My visit today to the local, big box home improvement store should have been ordinary. Instead, it was extraordinary. I could tell something was different from the moment the sliding doors parted for me. Men smiled sweetly and stepped aside as I passed customer service. Those with baseball caps reached to tip them. One gentleman in a camouflage jumpsuit passed me near the checkout lanes. He nodded, patted me on the back, and said “Congratulations.” In the hardware department, the salesman wouldn’t leave my side as I ogled the jumbo wall hooks. “Galvanized, you say, why sure, Ma’am, let me show you where they are. Anything else I can get you? Anything at all?”

Holy crap! For years–decades even–I’ve tried to engineer respectful treatment at building supply stores. It’s like manna for petite DIY women like me. You’d think in my case I could get a little courtesy. As an architect, I know the contractor lingo. Dig this: “8 mil vapor barrier.” “Plumbing coupling.” “Escutcheon plate.” Those are some bad @ss talking points, people! But the red vests stare blankly at me as though they’ve never heard of a zinc-plated c-clamp before, like I’m some kind of ponytailed alien who just made the thing up.

I’ve also tried manning up before hitting the wide aisles. Pencil behind ma ear, measuring tape on ma belt. To clarify, I’ve never put these things on for shopping trips, but if they’re already on, I don’t take them off, either. Here’s how it ends up: they think I’m shoplifting.

A quick tip: if you’re looking for home improvement store cred, don’t shop with your children on a weekend. The vests may be saying “May I help you?”, but they’re thinking “Laura Ashley paint chips on aisle 6, Mommy.”

So how was it that today, everything changed? Were the trippy rumors about 12.12.12 actually true?

No. It’s because I showed up with a big rack.

Of deer antlers. The rack I bought on eBay to mount on my shed. Because Prince Charles has antlers on his shed in England. I saw a picture of it in a lady magazine, and it was so cool, I’m copying the idea.

Little did I know that when I clicked “Buy it Now,” I was actually purchasing Cupid’s arrow to Everyman’s Heart. At least every man at Lowe’s in Central Virginia.

Did my new-found power corrupt me? Yes. Yes, it did. I strode down aisles where I needed nothing, just to collect looks of admiration. My fingers curled around the antlers, whose projections I now know are called “forks” and “palms.” Sadly, It was time to call it a wrap when a dapper shopper in Lumber said “that’s a weird thing to be wielding at Lowe’s.” What did he know?  Friggin’ suit.

On the upside, no one asked me what firearm I’d used to bring down Bambi. I’m no a gun expert, let’s just say. My hunting career can be summed up in four words: family room Nerf darts. But had I’d been asked, right there at Lowe’s, my professional experience would finally have proven useful. In my first architecture job, my boss sent me to job sites when unexpected conditions arose. Why, I don’t know; I was twenty-two years old with no knowledge of construction detailing. I’d show up and the yellow hats would look at me like I’d missed the ballerina bus. They’d start in with their questions, the ones I couldn’t answer. “What bolt pattern you want on this ridge beam?” Or “How much rebar should we put in the footer under this column?” Whatever the query, I soon learned that the only answer was another question: “What did you have in mind?”  The yellow hats would proceed to give up the goods. “Well, we were thinking six #8s, at 5″ on center.” Amazed at the coincidence, I’d say, “That’s exactly what I was going to suggest!”  Everyone was happy. They got validated, and I dodged a bullet.

“What firearm, you ask?”, I was ready to shoot back today. “Well what do you think I used, Silly?”  As long as my admirer didn’t suggest a SuperSoaker, I was good. In fact, just for today, I was GREAT.

“Don’t turn around twice; they’ll be grown up!”

Parents of young children hear this advice (or its equivalent) all the time from people with grown kids. The sentiment well-intended:  learn from my experience that this time is precious. Treasure it.

There are subtexts as well.
-I didn’t appreciate the time with my children enough, and now I feel regret.

-I did treasure my children, and now that they’re grown, I miss them terribly.

Depending on context, the comment may also mean:

-You don’t know how good you have it.  Stop complaining.

-No, I’m not going to babysit.

-The Avett Brothers are in concert tonight at 9. Beers before. I’m out!

Do you remember that hit book from the 70’s: Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life  by Gail Sheehy?  Every grown-up on Earth owned it. The cover featured groovy rainbow block letters racing toward a magenta frame. I imagine Sheehy has expert insight as to why people say “Don’t turn around…” and why I have a visceral reaction when they do. Maybe they’re all chapter 23, and I’m all chapter 21. I could read and find out, but I just perused the table of contents on Amazon.  Conclusion: Passages put adults in crisis in the first place. Witness the the incredibly depressing chapter briefs, like this one:

I also don’t accept that life has only twenty-five chapters before the “Afterword.”

Another variation of “Don’t turn around…” is “Just wait ’til they’re teenagers.”  This warning/brush-off comes from embittered parents of adolescents who don’t mind that your toddler just fell off a play structure or nearly choked on a grape.  “Little kids, little problems. Big kids, big problems.” Years ago, that’s what a father said within minutes of meeting my preschooler and me. When his sixteen-year old son rolled his eyes, I thought, “Bless you.”

It’s possible, even likely, that we’re all correct, whatever our stage in parenting. Young families can treasure each other and tire of the daily grind. Empty nesters can possess parenting wisdom and lose touch with the reality of caring for children 24/7.  Culturally, most people now have the good sense not to go up to near-strangers and say “You’re fat/old/cheap.” Could we also refrain from saying “You’re clueless/ungrateful/doomed”?

In America, family members are often separated from each other geographically, preventing inter-generational contact. The built environment, with its suburban sprawl, retirement communities, and nursing homes intensifies age isolation within local communities. When we interact almost exclusively with people of the same generation, it becomes hard to understand those who are younger or older. This leads to insensitive comments, and worse.

The world’s most sacred texts contain passages about supporting families throughout life.  I don’t know what they are, so I’ll close with a verse from Falco’s 80’s dance sensation, “Der Kommissar.”

Its a clear case, Herr Kommissar
Cause all the children know
They’re all slidin’ down into the valley
They’re all slipping on the same snow

Hear the children
Don’t turn around, oh oh
Der Kommissar’s in town, oh oh…

–Falco & Robert Ponger

My friend, T., lost her mother to cancer several years ago. I wanted to make her something: a tiny square of gold foil suspended from a string. “Tape it to the ceiling so it hangs over you you while you sleep,” I wanted to explain.

When my mother was gravely ill some years ago, I felt like there was no roof over my head. Just an open chute of black space filled with cold stars. She was my ceiling, a limit I could bump up against and then fall back to earth. I thought about T. lying in her bed, gazing into the abyss. All I could offer was single tile in a mosaic that would take a lifetime to fill in. If ever.

I didn’t give T. the tile. I imagined her waking to the nighttime cries of her young children and getting caught in the string. Or having to explain the dangling foil to a perplexed sibling. So then and now, I imagine it into her room, especially on nights when I, too, need a ceiling. There she is in the dark, looking up, just like me. The cracks in the plaster appear: a canceled job, a tragedy in the news, an eerily warm December. “Have a good night,” busy people say to each other in the evening, and in the morning, “Have a good day.” The send-offs hover, then pull towards the roof.

All the while, I’ve become a ceiling, too. My children’s sleeping breath blows me, their tiny gold square, back and forth like a pendulum. “Everything’s all right, you can go back to bed,” I tell them after a nightmare, just as my mother told me. As her mother told her. In the morning, if sun glints off the foil, it means the ceiling became a satellite. Someone was brought back from the reaches of space, drawn into a safe orbit, and deposited home.