Something About My Mother

I was going to do some silly thing about kids and mothers, but I’ve decided on this, instead. I wrote it on Mother’s Day a few years back, and updated it yesterday.

My dad 2 years ago, with my mom and Lucy.

It’s Mother’s Day, and my father is dying. Again.

His first stroke was more than 12 years ago. Doctors and machines and my mother’s faith kept him alive those first few days and weeks, and he got better. He could talk and respond, and we joked that he was about the same as before. A second stroke soon took care of that, though, and he wasted away to nearly nothing. But my mom takes care of him.

My dad 10 years ago, with our youngest.

The people at his first home were not diligent, not consistent in caring for my dad, so mom learned what to do. She changed him, cleaned him, turned him every couple of hours, did his therapy. She spent about eight hours with him every day, except when he was hospitalized for pneumonia, about every two months. Then she just sat beside him.

She moved him to a new place, where she still does much of the work, but at least he only gets pneumonia once a year or so.

My dad’s old friends rarely see him, nor do his sons who live close by, but my mom never fails.

My dad always said that we should never let him stay in a home, but you can’t “just shoot” him, as he always said. I’m sure the years there have been long for him, somewhere in his awareness.

The days and years have been long for my mom, too, but it’s changed her. The last of her rough edges have been worn smooth by devotion. She knows no more anger, she holds no more grudges, she hides no more affection. She knows only love for my dad.

And whatever price that has cost my dad, I’m sure he has paid it willingly.

Books Butchered By Their Movies

Jurassic Park is third on my list of favorite books, behind Lonesome Dove and The Dollmaker. I had read it three times before the movie came out, and was overflowing with anticipation and joy standing in line to watch Jurassic Park, the movie. I just could not wait.

Five minutes into it, however, I could not wait to get out. The name of the movie and some of the lead characters are about all the book and movie have in common. I don’t know whether Jurassic Park is a good movie, because I haven’t had the heart to watch it since that first time.

The Natural, on the other hand, was just the opposite. The novel, by Bernard Malamud, is compelling, but desperately dark and degenerate. Roy Hobbs in the book is insatiable, selfish, sadistic. Every bad thing he can do, he does. I liked the book, but I would not want to see it in the theater. Roy Hobbs in the movie is heroic and hopeful, despite a tragic flaw. I don’t want to give anything away, but the endings could not be more different.

I’ve read every Tom Clancy book, up to Rainbow Six, and can tell you that those books and their movies (The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger, to name three) are virtually unrelated to the print version, but that’s okay, because a true retelling of a Clancy book would make a 43-hour movie you could only enjoy sitting between a five-star general and an engineer. I’ve enjoyed the Clancy adaptations for the big screen, because I know going in not to hold them to the same standard as the books.

What about you? What excellent novels have you read that made a bad movie? Or what movie have you liked better than the book?

Danny's Day Out And Back

I don’t know how much time Danny actually rides his bike, but he loves talking about it and fiddling around with it. I usually do repairs for him, and not always very well, but he is grateful every time.

Danny is my brother by marriage, but our affection has grown from our five-year friendship. I love Danny, although I’m still just getting to know him. He is as sweet as can be, most of the time, but he can also be a bit of a rascal, a joker, and it is sometimes hard for me to tell the difference between disability and disobedience, manipulation and just messing around. He likes having things his own way, which I suspect he rarely does, and he likes hanging out with me.

We have tried for a long time to take a bike hike together, but my work schedule and his schedule often don’t jive, and when we do get a day that might work, the weather doesn’t cooperate.

Everything was perfect the other day, so we just went, up one of our city’s trails and back. We had a great time together, and to prove it, here are the pictures.

What do you think?

I Love Boobies

Well, duh.

What I mean is, this fad was a clever and fun way to raise awareness about breast cancer. That’s all I’m saying.

When I first saw one of these bracelets, on my daughter’s wrist, I was confused. I’m ashamed to admit my first thought was the old Seinfeld joke, “If I had breasts, I wouldn’t get out of the shower.”

But my daughter explained, and I thought it was a good idea. As the I Love Boobies campaign  swept the country, or at least our area, I saw the bracelets everywhere.

The organization name – Keep A Breast – was clever, as well, and I hope it does “help eradicate breast cancer by exposing young people to methods of prevention, early detection and support.”

I hope it does, but I doubt it. Too often these types of displays – lapel ribbons, “Save The Whales” bumper stickers, POW/MIA buttons – are popular fads only, just for show, more for the wearer’s vanity rather than anything of substance.

Few of the kids wearing these Boobie bracelets learned anything about preventing breast cancer, I suspect. I think they just thought it was cool, funny, that saying “boobies” in public was suddenly socially acceptable.

I considered making a button that said, “I Loved Boobies Before Loving Boobies Was Cool,” but I chickened out. Kelly would have smacked me.

Billy Crystal Came To Make Her Laugh

For Saturday Side Show, I recommend 700 Sundays by Billy Crystal, a superb story of his family and life in a distant time and place. It will make you laugh while it breaks your heart and makes you glad you’re alive.

Let me know if you enjoy it. Here’s an exerpt:

And the day after she checked in, I called her up. It was a stormy day, very windy and pouring rain. I said, "Mom, I'm coming over to see you. I have a new routine, it's really funny. I want to make you laugh."

She said, "You can't come here, you have to be sixteen."

"So, I'll do it outside, " I pleaded.

"No, it's pouring. Don't come."

I said, "Mom, you can't stop me."

I hung up and ran the seven blocks to Long Beach Hospital. The courtyard of the hospital is a U shape, and in the front was a big garden area. Right in the middle was this young sapling, tree, about five and a half feet tall, no branches, very frail. They had just planted it. It was held up by some yarn and some stakes, but in the wind and the rain of the day, it was bending over very easily.

I stood next to it, looking up because I saw Mom in the third-floor window sitting up in a chair, looking out. When she saw me in the wind and the rain, she was not happy. She looked down at me in horror, and mouthed her words, broadly, so I could see what she was saying….

"Billy, no. I told you not to come. Go home, Billy. Go home."

I shook my head, "No." I want to make her laugh. So I started doing cartwheels and round-offs, back flips, all the things I could do back then. And then I got an idea. I took a run and I slid headfirst into the mud like a giant Slip 'N Slide, and I stood up, my face covered with mud, because I wanted to look like James Dean in her favorite movie, Giant. Again horror from the third floor.

"No, no. Crazy boy. You're a crazy boy. Go home. Go home." She pointed furiously at me to leave.

I shook my head, "No." I came to make her laugh.

Wiping the mud off my face, I remembered she loved Charlie Chaplin. Chaplin was her favorite of all time. I started imitating Chaplin as best I could walking around the tree, leaving Charlie's footprints in the mud. Then I got another idea. I started talking to the tree as if it were a beautiful girl, because Charlie flirted with everybody. And then I embraced it, and I bent the tree over, and stole a kiss just like Charlie would do.

I looked up. Mom was laughing, a big warm laugh, her shoulders shaking. She held herself, as if we were hugging each other. Then she mouthed, "Go home."

I got my laugh. She blew me kisses in the rain, and I ran the seven blocks to the house, my Keds never once touching the concrete.

Shame On TOMS And The Shoes He Rode In On: Part 2

The daughter mentioned yesterday came home last weekend with a pair of TOMS knockoffs, cheap canvas summer shoes like the ones my mom used to buy for about $3. These new shoes look like TOMS, with the same soles and the same turned-over toe. The only thing missing is the feel-good-about-yourself blue label.

Before I finish that story, though, here’s one about my mom. My mother worked many years in a factory that made men’s clothing, sewing labels into men’s dress slacks. She would start the day with a pile of 700 labels and a pile of 700 pairs of pants, identical except for sizes. There would be 50 labels of some top designer brand sold exclusively in high-end men’s stores. There would be 50 labels each for the most expensive house brands sold at stores like Macy’s and Nordstrom and Bloomingdale’s. There would be 200 labels for the top brands at Sears and JC Penney. The rest were for pants sold at Walmart and Kmart.

Different labels, same pants. Same pants, different labels. See where I’m going with this?

Our daughter paid less than $20 for her generic shoes, which means that the manufacturer and the store are both making money at less than $10 per shoe. So how much is TOMS making, even after giving a pair away?

It appears TOMS spends around $2 to have a shoe made, so do the math. The Classic sells for $54, other styles for $74. If they are spending $4 for the pair you buy and $4 for the pair they give away, that leaves $46 for TOMS. They’ve given away 1M pairs, so that mean’s they’ve made $50,000,000 or so doing it.

Give away $4 M, keep $50M? That isn’t especially noble. It's a pitch.

Why not buy a $20 pair of shoes for yourself, and a decent $20 pair for a child in a shelter near where you live. You just saved $14, and that ought to buy you some legitimate self-esteem.


Read Part 1.

Read When Only A Name Brand Will Do.

Shame On TOMS And The Shoes He Rode In On: Part 1

One of our daughters has asked for a pair of TOMS shoes, but she has no justification when I ask why. “They are cool,” she says, which means that her friends are wearing them and she wants to keep up. “They are really comfortable,” she says, but so are socks, which are cheaper and just as sturdy as TOMS. “If we buy a pair, a poor child gets a pair,” she counters, desperate, as if there is something noble in this.

Buying TOMS is not noble, and One for One is a gimmick, a sucker game.

The average price for TOMS Classic is $54, and $74 for the other, more, um, fashion savvy styles, all of which have that cool label on the back.

What you’re paying for isn’t the label, but what the label represents: “I care more than you.”

It’s like wearing a ribbon for the latest fad cause. We feel better about ourselves and we think we look good in front of our friends because we wear a ribbon, rather than actually doing some actual work to help actual people.

Don’t get me wrong. Shoes are a good idea, and wearing shoes protects the health of children, but these are not good shoes: comfortable, maybe, but only while they last. You couldn’t scuff around in the poor streets of Ethiopia – where the shoes are made, there and China – or Honduras or Zambia for long.

“TOMS has given 1,000,000 pairs of new shoes to children in need around the world,” which is good, but it’s no different from cigarette companies and oil companies and pharmaceutical companies donating tiny amounts of their ill-gotten billions to charity.

The giving is a smoke screen, a sucker’s game. Don’t fall for it.

Tomorrow? Part 2….

And When Only A Name Brand Will Do.