Mrs. Fitz's Story Emporium

As an indicator, height is a poor one and I know because I’ve been lined up according to height often. This is due, in part, to the fact that parochial schools have a great number of processions and it carries over into other activities.

It got out of hand. We were lined up by height to go to mass, to receive our first communions, to become confirmed as soldiers of the Lord at confirmation, enroute to confession, and whenever a rare field trip happened. We were lined up to go to recess and come in from recess. But, really, I don’t think it was necessary to line up just to walk from the grade school to the cafeteria, which was in the high school across the parking lot.

I’m not suggesting our teachers were regimentarians, although they were. I think the practice simply became a habit and worth mentioning because habits can have results that take us unawares.

The shortest girl in our grammar school is, of course, still short. These many years later, she acts rather babyish, like somebody accustomed to going first. I’ve lost touch with the tallest girl in our grammar school but I hope she found great happiness. I was lucky to always land someplace in the middle. Unlike her, I was never last.

Two side yards, like parenthesis, cupped our ’50s-built Elmhurst ranch house but it was the west side yard where we got down to business.

Mom hung sheets on Mondays and Thursdays along a clothesline that resembled high-tension electrical wires, only shorter. My two brothers, and sometimes me, played baseball without bases. Dad gardened in a rectangle of mud in one corner: rasberries, strawberries, chives, rhubarb and the occasional tomato.

Our blowup swim pool got hauled out and filled when Dad gave in to my pestering for it. We burned leaves there. Our first scottish terrier Katie was laid to rest there, though Mom said we should keep that information to ourselves.

In a rare fit of high style, Dad hung woven wood blinds between the posts of the westside porch so we could sit without frying in p.m. sun. This was primarily decorative, since we didn’t sit on the back porch. However, serious conversation ensued on its back steps, of which there were two, although I can’t remember much of what we talked about.

All relatives and pals came in by the back door. Milk was delivered there, and I spent all afternoons of one preteen summer on a beach towel reading a book called The Source there. This was something of a ruse. I was in fact, trying to get tan. It was a pretty good book, though.

It was a pretty good backyard, too.

Yesterday morning, Rep.Gabrielle Giffords (D)watched her husband Mark Kelly captain the Endeavor shuttle into an orbit speed that would get you from Chicago, Il to Columbus, OH in about one minute (17,500 mph or 290 miles per minute.)

It took less than one minute Jan. 8, 2011 near Tucson, AZ to alter every physical aspect of her self, when she sustained a gunshot wound to her head. About 185,760 minutes have passed since that happened. (129 days=185,760 minutes)

I wish Gabrielle and Mark many more of the good minutes and fewer of the tough ones.

In Elmhurst IL in the 1960-somethings, Hawthorne public grade school was strategically located across the street from Immaculate Conception Catholic grade school, setting in motion a preoccupation of US and THEM.

We of the parochial persuasion had the upper hand, considering God dwelt with us. We had catechisms and a church on our first floor to prove this. Public school students were much better at sports, but then, they had a gym, and we did not.

We had the distinction of wearing uniforms, which made each of us look like each other and there is perceived power in numbers. Public school students had to get by on whatever their parents dressed them in, although I will say they were colorful.

The only men working in our building were two nice janitors who also wore uniforms, beige, and the occasional visit from Monsignor Plunkett, who handed out our report cards each year. I don’t know how Hawthorne kids received their report cards but I am certain they lost less sleep anticipating the event. It was rumored that Hawthorne hired some men teachers but nobody I knew could verify it.

As to diversity, there wasn’t any. The most rakish and foreign student to attend Immaculate Conception was a boy who moved to Elmhurst from New Zealand. He distinguished himself by playing kickball in his bare feet.

Recess was the single event we shared, sort of. At 12:30 p.m. daily, we congregated outside the church on what you’d call a big concrete landing pad and they cavorted in a blacktop parking lot enclosed by tall chainlink fence. To the unschooled, we would have appeared to have the edge…more freedom…no fence. This was illusory since we had the blessed Sisters of Saint Agnes on crowd control.

The best excuse I can think of for living in Chicago is that bad weather brings you closer to other people than good weather does.

Three examples on this Saturday, which should be a “Tra-La!It’s May!” day, but is most certainly NOT, prove this theory:

1. Wiggly-age people in our condo are having a hallway bike race, which really doesn’t involve bikes. It involves little sit-on toys with plastic wheels and it isn’t really a race. It’s a squeal-a-thon, provided by little ones who wisely accept that being the centers of everyone’s attention is their God-given right and duty.

2. Today is the day our 100 or so residents gather in sunshine to plant greenery in our streetside planters. With no sun and about 7 people, the event takes on the intimacy of a family, with commensurate disagreement about where things should go. Very chummy.

3. Walking is a glum option so cabbies rise to savior status. Generally overlooked in amiable amble weather, they get talky when it rains. I felt sheepish to cab it only 6 blocks but my driver was magnanimous. He said, “No problem, Lady.”

You rarely hear that kind of thing on a warm sunny day at the beach.

Once, I bad mouthed a nun and have yet to get over it, clearly indicating the lifelong bad that careless words can do.

I was 13. Sister Clarentine was our teacher and by “our” I refer to 60 of my fellows in her care every week day from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Our only escape, HER only escape, was recess and the rainy day we couldn’t go outside was the day I did this.

Seeking amusement, I wrote and passed a note to my pal Liz. I wanted to be clever. I wanted to be cool. I was neither. I referred to Sister Clarentine with a word we 8th graders tossed around when we didn’t want each other to know how scared each of us was. It was the equivalent of “nerd.”

Sister Clarentine, who had arthritis, was faster than she looked. She intercepted the note and stuck it somewhere into that vast black habit where pockets reside and left our classroom.

My life, what there was of it, passed before my eyes during the next minutes. When she returned to commence the business of learning, I had already promised the choir of angels my devotion, my future, my bike, everyhing. I was scared numb.

She said a few words to all of us about cruelty as she moved down the aisle toward my desk. Because this preceeded the time when smacking students was a felony, I anticipated much worse than I got. She just handed me my note and walked away.

What I got was much much worse. It was the first time I knew I had hurt somebody.

Samson is a dog I know only second hand, which may mean something, since he is a second hand dog, meaning he had a life before he was adopted by our son’s friend.

Seeing him rarely, I can’t be quoted, but I would say that it shows…that he had a first life, a past.

He is semi-large and won’t fit in your lap, anyone’s lap, though he tries. His bark is high, like a tenor, and he uses it selectively, only one bark at a time. Bark. cease. Maybe another bark. Cease. You get the distinct impression his natural way of expressing himself didn’t always bring him much in the way of reward.

What I like most about Samson is he always seems to be on high alert yet he always seems clueless. He reminds me of some people I know, and like.

As a new Mom during the 1980s in Downers Grove, IL, Mr. Rogers’ TV show for wee watchers taught me the difference between grownups and babies. Babies are smarter.

I latched onto the show early in our boy’s babyhood to infuse our mornings with energy, since mine was still in bed. But after the guru of glee did his sing-a-long silly-willies, his kindy voice bounced around my head for hours, like pebbles in a maraca. More, his infinite patience was irritating, as any trait I couldn’t emulate tended to be.

Our son had better sense. He never watched it. He sometimes used the TV console to ballast attempts to stand upright, which I knew from reading all the books was bloody unlikely. He tried to scale the TV a few times, putting his little feet on or about Mr. Roger’s face on the screen. Mostly, he just let Mr. Rogers be while he went about his business, which was to enjoy exactly where he was, immensely.

Smart baby.

The senior women of my Midwestern tribe tend toward lightness in language. This has the effect of living happy, which isn’t altogether true; but in some ways, it is.

If speech patterns are environmental, my aunties evolved as soft-tread speakers growing up members of six families within one building, called of course a six-flat. I suppose if my grandma or uncle lived a wall away, I’d think twice about untoward yelping or loudly stating tough stuff like, “Well, for crying out loud!”

If speech patterns are genetic, my aunties descend from a theatrical strain of plain speakers who believed in hard work and wonderful music, not particularly in that order. When they speak, which is often and at length, it has cadence and it has lilt.

Among their words I have some favorites:

Sippeecup.
Jumpin’ Jiminee or its Scandinavian variation, Yumpin’ Yiminee.
Peachy.
Holy Mackerel.
Hunkey Dorey.
Perfecto-mundo.
Well, I’ll be darned.
Well, I never.
She’s a looker, or its gender variation, He’s a looker.
In a pickle.
Cute as a button.
Well, that’s a new one on me.
Smart cookie

Some of their words are out of style, but since they ignore that, so do I:

Pocketbook.
Seemly or its opposite, UNseemly.
Maiden.
Secretary.
Clothesline.
Grouch or Grouchy.
The cat’s meow.

Aunt Dollie warrants remembrance and attention, which was what she got when she lived. I knew her as my Dad’s aunt during the 1960s and thought her exotic and stylish, as far as aunts go. Her haircolor was eggwhite, and I never saw it any way but bunned, sleek and severe. Her skirts were mammoth, though she was not, and she sewed pockets into them to hold her chihuahua Chico, like a hankie.

She gave off the air of party and had a really good walk, swishy. She looked like a woman who had opinions. She looked like a woman who liked looking like a woman who had opinions.

She and her husband Harold didn’t have children, which may account for her elegant clothing allowance. It may account for the affection she gave Chico.

This I could not share. Chico could never have been a pup, or else the cute-gene skipped his generation. His was the bark of a beast clamped in a bear trap. His was the mien of a blender spun on high speed.

I wonder why he was such a nasty dog. Perhaps living life as an accessory just rubbed him the wrong way.