In Defense of Valentine's Day

Since it's only a few days away, Valentine's Day is really getting some flack.

It seems to be the favored holiday to hate- everyone from single people to florists to restaurant staff to those who regularly bemoan our consumerist society.

But I must respectfully disagree.

Valentine's Day is one of my most favorite holidays, right up there with Thanksgiving, for being at its purest a celebration of something wonderful- love.

Yeah, certain powers that be want you to think that you have to spend a great deal of money to make this holiday significant, whether it be candy, stuffed animals, flowers or jewelry (while we're on the topic, could that Kay Jewelers necklace that Jane Seymour is hawking look any more like butts?)

Who knew Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman was such a perv?

And yeah, you could fall for that. But honestly, the commercialization of Christmas hurts my heart far more than aisles of pink and red heart-shaped boxes of mediocre chocolates. There's something far more obscene about people celebrating Jesus' birth with big-screen tv sets than buying some flowers for your loved one.

And I must also disagree that it's a holiday that solely serves to taunt the unattached, the single, and the lonely. And I think I have my parents to thank for that.

You see, I grew up believing Valentine's Day wasn't about mushy romantic love. It was a day set aside to make sure you told the people you love that you loved them. That was it. My parents made a big deal out of Valentine's Day for us, because they saw it as a day to celebrate their love for us. My dad bought me flowers for my very first Valentine's Day, when I was barely two months old.

And then when I was ten, two days before Valentine's Day, we had a horrible house fire late at night that only reinforced my love for this holiday and what it really represented.

My brother and sister and I were taken to our grandmother's to stay while my parents tried to salvage what they could of our house and find us a new place to stay and new stuff. When they came to pick us up, in spite of everything, they had a Valentine's Day card for me. It was simple- an illustration of a pink ice cream soda that on the inside said something like 'You're So Sweet.' But my mom and dad wrote how much they loved me and that everything was going to be okay, words I really needed to hear at a time when I was wearing borrowed clothes and had lost everything I had ever owned in my short life up till then. I still have that card. It's the essence of Valentine's Day to me.

And my parents also brought another special treat: my 4th grade classmates had saved my valentines for me. Looking through the cheesy little punch-out cards bedecked with Smurfs and other cartoon characters, I felt normal. I felt like a normal little girl, not one that had just a few weeks ago gone running through a smoke-filled hallway dodging sparks that were shooting down from the ceiling. Those tiny cards with their ink-blotty or smudgy pencil signatures were the greatest gift I could have received.

So give Valentine's Day a break. Don't give in to what Jane Seymour and her butts necklace want you to think the holiday is. Use it as an opportunity to tell people in your life that you love them. You can never do enough of that, anyway; what's the harm in a day set aside to remind you? And if you're really feeling lonely, make your way to your local animal shelter and heal a heart you find there. You'll never find love as generous and unconditional as a pet's.

Oh, and don't forgot that you can load up on candy super-cheap the day after.

Of Newspapers and Nutcrackers

I've slacked off on answering this question because I didn't have a really good answer. I wasn't exactly a carefree child. I was a worrier, an overthinker, a perfectionist. I remember feeling frustrated a lot that I wasn't taken seriously because I was a little kid. I remember having my feathers ruffled on many occasions because some adult laughed when I used big words. I clearly don't miss any of that.

But then on Sunday, a couple of friends and I took our friend's children to see the Ithaca Ballet's performance of the Nutcracker. And it reminded me of what was great about being a little girl.

First of all, hats off to Annie and Charlotte for their behavior. They were quiet, rapt, and paid attention to what was going on on-stage. Very impressive for a four and five-year-old. Annie climbed into my lap to take advantage of my aisle seat's choice view. Sitting there, with her head leaned back on my shoulder, I saw the show through her eyes, seeing the spectacle of costumes and sets and fake snow dropping from up above for the first time. When she gasped at the entrance of the Mouse King, I did too. And she made up stories about what was happening on stage when, frankly, all the 'hail fellow well met' night before Christmas formal party dancing got a little boring.

It reminded me of the best part of being a little girl, at least for me: the freedom to visit whatever strange places your head takes you to, to lose yourself in an imaginary world of your creation and not have any hesitancy about what other people might think. 

My cousin recently found some letters I had sent her (we had quite the correspondence going on back in the early 80s), including my first (and I believe only) issue of the Vegetable News. I think I've mentioned before
here that I had a thing for vegetables when I was kid. I thought they were hysterical and was always writing stories and plays starring them (Okrahoma! never made it past a concept, unfortunately.) Apparently, I also thought they were newsworthy.

I also had sage advice to offer:

I really do not know what I was talking about regarding the "beepers" that get "installed in your ear." Or I could see the future and failed to take full advantage of my prescience regarding bluetooth headsets.

I also showed an appalling lack of understanding of genetics:

(Or I was inappropriately inspired by Kermit the Frog and Fozzie Bear playing "twin" crack reporters in The Great Muppet Caper.)

I apparently watched the sh!t out of the '84 Olympics as well. And a lot of episodes of "Alice."

But I didn't care. I wasn't writing for any audience other than my cousin. I gave no consideration to what anyone else would think. It amused me, I thought it would entertain her, nothing else mattered.

I miss that kind of simplicity.

And writing about vegetables. I should get back into that.

 aftirI

Of flappers and fashion

I have a great fondness for that period of time post-Edwardian era when corsets were on their way out and the flappers were just beginning to make themselves known.

Dresses were getting roomier but with a slimmer, straighter shape.

But I overwhelmingly prefer the 1920s. Besides all that beautiful art deco beading, dropped waists were de rigeur, which is great for me because I'm surprisingly long-waisted for someone as short as I am. This means that the waists on regular dresses usually hit me way up on my ribcage, with my natural waist falling anywhere from two to four inches below the waist on the dress, which besides being incredibly uncomfortable is also terribly unflattering.

Also- look at those shoes- sensible heels! High enough for shape, but not so sharp you could use them as a weapon. Your ankles aren't in danger from snapping when you wear these beauties. You could run for a bus in these shoes.








Cute hats were an important part of 1920s fashion. I love a good hat.

Beyond the 1920s, I also dig Katharine Hepburn in a pair of flowy trousers,

Audrey Hepburn in a simply cut little black dress. And a hat.

 Mostly because my hair is growing out and getting kind of wild, I've been intrigued by Stevie Nicks/ Jean Shrimpton in the 70s with their long flowy dresses, shawls and big boots. I love boots almost as much as hats.

But truthfully, I'm happy to be existing now with fewer fashion rules than we've ever had. You're free to pick from all these past decades and choose what you like and how you want to combine it. Yes, there have been some damn ugly trends (those platform stiletto heels that make you look like you fashioned a pair of shoes out of a couple kleenex boxes, the unfortunately ubiquitous flip flop, flesh-colored pantyhose, jumpsuits) but we're a lot healthier about what we'll do to ourselves in the name of fashion.

I'm appreciative every day to live at a moment in time without corsets, foot-binding, hoopskirts, or towering powdered wigs.  

 It's a helluva lot safer, too.

Of Breakfast Meats and War Movies

Olivia Pope don't need no nickname.

My first name is "Kerry" and that, along with its spelling, does not lend itself easily to a nickname. In its other variations, it usually is a nickname of itself.  "Carrie" is usually short for "Caroline," for example. But "Kerry" is not short for anything, even though I've met several people who insisted it couldn't be, it HAS to be short for something and why won't I just tell them my full name?? What am I trying to hide from them??? (I don't see anyone pestering Kerry Washington about this.)

My sister is in the same boat. Her name is Katie. Just Katie. Not Katherine, not Kathleen, not Kaitlyn. Just Katie. I should know; I named her. (If she was a boy, she would've been Busy Timmy. YOU'RE WELCOME.)

So I've never really had people try to shorten my name to a nickname. There's been the occasional "Kerr" thrown out there in casual encounters (and never repeated after the initial experiment because 1. it sounds weird and 2. dropping the "y" at the end does not really shorten it much). I had a teacher in high school who called me "Kerr Bear" like the Care Bears, which was a little perplexing but I think he was just grasping at straws.

The only real nickname I've ever had is the one my dad gave me when I was baby:  Hamchuck.

Yeah, it's right there in the title to this blog. The irony is that I hate ham. I don't even like Canadian bacon because it's too hamlike. Hamlike? Hammy? ( I love the Denny's breakfast special named "Moons Over My Hammy." But only for the pun. I'd want to substitute sausage for the ham. But "Moons Over My Sausage" just sounds really, really dirty and too unpleasant for breakfast time. Although in doing a quick search just now, I learned that Moons Over My Hammy is actually slang. I'll let you find out for yourselves. And yes, by the way, I do eat other pig products. I like bacon; I like sausage. I will even eat ham if it's chopped up in teeny tiny bits and used primarily to flavor another dish, like mac & cheese or even split pea soup. But ham on its own is gross. So are pork chops. But I digress.)

My dad, however, LOVES ham. Loves it. (Even in Spam form, god help his liver.) So much so, that I always assumed that's why he called me Hamchuck. He loved me, so of course he'd call me after his favorite meat product, right?

Well, turns out it's not quite that cute.

A few years ago, a friend of the family read my blog post about chasing after a bat in my parents' house after bringing my dad home from knee surgery. He informed me that "Hamchuck" is actually a character's name in the John Wayne movie "The Green Berets." Hamchuck (or alternately "Ham Chunk") is a Vietnamese orphan who is taken under the wing of one of the main characters, Sgt. Petersen.

Here's what IMDB said about the film:

Hamchuck is the one on the right.

"Petersen befriends a young native boy named Ham Chuck, a war orphan who has no family other than his dog and the soldiers at the basecamp. As the battle rages, the dog is killed and the boy tearfully buries his faithful companion. Symbolically, the boy uses the stick he had used to dig the dog's grave as the tombstone. As the soldiers rush to their defensive positions, the stick is knocked away, leaving an unmarked grave."


I think I preferred the pork product reference.

Screw you, Dorothy Hamill.

Was it this one?

Or perhaps this one?

Nope. Definitely this one:

This one right here. 

Hellllooo, headband. 

*sigh*

Of Loss and Luck

Yes, I know this blog post is supposed to be about the topic card I found last week, "who do you sorely miss." I'm not veering far. This is about loss and luck.

I got into a bit of a Facebook-comments battle with someone who posted a story about the folks who took advantage of a technical error with their EBT cards that left them with no spending limit and went on a spree. While, yes, that was despicable behavior, the comments left about this article were cruel and disparaging to anyone using public assistance or even being in the position of needing it, with some especially vicious yet typical mean-girl comments from the poster's wife (they fell into the eloquent 'oh no she didn't, don't make me come after you, I'm gonna beat you up behind the silk mill after school, which really means I'll just launch myself at you, scream and pull your hair' typical invective of the less-intelligent variety of mean girls that populated my hometown area and for all I know, still do.)

I was, quite literally, stunned at the viciousness that poured out through their comments for anyone who was not as well off as they are.

Maybe I'm naive, but I didn't realize people hated people who are poorer than them. Loathing those who have more than you, that I understand, but why all the hate for someone who'd fallen on hard times and needed a hand?

I got to wondering if this was just the way we think as Americans. We've always idolized rich people- we emulate them, we eagerly read every tiny detail about their lives, we're supposed to aspire to become them. But did we resent poor people as much during the Great Depression as we do now?

I posted a question on Facebook asking this and got some thoughtful responses. The most succinct was from a friend who had seen Garrison Keillor speak recently and mentioned that he said no one resented or mocked poor people back then because everyone was poor. Considering the hard financial times we're going through, I wonder why we don't share that same attitude. Very few of us can claim we're completely financially secure; I don't know anyone who doesn't have some worries about money, who doesn't worry about the roof caving in over their heads, both figuratively and literally. Our incomes have declined while the cost of goods and services have increased. We're really not any better off than we were before the financial crisis hit.

And why don't these people turn their anger to those who did this to us in the first place? Why is their disdain saved for the single mom with two toddlers who husband ran out on her instead of the Wall Street maverick who made record profits off other people's misfortune? I suspect that that attitude is driven by fear, a subterranean ice-cold dread you hide deep down in your consciousness and fight very hard to keep from thinking about, a fear that that down-on-their-luck person could be you.

Because it could. Honestly, it's not so much about doing everything right or following the rules; it's all about luck. Some people who do bad things have good luck; some good folks who try their hardest every day get crapped on by bad luck. Luck is a dirty, fickle little troll who haphazardly and arbitrarily decides to either kiss you or spit on you. You have no control over luck; maybe that's what's so scary.


It made me think of a friend of mine. We knew each other in high school- not well,  we shared the comradery of the mat-sitters- the unathletic amongst us who sought sanctuary in the furthest reaches of the gym during PE to avoid being called on to participate. I got to know her better through Facebook as adults. She was funny, sharp, witty, kind, and above all, honest. She was the first to call someone out for perpetuating a bullshit stereotype. I wished I could hear her voice on the discussions I was reading.

My friend was a good person who knew bad luck; she knew struggle. I read her posts as she learned of her mother's illness, hundreds of miles away. She shared with us her desperation to visit her mother one last time so she could meet her little girl, so her daughter would get to meet her grandmother just one time. Somehow, she made it happen. I felt like I was on the journey with her- watching her little girl's wonder at her first plane trip, the weird hotel where they were staying, her joy at seeing her daughter and her mother together.

Her mother passed away not long after the trip. It was her spot of good luck that she'd been able to see it before that happened. I admired her so much as she dealt with her grief and took the steps she needed to move on with her life. I shared in her joy at buying her first ever new couches. (My own new couches, my first ever pieces of furniture that weren't handed down from someone else, were still a source of wonder to me, too.) Her family adopted a kitten. Things seemed good again.

Then her husband fell ill. Seriously ill. My friend ranted and raved, she was furious at fate- that fickle troll's ugly cousin- for dealing her this hand so soon after facing tragedy. She threw herself into caring for him and fighting his illness with him. Things were serious, but he was responding to treatments and there was hope ahead.

And then one day, as I checked her page, I saw a post that was not written by her, but her husband. My friend had suddenly collapsed while walking from her car to her apartment with her daughter and died. They thought it might have been a blood clot from recent surgery. She'd been complaining about sharp leg pain and had had a blood clot previously.

I didn't know what to do with this information. We were still young enough for the death of a classmate to be unusual and strange. It was just so sudden. It just seemed so unfair. She had brand new couches, dammit! She had plans for the future! I think she had tickets for a cruise. She had a brand-new kitten. She had a little girl to raise.

I thought of my friend and her family a lot. They were good people. They didn't deserve what happened to them. They didn't ask for that. It was just bad luck.

And then yesterday I happened on to my friend's Facebook page where her husband had occasionally posted updates on how their little girl was doing. Another friend, one I don't know, had posted a notice.

Just a little over a month after his wife- my friend- had died, her husband succumbed to his illness and passed away. I really was in shock this time. All I could think of was, "What horrible luck." And to think of their daughter, just four years old, having to deal with all this tragedy. Only people in olden times, in your grandparents' time, lost their entire family when they were so small. It seems like such an old-fashioned thing to have happen to you. Even the word they use to describe someone who has lost their parents is so antiquated, so Dickensian- "orphan."

My friend's little girl is being cared for by family members. I wish her so much peace, love, and good counseling or therapy. And I most fervently wish that her family's hard luck has been used up, and she has nothing but the good kind from here on out.