YOU’VE SEEN the magazine ads. There’s a village with all the houses facing a winding canal instead of a street — sort of a miniature Venice, without the pigeons.

It is dusk. Old-fashioned gas streetlamps line the canal and golden lights glow in the windows of the stone houses.

The ad is for plates or framed prints or coffee mugs with these romantic images, available for five installments. The picture was created by Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light.(TM)

I’ve never met anyone with a trademarked name, and I’ve certainly never met anyone with a descriptive title as a surname. It harkens back to an earlier day, doesn’t it? Sir Lancelot, Defender of Damsels or Slayer of Dragons.

Maybe it’s just as well that we all don’t have titles like that. It might reveal more about what others think of us than we’re prepared to know. I might be Kerri, Bringer of Peace, to my face, but then again, I might be Kerri, Cause of Nausea, behind my back. Your boss might be Carrier of Ulcers or Ignorer of Deadlines. Your spouse might be Burner of Burgers or Loser of Keys. It’s a little reductive.

Recently I heard in a news story that Kinkade has extended the reach of his painted beam of light to the planned community business. There’s now a Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light, housing development, where you can live in one of those stone cottages along the winding canal with the gas streetlamps. Is it always dusk there?

How old do you suppose a person might be before a title like Painter of Light is conferred? There might be several titles over the course of a lifetime, making it tough to keep up with old friends.

Hey, did you hear about Jane, Carrier of Extra Pounds? Didn’t she used to be Jane, Wearer of Size 2? What happened to her?

You didn’t know? She married John, Fryer of Lard, and they had four kids. She hangs out on weekends with her friend Marge, Wearer of Tarps, and they bake brownies all day. But her sister Renee, Stapler of Stomach — now, she kept her figure and married that lawyer Bruce, Chaser of Ambulances. They bought a house in that Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light, village that went up. Lost their dog in that canal when it rained in the spring, and can’t use the front yard at all — you wouldn’t believe the things that wash up on the doorstep. And when the tide’s low, the smell isn’t so romantic, trust me. But otherwise, they love it there.

What do you suppose were the titles Kinkade nixed? Merchandiser Without Restraint? Robber of Readers of Parade? Competitor for the Franklin Mint?

I shall remain, Kerri, Keeper of Cash, and avoid the temptation to begin an installment plan for one of those commemorative plates. But if someone wanted to start calling me Kerri, Bringer of True Wisdom, I wouldn’t object.

My mother is still here. The evidence is everywhere. There are cuttings of six different types of plants rooted in water in bottles on the kitchen windowsill. There are half-finished craft projects and yards of fabric in plastic grocery bags and piles of clothes no one can wear but are too good to discard or give away. Even though my husband never met my mother, he keeps her memory alive through stacks of saved newspapers in a laundry basket and twist ties from bread wrappers stowed away in the kitchen drawers. Lately I’ve even been known to save rubber bands on doorknobs.

When a friend gave me a photograph of myself, I was surprised to see my mother where I should have been. Not only has she entered my bathroom mirror, but she’s also standing in for me at social events.

I’m not speaking metaphorically here. This is a scientific phenomenon documented by my friends as well. We also have enough of us experiencing strange inaccurate readings on our bathroom scales to verify a significant increase in the pull of gravity—something akin to global warming. The fact that it seems to affect females over forty who are underrepresented in the scientific community is only more proof of a vast conspiracy to keep this environmental shift a secret. I blame the current administration.

But back to my mother’s recent manifestations, I’ve also been channeling her voice as I rant to no one in particular about how hard I worked to decorate our living room on a shoestring, and how glad I am that I’ve never had enough money to buy new furniture since it would be even more upsetting to see GOOD upholstery ruined by indoor animals and the abuse of children. That was my mother talking, not me.

Like my mother before me, I am a dabbler. I can pull off a variety of creative acts, from doodling a decent sketch of a duck’s head on the back of a school board meeting agenda, singing in a voice I blush to admit a music professor once remarked was “very human” (faint praise, but I felt vindicated, somehow), and tossing off witty repartee—sometimes during the actual conversation, but more often in my slightly embellished recounting of the episode later. And just since my daughter turned thirteen, I have developed my mother’s uncanny ability to exasperate teenage girls.

This December will mark seventeen years since my mother supposedly died. Now I know the truth. She’s still here. She’s still right here.

SELFLESSNESS MAY BE A FEMALE TRAIT, BUT DO WE HAVE TO INDULGE IT?

I wonder when it starts. Do tiny female embryos begin life saying, "No, really, I'm fine. You just go ahead," to the various items floating by in the amniotic fluid?

I've read that female babies cry sympathetically when they hear others in the hospital nursery start to wail. Is it because their reveries were interrupted by the noise or because they're trying to show support for each other? Or are they just frustrated that they can't climb out and fetch a bottle for the kid in the next cradle?

Whenever it begins, there seems to be an innate tendency, encouraged enthusiastically by the rest of the world (read that dad and the kids), for females, even in the modern Western world in the '90s, to feel they were born to serve, always putting others first or facing the guilt if they don't.

I certainly don't claim to be especially unselfish on the big issues. I insist that toilet seats be returned to the down position and that we stop to look in the antiques stores on our way home from vacation, or that we ask for directions when we get lost.

Yet I do notice in myself a weird sense of responsibility for the happiness of everyone in my line of sight, at my own expense if necessary. I'll admit some of it is a little crazy. What is that twinge of guilt I feel when something good comes on TV, and I am the only one to see it? Why do I feel compelled to run to the phone to make sure it doesn't belong just to me?

And watch me around the fried chicken. I feel no guilt about having the highly competent teenaged staff at the fast-food counter cook the stuff, but I'd never be the one to take a good part. Save me the wing. I'll just sit here and eat it in the dark.

Maybe it isn't just me. Traditionally female careers are service-oriented, with many of us clumped in jobs that pretty much require us to be selfless and uncomplaining. And how many of us become the office mom - remembering the birthdays, watering the plants, buttoning everyone's coats before we send co-workers home?

All this selflessness is wonderful when it springs genuinely from a person's nature. And it's great to be on the receiving end. But what if we all wake up one day and just don't feel like it? What about all of us who happen to have the biological parts and hormones but not the sweet, giving spirit? How about all of us selfish, grumpy, tired females who want the best piece of chicken? We get Part 2 of the female equation: guilt.

Watch me and count the apologies. I'm sorry about the weather, the traffic, the cover charge, that I didn't keep you from making the mistake, that I didn't know what you were thinking. And if you tell me I apologize too much, well, I'm sorry about that, too.

Am I the only one who feels this way? Can I start a new anti-selflessness movement? We could revolt. Refuse to be put on hold. Just say no to sending those sappy greeting cards with bad poetry written in flowing script. Strike the phrase ``Oh that's all right'' from our vocabularies. Let's do it. Let's declare Monday to be a day of celebration: a National Day of Maternal Absolution.

Meet me for lunch. We'll order all white meat.

I TALK TOO MUCH. If I call you on the phone, I might talk for an hour. I talk to myself while driving, while I brush my teeth (it's a little muffled), and while I dial the phone. Sometimes I'm rehearsing what I'll say. Sometimes I'm rehashing an old conversation and editing it to give myself the clever lines. There's no Verbose Anonymous, so I suffer alone, although not in silence.

When I was 10, I voluntarily attended a summer school program to learn to sew. I was the youngest in the class and the least experienced. The teacher was harsh and impatient with me, saying things like, ``Let me put a bug in your ear. You're way behind everyone else.''

That was the first time I'd ever heard that phrase, and I was pondering the idea of insects in my ears and whether that was supposed to be good or bad, and missed whatever else she said. I blissfully continued to mumble to myself, sew crooked seams, and pull snarled thread from the red halter top I would wear only once.

Early in the program, a dark-haired girl had stared steadily at me as I walked in and found my seat. Foolishly forgetting all rules in the Kid Code, I said cheerfully, ``Whatcha lookin' at? Am I a star?''

It was social suicide. The girl rode me to death the rest of the program with snide jabs and nastiness. Of course, she had a pack of she-wolf friends around her to appreciate her comments. I was alone, the weak calf separated from the herd. An easy mark. Between the bugs in my ears and the pack of canines stalking me, summer school couldn't have ended too soon for me.

With the gauntlet I walked each day, maybe it isn't surprising that I made a conscious decision that affected my social interactions for the next 25 years.

I decided that I would dare myself not to speak to anyone all day. Not on the bus, not at lunch, not in class. A quiet girl was mysterious, and less of a target, I decided. A loud girl who tried to be funny or say out loud the comments that dropped from her brain onto her tongue risked that un-cool kid brand being pressed into her forehead. Again.

And so, from the tender age of 10 until, I don't know, last Tuesday, I fought my true loud, boisterous, show-offish nature to become quiet, unassuming and tasteful wallpaper.

Some days were successful, and I didn't say a single word all day. Other days, I couldn't help myself and would comment about a house we passed on the bus, or a show I saw on TV, or a Bobby Sherman song. Usually this was met with a cool stare from the she-wolves.

It never worked anyway, which is why I finally gave up. I am now easy to find, if you have most of your hearing intact. I no longer censor myself; I just cringe remembering things I wish I hadn't said. But I'm finally exhibiting my authentic self, which is supposed to be cool these days.

I think I'll have a T-shirt made that reads ``LOUD AND PROUD'' or ``SHUSH THIS.'' But let me put a bug in your ear. I won't sew it myself.

I grew up with some expectations and assumptions that I’ll bet lots of us share.

I grew up knowing that if Euell Gibbons could eat a pine tree, I probably could learn to survive in the woods if I had to, and the idea was comforting.

I knew that if I lived in the wilderness, I could sing John Denver songs, enjoy magnificent scenery and feel I was one with the cosmos.

I would never under any circumstances throw trash from my car because I wouldn’t want to be responsible for making an Indian cry.

I knew that I wanted to live in a farmhouse with my family like the lucky woman Millie in the U. S. Savings Bond commercial whose husband called her one good woman doing the job of two.

I imagined myself peeling apples and wiping my hands on an apron as I walked out to the porch to greet my husband coming home from the sawmill on Walton’s Mountain, or maybe tying on a pokebonnet to walk to town a la Little House on the Prairie. I was torn between Dan Haggerty as Grizzly Adams, Ralph Waite as John Walton, and Michael Landon as Pa when imagining my future mate.

My mother marched in the first Earth Day events on 1970. My parents grew up during the Depression and saved everything that might be useful one day—rubber bands on all the doorknobs, washed and reused Styrofoam cups and plastic utensils in the cupboards, clothes saved in cardboard kegs in the attic and not much ever just thrown away.

Nature was revered in my family, and any wild animals that showed up in our yard—rabbits, possums, snakes and snapping turtles-- were carefully caught and relocated in woods and open spaces. Wildflowers and cultivated plants were in flowerbeds, pots on the porch and on the windowsills, and little “slips” were always rooting in a bottle of water somewhere.

I felt connected to the earth I lived on and I had great respect for the old ways of doing things. When my parents made us eat cornmeal mush with syrup on it to show us how hard things had been for them growing up eating it, I asked for more and kind of botched their demonstration.

Living in the country with enough land for chickens and goats was a goal of mine since I was about thirteen. My parents grew up on farms and I couldn’t for the life of me understand why they would have given that up to live in the suburbs with houses around them and just a front and backyard.

I looked at old white farmhouses—which are becoming more scarce all the time—for eight years before we moved into one in Gates County.

I discovered to my surprise that people who had been lucky enough to live in this rural paradise for generations didn’t necessarily share my sentimental view of the land and the animals living here. The only good snake is a dead snake and all are assumed to be water moccasins regardless of color or markings. Most aren’t interested in preserving habitat for any wild animals, better to shoot them and leave them for the buzzards. When you’ve finished your soda or hamburger, the best place for the cups and wrappers is the side of the road. If an animal –wild, domestic or otherwise--is in the road, aim the car right for it and laugh.

How did growing up just 60 miles away give us such different views of the world?