old granddaughter to Waterford. She walked the entire length of the mall twice and spent some time in the little play area while I reminisced about how, with her mother over 30 years ago, I discovered the wonders a weather proof Mall Main Street.

Enough Said: In a world of banging pots, let there be silence

Published September 12. 2016 10:14AM

  

Because of one simple gesture today, the flash back importance of something I have been overlooking for quite some time, changed my day, and I hope, will become a routine staple. This something is what many of the world’s citizens have consciously, or unconsciously, dismissed.
The importance of quiet.

It’s been quite a hot and now loud summer for us. During this year’s record breaking heat waves, we went from a huge house with near silent whole house air-conditioning to a downsized domicile with beige and gray boxes spewing cool air from their perches on windowsills. I do not begrudge their constant whirring, because like fans on steroids, they kept us cool. But one morning I realized just how in tune I had become with the mechanical choir of comfort.

On that morning, the constant droning of the air conditioners, we had turned them off because the night before was cooler, was gone. The humming heartbeat of the house, the old furnace which heats our hot water, was resting between tasks. Early morning TV was off because I was tired of listening to the political pot of stew boil and burn. That’s when it happened, that which I have not heard since the power outage of Hurricane Sandy, the comfort of quiet.
We had power, everything simply went still.

It got my attention like someone dropped a book on a hardwood floor, like a door blew shut, like a dog bark at 2 a.m.

The unexpected silence felt strange at first, as if someone had jammed cotton in my ears. But soon it was nice, then wonderful and oddly familiar from another time of less gadgets.

 

After listening to birds calling to each other in our new backyard and the gentle swish of leaves tickling each other, I was astounded by the symphony of natural sound which was pleasing, not jarring and soothing, not depressing. Silence had never been so filled with sound.
As the member of a generation raised on forced quiet times, because our fuzzy three channel black and white TVs went off air at night and switched back on at 5 a.m. with the Farm Report, I recalled my early years. (We mature types reminisce about that kind of stuff from time to time. It makes us feel right in a world of wrong.)

Our days started with the rustling of newspapers at the breakfast table instead of selected experts and pretties in a box, blaring Chicken Little sky-falling stories accompanied with award winning background music. Now we are instantly informed about the calamities of populations half a world away, with soundtracks, as if they suffer in our own backyard. Actually, communication has shrunk the world, it is our backyard.

Don’t get me wrong, I like being informed, quickly and decisively. The first thing I do when the bottom falls out of another world situation, TV is where I turn, but in this cacophonic world of instant info I think it’s time to recall the reassurance of quiet.

TV isn’t the only mind mangler. Computers, cell phones, kid’s toy tablets and real ones, all kinds of devices we turn on, plug in and hang from our ears, fill our existence like low hanging bass and a treble clouds. So much has been written about the swiftness and ease of information, and the importance of social media and its presence in our lives, I won’t go prattling on because my rattle simply becomes another noise in a world of banging pots.

So it is that on that morning, and now almost every morning, I am going to grasp quiet and hold it tight. Unless it gets hot again and I have to turn ACs back on.

You can make noise by quietly reaching Carolynn at cp.enoughsaid@aol.com

Enough Said: I am Ms. Cliché, ask me, go ahead, ask me

Published August 15. 2016 9:21AM

 

I am a senior citizen with the potty mouth of a middle schooler and the backbone of Edith Bunker. I live in a body which looks like a melted candle and my mind remembers just enough to get by; although how would I know. Because I have been around the block a few times, and seldom mince words, a friend suggested I write an advice column for those who are sliding down the other side of hill everyone else says we are already over. After I picked myself up off the floor, and wiped the laughing tears from my cheeks, I thought, I’ll give it try.

Here’s the first letter written to me, by me. It’s the thought many oldies mull over in the middle of the night, (9 p.m.), when we wake up after dozing on the couch, get up to pee, go to bed and can’t get back to sleep.

Dear Ms. Cliché,
I never thought getting older would be like this. The aches and pains I can deal with and because I can’t change the past, and can’t predict the future, I have no regrets. Though I am grateful for my long marriage and wonderful family, something is missing. I’m not sure what it is and I don’t know where to find it. Can you help me?
Thank you,
Searching Senior

Dear Searching Senior,
Years ago, my husband burst through the kitchen door proclaiming that life had gone to hell in a tool box because he had lost his wallet. My husband is great at building things but for him to find anything smaller than a jigsaw is like a bloodhound with a sinus infection.
“When was the last time you actually used your wallet?” I asked him.
“There’s no money in it, I haven’t used it in a while,” he answered.
“Did you put your wallet in your pocket when you left for work?” I asked. He looked at me like I was his mother.
Snide man said, “I never drive without my driver’s license, AAA card, Home Depot charge and a picture of our wonderful family.”
The picture was a dorky Sears Studio portrait, the AAA card had expired and I didn’t know we had a Home Depot charge.
I searched the couches, laundry basket and dog bed. He went through his truck twice, which he uses for business and drives every day. No wallet.

 

My husband got a new driver’s license, we canceled the charge card and I gave him an updated dorkier photo. I filled his shiny new wallet with all the new necessaries, plus a crisp one dollar bill for good luck.
Three weeks later my husband burst through the kitchen door.
“You’re not going to believe this but I found my wallet,” he said.
In his hand, the old lump of leather, filled with all the bits and pieces of his life which he had carried with him for years.”
“Where did you find it?”
“In the truck.”
“But you searched the truck,” I said. “Did it fall out of your pocket and get kicked under the seat, or lost among all the tools or buried under all the empty to-go cups?”
“It was on the dashboard right in front of me,” he said. “I must have taken it out of my back pocket because it was uncomfortable.”
Rare for me, I was speechless.
“Well, it is the same color of the dash.” he said.

So dear Searching Senior, though you know something is missing, and you’re not sure what it is, or where to find it, just remember, no matter how hard we look for what we believe is missing in our lives, sometimes that which we seek is right in front of us all the time.
I am as sure of that as I am that my husband still can’t find a thing.
Truly Yours,
Ms. Cliché

Carolynn Pianta says you can contact Ms. Cliché at cp.enoughsaid@aol.com