Hold Fast to Dreams by Liz Flaherty

This came mostly from 2019. The past week or two, I've been buying school supplies here and there, worrying about Covid in the schools, about how kids are bullied, teachers are bullied, and pubic education is under constant fire from the same people who are holding the fire extinguishers behind their backs and saying "Gotcha!" 

Am I biased? You bet. I have kids who teach and a grandson still in middle school. I'm afraid for the students who may not get what they need in the future, whose school curricula may be built around political platforms instead of the truth, and who have to learn to take cover before they learn the alphabet and "Red Rover, Red Rover..." I worry about teachers ending up having to be armed, because...you know...they don't have enough to do. 

I'm a mom and a nana. I got a little sick writing that. Thanks, again, for opening the Window and for reading it even when you don't agree with it.

Her name was Margaret. In my freshman year, she had someone else grade short stories we wrote, just to give us another outlook. I got great feedback--I held onto that a long time. Great feedback is an immeasurable gift. 

His name was Gordon. He encouraged.

Her name was Clauda. She taught both English and Latin, and I learned more about words and their origins than I ever would have thought existed.

Her name was Jane. She didn't think I'd EVER learn to type, but I did. Finally. Not well, but well enough that being a writer was much easier than it might have been.

His name was Joe. He taught Algebra and about life, and when I sold my first book, he brought me a dozen roses.

Her name was Mrs. Sullivan. She was my first grade teacher and she didn't like me, but she let me read with the second graders because I was bored. I was scared to death of her, but I learned. Every day.

His name was Graham, although I don't think they called him that. He taught Senior English. It may have been my favorite class ever. 

His name was Jerry. He was a heck of a basketball coach, and he taught American History and made me love it. He also gave me a C in it. It's where I learned you don't have to be good at something to learn from it and enjoy it. 

I graduated from high school 54 years ago. The list above is a microcosm of the ones who taught me in those 12 years on the way to graduation. I still remember their names, what they looked like, and things they said to me.

On November 19, 2019, almost 20,000 teachers went to the State House in Indianapolis. They sang, they chanted, they wore Red for Ed. They carried signs, they met with legislators, they publicized the shame that is our state's stance on public education. My daughter and son-in-law were there. The support our educators received was humbling. The support they provide to their students should be humbling to the lawmakers; unfortunately, it is not.

I will get off my soapbox now. I realize it's probably not the right place for it. And yet it is. Because of those people up there, I'm a writer. I know about commas and plot and quotation marks. I know that in that 12 years with them, none of them ever told me I couldn't do anything. None of them ever said I wasn't good enough. None of them ever cared where I lived or that I didn't dress as well as other girls. They gave me everything I needed in adulthood's toolbox.

And I'm still so grateful.

To all the teachers and kids and school staff going back to school, have a good week.Be safe. To them and everyone else, be nice to somebody. 

Free with the Tree by Liz Flaherty

I've written about music before, which with my tin ear, two left feet, and appalling voice, isn't necessarily expected even though music is as important in our house as any possession we might have. Experts insist you should write what you know, and what I know about music is how bad I am at every facet of it.

Except listening. I'm a good listener.

And feeling. I'm good at that, too. (And dwelling on what I feel, but we're not talking about that this week.)

Terri & John Bond - Photo by Sarah Luginbill

We were at an open mic session at Gallery 15 this week and Terri and John Bond sang "Mr. Bojangles." It's an old favorite and I hadn't heard it in a long time. I sang along almost silently--at least, no one gave me any dirty looks--and the lyrics and the tempo of the song created one of the most overused terms of the century, a soft place to fall. With the sounds of Circus City Days as a suitable backdrop, the story in the words and the gentle tune opened the doors of yesterdays and good feelings. 

When I looked up "Mr. Bojangles" this morning to get information on it, I remembered a made-for-TV movie in 1977 called Sunshine Christmas when Pat Hingle sang the song for his granddaughter. It was a sweet, sentimental show that entertained and made my heart ache at the same time. What could be better?

Hearing Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," watching graduates walk in to "Pomp and Circumstance," and experiencing anyone singing "Amazing Grace" can bring me to tears and hiss "shhh!" to anyone silly enough to talk while the music's entering my heart. 

There are moments that music give us that are like gifts. Bette Midler and Wynonna Judd are singing "The Rose" on YouTube as I write this, and I remember that it was played at my brother-in-law's funeral. Laughing Bill. We still miss him. But, oh, the memories are precious.  

Music is public, it's loud, it's shared; there is music played in cars that can be heard and felt hundreds of feet away (whether you want it to be or not), and yet...and yet...it's so intensely private, too. I just listened to Linda Ronstadt singing "Silver Threads and Golden Needles" with the Eagles and danced in the office wishing I had a hairbrush out here to sing into. I would not care for anyone to have seen that, much less heard it. It would leave a mark

I dislike virtually all music--give me a break; I said virtually--released in this century, plus most of the stuff my kids played in the last one, but I know how the music of the 1960s made me feel. And I remember how my mom disliked it. I think there were a couple of years there when the only words she said to me were, "Turn it down!" That is, I guess, how generations roll. What's funny is that the songs from when my folks were young give me all kinds of warm, fuzzy feelings when I hear them. My kids like the Beatles and the Eagles, too, and I'm fairly sure they're all aware that "Good Vibrations" is anthemesque in its importance. 

Sometimes the mistakes are what you remember when you hear a song. I sang, "...just another magic Monday..." for years instead of "...just another manic Monday..." (Even now that I know better, I like magic better.) I just saw a meme on Facebook about an eight-year-old singing "...dancing queen, young and sweet, only seven teeth..." Kari Wilson and Anna Bednarski agreed that they sang it and it flowed. Anna said it might be even better than the original. Just like magic...

Duane sang a Joe Nichols song last night called "The Shade." It's a nice song and has one of my favorite lines of all time. ...the shade comes free with a tree...

We need music, don't we? We need to be better listeners, to have open hearts, to allow ourselves to feel. We also need to be foolish sometimes and sing badly into hair brush microphones, to cherish the memories that music gives us, just like the shade with a tree, free of charge. 

Thanks for listening. Have a great week. Be nice to somebody. 

Such are the dreams... @Liz Flaherty

This was written for Mother's Day of 1991. It wasn't my last Mother's Day column, but it was my first. It's kind of nice to know I still like it, although I'm not sure I remember the original dreams--the reality was so much better. What do you think?

"She looks in the mirror and stares at the wrinkles that weren't there yesterday..." - Chris Gantry

When she was young, before she had formula stains on her clothes or stretch marks or crows feet, your mother had dreams. In those dreams, she was a singer or dancer or writer or CEO. She wore designer clothes and her hair was always perfect and she had the kind of checkbook balance that dreams are made of. Her plans for vacation never included McDonald's or Motel 6.

For many mothers, there was a man in those dreams. He was always strong and handsome and intelligent and sensitive. He never forgot important dates, never left dirty clothes on the bathroom floor, never for one moment considered anything in life to be as important as the woman whose dreams he was inhibiting.

Sometimes there were children in the dreams, children who behaved well and wore miniature designer clothes that stayed clean. Children who ate their vegetables without complaint and did their homework without fail and who never watched tasteless television or hid dirty magazines under their beds. Even after your mother gave birth to these children (painlessly--we're dreaming here) she maintained her figure and her perfect hair and flawless skin that defied crows feet to appear.

Her home was a portrait of good taste and comfort. In her dreams its plumbing was never iffy, its windows never leaky, its floors never sloped and scarred with the passage of time. The furniture shone with the patina of quality and good wax. The beds were made each morning and the pillows arranged in the artful disarray the magazines make look easy. The house was even paid for.

It is said that dreams die hard.

Not for most of us. For most of us, they change rather than die. We wear what is comfortable and what we can afford, we have bad hair days and not-so-bad hair days, and time leaves its obvious footprints on our skin. Instead of glamorous careers, most of us have jobs we may or may not like but which help keep the checkbook balance in the black. Not the very black, maybe, but close enough to keep the wolves from the door.

The men in our lives are different from what we dreamed, as fallible and faulty as we ourselves are. Although on any given day, they will probably have some of the characteristics of the men of our dreams, chances are good they'll never have all of them at once.

Which brings us to the children of our dreams. Speaking for myself only, I must say that mine were not. If one of them happened to be behaving well, the other two probably weren't. They dressed okay, but were seldom clean at any point in time previous to their 12th birthdays, when they suddenly started taking two showers a day and setting up housekeeping in front of the bathroom mirror. They did homework spasmodically and subsisted on diets that even now the memory of makes my stomach clench. They watched, read, and listened to every single thing I ever didn't want them to.

They turned the house of my dreams into what seemed at times like a three-ring circus. There was no single day in which every bed in the house was made or every dish clean at the same time. The house has leaky windows and iffy plumbing and a few floors that would feel right at home on a ski lift. The patina on the furniture is marred by marks from compasses and baseball cleats and the rubber soles of size 12 basketball shoes.

There is nothing I would change. Nothing.

When I was young, I had dreams. Somewhere in the passage of time, those dreams underwent changes, but they all--every one of them--came true. I hope yours did, too.

Happy Mother's Day to us all, and thanks, Mom. Both of you.

My mom, Evelyn Shafer

Duane's mom, my other mom, Mary Farrell

Tales of the prom...

I don't have a date on this but I think it was 1991. It was my first column for The Peru Tribune, the first time the Window Over the Sink officially opened. Things have changed, of course, including my writing, but the memories are still warm.

Well, it's here. Oh, boy, am I thrilled. It is, after all, every woman's dream to be the mother of a son attending the prom. Or even better, she could be the mother of a daughter attending the prom. I've been both.

It doesn't pay.

"I've never in my life owned and outfit that cost as much as the tux we're renting," I told my son the other day, "And I wear my clothes for a hundred years; you're only wearing this sucker for one night and you're just going to fling the jacket over the back of the chair and spill punch on the shirt."

Last year, when it was my daughter and it was her last high school prom and I was feeling sentimental, I told her not to worry about how much her dress cost. And she didn't. However, when she swished into the living room in shimmering folds of red satin, I did mention that for all that money I thought the dress should at least have a top.

When my oldest son attended his first prom, resplendent in white tie and tails, I told him he looked like an ice cream man and asked where his little truck with a bell on it was parked.

Kids today have no sense of humor.

The prom wouldn't be so bad if they didn't have to go out to dinner, too. I asked my son where he and his date were going.

"She's not real picky about stuff," he said. "We could probably go to McDonald's."

"Great," I said happily.

"But we won't," he added, and then he told me where he did want to go. 

So much for retirement.

And then there's the after-prom. Two of my kids have gone to King's Island for after-prom. If they'd only let me know about their plans ahead of time, they could have skipped the prom and we could have bought King's Island for them instead.

We have a discussion every year that a son attends a prom about what car said son will drive.

Not his own. Heaven forbid.

Not mine. It's old and dirty and smells like smoke and has junk all over the back seat.

Which leaves his father's.

Okay, fine, it's prom night. No problem. Go ahead and wash it and clean it out and use it and have a good time.

Guess who ends up washing it and cleaning it out. Right the first time. The man who owns it and the woman who married him for better or for worse but had no idea at the time that kids were so finicky about other people's dirt since they were never finicky about their own.

And did you know nobody goes home on prom night? Did you know that if Dad's car comes up the driveway before dawn, the prom was obviously a failure? Do you know how hard it is to sleep when there are a gazillion kids out there staying out all night doing God knows what but you sure hope He's watching? Do you know what it's like if you have to work the next day? You spend the day walking around like a zombie and saying things like, "Oh, yes, he had a great time," and "She looked so pretty in the dress I didn't even mind that we don't get to take a vacation this year."

But then they're home, and the prom is over. The dress hangs in a bag at the back of a closet--your closet, because hers is too full--or the tux is returned to the store and the explanation made for the spilled punch. In a few weeks, the prom pictures arrive--both the red-eyed snapshots you took and the professional poses from the dance itself.

They're beautiful. Not the pictures so much as the people in them.

And the car's all right. Just a flower petal here and there to show who its occupants were.

The money could have been spent in a lot worse places. The vacation spot will still be there next year, but the kid may not.

Because they grow up on you, quicker than the mind can grasp, and there are no more proms.

I'll miss them.

(Note in 2017. I was right--I do miss them. But I must admit, it's more fun with the grandkids--I get to see the pictures and laugh at the stories, but I sleep all night on prom night and they drive someone else's car.)