Why so shy?

By Marilyn Jozwik

I always wondered why my brother Mark was so shy.

When my grandfather’s green Cadillac would pull into the driveway, he’d shout “Head for the hills” and fly out the back door, running as fast as his legs could carry him. He hated social gatherings.

As I pore through old photos from my childhood, one thing is quite evident: Just about every picture my brother is in shows him with slumped shoulders, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else. Either that, or he’s pictured running away or simply not in the photo at all.

Even as an adult, he’d hold a jacket or newspaper or whatever was handy over his face to avoid the camera. There are a few occasions he couldn’t avoid being duly recorded – grade school photos, graduation, family weddings. Even in some of those, he looked like his puppy just died (even though we never had a dog).

But his shyness didn’t just pertain to photos – it carried over to school, family gatherings, any social function. I was too young – maybe around 4 -- to remember, but by family accounts there was one time we visited some relatives Up North and, when it was time to leave, no one could find Mark, who was about 8 at the time. After a good deal of time spent searching, someone opened the door to the basement to find my brother sitting on the steps, where he probably was the entire time.

I wasn’t crazy about visiting relatives, either. It was the time of “children should be seen and not heard” so after some obligatory greetings with grandparents or aunts in which I was always reminded I was “the baby of the family,” even as my age ripened far past babyhood, we were sent on our way. The best times at relatives’ were not the social interactions, but going to the creek near my mom’s parents’ house in Chilton to catch frogs, or watch the sulky races at the fairgrounds across the street. There were also some good times at my dad’s parents’ lake cottage a little over an hour away. But even there we would be under the watchful eye of my grandmother, who could be quite stern. “Don’t ‘slap’ the door,” she’d holler as we’d race out the old screen door. I think she meant “slam” but it always sounded like “slap” the way she emphasized it.

There were amusements at the lake for us kids -- a little row boat, a pier to fish off, a lake to splash around in (if the wind was blowing the algae away from shore), the shoreline neighborhood with its cast of characters to explore, including the enigmatic Billy Beers who spent time in summers in a little shack behind our neighbor’s log cabin cottage. He didn’t own a car and would be seen hitchhiking to get back to his home in Beaver Dam, some 15 miles away. No one seemed to know much about him, so we sort of thought of him like a Boo Radley from “To Kill a Mockingbird,” a bit of curiosity mixed with fear.

While I remember doing things with Mark – going out in the rowboat, playing ball and games, walking home from school (grudgingly with his 3-1/2 years younger sister), there wasn’t much chatter. He was lost in his own thoughts most of the time, and they didn’t include his little sister much.

He had a few friends he played ball with in the neighborhood, but never any close friends. No guys came over to “hang out.”

He grew up a bachelor, had good jobs, owned a house and property, and lived alone Up North. He always came down for family holidays and remembered everyone’s birthday with a thoughtful monetary gift. As an adult, he was quiet, but would always politely listen. Or, when the topic turned to projects around his house, or his garden or nature walks, he’d be happy to contribute. No one had a bad word to say about him. He was a good guy.

But I guess you’d call him a loner. And I wonder why. Could it be having to share a room with his much older brothers, who were 12 and 16 when he was born? I can’t think of more difficult ages than that. The two older boys had already formed a close bond, which they maintained into their adult lives. They weren’t bad guys, but you just can’t expect two teenaged boys to be the nurturing sort to a little brother. They probably didn’t tolerate much and were probably not too delicate about their criticisms. Being around two much older brothers probably didn’t do a whole lot for the youngest brother’s self-esteem. And by this time my sister was all about friends and fashion.

Maybe it was just in his DNA. Are some people just predisposed to be more outgoing than others? Are some people just perfectly happy being left alone? Did he know that even at an early age? If so, all the times we’re thrust together with people to interact must have been torture for him.

Even with the same parents, the five of us siblings couldn’t have been more different from each other. We all had our idiosyncrasies. Mark was the shy guy. But why?

Mom and smoking: 'I don’t inhale.'

By Marilyn Jozwik

One of the most vivid memories I have of my mom is of her in a full ruffled apron sitting by the kitchen table, a cigarette in her hand.

She looked relaxed and even classy with the cigarette between her fingers, the smoke swirling in a gentle haze around her neatly coiffed hair. Her cigarette breaks would usually follow a couple hours of ironing, or washing floors, or gardening, or some other tasks needed to maintain a household of seven. It was a reward, often accompanied by a piece, or two, of fairy food, her favorite confection. Perhaps she thought about how good a few pulls on a Salem (“Take a puff – it’s Springtime!”) or Kent (“With the micronite filter”) would taste while she sprinkled dad’s work clothes with water and listened to the steam hiss from the iron, or scrubbed our splatter-pattern kitchen floor (you could never tell it was dirty) on her knees, or went out to the garden to pick strawberries or raspberries or dispatch pesky weeds.

As one family story goes, a doctor recommended she take up smoking to calm her nerves. Women at that time were supposed to always be calm and even-tempered. There was no putting the kids in a stroller and taking a jog around the block, going to yoga class when dad got home or taking out frustrations at a kick-boxing class. Cigarettes were a popular, quick and, even recommended way to relax and socialize.

I came across an old Life magazine from 1948 and there was an ad on the back cover of a pretty woman with a big white flower in her hair, a coy, somewhat seductive, smile on her face and a Lucky Strike cigarette in her hand. Like virtually every ad, it is art, in vivid color. The tag line at the bottom reads: “So round, so firm, so fully packed – so free and easy on the draw.”

It’s little wonder that cigarettes held such appeal in the ’50s and ’60s, and did well into my own adulthood. In college classrooms, in the early ’70s, there were little silver foil ashtrays on many desks and professors would routinely smoke while they lectured. I remember one history professor would slowly speak a couple of sentences, then draw in deeply and deliberately from his cig before making a few more pronouncements. The whole suck and speak sequence was repeated over and over. It was mind-numbing.

I tried smoking a couple of cigarettes in college. After all, my boyfriend – and future husband – smoked and he was pretty cool. They tasted awful, hurt my throat and made me cough. I could not understand how anyone could get past all that. Even being cool like Tom was not enough incentive for me.

I certainly would not have been out of place smoking in my home. Besides my mom, my dad smoked a pipe, and my two much older brothers smoked just about everything legal they could inhale. I loved the smell of my dad’s Sir Walter Raleigh or Prince Albert pipe tobacco, and my brother’s cigars.

The house always smelled like a combination of smoke, and chemicals that my dad stored in our attached garage for his job. Friends would always politely comment on the unique scent of my clothes. Since I was used to it, I never even noticed.

I’m sure the walls in our home were yellower than they should have been and maybe we had more colds than we should have. But that was the way of the world at the time. Smoking was everywhere. Ash trays were lovely table decorations in virtually every home. I remember one in our basement was from Florida – a small, leathery, orangish gator wrapped around a big shell. There also was this heavy, cast-iron stand with a bucket hooked on it for my dad’s pipe tobacco.

There was hardly any place you could not smoke — airplanes, restaurants, offices. Even doctors’ offices. I mean, even the doctors smoked. In the same magazine I mentioned earlier, there was a picture of Joe DiMaggio smoking a cigarette in the Yankees dugout.

As we got older, we would chide our parents on their habits. My mom always replied, “Oh, I don’t inhale,” which we knew was bunk. She died in 1976 at age 69 of lung cancer, when I was 25.

Dad continued to smoke pipes until he suffered strokes shortly after mom died. He was 73 when he died.

I always marveled at the will of our nation’s Congress and state legislatures in the 1990s to snuff out the burgeoning tobacco industry and its fraudulent advertising that got a world hooked on such unhealthy habits.

I just wish it would have come sooner. Maybe I would have enjoyed more years with my parents.

So, what's buggin' you?

By Marilyn Jozwik

Remember that children’s song, “The Ants Go Marching” – one by one, two by two, etc.?

Well, the ants were marching in a couple weeks ago – more like 10 by 10. A highway of tiny red ants heading in two directions from the front door of our condo, along the hallway baseboard and into the kitchen, following the baseboard highway.

I am always intrigued by ants. Each one always seems to have a specific mission. There is something really quite organized about their movements. And while I really hate to extinguish anything living, I just can’t tolerate having insects raiding my pantry, their likely destination.

I did some research and found that ants don’t like cinnamon. So, I sprinkled a little along the baseboard by the door and checked the next day for an update. The ants were still there, but instead of making the left turn around the baseboard into the kitchen, the ants avoided the powder and trailed off into the living room where they seemed to be quite disoriented. I think the cinnamon messed up their little internal GPSes. I took my trusty Dustbuster and sucked up the lost little guys. I put the Dustbuster in the garage in case they wanted to escape. This went on for a couple days and soon they totally disappeared, no doubt in search of less cinnamony environs.

We’ve had to live with various insects throughout the years. In recent years, box elder bugs have occasionally taken up residence. I think it started a few years ago when I brought in a plant from outside in fall. I picked the bugs out and shook the plant, hoping I had kept them outside before I brought the plant in. But throughout the fall and spring, the hard-shelled, shield-shaped pale bugs stowed away and made themselves comfortable. The last couple years, we’ve seen a couple handfuls, but this year they were lying in wait and, come May, they partied like it was 1999. Their buzz is unmistakable, hovering around the room like some clumsy dirigible.

My worst encounter was when I settled under the covers one night, picked up a paperback from the night stand and was eyeball-to-eyeball with the creature. The book went flying and I’m sure I gave the poor bug an even bigger scare with my screech. Every day I plucked them off the screen door, grabbing them with Kleenex on their sides and depositing them outside. For the time being, the house is free of anything buzzing or crawling.

Although, the Spanish adage -- su casa, mi casa – generally doesn’t apply to insects, I will allow an industrious spider or two to take up residence in some corners. They really don’t bother anything, so I’m happy to share a space with them. Plus, they can be a great security system for houseplant infestations and other more annoying insects.

I know people will say they have a spider bite because they saw a spider and later had a red spot on their skin. It is very rare for spiders to bite, and even rarer for a person to actually see a spider bite them. Spiders normally don’t bite unless they are threatened. However, there are a few spider species that have long enough fangs to penetrate skin, and poisonous venom, so you don’t want to mess with them.

One year a huge spider had formed a large web on a hanging plant on our balcony. Every day I would see it in the middle of this gorgeous, intricate work of art to start my day. Later in the summer, I saw the cocoon of spiderlings this female had created. I learned that the female will stay with the cocoon until she succumbs to cold in winter, but the cocoon protects the little ones until they hatch in May. I didn’t bring the plant in, but let the mama spider and her brood fulfill their mission, sacrificing my spider plant to the cold in the process.

I guess we have to remember that we share the planet with all sorts of God’s creatures, not all of them warm and fluffy. We’ve just got to learn how to live together, as peacefully as possible.

Happy Mother’s Day – and an Ode to Grandma

While I had a wonderful mother, there were other women in my life who were influential. I’m sure we all can think of those wonderful women who were – or still are – guiding figures in our lives.

Perhaps other than my mother, my paternal grandmother was most prominent in my life. We saw her often, especially in summer when we would spend time at her and my grandfather’s cottage up north.

While I appreciated my grandmother’s intelligence, work ethic and practicality, she was not one of those grandmas we would run to for a big hug when we visited. Instead, it was, “Come, give your grandma a kiss” when we met. It was not so much a warm, loving request as a crusty command that we obeyed reluctantly. After the obligatory kiss my brother and I would be summarily dismissed and sent away to play. It was the days of children should be seen and not heard.

One time, my brother saw my grandfather’s big, green Cadillac pull into our driveway and he sped out the door shouting, “Head for the hills,” with his younger sister scampering behind him. All that just to spare us the faux show of affection.

My grandmother’s life was very orderly, uncluttered. She didn’t waste words or time and always said what was on her mind, regardless of whether it offended someone. She didn’t let slights fester, but would quickly get them off her chest. I remember her chastising me on the phone when I was a teen for not writing her while she was in Florida for the winter. “I was busy,” I told her, as any teenager thinks their life is. “You’re never too busy for your grandma,” she scolded. Lesson learned.

 In later years – she would live to be 94 -- she would tell me everything she did that day. “I had some oatmeal and coffee for breakfast. Then, I did a load of wash and watered all the plants on the windowsill in the kitchen and in my bedroom. I had a nice pork chop for dinner and watched ‘Bowling for Dollars.’” It was a litany of mundane tasks and activities that helped give her day structure.

She lived in an apartment building she owned and kept it very tidy, with Victorian furniture and an array of knickknacks, which always delighted me as a youngster, like the Santa’s castle that played music she put out at Christmas. I can still see her sitting in favorite wingback chair, with the bag of knitting at the side, or handing out presents at Christmastime. She was always the dominant figure when she was in the room.

I remember her apartments having a distinctive smell, not a bad smell, but a combination of the things she cooked and baked based on her German heritage. She’d sometimes make Greek desserts to please my Greek step-grandfather. There was lots of material to soak up smells in her house—thick carpeting, thick draperies and lots of nice, dated furniture, including a teal, feather-filled chaise lounge which both my brother and I found quite exotic.

I guess my grandmother was the first woman I knew who showed me how strong a woman could be. She had two children before she was 20, divorced an alcoholic early in her life, had a career in sales and traveled – at a time when women didn’t often have careers -- and later started her own business.

There weren’t “I love yous” shared, or long embraces, or sweet interactions with my grandma. But there was the example of just what a motivated, diligent, bright woman was capable of.

Searching for a red Corvette -- or a bounty of blessings!

By Marilyn Jozwik

Some years ago, a teacher talked about something that she called The Red Corvette Theory.

The idea, a I remember it, was that if you have a red Corvette, you will notice more of them because they are uppermost in your mind. It’s not like there are suddenly more red Corvettes on the road. It’s just that once you have one, you begin to look for them.

Try it out with the car you’re driving. In our case, it would be a 2016 grey Toyota Corolla. It seems like every other car on the road is a similar vehicle. Granted, there are herds of them out there, but now that we have one, they seem to pop out in every lot – and there’s been way too many times that I’ve tried to get into the wrong grey Corolla.

But I also notice this phenomenon in other areas, such as expressions I take note of for the first time. A few years ago, I heard the term “scofflaw,” referring to a person who flaunts the law, like someone who ignores traffic rules. I’m sure I had heard it before, but in this instance it stuck. It wasn’t long after that I would hear it more frequently and start using it myself. The term had moved from my brain’s basement to the living room.

Then again, there’s another more insidious way The Red Corvette Theory manifests. Years ago, a group of workers would sit around at lunch time and someone would mention a coworker they didn’t like. Suddenly, everyone at the table could find reasons to denigrate that person. And then, even worse, after that we would look for those reasons – maybe the feeling was they were favored by the boss or talked too loud on the phone or took more authority than we thought they ought. The next time our lunch group met, we had a whole new arsenal of insults to contribute.

By the same token, if someone admired a coworker and started the ball rolling with praises, the group would join in with kudos of their own. And just the reverse would happen. We would look for the good in those people.

Our little gossipy lunch sessions came to an end when a new coworker joined us and started the conversation ball rolling about interesting topics she had heard on public radio. It got us all out of our fault-finding missions and into more constructive and informative dialogue. I think about that when conversations start to turn toward negativity, especially about others.

What I learned from that is that, whatever you look for in life, you will probably find. If you carry a grudge, or simply have a personality conflict with someone, you will constantly be looking for reasons to support your opinions. Usually, if you really stop to think about that person, much of your feelings are emotions, and not rational. All the perceived wrongs or slights become bigger and bigger when they are focused upon, until they crowd out anything positive that might be lurking in our subconscious. Maybe we can’t even remember what started us on the road to disliking that person, but we still will look for the negative traits.

Tom always says I’m a Pollyanna, a glass is always – or at least usually -- half-full person.  But I’ve certainly had doubts about people, have found myself involved in conversations disparaging others or felt angry about perceived slights.  Yet, as I get older, I find myself trying to assess the whole person. To not get stuck in the negative side of The Red Corvette Theory, concentrating on virtues, rather than vices.

I don’t have a red Corvette to look for, but I do have a bounty of blessings which I seek and am thankful for every day. And that is even better.

The art of fruitful sitting

I’m not much of a sitter.

No, I don’t mean a pet-sitter, house-sitter or baby-sitter. I can handle all those quite well, thank you.

What I’m talking about is your common, everyday sitter. Not watching pets or houses or babies. Just sitting and watching the world go by.

The trouble is, it’s hard for me to just watch the world go by. Because I always feel I need to keep up with the world – not let it pass. There is always something to do, which makes it impossible to do nothing.

Part of it is heredity. I come from a long line of doers as the youngest of five. There was always activity in and around our house when I was growing up. My oldest brother, Warren, who was 20 years older than I, had his own hobby room in the basement. There he had a ceiling punching bag and resistance ropes and weights for body-building; a cabinet and worktable for his fishing lures and ties, fly rods and reels and other equipment; and lots of woodworking tools. He also had a wall in the basement of several 50-gallon tanks for his tropical fish hobby. Between the laundry, makeshift half-bath and my brother’s hobby room was Dad’s large workroom, with an area for wood pieces for projects, a large table saw and workbench in front of the big, black oil tank.

Upstairs in his bedroom, Warren had a huge stereo system and record collection, as well as an extensive stamp collection. Everything was meticulously maintained and organized.

Our garage was built with lots of storage for all sorts of recreation equipment – baseball bats, mitts and balls, footballs, basketballs, golf clubs, volleyball, croquet set, badminton set, roller skates, ice skates, tennis rackets, boxing gloves. And always the latest amusement – hula hoops, yo-yos and even a pogo stick. All were accumulations over several decades for five kids They were mostly for the guys in the family, my three older brothers and my dad—but also for me, the tomboy. My sister, who was 11 years older, was mostly concerned with her friends and making sure her pesky little sister didn’t get into her diary and other personal effects.

There was always music around the house, live and otherwise. We had a baby grand piano in the living room and an upright in the basement, a drum set, clarinets, saxophones, oboe, guitar and, somewhere in the attic, an old ukulele. Classical, jazz and on rare occasions my Disney favorites album would play on my brother’s stereo system throughout the house.

Besides cooking and housekeeping, Mom loved handwork – knitting, sewing, crocheting, embroidery – even fur remodeling – and she loved gardening. Her hands were so often in material, dish water or dirt.

It was a childhood ripe for doers, not so much sitters. Of course, there is so much mandatory sitting we must do throughout our lives. School, church, jobs. And don’t forget those favorite TV shows. But for virtually my whole life, if I had the option to be doing something or just sitting, I would always opt for the doing.

I figured there would be plenty of time to set down for long spells when I’m older.

Then I started realizing that maybe now is the time to start practicing the art of fruitful sitting.

And there is no place better to do that than here on the Gulf Coast of Florida, where we’ve been spending a good deal of the early spring. Tom and I have found some wonderful spots for just sitting and watching a world of nature go by. Nearby is a little block-square park called Galatea Park, a beautiful little piece of tropical paradise with a couple of huge fountains and a lily pad-filled pond. It has the ambience of an Italian garden. Benches near the pond and a seating rim around the large fountains encourage dalliers, as do a usually present duck family, blue jays, frogs, turtles and parades of geckos.

Another good spot for sitters is a half-block away, where a series of high-rise retirement homes overlook Boca Ciega Bay. We saunter over there often to enjoy the view of the bay from the pier – and some relief from heat and humidity -- and the big pond behind the homes where water birds frolic, providing lots of amusement.

I guess sitting does have its merits. I can start practicing now. So, I’ll be really good at it when the time comes to use it.