Author: Patricia Mitchell Lapidus

My mother had wanted to use her left hand but was forced to use her right.  Even years after her school days an awkwardness was apparent in her cursive.  And she was still protesting against the interference with her natural preference.  Easy to agree that no child should be forced to change.  By the time I was born with that left-handed preference I was left alone to use the hand with which I was most comfortable.

Wondering recently what was behind the old belief that all children should be trained to be right-handed, I recalled two bits of trivia from history.  Suddenly I had one of those moments when the whole story clicked.

The first bit of history was this: during the many years when men used knives and swords and, then guns, it became necessary to know whether it was safe to walk up to another man.  To show that each meant no harm, men greeted each other with an outstretched right hand, ready to shake with the same hand that might have gone for the sword.  If they did not shake, they doffed a cap or pulled a lock of hair in greeting, again showing the right hand clearly.  Apparently most men did use the right hand to hold a weapon, though I expect if a swordsman was left-handed, he had to make his left hand visible as well.

Now here a second bit of history: I have read that in the days before toilet paper, people used their left hand to wipe and their right hand to eat or shake hands with a friend.  It was necessary to know you were not shaking with the unclean hand.  From this, right-handedness became the norm.  I can imagine parents teaching small children to wipe with the left and eat with the right.  You couldn’t have had part of the population doing the opposite—how would you ever know which hand to trust?  Add to that, as a friend of mine who joined me in this line of reasoning suggested, over time right-handedness must have built itself into the genes.

By the time my mother was forced to change her preference, folks may have forgotten that history.  I’m not sure, though, since the family used an outhouse built into the barn where a Sears catalog sat, um, handy for ripping out a page to use.

Meanwhile, a few scientists have made much of the relationship between the sides of the brain and preferred hand, noting that artists are often left-handed and that the left side of the body is controlled by the right side of the brain—the nerves cross at the neck.  The left brain is supposed to be better at order and mundane work, while the right side is supposed to be better at pattern and abstract thinking.  In hard times, of course, art and deep thought are a luxury, giving that much more reason to stress right-handedness.

These bits of information came to my awareness separately and many years ago.  Only recently did I put enough attention on them to fill in the whole picture and come up with this theory.

I grew up with modern sanitation and, probably not coincidentally, was allowed to write and eat with my left hand.  The awareness of why earlier folks were so adamant about right-handedness was lost.  Thankfully, by my time so was the opinion.

I take most of the blame for what happened.  I knew that the lake was northwest of where Brenda lived and northwest of where Adam lived—we’d picked him up on the way.  I knew this because in Maine, lakes are northwest of where you live while the ocean is southeast of where you live.

We swam, we barbecued, we talked, and we swam.  When we were done having all the fun we could think of, we headed home.  Owen and Logan had not yet had all the fun they could think of so we said our goodbyes and left them to their daddies.  We headed home, but not the way we had come.  On the way there Brenda had needed to stop at a store which turned out to be not only a bit south of our route but across one of those roads you can’t get across in Maine in summer because of the zip of vacationers going northwest to the lakes or southeast to the ocean.  Adam, as driver, managed to do a run around the end of the road and drive back to the store, cars buzzing both ways.  When Brenda came out of the store with the chips and sodas, cars were still buzzing steadily both ways.  To get back on the road to camp, he drove down and around the other end of the road.  That got us back on track.

Now, in the car going home we were drowsy with eating and swimming and with watching two little boys soak each other with a hose–and anyone else who came near.  Hey, when has there been enough water in just one lake for two little boys.  We had done our hugging and waving goodbye and were headed up the camp road to the blacktop.  Brenda said, “If I still felt like talking, Adam, I could tell you the shortcut home.”

“I think I know that shortcut,” Adam said.

I sat quietly in the passive (passenger) seat.

At the bottom of the road he turned one way instead of the other and pretty soon Brenda found she needed to talk whether she felt like it or not.  “Go left here and around by Thompson Lake.”

“You mean between Thompson Lake, don’t you?” Adam grinned.

Between was a better word for it.  In a couple of minutes Thompson Lake was on both sides of us.

“This is the place where Lenny and Mitch drove into the lake in winter,” Brenda explained.  “There were no guardrails then.”

I didn’t asked what became of Lenny and Mitch after they drove into Thompson Lake.  I had just seen them at the picnic and thought the story could not have had a bad ending.

Adam drove between water and up around to the left, which was north.  The direction was all wrong.  Everyone knows that in Maine, when you leave a family picnic at the lake you have to drive southeast to get home.

I started to say we should have gone the other way, but I remembered that the other thing everyone knows is that you never, ever turn around.  Once past the intersection you are committed.  There is no more going back and taking the other road than there is going back to yesterday and marrying the other guy (or girl).  So I sat in the passive seat and kept my own council.

“I think I should get out the map,” Brenda said.

“No, don’t look.” Adam was into the adventure of it now and didn’t want information to spoil his afternoon.  He kept taking turns to the south but the road curved back to the north.  Then the road obligingly curved back south.  Adam said not to worry.  He had an internal compass and he knew the average direction we were going.

Brenda, sitting in back of Adam, took out the map anyway.  How was he to know?  Besides, mothers never quite make the switch to doing what their children say.  She was going to put some order into an otherwise random trip.

Adam drove this way and Adam drove that way, trending northeast, I was sure.  When I mentioned this he admitted that missing the next turn could end us up in Canada, though there would be some rivers to cross.

I said, “You just came between a lake.  Coming between a river shouldn’t give you trouble.”

“Owen and Logan would like a river,” he said.

By now Brenda had studied the map. “Turn left here,” came the word from the backseat.

Adam did.

“But this road is bumpier than the one we were on,” Adam said.  He looked at me, waiting for Brenda to hear the taunt in his voice.

She didn’t hear.

I said, “Have you been teasing your mother like this for almost forty years now?”

He guessed probably, if we consider that he began teasing her before he could talk.

But she was focused on the way home and refused to be distracted, an ability she’d begun developing, oh, about forty years ago.

“Go straight across the next road,” she said.

Adam did.

“Now watch for a dirt road on the left.”

It was beginning to sound like she had her bearings.  It wasn’t a dirt road.  But in a few yards the pavement gave way to dirt, proving that either Brenda knew what was what or we were in Maine.

We continued northeasterly and, thanks to Adam’s internal compass—or perhaps to Brenda’s map—came out onto a paved road and to a familiar apple orchard stand open for business.  We stopped.  Brenda got some pumpkin donuts and some macs for pies.  And we got everyone home from there.  None of which could have happened except that the camp on the lake may have been southwest of home, not northwest as I had supposed.  But, no.  Couldn’t be.  In Maine you don’t go southwest to get to a picnic.

Disclaimer: I have lately been reading Mark Twain, and no one so influenced can be much trusted with a narrative.

Book Note:  Lucinda’s Solution by Nancy Roman

I wanted to read Lucinda’s Solution to support a writing sister in my area and to find out what she writes about.  I was well rewarded for my curiosity.  I started reading and I couldn’t put the book down.  This is a historical novel with an excellent understanding of women’s issues during and after WWI when women were about to get the vote.  During much of the plot Lucinda doesn’t have much say even in her own family where her autocratic father makes the decisions about the lives of his children.  Roman brings the story to life, the condition of women, their trials and trumphs.  The characters are vivid and plot well-suited to bringing out the best in Lucinda.  I do love a bohemian solution.  Lucinda’s Solution reminds me of one of my all time favorites, John Knowles’ novel The French Lieutenant’s Woman.  Thank you, Nancy.

Small glass bottles are ideal for filling with water and a bit of food coloring.  You can play around until you find colors you like.  Today I created the moss green color and the turquoise.  The bottles sit on my table where I can see them and smile as I walk by.

My second sharing is about idioms.  How often do you find yourself accepting a trite expression without examination?  I do it all the time.  But every once in a while I wonder what is the story behind that image.  If you look for it there is a picture behind every word we use and behind each idiom.

I’m reading an old Zane Grey favorite, The Riders of the Purple Sage.  There is a tense scene in which the main character waits “with bated breath.”  Not baited as the word is often written.  That’s an error.  I looked it up.  But before I got as far as the dictionary entry,  I thought, “bated” as in “abated,” meaning “lessened.”  Yup.  The New Oxford American Dictionary says “bated” means, “in great suspense, very anxiously or excitedly.”  In the sixteenth century “bate” meant “restrain.”  Makes sense.

Sometimes I go through my own writing to make sure I have not let an error like that slip by or used a worn cliche without being aware of the image it evoked when it was fresh and new.  If I want to say something was completed in the nick of time, I try to at very least stop and think what nick would mean.  We know what we mean by the phrase but if it doesn’t give us a vivid picture, we may not get the same sharp idea the writer intended.  According to wikipedia, “nick” once meant a small notch marking the exact point.

I found a lovely list of cliches on this cite.

https://literarydevices.net/cliche/

Making up one’s own images is, I think, a bit harder these days than in former times.  Our ancestors had nature and farm animals to refer to when they spoke.  When her children quarreled at chores, my mother would say, “Quit your pull-hauling.”  Anyone who had ever seen a team of oxen that refused to pull together would understand that image.  The disgusted farmer would say, “First one pulls and then the other hauls.”  Today we have driving images and those related to computers, the internet, and our many devices.  One joke has it that when a waitress slipped on some water and fell, a customer said, “Our server is down.”  Then there is the question how Bill Gates gets into his house when he forgets his key.  He uses a window.  When we use images related to computers and the internet, most people get the picture right away.

Still, I like the old images best.  But if I use them, I know I have to explain.  If I say “cock of the walk” I will add something to freshen it up or change it a bit: “he thinks he’s the cock of the barnyard fence” will do.

Here are more:

Sly as a fox looking for a break in the chicken coop wall.

Let’s hightail it outta here like heifers running from the cattle truck with their tails lifted high.

She’s growing like a weed, taller than a tomato plant and sturdier than kale.

Play with color.  Play with words.  The pictures behind the expressions we use are vivid and telling.  And don’t follow anyone’s guidance unless it’s as much fun as a barrel of piglets let lose in the barnyard.

If you find any worn cliches in my books, be so kind as to let me know.  Grin.

This is berry season at Wild Carrot Farm, a CSA near my home.  Each Wednesday I stop at their stand at the end of my road for such treats as fresh lettuce, cucumbers, Swiss chard, summer squash, and berries.  (Community Supported Agriculture or a CSA, as you may know, is a farm where members of the community pay a sum in advance in order to ensure the farmer can grow the food we will want.)

When I carry home my boxes of blueberries and raspberries, I recall the hours of my childhood spent picking berries in the woods that were part of our farm, raspberry canes drooping with berries in the glades and under the power lines, blackberries big as my dad’s thumb, blueberries in plenty in open patches.  Sometimes we brought home several pails full.  We used two-quart berry pails, tying the bail to a rope around our necks.  This left both hands free for picking.

Dad made a “blueberry board” to help Mom sort the berries.  It was a long board, somewhat wider than an ironing board, which she could prop on the table at a slant.  When she poured some berries at the top they would roll along toward a catching bowl at the end while she picked out the stems and leaves and white (unripe) berries at they rolled.  Dad nailed two long inch-thick boards along the sides to make a trough, wide at the top and narrow at the bottom where the bowl waited.  He provided two smaller sticks to stop the berries along the way, giving Mom time to complete the sorting.

On the evening of berry picking we ate bowls of blueberries with sugar.  We didn’t yet dream that sugar was bad for our health.  What we couldn’t eat Mom put up in pint jars with sugar syrup.  These went into winter pies.  Yum.

Now I eat my berries in yogurt sweetened with stevia.  I’m not sure when sugar and bleached white flour entered our family diet.  My mother and grandmother were not on the alert for any danger in these changes.  They trusted the manufacturers and merchants with, we can now say, a dangerous naivete.  In their place I would have done the same.  Today most of us are on the alert for dangers in our food.

This summer I watched my toddler granddaughter eat strawberries cut into quarters.  Organic berries were available in large boxes at the local Trader Joe’s.  Strawberries grown with chemicals are listed at the top of foods to avoid.  I learned recently that some chemicals may interfere with our good gut bacteria and may even damage our intestinal cilia, those tiny fingers that take nutrition into the blood stream.  You can’t live without a way to move food from the tummy to the rest of the body.  You can’t live without your digestion.  I worry about children whose parents don’t know what is in their food.  Our children are vulnerable–and utterly dependent on the care we give them.  Here is my granddaughter with her caring and knowledgeable mama.  She is precious but no more precious than many another child to whom life may not have been so kind.

Since my health memoir Tummy Story was published I’ve encountered several other health memoirs.  It must be the year to share our detective work on the path to better health.  With traditional medicine beginning to combine their tools of diagnosis with nutrition and other models of medicine, with alternative medicine increasingly available, and with the internet at our finger tips, we can find out most anything we need to know about how the body works and how to help it–or at very least how not to interfere with the wisdom that is built into our bodies.  (See Tummy Story: Digestion in the Age of Processed Food and Antibiotics.)

Tummy Story

We live in an age of miracles.  When I left my home in the early 1960s, there was no such thing as a personal computer.  The first computers were as big as houses.  There was no chance of my wandering the yet-to-be-created internet to find what I needed to know.  Maybe I was lucky to go to many places and try many ways of living.  But we are lucky today to have good health guidance and much more at our fingertips.