My Favorite Husband

what could be more important than to enjoy the ride together?

The golden rule is of no use to you unless you realize that it's your move.         Doug Larson

How was I so fortunate to met and then agree to marry my husband of almost fifty years? My guess is it was about 50% luck, 40% knowledge and 10% gut feeling. This ratio has served me well. One of the things that I'd tell clients when I was counseling, was "choosing a life partner is only one part a heart choice. The other two parts involve the head [the intellect] and the gut." Many people are willing to dismiss a person's history when choosing a mate because they feel so in love and for that I'd caution, "watch their actions, not their words." Some questions that I'd ask, "are they still friends with their exes, are they on good terms with their families, are they unfailingly kind, how do you feel when you're around them?" These are important questions and not to be overlooked. Here are the exceptions: when there is emotional or physical abuse, the person may have made a wise choice not to be involved with their exes. Same goes for those who are unfortunately from abusive homes, perhaps distance can be the best healer. The most important components are the unfailing kindness, the friends that she/ he has acquired and the messages you get from your gut about the person.

When I met my husband, I was a very naive nineteen year old sophomore in college. I'd been to an all girls Catholic high school and was backwards in my attitudes toward dating. I didn't date a lot in high school and since my family was comprised of many females, having only one younger brother eight years my junior, I wasn't that savvy about men. So Freshman year, when seemingly "nice" young men approached me I assumed that they were fine. Happily for me it took only a couple of insincere jerks who asked me out and then stood me up, for me to figure out the "watch their actions" part of the equation. Also as a Freshman, far from home and family, I was so scared I wouldn't do well academically I became a bookworm and spent copious hours sequestered in the library. How on earth did this mole come out of her hole?  Sophomore year.

  Men seldom make passes at female smart-asses.                                                                  Letty Cottin Pogrebin

Coming from an all girls high school did have distinct advantages: I considered myself an intellectual equal to all the young men I met. It never occurred to me to hide my intelligence.  I frequently raised my hand in class, answered and asked questions of the professors. To my way of thinking, who wouldn't? I found out. Most of the other young women wouldn't dare to ask or answer. They didn't want to upset the young men by being too inquisitive or bright. Silly but true. I also gravitated toward the young women who'd never dream of being in a sorority [and imagine that, I was never invited] and enjoyed being brainy and/or eccentric. Hence like seeks like.

My college friends were fun, witty, studious, kind and adventuresome. Naturally we were drawn to the guys who were similar in spirit. At the first dance in the fall Sophomore year I danced with a good friend from freshman year. Tom introduced me to this handsome, rowdy, funny friend of his, Dick. I was dating several young men at the time and when I say dating I do mean in the most platonic method of dating possible: movies, dinner out, walking home from class. So I just added D to the rooster. I believe he was dating also but it was no big deal. We slowly got to know each other, studied together, went to the same parties, danced, and eventually lived just a couple of houses away from each other. Our friends clicked as did we, more and more. Best of all he made me laugh and I grew to respect his sharp intelligence and inherent kindness.

After a couple of years he asked me to marry him by inserting a diamond ring inside a box of Cracker Jacks as the prize inside. He knew I was a sucker for Cracker Jack. We went home to my parents for Christmas and announced to them that we were engaged. Their mouths fell open. Mind you this is from the woman who was still able to sneak into the movies as a 12 years old. Now I understand their shock. Then I said in a squeaky voice, "aren't you happy for us?" and they quickly thawed and we celebrated.  Both of my parents absolutely loved him and relished our visits.

the grands think he's funny too

too much fun prior to dinner out with the grands

It is not enough to know what is right. Courage also is need to do what is right.       Arthur Dobbin 

Thank God I came to appreciate Richard Grout's complexity because I shudder to think if I had passed him by. I would have missed out on an extraordinary man.

This is the man who has loved me despite my being just the teeniest bit difficult and opinionated.
This is the man who was my ally in joy with the birth and then raising of our beloved sons.
This is the man who has grieved with me over all the deaths great and small that inevitably come with life and age.
This is the man who took such extraordinary care of me through the miscarriages, our stillborn daughter, the hip surgery, etc. I have never once heard him complain about all the care taking.
This is a man who put his enormous grief aside when my father suddenly died at age 67 of a heart attack and got 17 of us on the same plane to Chicago.
This is the man who tirelessly worked to save the earth, to promote good people into political office, to shepherd with love and respect all who have worked for him.
This is the man who chosen to work with the Department of Ecology for his career instead of the private sector for at least double [triple?] the pay because he believed in the good he was doing.
This is a man who touchingly coached all of his staff through recovery after the horror of the pipeline that blew up in '99 in Bellingham killing four children.
This is the man who as characterized by mother, "Dick is such a fine person, what a blessing he's been in all our lives."
This is a man who wholeheartedly embraces grand parenting and relishes the day to day details of our grand's lives.
This is the man who is the 'go to' for our sons when they have questions about their lives.
This is the man who has been my only husband but has been the most excellent and dear husband any woman could ask for.

Richard, Mr. G, still makes me laugh, we have such fun together, we are worthy opponents in a battle of wills, partners in joy, we love and are loved and that makes all the difference.

susansmagicfeather copyright 2017 Susan R. Grout  all rights reserved

Our Bother

Thanksjuning 2016

Marital bliss improves anyone's outlook on life

As many of you know a house full of girls is a house full of high jinx and noise so when our baby brother was born we were all delighted by the novelty. Peeing straight up! Trisha got the brunt of that! A huge baby who was calm and content.

Being the last of six kids, Bobby got only some attention from the busy parents but he was the recipient of many buggy rides and dress ups from his older sisters. We all doted on him. This huge new brother.

He got a nick name when I went to camp. As a little boy, Bob sent a letter to me and signed it, "your bother Bob".   Hence forth, bother Bob.

Because Bob was nine when I left for college and thirteen when I got married, I wasn't around for most of his young years. What I do remember is this: we were all home for the summer it was hot, we were in the Glencoe house and Bob was maybe ten years old. He, for reasons unknown, decided to dress as "Stupid man". Bob had his shoes on the wrong feet, clothes on backwards or inside out, zippers unzipped. Mom was giving a party and sent Bob down the basement to get a watermelon out of the downstairs refrigerator. As he descended the stairs Mom called out, "whatever you do, don't drop the watermelon." Coming upstairs, KERPLOP! Stupid man must have tripped.

I know Bob had many neighborhood friends and they were endlessly making weapons in our backyard. Some of these now respectable gentlemen are still in touch with Bob and came to Mom's memorial.

No one who cooks cooks alone.  Even at her/his most solitary a cook in the kitchen is surrounded by generations of cooks past, the advice and menus of cooks present, the wisdom of the cookbook writer.     Laurie Colwin

Do not make a stingy sandwich; pile the cold-cuts high; customers should see the salami coming through the rye.                            Allen Sherman

Bob moved out to Hollywood Ca. worked in various restaurants and really honed his cooking skills.
Bob is a great cook and as a matter of fact that was one of the things that enticed his darling wife Senja to marry him. She said, "I was talking about Ricketts who I'd been dating and my girlfriends said, 'marry Ricketts, he can cook'!" Easy peasey.

After awhile he married our lovely sister in law Senja and they eventually bought the house in which Senja grew up. Lucky for all of us because one of the grand traditions in which my siblings and I participate is going to their house in June for "Thanksjuning". This started because Bob wanted us to come for Thanksgiving and we said, "won't work Bob we have these big families." So, Thanksjuning was born and is always a joyous occasion.

Bob does all of the cooking despite repeated attempts from the sisters to lighten the load. We do become sous chefs and we do sing in the kitchen, hopefully being entertaining.

Speaking of entertaining Bob is quite the excellent musician. He and his pal Tex formed "The Groovy Rednecks" which has been voted the best bar band in LA. for many years. He also plays with "Talking Treason" with Laura Smith whom we all love. So entertainment is a constant commodity in their house. When we're there we sing and play and eat, then sing and play and occasionally dance to their juke box. Fun R Us.

That is why we are grateful to have this generous bother Bob in our lives.

susansmagicfeather 2017 copyright Susan R. Grout all rights reserved

Shame and Shaming, Get Your Foot Off My Neck

Liberals feel unworthy of their possessions, Conservatives feel they deserve everything they've stolen.                                                Mort Sahl 

Many years ago criminal acts were punished by people being put into the Pillory to be publicly humiliated on the public square. It was a wooden device, the head and arms trapped the criminal like a oxen yoke that they couldn't escape. Sounds reprehensible, inhumane doesn't it? However there are reprehensible, egregious acts committed each day from the highest office in this country by the current GOP administration. The list is a long one: depriving people of their health care and insurance; allowing old people to starve; putting children, separated from their parents in cages; invading the privacy of women's medical treatment; fouling our clean air and water; denying that there is a climate crisis--- all this is no big deal to the Republican administration. Despite the verbiage of caring for this country and the people therein, our #45 currently spending many millions on golfing and self aggrandizement.  The travesty of the President against the wishes of the Pentagon putting on a parade for himself is a huge waste of money to say nothing of an embarrassment for any thinking person in this country. Then the kicker: we're paying for it in more ways than one. Has the Republican administration bothered to add up what the President has spent superfluously on himself? The Pillory I say!

I regard it as a crime to knowingly depriving hungry children when we are one of the richest countries in the world. Then the for profits that are being given  and starving people of food when there is a surplus of food in this country. It has been seriously recommended that the Meals on Wheels program be cut. It has been recommended that our contribution to foreign aid be drastically cut. This announcement came when many countries in Africa are on the verge of famine. What seems even more disgusting is our 45th golfs each weekend at Mar-a-Lago and his wife remains in NYC all at tremendous expense to us and then, with the stroke of a pen, he takes away money that could be used to feed people. Someone make sense of this for me.

One of the important issues currently addressed in schools across the country is combating bullying. Yet one of the biggest bullies in the country just got elected president. He is notorious for his lack of empathy and disdain for those of us he says are "bleeding hearts". That he would choose an entirely ill suited and ignorant woman, Betsy De Vos, to be in charge of the schools is an enormous insult. She has a prejudice against the public schools and does not understand some of the basic rights of handicapped children. 

Many of 45th's fans are good, loving, and supposedly religious, and yet they make no connection to what the 45th is doing to the country. They can't seem to believe that they elected a greedy, insufferable person who is trying to cut social programs, many which directly benefit them and meanwhile will give extensive tax cuts to the wealthy.  How is this "loving one another" or even caring for their fellow humans? I fail to understand. Is their love so narrow that they feel love should be limited? If so why? Love is vast and as Walt Whitman stated "contains multitudes." 

• All I ask of our brethren is, that they will take their feet from off our necks, and permit us to stand upright on that ground which God designed us to occupy.
  • Sarah Grimke July 17, 1837

I read the above quote in the county building in New Orleans in an exhibit of women's rights. There is a book based on the life of Sarah Grimke and her sister, The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd. The Grimkés, the author learned, were abolitionists and "among the earliest major American feminist thinkers." In the late 1830s they were also, she writes, "arguably the most famous ... women in America."

Although this was written 180 years ago by a suffragist and abolitionists the quote still remains sadly right on. All I ask of our oppressors today is they take their officious foot off, not only my neck, but the country's neck as well. Allow, once again people the right to vote, stop the gerrymandering and the photo ID crap. Stop invading the rights of women, specifically using laws to control her body and her privacy. What is between a woman and her doctor is none of your business. If you think it is I have an interest in their Viagra prescriptions and I want to see a full report on their sperm count. 

Supposedly the 45th is a champion of jobs yet with the gutting of the EPA, defunding schools, penalizing states for not going along with his climate change denial, is taking thousands of jobs from the American public. Interestingly these are in areas that are critical to all of our health and well being. Want clean air and water? Take the foot off our necks. Perhaps that is why the Pillory came into my consciousness. Put the yoke around the people who are behaving in an appalling manner and attempting to steal from us our basic rights. Shameful behavior must have consequences.

Americans have always prided ourselves as being heroes, as being there for the downtrodden and welcoming with open arms the ones who are suffering in other parts of the world. Knowing that our vetting practice is more than 2 years long for refuges to become available for citizenship, why suddenly are so many afraid of refuges. It is the young white men who have 74% of the time committed the terrorist acts. Should we by their logic start screening all right wing young white males between the ages of 17 and 50? 

What has happened to our generosity, our American spirit, our kindness? Nastiness has creeped in with the creeps. Speaking of creeps, most of us would never let our girl children around someone who is as disrespectful as 45th or Bill O'Reilly. 

I have been asking the same question, respectfully, of everyone that I know who voted for the 45th: "please tell me, and make it based on truth, what is admirable about our 45th and why should I respect him." I have not gotten an answer yet to that question. Oh, yes they say he's a good businessman. Really? He has six bankruptcies that can be documented and numerous lawsuits. That doesn't seem to be good business to me. Why should I respect a man who would deride a handicapped journalist and lies constantly? If you have some insight, please help me out here. 

I would like to put him and a few of the more reprehensible men in public office in the Pillory. Why you ask? This is possibly the only way they might feel the full import of their lack of empathy for our country and the average citizen. Their acts are shameful and yet they feel no shame. 

Mom never needed Meals on Wheels, just think of the many who do

susansmagicfeather 2017 copyright Susan R. Grout all rights reserved