The Summer of the Exchange Student

Here's something that most people I know don't know about me or my family ...

During the summer of 1984, in between my freshman and my sophomore years in high school, my family served as a host family for an exchange student.

Lots of people who have hosted an exchange student have probably had a great experience, one from which they greatly benefitted and something that they would recommend that someone else do as well.  Not so much in our case.

Corinne, with Mom and Nancy, in more clothes than I ever remember seeing her wear that summer

Our exchange student's name was Corinne.  She was from Nice, France; her father was a surgeon, and her family lived in a house on the French Riviera.

I have no idea how the match between her and my family was made by the exchange program agency.  It's possible they were desperate for placement families, or maybe they just used the exchange student's age and gender to pair the person with the family.  Suffice to say, though, that from Day One it was pretty obvious that the match wasn't a great one.

Corinne was between my sister Jennifer and me in age; one of the rules of the program was that the exchange student be given her own bedroom, and so Jennifer and I agreed to bunk together in my room during the summer and let Corinne have Jennifer's bedroom.  When Corinne got to our house, we excitedly showed her around, and she was silent.  No expression, no comments.  I thought it was a language barrier issue until later that day when she started saying things like, "OK, that's your room?" and "OK, you eat in your kitchen?" with a French accent and a condescending tone.  (Apparently someone had told her that Americans say "OK" a lot, and so she started off many of her sentences with that as a kick-off.) She went to bed really early that first night, which we thought might be because she was jet-lagged from the trip.  A week or so later, though, when she was still retreating to the bedroom pretty early on a nightly basis, we asked her if she was tired, and she said, "No, I'm just boring."  We laughed for a minute, until she clarified that she actually meant "bored."  Well ok, then.

The summertime weather in Corinne's hometown peaked out at about 80 degrees; the inside of our house was that same temperature because Dad was strict about the thermostat setting, and as usual the outside temperature in the entire state of Mississippi that summer was a hot, humid 99 degrees in the shade.  She came from a land of famous painters, sightseeing, and yachting; we had fun making pottery out of mud from our backyard, chopping the heads off water moccasins with a garden hoe, and canoeing in the lake behind our house.  She was used to fancy food and fine wine; in our neck of the woods, the menu consisted of Miller Lite for the adults and sweet tea for the kids to drink and something like beanie-weenies, grilled cheese sandwiches, or spaghetti to eat.

Some of the blaring differences in our lifestyles were actually kind of funny, although probably much more so to us than to her.  Our two dogs, who lived outside, often got ticks on them, especially during the summer months.  We thought nothing of pulling off a big, juicy tick we'd found on one of the dogs; the first time I did that in front of her, she was oddly fascinated - apparently she had never even seen a picture of a tick before.  Here's the really funny kicker to that: a week or so later, we went out to eat at a restaurant with a salad bar, and my dad put sunflower seeds on top of his salad.  When Corinne saw the sunflower seeds, her eyes got really big, and she asked in half amazement/half horror, "You put ticks on your salad?"

"You put ticks on your salad??"

One responsibility that came as part of having Corinne there that fell mostly on my mother's shoulders was policing the practices of grooming and decency of dress, both of which were obviously different in our house than what Corinne was used to.  Mom figured out that the best way to address the problem was to make a blanket announcement to my sisters, Corinne, and me.  My sisters and I had to bite the insides of our cheeks to keep from smiling or laughing whenever Mom said things like, "All girls in the house must shower tonight ... be sure to shave your legs and use soap in the shower and put on deodorant afterwards."  The first time Mom told us to get our swimsuits on to go to the pool at the Tennis Club, Corinne emerged from the bedroom wearing a string bikini that consisted of about one square inch of material in total.  "Girls, let's all wear t-shirts over our swim suits so we don't get sunburned," Mom called out, quick with the reaction.  "OK, I'm used to sun all over," Corinne informed her.  "It's a strict rule at the club," Mom told her and handed her a t-shirt.

My family went to Biloxi, Mississippi, where my dad attended a business convention during the first week in August every year when I was growing up, and we did that year too, with Corinne in tow.  I remember the expression on Corinne's face when she first saw the beach there; I guess the Redneck Riviera didn't quite compare to the French one.  We had a blast, though, like we always did; we swam for probably at least ten hours a day there.  We were thrilled that the hotel where we stayed had a bar in the swimming pool, and Dad let us charge two Shirley Temples each per day to the hotel room.  By that time in the summer, Corinne had for some reason gravitated towards Nancy, who was about five years younger than she was, rather than towards Jennifer or me; Nancy entertained herself during that entire trip by pretending she could speak French and then telling Corinne to answer her back in "real French."  Quite entertaining, for us at least.

Don't get me wrong; we had fun that summer with Corinne there.  It's just that there's wasn't much, if any, of an exchange going on between her and us; pretty much all we learned about her country or her was that we were very different.  I wonder what she said about her experience as an exchange student when she went home; people probably thought she was exaggerating or fabricating when she told them about how we tanned on the roof of our house, drank water straight out of the hose, and ran around barefooted in the backyard all summer.  All in all, I guess it was an educational experience for her, although almost certainly nothing like the way she or her parents had intended for it to be, and for us, at least, it has provided many laughs over the years when we've thought back to the Summer of the Exchange Student.

Priceless Memories

Eight years ago, my sisters, our husbands, and our children traveled from our corners of the country to meet at my grandmother's house in Alabama.  The day after we had arrived, our group of eleven piled into cars and drove across the state line to Wild Animal Safari in Pine Mountain, Georgia.

When we got there, we found out that there were 15-passenger vans available for rent to drive through the park - and the vans were zebra-striped!  We knew it would be much more fun for all of us to be together in one vehicle to travel amongst the animals who roamed free over the many acres there.  We paid the admission and the rental fee and then headed towards our Zebra Van; as we were boarding, my brother-in-law Peter walked over carrying a giant bag of animal feed.  He said it was a better deal to buy in bulk instead of purchasing individual containers of food for each of us to feed to the animals in the park.  I will never forget the look of wonder on Grandmom's face when she saw Peter carrying that huge bag; she laughed excitedly as she took her seat in the van and then said, "The animals sure are going to LOVE us!"  

Somehow it worked out so that my brother-in-law David took the wheel in the van - some of the time with my niece Daly on his lap - and with my daughter Molly in the passenger seat in front.  The rest of us sat on the bench seats in the back with our windows rolled down, ready to feed the animals as David slowly drove along the gravel road, stopping frequently as wildlife approached the van.  

There was a great variety of animals in the park, from antelopes to zebras.  We all had a blast, including and maybe especially Grandmom, who smiled ear-to-ear the whole time that we were there and laughed hysterically when a big slobbery bison leaned in through the window and tried to lick her in the face!

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We had such a good time there that day that a couple of years later my husband, my daughters, and I went back to the park with Grandmom.  The second time, when it was just the five of us, she was moving much more slowly than the first, and we just drove through the park in our car since we were a much smaller group.  After we had driven through the safari part of the park on our return trip, we went in the gift shop.  Grandmom, who, as I've mentioned, lived on a very tight budget, thanked us for taking her and for paying for her admission, and then she said she wanted to buy a souvenir for us to take home.  Always the practical thinker, she picked out a pair of salad tongs with a zebra carved into the handle of each one.  When she gave them to me after she had paid at the counter, I noticed the price tag said $19.99.  That was a lot of money for a person of her income to spend on a non-necessity, I knew, and she knew that I knew it.  I looked at her, thinking that I should decline the gift and try to get her to return it, but then she said, "Thinking I was going to be able to take a vacation somewhere this summer, I had some money saved. Today has been as good as any vacation, and I don't need anything else, so please accept my gift."  

The zebra salad-tongs, today

A few weeks before, Grandmom had stepped into a hole in her backyard while hanging clothes on her clothesline and had broken her leg.  My dad had tried for years to get her to let him buy her a dryer, but she insisted that it was a waste of money and she didn't need it.  After all, she said, she had raised a family and had lived without one for eighty years, and who could argue with that logic?  When she had fallen, she laid in the yard, unable to get herself to a phone, for about an hour until her next-door neighbor pulled up in his driveway and saw her.  He had called the ambulance and then my dad, and my parents had come to be with her while she was in the hospital.

When I'd called the next week to check on her, she told me that she had a walking cast on her leg and that she would appreciate some help with a couple of things so she hoped we could come to visit her soon.  Of course, I arranged to get there as soon as I could, worrying that things must really be dire if this independent woman needed help taking care of herself.  When my husband, my daughters, and I got there, though, we found out what she actually wanted help with, and it wasn't technically self-care: she wanted assistance with pulling her refrigerator out from the wall in her kitchen so she could do her scheduled quarterly cleaning behind it and with cleaning up debris that had fallen into her yard.  Other than that, she had it covered, she told us, and so we did those chores and then decided to head to the Safari Park the next day.  (Side note: Grandmom had told us to put any limbs, sticks, or leaves from her yard on the curb across the street from her house instead of in her trash can, but I had dumped a bucket of semi-wet leaves in there anyway, thinking it didn't really matter.  As we walked out to the car to leave for the park the following morning, she cooly lifted the lid of her garbage can and peered inside, and then she said, "Somebody put debris in here!"  I had to admit that I had done it, and she said, "Well, next time remember to put all of that stuff on the curb where it's supposed to go; that's what I do!"  Ouch!)

We had a lot of fun on our return trip to the park, but not nearly as much as we'd had the first time when we had gone as a big group.  I have treasured those salad tongs since that day, though, remembering fondly both of our trips there with Grandmom and remembering how she so generously spent her vacation money to buy them for us.

Several years after our second trip to the park, Grandmom had a stroke, and her physical and mental decline began.  Many, many times when we visited her after she was in the nursing home, we talked about how much fun we'd had at the Safari Park; in fact, when her condition had progressed to the point where she couldn't carry on a conversation, we often described things from the day when all 11 of us went in great detail, in an effort to help her to remember that wonderful day and to help her to focus on a much happier time.  

On the night before Grandmom died, as my mom was sitting with her holding her hand, my sister Jennifer called Mom's cell phone and asked Mom to hold the phone up to Grandmom's ear.  Although Grandmom had been unresponsive for several hours before, as Jennifer again tried to use her words to paint a picture for Grandmom of that great visit, Grandmom smiled and her breathing pattern became more relaxed, and I have no doubt that that happy memory was one of the last things on her mind as she transitioned out of this life.

"Not too many people can say they've been kissed by a bison!" Grandmom said. 

The Hitchhiker, Part 1: The Gift of the Story

As I have learned since my dad went on ahead, one of the greatest gifts that can be given to someone in grief is talking to him or her about their loved one: telling a story that involves the person who has died, sharing something you remember about that person, or talking about a quality that person had or a deed he did that you appreciated can be a priceless treasure.  It doesn't have to be a significant account; sometimes something funny or unique that person did is just what the person who is grieving needs to hear.

Not long after my dad died, my mom, my husband, and I went to the Mid-South Grain Association meeting in New Orleans, or simply "Mid-South," as my dad called it in general conversation.  Dad was in charge of organizing the convention there every February, and we went after he died to represent him in a way.  My mom kept up with the administrative duties that she had assisted Dad with for many years, but, as I came to find out, it was as helpful for us to be there amongst many people who had known Dad for years - some for decades - as it was for them to have Mom filling in at the registration desk.

The highlight of the trip for me was listening to one of my dad's long-time friends and previous coworker talk about some of Dad's antics from "back in the day."  Some of the tales I had heard before, mostly from Dad himself, but others I had never heard, and I felt comforted by all of them; it felt almost as if I was getting a piece of my dad back for just a little while.

Like a lot of people, Dad was a work hard/play hard kind of guy.   But the thing that I think made him unique in that area - at least from what I have gathered from seeing him interact with people professionally and from listening to what others have said about him in a business context over the years - is that he was often able to make the work environment fun for himself and for others.  For starters, he never hesitated to laugh at himself, and his interest in everyone around him was genuine.  Never did he miss an opportunity to say hello to or to compliment or express interest in someone else; the way he assumed that pretty much everybody had good intentions somehow seemed to result in that becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.  He delighted in clowning around when time and the situation allowed; I don't know that he learned about the benefits of fostering a positive work environment in a formal setting, but he certainly applied the principles all the same and always seemed very popular with his employees because of it.

"Cotton Row" on Front Street in Memphis, Tennessee

Here's the story that my dad's friend told us from back in the early 70's, when my dad worked at a company with an office that was located in downtown Memphis:

One Friday, some of Dad's clients had come to Memphis from out of state, and he was in charge of entertaining them that night.  My mom had driven with my sisters and me to her parents' in Nashville for the weekend, and Dad was planning to drive to meet us there late that night after he had taken the customers out on the town.  He worked until closing time and then met them at a restaurant down the street from his office.  As the story goes, the dinner turned into more of a party than Dad had expected, and when it was over he returned to the office since he had parked nearby.  Evidently, he was trying to ward off the headache he thought he'd be getting the next morning and so he walked over to his desk to get to his bottle of aspirin.  Unfortunately, though, the floors were in the process of being redone, and Dad left footprints on the adhesive backing that had been laid down in preparation for the tile that was going to be installed the next day.  Apparently there was much laughter the next morning and later some friendly ribbing about the fact that everyone could tell who the culprit had been since the tracks lead straight to his desk, where several aspirin tablets were spilled on the desk, and then back to the exit door.  

As Dad himself later told the story to his friends and coworkers, after he'd gotten into his car and then started driving on the interstate headed towards Nashville, he realized that he'd had too much to drink to be driving.  As luck would have it, soon after that he saw a hitchhiker on the side of the road. Necessity being the mother of invention (and of innovation), Dad pulled over and rolled down the passenger-side window to ask the guy if he could drive and where he was trying to go.  "Sure, I can drive," the guy said, and then he added, "I'm hoping to get to Nashville tonight."

"Well, get in, then," Dad told him, probably smiling from ear to ear and thinking he had struck gold. "I'll be asleep in the back; wake me up when we get there!"

I doubt he told my mom about the details of that trip for quite some time after it happened, and it wasn't until after his death that my sisters and I heard the story.  I could picture it happening though, and hearing the tale was a much-appreciated gift, one that I will always treasure.  And it wasn't Dad's last interaction with a hitchhiker either, ...

To be continued ... 

Road Trips

 My parents took my sisters and me on lots of road trips when we were growing up.  Both sets of our grandparents and the rest of our extended family lived in states other than where we lived, and it seemed like we piled into the station wagon and hit the road fairly often.

Like lots of families during that time period, we traveled on a pretty low budget.  We packed a cooler and a bag with things like colored pencils and paper and a deck of cards, and we were good to go.

We took lots of camping trips, did a good bit of sightseeing and touring, went to Disneyworld and several water parks, and made it to the beach on several occasions.  All of that blurs together as Good Time Family Fun in my Memory Bank.  There were, however, a few specific events during my childhood involving family road trips that I remember as standing out the most, things we did while traveling as a family that I think about again and again, memories that always bring a smile to my face.  I’m not even sure of the exact timeline of these.  All three happened as part of the travel my family was doing - they were side-shows, far removed from the main event; they were spontaneous; and they were unforgettable.

We lived in Albert Lea, Minnesota, when I was in kindergarten.  I loved that house for lots of reasons; I learned to ride a bike without training wheels in the front yard there, my younger sister came home from the hospital as a newborn to that house, and it had a cool laundry chute that went from the second floor to the laundry room in the basement.

One day, our parents were packing the car before we embarked on another road trip, and my sisters and I were in the den gathering up a few books and toys to take with us.  The TV show that was on came to an end, and the next thing that came on was a movie: “The Wizard of Oz.”  I had never seen it before, and I was mesmerized from the start by the tornado scene, the characters, the way it went from black-and-white to color, and the music.

About 30 minutes into the show, my parents completed their last-minute preparations for the trip.  I’m sure they were ahead of schedule for the time they had planned to depart on the trip; my dad hated to be late and went to great effort to make sure our family was on time wherever we went.  He came into the den and started his battle cry of “Load up!  Time to go!” but then saw us sitting on the floor, as he termed it, “glued to the TV.”  When he realized what we were watching, he and Mom sat on the couch behind us, and we watched the rest of the movie together, with Dad singing along to every song in the movie: from “We’re Off to See the Wizard” to “The Merry Old Land of Oz” and “If I Were King of the Forest.”  The movie and the music were great, and I’ll never forget how time seemed to stand still as my family sat there in the den that day, entranced, entertained, and together.

A few years after that, my family had moved to another state, and we were in the car again on a road trip.  I don’t remember where we started or where we ended up, but I do remember the best part of that trip:  Dad was driving along the highway while the rest of us looked out the window.  I don’t know who saw the little carnival in the hillside first, but I do remember the moment when all of had it seen it.  My sisters and I oohed and aahed at the Ferris wheel and the other rides we saw.  It looked like fun, but we were On the Road and On a Schedule.  Probably no one in the world was more surprised than we were at that exact moment in time when, without a word, Dad pulled onto the two-lane road at the foot of the hillside and started driving towards the carnival.  I remember thinking I was dreaming.  He pulled into the gravel parking lot, parked the car, and said, “Who’s up for some rides?”  Better than Christmas!

 When I was a pre-teen and even into my high school years, my family celebrated New Year’s Eve by staying overnight in a Holidome about 100 miles from where we lived.  My sisters and I each got to invite a friend, and, once we got to there, our parents pretty much unleashed us in the open space inside the hotel.  We ran in the halls, jumped on the beds, rode up and down the elevators, went into the sauna room, ordered room service, watched music videos on MTV (which we weren’t allowed to have at home), and swam in the indoor pool.  Just enough freedom, lots of fun, excellent people-watching (one year we watched a woman swim laps in the pool for hours in a shower cap) – it was perfect.

I’m not sure if there is a specific lesson from or a point to looking back at memories like these, other than just remembering and thinking about how much fun we had together as a family.  Maybe there’s a little bit of a “Take time to smell the roses” lesson in there, and that we certainly did.  We definitely appreciated each opportunity, each day, and each other along the way, and for that, as well as the memories that time will not allow us to forget, I will be forever grateful.

I remember riding in the backseat of the car with my sisters, barreling

down the highway on family trips, listening to Dad sing this song.