My little girl is covered in bruises and scratches, just as I was when I was a kid, and for many of the same reasons … primarily climbing trees and kissing cats.  I remember Mama always being horrified because I went to church black and blue and sometimes bloodied.  This picture was taken yesterday after my girl slipped and fell so hard her gums fuzed into her braces.  (That’s a cat scratch on her cheek she received after doling out one too many kisses.)  One of my earliest memories is of drinking my mother’s bottle of Avon Skin So Soft when I was four.  That was back before they had “childproof” caps.  I remember it because of the charcoal they gave me to throw it all up.  My little one was just four when she had to have both an endoscopy and a colonoscopy, and I recall feeling helpless as I watched her vomit.  When I was in kindergarten I completely severed a finger on my left hand just above the knuckle.  For the record it continued to grow normally even though I’d held it in my other hand separately for over five hours.  When my girl was in kindergarten she fell off the “monkey bars” at school and wound up having to have surgery.  She also had two rather large screws which protruded outside of her cast that pinned her elbow together at the growth plate.  I can still remember cracking my forehead on the corner of Daddy’s desk and hitting an artery — so blood shot out for feet in every direction but not one drop hit my face.  When my little one had to have eye surgery she involuntarily emitted tears of blood.  My beautiful mother was a red-head, and in the 1970s folks thought you were nuts if you said you required careful handling with anesthesia.  Mama fell and broke her hip and her femur bone when she was in her ’70s.  I tried SO HARD to warn them about the anesthesia; my little mother was placed in intensive care for DAYS after that surgery.  The hospital wing she was in was circular with pods that looked liked something out of Star Trek.  When my child had another surgery, an anesthesiologist dismissed my concerns that she’d inherited my mother’s red-headed genes even though she has auburn hair.  After the “routine” procedure my little one did not readily “come out” of the anesthesia.  In fact everyone else went home by noon and my child was still completely lethargic by sundown.  We finally got to take her home … with the doctor’s personal cell phone.  I shall refrain from mentioning some other pretty gory accidents I had as a kid in the superstitious hopes they won’t happen to my Baby Doll as well.  The American professional wrestler Johnny Gargano said, “You can never control injuries.  Accidents happen; that’s just how things go.”  I have various scars on my body which do not bother me at all; I guess I’m just not super vain.  Now my little girl has scars on her body that carry stories with them just as mine do.  However I confess I hope she does not get into anymore accidents.

When I was very little, I have a vague memory of sitting in front of our console TV and catching the end of “The Lawerence Welk Show.”  I know there was a big band and dancing, but mostly I remember the bubbles.  As I was trying to recall more, I discovered the bubbles were intended as a visual tagline for his “Champagne Music.”  To further date myself, I remember my folks liking a song by a singer named Don Ho entitled “Tiny Bubbles.”  I can remember loving Mr. Bubble and always begging to have him for my bath.  Skip ahead to more modern times and I think of 50 Cent’s “You can find me in the club, bottle full of bub” song.  I loved the same old school bottle of bubbles that my child does now and I started to fall in love with my future husband when I found out his email address had “bubble gun” in it.  I have brought bubble “guns” to the arboretum, picnics, outdoor movie nights, and listening to the symphony outdoors, all as an adult.  When our little girl was younger she had a birthday party at a bounce house place and I remember the deluxe package came with a bubble machine.  Well, yeah!!!  So recently when she got invited to a birthday party for her sweet friend it turns out they rented a bubble truck.  Here I am picturing something out of that old TV show and the woman in charge was wearing a “Ghostbusters” shirt.  My little girl had not seen the original movie, but did watch the remake with all female leads.  Instead of individual bubbles gently billowing in the wind, imagine a machine that just blasted them out for over an hour as they grew from ankle height to waist height to above all of our heads.  The weather was idyllic, music was blasting, and it was punctuated by shrieks of joy.  I’m not sure which one of us thought the bubbles were the most magic.  Tom Noddy, the stage name of an American entertainer whose TV performances of “Bubble Magic” with soap bubbles in the early 1980’s led to “Bubble Festivals” across America, once said, “Bubbles are always new; you just can’t find an old bubble.”  I have always noted bubbles were ephemeral — whether they are in Champagne, gum, or the tub.  Perhaps for that reason alone I shall continue to always delight in bubbles.