by Kathy Brasby | Sep 22, 2015 | Stories
“What do you think this says?” my husband studied a small box he’d lifted from the shelf at the grocery store. “Do you know any of these words?”
I browsed the ingredient list.
Browsed in the sense that I tried to put letters together to make words. I knew the letters but I didn’t know the words.
Humbling for an English major.
“Well, this picture could have something to do with an antibiotic,” I said.
His frowned. “That picture could be a pumpkin for all I can tell.”
He was right. The printing was not clear.
We should have brought a translator but the available ones weren’t, well, available. They were tending to our son’s wounded knee. Somehow, in the construction of the new church, his knee had connected with something rough and hard. We had been sent in search of antibiotic cream while they cleaned the gash.
We went, confident that we were reasonably intelligent adults but we were in a Spanish-speaking country where we didn’t know the word for antibiotic. We didn’t even know the word for first aid or bandage.
Finally we settled on a slender box that appeared to have an image of a wound along with the brand name printed on the front plate. It could have been a logo of a whirlwind, too. We weren’t sure but there was a tube in the box. Close enough.
We took our find back to the church and handed the box over to the nurse. She pulled out the tube.
Sometimes you wish you had a translator and you don’t. Sometimes you have a translator and wished you didn’t.
She translated for us then. In between giggles.
Instead of buying antibiotic cream for our son, we’d picked up a tube of Preparation H.
Like this:
Like Loading...
by Kathy Brasby | Sep 15, 2015 | Stories
From the time he decorated himself like a Christmas tree , our youngest has brought adventures to our life.
He was the one who rummaged through his father’s toolbox so that he could remove the training wheels from his bike after one day on his little bike. “Those get in the way,” he said.
I awoke once at 2 am to a noise like a strangled cat. Of course I got up.
The Digital Cat
He sat in front of a computer screen playing with a digital cat. Do you know that when you select a digital spray bottle and squirt the digital pet cat, it squawks in a way that makes a three-year-old giggle like a pinched balloon as the air escapes.?
He knows how to hypnotize a baby rabbit and dodge a paint ball. He never has mastered the ability to separate his clean laundry from the pile of clothes on the floor but where’s the adventure in that?
I always wondered what career he’d pursue. Cat tamer? Graphic designer? Sci Fi novelist? Now he’s graduated, employed and moved out.
He loves his job. It has to do with rummaging through phone settings rather than a toolbox and teaching others how to untangle their own phones.
And he’s laundering money, too.
Truly I am thrilled. If he’s laundering money, that means he’s actually putting his clothes in the washing machine.
My work is complete.
Like this:
Like Loading...
by Kathy Brasby | Sep 9, 2015 | Stories
My nephews met me at the door of their house. Well, they bounced to the front door and shook their hands like wet rags while they rebounded like pogo sticks. I let myself in.
“We have a new puppy!” said the five year old.
“He’s our very new puppy. We have a new puppy!” said the four year old.
I gathered that he was new.
They were pointing down the hall to their bathroom. “Um, where is this new puppy?” I asked.
“He’s getting a bath!” said nephew #1.
“Mom is giving him a bath!” said nephew #2.
They were more excited than a hog waiting for the feed bucket.
“Can I go see him?” I asked them.
“Mom’s giving him a bath!” said nephew #1. “We have a new puppy.”
“New puppy,” said nephew #2. He didn’t get the whole sentence out. I guess he was tiring from all the bouncing.
I wanted to see the new addition so I called to my sister. “Are you done?”
“Done,” she said. “Here he comes.”
A long brown leg stepped into the living room.
“Our new puppy!” the boys squealed and wrapped arms around each of the dog’s front legs.
Apparently if you’re four or five years old, all dogs tower like giant sequoia trees.
Because this new puppy turned out to be a two-year-old Great Dane.
Like this:
Like Loading...
by Kathy Brasby | Sep 2, 2015 | Stories
When the mouse skittered across the corner of our kitchen, our family had a rainbow of responses.
Mom and oldest brother sprang to the attack, stomping the mouse’s terrified wake.
Younger sister leaped to a chair and stood there, holding her cheeks with her hands. She would have gotten onto the table but the mouse had interrupted dinner. She didn’t want to step in the gravy.
The mouse blazed into the bathroom where Mom and brother followed, slamming the door behind them.
Sister was doing the two-step on a chair while crashes and shouts came from the bathroom.
“Wonder what that was?” asked younger brother, who had joined me on the sidelines observing. We had both heard the thud like a tree falling.
I laughed. “There’s not much in the bathroom to knock over.”
“I hate mice,” said our sister.
“We can tell.” Our brother was master of the obvious.
Laughter blasted from the bathroom and the sound of boots slapping linoleum and bathtub. Then another crash.
“Hope they hurry up,” brother said. “I’m hungry.”
“Ewwww,” said sister. I was hoping she didn’t put footprints in the mashed potatoes.
“I wonder if the mouse can slide under the door,” said brother. He was watching our sister when he said it. She shrieked on cue and he grinned. Score.
More crashing rolled out of the bathroom and then a war whoop. The door swung wide and our brother emerged.
“Got it!” he said and dropped into his chair at the table to finish dinner. Second brother joined him and a feeding frenzy after a mouse attack seemed imminent.
A lot of bonding went on that evening. Mom and oldest brother bonded in the mouse war. Younger brother and I bonded in observing the chaos.
And our younger sister? Well, she bonded with her chair.
Like this:
Like Loading...
by Kathy Brasby | Aug 18, 2015 | Stories
The reason the boys were ready for me when I pulled up in the big van was what they held in their hands.
“We found these!” Saber unfolded his palm to show me a rubber ball on an elastic band.
I’ve seen plenty of rubber balls. I began a jaded smile and then he threw the ball down. It bounced high over the building roof with the elastic band unfurling to let it kiss the clouds before rebounding and bouncing again. This little contraption had more energy than a litter of hungry puppies when mama pokes her head into their view.
The boys had finished a week at church camp and I was bringing home a gaggle of eleven-year-olds. Well, if a gaggle was seven, I was bringing a gaggle.
Each of the boys launched a ball above timberline blended with giggles. Boys really can giggle.
I’m a mother. I could see the potential here.
“OK, guys. No bouncing the balls in the van.”
They all nodded and their arms went into hyper drive to get bounces done before they loaded.
Finally we pulled away from camp and made our way down the mountain. All was well until I pulled up at a stop light in town.
Traffic was heavy and I had been watching cars surround us. Then I noticed giggling from behind.
Saber waggled his arm out of the side window. His ball ricocheted off car roofs and zig-zagged between lanes. The elastic band kept the ball in sight but not mannerly.
It took him a minute to retrieve the ball after his driver threatened to dunk him in the lake if he didn’t get the contraption back inside. The strap was pretty easy-going and not easy to gather. Maybe a little like Saber.
Then he rolled up the gadget and stuffed it in his backpack, giving me a smile fit more for angels than gaggles of boys. “I didn’t bounce it in the van,” he said.
No, but he had run the risk of kissing the clouds.
Like this:
Like Loading...
by Kathy Brasby | Aug 11, 2015 | Stories
My first bike quickly resembled a pancake but not in my eyes.
In my eyes, it had red steamers flowing from the handlebars, sparkles along the bright paint on the frame, and a big white horn on the front. I was only six and, knowing my parents’ financial state at the time, none of those things were true.
But it was my first and I had learned to balance on it with only a couple of skinned knees along the way.
I had the bad habit of dropping it on the ground when I was finished riding, usually in the driveway. My father warned me several times that it’d get run over if I kept doing that and I tried. But my six-year-old mind seemed to resist the idea.
One day I came out to find that my bike had been flattened when Dad backed over it with one of his big farm trucks.
I stood there while my brain connected the dots. Leaving the bike on the ground did indeed mean it would get run over.
I learned. I never did that again.
But my years with bikes was not over. In those days, Dad would visit farm auctions in the winter, trolling for bargains. And he often came home with a bargain bike.
Since I was the oldest child, I would get the new bike (“new” only in the sense of never living on our farm before) while my old bike went down the sibling chain.
These auction bikes usually lacked fenders and color. Certainly no streamers flowed from handlebars. One was so big that I had to ride on my tiptoes until I grew some more.
But we rode our bikes daily. Up the lane, over the bumps, into the wind.
I still like bikes. I’ve never had one with streamers or a white horn. But I’ve never ever again left one lying on the ground. I’m ok with plain bikes but still not so crazy about pancake bikes.
Like this:
Like Loading...
