by Kathy Brasby | Dec 9, 2014 | Hope
My second black eye (see That eye for the first one) earned me a variety of responses.
This one came a few years after I was married.
I stood at the checkout counter of the grocery store with two kids, a full load of groceries, and a deep black swoosh under my eye.
The clerk took my check while staring at the cash register keys and returned my receipt while studying the scale below me.
As I walked to the car, a woman met my eyes (this was in a friendly small town) and then studied the pavement intently.
But a neighbor, who had just arrived in the parking lot, popped out of her car. “What on earth happened to you?”
At church the next day, a friend wandered up to me with a grin on his face. “So does Matt look as bad as you do?”
Matt’s my husband and our friends knew his character pretty well.
But I had to confess over and over that a male member of the family had done this to me.
Here’s the rest of the story:
I was tucking our younger son, 3 years old at the time, into bed and leaned down to kiss him on the forehead just as he moved forward to give me a hug. His hard head crashed into my cheek.
Let me tell you that such a collision paints the blackest swoosh you’ve ever seen.
My experience was simple but it gave me more empathy for women with black eyes not so innocently delivered.
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by Kathy Brasby | Dec 5, 2014 | Seasons
The woman’s voice was urgent. “Your mother’s levels are too high and she needs shots to prevent blood clots. I’ve ordered the medication already.”
Jenny’s phone felt like a brick in her hand. She didn’t understand most of the words the woman spoke. Medical terms that meant little.
But what landed was the next instruction. “You’ll give her injections every day for two weeks and then we’ll test her blood again. When can you pick up the prescription?”
Injections? Blood tests? She would give the injections?
“We need to get this started today.” The woman on the phone added some instructions for the injections. Jenny’s mind caught half of the instructions because injections kept ricocheting in her brain.
“Call me if you have any questions,” the woman said. And then she was gone and Jenny had only the ricochets to deal with.
Two hours later, Jenny held the package of syringes in her hands. She pulled one out, an odd little combo with a spring in the middle of the syringe.
“I am supposed to inject this right into your tummy,” Jenny said. Her mother studied the apparatus.
“Well, let’s get it done, then.”
Tears prickled in Jenny’s eyes. Her mother lay on the bed, her stomach exposed. Her skin was soft and thin around her belly button.
“I’m so sorry. I don’t want to do this.”
“Oh, you’ll do fine. Just go.”
Jenny’s arm seemed heavy. She took a deep breath. Fourteen of these to give her mother?
She pressed the needle against skin and the syringe seemed to gain a life of its own, injecting and popping away in an instant.
“All right,” her mother said. “Got that done for today. Let’s go get some dinner started.”
“I’m so sorry, Mom.”
“Well, you do what you have to do.”
As Jenny helped her mother to the kitchen, she knew that that’s exactly what they had just done. But that didn’t make it easy.
They marched on.
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by Kathy Brasby | Dec 2, 2014 | Stories
I’ve had two black eyes in my life. They both came in events so innocent that I can share the stories later.
That’s pretty amazing in itself.
I blame the first one on needing to pick up an elective class in my last semester of college. I chose an auto mechanics class for women.
The class unraveled the mysteries of internal combustion and banished all ideas of needing to replace lug nut valves on my car. Amazing class.
One of our projects was learning how to change the oil on our cars. It’s not that hard to do. Really.
Something that helps is having the right tools, which I didn’t have and didn’t want to spring big bucks for. So I made do.
Making do is a key element in too many of my stories, I’ve noticed.
But I digress.
I had a pipe wrench to loosen the oil pan drain plug. I clamped the wrench on the drain plug and then hammered the handle with whatever I could find. A hammer. A lead pipe. A big rock.
The wrench was beginning to move as the drain plug loosened. And then something happened.
“Something happened” could be my motto, now that I think about it…
But the wrench popped loose and bounced off my cheek. I could feel something warm below my eye and assumed I had knocked loose a contact lens.
So I made my way into the house to retrieve the lens.
Um, no, the lens was fine. But I had a one-inch gash from the errant wrench.
And the next day I had a Nike-swoosh-quality black eye.
I’d love to tell you that I learned not to make do. Or not use the wrong tool.
But my absolute best solution to this problem was when I married a top-quality mechanic who never let me change the oil again.
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by Kathy Brasby | Nov 25, 2014 | Stories
Never had the first snow of the season been so anticipated as it was by our neighbor who was armed with a new snowblower.
The day came, of course. The first snow.
On the plains of Colorado, snow often comes as crispy shards driven by a dry wind. This snowfall was one of those.
But our neighbor rushed out to his driveway as soon as the swirling snow could be seen.
We heard the roar of the engine and rushed to the window. This wasn’t to be missed.
He started at his garage door and opened a dry path to the street, turning the blower around and aiming for the garage again. As he walked, the whispy snow flying out of his blower’s tube rose in the air and shot downward with precision.
Back onto the path he had just cleared.
Our neighbor finished the driveway in that same fashion: clear a patch and blow new snow onto it. Maybe the motto of the snow blower is never look back.
But, at the rate he was clearing things, he could enjoy his new machine all day long. Not bad for a new snow toy.
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by Kathy Brasby | Nov 21, 2014 | Seasons
A salt shaker was the last thing on my mind but it lasted the longest.
“You need kitchen things,” my mother told me. “You can’t move into an apartment without those.”
I was a sophomore in college and outfitting a kitchen wasn’t high on my list. But we spent time that summer shopping thrift stores.
I found four melamine plates, some scarred table ware, and two dented pans. Good enough for me.
I checked off that project.
I managed to squeeze in a week’s visit to my grandmother’s house with Mom.
The topic of my apartment came up.
“You need kitchen things,” my grandmother said.
That sounded really familiar.
But she didn’t say any more until dinner time. As we sat around her table with the savory scent of roast beef drifting from the serving plate, she handed me a little bundle.
These are the actual shakers from my grandmother.
“You can have these for your new kitchen,” she said.
I opened the bundle. Two salt shakers. One with a red screw-on lid, one with a clear lid pressed on. But both had a kind of crystal look to them.
“They almost match,” she said.
And, with my kitchen outfit, they really did.
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