One of my family’s favorite movies is “Fiddler on the Roof.” The 1971 musical features a half dozen memorable songs, from “If I Were a Rich Man” to “Tradition.”

As I’ve been following a friend’s unlucky dating adventures, one song that’s stuck in my head is “Matchmaker.”

Three daughters start off wishing the town matchmaker, Yenta, will find them the perfect man. As the song goes on, they realize the perfect match could be a nightmare.

Today’s singles don’t rely on Yenta to find them a mate. They rely on social media to find the ideal companion, and I’m not sure if that’s a better avenue than the old-fashioned matchmakers in every family.

Many Sunday afternoons were spent in my grandparents’ kitchen after Sunday dinner discussing the possible matches they could find for the unmarried people in the family.

“What about Mary’s son?”

“He’d be a great catch. He is 50, though.”

“Even better. He’s got a lot of money in the bank.”

I’ll admit to playing matchmaker for my sons. I thought I was dropping casual hints.

“Hey, I saw – insert name of eligible girl here – in Mass last Sunday. She’s single, you know,” I’d say. All they’d do was roll their eyes.

As the years went by with no mention of a girlfriend, I’d do my best to drop a hint about the eligible girls who were slowly but surely disappearing from my Aggie boy’s dating pool.

Usually I’d open this newspaper and see an engagement announcement for one of the girls he’d gone to high school with. I’d call him and, without even saying hello, start in with my best matchmaker voice.

“Your future wife is about to get married to someone else,” I’d say. There would be a long sigh on the other end of the phone.

“This makes about five girls who are now married to someone else and probably someone else will be spoiling my future grandchildren,” I’d say.

The Aggie boy would usually hang up at that point.

Once I asked him why he trusted an online dating app to fix him up with a girl when his mother could do the same and for free.

He did admit that the girls I chose were nice looking, smart and, let’s not forget, Catholic.

“And what’s wrong with that?” I demanded to know.

Another eye roll.

Other moms played matchmaker as well.

Years ago, I had dinner with a friend, and she looked upset. She said her daughter had just broken up with a boy she’d been dating for years. The light went on in my matchmaker brain.

“How old is your daughter?” I asked. She replied with the same age as my son. I whipped out my phone and went to the gallery.

“See this face,” I said, pointing at my Aggie boy. “He has a good job and he’s never been married.”

She took out her phone and showed me a picture of her daughter.

“She graduated from Baylor,” she said.

“Mine graduated from Texas A&M,” I replied.

We both breathed a sigh of relief we wouldn’t have to bridge the Longhorn rivalry.

“We’re Presbyterian,” she said cautiously.

“We’re Catholic. Close enough,” I said. We texted the pictures of our children to each other and I promptly texted her daughter’s picture to my son.

“Look this girl up on Facebook and do it quickly before another one of your wives marries someone else,” I texted.

That’s probably the pushiest I’ve ever been, but I now realize it was all for nothing. The Aggie boy found a wonderful woman all on his own, and they adore each other. How he managed to do that without his matchmaker mother remains a mystery.

I still have two unmarried sons and both have had less-than-pleasing results with dating apps. Maybe it’s time I remind them they have a reliable Yenta right underneath their noses.

“Oh boys, have I got a match for you…”

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald. 

Finally the Internet got something right.

We’ve all skimmed through dozens of online “facts”– there are reptilian humanoids in high government positions running the world, Elvis and Tupac have been spotted in a washateria eating peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches and time travelers can be seen in old photos using cell phones.

There’s one I can say actually happened to me:  if you leave your clothes in a dark closet for three months, like say during a pandemic, they shrink.

At least three sizes.

The last time I put on a pair of dress slacks was Friday, March 8. In those 13 weeks, those jeans shrank. I can’t button or zip them. Same goes for the skirts in my closet. All my shirts refuse to button and even my shoes are pretty darned snug.

It has to be because they haven’t seen daylight.

The reason couldn’t be that I’ve been stress eating for the past three months. There’s no way that a steady diet of the comfort foods from my childhood — Cocoa Krispies, meat loaf and Kraft macaroni and cheese — caused me to put on a few pounds.

As an experiment, I tried on all the shorts in my closet, and the only ones that fit were the ones with an elastic waistband. I think elastic has some magical properties that lack of sunlight causes the material to relax and stretch more.

There are a few superheroes in my wardrobe. Socks are immune to any effects of daylight. They all fit the same way they did before they were stuck in my drawer for three months. Same goes for towels and washcloths.

My mascara and eye shadow are in the same spot they were three months ago. Ditto for my lipstick. I haven’t had to take the cover off my deodorant for at least three months. There are a lot more gray hairs in my brush, though, so that’s an oddity that needs investigating.

I think the batteries in our house have been affected, especially the batteries in the television remote control. We’ve had to change those a couple of times during the pandemic when we normally only change those once a year.

Although how sunlight got to the remote when it’s been either in my hand or on the couch underneath an empty bag of Doritos is a mystery.

The internet says a lack of sunshine can cause the human body to adjust in strange ways. Somehow the pandemic affected my grocery-store buying routine, and bags of Oreos and Doritos jumped into my basket when I was adjusting my face mask.

They brought along some friends. There’s two bags of Hershey’s Kisses and a huge box of instant mashed potatoes on the top shelf of the pantry that were mysteriously in my grocery bag when I got home.

Something strange is going on in our freezer because I always have ice cream for the grandchildren. They haven’t visited for weeks, yet a whole gallon of Blue Bell Cookies and Cream ice cream has vanished.

Even I have to admit I’m stretching this theory when claiming lack of sunlight affects ice cream in a dark freezer.

It couldn’t be that someone is like a fish out of water now that there’s no routine, and food seems to be the only constant.

It couldn’t be that the best companion when watching four back-to-back seasons of “30 Rock” is a jar of peanut butter.

It couldn’t be that someone gets bored at night and sneaks vanilla ice cream and chocolate syrup for a pick-me-up snack.

Or a mid-morning snack.

Or a mid-afternoon snack.

I wonder if the reptilians are behind this…

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald. 

I’m starting a new chapter in life – retirement.

Where did the years go?

My first grown-up job was as a secretary at the Baton Rouge Exxon plant. I loved new technology and was eager to put what I’d learned in school to use. I was also ready to start getting a paycheck.

I remember looking at the older secretaries and wondering why they were still there. I arrogantly thought they should retire and make room for the young ones. After all, we knew everything and they were dinosaurs.

We young ones would gripe about them at lunch and claim if we could retire, we’d do it in a minute. Walk away from the grind and spend our days doing what we wanted to do. Forget work.

Now I’m at the other end of the spectrum, and I know why older folks are reluctant to leave their jobs.

Retirement is scary. For many, work defined us, gave us a purpose.

All that changes when we clean out our desks and leave.

But even though our daily routine is changing, most of us still have some fire in our belly. That doesn’t change because we’re no longer punching the clock.

Young people think they have a corner on the market when it comes to passion for changing the world.

That’s a trait embracing each and every age group, from my mom’s generation that taught us how to recycle, value democracy and to fight for what we believed in to my generation that learned presidents weren’t to be trusted.

Those old secretaries might not have known how to use a word processor, but they taught me how to be professional in a world where women were second-class citizens.

What goes around comes around. I had to smile when I overheard two millennials talking about the quality of vinyl records. Those of us who owned Santana’s “Black Magic Woman” 45-record could’ve told them that.

The world still grieves for injustices. My generation remembers being saddened when The Beatles broke up and heartsick when John Lennon was killed. We grieved through the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy.

We survived hip-huggers, go-go boots and pet rocks. We were lucky enough to see an astronaut walk on the moon and watch a young Luke Skywalker harness the power of The Force.

Now we’re wondering why a younger generation pays big bucks for Spanx when we threw those miserable girdles out back in the 70’s.

Those of us calculating our Social Security numbers can bring some old-fashioned common sense to the world, just as our grandparents and parents did.

The back-yard garden, the one our great-grandparents tended, has made a huge come back in the past few months. Young families are learning the satisfaction of growing their own cucumbers, tomatoes and squash.

We old folks have a Mr. Coffee or percolator in the kitchen, and we chuckle every time we spot someone with an expensive throwaway coffee cup. We’re enjoying home-brewed coffee the exact strength we want for about 20 cents a cup.

The peaceful protest marches of the 1960s actually brought about change. Integration in the 1970s taught us we could only learn acceptance when we got to know people of a different race or culture.

And a comfortable, well-worn flannel shirt is worth hanging on to season after season.

Maybe the old ways aren’t so bad after all.

 

    This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald. 

Bad things happen.

They always have.

They always will.

I wanted life to be a smooth ride. I knew bad things would happen, but I didn’t want there to be tragedy.

I found out early that’s not how life happens.

When we’re young, bad things are the monsters hiding under the bed or in the closet. But then a divorce, an ill parents or financial troubles shatter our young worlds. We learn early that life isn’t fair, but we move on, a little less innocent.

In our teen years, we learn first-hand how cruel and vindictive our peers can be. We endured notes passed around the classroom and whispers in the cafeteria.

Our peers ridiculed us for our hair, our teeth, the way we talked, our clothes, where we lived – the list was endless.

The internet changed everything. Now there’s vicious bullying that’s belittling and cruel. The comments these anonymous trolls post are unfair, but somehow, teens lick their wounds and move on.

In the past, we learned we had to take off the rose-colored glasses.

These days, those lenses are shattered.

The coronavirus has changed our perception of what’s safe. I watch movies and see people in food courts, at concerts and walking down a crowded city street and think those days will never happen again.

And now racism and hatred have reared their heads again and torn our country apart. We tell ourselves this outrage over the brutal assault and murder of George Floyd is something new, but it’s not.

Brutality against people of color has been with us since the beginning of mankind.

But now, we can see what happened – there’s no denying. The footage of Mr. Floyd being smothered by a stone-faced police officer is excruciatingly painful.

I watched, thinking the officer would realize what was happening and stop. I thought his fellow officers would listen to the bystanders yelling for someone to help their friend and one of them would step in and stop their co-worker.

I hoped the bystanders would rush the officer and rescue their friend. But I realized they were probably terrified the same would happen to them. It must’ve been agonizing to watch their friend suffocate and they were powerless to do anything.

That must be how minorities feel when people in power pick on others, whether that’s on the playground or on a city street where the stakes are literally life and death.

Bad happens.

Those who lived through the Depression never wanted to go back to rationing, living in fear and sending their boys off to fight in a war.

Those who lived through the Civil Rights movement never wanted things to go back to how they were before leaders demanded equal treatment and dignity.

The black-and-white photos of lynchings are beyond horrific, and it’s the faces of the men and women who are watching young men of color hanging from a tree that make you believe in evil.

Somehow, we find ways to live with the bad.

We avoid the bullies on the playground, learn that gossip fades and we can live without social media.

Educators teach tolerance and acceptance in school, and leaders like Malala who advocate for children to be taught so they don’t repeat the intolerance invasive in their midst.

We listen to the words of leaders who advocated peaceful solutions.

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” stated Dr. King in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” which should be required reading for everyone.

The late Nelson Mandela said peace is an environment where all can flourish and John Lennon asked us to imagine a world where we all live in peace.

I’d like to imagine a world where we all live together in understanding, safety and equality.

I just pray it’s not a child’s dream any more.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.