It is fitting that this Halloween, the anniversary of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and Daylight Savings Time coincides with my discovery of an old newspaper clipping.

Maybe junior year in high school my friend won a bunch of tickets to The Rocky Horror Picture Show theater show. She invited a group of friends and insisted that we all dress up, “It’s better to go in costume.” Was about as specific as she got.

The gals came over to my house since we had a costume collection that spanned decades and the two most tolerant parents in the school district.

“Wear that!” my friends encouraged. I am the youngest in my family I am easily swayed.

We got to the theater and they started frisking us.

“You have any toast on you? What about rice? No throwing rice! They’re real people you know…hey, is that a water pistol? No water pistols….”

“What is this all about?” I asked my friend.

“Oh, people throw things at the stage at certain times in the show.”

“Ohhh” I started when a man interrupted me.

“Hey! You and your friends get over here, we’re taking pictures….”

We allowed ourselves to be herded over there and photographs were taken. They must’ve thought they were good pictures because the next day my father called me in to his study.

“The theatre show you went to last night, Mary, what type of show was it exactly?”

“Some show that one of the field hockey girls got free tickets for.”

“Was it….decent?”

“Yeah, it was okay….”

“Mary – can you please explain this picture of you, in the paper, with your name spelled incorrectly?”

“It’s a tough name to spell –no one ever gets it right!”

“Mary! Did you see what you were wearing?!”

“B-r-z-u-s-C-o-w-i-c-Z! They sure didn’t spell the name right!”
​
I tucked the paper away in a box only to find it on its’ anniversary. Welcome to my time warp – properly spelled.

Mama was a complex woman. She grew up in northern Maine, was an army nurse in World War II, and she mothered eight children. She was pretty dang fearless, except when it came to carbohydrates.

She was petite in stature and enormous in personality. Her fear, I expect, was that her personality would translate into becoming a heavy woman. Her weight was important, almost as important as keeping her children amused, and her carbohydrate aversion kept her from serving potatoes. Potatoes were saved for Thanksgiving, Easter, and Christmas. Otherwise, the only other carb was Minute Rice.
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For a non-cook like mama, somehow the convenience of something only taking a minute to cook out-weighed all the danger and fear of the carbohydrate.

Below Halloween candy has been at our local market since August, and I have held off buying any until today – October 28.  Yet I do have a willpower problem: I have no willpower.

I was going to buy Halloween candy that I don’t like, but my children insisted that I get “good stuff”. The “good stuff” has been in my house for less than two hours and it has been calling to me.

In high school, Halloween candy used to float around the whole month of October. It would linger into November, appearing in the lunches of students who had perverse parents who FROZE Halloween candy and rationed it out. Talk about terrifying.

The Three Musketeer was the candy bar that was eaten in the weirdest ways.  As a justification for eating some of the candy that I bought today, I will discuss the four ways I saw the Three Musketeer bar eaten:

​Below photograph from the right:
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Traditional - bite taken from the short end
Artistic- chocolate coating nibbled off and then eating the nougat
Rebel – eating from the long side of the candy bar
Glutton – popping the whole candy in the mouth at once
 
I may have to go buy another bag of candy….

​“If you can read, you can cook,” is as ugly a lie as you can get. I can read just fine, but I cook (and I quote my children) “so-so, at best”.

My mother was an excellent reader, but her cooking left much to be desired. What mama lacked in motivation, however, she made up for in execution.

My oldest sister remembers a time when she couldn’t yet read and how mama would have her prepare food, reading the instructions aloud. Mama enhanced the experience by giving my sister beautiful aprons to wear: there was a drawer full of child-sized aprons, and mama would open the drawer and let my sister sort through the colors and styles until she found the apron that fit the recipe.

Then mama would place the high stool by the counter and open the cook book.

Although, my sister couldn’t read, she scanned the page as mama pointed at the list of ingredients. Mama would read and my sister would measure, or zest, or stir, blend or fold.  Whatever mama read, my sister would do.
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Mama knew how to delegate, and she knew how to encourage: “That is the prettiest lemon meringue pie I have ever seen! Certainly the prettiest ever made by a four-year-old!”

​Mama couldn’t cook, but she made it a point to know how to pretend-cook for her audience.

She knew that her children would eat anything; it was her husband, our father, who could be a tough customer.

Mama figured out early on that every person has a weakness: Tata’s was his pride in being Polish. Mama worked that weakness.

Tata had bought Mama a Polish cookbook when they got married.

Mama was no fool. She thumbed through the cookbook and picked out one or two easy recipes that she liked and she learned how to prepare them. The other two hundred or so recipes were used as follows:

Mama would fry some onions.

“The smell of fried onions disguises everything!”

Then she would start cooking and burning a meat, a vegetable, and some form of carbohydrate (which she would avoid eating). Some nights, dinner worked out. Other nights Tata would ask, “What is this dish called?”

“Oh, I got it from the Polish cookbook….”

Tata would touch the burned bits tenuously, frown a bit, and eat.

This worked beautifully until one night nothing, not even the smell of fried onion, could cover the smell of burnt cabbage. Mama poured some Ragu tomato sauce over the mound of a mess and set the plate in front of Tata.

Tata was a gentle man.

“My! This is interesting! …What is it called?” He asked carefully.

“Oh, it’s from the Polish cookbook….”

“Dear, do you think you could show me the recipe? What page was this one on?”
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It is sad when a good thing ends.

There is a butterfly pavilion at the children’s museum in our city. It is a lovely space full of light, plants, and exotic butterflies.

The assisted living center where my mom lived thought it would be a wonderful place to take a group of their residents. Mama had always liked going to the children’s museum with her grandchildren so I signed her up for the outing.

I met the bus and helped mama get comfortable in her wheelchair. I relaxed my shoulders as I pushed my mom into this very modern, very disability-friendly museum, “No problems here.” And I settled in to really enjoy the day.

We rolled by the children playing in the child-size version of a supermarket. Mama followed the skipping children with her eyes and commented, “Look how happy they are!”

She kept scanning the crowd looking for the liveliest and loudest and smiling at them. She nodded at the children playing with toy trains.

We pushed past children playing in reading adventure land and into the hushed waiting area of the butterfly pavilion.

A woman from the museum primly explained the marvels we were about to experience in the exquisite butterfly exhibit and our group was ushered in the luminous pavilion. There was a walkway surrounded by lush and fragrant plants. A gentleman sneezed and dabbed at his nose with a linen handkerchief.

The prim woman explained about how extraordinarily special these butterflies were and as she spoke colorful winged creatures fluttered by us. The prim woman got a bit excited as one butterfly flew close to mama.

Her “Oh, look!” sounded more like a warning than like a cry of excitement and mama turned to see these large wings fluttering near her head; mama swatted at the creature.

“Dammit to Hell! Get that thing away from me!” she said with her best World War II army nurse voice.

“Mama, it’s just a butterfly….” I tried to soothe as I cringed hoping the damn thing wouldn’t turn and charge us, I added, “I think we’ll wait for the rest of you outside.”
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And mama and I left to watch the children playing reading adventure land.

The front door was covered with moths and I scooted right in, so none could follow me into the house.

My son was in the kitchen snacking on some blue corn chips. He handed me a few and I bit down on one.

“All good at school?” I crunched at him.

“Yeah, all good….Oh!” and he indicated to something on my shirt.

I glanced down and saw a dark butterfly-shape near my chest. I hate moths, I don’t know why, and I especially don’t like moths on me.

Slowly, I opened the drawer and reached for a napkin.

My son was transfixed. I know he can get nervous, so I tried to keep very calm. I took a slow, deep inhale and as I exhaled I swiped at the moth, crushed it in the napkin, threw it on the ground with a triumphant scream, and stomped on the intruder.

I beamed at my son, proud of my cool. His face was pure puzzlement.

“Mama, what are you doing?! That was a nacho.”

“Oh, no! THAT was a moth!”

“Nacho. Look.”

Well, at least I showed that nacho who is boss in my house.

​I always wanted black hair. This was probably because three of my sisters had beautiful, straight, long black hair.

​When I went to Spain for a semester as a junior in college, I kept an eye open for women with cool hair, and I would ask them where they got their hair done.

One day I chased a woman off the bus. She walked me to the door of her hair salon. The space was champagne-colored: I was instantly intoxicated. Sebastian was the main stylist and as he inspected me, he asked me slow and careful questions about my hair goals.

“I have always wanted black hair. Since I won’t be going home for a few months, would you dye my hair pitch black? I would like to look like Louise Brooks”

He turned to his assistant.

“Carmen, please, the black wig from the back.” Then he turned to me, “Hija, we would all like to look Louise Brooks. Just wait until you see what this does….”

Carmen came back and Sebastian started arranging the wig on my head, his upper lip firmly gripping his lower as if he didn’t want any unkind words to escape. Carmen’s eyes, and the looks from the other stylists, let me know that, perhaps, there was a problem.

“There! Take a look.”

Sebastian moved away and I saw the sleek black helmet of hair suspended above my t-shirt. My face had totally disappeared.

“’Washed out’, I think that is the term. You have no face with that hair. I could do some black, if you like. It is daring, yes, but do you think you would like to adventure in to the world of a bit of black hair?”

Like all my life.

“Yes, please!”

Sebastian gave direction, and with thirty quick hand movements, passed me over to the Colorist. He motioned to another woman.

“Marisol, help this young woman. Apply some make-up that will match her hair. Don’t worry! The make-up is to help you see what you can look like. It is not for who you will have to be.” And he gave my shoulder a quick squeeze and adjusted a piece of my hair.

My hair was colored and washed, make-up palates were held up to me, discussed and discarded. Sebastian cut my hair and another woman styled it. Layers of cosmetics were applied.

Sebastian glowed at me, “You see? ¡Otra!  y ¡la misma!”

“Different and yet the same.”

Sebastian and I bonded and I searched him out whenever I was in Madrid. Then, one day, I went to the shop and it was a bank.

“But where is Sebastian’s salon?”
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“Oh, Sebastian? He is no more,” was the only answer I received.  

​

Nothing brings morale down like a bad haircut.

I was living in Spain and my boyfriend knew my work was intense and sometimes stressful, so he treated me to a haircut in a fancy salon in Madrid.

The staff oohed and aahed over me. They gave me an espresso in a chunky silver cup and a chocolate on a small silver plate. They coddled me for about almost two hours and when I left, I felt divinely positive that I looked marvelous.

Then I got into an elevator that had mirrors. I tried to see the back of my head. There seemed to be a whole swatch of hair missing. Couldn’t be. I ran my hand over my head. There was no smooth flow of hair.

I looked again. This was no neatly layered look. Heck, this wasn’t even a punk look. This was a “someone-has-the-mange-look.”

I started to sob. I called my boyfriend, “You Span-iards!” I blamed the whole country for this.

My boyfriend tried to calm me down, “Just go back and tell them to fix it. It cannot be that bad, this is a very good salon.”

“It is MY hair! It looks like rats have been at it!”

“Why did you not say something when you were there?”

“They gave me chocolate and espresso. They distracted me!”

“Look, I will meet you at the hair place in an hour, okay? We will fix this, okay?”

“Okay, okay, but it’s not your hair…”
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We did go the salon together. The stylists grouped together, “Well we can just shave the back of her head. It is just that her hair, it is Anglo-Saxon hair. Anglo-Saxon hair is very hard to cut.”

In the early 1990’s, I lived in a cool and vaguely dangerous part of Madrid. Whenever I walked to work, I passed this dimly lit and alluring hair salon, which always seemed to be full of gorgeous tall men.

I decided that I should give it a try.

The walls were a deep purple, the floors a slick black tile, and the mirrors clean, but struggling to reflect anything in the gloom. No one else was getting their hair cut, but there were three tall, chiseled men filling the space.

“Hola, buenas días, quería cortar mi pelo.” I smiled brightly and pointed at my head and made a scissor motion at it.

The tallest and blondest had a cape around my neck and a seat under my derriere before I could say another word. His long fingers worked their way under my hair and up my scalp as if he were going to read it. I pulled my neck forward and instructed,

“Solo un poquito, para darlo mas forma…”

Blondie stopped and looked at me. I knew that face. It was one of non-comprehension.

I tried English. All Germans speak English – but not these ones. I tried French. Nope. Italian? Niente. I even waded into my brain and pulled out a few Polish words that might have worked. Nothing.

I hadn’t needed to bother; Blondie was cutting away and chatting in German with his friends. I relaxed and thought of reciting the poem I had learned in Sixth Grade with Frau Turner, “Punkt, Punkt, Komma, Strich…” I contemplating telling them I had a dog named “Lumpi.”

My German thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of another Teuton, this one a patchouli-wearing, hippy-haired German. He put his hand on Blondie’s shoulder, a bit angrily, I thought. Blondie swung at him, brandishing hair shears. Hippy tried to rest his hand on Blondie’s hip. The shears almost made contact.

Hippy stepped up onto a purple chair and almost knocked himself out on a beam.  Then he and started shouting (in German, of course) at Blondie. The other two Germans shrugged indifferently whenever Hysterical Hippy looked at them for approval.

The snip-clack of the scissors traced a line around my ear. I suddenly became very fond of and very nervous for my ears. Blondie was snarling in German, reminding me of a guard dog. I felt my neck getting red, and it wasn’t just the razor Blondie was using on it.

Hippy ran around and got a bit in Blondie’s face. Blondie swept the razor up, right past my nose (I was becoming fond of my nose, too) and within centimeters of the Hippy’s face.

Hippy left. My neck was brushed off with a soft brush. The cape was pulled off. Everything went in to its place.

I paid, left a generous tip, and waved to the Brüderlein in the back.

As I walked out the door, I touched my ears and tip of my nose. There was no blood but there would be no return visit for me.