Morbid Marketing

In honor of Halloween, I thought I'd spend several hundred words on the topic of morbid marketing.

I made up the term for all the direct marketing I still receive for my late parents. Sure, it's slowed down. The National Rifle Association's appeals to my father finally stopped altogether. They must have gotten the message that I did not inherit my father's interpretation of the 2nd amendment after I kept writing nasty things on their postage-paid return envelopes.

But the direct marketing still comes. The most recent appeal came this week, addressed as such: "Luella, Call Fast." It continued inside: "The Most Powerful Anti-Wrinkle Secret in History. No Surgery! No Syringes! No Prescription!"

Well, no luck! And might I suggest you spend a little more on your leads list? Cuz Luella's not worried about a single wrinkle, fine line or dark circle in nearly four years.

But that's an example of the lousy, lazy lists-makers of the marketing world.

It's the personal appeals from companies who did business with my parents and who knew that they no longer were customers because they are dead that really rub me. And, oh, yeah, I'm calling you out.

Allstate Insurance. Just a few months after canceling my parents' car and condo insurance, I received, addressed to my mother from her long-servicing agent, a smartly taglined letter: "Life Changes. Your Insurance Should Keep Up."

So should you, Dan the Insurance Man. Because your appeal that "every time you reach a new milestone in life, it affects everything ... including your insurance," doesn't really apply in, well, death. Unless you mean I should cancel the policies, which I did.

Another, sent to my mother about six months after she died, was from Christ Medical Center. Its appeal: "Please Help Christ Medical Center Continue to Save Lives!"

Umm, need I remind you that mom was your patient, and she died just hours after I drove the two hours home to Wisconsin because your doctors assured me "there seems to be nothing wrong with your mother ... we'll keep her overnight, but she'll get to go home tomorrow most likely"?

Yeah, she went home all right. Home to her Maker.

So, sorry, her estate is not in the mood to give you a 'special tax-deductible gift of ... ".

But my all-time favorite morbid marketing example is a note from Palos Health & Fitness Center. This is where my mom took her water aerobic classes and made new luncheon friends. Because for Luella, lunch was life.

I called to cancel her membership as soon as I realized it was an automatic debit in her checking account. When I did, the woman who took my call asked why I was canceling. I very clearly explained that my mother had died and would no long need her membership.

Apparently the message was not conveyed to the 'membership team,' because she received a note from said 'membership team' just one month later, saying: "We miss you!" ... and ... "We hope you are keeping up with your health and fitness goals. We know you had specific reasons for leaving us but hope that your situation has changed over the last few months. To help you get back on track, we are offering zero enrollment until April 30th, 2007... What a great way to come back."

And on Halloween, I just wonder if Mom's not doing some kind of special Luella haunting on the Palos Health & Fitness Club, just to spook the crack membership team.

Happy haunting!

Hairy Kari on a Monday

Sunday morning I chatted with a dad of a nearly-2-year-old girl with beautiful blond hair that has yet to be cut. We laughed about our apprehension of cutting our babies' hair.

Half jokingly, I warned him that my friends with daughters have shared that girls, before first or second grade, usually just days before school picture day, cut their own hair. Just to see if that's perhaps a career direction for them. I don't know why.

Sometimes it's just the bangs, sometimes it's more of an all-over cut. Always it takes a genius of a hair stylist to 'fix' it.

I'm remembering such a scene recently on Mad Men when the young Sally did a number on her hair, to a harrowing response from both mom and dad.

I don't recall ever doing it myself, but who knows, and who could tell me now? Plus, the pixie was the cut I was famous for during my youngest years. Not much to cut.

With three boys, I really didn't think I had anything to worry about.

But if you've read any smattering of this blog, you may be familiar with my middle son, TJ. And you already know what's coming.

Yep, the boy with the gorgeous dark brown curls walked into my bathroom this morning with a handful of hair, proudly showing me. Having recently cleaned out hair brushes, I hopefully asked, "Were you playing in the garbage?"

He answered no, bringing the scissors he had in his right hand closer to my eyes, which had yet to be reacquainted with their contacts so early on a Monday.

"No, Mommy, it's my hair," Tj boasted. And to add insult to injury, "Isn't it cool?"

Although I inherited my dad's time-bomb temper (I'm working on it), I am no Betty Francis or Donald Draper. I calmly told him to put the scissors back, throw out the hair, and get ready for breakfast.

And after he left my bathroom, I laughed.

Remembering Dad

My dad died much too young, which doesn't make me special. I know lots of folks who've lost a parent way too young, or even a spouse way too early.

It's been just over seven years since my Dad died. It was July 2003, and our oldest son, Luke, was just one. We still lived in the city, and I had just left my full time job to stay home with him.

It had been so hard for me to tell him I was quitting, or as I put it then, "taking a sabbatical." He had always been the parent who encouraged my career goals. When I quit a corporate job to return to my first love, newspaper reporting, even though it meant a serious change to my income and lifestyle, he was the parent who told me I was right to pursue my dream. When my dreams changed and I decided to return to corporate work and to pursue my MBA, it was Dad who gave me a copy of economist Diane Swonk's autobiography and told me, "You will enjoy this."

So of course when I told him I was leaving my job to mother Luke full time, he was genuinely thrilled and told me I'd accomplish great things in life, that I didn't need a six-figure income to do that.

It took me a long time to figure out it didn't matter what I did in life, my Dad would encourage me and be proud of me.

So I'll never forget what one friend wrote in a note to me after he'd suddenly left us all behind, wondering what exactly his dreams had been. She'd written, "You made your father very proud."

I hadn't known until that moment that making him proud mattered so much to me.

My dad was not a perfect father. I was not a perfect daughter. But his love for me, my brothers, my cousins, his God and his country (82nd Airborne!), was perfect.

Today, Sunday, October 17th, would have been his 76th birthday. I thought I'd share this photo of four of my seven cousins, my brothers and me (that's me in the red top and green shorts, always a fashion icon), at my aunt & uncle's home one Memorial Day weekend, where we all gathered yearly for the Indianapolis 500.

Your family, and many others, miss you, Dad. Happy birthday.

The Girl With the Angel Wings Tattoo

I'm not a big fan of tattoos. A few of my family members and a minority of my friends sport one or more.

Of course, more friends may have tats that I just don't know about, and if that's the case, I probably want to keep it that way.

Not being a fan of tattoos in no way reflects a judgment on my part about people with tattoos.

Tattoos can be meaningful. Tattoos can be clever, cute, beautiful, artistic, tasteful.

Kevin and our good friend Paul almost got "Packers" and "Bears" tattoos, respectively, many years ago. I'm thankful that Paul, who by then had an infant daughter, came to the conclusion that maybe he didn't want to have to explain to his daughter, 18 years down the road, why it was ok that he got one but she shouldn't.

I've thought about it. Something small and cute on my ankle maybe. But, frankly, I'd rather avoid needles unless medically necessary.

Disturbingly, I have seen a few tattoos on women at my gym ... women who are great grandmothers ... women who I'm sure thought the tattoo was meaningful and a good idea, at the time. Fifty or 60 years ago.

I see a lot of tattoos on women in my yoga classes. The other day I was mesmerized by a tattoo on the young woman holding a perfect tree pose in front of me. Tattooed on her back were angel wings. Not too large, but large enough. And, I'll say it, quite beautiful. Through my exhaustion and sweat, for a moment I thought an actual angel was standing just two feet from me.

But I know she's not an angel. Real angels are too busy saving Chilean miners and doing that sort of amazing work to be doing yoga on a Monday morning.

Thanks, all you Angels out there.

Boy, Crazy

In what used to be a guest room in my home, I have a dresser drawer labeled "Spy Gear," and another marked "Weaponry."

No, I haven't joined some paramilitary group nor am I a secret double agent Angelina-Jolie-type-movie-character spy disguised as an ordinary suburban mom.

The dresser is in our guest room-turned play room, and I am just an ordinary mom of three young, active boys. In fact, I remember long before becoming a mother I said I wouldn't allow toy guns in my home.

And just yesterday I told my oldest son that walking by his and his brothers' bathroom makes me want to barf. He asked me what 'barf' meant, and I said I was shocked he didn't yet know all the synonyms for throwing up. At that point, his visiting friend and I came up with about eight different ways to say 'puke.'

And I laughed at the fact I just initiated a conversation about vomiting, and wondered, "How did I get here?"

This certainly wasn't my plan, being married 13 years (to the same man) with three boys, a house in the suburbs, volunteering at my kids' Sunday School.

Nope. I vividly remember an essay I wrote in 6th grade. I don't remember the assignment exactly, but it must have had something to do with 'what I wanted to be when I grew up.'

I wrote that I was going to be foreign correspondent for a major newspaper (c'mon, this was the late 70s when newspapers were relevant), get married and have twin girls (always was interested in efficiency and figured two kids, one pregnancy = smart) but have a nanny or a husband who stayed home with the girls while I trotted across the globe covering war and uncovering scandal, exposing scoundrels.

My teacher, Miss Wall, gave me a decent grade but commented in the margins that I shouldn't try to be so specific, that we don't necessarily have control over everything in our lives. She warned that thinking we had such control would only lead to disappointment.

Then there was college. I could have earned a minor in Women's Studies given the number of classes I took in that department. All the literature I read and lectures I listened to about changing the world, about not settling for the status quo, about not doing the things society expected of me, just because society expected it.

Those lessons, along with other life lessons, created a person who, when I met my husband, was not going to get married. I certainly was not going to have children. (He likes to remind me of this every once in a while; he thinks it is very funny.)

But I did marry him, and after many years filled with foreign travel and rat racing, we did have a child. Liked him so much we adopted another. Then had another after him.

I haven't given up on changing the world, however. I have three smart and talented boys to raise into status quo-bucking, rule-breaking, society-influencing men -- three men who will know how to clean their own bathroom.

Their first lesson begins promptly at 7 a.m. tomorrow.