Family

Thrift Shops

Kathy Stevenson1 Comment

(Originally appeared in my essay collection Lake Forest Moments.)

One of the best places not to be seen is the Lake Forest Thrift Shop. Maybe it’s a leftover feeling I have from the days my mother dragged me around to garage sales, but I can’t walk into a thrift shop without a sense of furtiveness. Like if someone sees me in there, they’ll think I’m looking for cheap, used items, which means I must not be able to afford the new item, which means I must be down on my luck, which means I’m a failure, which means… you get the idea.

Perhaps you have to be brought up poor to get this nervous, sweaty-palm feeling whenever you are confronted with other people’s discarded things. (Think Scarlett O’Hara’s impassioned cry, I’ll never go hungry again…) I react the same way when I see used clothing, I’ll never wear my sister’s shoes again…

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A Summer Fantasy Becomes Reality

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(This essay was originally published in The Christian Science Monitor.)

It was one of those rare days at the beach. The humidity was low, the temperature hovered right around 80 degrees, the sky was washed with watercolor blues and the flags snapped briskly over the boat harbor. Lake Michigan was quiet and waveless and even the water temperature had risen above the frigid level to merely bone-chilling.

So what was wrong with this picture?

Actually, everything was right. I had finally reached that nirvana of motherhood – that fantasyland that mothers of young children only dream of. My adolescent children, who had accompanied me to the beach, had run off with their friends as soon as we’d arrived. I was alone.
I could reach into my canvas beach bag and read a book or magazine uninterrupted. I could roll over and nap. I could buy myself an ice cream and not have to share it. I could float lazily on a raft, write a short story, re-invent my life. Continue reading →

Bittersweet Summer

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(This essay originally appeared in Main Line Today magazine.)

There comes a time every summer when you finally get your well-deserved week at the Jersey shore. You’ve managed to squeeze a week in between sports, dance, sleep-away, and tennis camps and the beginning of school. Your packed and overloaded family car resembles a suburban version of the Beverly Hillbillies as you careen joyously into Avalon or Stone Harbor or Ocean City, the entire family singing along to the soundtrack of The Sound of Music. Summer vacation is here at last – the kids have no scheduled activities, you and your husband have coordinated a week off, and the sun is shimmering benevolently over the Boardwalk. Aahh, the dog days of summer…

Fast forward one week. You never noticed it before but it is quite possible that you are the only truly sane, normal person in your family. How this fact has eluded you when you have lived with these people for decades is a mystery. You start thinking that maybe, just maybe, it is time to go home. If you have experienced any of the following phenomena, then perhaps you truly have been at the Jersey shore too long. Continue reading →

In Praise of Nerd-dom

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(A short essay in response to the Scripps Spelling Bee…)

I love seeing the faces of the finalists in the Scripps National Spelling Bee in news reports this morning. Bafflement, beady-eyed concentration, stunned cluelessness, and triumph are all written across the faces of these adolescent nerdy types. Released from being stuffed into lockers, being pelted with dodge balls, and being exiled to the bad lunch tables, this is their moment.

I actually find it amazing that spelling bees are still part of our culture. After all, computers have programs to check our spelling, and who spells anything out in e-mail or on Twitter? Like school bake sales, home economics, and white cotton P. E. uniforms, they seem an anachronism, a throwback to a more contemplative, cerebral, Mayberry-ish time. Continue reading →