Category: essay

The Mark of Mordechi.

There were always dirty spots on the hallway carpets and in the elevators when I lived at Sage Pointe.  At first glance, they looked like the usual suspects, perhaps greasy take‑out containers leaking through flimsy bags, or perhaps the aftermath of a dog with poor timing.  Whatever their origin, the stains remained year after year after year, since no one on the board of directors ever bothered to call a carpet‑cleaning company to shampoo the carpets.

One weekend, though, someone obviously made an effort.  A sharp smell of Resolve® or Shout® hung in the hallways, proof that some anonymous soul had tried to scrub away the blotches.  Whoever it was deserved a medal for attempting to keep the place somewhat presentable.

Then came the Saturday afternoon when I stood waiting for the elevator to reach my floor.  At last, the doors slid open, and there stood Maddee and her younger brother, Mordechi, dripping from the pool and armed with their usual assortment of floaties and bottles.  Just as the doors parted, I caught Maddee in mid‑swoop, giving her water bottle a final flourish and spraying the elevator carpet.  When I looked down, I saw she had left a large, wet “M” beside the other permanent stains.  She and her brother stepped out quickly, their faces tight with guilt and silence.

I greeted them anyway, asked how they were. “How you doing?” I asked.  Maddee’s cheeks flushed deep crimson, and she stammered and babbled through a jumble of half‑formed words as she tripped over her tongue.  She knew that I knew.

The next morning, more than twelve hours later, I rode the elevator again.  The wet “M” was still there.  If it had been water, it would have evaporated long before.  Whatever she’d squirted (soda? juice? suntan lotion?) had soaked in and stayed put.  It’s still there to this day.

Funny, isn’t it, how the Stankle kids, the offspring of Adonis the preacher man and his aromatic wife, aren’t always the paragons one might expect.  And the kids weren’t toddlers; at the time this happened she was about eleven, he was about nine.  Both were old enough to know better and old enough to choose differently.  After all, their father preached it every Sunday and Wednesday on stage.

In a condominium association like Sage Pointe, the carpets in every building told the truth long before the residents did.  Every stain, every spill, every careless squirt from a child’s bottle became part of the story we all had to live with.

Courtesy, like cleanliness, is a shared responsibility.  It’s one that begins with small choices made when no one is supposed to be watching.  And yet, as those lingering marks remind us, someone always is watching, even if it’s only God.

 

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Not-So-Sweet Tarts, and When No One’s Minding.

A Lesson in Modesty.

In a lot of areas around the country, this weekend marks the opening of public swimming pools, so dig out your floating devices and the skimpiest swimwear you can find.  This story comes from a time when I lived in a condominium with swimming pools, a wading pool, a cedar-lined steam room, and all the inconsiderations you can imagine.

The elevator car came to a stop on the lobby floor.  The doors slid open, and I was ready to step out, until I froze mid-step.  What made me pause were the three young women standing directly in front of me, momentarily blocking my path, dressed in barely-there bikinis and entirely unbothered by their own near‑nakedness in a public hallway.

They were college‑age visitors, laughing and carefree, accompanied by one of the downstairs middle‑aged neighbors who was wrapped in a thick beach robe.  The trio of girls, I found out later, spent the weekend coming and going, and the next day I saw them again, heading down the back stairs toward the pool.  As those sweet tarts walked, their swimsuits shifted and rode up, leaving little to the imagination between the ripples of fat and even less to modesty, by cracky.

There was even a time in the dead heat of summer where it just happened that an older, senior-type crowd was having a get-together under the heat of the blazing sun.  A group of teenage girls in tiny bikinis made their way down the pool’s stairs, smirking and walking slow and seductively right in front and past the men.  The women were at another corner of the pool and appeared not to notice the bru-ha-ha.

Throughout the swimming season, the indoor pool area itself told the rest of the story.  In the corners were mounds of inflatable toys stacked so high they reached halfway up the walls.  Beach balls, float rings, plastic ducks, water pistols, and abandoned gadgets cluttered the water.  More than once, if you wanted to swim, you had to fish out stray and abandoned toys or dive to the bottom to retrieve whatever had been left behind.  Interestingly, the steam room was always left clean and uncluttered.

Yet, it was the renters and short‑term visitors who were the ones who mostly descended upon the pools and hot tub, and that’s where most of the disorder began and remained.  Sure, they enjoyed all of the amenities but had no real stake in the property, so there was little incentive to care for it.  And, truthfully, the same could be said for the owners who hosted these guests or rented out their units.  The result was the same: a shared space treated as disposable simply because it belonged to everyone and therefore, in their minds, to no one.

In the end, what unsettled me was more than the exposed full butt cheeks and almost-to-the-nipples cleavage, or the toys or even the noise, but the casual indifference that trailed behind them all.  A shared space only works when the people passing through it feel some measure of responsibility for what they touch and leave behind.  When they don’t, when visitors treat the place as a weekend playground and owners look the other way, the common areas slowly erode.  And standing there in the elevator doorway, watching another wave of guests drift toward the pool, I realized how quickly a condominium building can lose its hominess when too many people forget or just don’t bother to care for it.

 

 

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Stench in the Shadows.

In the condominium association where I lived once upon a time, there was a strange occurrence that only a brave resident could resolve.  This is the true story.

The overstuffed garbage bags appeared twice weekly in the broom closet on the fifth floor of the condominium building.

What brought this to the attention of the residents was the overpowering stench of rotting foods in the bags.

On a Saturday morning, Miss Wanda, the bravest of the fifth-floor residents, had enough of the reek and marched to the broom closet.  Several residents followed her, for they wanted to be in on the revelation.  Wanda opened the door, and there it was: an overstuffed Hefty® bag emitting a stench that would knock a skunk off his beam.

Wanda took one of the bags and opened it up.  Everyone around her jumped back and held their noses.

“It smells like death,” Old Man Fontane gasped.  “Death on a plate of rotted sardines.”

“At least!” gagged Issac Brenner.  “It smells worse than my ex-wife’s armpits after a sweaty walk in the park.  I’d know that stench anywhere.  Barf!”

“Hoo-eee, Lordy!”  Mrs. Chisa Cooke walked away while holding her nose.  “Y’all enjoy.  I’m headed off to watch Julia reruns on my brand new television.”

Bravely, Miss Wanda dug into the garbage bag.  Slimy beet greens, a moldly banana, empty cartons, and paper brochures from the Poconos greeted her.  She dug around until she saw an envelope.  She reached for it with two fingers.

“Ah!  Well.”  She examined the address.  “Ah ha!  It’s from that brood across the hall from me.  I’ll talk to them.”  The neighbors nodded their heads and a few just whispered, “Ooo!” and “Yeah.”

Miss Wanda knocked on the Stankles’ door.  After talking with the grandmama, neighbors could hear the two women laughing before Miss Wanda returned to her condominium.

“So who did it?” Mrs. Chisa Cooke asked the next day in the laundry room.

“Oh, it was her youngest grandbaby, Tristane.  Do you know that ten-year-old is afraid of the dark, so he just tosses the garbage bags in the broom closet and runs back home!  His parents never check to see if the boy is doin’ his errands right.””

 

 

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Elevator Encounter.

It was Monday evening in March several years ago, Saint Patrick’s Day in fact, when I lived at Sage Pointe and had the weirdest encounter at the elevator.  It was the kind of evening that felt like it had already overstayed its welcome with humidity, the sun nearly set below the horizon, and the atmosphere vaguely resentful overall.  The evening just didn’t feel right.  I had some business to attend to on the first floor of my condominium building.  It wasn’t anything dramatic; just a quick look-see on a neighbor’s wreath on the door.  Once that was done, I turned back toward the elevator, ready to ascend to the relative peace of my penthouse suite.

The elevator dinged open with its usual lack of enthusiasm.  Out stepped the dog walker who was a lean, overworked man with the expression of someone who’d long ago stopped pretending to enjoy his job.  He was wrangling two dogs that week: a jittery black and white shih-tzu dogs, one with a Napoleon syndrome and the other who looked like he’d seen too much in life.  They belong to the renter, “Princess,” we all called her.  Anyway, behind the dog walker emerged a disheveled woman who could only be described as a walking cautionary tale.

She was large, loud, and chaotic in every sense.  Her hair was a brittle, bottle-blonde explosion of stringy straw, unbrushed and defying gravity, as if she’d just lost a fight with the town’s stray cat in an electric storm.  Her clothes hung off her like they’d given up trying to flatter her shape, and her arms were crammed full with an assortment of objects: papers, a purse that had seen better decades, and a large bag that looked like it had been repurposed from a deflated beanbag chair.

Before I could step aside, she lunged forward, thrusting her face into mine with the urgency of someone trying to solve a crime in real time.

“146—Eight?  148?  148?” she barked, her breath a cocktail of tobacco, menthol, and desperation.

I blinked.  I had no idea what she was babbling about.  Was it a code?  A unit number?  A cry for help?

“148?” she repeated right in my face, louder this time, as if volume might unlock my comprehension.

“Umm—” I managed, instinctively leaning back, trying to create space between her and my personal bubble, which she had already detonated.

The dog walker, sensing my confusion and her unraveling, stepped in like a reluctant mediator.

“Here,” he said, gesturing down the hallway and beginning to walk, the two mutts trailing behind him like reluctant furry witnesses.  “I’ll help you get there.”

I didn’t wait for the encore.  I slipped into the elevator, pressed the button for my floor, and let the doors close on whatever that was.  The ride up felt like a small victory.  Quiet, controlled, and blessedly devoid of oddball mystery women and their numerical riddles.

 

 

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The Quiet Edges.

There was once a resident in a condominium I owned, a man so enigmatic that no one ever quite claimed to know him.  He drifted through the halls like a rumor made flesh, and before long he became the quiet talk of the association.  Here’s the story:

He kept to himself, and barely anyone knew his name.  It was said that Alonzo’s jet black, laid down styled hair shone so bright it might have lit up all of Sage Pointe.  His hair was a shimmering emblem of confidence and unspoken connection.

“Alonzo,” those who knew his name would say, “He got the thickest, the baddest, the most outta-sight edges this side of Sage Pointe.”

“Alonzo?  Ain’t he the one with the black patent leather hair?”

“Shiny and bright, that Alonzo is.”

I know that Alonzo’s secret was SoftSheen Dark and Natural in “Jet Black.”  I’ve seen the box he threw out in the recycling bin.  His “secret” might have looked unnatural as vinyl patent leather shoes, but he had not one grey hair on his head.  It was a one-tone black from the back of his head to the slicked down edges in the front, from sideburn to sideburn.

As time passed, Alonzo’s hair became more than just a spectacle; it turned into a beacon of curiosity and a source of fascination at Sage Pointe.  People were in awe about him at the monthly condominium association meetings – the few times he bothered to show up.  They marveled at him in the church, drooled at him in the grocery store line, admired him at the barbershop, and speculated about his unknown secrets at the local diner.  Yet Alonzo carried on, keeping to himself, his glossy raven hair unfaltering, like a strange moon in its perennial glow.

But one summer evening, at the annual Sage Pointe party, Alonzo broke his silence.  He sauntered onto the wooden dance floor at the activity center with his head held high, dressed sharp as a razor in a cream‑colored linen suit that caught the breeze just so, a narrow burgundy tie tucked neatly against a crisp pale yellow shirt, and red shoes polished to a mirror shine.  The flashing dance lights cast dazzling reflections off both his raven‑black hair and the blinding shine of his shoes.  Eight gold rings gleamed on his fingers — thick, heavy bands with diamonds, emeralds, and garnets that flashed each time his hands cut through the air, catching the lights as surely as his raven‑black hair.  He moved with an easy, unhurried confidence, swaying to the beat of funk music like he had been born for that moment.

Earlier that evening, I watched as he stood off to the side of the party room sampling the appetizers— deviled eggs dusted with paprika, tiny ham biscuits, and those colorful cellophane-tipped toothpicks that skewered a variety of cheese cubes that squeaked when you bit into them.  He washed it all down with two strawberry daiquiris so cold that the condensation rolled down the red plastic Solo® cup like sweat on a July window.  He sipped them slow, savoring each icy, syrup‑sweet mouthful as though it were part of some private ritual that he wanted no one else to be a part of.

I watched him in awe along with the crowd and laughed when Alonzo pulled a small group of kids into his groove.  “It’s all in the soul, you crumb crunchers!  Dance like your hair shines brighter than the stars,” he declared, a wide smile breaking through his elusive façade.  That night, he wasn’t the enigma they had speculated about.  He was the rhythm, the light, the joy.

That is what everyone wanted to believe.

By the time the party was over, it was said that Alonzo’s edges shone so bright it might have lit up all of Sage Pointe.  After the party, although he disappeared into the quiet mystery of his condominium once again, his name would be remembered as the man who brought the condominium association an evening they would never forget.

But in the weeks and months that followed, people began to notice something strange: no one saw Alonzo at church, or in the grocery line, or even passing by the barbershop window.  His apartment blinds stayed drawn, his mailbox appeared untouched.  Some said he’d moved away; others whispered he’d simply slipped into the night the way he’d always lived— quietly, without explanation.  His silver car would be in his parking spot, and sometimes not.  His monthly assessments still were paid in full and on time.  But no one actually saw him.

Now on certain humid evenings, when the streetlights flicker and the cicadas fall silent, a few swear they’ve seen a glint, just a brief flash, like moonlight on patent leather, disappearing around the corner before they can call his name.  And in Sage Pointe, that is enough to keep the legend alive.

In time, the condominium association learned to stop asking where Alonzo had gone.  Life in Sage Pointe moved on, as it always does, yet something in the air felt slightly altered, as though a faint shimmer had been left behind.  The wooden dance floor where he’d once spun the children around seemed to hold a deeper polish, catching the light in ways no one could quite explain.  And every so often, when the dusk settled low and the streetlamps hummed to life, someone would pause mid‑stride, certain they’d caught the scent of pomade or felt the whisper of a beat only Alonzo could hear.  Whether he had slipped away to some quieter corner of the world or simply stepped into the shadows he’d always belonged to, no one could say.  But the memory of that night, and the man whose hair shone like a secret, lingered in Sage Pointe like a story half‑told, waiting forever for the rest of its truth to surface.

 

 

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Cutting the Mustard.

A Lesson in Gluttony and Control.

Finally, there is only French’s® yellow and Gulden’s® brown on my pantry shelf.

Once upon a time, that space was also shared – packed, in fact – with small jars holding other variations: champagne, chipotle, curry, honey, jalapeno, siracha, Dijon, . . .

Then, one day, I said aloud, “That’s it!  No more of these yuppified wannabees!”

And Lo!  The clouds parted and the sun came out.  Best Friend assented my exclamation with a “Hear!  Hear!”

We do like mustard.  It was easy to pick up a small jar of something a little different when we stopped by our local winery.  What’s a two-ounce jar of champagne honey mustard?  It didn’t take up much refrigerator shelf space along with the other six or seven two-ounce jars.

Yet, that one day, I had enough.  Those “specialty” mustards began tasting pretty much alike.  There wasn’t anything special about them anymore, except perhaps their unusually shaped jars that really had no further purpose for me after the last bit of mustard was scraped from the sides.

I was throwing money out the proverbial window.  And for what?  To feel like we were indulging in something special or upper class?

Pfffft.  It was a waste.  We said right then and there that those types of mustards won’t darken our doors again.  From then on, it will be a bottle of yellow, a bottle of brown, and a jar of Dijon.  That’s all!  No more yuppy mustard, as we call it.  No more fancy-this and fancy-that.

Along the same lines, in fact, the equivalent goes for fancy horseradish – I have a bottle of siracha horseradish that I bought a few weeks ago from a mom-and-pop grocery store in a neighboring town.  Is it anything special?  No, not really.  It’s really not what I expected; it’s not any hotter or spicier than regular horseradish, and it has a strange, sweet background taste to it.  I could kick myself for not reading the ingredients list better, because this bottle of weirdness has corn syrup in it.  (We’re cutting out corn syrup from our diet).  So, if I want the kick that siracha gives to my bowl of pho or broiled chicken or vegetable stir fry, I can get the siracha bottle from the refrigerator and squeeze a shot or two on my plate.  If I want horseradish, I can make my own fresh or buy a jar of straight horseradish.  I don’t need an odd yuppie horseradish-siracha concoction. Keeping it simple, silly!

So, we’re cutting the mustard.  We’re keeping it unpretentious.  Now on the refrigerator shelf sits a container of yellow, a bottle of brown, and there is a space for Dijon because I need that specifically for making Steak Diane.  Otherwise, any other types of strange mustards will remain on the store and winery shelves, available for other shoppers and connoisseurs to fill up their refrigerators and sate their taste buds with frou-frou table mustards.

It’s minimalism for us now.

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Hack, Steal, Swipe, and Other Modern Courtesies.

It’s the Language of Plunder, and it’s all the rage I’m talking about today.

Every so often, my thoughts drift toward the strange new definitions floating around in the modern lexicon.  It’s those little word fads that flare up, spread everywhere, and then vanish the moment a shinier bit of slang arrives.  A word fad, as I see it, is a piece of language used mindlessly, repeated without understanding, and destined for the linguistic landfill as soon as the next trend rolls in.

One of the most abused is hack.  We now have hair hacks, cooking hacks, travel hacks, security hacks, hacks for everything under the sun.   The word is slapped onto any tip, trick, or mildly useful suggestion.  Yet its true definitions include “gaining unauthorized access” and “cutting with heavy blows.”  Neither definition suggests something gentle, clever, or admirable.  Hack!

But instead of offering tips such as hair tips, security tips, cooking tips, we hack, hack, hack.  Take unauthorized access.  Grab and run.  Rip off.  Steal.

Which brings me to another disturbing phrase I hear far too often: “I’m going to steal that idea!”

Usually, it’s said when someone supposedly admires another person’s décor, recipe, style, or skill.  Once upon a time, we might have simply complimented the person.  We might even (brace yourself) have asked permission to borrow the idea.  However, courtesy is apparently passé these days.  Why ask when you can proudly announce your intention to steal from that person?

Why, indeed?  Hands up!  Hand it over!

So now everything is framed as theft: steal, swipe, take, hack.  Even admiration is expressed in The Language of Plunder.

It’s a small thing, perhaps, however, small things shape habits, and habits shape culture.  When our everyday speech defaults to the vocabulary of taking, it’s no wonder the world feels increasingly coarse, transactional, and grabby.

And yet, here we are.  This is the way of things now.

In the end, these little phrases are not harmless quirks of speech; they reveal how casually we treat one another.  When the language of theft becomes the language of admiration, something in our cultural posture shifts away from gratitude, away from courtesy, away from the simple dignity of asking.  Words shape habits, and habits shape the world we build together.  If we want a gentler world, perhaps we begin by speaking as though one is still possible.

 

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When the Hallways Talk.

A short story from the past.

For hours, JeVaughn Willard sat in his recliner, frowning at the sporadic thuds and rolling rumbles echoing through the Sage Pointe Condominium building.  He took another puff of his Kools and listened hard.  The sounds came and went with no discernible pattern, bouncing off the walls and rattling his nerves.  He strained his ears, trying to pinpoint the source, but the building’s acoustics made it maddeningly elusive.  He slid out of his recliner and ambled over to the picture window.  He pushed aside the slats of the Venetian blinds and was glad he was not in the howling thunderstorm.  JeVaughn returned to his recliner.

As the clock struck eight, he took a break from reading his latest mystery novel.  His overflowing garbage bin finally gave him a reason to investigate the noise in the hallway.  He grabbed the bag and shuffled out into the dimly lit hallway, trying to keep his ragged brown corduroy slippers from flying off of his feet.  The carpet muffled his footsteps, but the strange racket had grown louder.  Then, as he rounded a corner, the mystery revealed itself.

Two neighborhood kids, the brood of the Reverand and Mrs. Stankle, were tearing up and down the long corridor, kicking a slightly deflated soccer ball between their feet.

Bam!  The ball slammed against a wall, leaving a faint smudge before careening into the air.

Thud!  The ball rebounded off the ceiling, narrowly missing a flickering light sconce as it came down.

JeVaughn Willard sighed, the corners of his mouth twitching with restrained annoyance.  He trudged to the garbage chute and let the bag drop with a hollow clang, watching it disappear into the void.

“Pointless,” he muttered under his breath, sparing one last glance at the kids.  They laughed and shouted, blissfully unaware of their disruptive echoes.

JeVaughn tightened his terry cloth robe and shuffled back to his door.  “No use mentioning it to their parents,” he thought grimly.  “The reverend’s sermons are loud enough.  I don’t need him aiming one at me!”

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On Winning the Lottery.

I sometimes wonder what I would do if I suddenly won the lottery, not in the frantic, daydreaming way people often imagine, but in a quieter, more interior sense.  What would it reveal about me?  What would it change, and what would it leave untouched?

The answer, I’ve realized, depends less on the amount and more on the person receiving it.  A small windfall would be a pleasant gift for my husband, perhaps a chance to take a trip I’ve dreamed about for years.  But a larger sum such as hundreds of thousands, even millions, in fact, invites deeper reflection.  It asks who I am beneath the surface of daily routines and practical decisions.

If such a blessing ever came my way, my first instinct would be to give.  I would write a check to my parish, trusting that the funds would be used where the need is greatest.  I would finally visit the old country, reconnecting with my family there, and eventually stepping into the pilgrimage sites that shaped my imagination long before adulthood did.  I would sell my current home and settle into a condominium in a quieter corner of the state, close to a traditional Catholic parish where the Latin Mass still rises like the beautifully fragrant incense from another century.

But beyond those changes, I know myself well enough to see what would remain the same.  Wealth would not tempt me into reinvention.  I wouldn’t adopt a grand accent or cultivate airs.  I wouldn’t trade smoked chubbs or oxtails for some curated, fashionable palate.  I wouldn’t suddenly require a staff to manage my life.  I would keep my one car until it sighed its last breath.  I would continue wearing the clothes I already own, cooking the meals I already enjoy, and living with the same simplicity that has always grounded me.  The only indulgence I’d allow is hiring painters for the new place—because some chores lose their charm with age.  I’ve done enough painting and redecorating in my life.

Reflecting on this, I see that my imagined choices with lottery money mirror the choices I already make with my current income.  In fact, our relationship with money is rarely transformed by the number of zeros in our bank account.  Instead, it reveals itself in how we think, what we value, and what we believe we need to feel whole.

Financial psychologists speak of “money personalities”—the Spender, the Skeptic, the Saver-Investor.  These categories are not cages; they are mirrors.  They reflect the habits shaped by our upbringing, our culture, our mistakes, and our growth.  And like all aspects of the self, they can evolve.  A windfall might awaken generosity, anxiety, or discipline.  It might even amplify who we already are or nudge us toward who we hope to become.

In the end, imagining a lottery win is less about money and more about character.  It invites us to ask what we truly desire, what we fear, and what we believe will bring us peace.  For me, the answer is surprisingly simple:  I don’t need more “things.”  I need meaning, connection, beauty, sacrifice, and faith.  And those, thankfully, are not purchased with winnings but cultivated in the quiet choices of my everyday life.

Winning the lottery isn’t reality, but it is a little fun to banter about what I would do with an amount of money I can’t comprehend.  No harm in having some fun with the idea, though.

 

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