This has been a year that defies explanations.

I spoke with my parents a week or so ago. We have used Zoom and other types of video to communicate but, more often than not, I just call up my dad, he puts me on speaker, and we chat as we always have.

My parents were about to go skiing.

They live in the north, but they don’t live on the North Pole. It was much too early to cross-country ski, but they’d had an early snow and my mom decided they should give it a try.

“You know what is going to happen,” I told them.

“Uh-huh,” my dad said.

“First the snow is going to stick to the bottom of your skis, then the leaves are going to stick,” I told them. “You are going to be stuck in place!” I felt like the voice of doom, truth-telling to my very experienced 80-some-year-old parents.

“Yeah,” my mother admitted, “I’m sure you’re right!” I could tell this would not deter her for a minute.

My husband, Peter, and I were preparing for a visit from my former brother-in-law, Jason. This is the first visitor we’ve had in eight months, and his visit precipitated a lot of housecleaning. There are places we just don’t get around to cleaning until we are confronted with the prospect of company.

“The baseboards in the bathroom were filthy!” Peter informed me.

“Your desk is covered in dust!” I told him.

We cleaned places we hadn’t looked at closely in three-quarters of a year so that we could entertain Jason, who spent almost the entire time on our patio, which Peter swept for the occasion. Peter made his famous enchiladas, and I made my Aunt Betty’s apple squares, and it was a lovely evening. Peter built a fire and we sat around and talked until much later than I usually stay up.

Jason’s father, my former father-in-law, is 94 and failing and Jason is driving all the way from California to Wisconsin to see him -- even though he knows he’ll have to visit his father through a window, even though he’ll have to drive through places with a lot of illness and some early winter storms to get there.

“I didn’t think I was going!” Jason told me, just before he left. He sounded a little surprised.

But he ended up renting a car and is driving to see his dad, who now weighs only 100 pounds, who may or may not recognize him when he gets there, and who is no longer able to converse.

“I wasn’t going to go,” Jason repeated. “But now I’m going.”

For quite a while, I’ve been trying to let go of expectations. People say that holding too tightly to our expectations only leads to unhappiness, but I’ve always had a hard time letting them go. I like the idea that I have some idea of where my life is headed and what is going to happen next.

A few hours after I spoke with my parents, I saw a photo posted on Facebook of my mom on her skis in the woods. Their house was nowhere in sight so they must have made it some distance. I’m sure it wasn’t great skiing -- but that wasn’t really the point, was it?

If this year has taught me anything, it’s that maybe I need to let go of some of my expectations of how things work. This isn’t the year for them.

I looked again at the photo of my mom. She’s skiing in the early snow and smiling.

Till next time,

Carrie

Carrie Classon’s memoir is called, “Blue Yarn.” Learn more at CarrieClasson.com.

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION

It’s the season for all things scary, and I found myself wondering how many people are actually looking for more things to frighten them this year.

There is a new horror movie about Zoom that is supposed to be terrific ... and I won’t be watching it. I’ve never been a fan of horror movies. On the very few occasions I’ve tried to watch a scary movie, I end up both covering my eyes and plugging my ears (the ominous music is the worst part of it) and I emerge with a pretty limited experience of the film.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a column about my husband Peter’s war with the rodents, and a friend sent the lyrics to “Ben,” a song recorded in the early 1970s by a young Michael Jackson. It was the theme song for the movie “Ben,” which was a sequel to “Willard,” which Peter then decided he had to see. The movie has only recently become available on DVD and so, when it arrived in the mail, we sat down together to watch it.

“This isn’t a horror movie, is it?” I asked Peter for the second or third time.

“No! It’s about rats!”

That didn’t really answer the question, but I agreed to watch until it got too scary and so I sat with him through the opening credits. The movie starred Ernest Borgnine as the mean boss and Elsa Lanchester (who played the bride of Frankenstein a few decades earlier) as Willard’s mom, and a 19-year-old Bruce Davison as Willard. But the real stars of the movie were a lot of rats playing themselves.

And Peter was right, there was nothing remotely scary about the movie until the last fifteen minutes when Willard turns homicidal and enlists the rats to help him. Then the rat named Ben reads the word “pesticide” on the box that Willard is pouring into the rat’s dinner bowl (or possibly recognizes the skull and crossbones?). That’s when Willard is killed by his little rat friends.

Afterward, I watched a few interviews about the making of the movie. This was before the days of computer-generated imagery and to get the last scene, Bruce Davison was covered with peanut butter and had 600 rats poured on top of him. They said they shot this scene last because they weren’t quite sure how it all would work out.

I didn’t learn how much the young Mr. Davison was paid for his role, but I’m guessing it was not enough.

The movie was a huge and unexpected success when it was released, and a slew of killer animal movies followed. There were movies about snakes and killer ants and, of course, “Jaws,” a bit later on. The movie also apparently prompted an uptick in pet rat adoptions.

The idea of horror fascinates me. There are movies and books about dolls and babies and clowns and all sorts of things that wouldn’t, under normal circumstances, be scary. I can read horror novels only because I can put the book down and reassure myself that I am still in my home, no monsters in sight.

And maybe that’s why we need scary stories right now more than ever.

It’s good to leave a scary world and realize that everything is not as terrible as the book or movie. Real life might be less certain than usual, but I can take comfort in the fact that I’m not covered in peanut butter with 600 rats swarming all over me.

Sometimes, you have to take what comfort you can get.

Till next time,

Carrie

Carrie Classon’s memoir is called, “Blue Yarn.” Learn more at CarrieClasson.com.

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION

“I’m hunkering down,” Rebecca told me.

I know what she means. My friend Rebecca just returned from a road trip she made after a lot of careful consideration. First, her mother was sick. Then, she fell and broke her hip. Rebecca’s mother is 90 and she did not seem to be getting better. Rebecca decided she needed to go visit her.

Rebecca and her daughter drove across three states for the visit. Rebecca said it was a wonderful trip and she bonded with her daughter as never before. Her mother is doing a little better now.

“She’s still 90. But she knows I love her,” Rebecca said. That was the purpose of the trip, after all.

I was a little jealous of Rebecca, I’ll admit. My husband, Peter, and I have gone exactly nowhere -- unless a trip to the dentist counts. Even going to the dentist was kind of exciting. It felt like some sort of exotic escape, not simply an occasion to have the plaque chipped off my teeth. I suspect I talked too much to the dental hygienist, who had a job to do that was not made easier by my chatting.

But I won’t be going back to the dentist for a while and, like Rebecca, I’m hunkering down. Peter and I still visit his sister, Lori, who is fighting cancer, so we are being particularly careful. It’s getting cold, people are moving indoors, and there doesn’t seem to be much reason to expect anything will change anytime soon. I think my whole notion of what constitutes a special occasion is shifting.

Another friend, Yvonne, comes by with her dog, Remington, at least once a week. She used to just stop when she was walking by and, if I saw her, I’d come out and give Remington a treat and we’d catch up. Now she rings the doorbell.

“Remington!” I holler at the top of my lungs.

Remington goes crazy with excitement and I come out and sit on my front steps and chat with Yvonne. Sometimes Peter joins us. He tosses goldfish crackers to Remington who, since the start of the pandemic, has really improved his catching skills and now routinely catches six out of six goldfish that Peter tosses.

“Great job!” Peter tells the exuberant dog. “I think you’re ready for the circus!” Remington is proud, I can tell.

Yvonne and I will chat for up to a half an hour, or whenever Remington gets too bored and impatient to stand another minute, and she always promises to come back soon. I don’t remember get-togethers like this being so important before. But they are terribly important when we are all hunkering down.

I hear a lot of people talk about how we will remember the times we are living through now. Some of the predictions are far-reaching and world-altering and industry-changing and they could be right.

But I think I will remember playing games with Remington, and looking forward to Yvonne’s next visit, and reading to Lori on her deck, and watching the moon rise with Peter -- with nowhere to go, and a fading memory of where we would go if we could.

We are all hunkering down now and, while I’m sure the world will get larger and more exciting again, right now it is quiet and small, and I am learning to appreciate the small and quiet things.

I called up my mom, whom I haven’t seen in almost a year. “Nothing happening here!” I tell her.

“Nothing happening here either!” she responds. And that seems to be OK.

Till next time,

Carrie

Carrie Classon’s memoir is called, “Blue Yarn.” Learn more at CarrieClasson.com.

DISTRIBUTED BY ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION