Elaine Ambrose

Bestselling Author, Ventriloquist, & Humorist

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Airport Bathrooms can Drain Your Soul

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woman toilet (Featured on The Huffington Post Travel, March 27, 2015)

As a frequent traveler through life and space, I often have the need to use a restroom in an airport. Such necessary actions require tenacity, humility, and tolerance, human attributes that may not eagerly spring into action after sitting four hours on a plane with a middle-age bladder.

Airport bathrooms were designed by evil people who hate women. Schlepping my carry-on luggage, I get in line for the women’s restroom, and woe to anyone who takes cuts. Once inside, I join others who resemble a herd of bowing, pack-laden peasants as we peek under doors to find an unused toilet. I wrangle two plump pieces as I wiggle inside the stall then pull the luggage tight to my body so I can close the door. Then I shift the ensemble against the door so I have room. I dutifully place the tissue ring around the seat but usually the automatic flusher operates and pulls the tissue down even before I can sit.

I don’t dare sit down without the tissue because the woman before me decided to save time by squatting and spraying the entire seat. So, I straddle the toilet, pull down another tissue, quickly slap it onto the seat and try to maneuver into position before the flusher goes off again. The same thing happens. It’s not a pleasant or quality use of my time to be trapped into a crowded stall with my pants down while screaming at a commode that continues to mock me by flushing on a whim. I suspect demented staff members are operating remote control flush switches and arbitrarily decide which hapless women to torment. I look around for hidden cameras and notice there isn’t any toilet paper.

After a woman successfully manipulates the toilet, then she must wrangle the luggage back out of the stall, stand in line for the sink, wave her hands under the sporadic soap dispenser and hope it works, wash her hands and then find the towels which are inexplicably across the room in a corner next to the woman washing her feet in the sink. Then she throws her used towel into the waste receptacle that reeks of soiled diapers.

Meanwhile, male travelers saunter into their restrooms, whip out and empty their hoses without needing a stall, wash their hands, admire themselves in the mirror, chat with the guys, and are on their second beer at the bar by the time the women straggle out of the bathroom, dragging strips of toilet paper on their shoes.

“What took you so long,” a naive man will ask, but only once.

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After a recent long-distance flight, I pranced to the nearest bathroom only to find it closed. Why can’t the maintenance people schedule their cleaning routines around arrival times? If they know a plane loaded with 200 people is landing in 30 minutes, by all means get into that restroom and tidy up because there will be at least 100 females making a stampede for the four available stalls. And, a closed restroom could result in desperate women marching into the men’s room. Been there, done that, didn’t care.

A few times, I’ve enjoyed the privilege of a privy in an airline’s executive lounge. The women’s restrooms are spacious and clean, and have real towels and free breath mints. There aren’t any lines, the stalls are big enough to host a cocktail party (not that you would want to do that), and the automatic flushers politely wait until you have finished your business. Obviously, these facilities were designed by distinguished women who travel.

Caveat #1: Now that this rant has washed away, I’d like to acknowledge the wonder of flying. This week I sat in a chair in a tube with hundreds of other passengers and flew at 38,000 feet over the Pacific Ocean. There were 100,000 flights that day, and thousands of people traveled through airports. The common ordeal of finding a lavatory pales in comparison to the glorious ability to seek adventure and not bitch about inconveniences.

Caveat #2: I’ve enjoyed opportunities to travel the world, and each exotic place comes with customary bathroom facilities. In India, our modern rest stop included a room with a tile-lined hole in the ground and two foot rests. In Nepal, we used a log over a ditch. One facility in South Africa offered a room of toilets without partitions or toilet paper. Many locations and homes in our own country still use outhouses. I recognize my comic rants as First World problems, and I’m grateful for indoor plumbing. Now, onto the next adventure.

When Your Parents were Lovers

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(Featured on The Huffington Post 50 on March 20, 2015)mom dad 1947 2

The grainy, black-and-white photographs from 1946 fluttered to the floor, free from decades of bondage among hundreds of photos in my mother’s leather albums. I picked up the images and stared at my parents and strained to imagine the young couple in love.

My father stood in his Army fatigues in front of a row of tanks in Japan. While he served overseas after World War II, his wallet contained the photo of my mother in a swimming suit. My earliest images of her are quite different. I remember her in a large flowered dress, waving to me with plump arms while admonishing me to “be good” because my father was coming home from work. I’m amazed that she once was a charming young woman, smiling to her fiancé, wearing a bathing suit in front of a flower garden. I wish I had known her then.

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Another photo from 1948 was a self-portrait, taken long before instant selfies were available on cellular telephones. Their young innocence intrigues me. I imagine my mother sewing linens for her hope chest while listening to the Glenn Miller Orchestra on the radio. I see my father coaxing an old tractor to complete one more row in the field before dark. They married on a cool day in late November 1948 with nothing but determination and grit. The years brought prosperity and heartache. Dad passed away in 1989 after receiving a cancerous, transplanted liver. Mom slipped into dementia a few years ago and died last November, just short of what would have been their 66th wedding anniversary.

I never saw them hug and kiss. I guess the stress of several businesses and bad health depleted their romantic energy. For several years, my father lived in another state during the week, where he operated a trucking business. Every year, Dad would give me money to buy Mom presents for Christmas and other special occasions. She would always buy him a patio lounge chair for Father’s Day. The fabric rotted, unused, in the sun.

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Of all the faded photos I’ve examined, none are as profound as the ones of the young couple in love. That’s how I choose to remember them. They were beautiful, before the trauma and drama of life cheated them out of growing old together. I want them to know their legacy is strong, and lives on through their amazing grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

I have a request for my middle-aged friends: Are your parents still living? If so, maybe you could take a few hours and visit with them. Ask them about their courtship and their first years together. I predict they will open their hearts and their scrapbooks and begin to talk. Help them celebrate the memories of their young love. Otherwise, you may never know about their passion until a wrinkled photograph falls onto the floor after they’re gone. This weekend, I’ll play Glenn Miller’s “String of Pearls” and open another album.

Jolly Jaunts on the Mother-Daughter Journey

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 Featured on The Huffington Post 50, March 23, 2015.

emily purple hair

My daughter has purple hair, colorful tattoos, and she teaches physical and mental health to her loyal clients. I have thin hair, gnarly age spots, and I tell jokes until people snort beer from their noses. Though we have varied techniques of pleasing our intended audiences, we guarantee customer satisfaction and life isn’t boring.

My son and I are solid as a granite mountain with no drama or surprises. We understand each other and always have connected in a slap-stick “I got your back” sort of comedy skit. My daughter and I have shared the peaks and valleys of life with more volatility than a game of fetch with a junkyard dog. At least we’ve passed the wretched teenage years when she would wail, “Stop looking at me!”

elaine emily maui

If mothers can survive their daughters during puberty, the rest is close to perfection. My daughter and I have traveled together on journeys that define our lives. When she was 11, I took her on a business trip to Chicago and we attended one of the first productions of “Les Miserables.” She knew the score from memory and we laughed together at the raunchy song “Master of the House” and sobbed like babies during “Bring Him Home.”

During college, she lived for a year in Guanajuato, Mexico. I visited her and gasped with pain at her living conditions, mainly because there were 90 steps up to her one-room apartment. She lived alone and didn’t have a stove, heater, or laundry facilities, but she thrived in her new adventure. We experienced a grand time touring the sites, buying fresh flowers and fruit from the local market, and guzzling cool beer at Bar Ocho. In that year, I let go and she matured and blossomed.

Other trips included a six-country tour of Europe with her high school class and a 12-day train odyssey across Canada with my mother. For her 22nd birthday, she was my guest as I hosted a university alumnae tour through Spain. We escaped for two days, rented a car, and drove to the Costa del Sol on the Mediterranean. She spoke fluent Spanish, so the trip was less complicated. After that, we shared a hike on a rugged, 3-day excursion across the Haleakela volcano field in Maui, Hawaii. She led a group of women who slept in tents, cooked over an open fire, and gazed through tears at the brilliant stars. Life with her became one continuous adventure.

e and emily cabin

As a reward for graduating from college with scholastic honors, I gave her a round-trip, week-long ticket to Hawaii. She didn’t return as planned. She found several jobs to support herself, including working on a tourist boat. One of her responsibilities was to free-dive into the ocean to set the anchor. She did that until a blood vessel burst in her eye. She started a woman’s hiking business and escorted tours across volcano fields and through rain forests. Then she was hired to teach at the Waldorf School on Maui. I wish there were such amazing schools for my grandkids in Idaho. Seven years after going to Hawaii on a week’s trip, she returned with a husband and a baby. Now she colors her hair purple for a fun, creative flair, and she’s the reason I have so much gray hair than I need to dye it brown.

We’re now on another excursion to a writing retreat on Maui. This time, it’s different. I’m recovering from knee surgery, I’m slower, and I have no desire to hike anything beyond two steps into a wine bar. After I lost my boarding pass, she gently took over as tour guide, and I was grateful. The changing of roles is unplanned but necessary. Without her help, I’d still be wandering around the San Francisco airport and she’d be on a Hawaiian beach happily sucking a Mai Tai. I’m secretly one of her biggest fans.

During a recent conversation, we reminisced about the passing of my mother. I carefully approached the subject of her role as my designated Power of Attorney for Health Care. I emphasized that I did not want to live without independence. She soothed my worries with her honest reply: “Don’t worry, Mom. If you’re ever on life support I’ll pull the plug.”

She loves me, too.

Public Breastfeeding can be Expressed in Good Taste

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(Featured on the Huffington Post Comedy on March 16, 2015)

public breastfeeding

 

I recently attended an elegant wedding at a seaside resort where the gift table and the guests were well-endowed. However, there was some engorged indignation at the reception as two perky women nursed their babies without discreetly covering the bobbing heads of the darling sucklings.

One of the bridesmaids conveniently wore a strapless gown to easier facilitate the moveable feast. Reaction to the public display of liberal lactation ranged from frothed and pumped up annoyance to flowing praise for the natural and healthy nourishment between the mother and child reunion.

It sucks to be criticized for using a supply on demand device for its original purpose.

“Oh, my, I must warn Harold not to go over there,” a woman muttered to a group of older guests with permed hair, lace hankies and sensible shoes.

“I haven’t seen this many bare breasts since I watched a National Geographic documentary about African tribes.”

“In my day we discreetly fed our babies under a blanket, and my mother hired a nurse maid for her children,” snorted another lady.

The younger crowd seemed nonchalant and didn’t latch onto the uncomfortable tension that leaked into the room. They laughed the night away, draining jugs of wine until they acted like boobs.

To insure that the event wasn’t a total bust, they danced through the spot so the hooters could hoot, the knockers could knock, and the stranded friends could wean themselves away from the dried up and sagging patrons. In a final tit-for-tat, the young adults pulled the older folks out of their bondage and onto the dance floor to lift and separate their drooping spirits.

By then, the contented babies were asleep and the milked mothers had a few hours to pad themselves and dance the Fandango until the cows came home. That way, they could have their wedding cake and eat it too.

The best formula for enjoying a special occasion that involves young couples is to anticipate the appearance of at least one nursing mother.

Offended people can choose to avert their attention to the drunken uncle or the pouting teenager, or the Rod Stewart impersonator in the band. The public nursing only lasts a few minutes and the alternative is to hear a screaming baby and witness a swollen mother in pain.

I nursed my two babies each for a year, and it was a rewarding experience. I never walked around in public hooked up to the little buggers, but I don’t disapprove of those who do. There are far too many neglected babies who hunger for the affection and attachment of loving mothers.

After my children were grown, I cleaned out the house and found a little bottle of breast milk saved in the back of the basement freezer. My younger child was 18 years old and didn’t need it. I couldn’t throw it away so I lovingly placed the bottle into a velvet Crown Royal pouch and buried it under the rose-bush in the back yard. I probably need counseling for that.

How to Thaw a Cold Childhood and Create a Warm Family

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ambrose truck elaine tom

Grown-up Me traveled to a conference in Nashville last week to speak to a national gathering of women bloggers. I smiled with confidence and prepared to meet, greet, and tweet. Then I noticed the conference sponsor — a frozen food company introducing a new product — and Grown-up Me disappeared. A small child stood in my place.

As the Little Girl Me, I felt the business clothes hang loosely on my youthful frame and my small feet wobble in the heeled shoes. I stared at the compact packages of frozen meals as the stage and podium turned into the cold dining room from my past. Again, I was a sad girl in need of comfort food that never came.

I grew up eating frozen dinners on disposable aluminum trays that provided exact portions of mixed vegetables, a meat concoction, manufactured potatoes and bland apple crisp or a meek cherry cobbler. My father was a stern, successful workaholic who built a trucking empire in the 1960s hauling frozen food and TV dinners throughout the Northwest. He was gone during the week, driving trucks from California to Montana, then back to California. He’d stop by our house in Idaho and leave a box of frozen dinners. And then he was gone again.

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My mother dutifully heated and handed the aluminum trays to her children, and we ate in silence. As a stubborn girl, I defied the orderly presentation and pushed the wrinkled peas into the potatoes and plopped the dessert onto the meat. It all tasted the same, anyway. As we consumed our meal, I wondered how it would be to live in a place of warmth, peace and laughter. I longed for a hearty homemade meal shared with a happy family, so I made it my mission to have that scenario.

You can relate to my story if you spent your childhood sitting silently around a table in a cold room, chilled from within, following a predictable pattern that would repeat for years. As a young girl, I vowed to someday come in from the cold when I had a family of my own. Decades later, I finally realized my childhood dream of living in a warm, loving home full of laughter. Challenges remain, as in all situations, but my table is covered with home-cooked food and surrounded by contented grown children and giggling grandkids.

Here are some life lessons that can help navigate beyond a cold childhood:

You are not disposable. Just as the trays from frozen dinners were tossed into the garbage, I often felt unwanted during my childhood. After I left home and financially supported myself, I felt the first taste of freedom. I finally mattered, and my skills were worthy of a paycheck.

You can create your own path. My adult journey often was treacherous as I took risks to find a better life. I stumbled, fell and had to start over several times. But, I always stood, brushed off the dirt and kept going because I knew what I didn’t want and what I wanted. I worked at several jobs and found better ones. I attended cooking classes and registered for cooking tours to visit other cultures and learn how to make special dishes. I earned enough money to purchase quality plates, silverware and glasses that weren’t tossed into the garbage after every meal. I married, divorced and remarried and finally found my forever love. My children survived many meager meals while they were young, but we survived together. After many years of trial and error, we finally got to enjoy dessert.

You can envision and achieve your goals. My desire to provide and enjoy a warm home was fueled by the vision of a festive holiday table. Over the past few years, I’ve dined at such a table and thankfully watched my adult children and grandchildren laugh, tell stories and barter for the last piece of pie. Then my husband will offer a toast, and we’ll raise our glasses in celebration. This spontaneous merriment often leads to multiple toasts.

Your parents had struggles, too. I didn’t get along with either of my parents, and we were all happy when I finally went away to college. Looking back, I have developed a new empathy for them. They did the best they could as they battled health, economic, and relationships issues. They have both passed away, and I regret not trying one more time to kindle a small spark that would have bonded us together. As their legacy, I will honor them with positive thoughts and not dwell on sad memories.

Acceptance is liberating. Now I have the maturity to appreciate the work my father did to advance his business success and support the family. But the wealth came with a price. Every mile he drove, he purposely placed distance between himself and his family. Even after he stopped driving and had accumulated the resources to buy more trucks and hire other drivers, the house remained cold. I used this experience to motivate my own search for emotional and physical nourishment.

Family mealtime is an important ritual that forms the basis of childhood memories. Successful dinners don’t need to be cooked from scratch from original recipes. Frozen entrees are a handy substitute after a hectic day and the family needs to eat before midnight. A home-cooked meal or a microwaved dinner can be the centerpiece of an abundant family feast; it all depends upon the warmth in the room, not just from the dish.

Back at the conference in Nashville, Little Girl Me held out my hands and accepted the offering of warm macaroni and cheese cups from the representative. Grown-up Me smiled and said, “Thank you.” You can’t go wrong with macaroni and cheese, the proven comfort food. “Frozen Dinners” is now just a metaphor, a birthmark that someday I will turn into a memoir.

 

(Featured on The Huffington Post Fifty on March 16, 2015)

 

The Ugly Reality of Fake Beauty

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elaine photoshoppedelaine old 3

 

Two photographs of me taken 15 minutes apart illustrate the powerful allure of altered images. In one photograph, I look like a sagging, seasoned but sassy senior citizen. In the other one, I resemble the beautiful actress Katherine Zeta Jones. It’s amazing what a talented professional photographer can do with a new software program that rearranges facial features. I should wear a mask of the fabulous phony face, but then I couldn’t eat chocolate or drink wine, so I’ll stay with the contented crone.

Let’s face it: The dramatic but artificial improvement is shocking. The only similarities in the two photos are my jacket and jewelry. The rest is fake. Bogus. Counterfeit. But, damn, I would love to look like that.

With that face, doors would open, opportunities suddenly would appear, and strangers would buy me drinks in bars. With that face, I could walk into a fancy store and the salespeople would actually pay attention, a phenomenon I haven’t experienced in more than 20 years. I could probably get my own reality show on television, using no talent at all. That perfect pose would be published in magazine advertisements and on weight-loss product packaging. Imagine the unlimited scenarios.

Reality can be a bitch. If I used that photo on resumes or business cards, people would be overcome with disappointment when they met the real me. The manipulated image wouldn’t be accepted when I tried to use my driver’s license or passport. And, I’d lose the respect from friends and associates who know the authentic me. They would laugh in my normal face.

Full disclosure: I did use some of the photographs taken by the professional photographer. Some of the skin imperfections were erased and she caught my irreverent attitude, but the images still resemble me. The best one now is on the front page of my website. Don’t judge.

The ugly reality of fake beauty is that it removes authenticity. I never looked like the glamorous photo and I never will. And, that’s okay. Older women have earned their laugh lines, and their faces gain a certain grandeur as their jowls droop into their necks. Living long enough to sprout age spots and wrinkles is a privilege denied to many. Two good friends died recently, and they won’t have the opportunity to grow older and look more glorious with age. It may sound cliché, but for them, I’ll focus on inner beauty. I’ll also be grateful for another day to annoy or humor people. That’s real.