I write stuff down. writer • humorist • activist
The church pews are filled with country folk in their Sunday best, even though it’s a Friday. Some of the old-timers wear clean coveralls, some their Sunday pants, belt, and suspenders, pulled up way too high, white tube socks revealing boots fresh from the barn, maybe a collared-shirt, tucked in tight like they just visited the restroom and no need to re-tuck for the rest of the day. Or at
She wanted a cow the way someone who grew up a million miles away from a farm wanted a cow. “They’re so cute,” she mooed, riding shotgun while driving up and down the hills of Route 20 in Upstate New York. Real upstate, not downstaters version of upstate. Tri-state New Yorkers think anything outside Yonkers is upstate, but there’s a whole lotta acreage between the Hudson River and Lake Ontario,
*Written over a year ago, when masks were “advised” and socially distancing encouraged. Everyday people were beginning to listen, yet COVID was considered by some main street deniers a figment of our overactive imagination. For locals, this was at Caralluzi’s Food Market, Bethel, CT. * I maneuver the one-way aisles, six feet apart from scardy cats in front and behind me, methodically grocery shopping. I’ve turned into a futuristic human
I never saw it coming, becoming the old lady on the block. Circle of life and all, I get it, but some neighbors got it before I did, calling me ma’am. Asking if I was saving the treehouse for the grandkids. Wondering if I wanted to sell the mower. When I moved to number 5, first house up the knoll on the left of a dead-end drive filled with empty
Most houses have doors, and these doors have locks, and these locks have keys, or should, to keep those inside safe and provide peace of mind that life is secure. “Did you lock the house?” was never a question asked of me no matter where we lived. Doors have keys to lock them shut, keep people out, keep others in, and although the front and back doors where I live
Did everyone feel this lonely before the “new normal” settled in? Back when Dunkin Donuts, Target, and State Farm were selling their wares, instead of peace, empathy, and positivity for these uncertain times? And if we are supposed to be sheltering in place, staying at home, shutting down all non-essential businesses (as we should be), how did all these brands and their subsequent ad agencies rally the big empathy push
My mother’s television remote is broken and somehow this is my fault. She calls, often, to let me know. As if I could ever forget. My mother is not weak. She is not helpless, far from it. She is also not the stereotypical made-for-tv, warm and cozy, milk and cookies – ‘Oh, sweetie, how are you?’ – grandmotherly type. Not a chance. She’s more Grandma 5G – maybe OG –
The sky is brighter – clearer, softer, fresher – but you wouldn’t know that if you never went anywhere else. You have to leave, to appreciate the brightness of the night sky, or how the sun sits so low in the sky in the winter, like a stone being skipped across the horizon of a gray lake before sinking underneath. Whenever I wanted to beat my kids, which was a
An irreverent storyteller with a foul mouth and big heart, Kathryn Mayer (aka Kathy and/or Kate) is a writer, humorist, and (former) activist writing out loud with humor and grace about little life moments with big ripples, including the space between parenting and aging parents, social issues, angsty reflections of midlife, and, sigh, gun humpers. Still. Sometimes a big deal, sometimes not Mayer is a national award-winning columnist, according to the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, and her essays have been recognized as Voice of … Read More Here...
kate[at]kathrynmayer[dot]com
xo Kate