Tag: fiction

To read or not to read

Do I want to read my mother’s diary? Mother recorded the days of her life from the time she was 13 in 1944 until 1948. That was a year before she married my father, Ray Arrington.

The relationship between my mother and me was never awful but not ideal. More a Wabi Sabi relationship. What would I discover about my mother when she was young? Would I learn embarrassing information? Embarrassing to whom?

Should I just leave what I know about my mother be? Or should I explore that diary for more? Maybe it’s just a record of what she ate, did in school—day to day accounts. Or perhaps, I can harvest more about Helen Louise Espey. Were there traumatic incidents that shaped her life? That helped shape mine, my sister’s? A family member whom she never mentioned but who influenced her perspective on life?

Once she handed me the book, Irregular People. She told me this book would explain who she was. I started the book, but I didn’t finish it. I didn’t see my mother in Joyce Landorf Heaterly’s words. Maybe I should read the book filled with Mother’s own words?

After my parents died, my husband and I found bags and bags of photos squirreled away in their attic. Most photos had no identifying information about the people, the places, the occasions the pictures had captured. Those photos reluctantly hit the trash. Photos that identified people went home with me.

One photo that I vividly remember was of Mother’s eighth-grade graduation. One classmate’s face is missing. Clearly Mother had neatly, precisely cut it out. It looks so funny—this black and white photo with a square hole on top of some boy’s body. A square you can push your finger through—an empty, meaningless void. An omen about the diary?

Who was this headless person to her? Why did she cut him out of the picture, maybe out of her life at age 13? Would her diary solve this mystery? Do I want to know? Was it just a teenage whim or a glimpse of who she was to become?

Help me out here readers, if there are any readers. How much do we want to know about our parents? Are some things better left cut out of our lives, like the face of that boy? Is it a violation of my mother’s privacy for me to read her words, though she no longer lives? Or maybe she does live out there in the ether world. Mother always could read my mind. Is it time for me to read hers? Will she know? Will she care?

Pest Cemetery—sometimes dead is better

Well, no, I am not talking about Stephens King’s Pet Sematary. The book’s theme that “Sometimes dead is better” rings true for this saga.

Pest Cemetery refers to the interior of our home. It has become an eternal resting place for brown marmorated stink bugs. Armed with a shield-shaped body, these insects have overwhelmingly invaded our house. They suddenly land in the strangest places—on my windowsill, the edge of my wine glass, in my wine glass.  

But more than their flying around and landing on my nose while I’m asleep (which can be beyond annoying), they die in weird places. Expiration can occur on the edge of a door frame. They cling vertically as if velcroed to their final resting place. Some meet their maker on my bathroom mirror looking into their own dead eyes. Others give up the ghost on the shower floor prompting me to yell, “Not another one!” I gingerly step around them but vehemently catapult them over the shower door. I do not want to test the reason for their name.

I do admire these odorous, in-your-face insects. While I politely escort them outside, leaving their fate to Mother Nature, my husband throws them in the toilet. “Sink or swim,” he commands. Down they go to a watery death, shrouded in two plies of Charmin Ultra Strong.

Actually, they swim more often than sink. One stink bug endured three flushes before it finally succumbed to the toilet’s whirlpool. Time after time after time, it had slowly crawled up the porcelain bowl. One of its six legs almost touched the outer rim—so close yet so far away. What determination, what grit.

Once when I wasn’t very stink-bug-compassionate because they had grown fond of my glasses, I tried vacuuming one up. It was nonchalantly cruising the hallway, checking out our dust bunnies. My Black & Decker failed to suck up this determined stink bug. What it was holding on to or how, I have not a clue. But it clung to the hardwood floor as if gorilla-glued.

Slowly compassion or maybe exhaustion set in. I carefully transported it to the front walk in hopes that some wren would swoop down for a quick snack. Okay, not the most compassionate move for the stink bug, but I didn’t want another corpse to avoid stepping on. I, might, though, have made a wren happy.

Hopefully, our bugs do not rise from the dead to embark like Pet Semetary’s Gage on a deadly rampage. I’d hate to be in a headline that read, “Elderly couple devoured by Zombie stink bugs.” Might the resurrected bugs come bounding out of our septic tank, ready for revenge? Maybe.

But this entomological nightmare has caused me to think about how we treat creatures that do not have Insta-worthy, “Oh, they are so adorable” bodies or personalities.  I’m not sure just how important they are to the ecosystem, but they are alive.

These nuisances do not hurt humans although in Ten-Commandment-plague numbers, they can ruin crops. Many people eagerly feed the cute deer even though an oversized herd can die of starvation or cause devastating car accidents. But an innocent stink bug? Just flush it down the toilet or relegate it to the whims of nature.

Which then makes me wonder—how many people do I flush down the toilet?  They don’t look like I think they should look—flush. They “bug” me—flush. They don’t behave as I think they should behave—flush.  They don’t believe as I think they should believe—flush them out of my life.

The next time I’m about to quickly misjudge or stereotype someone, before I flush, I will take a moment. Yes, some folks must be flushed from my life. Others will need a trip to my front deck where they can start their search for a more welcoming home.  Many, though, I will patiently consider, maybe meet for coffee, perhaps share a walk. Will they flush me or I flush them? Not everyone has to be my BFF or I theirs, but we owe each other respect.

I also owe my stink bugs that respect—if they promise to stay out of my hair. When they die, I will gently pick them up. Their grave will be one of my wastebaskets, neatly lined with Best Value garbage bags. No more watery graves or soggy shrouds.

Photo credit: Wisconsin Horticulture, hort.uwex.edu

Only my premature judgments, quick stereotyping, hidden prejudices, and impatience will I flush. Sometimes dead is better.