the advantage of being poisoned early and often

There's liberation from existential angst when you know your fate is sealed by earlier actions.

Whenever the latest toxicity scare is waggled in my face, I remain serenely nonplussed. I am a study of serenity in the face of saccharin poisoning, Diet Coke, plastic dishes in or out of the microwave, tap water, aluminum cookware, fruit from Mexico and mobile home insulation, just to name a few.

As for processed foods, I eat them with abiding gratitude. They hold places of honor in my pantry because they come with all the chopping, measuring, and stirring parts done for me. I could live in a house made of Velveeta cheese. (I do have respect for moulds because they cause me to sneeze my brains out.)

I am able to move with aplomb through this toxic house of horror because as child, I rode my bicycle behind the foggin' machine as it fogged mosquitoes, their young, and me with DDT.

Over my formative years, I sucked down enough of that stuff it's a miracle my children don't speak from a mouth in the back of their head.

At that time, pest control in rural Texas towns was not a study in subtlety. You brought out the big guns when it came to annihilating the creepy-crawlies honed in on your crops and live stock. Why spare the rod with mosquitoes? The adverse effect of dousing children with pesticide until they were damp with it was moot. The town had mosquitoes. This was bothersome to folks sitting in the yards drinking ice tea.

DDT is not addictive but it is intoxicating. The fogging machine emitted a pale, grey-blue cloud that was soft and cool like a fog, hence its deceptively beguiling name. DDT smells good. It was probably an additive like the bad smell put in gas so you know you've got a leak. I'm sure the smell had something to do with attracting mosquitoes. Problem was, it also attracted small children. Any adult who rode his or her bike into the fog will tell you, with a wisp of nostalgia and a momentary lapse of reason, how lovely it smelled.

Given the number of halcyon summer days I spent in a cloud of DDT, I can say, with impunity: Bring on the Velveeta, and don't forget  the white bread.

grandchildren: more than a refrigerator magnet

Grandchildren are an underutilized source of embarrassing but critical information pertaining to personal hygiene and grooming. Grandchildren will give you information your partner or best friend can't or won't. Always, always thank them for the feedback. If it sends you to the bathroom to sob into the towels, thank them anyway.

Take hair for instance. The grandchild is a safeguard against continuing, in ignorance, a bad hair choice. If one asks you, "What's that on your hair?" you may reasonably assume that the color choice was unfortunate. Or unaware, you may be out and about with bird poop in your hair. Sometimes clarification is necessary.

If the color choice is good, the child will say, "Did you cut your hair?" When you hear the phrase,"Did you cut your hair?" you can confidently assume that you've made a good hair choice even if cutting your hair wasn't one of the choices.

fireplace snobs

While pondering the mysteries of life, I missed the 17 days of winter we get in my part of the country. Therefore while not a seasonal post, it is a timely one. Human foibles always are. For example:

• Why don't men who dye their hair ask another man how it looks...in natural light?

• St. Patrick's Day aside, green bagels are unnatural. Then there is the probable fact that St. Patrick didn't eat bagels, green or otherwise. Green bagels are embarrassing. I avert my eyes.

• What’s with the elephantine testicles hanging over the trailer hitches of vehicles driven by males who can't hitch up their britches unaided let alone a trailer? When I'm behind those foul things in a drive-thru, I want to get out of my car, knock politely on the guy’s window, and throw up in his lap.

What the !#X*%@*# !!

When the five grandchildren began to come along, you’d think congratulatory wishes would be forthcoming, and you would be wrong.

Too often it was a variation on the theme, "You are going to have to clean up your language now,” emphasis on you.

Well, maybe yes, and maybe no. It turned out to be no. I quickly learned you don't need to shield the children, but the parents.

I cuss in front of the parents.
I cuss in front of the children.
I do not cuss at all when the children and the parents are in the same room.

thanks

I want to say how much your gracious responses to A Matter of Space meant to me. They represented the spectrum of adulthood serving to remind me that we are truly more alike than we are different.

a matter of space

A message comes telling me a man who loved me and I loved back, is dead, and I don't know what to feel. After midnight, I get out of bed and go into my closet. I sit on the floor and rummage through boxes of photographs looking for the packet I know is there. And now I have it in my hand. It holds photographs of us dancing.

I

He wears a dark suit, and I a fall of shimmering blue.

His eyes are closed, oblivious to the camera my face hidden
in the curve of his neck.
He with his height and solid frame, I on long, slender legs
instinctively align leaving no space between us.

II

He moves our clasped hands to the small of my back.
He draws and lifts me to him,
my left arm sliding round his neck as I am gathered up.

He straightens, bringing our faces level. Planes from cheek to jaw
slide into place leaving no space between us.

III

As passions will, it ended badly.

Yet, here I sit on my closet floor, throat constricted with grief,
not for the man who would be a stranger to me now.

But for the figure caught on film when I had uplifted, graceful arms
and he was there and tender, and we let no space between us.

crafting with condoms

The 30-year old grad students contend that old people can distract themselves from the gradual slippage into the gapping maw of death with a hobby.

OK. Want a hobby? Be prepared to make a big investment. You can buy a used bass boat for what it costs to make a scrapbook for your grandchildren.

We are besotted with crafting. Need proof? Take a stroll down the periodical aisle of Barnes and Nobel when you're in drinking coffee with no intention of buying a book...better yet; check out the arts and crafts section. Without a high tolerance for overwhelmed, you'll come away with a facial tic.

aging? well aren't we all?

I saw a recent photograph of myself. I looked old and bitter. Can't do anything about getting older, except die soon, and I don't care to exercise that option at this time. But I sure can do something about being bitter. So I did. After 37 years of marriage, I got a divorce.