True South

All Pumped Up

Or just wait until the urge passes

By Susan S. Kelly

And now, a few concise words about exercising: I loathe it.

I was never on a sports team. No one wanted to double-Dutch jump rope with me as a partner. I’m so uncoordinated that I tend to fall down just putting on my underwear. In high school, while I kind of coveted the flippy kilts my field-hockey playing classmates got to wear, I preferred the passive, less-participatory exercise of wearing a weighted belt Velcroed around my waist under clothes. Worked just fine until you drank a glass of water. After study hall, we’d “walk” down the long dorm hall linoleum on our butt cheeks while listening to Cat Stevens singing “Wild World” from the Tea for the Tillerman album. An effort, in retrospect, that would have probably been a lot more effective if we’d just ceased and desisted with toast-eating contests at breakfast.

Despite years of sitting in stadiums, I never understood football until I watched Friday Night Lights on Netflix and had to figure out first downs to follow the plot. As for tennis or golf, why would anyone do anything that requires putting on sunscreen, much less sweating? I’d be perfectly content never to put on sneakers again — and I realize they’re not called sneakers anymore. In my opinion, anyone who changes the sheets on a king bed has had ample exercise for the day, what with all that walking around from one side of the bed to the other.

In defense of all this inactivity, I’d like to point out that I wear no ace bandages anywhere, have no joint, tendon, muscle, back, knee or other issues, and have no idea what an ACL or meniscus is or where they’re located; all of which I attribute to the fact that for five decades I never engaged in anything competitive or, well, physical, when you come right down to it. Just sayin’. And I do like to think that balancing on one foot while brushing my teeth counts for something. At least it beats my friend who’s figured out that she can set the treadmill speed at 3.8 before the wine starts sloshing out of the cup holder. Never mind my friend who’s eating Big Macs because the people at Weight Watchers told her she’s not fat enough to qualify.

Still, when a fitness facility opened up practically in my own backyard the year I turned 50, I decided it was Time To Get With The Program, as my father would say. Not that I would even consider walking the one-eighth mile over there when I could drive. Please. It quickly became clear that I don’t have the personality for yoga. The first time the instructor told me to quit wearing baggy tops — so she could correct my position — was the last time I went to yoga class. Besides, the whole time we were supposed to be clearing our minds or assuming the Savasana pose or whatever you’re meant to Om, I was thinking about all the things I needed to be doing and wishing the session would just end so I could get on with it. One friend’s husband wanted to go to yoga class with her, so she gave him a set of sessions for Christmas. Unfortunately, his first class became his last class, because, as is often the case with yoga, he publicly pooted. There’s no namaste for that. Somewhat similar to my sister’s issue with a chocolate power bar in her back pocket that melted and squished and looked — well, let’s just say it’s best to always wear black exercise clothes.

Beware of classes disguised as cults, in which Fitness Barbies and Kens are demoralizingly superior to you. I’m sorry, but if you have makeup on at the gym, I don’t care how long you can plank; you’ve lost all credibility. But I do like the way, in a class, the teacher will run down the quick-quick chop-chop single-syllable system checklist of to-dos or have-dones: quads, pecs, lats, delts, abs, glutes, biceps, etc. They come in handy for doing crosswords. (While sitting down.) The main argument for classes with scary titles like Pump It Up, Power Flex, yada yada, is the punch line to that old joke about why the guy keeps hitting himself on the head with a hammer: Because it feels so good when you quit.

Best, then, to stick with the treadmill, where you can multitask otherwise sedentary activities like online bridge and Netflix. At 79, a friend’s father began memorizing T. S. Eliot to pass time on the stationary bike. He’d repeatedly take a laminated card from his pocket, consult it, put it back, and pedal on. The discipline proved so popular to fellow cyclers that he formed a club with seven other men who meet three times a week to recite. In case you’re wondering, “The Waste Land” takes 40 minutes to recite.

Me, I’m reveling in a smaller triumph: The nurse who administered my flu shot asked, “Do you work out?”

“How did you know?” I returned.

“Your arm muscle,” she replied.

Score!  PS

Susan S. Kelly is a blithe spirit, author of several novels, and a proud grandmother.

True South

Regrets, I’ve Got a Few

The penitence of parents

By Susan S. Kelly

Lent looms and then — BOOM — the season of gloom is upon us, those 40 days and 40 nights during which one is meant to repent. But if you’re a parent, guilt knows no season. It’s just always around, or in literary lingo, omnipresent.

Take my 38-year-old son, who not long ago revealed to me that as a child, he used to stand over the trash can while eating cookies so he wouldn’t drop crumbs on the floor. Oh, what this casual confession says. I never told him to do this; he just wanted to avoid the problem, or hearing about it. That he was so amenable pains me, the way he was when I just took him out of one school and sent him to a magnet that required a 45-minute bus ride. This would be the same son who, as a 2-year-old, kept waking at 3 a.m. for so many consecutive nights that I finally took him out of the crib, set him on the floor with a cut-up orange, and said, “Fine. Have fun. See you in the morning,” and went back to bed. No wonder that, later, when he woke up sick in the middle of the night, he always walked around my side of the bed to wake his father instead. Can I catch a little slack here? I remember when I was answering so many children’s questions and child-related telephone calls that I couldn’t take my own temperature because I couldn’t keep my mouth closed around a thermometer for three consecutive minutes.

At least I managed to rescue his brother, whom I happened upon in his room with the mini-blind cords wrapped around his neck because he’d been playing “Pirates.” The same child who, because I told him to visit the dermatologist, wouldn’t do anything about his warts except wrap three fingers on one hand in duct tape for six weeks because he’d heard it would make warts go away.

Confession may be good for the soul, but on the whole, I think I prefer yesteryear’s Lenten mite boxes, where all you had to do was part with some of your allowance. Though I probably failed in that department too, since I once discovered a child trying to extract a nickel from between the car seats with tweezers. Those kinds of memories can be assuaged with this one: How short a space in time elapsed between my daughter telling me tearfully that she didn’t want me to die (“Don’t worry, honey. It will be a long time before I die.”) to telling me that she wished I was dead. That was probably about the same era that her phone’s voicemail message was “My give-a-damn’s busted.” At least I escaped another friend’s fate, who discovered a pamphlet titled “How to Take Care of your new Tattoo” in her daughter’s Kate Spade pocketbook.

Oh, the countless little deaths I delivered, including, say, the April Fool’s morning that my daughter danced into the kitchen and merrily, mischievously, announced that she hadn’t done her homework. I barely looked up from the bagged lunch I was fixing in order to comply with her school’s eye-rolling rule of packing no disposables, only recyclables. Would it have cost me anything to play along, to acknowledge her 7-year-old April Fool’s effort? Two decades later, I still cringe at the memory.

Thank heaven that friends’ stories go a long way in the “I’m Not the Only Mean Mother” department. Names have been omitted to protect the guilty, but one friend who’d reached the end of her parenting rope with her tantrum-throwing 5-year-old picked up the phone, mimicked dialing as he writhed on the floor, and said, “Hello? Yes, is this the adoption agency? I have a child available . . . ” And this from another mother’s shame vault: The afternoon she took the car keys and got in the car and began backing out of the driveway, all the while calling, “OK, I’m leaving now, hope you can take care of yourself,” while her child wailed with despair. One acquaintance told me that when her son was disconsolate about a terrible grade he’d made on a test in fourth grade, she’d taken him in her room, sat him down, and said, “Listen. You were planned, and I know a lot of people in your class who were accidents.”

Still, surely for every painful-to-recollect instance, there’s a corresponding instance of sweetness, and I offer these up not as defenses, but to keep myself from weeping. Such as the child calling during his first week at boarding school, desperate with fear, panicked and frantic because he was washing clothes for the first time and “the washing machine in the basement is stuck and I’m required to wear a collared shirt to dinner and they’re all in there wet” — and my assurance, four hours away, that the machine was simply between cycles, wait a few minutes and it would begin chugging again. The same child I sang “My Best Beau” to, from Mame, when I was rocking him to sleep as a baby. I sang “Baby Mine” from Dumbo to his sister in the same rocking chair. The three children whose old-boyfriend box of letters and memorabilia, whose Jack Daniel’s bottle filled with sand from the summer job at the beach, and whose slab of crudely painted wood commemorated a summer camp mountain bike competition, are all still in their bedrooms somewhere, though the three themselves are long gone. You take comfort where you find it, in the baby album entries you made so as not to forget the child who said, “I did that later ago,” meaning already, or “I won, now you try to win me.”

And when that doesn’t work, there’s always the adult child to give an old scenario a new spin. “Relax, Mom,” the tweezer-wielding son reminds me. “It was a double-headed nickel.”

Terrific. Allowance issue absolved. Back to atoning.  PS

Susan S. Kelly is a blithe spirit, author of several novels, and a proud grandmother.

True South

Make a Note of It

A catalog of the oddities of life

By Susan S. Kelly

For a certain kind of writer — OK, this kind of writer — what’s in your Costco cart, and what you do at night to get ready for bed, is invaluable and fascinating. Unfortunately, this sort of ephemera, discussed offhand in a grocery store parking lot, or city park, or next door on the treadmill, or at the office water cooler, tends to get lost, forgotten or ignored while you’re bringing in the trash cans, refilling the copier paper tray, or debating shredded or chunk parm.

So I make a practice of writing everything down, copying it to the computer, printing it out, punching holes in it, and filing it in notebooks under tabs, just like you did in fourth grade. A new year seems like a good time to revisit these collected works, and reconfirms my opinion that people will tell you anything.

What you may classify, in today’s parlance, as oversharing or TMI is pure gold for a writer. You never know when you’ll need an offhand comment like, “My grandchildren all sound like outlaws or whaling ships: Sophie Morgan. Casey Jackson. Wyatt James,” to punch up a scene. Or my friend’s house cleaners, a gay couple that comes while she’s at work, and routinely leaves complaint notes in the fridge saying, “Why don’t you get something decent to eat?” And while we’re on the subject of fridges, there’s my friend who told me she looked so terrible one day that she couldn’t go out in public. Instead, she went to the drive-through window at Krispy Kreme and bought four bottles of milk. Because she remembered that, as a child, Krispy Kreme had the best milk.

It pains me that I will likely never find a place to use this email: “Remind me to tell you the story some time about the husband of our class valedictorian (who herself picked her nose and ate it in class) who came to a hometown funeral and his tooth moved when he talked. I didn’t see it, but it was well reported by another friend.” Still, I’m comforted that, sooner or later, I’ll probably be able to fit in my Charleston friend’s road trip with her history-buff father to visit all the Civil War battlefields. But only the ones that the Confederacy won. So much for revisionist history. And Gettysburg.

Next time you make a move, stay focused on what’s really important and do what one friend did: While everything’s being wrapped, packed and stacked, draw a big smiley face on the box that has all the liquor in it.

Embarrassment tales are a dime a dozen, but here’s one I bet you won’t find in that long-gone “Was My Face Red” page in Reader’s Digest. The day after giving birth, a friend was immensely relieved when the doc came into her hospital room. She opened her gown, showed him her breasts and said, “I am sooo glad you’re here. My milk has come in and they hurt so badly and can you look at them and tell me if they’re normal and give me something for them?” The doctor looked at the floor for a long minute, then said, “I’m the pediatrician.”

But seriously, what is it about underwear? Stories tend from the mild — the friend who stained (OK, steeped) — all her heirloom linens in tea for the perfect antique shade, which was inspired by the memory of her mother boiling her bras when she came home from boarding school, to the lawyer who took off his blazer at work, not realizing a pair of underwear was stuck to the back of his shirt. Let that be a lesson to check your lint traps. Tricot has a natural affinity for non-iron Brooks Brothers shirts.

Underwear-related and completely unedited from the notebook original, this gem of a tail, I mean tale:

I know airport toilets are all about efficiency, but they are over-zealous. The best news is that every toilet I visited had seat covers plentiful, and I visited plenty between RDU, Dallas and Denver. So, I head for the toilet with 90 coats, backpack, luggage. As you disrobe, the toilet flushes because you’re moving. Then, I get the toilet cover assembled, and another auto-flush because you’re moving. Which creates the problem, because you’ve set the cover on the seat and it flushes the cover down, so you have to get another cover assembled. Of course it flushes again as you turn around to take off pants to sit down, but this time you’re holding the cover, but it keeps flushing forever and your cover is fairly mangled, so by that time you are holding it, trying to undo your pants and sit on it while it’s flushing, but still maintain sanitary integrity holding the seat cover and you sit down in a hurry still holding the seat cover that is trying to go down the toilet. It was exhausting and a complete waste of water.

And it’s only January. PS

Susan Kelly is a blithe spirit, author of several novels, and proud grandmother.

True South

Family Dinners

The more they change over time, the more we need them

By Susan S. Kelly

Sure, sure, it’s turkey time, but how about the other 364 dinners someone needs to dream up, whip up, order up, serve up, and clean up for the hungry hordes? It’s been said that every family has a 10-meal rotation that they unconsciously stick to. Chicken, pork chops, spaghetti. Tacos, brats, pasta. Then it’s leftover night, or pizza night, and the rotation begins again.

In direct opposition to this menu stasis theory is the fact that, like everything else on the planet, family dinners change and evolve. At first, they’re wild, untamed things, with high chairs and thrown food. In time, bibs are replaced with napkins, and manners. The toddler turns 6, and learns to set the table. Actual conversation takes place during a family dinner, unless you make the mistake of asking a 7-year-old about the movie he saw, because a 7-year-old’s synopsis tends to last through dessert.

Then comes school. School, school, school. Tired of hearing about school, my mother decided to select a topic for discussion during our family dinners. “Tonight we’re going to talk about art,” she said one memorable table time. Muteness ensued. Cornbread was consumed. The experiment was an abject failure. Family dinners cannot bear that burden. Like nature itself, they have to wander all over the place and sprout in different directions. Also like nature, there’s an exception to every absolute: My children had friends whose parents, over Sunday dinner, would pay their kids a dollar if they could summarize the sermon at church. Their dinner table topic stayed on point. My sister handled the nightly kitchen table convos by asking everyone what the worst and best parts of their day had been. Her husband’s answer never varied: worst — getting out of bed; best — getting into bed.

Every family dinner has its accoutrements other than food. On television shows, families had sodas at dinner; only milk was served at our table. I longed for a spinning lazy Susan in the center of the table, bearing ketchup and Texas Pete bottles on its swiftly appointed rounds. I’d have settled for an upright napkin holder, so you could fish another out when yours fell out of your lap, or got sticky or shredded — a yearning that probably explains why I tend toward cloth napkins now for family dinners. Still, I hid those cloth ones away one Christmas so we could use holiday-themed ones, and didn’t find them until the following September. And still, family dinners had proceeded right on, with the one-ply paper ones.

Happy is the day when evolution gets ’round to when children can cook, rather than complain, about the unfamiliar vegetable, or the texture of the meatloaf. Then, each family member can “take a night” on a vacation, or a Wednesday. They delightedly pick the menu, proceed to shop, prepare, serve and wash up, while you contentedly enjoy the sunset, or the news. As long as you’re also content to foot the bill for tenderloin filets, or dine cheerfully on boiled hot dogs. A new era of family dinners is ushered in when girlfriends and boyfriends arrive on the scene. No more dishing out from pots and pans on the stovetop; time to up the game and make an impression with actual serving dishes. Flowers in a vase. Not candlelight, though: too much of a statement. Where there once was a clamor over who gets to say the blessing grows the nervousness of who gets picked to say the blessing.

Every family experiences years when organizing a dinner together centers around sports, meetings, babysitting and jobs, a task on a par with planning the invasion of Normandy. I wrote a novel whose plot included a family member who’d died unexpectedly. Of the grief-stricken moments of daily minutiae that followed, the most sorrowful was the evening the mother opened a kitchen drawer and gazed at the placemats. She realized that the rotating stack of four — checkered, straw, quilted — would now resume as three. The pattern of family dinners had been forever altered, hammered home by a detail as devastatingly simple as a pattern of placemats. Still, families consist of only two, too. My husband and I light candles every night. After 60, low lights are beneficial. Even the food looks better.

Fifty in a field for a reunion, four for chicken tetrazzini, a pair on stools at the counter with a bowl of soup. Breakfast for dinner. The Sunday steak. Take-out. A USPS delivery from a specialty service with every ingredient, plus recipes, included. Or just the specialty of the house — one of those 10 meals. In the end, only three ingredients truly define a family dinner: Food. Conversation. People.  PS

Susan Kelly is a blithe spirit, author of several novels, and proud grandmother.

True South

Closet Conundrums

When it’s time for the big switch

By Susan S. Kelly

Now approacheth the dreaded biannual chore, at least for the females of the species: The Closet Changeover.

The way I understand it, and if the pictures in People magazine can be believed, people in LA never have to do this. Los Angeles is seasonless. Celebrities: They’re not just like us, actually, as People would have you believe.

And for Wisconsinites, Vermonters, Floridians and even some Texans, whatever seasonal change they have is so short that barely a hanger or a shelf needs disturbing. Ten-month winters, two-month summers, and vice-versa. But for those of us who live with real seasons, it’s time to get to it.

Now, normal people, sane people, probably schedule this task; take a Saturday and tackle it all at once, chop-chop. Then there are the folks who wake up one chilly morning and say, “Where is that sweater?” And tackle it all at once. And then there’s me — and I suspect a lot of others — who begin with good intentions and get sidetracked not by the internet, but by decisions, so that the task takes six weeks, on and off. You can’t tell, but I do have a system.

Throw everything on the floor and bed. (Hope it’s a king-size.) First, separate into categories of Too Tight, Too Short, Too Bare, and Just Because You Can Doesn’t Mean You Should. Likely, there will be a tall pile of Not Sures. And, like that old saw that warns if you have to ask the price of something, you can’t afford it, it follows that if you have to take a selfie wearing the garment in question and send it to your sisters and ask if you should keep it, the answer is probably no.

(Speaking of not affording, now’s a good time to get out the Goof Off and scrub away the tell-tale Marshalls and TJ Maxx stickers on your shoes.)

During this process, you’ll experience acute apparel anxiety. One of my sisters has said, “I’m living in separates hell.” (Remember that term, “separates”?) To escape, she’s decided to convert nearly her entire “’drobe,” as she calls her wardrobe, to dresses, and tech clothes. The other sister is such a shopper that she began putting clothes on layaway when she was in seventh grade. (Remember that term, “layaway”?) I ask you, what kind of 12-year-old knows what layaway is? A born consummate clotheshorse, that’s who, and that sister hangs tags on her clothes to remind herself what event she last wore it to — a dinner, a cookout, a meeting. I kid you not. She’s the sister who coined two of my favorite ’drobe terms: The Punishment Dress (or shirt, or whatever) that you’re sorry you bought but you have to wear to punish yourself for buying it. And The Whistle Dress, for the dress that’s so easy, and is ideal for so many situations, that you just whistle and it jumps out of the closet. Often, it must be admitted, Whistle Dresses don’t touch your body anywhere but the shoulders.

“Is this out?” I text the clotheshorse sibling, attaching a picture. “Houndstooth is never out. Neither is leopard print,” she messages back. OK, that’s settled. Onward.

Here are the clothes you’ve simply turned against, have developed an inexplicable and unreasonable hatred toward. Pitch. Here are the ones to downgrade, meaning that you “saved” it for in-law dinners, a charity speaking event, etc., but this year, it gets demoted to church. In-laws judge in-style. God does not.

I know it looks great on you, but if it itched last year, it’s going to itch this year. Pitch.

It’s also OK to toss something just because you’re tired of it. But, a warning: When photographs of you wearing it come up later in some post, or in the photo drawer that’s never been properly organized, you might find yourself saying, “Dang, that looked good. Why did I get rid of it?” Too late for regrets.

Now, here comes the poundage pile, the five-fewer-pounds-and-this-will-fit-fine-again layer, I mean pile. The clothes that my mother calls “tailored,” I call “tight,” and my daughter calls “body con” (for “conscious”). Here’s how you’re gonna deal with that. If you’ll still need Spanx with it even after the five pounds magically evaporate, pitch.

A moment, now, of self-congratulation for all the stuff I don’t have to pitch, the trends I managed to live through and do without: poufs; shrugs; tracksuits; Crocs; boiled wool jackets. The trend I wish I’d bowed to: jean jackets. The trend I fell victim to, but only once: Ultrasuede. What I will never, ever give up: clogs and cardigans. What I am, thank you Jesus, too old for: bralettes.

My final advice, born of experience, is to always buy something at the end of a season, when it’s on sale, and then, facing that shelf or rack of been-there-worn-that duds the next closet changeover (April), you’ll spot something fresh, unworn, and new-to-you, which makes the chore the faintest bit more bearable.

In Los Angeles, everybody from bums to billionaires just wears T-shirts. In New York City, everybody but Hoda and Kathie Lee just wears black. But you’re Southern. What’s in your closet?  PS

Susan Kelly is a blithe spirit, author of several novels, and proud grandmother.

Did She Say That Out Loud?

Favorite utterances I have known and used

By Susan S. Kelly

Southerners are big on sayings that are peculiar, well-worn, and whose origins — never mind meanings — are vague. “Bless her heart” comes to mind. We also love our book-or-movie lines that translate well to reality: “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

For my money though, nothing beats the casual comments friends and family have unwittingly uttered in the presence of a writer — me — who keeps entire notebooks of minor observations such as new wallpaper smells like Band-Aids, and what people have in their Costco cart. Herewith, a few of my everlasting favorites.

Scene: Driving my 87-year-old mother on the Interstate.

Mother: “Do you ever use the left lane?”

Me: “When I need to pass a car, but otherwise, you’re supposed to stay in the right lane. The left lane is for speed, and for passing.”

Mother: “I drive in the left lane all the time.” Pause. “I consider it my privilege.”

Ensuing jaw drop.

Scene: Discussing acquaintance X with my friend Trish.

Trish: “Anyone with hair that long at her age is bound to be tough.”

Ensuing fall off the chair laughing before wryly agreeing.

Scene: Charlestonian pal Ginny visiting Greensboro, wandering through the rooms of my house: Ginny: “I forget how much stuff y’all have up here.”

Interpretation: It’s so tropical in Charleston that rugs and objets are superfluous and just make you feel even sweatier.

Ensuing anxious reassessment of household décor previously considered cozy and now viewed as cluttered.

Scene: Someone my friend Sarah and I slightly knew in college moves to town.

Me to Sarah: “You and I should probably have some kind of welcome get-together for her.

Sarah, with slow blink: “I have all the friends I need.”

Ensuing appreciation of Sarah’s chop-chop ‘tude freeing me from entertaining responsibility.

Scene: Dressing room of bathing suit marathon try-on with sister Janie.

Janie: Big sigh, followed by: “I just look better with a few clothes on.”

No interpretation needed.

Scene: Discussion with friend Marsha about recent debatable behavior of hers, mine, and others’.

Marsha: “Well, who cares? I’d rather be controversial than boring.”

Ensuing decision to be controversial rather than boring.

Scene: My great-aunt comes to pick up my grandmother for a luncheon in early April. My grandmother is dressed in a lavender crepe suit and, as frequently happens in April, it’s 48 degrees outside.

Great-aunt: “Jewel, aren’t you freezing?”

My grandmother Jewel: “Sure, but I look good, don’t I?”

Ensuing decision upon being told this story: Never to name anyone Jewel.

Scene: My mother-in-law telling her friends that her son is getting married to “just the nicest girl.”

Friends: murmurs of assent and congratulations.

Mother-in-law: “And the best part of it is, she’s already Episcopalian!”

Ensuing gratitude for whatever makes my mother-in-law happy that I didn’t have to work at.

Scene: Famous writer turns to me at a dinner party, and out of the blue asks, “Have you ever had a serious operation?”

Scene: Friend Anna’s withering riposte to being wronged by others: “I have a big mouth and a wide acquaintance and intend to use both to your detriment.”

Ensuing decision to: 1. Stay on Anna’s good side, and 2. Adopt this adage myself.

And, in the spirit of the season, a couple of Christmas-themed favorites.

My older son to his sister: “I’m outsourcing my Christmas thank-you notes this year. Interested?”

His sister: Withering look.

My sister to me: “I’m giving my children electric blankets for Christmas this year. Do you think it will give them cancer?”

Me: Withering eye-roll.

Morals:  1. You can’t make this stuff up, and 2. Sooner or later, a writer is going to bite the hand that feeds it, and use your unforgettable utterances.  PS

Susan Kelly is a blithe spirit, author of several novels, and proud new grandmother.

Farewell to the Yankees

A Southerner loses that lovin’ feelin’

By Susan S. Kelly

A love affair of 55 years is coming to an end. All the symptoms are there: the nitpicking, the tetchiness, the gradual disaffection, even annoyance. Plus the self-searching question — Is it really worth it? — and the go-to from Ann Landers: Am I better off with or without him?

The romance began when I was around 7, and discovered among the Lifes and Times a magazine with a colorful cover drawn or painted — not photographed — with pictures I understood: beach scenes, city scenes, seasonal scenes. Scenes with dogs or kites or sailboats. Most surprisingly of all, there were cartoons inside. Cartoons in an adult magazine?

I was raised on the cartoons, on hardback collections of Peter Arno and Charles Addams and George Booth cartoons. When my parents had parties, I was allowed to eat Spaghettios in the kitchen and pored over those collections so long that I memorized them, and automatically use the punch lines in situations — Put us in the rear, we’re bound to make a scene, and Boo, you pretty creature! — and no one has the slightest idea where the non sequitur came from. When my sisters and I divided items before our family home was sold, the flatware sat there unnoticed while we eyed each other over who would choose the cartoon our father had framed and hung in our swimming pool dressing room: Do you realize there are hundreds of little girls who’d be happy to have a pool they had to clean?

I’m speaking, of course, of The New Yorker.

I have read The New Yorker, or at least parts of it, since I was old enough to read. As with any long-term relationship, we “went on a break,” in today’s parlance, during the partying years of college. But Nancy Bryan Faircloth of Greensboro’s own Bryan family, who saw a future writer in me, gave me a subscription at 20, which continued until her death, by which time I had been mainlining the mag so long that I re-upped and upped and upped. I’ve read The New Yorker on the treadmill and road trips and vacations and by the fire and by the club pool when my children were swimming and friends thought I was deeply weird.

I wallpapered my first apartment bathroom in its covers, as one does when in love. I framed the covers and hung them, checkerboard-like, over the sofa. I have poster-sized prints of a pair of covers (William Steig, illustrator of The Phantom Tollbooth), beautifully framed and hanging in my daughter’s bedroom.

I have gone to hear speakers based on their articles and stories in The New Yorker, including Calvin Trillin at UNCG. I’ve searched the internet for photographs of its writers (especially the cartoonists). I’ve sat in an otherwise depressing Algonquin Hotel lobby to see if the scalawag wits of the Round Table would speak to me. I’ve written an outraged letter to the editor — How dare you overlook a typo in a John Updike story? I’ve turned down hundreds of pages to look up vocabulary words, scissored sections for my To Keep Forever file, sought out books by and biographies about its writers, from E. B. White to J.D. Salinger and even the editor who decided where the commas belonged. Based on its reviews, I’ve gone to see movies that make me even weirder in the eyes of my friends, and endured my husband’s thinly veiled scorn for the magazine’s self-superiority. I’ve submitted stories — a truly laughable exercise in futility for a publication that receives some 300 submissions a day — perhaps just to get the rejection slip to tack on my bulletin board beside another cartoon; this one of a fellow speaking into a phone: “How about never? Is never good for you?”

And I’ve learned so much. About Shakespeare and sand. About Spanx and Zappos. About Stephen Sondheim and Willa Cather and chefs and foragers and long-distance swimmers and celebrities and scientists and what happens to unsold books. Personal histories about summer camp or losing a child or aging or writing, the tragic childhoods of aristocrats — wide-ranging and informative with a dose of human interest. Topics that appeal to the essentially voyeuristic personality of a writer, or someone who’s pretty good at Jeopardy!

And therein lie the reasons for the thinning of devotion, the dissolution of loyalty, the slow, painful, deliberate bust-up with the mother lode of linguistic perfection. More and more, the beloved covers have morphed to political caricatures and cartoons rather than sprightly, witty, whimsical art. Inside are articles about child soldiers and genocides and uprisings and corrupt leaders and terrorist strategy and the judicial system and failing — well, everything. So that, like texts that go unanswered in contemporary romances, two and three unread issues pile up, where they once were eagerly devoured. Glad anticipation has been replaced with relief, when an issue arrives with zero articles I want to read.

Ever heard this one? “You’re just not fun anymore.”

And so, goodbye luminous literary stars. Goodbye cartoons. Goodbye big words. Instead of a bang or a whimper, there’s just this variation on a Dear John: Dear The New Yorker, No need to renew my subscription. But I’ll never forget you.  PS

Susan Kelly is a blithe spirit, author of several novels, and proud new grandmother.

Hold the Aioli

And don’t even talk to me about sweet potatoes

By Susan Kelly

My first fast food was pineapple rings served straight from the squatty green Del Monte can alongside Chef Boyardee little pizzas warmed in the toaster oven. This was fast food because my mother was having a dinner party and she needed to feed us fast. I loved that combo of metallic sweet and salty acidic crunch. Today those flavors would have some fancy pants term like “sweet and savory.” My foodie sister-in-law in Raleigh would understand. I don’t even understand her tweets.

Catawba rabbit w vibrant pureed cararots, bl trumpets with earthy cihianti….,,,

Long Johnw blubry+ricotta fr@monutsDonuts is my style; NC sweet potato+horchata are destined for my boys’ bfast

Jennifer, the sister-in-law, is one of those people who just know culinary minutiae: that adding crabmeat to an otherwise ordinary potato soup will be delicious, or that arugula marries well with watermelon. I have never been part of that cognoscenti. I can, however, use words like cognoscenti with confidence. I can also coin cooking words. Nart, for example. Nart is a verb that describes using a food processor, whose etymology stems from the proper noun Cuisinart. Correct usage looks like this: “I narted the rotten bananas for banana bread.”

My family as a whole expends a lot of time and effort — and opinions — on food. When we’re all at the beach together, my sisters take pictures of their lunches. Truly. It’s a competition of plate tastes and appearance. Some three-bean salad at 4 o’clock, crackers with pimento cheese at 5. A half chicken salad sammie, several bread and butter pickles, a wee dab of leftover tomato pie from the night before, ditto the cold shrimp with a light coating of cocktail sauce, some of those suspiciously slick pre-cut knuckle-sized carrots with hummus. “I am so bummed,” one sister will say, studying the other’s plate, because she forgot there was some roasted okra hidden in the far corner of the fridge. When I get home from the beach, the Fig Newtons in the cupboard have gone hard as bullets. I am so bummed.

At 9, my youngest sister said, “When I grow up, I’m going to make enough money to buy nice things.” Like what? I asked, expecting cars, clothes, jewels. “Heinz ketchup instead of Hunt’s,” she said. Talk about your worthy aspirations! While other budding scientists were building weather stations, my nephew’s eighth-grade science project was titled “What Method Works Best?” It featured various old chestnuts about how to chop onions without weeping: holding the onion under water while cutting (I ask you, who manages that feat?), and holding a wad of white bread in your mouth. The winner was simply to don swim goggles, always a fashionable kitchen look. My question is this: Why not just nart the dang onions?

As an adviser for the roundly dreaded college application essay, I was finally rewarded with the perfect prompt one year: What is your favorite comfort food and why? At last, something my students and I could metaphorically sink our teeth into. Why labor over Uncle Jimmy as my Most Respected Person or an Eagle Scout project as my Proudest Achievement when you could write about all the varieties of comfort food? The road trip comfort food of Nabs and a Coke; the getting over the 24-hour throw-ups comfort food of scrambled eggs and grits; the tailgate comfort food of fried chicken; the Christmas morning comfort food of Moravian Sugar Cake; the late night comfort food of cold pizza; the — wait. My pupil has fled. Was it the mention of the throw-ups? Or maybe he divined that leadership qualities can’t really be addressed by writing about barbecue. Well, it’s been said before: College is wasted on the young.

I suppose food can only be written about with authority by famous television cooks. Those celebrity chefs, however, are a fraud, and real cooks know it. Real cooks cuss when the gnocchi clots into one big soggy dumpling. Real cooks shuck, silk and shave a dozen ears of Silver Queen for stewed corn to take to a sick friend and cry when they realize the milk they added had gone bad, just as they realize that they accidentally used a candy thermometer instead of a meat thermometer and it melted inside the pork roast. Real cooks have kitchen shelves that look like mine, where the cookbooks are lined up like an exhibit on domestication, representatives of each era of my marriage and culinary efforts.

Here are the homely (dowdy, matronly) spiral-bound paperback Junior League volumes, the recipes featuring cream of mushroom soup and Velveeta, and titled “Ladies Day Out Stew,” laughable and tender. Then comes the new wave, the Silver Palates, with charming pen-and-ink drawings, when arugula and aioli were a different language altogether. All those good intentions — Try this! I’ve innocently written in the margins — still captive, still somehow alive, in those cookbooks.

But never mind the effort and fuss, here to save us is Martha Stewart’s Quick Cook, proving you can be gourmet and effortless too. Beside Martha are the cookbooks dedicated to a single topic: Pasta Perfect, Soups, Grilling, Desserts. Now, it seems, we’ve returned to the Junior League: fancier hardback versions with enticing, lush color photographs of Kentucky Derby Pickup Supper or Oscar Night Buffet. Still the party menus. Still the names of contributors. And still my hopeful handwritten intentions: Try this!  PS

In a former life, Susan Kelly published five novels, won some awards, did some teaching, and made a lot of speeches. These days, she’s freelancing and making up for all that time she spent indoors writing novels.

The Brief Unwritten Social Rules of the Southern Womanhood

(Revealed at last)

By Susan Kelly

Opening caveat: No judgment here, as the millennials say. Simple reportage.

As brides-to-be, both my daughter and my daughter-in-law looked blankly at me when I mentioned a trousseau present. They had no clue as to what — much less how to spell — a trousseau is, er, was. OK, fine. One less gift to buy. (This, from the bride-to-be whose mother went with her to buy a honeymoon nightgown. For my trousseau. Later, I chopped off my mother’s peignoir to wear as a dressy top to cocktail parties. Draw your own Jungian, Freudian or rebellion conclusions.)

Like the era when mixing metals was simply not done, the time of wedding trousseaus, in which your mother’s friends brought gifts for your lingerie or linen or stationery drawer, has gone the way of children being seen and not heard. More’s the pity. But never fear, plenty of Unwrittens — obscure social mores you’re meant to follow that aren’t recorded anywhere and, often, have no basis in existing — are still out there, and I’m making a few publicly available. Ready?

Blacken the wicks of all candles even if they’re so fancy and curved and hand-dipped or whatever that you never plan to burn them. The brief sulphur aroma may cause your children or husband to sniff and say, “Have you been smoking?” to which you can point to the candles. Then they’ll say, “Why did you do that?” Good luck.

Answer all formal invitations in black ink only.

Honeydew should always be served with a slice of lime.

No front yard flowers. Exceptions: naturalizing bulbs (not tulips or hyacinths; crocus debatable) and these should only be growing in ground covers.

No botanical prints or skirted tables downstairs. (These last two from a Charleston friend’s mother. You should hear her on non-Christmas front door wreaths.)

Nice people have blanket covers.

No bare shoulders at a funeral. (This dictate from a friend whose baby nurse actually told her this as my friend was trying to get her post-natal body to a funeral.)

Beginning Labor Day, wear transitional dark cottons. This was an actual phrase at my house, and translated, for me, as cotton Black Watch plaid smocked dresses to school. (The brand new book satchel provided some offsetting comfort.)

Do not say purse. Say pocketbook. (Although my sister’s high-fashion boss at Belk told her that if she said pocketbook instead of bag one more time, she would fire her.)

Do not say hose. Say stockings. Exceptions can be made for pantyhose. (Though personally, as an Anglophile, I think we should switch to tights and be done with it.)

Do not say panties. Say underwear or underpants or, in a pinch, borrow u-trou from the boys. If you say panties, we can’t be friends. End of story.

Literally.  PS

In a former life, Susan Kelly published five novels, won some awards, did some teaching, and made a lot of speeches. These days, she’s freelancing and making up for all that time she spent indoors writing those five novels.

A Little Bacon Grease, Please

In praise of the olive oil of the south

By Susan Kelly

I miss bacon grease.

My grandmother and my mother — and I, as well, for a while — had a round, silvery metal container on the top of the stove for bacon grease where everyone now has their sea and/or kosher salt bowl. The container held a clever fitted strainer neatly built in, where crispy bits of brown were trapped. These are the bits, my mother says, that make your eggs unlovely if you scramble them up in the same cast iron pan that you cook your bacon in. I have no use for these aesthetics, but it’s easier to answer, “Fine.”

Even less appealing to the eye, beneath the sieve was stuff that resembled pus, but grainier. A semi-solid that wasn’t quite white, but wasn’t quite yellow.

Nowadays, we don’t even cook bacon anymore, or rarely, the big-breakfast must-have that smells so good. We buy it already cooked at Costco and just nuke that baby for your BLT or spinach salad or squash casserole. But at one time bacon grease was king. It reigned over butter, margarine, Crisco, the works. Bacon grease went into cornbread and was an understood ingredient for the pot likker in crowder peas and butterbeans and green beans. You put a dollop in a pan and fried up a hot dog or slice of bologna. Or okra. Heck, you used a cup of the stuff in red beans.

Bacon grease went into the dog food, too. Lab to dachshund, it made their coats shine, or so it was believed. With our dogs drooling over those dry chunks coated with bacon grease, their supper looked so good I nearly wanted to eat it myself.

Bacon grease was the olive oil of yesteryear, though it didn’t come in pretty containers, and you actually had to cook to get it. You couldn’t buy bacon grease at T.J. Maxx, or upscale foodie stores, or the everyday Teeter, for that matter. Still, like olive oil that comes from certain regions or specific orchards, bacon grease had a provenance too: your own kitchen. It wasn’t cold-pressed or extra virgin or truffle-flavored. It was, however, labeled, though not in a foreign language or with pretty, Italianate fonts. The container said GREASE right there in raised, silver, block, all cap letters.

Even purists could throw a little sausage grease in there, too. Neese’s patties are preferred over links, though links are an admittedly more convenient vehicle to dredge, swipe and swish through the syrup left behind by the pancakes and waffles. To this day, I’m still unsure what made me feel more that I’d become a bona fide grownup in the kitchen of my first apartment: potholders, or that store-bought GREASE can.

When it comes to stove-sitting-stuff, salt bowls may be trendier, even healthier, but nothing — including spoon rests and olive oil spritzers — has the personality and presence of a metal grease container. Empty frozen O.J. cans need not apply.  PS

In a former life, Susan Kelly published five novels, won some awards, did some teaching, and made a lot of speeches. These days, she’s freelancing and making up for all that time she spent indoors writing those five novels.