Snakes terrify me.

But they seek me out.

Which terrifies me even more.

On the other hand, my neighbor loves snakes. Arthur knows everything about them, from their coloration, to their habitat to whether or not they’re venomous or non-venomous.

It’s ironic that between the two of us, the magnet for snakes is me, the chicken, lily-livered screamer.

Last year, I went outside to check the pool skimmer baskets. But as I got closer to the pool, I spotted something – a long, black snake gliding along the top of the water.

I froze. My husband was gone and it was just the dog and me against the viper.

My sweet coward looked at me, lowered her head and slunk away to the back door.

So I called Arthur.

I hadn’t hung up the phone before he was running into my back yard, his twin boys behind him, yelling “Where’s the snake!”

“The creature’s in the water – kill it, kill it, kill it,” I said. Okay, I screamed.

“It’s a harmless water snake,” he said gently snagging the snake as it got close to the side of the pool.

He explained how harmless snakes are beneficial, especially as they eat vermin, such as rats and mice.

Blah, blah, blah.

Just kill it, Arthur.

His wife, Courtney, came over and we became a choir – “kill it, kill it, kill it.”

Now I know snake lovers and those who understand nature better than I do are cringing at this moment.

They’re the ones who agree with Arthur – snakes are an integral and important link in nature’s chain.

I understand that.

It doesn’t mean I want those important links of nature slithering around my house.

Or in my yard.

Or in my driveway.

Two weeks ago, I went down to get the afternoon paper. There, curled up by the mailbox was my living nightmare – a big, fat snake.

After I could breathe again, I hauled out my best snake weapon – my phone.

“Arthur, there’s a snake in the road,” I whispered.

In a flash, he was standing over the snake, and proclaimed it an innocent child of nature. He picked it up and asked if I wanted to touch the snake.

I’d rather touch lava.

He laughed and said he’d relocate the snake in the woods.

I watched to make sure he relocated that snake in the deepest part of the woods.

Last week, I was out for an evening walk. The weather was cool, the humidity non-existent, and the birds were singing in the trees.

I started down the driveway and there, right in my path, was a snake.

In reality, it was probably only two feet long. What I saw, though, was a viper 10 feet long with venom dripping from its gigantic fangs. I did the first thing that popped into my mind – I called Arthur.

“There’s a snake in my driveway, and I almost stepped on it,” I said, my voice quivering.

I’d barely hung up before he was riding his bike through the ditch into my driveway, his son right behind him.

“That’s a rat snake,” Arthur said. “They’re good to have around the house.”

“The only good snake to have around my house is a dead one,” I replied.

To which he laughed, reached down and picked up the snake.

At that moment, he became a god.

He proceeded to tell me all the good qualities about the snake, but all I could think was he better stay 10 feet away from me and not drop that slithering reptile.

“What are you going to do with that thing,” I asked, keeping my eye on him all the time.

“Put him or her in a safe place,” he said as we both said “far away from this house.”

I think those who aren’t afraid of snakes are the bravest people in the world.

I’m not one of them.

Instead, I’m a snake magnet.

As long as King Arthur’s around, I won’t be afraid.

 

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald. 

 

With Texas governor Greg Abbott opening the state back up, most of us can see our world turning from a shelter-in-place to a getting-back-to-normal world.

Because everything should be a learning experience, there’s a few things I picked up during this Covid-19 event.

I like my house.

Usually I’m gone from 6:30 a.m. until about 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, and I’m running errands on Saturdays.

Sundays were spent getting ready for the week, so my house was a stopping-off place.

I haven’t left the house much for the past six weeks. I’ve come to appreciate the comforts of home.  Our old corduroy couch is a quiet place to sit and watch television, read a book or just relax.

The back porch has become a serene spot to ponder life, especially in the morning. I love listening to the birds and the quiet before getting started on the day. I don’t know what bird is making what sound, but it’s a symphony that’s quite enjoyable.

Gray hair isn’t so bad.

I’ve spent years covering up the gray, but having the gray peeking through – okay storming through – hasn’t been as bad as I thought it would be.

This virus has me appreciating that getting older doesn’t necessarily mean I’m out of touch and old. I can still get out and walk, ride a bike and listen to loud rock and roll music.

I’ve learned I can stay out of my car.

From the time I started driving, I’ve always racked up miles. I love going places, and even though I’ve had a driver’s license longer than the internet’s been around, leaving the car in the garage has been a refreshing change of pace.

Families are fun.

It’s just my husband and me at the house, but I’ve been watching my nieces, nephews and cousins online as they recreate family time. My cousin Mike and his wife Katie hosted nightly Quarantine Olympics with their boys with hysterical results.

They had a whipped cream challenge where someone puts a mound of whipped cream on the back of their hand. Then they took their other hand, slapped at their wrist to make the whipped cream fly up in the air and then see who could catch it in their mouth.

We learned video games and Netflix series get old so we hauled out our bikes and rode around our neighborhoods. We had sing-a-longs, played Monopoly and Clue and realized our family members are pretty cool people.

I like cooking.

Okay, that might be a stretch, but I actually enjoyed the smell of home cooking – meatloaf in the oven, chocolate-chip cookies cooling on the counter and bacon frying in the morning.

Soon enough, it’ll be the smell of salad dressing and baked fish but, for now, I’m enjoying the comfort smells of my childhood.

We learned critical situations bring out the best and the worst in people. Neighbors helped neighbors, teachers learned a new way to connect with their students and we understood how invaluable grocery and pharmacy store workers, nurses, doctors, EMTs, police officers, fire fighters, Post Office clerks and sanitation workers are.

Politicians are wrong. Doctors are wrong. Newscasters are wrong. And, the biggest shock of all, the internet has false information. On the same note, politicians, doctors and newscasters are occasionally right. I’m still not sure I believe the things I read on the internet.

We lost beloved relatives and friends through this illness. So many lost opportunities and there’s no way to get them back.

But we learned to regroup, stand up straight and keep moving forward.

Family and friends are what’s most important – not shopping, eating out or running the roads.

Life is fickle and fleeting and often the best moments and aspects of life are right underneath our noses.

Soon roads will be congested and the lessons we’ve learned over the past six weeks will fade. Try to remember – out of all this chaos, you probably discovered what was most important in your life.

Don’t let it go.

 

  This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald. 

Hair salons and barber shops opened their doors last week, and for most, not a moment too soon.

Without the benefit of professional hair stylists for the past six weeks, most of us were showing our true colors. In my case, that hair color is not chestnut brown.

Some decided to take matters into their own hands and turn their kitchens into a beauty salon. That made me remember when my dad cut my brothers’ hair.

He’d get a stool and start with the oldest. Usually Dad had a couple of beers before he cut their hair, so he was feeling pretty confident about his abilities.

My brothers – not so much.

Dad’s hair styling consisted of three styles.

One was putting a bowl over the boys’ heads to use as a guide. They ended up looking like Moe from The Three Stooges.

His next style was to put his hand on top of their heads, hold them still and then drag the electric razor up the sides of their heads and finish it off with an attempt to get their bangs even.

His main style was to shave the sides of their heads and the tops and they’d walk away with a crooked crew cut. There was no trying to get out of the haircut – my dad wasn’t about to pay a barber for what he could do with that electric razor in the comfort of our own kitchen.

My youngest sister tried her hand at cutting our neighbor’s little girl’s hair. When they were 4 years old, my sister decided Lisa needed her bangs trimmed.

When Lisa’s mom came home, she was mortified. I remember standing back and saying “Well, for a 4-year-old, she did a good job with the scissors.”

I’ve never been brave enough to cut my own hair. Years ago, I tried a home perm. I thought I was buying a body-wave kit, but I accidentally bought a Lilt Home Permanent kit.

When I took the rollers out of my hair, I thought the curls would wash out.

I was wrong.

I washed my hair 20 times that night, used half a bottle of conditioner and still I looked like Harpo Marx.

There are success stories. Some friends decided since they were married and a team most of the time, they might as well beauty salon together.

With a cell phone set up as a camera, they showed each other giving the other a facial. Then they moved on to haircuts.

Coy and Liza did a fabulous job with the trims and facials and provided a hysterical cut-by-cut chronicle of their actions, complete with cotton balls between their toes while they toasted each success with a fresh glass of wine.

The most recent home haircut didn’t turn out quite as successful. My oldest grandson was tired of his hair always getting in his eyes. He asked his dad to trim up his hair since dad has a haircutting kit.

Chris warned James he wasn’t skillful with cutting someone else’s hair, but James felt confident his dad could at least trim his hair in the front.

Chris called later that night. The home haircut had been a disaster. Apparently, it’s not so easy to cut and trim hair as it is to shave your whole head. They found a friend who’s a hairdresser and she agreed to fix the haircut.

They socially distanced and James loved being able to see.

His father has vowed to never try and cut his sons’ hair again.

He’s off the hook for a while as, thankfully, the hair salons and barber shops are taking customers.

Businesses are reopening slowly, and we can stop pretending we’re chefs, home-school teachers and flower-power “make-love, not-war” children from the 1960s.

Although those love beads have been a lot of fun to wear around the house.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald. 

Sunday is Mother’s Day, and this year, we have a whole new column to add to the reasons why we love our mothers.

The Quarantine Parent.

Over the past few weeks, moms and dads have learned a whole new level of parenting they never dreamed existed.

Not only are we handling a disrupted reality and looming bills, there’s also the uncertainty of whether or not we’ll have jobs when this is all over. For many, the parenting job is a solitary one and those parents are doing a super-human job.

Still, there is some venting moms need to do with other moms.

“Are there ever times you don’t like your child?”

“Can I just go to the bathroom without little fingers waving at me from underneath the closed door?”

At the park or playground, we do a lot of comparing. Why is our kid the only one trying to hang from the money bars without his pants on?

Why is our kid the only one eating sand, and why is our kid the only one afraid to go down the slide?

While you’re thinking you’re a failure, a life-saving mom will come sit by you and tell you her kid still picks his nose and eats what he finds.

Moms with elementary-aged children are finding out what their child does all day long. It’s not singing and finger painting. That’s just what you see in the Friday take-home folder.

The real lessons are hard.

Kids are using iPads to create digital posters and presentations. Most of us feel like magic markers and a 20-cent poster board from the corner drug store should be more than good enough for the life cycle of a butterfly.

This major detour wasn’t in the mom handbook that’s supposedly out there, but parents are getting with the program and finding out a few important facts.

One, their child is not the angel they thought. Their child fidgets, whines, refuses to work, wants frequent Popsicle breaks and has to go to the bathroom every 10 minutes.

For moms of teens, you still badger them to get his or her work done and they tell you they’re handling everything and to stop nagging them. Then you get an email from their teacher saying they haven’t logged on to their class in two weeks.

Thanks to technology and the steep learning curve we’re now on, you know how to check their grades. You know how to see if they’ve been on the computer and, for the first time in years, you can play the “got-cha” card and win.

In the midst of the computer storm, we’ve gotten some perks.

We’ve learned to appreciate our children. We’ve been given time to really get to know our offspring.

Our squirmy 8-year-old is that way because she doesn’t understand the lesson. You now have time to talk one on one with your little one to explain the Constitution the best way you can.

Your toddler is quite the gymnast as you’ve discovered when they maneuver their way through the living room that’s littered with toys, the cat, the dog, Legos, Barbie shoes and everyone’s slippers.

Your disinterested teenager is that way because he has trouble reading. You weren’t able to catch it because he managed to hide his struggle behind video games and false reassurances.

You’ve rediscovered the joys of sitting next to your son or daughter while cooking, playing in the back yard or just talking because there’s no soccer or baseball practice, no martial arts class, no dental appointments.

And best of all? They’ve watched their parents adjust to a new reality, learn to handle their fears by not giving into them and to believe the future has to be better.

This virus has been a curse to so many of us, but there’s usually a silver lining in every situation. Getting to know your kids in a leisurely way just might be the lining we’ve been looking for.

Happy Mother’s Day to all our moms out there. Of all the years, this is the one where you really deserve that big Mom trophy.

 

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald. 

I’m not someone who enjoys cooking. I’d much rather wash and dry the dishes, pots and pans.

But in this time of staying home, I’ve found myself looking through cookbooks and the internet for easy meals.

I told myself that this was a great time to branch out and try something different. Most of the recipes I saw included some foreign spice or ingredient I wasn’t sure how to find during my usual shopping trips.

So it was back to turning on the oven for the tried-and-true recipes of my youth.

Mostly, there’s meatloaf with mashed potatoes and corn, baked chicken with peas and macaroni and cheese and spaghetti and meatballs.

It’s hard to come close to my mom’s home cooking, but what ties me to her in the kitchen are potholders made by her mother and my grandmother.

My Siti, as we called her, had many talents, but one that still amazes me is her crocheting skills.

She crocheted afghans for most of us, and I still use them. One of my favorites is a blue, beige and white afghan she made almost 50 years ago, and it’s still in great shape, despite being washed and used every winter.

For me, her most artistic creations are the potholders she made out of crochet string. They’re circular and feature a widening circle in the middle with matching colors blending into each other. I have them in gold, purple, blue and red.

Outside of the main circle are designs that look like leaves or a six-sided star.

The backs are simpler, but they’re the same colors as the front. She inserted layers of cotton batting in the middle, and then crocheted the two circles together and formed a lacy edging.

Even wearing glasses, I have a hard time seeing the stitches as they’re so small and delicate, yet these pot holders have kept my hands from burning no matter how big the pan or pot.

I have thicker “store-bought” potholders in the drawer, but they don’t do as good a job as the ones my grandmother made all those years ago.

I use the potholders every day, and they’re showing their wear – there’s food spots on most of them, a couple have a little burn on the edge where I got it too close to the fire, and some have frayed in spots. I’ve done my best to stitch them up as soon as I notice a hole because I’d never throw any of them away.

My mom has some of the pot holders as well, but she keeps them in a drawer, wrapped in tissue paper. When I found them at her house, I asked her why she didn’t use them. She said she was afraid she’d catch them on fire or ruin them.

My sentiments are different. These potholders aren’t meant to stay hidden in a drawer no matter how beautiful they are.

They’re meant to be used because whenever I use them, I remember my grandmother.

I picture her sitting at the end of their gold couch, crochet needle in hand, moving that needle in and out of the yarn so quickly, I thought she was in double time.

I remember sitting close to her, patting the soft skin on her arm, loving the way she smelled and the warmth she gave off.

My sons reach for the same potholders when they’re here cooking, and, one day, I hope those potholders will be theirs. They will mean something to them because they saw me using them, but they also know the rich history behind these family heirlooms.

When I find myself repairing one of the frays on the potholders, I wish one of my grandchildren were sitting next to me so I could tell them the story of their great-great grandmother who wove beautiful potholders and spun mesmerizing tales of her childhood in Lebanon.

There’s not a lot to be grateful for during this pandemic, but slowing down and remembering why the things I use are important has been a blessing.

 

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.