The writing of poetry should come with age restrictions.
Allow those with the chubby fingers
and cherubic cheeks
to write Haikus about dogs and birds
and acrostic verses that trace their love of space
to the A-astronaut of their first names.
Allow those with hands spotted by time
to pick up pens and give rhyme to
the paths that have worn the creases
around their smiles and blurry eyes
in sonnets that recount old loves,
the weight of a ripe tomato plucked off the vine,
or the fat, dark circle of a tear drop
on light blue polyester pants.
Even allow those in their twenties,
thirties, and forties
to write free verse detailing the curtain of hair
fanning across their wives’ pillows,
the rare findings of a crowded subway car
at two A.M. on a Tuesday morning,
or an ode to the college professor
with ivy-long ear hair,
coffee and spearmint breath
and a contagious passion for Fitzgerald.
But to the teens, we should prohibit the writing of verse.
Deny lines that begin with “I feel” and “I hope”
and make the use of
"blood", "betrayal", "agony" and "pain"
punishable by death
or community service.
We should force teens to write fiction
of adolescents in love
and coming to an understanding
with their misunderstood parents.
To write dramas about friendship
that defies all odds,
or at least lasts beyond first hour science.
Or, if they must write poetry,
we should limit their writing to Haikus
about dogs and birds.
Or acrostic poems that restrict their love of goth
to the G-grave of their first names.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Spitting Stones
Driving home today from the high school at 7:30 a.m., my daughter safely secured in her booster in the back seat, I found myself unfortunately stuck behind an empty car carrier truck. The interstate, while clear of the massive dumpings of snow that we have had, is still perilous in points simply because the gravel that was coated over the ice still remains. As I drove, the truck in front of me showered me with little pieces of this gravel.
"We've got to get out from behind this guy," I told my daughter as she watched with feverish eyes from the back. "He's spitting stones at us."
I like the alliteration of spitting stones. And as my mind is wont to do, I mulled it over within the context of my life. Because life has been spitting at me lately. Spitting stones though, despite its lovely poetic qualities, is not a fair portrayal of my reality. Stones have mass. They cause damage. Had the truck actually spit stones at me, my windshield would need replacing. He really spit small pebbles (and some dirt). They bounced off my car, a few may have nicked the paint, but most just impaired my visibility and made quite a racket. Life, then, seems to be spitting pebbles at me.
Pebbles are annoying. They're the unreasonable daycare director that I keep threatening to kill behind her back if she doesn't figure out how to do her job properly. The ex-husband who seems to be regressing to a maturity level lower than the high school students that I teach. They're the tooth that went bad and sunk me into debt, and then had to be fixed again, and again. The constant snow, and the sudden need for new tires on my car. Pebbles are the fact that I wake up every night at three or four and then can't go back to sleep. And that last night, just as I had slipped into an almost comatose state, my daughter woke me up to announce that she had thrown up in her bed. Pebbles are the stupid, innovative substitute request system that my district has just adopted that would not let me log in. And the help desk for that system that wasn't being manned by anyone until 6:00 this morning. Pebbles make my stomach churn, my teeth grind, and my forehead crease so much that I will always have to have bangs to hide the deep wrinkles that all this has caused.
We came to our exit, and waited behind the line of cars at the stop light on the off ramp. I lowered my shoulders and took a deep breath and looked over to the creek that runs along the interstate. A pile of rocks stretched across it at the point where it lay outside of my passenger window. Dense and heavy ice draped itself over the top of the rocks and glinted like crystal in the early morning sunshine. Evidence of our hardest winter in years. But water also caught the light as it tumbled over the rocks and in between the icy holes and furrows.
"Isn't that beautiful!" I exclaimed to my daughter, and inched the car forward a bit so that she could see it too.
Winter, relentless as it is this year, doesn't last forever. Day care workers are underpaid, and more patience exists somewhere within that thought. Teeth heal, or they get pulled. Vomit washes out of bedclothes, and eventually, a person gets so tired that they'll sleep through anything. Ex-husbands? Well, that's probably just a matter of finally coming to terms with the fact that things are what they are. Until they're not. Despite the pebbles, the ice is melting. Even if, as the meteorologists are predicting, it snows more tomorrow.
Zen and the art of interstate driving. Om.
"We've got to get out from behind this guy," I told my daughter as she watched with feverish eyes from the back. "He's spitting stones at us."
I like the alliteration of spitting stones. And as my mind is wont to do, I mulled it over within the context of my life. Because life has been spitting at me lately. Spitting stones though, despite its lovely poetic qualities, is not a fair portrayal of my reality. Stones have mass. They cause damage. Had the truck actually spit stones at me, my windshield would need replacing. He really spit small pebbles (and some dirt). They bounced off my car, a few may have nicked the paint, but most just impaired my visibility and made quite a racket. Life, then, seems to be spitting pebbles at me.
Pebbles are annoying. They're the unreasonable daycare director that I keep threatening to kill behind her back if she doesn't figure out how to do her job properly. The ex-husband who seems to be regressing to a maturity level lower than the high school students that I teach. They're the tooth that went bad and sunk me into debt, and then had to be fixed again, and again. The constant snow, and the sudden need for new tires on my car. Pebbles are the fact that I wake up every night at three or four and then can't go back to sleep. And that last night, just as I had slipped into an almost comatose state, my daughter woke me up to announce that she had thrown up in her bed. Pebbles are the stupid, innovative substitute request system that my district has just adopted that would not let me log in. And the help desk for that system that wasn't being manned by anyone until 6:00 this morning. Pebbles make my stomach churn, my teeth grind, and my forehead crease so much that I will always have to have bangs to hide the deep wrinkles that all this has caused.
We came to our exit, and waited behind the line of cars at the stop light on the off ramp. I lowered my shoulders and took a deep breath and looked over to the creek that runs along the interstate. A pile of rocks stretched across it at the point where it lay outside of my passenger window. Dense and heavy ice draped itself over the top of the rocks and glinted like crystal in the early morning sunshine. Evidence of our hardest winter in years. But water also caught the light as it tumbled over the rocks and in between the icy holes and furrows.
"Isn't that beautiful!" I exclaimed to my daughter, and inched the car forward a bit so that she could see it too.
Winter, relentless as it is this year, doesn't last forever. Day care workers are underpaid, and more patience exists somewhere within that thought. Teeth heal, or they get pulled. Vomit washes out of bedclothes, and eventually, a person gets so tired that they'll sleep through anything. Ex-husbands? Well, that's probably just a matter of finally coming to terms with the fact that things are what they are. Until they're not. Despite the pebbles, the ice is melting. Even if, as the meteorologists are predicting, it snows more tomorrow.
Zen and the art of interstate driving. Om.
High Maintenance Biatches and the Misunderstood Art of the $12 Woo
It is hard to talk about this issue without tripping over a thousand clichés. Because truly, this has been an issue ever since Grog first left the cave a million years ago in search of the perfect gift for Broog. Articles are written dropping 10,000 hints, entire department store floors are devoted to helping direct appropriately, and TV commercials mock us with how easy it is to get it right. And yet, once again, unassuming girl falls headlong into that deep, deep chasm that so mercilessly divides man from woman.
The Caribbean called my boyfriend the week after Thanksgiving. Its warm, balmy breezes, soft, white sand, and emerald waters all waggled a little finger at him, and he flew. I stayed behind in the fifteen degree weather, sliding along the ice with my daughter, my work, and our two dogs. I couldn't have gone despite the very sincere invitation, I was happy to keep his dog, as my dog and his are having an intense love affair that J. and I seem to be incidental to, and cold weather happens. But despite all of these rationalizations, I resented his white toes nestled in the warm sand. My toes were cold, and the dogs tracked in mud all week.
The night before his arrival back home, he called.
"I'm bringing back the little one some seashells."
My heart softened. Resent J.? The wonderful man in my life? "That's so incredibly sweet. My daughter will love them."
"I've got something for you too."
Heart, big puddle on the floor. Really, really, wonderful man. "You didn't have to do that."
He laughed in a way that implied that, clearly, he did. "I'll leave them both on your counter when I stop by to pick up my dog tomorrow."
The weather had warmed back up by the time his flight landed. I was at work, watching the snow melt out the window. My daughter and I arrived home that night in the last dim light of the day. The counter in the kitchen shadowed the gifts he'd so lovingly left for us. I turned on the overhead lamp, and my daughter ran to her shells, in awe as she picked them up, rubbing their smooth, white surfaces along the tips of her small fingers. A yellow bag was all that was left. A yellow bag with a picture of a clipper ship. I opened it, and pulled out the small, hexagonal box therein. Another picture of a clipper ship was stenciled on its yellow lid. Above the ship, red lettering spelled "Tortuga" My daughter's interest in her shells dropped momentarily.
"What is it, Mommy?"
"Rum cake," I said, dropping the box back on the counter.
"What's rum cake?" she asked, her sweet tooth intrigued.
"It's a type of cake," I replied, "with rum in it."
I left the kitchen, the rum cake untouched.
"Rum cake?" Liza screeched the next morning in the car.
"Rum cake," I mumbled.
For years, Liza had driven me crazy on our carpool with her ruthless criticism of her husband's appalling taste in gifts. A very warm and caring woman, you would never guess it from the way she browbeats Mike every time he makes a gift faux pas. The last error happened on her birthday in March, a gaudy, ruby and emerald chunky bracelet that would look out of place on The Sopranos ("I tell him where to shop. I show him what to buy. I've lived with the man for twenty years; how can he not know what I like?"). And now, my judging of Liza in her time of pain had come back to haunt me.
"The thing is," I said to her, keeping my eyes on the road, "I don't even like cake. And he should know that because we spent my birthday together."
"Even if you liked cake, rum cake is a horrible present."
"But, it's the thought, right?"
She snorted, "What thought!"
Oh, this was bad. I tried to let it go-it was just one gift, after all- but something in me wouldn't release. The thought of this cake, this alcoholy, topped with nuts cake, was wiggling its way down into my soul and making me feel completely evil. I wasn't Liza. I never complained about gifts, especially from men that I was crazy about. Hadn't I once said to him that it didn't take much to make me happy? I was, and always have been, the epitome of low maintenance. Why, then, was this rum cake about to change all of that?
In search of a more rational mind, I visited my friend Karen. If you catch Karen on a Sunday, all baseball cap and sweatshirts, you'll see why she was my next point of contact. Low maintenance, rational, I was sure she would be able to get my head back on the right way.
"Rum cake?" she questioned. "Why rum cake?"
"I don't know. And I don't know why it's bothering me so much."
"Rum cake is a terrible present."
Doh! "I think all of this would be easier if men didn't woo at the start of a relationship. If they didn't put 100% of their brain power to finding just the perfect little gift to leave in your mailbox, then later on, when they're not using their brains at all, rum cake wouldn't seem like such a disappointment. Men should not be allowed to woo. They should show up for first dates dressed in ratty jeans, plop on your couch with the remote, fart and scratch themselves in inappropriate places, and then leave without telling you how beautiful you look. Don't they realize, by all of this high powered wooing, that they are setting themselves up for expectations that they couldn't possibly live up to later on?"
Karen sat stunned as I climbed off my soapbox and caught my breath. "Men do woo at the beginning," she said, no doubt thinking back to all of the little bags her boyfriend Andrew had left on her porch during the first few weeks of their courtship. Bags that she hadn't seen in several months. Her brow furrowed. "Oh, man, that sucks! It's probably only a matter of weeks before I get a rum cake too."
I thought I had it settled. Clearly, my boyfriend was an insensitive soul whose brain had not just been fried by that warm Caribbean sun but was also being impaired by a lack of intensity toward me.
Karen called later that night. "Get this," she said, barely able to speak over the gasping laughter. "I talked to Andrew about this whole wooing thing. And you know what he said?" Here she snorted. "He said, 'What's wrong with a rum cake?'"
"I've realized something very distressing," I said to my boyfriend over dinner the next night. "After all of these years, I do believe I'm high maintenance."
He raised his eyebrows, "Oh, do tell more."
"Well, it has to do with the rum cake."
"The rum cake?"
"I don't like rum cake."
"You don't?"
"J., I don't even like cake; you should know that."
His face fell. "I'm so sorry; I thought you'd love it."
How could I tell him that I was picturing something beautiful and personal, and I got rum cake instead?
"I know it should have been okay, but I just couldn't get there in my mind."
He laughed and shrugged his shoulders. "I'll just have to try harder next time."
"Men shouldn't woo." At this he rolled his eyes, for this was a conversation long exhausted between us.
"Women shouldn't either."
"What do you mean?" Incensed, I thought of the long love letter I had written him over vacation. I was still wooing.
He shook his head, no doubt picturing the same letter. "Women woo differently. It's not about the presents or the love letters with you."
"How do we woo?"
"You woo by being easy on us. You act as if you want for nothing, that it will take very little on our part to make you happy. We burp, and in the beginning, you find it charming. Eight months later, you're calling us pigs."
I opened my mouth to protest, but nothing came out. The silence at the table was deafening and I raised my hand to cool the flush that had spread throughout my face. "Oh my God, you're right. You're absolutely right. How could I not have seen this before? I've been masquerading as an easy-going girlfriend, when, in fact, I'm really a high maintenance bitch!"
He pulled my hand away from my cheek and patted it sympathetically. "I wouldn't read too much into it. After all, it's only a rum cake."
Clearly, there is little hope for any of us in this area, and with Christmas just around the corner, that's a little scary. I know that on December 25th, Liza will open her gift from Mike, and, knowing Liza, not even attempt to hide her disappointment. Karen will open her gift from Andrew, and if he's learned anything from this, it won't be a baked good. I will open my present and…maybe it will be perfect. Or maybe, after our discussion over dinner, it won't even matter.
What's come out of all of this? Well, one thing is the debate about the lack of wooing has ended. I suspect it is gone for good. Another thing is that a theme song seems to have penned itself and is making occasional appearances on our date nights. We'll be walking out of a store, or into a restaurant, or cuddling on the couch, and he'll lean in and whisper in his lilting tenor voice, "She's a high maintenance biatch…A high maintenance biatch…A high maintenance biaaaaaatch."
That's a love song of sorts, right? And to think that I thought the wooing was done.
The Caribbean called my boyfriend the week after Thanksgiving. Its warm, balmy breezes, soft, white sand, and emerald waters all waggled a little finger at him, and he flew. I stayed behind in the fifteen degree weather, sliding along the ice with my daughter, my work, and our two dogs. I couldn't have gone despite the very sincere invitation, I was happy to keep his dog, as my dog and his are having an intense love affair that J. and I seem to be incidental to, and cold weather happens. But despite all of these rationalizations, I resented his white toes nestled in the warm sand. My toes were cold, and the dogs tracked in mud all week.
The night before his arrival back home, he called.
"I'm bringing back the little one some seashells."
My heart softened. Resent J.? The wonderful man in my life? "That's so incredibly sweet. My daughter will love them."
"I've got something for you too."
Heart, big puddle on the floor. Really, really, wonderful man. "You didn't have to do that."
He laughed in a way that implied that, clearly, he did. "I'll leave them both on your counter when I stop by to pick up my dog tomorrow."
The weather had warmed back up by the time his flight landed. I was at work, watching the snow melt out the window. My daughter and I arrived home that night in the last dim light of the day. The counter in the kitchen shadowed the gifts he'd so lovingly left for us. I turned on the overhead lamp, and my daughter ran to her shells, in awe as she picked them up, rubbing their smooth, white surfaces along the tips of her small fingers. A yellow bag was all that was left. A yellow bag with a picture of a clipper ship. I opened it, and pulled out the small, hexagonal box therein. Another picture of a clipper ship was stenciled on its yellow lid. Above the ship, red lettering spelled "Tortuga" My daughter's interest in her shells dropped momentarily.
"What is it, Mommy?"
"Rum cake," I said, dropping the box back on the counter.
"What's rum cake?" she asked, her sweet tooth intrigued.
"It's a type of cake," I replied, "with rum in it."
I left the kitchen, the rum cake untouched.
"Rum cake?" Liza screeched the next morning in the car.
"Rum cake," I mumbled.
For years, Liza had driven me crazy on our carpool with her ruthless criticism of her husband's appalling taste in gifts. A very warm and caring woman, you would never guess it from the way she browbeats Mike every time he makes a gift faux pas. The last error happened on her birthday in March, a gaudy, ruby and emerald chunky bracelet that would look out of place on The Sopranos ("I tell him where to shop. I show him what to buy. I've lived with the man for twenty years; how can he not know what I like?"). And now, my judging of Liza in her time of pain had come back to haunt me.
"The thing is," I said to her, keeping my eyes on the road, "I don't even like cake. And he should know that because we spent my birthday together."
"Even if you liked cake, rum cake is a horrible present."
"But, it's the thought, right?"
She snorted, "What thought!"
Oh, this was bad. I tried to let it go-it was just one gift, after all- but something in me wouldn't release. The thought of this cake, this alcoholy, topped with nuts cake, was wiggling its way down into my soul and making me feel completely evil. I wasn't Liza. I never complained about gifts, especially from men that I was crazy about. Hadn't I once said to him that it didn't take much to make me happy? I was, and always have been, the epitome of low maintenance. Why, then, was this rum cake about to change all of that?
In search of a more rational mind, I visited my friend Karen. If you catch Karen on a Sunday, all baseball cap and sweatshirts, you'll see why she was my next point of contact. Low maintenance, rational, I was sure she would be able to get my head back on the right way.
"Rum cake?" she questioned. "Why rum cake?"
"I don't know. And I don't know why it's bothering me so much."
"Rum cake is a terrible present."
Doh! "I think all of this would be easier if men didn't woo at the start of a relationship. If they didn't put 100% of their brain power to finding just the perfect little gift to leave in your mailbox, then later on, when they're not using their brains at all, rum cake wouldn't seem like such a disappointment. Men should not be allowed to woo. They should show up for first dates dressed in ratty jeans, plop on your couch with the remote, fart and scratch themselves in inappropriate places, and then leave without telling you how beautiful you look. Don't they realize, by all of this high powered wooing, that they are setting themselves up for expectations that they couldn't possibly live up to later on?"
Karen sat stunned as I climbed off my soapbox and caught my breath. "Men do woo at the beginning," she said, no doubt thinking back to all of the little bags her boyfriend Andrew had left on her porch during the first few weeks of their courtship. Bags that she hadn't seen in several months. Her brow furrowed. "Oh, man, that sucks! It's probably only a matter of weeks before I get a rum cake too."
I thought I had it settled. Clearly, my boyfriend was an insensitive soul whose brain had not just been fried by that warm Caribbean sun but was also being impaired by a lack of intensity toward me.
Karen called later that night. "Get this," she said, barely able to speak over the gasping laughter. "I talked to Andrew about this whole wooing thing. And you know what he said?" Here she snorted. "He said, 'What's wrong with a rum cake?'"
"I've realized something very distressing," I said to my boyfriend over dinner the next night. "After all of these years, I do believe I'm high maintenance."
He raised his eyebrows, "Oh, do tell more."
"Well, it has to do with the rum cake."
"The rum cake?"
"I don't like rum cake."
"You don't?"
"J., I don't even like cake; you should know that."
His face fell. "I'm so sorry; I thought you'd love it."
How could I tell him that I was picturing something beautiful and personal, and I got rum cake instead?
"I know it should have been okay, but I just couldn't get there in my mind."
He laughed and shrugged his shoulders. "I'll just have to try harder next time."
"Men shouldn't woo." At this he rolled his eyes, for this was a conversation long exhausted between us.
"Women shouldn't either."
"What do you mean?" Incensed, I thought of the long love letter I had written him over vacation. I was still wooing.
He shook his head, no doubt picturing the same letter. "Women woo differently. It's not about the presents or the love letters with you."
"How do we woo?"
"You woo by being easy on us. You act as if you want for nothing, that it will take very little on our part to make you happy. We burp, and in the beginning, you find it charming. Eight months later, you're calling us pigs."
I opened my mouth to protest, but nothing came out. The silence at the table was deafening and I raised my hand to cool the flush that had spread throughout my face. "Oh my God, you're right. You're absolutely right. How could I not have seen this before? I've been masquerading as an easy-going girlfriend, when, in fact, I'm really a high maintenance bitch!"
He pulled my hand away from my cheek and patted it sympathetically. "I wouldn't read too much into it. After all, it's only a rum cake."
Clearly, there is little hope for any of us in this area, and with Christmas just around the corner, that's a little scary. I know that on December 25th, Liza will open her gift from Mike, and, knowing Liza, not even attempt to hide her disappointment. Karen will open her gift from Andrew, and if he's learned anything from this, it won't be a baked good. I will open my present and…maybe it will be perfect. Or maybe, after our discussion over dinner, it won't even matter.
What's come out of all of this? Well, one thing is the debate about the lack of wooing has ended. I suspect it is gone for good. Another thing is that a theme song seems to have penned itself and is making occasional appearances on our date nights. We'll be walking out of a store, or into a restaurant, or cuddling on the couch, and he'll lean in and whisper in his lilting tenor voice, "She's a high maintenance biatch…A high maintenance biatch…A high maintenance biaaaaaatch."
That's a love song of sorts, right? And to think that I thought the wooing was done.
The Ballad of John and Yoko
Tis the season for bad Christmas music. I'm hearing it everywhere from the grocery stores, to the post office, to the neighbor's at my boyfriend's house. Normally, I join in the revelry, no matter how tasteless the song, but I'm feeling grinchy again this year, and Mariah Carey and Brittney Spears trying to be jolly is just pissing me off.
On the way to work today, however, I did hear one of the "pop"py Christmas songs that I can fairly tolerate. It was John Lennon's song "Happy Christmas (War is Over)". I like it because it has John's voice, and he's lovely. And the children are singing with him, and that's touching. And the song makes me think of the timid hope available at Christmas thirty years ago during the Vietnam War, which in turn makes me think of my students, as many of them watch their parents return to Iraq this month for the third time. What disturbs me about that song, though, is that no matter how much I try to focus on John, or the angelic children's choir behind him, I end up hearing mostly Yoko Ono's voice. And right up there with Mariah and Brittney, it's incredibly irritating.
I owe a lot of who I am culturally-cool-wise to my big sister, who introduced me to The Beatles right after her country music phase and shortly before she went punk. I needed my sister to do this because my parents were Carpenters/Streisand/Manilow people, and sadly, I thought their musical preferences were keen. My older, cooler sister saved me. But along with her preferences, she passed down her biases. When she was fifteen, she managed to score a button that she wore proudly on her torn jean jacket (80's, people) that stated "I still don't understand what he saw in that bitch, Yoko". We watched a Beatles documentary together, and when Yoko entered the scene, and the recording studio, my sister tisk-tisked in a way that let me know that this woman's sins were unforgivable.
And really, her prejudice seemed justified. What did John see in Yoko? He was John Lennon, a Beatle, and she was, well, not at all who you would expect. Out of an entire Western Hemisphere, Yoko? Really? Not only was she not traditionally beautiful, but the blame for the Beatles breakup seemed to lay squarely in her lap. Bitch.
However, I was twelve. And complicated things break down a lot more simply at twelve. There were a lot of relationships back then that I didn't understand.
At 33, I met the 2006 Colorado version of John and Yoko. My boyfriend runs with a very tight crowd, which blows me away since none of my friends seem to even know that I have any friends outside of themselves. Regardless, the John in this relationship is J's friend, a sweet and beguiling man whose boyish features are always enhanced by a smile. He has climbed mountains, explored third world countries, and manages a very successful business that he started all by himself. His Yoko is a bit dumpy, slightly cross-eyed, and personality-wise, either intentionally abrasive, or sadly unself-aware. She has said several things in my presence that have left me wondering, "Did she hear what she just said?" And my opinion does not stand alone. When it became evident to the crowd that Yoko was not going anywhere anytime soon, my boyfriend had the very unpleasant task of conveying to John the universal concern about his choice in women. It's amazing that he was still invited to the wedding three months later.
I run into John and Yoko quite frequently at social gatherings; they've been married now for over two years. The group has resigned itself to Yoko, but she and John still usually end up sitting, I'm guessing by choice, off by themselves in another room, huddled in what looks like very intimate conversation. A part of me thinks that is sad, but as I circle, making small talk and trying hard to say nothing that will allow J's friends to question his taste in women, I find my gaze colored by wonder. How content they seem, how happily isolated in their own built-for-two world.
Regardless of the group opinion of this Yoko, and probably all Yokos, there must be a piece of the picture that's being missed. Because John and Yoko spent a week in bed, eating chocolate cake from a bag, and I'm guessing they never once ran out of things to say. Something in Yoko was perfect for John, and who were The Beatles, or the rest of America, or J's small circle of friends, to question it.
It’d be lovely to think that the reason why we don't always understand relationships is because what makes them work is not often visible on the surface. Below the skin, buried deep within the soul, a jagged piece is smoothed out by a snug fit of its jagged match, and the rest of it, the abrasiveness, the crossed-eyes, and the dumpiness, all falls away.
My Great Aunt May and Uncle Joe were John and Yoko long before John and Yoko hit the public scene. May was cute and feisty. She was wooed by all the town men for her skill on roller skates and the shape of her legs beneath her short roller skating skirts. Everyone whispered and wondered when she chose to marry the man in town who couldn't count change. But my mom told a story to me last week that I had never heard. Joe, a teenager when my mom was a girl, would let my mom come roller skating with him and his girlfriend (the beautiful and much sought after May). Around and around the rink they would skate with my mother's hands clasped tightly into theirs. That Joe is probably part of the jagged piece that snapped tightly into place for my great aunt. Retired now, they sit on their porch together in the summer while Joe smokes his cigars. My grandmother, one of the more vocal neighsayers back then, will still end a conversation about them with, "Lord knows what they've had to talk about all these years." But last year, my Great Aunt May and Uncle Joe celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary.
I still don’t know what John saw in Yoko. But then again, I don’t know Yoko. And even if I did, I’ll bet the only conclusion I could successfully draw was that she never should have tried her hand at a singing career. One thing I’ll always admire, though, is her ability to stand in the disapproving face of all who questioned her place in a relationship that seemed to work. John and Yokos happen all the time. They may, in fact, be part of the last bit of magic in this world. And yes, I’m fully prepared to accept that someday this will all come back to haunt me. Someday I will try to understand the love that shines in my daughter’s eyes for a guy who won’t make eye contact with me and mumbles monosyllabic replies to my every question. When I’m bemoaning the fact that he seems more Neolithic than Harvard-bound, I’ll take comfort once again with the idea that there must be something else there. You know…a John and Yoko thing.
On the way to work today, however, I did hear one of the "pop"py Christmas songs that I can fairly tolerate. It was John Lennon's song "Happy Christmas (War is Over)". I like it because it has John's voice, and he's lovely. And the children are singing with him, and that's touching. And the song makes me think of the timid hope available at Christmas thirty years ago during the Vietnam War, which in turn makes me think of my students, as many of them watch their parents return to Iraq this month for the third time. What disturbs me about that song, though, is that no matter how much I try to focus on John, or the angelic children's choir behind him, I end up hearing mostly Yoko Ono's voice. And right up there with Mariah and Brittney, it's incredibly irritating.
I owe a lot of who I am culturally-cool-wise to my big sister, who introduced me to The Beatles right after her country music phase and shortly before she went punk. I needed my sister to do this because my parents were Carpenters/Streisand/Manilow people, and sadly, I thought their musical preferences were keen. My older, cooler sister saved me. But along with her preferences, she passed down her biases. When she was fifteen, she managed to score a button that she wore proudly on her torn jean jacket (80's, people) that stated "I still don't understand what he saw in that bitch, Yoko". We watched a Beatles documentary together, and when Yoko entered the scene, and the recording studio, my sister tisk-tisked in a way that let me know that this woman's sins were unforgivable.
And really, her prejudice seemed justified. What did John see in Yoko? He was John Lennon, a Beatle, and she was, well, not at all who you would expect. Out of an entire Western Hemisphere, Yoko? Really? Not only was she not traditionally beautiful, but the blame for the Beatles breakup seemed to lay squarely in her lap. Bitch.
However, I was twelve. And complicated things break down a lot more simply at twelve. There were a lot of relationships back then that I didn't understand.
At 33, I met the 2006 Colorado version of John and Yoko. My boyfriend runs with a very tight crowd, which blows me away since none of my friends seem to even know that I have any friends outside of themselves. Regardless, the John in this relationship is J's friend, a sweet and beguiling man whose boyish features are always enhanced by a smile. He has climbed mountains, explored third world countries, and manages a very successful business that he started all by himself. His Yoko is a bit dumpy, slightly cross-eyed, and personality-wise, either intentionally abrasive, or sadly unself-aware. She has said several things in my presence that have left me wondering, "Did she hear what she just said?" And my opinion does not stand alone. When it became evident to the crowd that Yoko was not going anywhere anytime soon, my boyfriend had the very unpleasant task of conveying to John the universal concern about his choice in women. It's amazing that he was still invited to the wedding three months later.
I run into John and Yoko quite frequently at social gatherings; they've been married now for over two years. The group has resigned itself to Yoko, but she and John still usually end up sitting, I'm guessing by choice, off by themselves in another room, huddled in what looks like very intimate conversation. A part of me thinks that is sad, but as I circle, making small talk and trying hard to say nothing that will allow J's friends to question his taste in women, I find my gaze colored by wonder. How content they seem, how happily isolated in their own built-for-two world.
Regardless of the group opinion of this Yoko, and probably all Yokos, there must be a piece of the picture that's being missed. Because John and Yoko spent a week in bed, eating chocolate cake from a bag, and I'm guessing they never once ran out of things to say. Something in Yoko was perfect for John, and who were The Beatles, or the rest of America, or J's small circle of friends, to question it.
It’d be lovely to think that the reason why we don't always understand relationships is because what makes them work is not often visible on the surface. Below the skin, buried deep within the soul, a jagged piece is smoothed out by a snug fit of its jagged match, and the rest of it, the abrasiveness, the crossed-eyes, and the dumpiness, all falls away.
My Great Aunt May and Uncle Joe were John and Yoko long before John and Yoko hit the public scene. May was cute and feisty. She was wooed by all the town men for her skill on roller skates and the shape of her legs beneath her short roller skating skirts. Everyone whispered and wondered when she chose to marry the man in town who couldn't count change. But my mom told a story to me last week that I had never heard. Joe, a teenager when my mom was a girl, would let my mom come roller skating with him and his girlfriend (the beautiful and much sought after May). Around and around the rink they would skate with my mother's hands clasped tightly into theirs. That Joe is probably part of the jagged piece that snapped tightly into place for my great aunt. Retired now, they sit on their porch together in the summer while Joe smokes his cigars. My grandmother, one of the more vocal neighsayers back then, will still end a conversation about them with, "Lord knows what they've had to talk about all these years." But last year, my Great Aunt May and Uncle Joe celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary.
I still don’t know what John saw in Yoko. But then again, I don’t know Yoko. And even if I did, I’ll bet the only conclusion I could successfully draw was that she never should have tried her hand at a singing career. One thing I’ll always admire, though, is her ability to stand in the disapproving face of all who questioned her place in a relationship that seemed to work. John and Yokos happen all the time. They may, in fact, be part of the last bit of magic in this world. And yes, I’m fully prepared to accept that someday this will all come back to haunt me. Someday I will try to understand the love that shines in my daughter’s eyes for a guy who won’t make eye contact with me and mumbles monosyllabic replies to my every question. When I’m bemoaning the fact that he seems more Neolithic than Harvard-bound, I’ll take comfort once again with the idea that there must be something else there. You know…a John and Yoko thing.
Better Days
My blog has unfortunately become rather like a neglected houseplant this year. A once well-tended and thriving entity, it now sits in a dark corner most days, dust settling on its brown-tinged leaves, and if I happen to glance down at it while walking past on my way to somewhere else, I will think to myself, "Wow, it's probably time I water that", yet the thought and the action never seem to meet.
I’m guessing that the blog neglect stems from the fact that this year, as opposed to last year, little is new, which is both comforting and unsettling at the same time. I've been busy, but it's busy with the same old every day tasks. Most of the shifts that were planned for me in this chapter of my life seem to lay behind me, yet I find myself nervously tapping my foot, waiting for something else. I'm not asking for something, but it feels like after a year of constant change, suddenly status quo is a bit nerve-wracking.
It's not just me, either. My friend who also slumped along the messy divorce path last year has since signed the papers, worked out an e-mail plan that allows for very few four-letter word exchanges between her and her ex, and met a nice man. We talked outside my house last week as we handed off daughters for a play date, and I asked how her Thanksgiving was.
"Fine." She shrugged. "Yeah, fine, I guess."
I nodded my head. "Mine too. Good. Yeah, fine." I paused and watched my neighbor across the way struggle with a ladder and some Christmas lights. "I think the second year may be tough."
"Yeah. I think you're right. Although I’m not sure why."
Over the phone several nights later, we talked of Christmas trees that seemed out of place in our houses this year, and presents that we’re procrastinating buying, and the fact that the local station that plays Christmas music non-stop has all but been banned from both of our houses. The holidays feel like a bad fit this year. And yet, on a rational level, that makes little sense.
The second year is easier in so many respects. The papers are signed. The work of dividing up eight years on paper, laying out respective financial worth and arguing how much the cost of raising a child should be, is over. There are no more visits to the paralegal office or the courthouse. The uncertainty of how it will all be done has been resolved, and the longer we go about our own lives in our own houses, the more natural it all begins to feel.
There is also less mommy guilt the second year. The full trauma for my daughter is beginning to abate, and she has a vocabulary now with which to discuss the issues as they arise. She's accepted the fact that her dad and I will not reconcile, she's learned the routine of the overnights at his house, and she's even told me that it's not bad, having both of us apart. I think this last development comes as her dad moves into a happier place in his life. We have relaxed, and now she can too.
But it's still tough, and this is due mainly because along with the ick, many of the firsts also lay behind. This year has no first time the closet became all mine (sue me…it was a wonderful moment), no first time that the dog messed up, or the child messed up, or I did, and there was no one there to judge, make a snide remark about, or yell. There is no first time I reclaimed the entire width of the bed, and slept better than I had in years, and no first time that I was too tired to cook, and suddenly, it didn't matter because the four-year old thought eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner was cool. The firsts are over, and this year, divorced life is as routine as married life once used to be.
I’m also realizing, the more I pry, that the firsts distracted a lot from the reality of what was happening. Now that the shock has worn off, and some layers are more exposed, it's easier to see how much was really lost. And it's not the man; it's the idea. It's the longing I get when I see a family walking across the parking lot to Starbucks, the mother and two sons laughing about something as the man checks the luggage rack on the car before they all head in for coffee and then back out on the road to wherever home happens to be. It's my best friend Jen and her husband, whom I finally got over to see the Friday after Thanksgiving, setting up their tree November early, but Kevin, so indulging, so doting, so adoring of his wife and daughter, he could deny them nothing. It's the families that make plans for tomorrow, next week, next month, next summer, without even a thought as to who will have custody at that time, and without the “will we have to switch weeks/get permission/waste the money on the reservation and then have to cancel because we misjudged the whole situation?”. It's my neighbors, the ones I made fun of in one of my Christmas blogs last year, celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary in September, Vern's face lit up with the accomplishment of 50 years with the same woman by his side.
This year is good, and rationally, there is so much to celebrate. My daughter is thriving. The girl I worried wouldn't survive kindergarten got one negative comment on her first quarter report card: excessive talking. I convinced myself that her shyness would do her in, and now it turns out, she never shuts up. My house is still wonderful, and this year, it’s all mine. The furnace, refrigerator, and water heater occasionally shudder ominously as it nears its 110th year, but I hang pictures at will, rearrange throw pillows, and move the mugs over the sink without worrying that someone might not be able to find them later on. My dog has aged into a very mellow, very adorable, very attached to my daughter and very protective of both of us, companion. I stare at him some days, big brown eyes, tail swishing along the floor, and marvel at the day I almost insisted they put him back in his kennel at the pound. He doesn't even throw up in the car anymore. If that’s not worthy of a celebration, my goodness, what is? And of course the man who never should have ended up in my life, did. And despite the fact that we seem to have hit a rather large wall with our scheduling issues, there’s not a subject that has come up that I don’t feel comfortable addressing with him. He’s amazing. And we’re often pretty amazing together.
But I miss my family. Maybe not as it was, but as it could have been if I had been one of the lucky ones who had been able to watch my daughter grow up with her father by my side. If we could have been able to walk her to kindergarten this year, holding hands and shaking our heads back and forth, whispering in awe at how quickly five years had passed. And while time heals, and I can see that this year, I also know that this is a wound that will reopen over and over again. I will miss him when she falls in love. I will miss him when she slams her bedroom door and yells how much she hates me. I will miss him when she walks down the aisle, first with a cap and gown and maybe later dressed in white, and we sit apart, hands in our laps, sharing our love and pride for her separately. No matter how strongly I love someone else, no matter how wonderfully it may all turn out, even if I get the fairy tale this time around, I will miss that. I'm not throwing it in the face of all that I have but rather acknowledging that the moments this year, when I'm standing in my kitchen, a bit panicked because something doesn't feel right, and I'm not sure what it is, it's probably a little bit of this. And unfortunately, it's the kind of thing that doesn't look better even if you drape it with twinkly lights.
I’m guessing that the blog neglect stems from the fact that this year, as opposed to last year, little is new, which is both comforting and unsettling at the same time. I've been busy, but it's busy with the same old every day tasks. Most of the shifts that were planned for me in this chapter of my life seem to lay behind me, yet I find myself nervously tapping my foot, waiting for something else. I'm not asking for something, but it feels like after a year of constant change, suddenly status quo is a bit nerve-wracking.
It's not just me, either. My friend who also slumped along the messy divorce path last year has since signed the papers, worked out an e-mail plan that allows for very few four-letter word exchanges between her and her ex, and met a nice man. We talked outside my house last week as we handed off daughters for a play date, and I asked how her Thanksgiving was.
"Fine." She shrugged. "Yeah, fine, I guess."
I nodded my head. "Mine too. Good. Yeah, fine." I paused and watched my neighbor across the way struggle with a ladder and some Christmas lights. "I think the second year may be tough."
"Yeah. I think you're right. Although I’m not sure why."
Over the phone several nights later, we talked of Christmas trees that seemed out of place in our houses this year, and presents that we’re procrastinating buying, and the fact that the local station that plays Christmas music non-stop has all but been banned from both of our houses. The holidays feel like a bad fit this year. And yet, on a rational level, that makes little sense.
The second year is easier in so many respects. The papers are signed. The work of dividing up eight years on paper, laying out respective financial worth and arguing how much the cost of raising a child should be, is over. There are no more visits to the paralegal office or the courthouse. The uncertainty of how it will all be done has been resolved, and the longer we go about our own lives in our own houses, the more natural it all begins to feel.
There is also less mommy guilt the second year. The full trauma for my daughter is beginning to abate, and she has a vocabulary now with which to discuss the issues as they arise. She's accepted the fact that her dad and I will not reconcile, she's learned the routine of the overnights at his house, and she's even told me that it's not bad, having both of us apart. I think this last development comes as her dad moves into a happier place in his life. We have relaxed, and now she can too.
But it's still tough, and this is due mainly because along with the ick, many of the firsts also lay behind. This year has no first time the closet became all mine (sue me…it was a wonderful moment), no first time that the dog messed up, or the child messed up, or I did, and there was no one there to judge, make a snide remark about, or yell. There is no first time I reclaimed the entire width of the bed, and slept better than I had in years, and no first time that I was too tired to cook, and suddenly, it didn't matter because the four-year old thought eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner was cool. The firsts are over, and this year, divorced life is as routine as married life once used to be.
I’m also realizing, the more I pry, that the firsts distracted a lot from the reality of what was happening. Now that the shock has worn off, and some layers are more exposed, it's easier to see how much was really lost. And it's not the man; it's the idea. It's the longing I get when I see a family walking across the parking lot to Starbucks, the mother and two sons laughing about something as the man checks the luggage rack on the car before they all head in for coffee and then back out on the road to wherever home happens to be. It's my best friend Jen and her husband, whom I finally got over to see the Friday after Thanksgiving, setting up their tree November early, but Kevin, so indulging, so doting, so adoring of his wife and daughter, he could deny them nothing. It's the families that make plans for tomorrow, next week, next month, next summer, without even a thought as to who will have custody at that time, and without the “will we have to switch weeks/get permission/waste the money on the reservation and then have to cancel because we misjudged the whole situation?”. It's my neighbors, the ones I made fun of in one of my Christmas blogs last year, celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary in September, Vern's face lit up with the accomplishment of 50 years with the same woman by his side.
This year is good, and rationally, there is so much to celebrate. My daughter is thriving. The girl I worried wouldn't survive kindergarten got one negative comment on her first quarter report card: excessive talking. I convinced myself that her shyness would do her in, and now it turns out, she never shuts up. My house is still wonderful, and this year, it’s all mine. The furnace, refrigerator, and water heater occasionally shudder ominously as it nears its 110th year, but I hang pictures at will, rearrange throw pillows, and move the mugs over the sink without worrying that someone might not be able to find them later on. My dog has aged into a very mellow, very adorable, very attached to my daughter and very protective of both of us, companion. I stare at him some days, big brown eyes, tail swishing along the floor, and marvel at the day I almost insisted they put him back in his kennel at the pound. He doesn't even throw up in the car anymore. If that’s not worthy of a celebration, my goodness, what is? And of course the man who never should have ended up in my life, did. And despite the fact that we seem to have hit a rather large wall with our scheduling issues, there’s not a subject that has come up that I don’t feel comfortable addressing with him. He’s amazing. And we’re often pretty amazing together.
But I miss my family. Maybe not as it was, but as it could have been if I had been one of the lucky ones who had been able to watch my daughter grow up with her father by my side. If we could have been able to walk her to kindergarten this year, holding hands and shaking our heads back and forth, whispering in awe at how quickly five years had passed. And while time heals, and I can see that this year, I also know that this is a wound that will reopen over and over again. I will miss him when she falls in love. I will miss him when she slams her bedroom door and yells how much she hates me. I will miss him when she walks down the aisle, first with a cap and gown and maybe later dressed in white, and we sit apart, hands in our laps, sharing our love and pride for her separately. No matter how strongly I love someone else, no matter how wonderfully it may all turn out, even if I get the fairy tale this time around, I will miss that. I'm not throwing it in the face of all that I have but rather acknowledging that the moments this year, when I'm standing in my kitchen, a bit panicked because something doesn't feel right, and I'm not sure what it is, it's probably a little bit of this. And unfortunately, it's the kind of thing that doesn't look better even if you drape it with twinkly lights.
Fall 2006-The Prodigal One Returns
Ah, Fall. The wood chips in my front yard are scattered with the first yellow leaves, my neighbors drop the last of their summer harvest on my front porch, and the furnace chokes and sputters its first breath since March. The weather has turned crisp, my dog has turned frisky, and Einstein, the prodigal one, has returned home.
Old houses have their challenges. For instance, I have convinced myself that the crack in the bathroom ceiling adds charm. The crumbling steps off the back porch are historic. My "bury a body" cellar is practical, if not a little disturbing. And the floors, with their web-work of rotten wood, allow for easy access to critters, especially small, furry ones with twitching pink noses and beady, red eyes.
Einstein first found his way into my home last summer. My husband and I were at the tail end of our marriage, and he was the one who first discovered that we had a houseguest.
"Um, did you buy these crackers with a hole in the box?" He asked, reaching into the snack drawer and holding up a box of Triscuits with a noticeable gap where the calorie count should have been.
We dug through the cereal boxes and bags of chips to discover that our houseguest had taken quite a few liberties with our processed carbohydrates. I threw everything away, scrubbed the drawer with Lysol, bleach, and Comet. And when we went to the grocery store, the new snacks went to the top of the cupboard over the sink.
Later that week, Fred, my black Labrador mutt, awoke me from a dead sleep by barking at the refrigerator. I awoke, turned on the light, and watched horrified as a white streak raced two inches from my feet, only to disappear under the stove.
Two nights passed, and I was in my bedroom, working on the computer, when the creature's curiosity got the best of him. I slowed my typing to a hunt and peck and gaped as the brazen rodent walked from the linoleum to the carpet, stopped three feet from my chair, and stood up on his back legs to sniff the air. In one fluid motion, I slammed the door, shoved a towel under the crack and watched as he disappeared into it.
"I think I got him," I yelled to my husband who was in the other room watching television.
He entered the second door to the bedroom and closed it quickly behind him.
"He's under there," I whispered, motioning furtively to the towel.
"What now?"
"Hand me that glass," I said, waving my hand at the empty water glass on the nightstand. "I'll put it over him, and we'll road trip to Kansas tonight."
With glass in hand, I slowly peeled back the smallest corner of the towel, and watched in dismay as the ball of white escaped under the exposed crack in the door. Flinging open the door, I was just in time to see the mouse streak past my dog, Fred's head barely lifting in unconcerned boredom as the mouse disappeared under the sofa.
I laid out traps. Five of them, with peanut butter. Under the refrigerator, the stove, the washing machine, the sofa, and behind the claw-foot bathtub. I waited. And checked. And the peanut butter disappeared.
"He's brilliant," I muttered to my husband. "I'm not sure how he's not triggering the traps, but we may be dealing with a mouse bent on world domination, here."
My husband smiled vaguely, as was his usual protocol when I spouted nonsense. And a week later, he left.
The mouse stayed.
When a guest came in October, I opened my sofa bed to discover that serious nesting had occurred; the stuffing had been shredded in a spectacular manner. I started noticing mouse droppings by the mousetrap under the stove. His nighttime adventures in the wiring of the refrigerator kept me awake. A handful of times, I flung on the kitchen light, hair sticking up wildly, and tried to block him in one place, or the other, to no avail. I gave up. I named him. For the first time in my life, I contemplated buying a cat.
In November, right around the time that the world seemed intent on caving completely in on me, a smell began to permeate from the general vicinity of the stove. I ignored it for two days, and then called my step-dad.
"I think I have a gas leak," I hissed worriedly into the phone. "I'm afraid to turn on the oven because I'll probably light the whole place on fire." I glanced nervously in my daughter's room where she played, completely unaware of her imminent peril.
"Have you looked behind the stove?" he asked, ever the voice of reason. "Sometimes food falls back there and rots. Check there first and then call me back."
I hung up the phone and moved tentatively to the stove. I pulled out the broiler pan, and peered into the darkness. There was something there, but without a light, I couldn't tell what. I grabbed the flashlight from the laundry room and shined it along the floor. A small, white body, crumpled under the metal of the mouse trap, lay still, a pool of brown, dried blood surrounding his tiny head.
My heart fell. I pulled myself up into a sitting position, put my head against my knees and sobbed. My daughter stumbled from her room in alarm.
"What's wrong, Mommy?" Her four-year old hands caressed my back.
I struggled to get a hold of the situation. "Oh, Baby, it's nothing. One of the traps I set finally killed the mouse, and for some stupid reason, it's making me a little sad; that's all."
Her big, brown eyes filled with tears and she sat down on the floor next to me. "Stop crying," she ordered shakily. "because you're making me cry."
And we did. We cried over Einstein, and his unexpected death. And of course, we cried because by that point, we needed to cry. We needed the excuse to sit on the kitchen floor and have a grand ol' pity party.
Later, I removed Einstein with a plastic bag and scrubbed away his blood. I replaced the broiler pan and went about the job of getting on with the night.
But it wasn't Einstein. Days later, the scuttle under the refrigerator returned, and I laid out more traps. Peanut butter continued to disappear, and occasionally, a snap would resound. I would dispose of the body, and life would continue to tick. I concluded that Einstein, my genius white mouse, had invited his dumb cousins into my house for the winter. He nibbled, he escaped. They gorged, and got snapped. Einstein, in his evil genius state, lost my sympathy. The tears over his death became a moment of weakness, and I laid out rat poison in the cellar. Winter came, and the last of the mice died away.
Last night, a click clack of nails on the kitchen floor roused me from sleep. Assuming it was Fred needing to go to the bathroom in the middle of this night, as he does from time to time, I pulled myself away from the warmth of my covers and shuffle- slid across the kitchen to the back door. Fred was not waiting for me, as is his normal custom on nights when he needs to go out. I looked into my daughter's room and saw him curled up, head tucked under his tail, undisturbed. Convinced it had been part of a lingering dream, I returned to bed. Relaxing back into sleep, the faintest of scuttles could be heard, coming from the kitchen.
I can only conclude that Einstein is back. Sure, it could be any number of random mice, seeking a warm place to pass away the cold of winter, but only a mouse of Einstein's fortitude could have traversed the maze of lethal rat poison in the cellar to emerge unscathed and hungry for more. I have yet to see the mouse droppings, he has yet to discover the new stash of snacks, but I bought the traps today. A year has passed, and the world is a completely different place. Einstein makes me smile wistfully about a year spent moving from that place to here. Here is good. I know so much more now than I did then. For instance, if you put the mouse trap in a paper lunch sack, when it triggers, all you have to do is grab the sack and throw it away. No body to illicit unwarranted sympathy. No smell. No blood.
Welcome home, Einstein.
Old houses have their challenges. For instance, I have convinced myself that the crack in the bathroom ceiling adds charm. The crumbling steps off the back porch are historic. My "bury a body" cellar is practical, if not a little disturbing. And the floors, with their web-work of rotten wood, allow for easy access to critters, especially small, furry ones with twitching pink noses and beady, red eyes.
Einstein first found his way into my home last summer. My husband and I were at the tail end of our marriage, and he was the one who first discovered that we had a houseguest.
"Um, did you buy these crackers with a hole in the box?" He asked, reaching into the snack drawer and holding up a box of Triscuits with a noticeable gap where the calorie count should have been.
We dug through the cereal boxes and bags of chips to discover that our houseguest had taken quite a few liberties with our processed carbohydrates. I threw everything away, scrubbed the drawer with Lysol, bleach, and Comet. And when we went to the grocery store, the new snacks went to the top of the cupboard over the sink.
Later that week, Fred, my black Labrador mutt, awoke me from a dead sleep by barking at the refrigerator. I awoke, turned on the light, and watched horrified as a white streak raced two inches from my feet, only to disappear under the stove.
Two nights passed, and I was in my bedroom, working on the computer, when the creature's curiosity got the best of him. I slowed my typing to a hunt and peck and gaped as the brazen rodent walked from the linoleum to the carpet, stopped three feet from my chair, and stood up on his back legs to sniff the air. In one fluid motion, I slammed the door, shoved a towel under the crack and watched as he disappeared into it.
"I think I got him," I yelled to my husband who was in the other room watching television.
He entered the second door to the bedroom and closed it quickly behind him.
"He's under there," I whispered, motioning furtively to the towel.
"What now?"
"Hand me that glass," I said, waving my hand at the empty water glass on the nightstand. "I'll put it over him, and we'll road trip to Kansas tonight."
With glass in hand, I slowly peeled back the smallest corner of the towel, and watched in dismay as the ball of white escaped under the exposed crack in the door. Flinging open the door, I was just in time to see the mouse streak past my dog, Fred's head barely lifting in unconcerned boredom as the mouse disappeared under the sofa.
I laid out traps. Five of them, with peanut butter. Under the refrigerator, the stove, the washing machine, the sofa, and behind the claw-foot bathtub. I waited. And checked. And the peanut butter disappeared.
"He's brilliant," I muttered to my husband. "I'm not sure how he's not triggering the traps, but we may be dealing with a mouse bent on world domination, here."
My husband smiled vaguely, as was his usual protocol when I spouted nonsense. And a week later, he left.
The mouse stayed.
When a guest came in October, I opened my sofa bed to discover that serious nesting had occurred; the stuffing had been shredded in a spectacular manner. I started noticing mouse droppings by the mousetrap under the stove. His nighttime adventures in the wiring of the refrigerator kept me awake. A handful of times, I flung on the kitchen light, hair sticking up wildly, and tried to block him in one place, or the other, to no avail. I gave up. I named him. For the first time in my life, I contemplated buying a cat.
In November, right around the time that the world seemed intent on caving completely in on me, a smell began to permeate from the general vicinity of the stove. I ignored it for two days, and then called my step-dad.
"I think I have a gas leak," I hissed worriedly into the phone. "I'm afraid to turn on the oven because I'll probably light the whole place on fire." I glanced nervously in my daughter's room where she played, completely unaware of her imminent peril.
"Have you looked behind the stove?" he asked, ever the voice of reason. "Sometimes food falls back there and rots. Check there first and then call me back."
I hung up the phone and moved tentatively to the stove. I pulled out the broiler pan, and peered into the darkness. There was something there, but without a light, I couldn't tell what. I grabbed the flashlight from the laundry room and shined it along the floor. A small, white body, crumpled under the metal of the mouse trap, lay still, a pool of brown, dried blood surrounding his tiny head.
My heart fell. I pulled myself up into a sitting position, put my head against my knees and sobbed. My daughter stumbled from her room in alarm.
"What's wrong, Mommy?" Her four-year old hands caressed my back.
I struggled to get a hold of the situation. "Oh, Baby, it's nothing. One of the traps I set finally killed the mouse, and for some stupid reason, it's making me a little sad; that's all."
Her big, brown eyes filled with tears and she sat down on the floor next to me. "Stop crying," she ordered shakily. "because you're making me cry."
And we did. We cried over Einstein, and his unexpected death. And of course, we cried because by that point, we needed to cry. We needed the excuse to sit on the kitchen floor and have a grand ol' pity party.
Later, I removed Einstein with a plastic bag and scrubbed away his blood. I replaced the broiler pan and went about the job of getting on with the night.
But it wasn't Einstein. Days later, the scuttle under the refrigerator returned, and I laid out more traps. Peanut butter continued to disappear, and occasionally, a snap would resound. I would dispose of the body, and life would continue to tick. I concluded that Einstein, my genius white mouse, had invited his dumb cousins into my house for the winter. He nibbled, he escaped. They gorged, and got snapped. Einstein, in his evil genius state, lost my sympathy. The tears over his death became a moment of weakness, and I laid out rat poison in the cellar. Winter came, and the last of the mice died away.
Last night, a click clack of nails on the kitchen floor roused me from sleep. Assuming it was Fred needing to go to the bathroom in the middle of this night, as he does from time to time, I pulled myself away from the warmth of my covers and shuffle- slid across the kitchen to the back door. Fred was not waiting for me, as is his normal custom on nights when he needs to go out. I looked into my daughter's room and saw him curled up, head tucked under his tail, undisturbed. Convinced it had been part of a lingering dream, I returned to bed. Relaxing back into sleep, the faintest of scuttles could be heard, coming from the kitchen.
I can only conclude that Einstein is back. Sure, it could be any number of random mice, seeking a warm place to pass away the cold of winter, but only a mouse of Einstein's fortitude could have traversed the maze of lethal rat poison in the cellar to emerge unscathed and hungry for more. I have yet to see the mouse droppings, he has yet to discover the new stash of snacks, but I bought the traps today. A year has passed, and the world is a completely different place. Einstein makes me smile wistfully about a year spent moving from that place to here. Here is good. I know so much more now than I did then. For instance, if you put the mouse trap in a paper lunch sack, when it triggers, all you have to do is grab the sack and throw it away. No body to illicit unwarranted sympathy. No smell. No blood.
Welcome home, Einstein.
Move over Julia Childs...you're blocking the view of the pizza in my freezer.
Dinner has recently become an area of angst in my life. The constant question of what I will cook, how long it will take, and how many dishes will be left at the end to wash, consumes me before I even enter the door most evenings. Cooking used to be a point of solace at the end of the day. At twelve, when the natives were restless and trying their darndest to bring the English teacher to tears (good luck with that one, kids), I would lazily picture the contents of my cupboards, a slow smile spreading across my face as I mentally laid out the ingredients, placed the pots and pans at the ready on the stove, and filled the house with smells of garlic and thyme.
My cupboard, once a shelter to bags of dried lentils, whole wheat pasta spirals, and sun-dried tomatoes, is nothing now but a fortress of cardboard and tin, glued papery labels that boast nutritional value right next to the preservative count. No wonder that on my ride home from work lately, I look longingly into the cars on the freeway and dream of their drivers rolling down their windows to invite me over for dinner (hasn't happened yet, but I'm perfecting the starving orphan look).
If I can't have a built in chef, or follow one home, I would like to be a woman who loves to cook. I have fantasies of wearing a striped apron, unpacking a cloth sack full of herbs and fresh bread, and chopping vegetables in my candle-lit kitchen to opera and a glass of $20 Cabernet. The truth, the horrible truth, coming from a woman who is wanted for serial murders of even the hardiest of houseplants (it's true; I'm hopeless), is that while I dream of being domestic, I simply am not. I don't garden, I don't save old toothbrushes for cleaning grout, and I often forget which day to recycle, so my back porch is a bit Sanford and Son. Domestic challenge aside, I have two and a half hours from the time that I pick up my daughter to the time that I turn off her light for bed. Two and a half hours to feed, clean, bathe, cuddle and read to, so even if I had the desire (the abstract is there, the reality is not), forget the daily trips to the corner market. And if I bought fresh herbs on the weekend, to use for some future delectable dish, they would rot and slime on a shelf in my fridge, much like the green onions that I saw peeking out from underneath the tortillas this morning.
But still…how much of our quality of life is based on the quality of the sustenance we provide for our bodies? Is my constant restlessness and irrational despair tied to the four boxes of Annie's Mac and Cheese and the frozen package of tofu dogs hunched over somewhere in my kitchen at this very moment? My daughter, a very picky eater who prefers her chicken nuggeted, doesn't mind my temporary culinary downfall. But a part of me wonders as we race around in the morning, barking and bumping into one another in our maddened frenzy to find socks, shoes, and sweaters, if it wouldn't be different if tonight I dimmed the lights, added music for ambience, and did something astounding with a piece of salmon. Would we smile indulgently at the dog, rinse out our juice glasses and "Excuse me, Mother," and "Most certainly, daughter," tomorrow morning instead?
My cupboard, once a shelter to bags of dried lentils, whole wheat pasta spirals, and sun-dried tomatoes, is nothing now but a fortress of cardboard and tin, glued papery labels that boast nutritional value right next to the preservative count. No wonder that on my ride home from work lately, I look longingly into the cars on the freeway and dream of their drivers rolling down their windows to invite me over for dinner (hasn't happened yet, but I'm perfecting the starving orphan look).
If I can't have a built in chef, or follow one home, I would like to be a woman who loves to cook. I have fantasies of wearing a striped apron, unpacking a cloth sack full of herbs and fresh bread, and chopping vegetables in my candle-lit kitchen to opera and a glass of $20 Cabernet. The truth, the horrible truth, coming from a woman who is wanted for serial murders of even the hardiest of houseplants (it's true; I'm hopeless), is that while I dream of being domestic, I simply am not. I don't garden, I don't save old toothbrushes for cleaning grout, and I often forget which day to recycle, so my back porch is a bit Sanford and Son. Domestic challenge aside, I have two and a half hours from the time that I pick up my daughter to the time that I turn off her light for bed. Two and a half hours to feed, clean, bathe, cuddle and read to, so even if I had the desire (the abstract is there, the reality is not), forget the daily trips to the corner market. And if I bought fresh herbs on the weekend, to use for some future delectable dish, they would rot and slime on a shelf in my fridge, much like the green onions that I saw peeking out from underneath the tortillas this morning.
But still…how much of our quality of life is based on the quality of the sustenance we provide for our bodies? Is my constant restlessness and irrational despair tied to the four boxes of Annie's Mac and Cheese and the frozen package of tofu dogs hunched over somewhere in my kitchen at this very moment? My daughter, a very picky eater who prefers her chicken nuggeted, doesn't mind my temporary culinary downfall. But a part of me wonders as we race around in the morning, barking and bumping into one another in our maddened frenzy to find socks, shoes, and sweaters, if it wouldn't be different if tonight I dimmed the lights, added music for ambience, and did something astounding with a piece of salmon. Would we smile indulgently at the dog, rinse out our juice glasses and "Excuse me, Mother," and "Most certainly, daughter," tomorrow morning instead?
Baggage
My very first piece of luggage was a small suitcase, pink roses woven into beige tapestry, white vinyl edging creating a pathway for a shiny, silver zipper. I was six. I carried it proudly through the airport before our flight to Spain. It swished through the air by my side, and when I sat down to wait for our boarding call, it rested by my right foot, upright and patient, until I lifted it effortlessly into the air and handed it to my dad for storage in the overhead bin.
I was a sophomore in college the next time I went on a long trip with luggage. I flew to Mexico with my boyfriend for Christmas, and then on to San Francisco to meet his parents. For the occasion, I splurged on a big, black duffle bag, made quite popular at the time by soccer players (I guess…who else needed a bag that big to carry all of their stuff?). I imagined the same six-year old effortless lift as I shouldered it and strolled casually along the terminal, one hand resting lightly on the strap. I packed shorts, bathing suits, and tank tops for Mexico, and fisherman sweaters, jeans, and hiking boots for Northern California. What I ended up with, as I raced for our connecting flight in Phoenix, was a bag that was not only too fat to carry, banging my shins and bumping my knees as I bumbled down the terminal, but also impossible to lift. It weighed as much as a small, Japanese Sumo wrestler, and, on the rare occasion that I was forced to hoist it to my shoulder in order to move more quickly, I lost all feeling on that side of my body for at least a half of an hour.
Two years later, on a trip to Austin, I corrected the big bag error by packing only small bags. Five of them, all with shoulder straps, all small enough to sling across my chest should the need to run from, or for, a purse snatcher arise. The trip through the airport was easier on my back, but no less annoying; I kept dropping bags as I turned sideways to accommodate the crush of people always present in the Dallas/Ft. Worth Airport. Once in Austin, I spent the entire trip dumping each bag in search of an item, only to find it in the last bag that I dumped. And, of course, on route back home, I left one of the bags either in my hotel or in the back of the rental car, losing forever my favorite pair of pajama pants and a Howard Jones t-shirt.
Ten years later, I'm still trying to work out the baggage issue, although I don't travel much anymore. Most trips are no longer than an hour north to Denver, and for those, I can load up the car with as much stuff as I want. In ten years, I haven't managed to put together a matching luggage set. In fact, that same stupid duffel bag that I bought for Mexico makes most of my weekend trips. I find that in my thirty-somethingeth year, I have moved toward an uncomfortable balance between the two baggage extremes. I always pack the one big bag, still rather difficult to lift, and dangerous to any joints below the hip area, and several small bags that multiply once I turn my attention toward the road. I spend half of my time in Denver schlepping my stuff from the car and the other half schlepping it back. It's not six-year old tidy, but, after a death, several dumpings, a marriage, and a birth, I'm resigned to the fact that I am not afforded the luxury of traveling lightly anymore.
The whole "things we carry" discussion popped up the other day with my favorite margarita/mojito philosopher, and we've both decided that life would be easier if, like the bags we drag to the airport, we could lay out for the world our metaphorical loads in a visible way. Beware the person carrying the steamer trunk, but also be wary of the person with the single carry-on who keeps disappearing to a dark, hidden corner every time he needs a change of clothes. Avoid the woman flaunting the LouisVuitton twelve-piece luggage set because even if it coordinates with her outfit, she's going to need a ton of help getting it out of the taxi. Is it necessary to look for someone whose luggage matches yours? Or can you be a Gucci girl (as if), and find bliss with a Samsonite man? Is it okay to travel with someone who has fifteen bags, if, like a good boy at customs, he claims all of them before boarding (euphemism not intentional). If your load is heavy too, at least you know he can't blame you when you both miss your flight. Or, should those that have to pay extra for exceeding the airline weight allowance, limit themselves to the annoying people who can make it a week on two pairs of underwear, a pair of jeans, a t-shirt and a sweater? The light traveler may resent the hell out of having to travel with sixteen extra suitcases, but at least he's got a free hand.
This baggage debate comes a scant week before aforementioned philosopher and I tentatively step in a car, with luggage, for our first overnight away. I have shuffled and reshuffled the childcare responsibilities, shouldered, packed away, unpacked and ironed out, folded, hung up, and decided to wear the guilt of leaving my daughter at such a tenuous time. Obviously, when I climb in the car the morning of, it's going to tip slightly to the passenger side to accommodate the weight of everything I'm bringing. I worry about this. Those of us with luggage, a lot of luggage, bang-your-shins-and-stoop-you-to-one-side luggage, may have to accept that we don't make good travel partners. Either that, or look for the people wise enough to anticipate our need for a full-time porter.
I was a sophomore in college the next time I went on a long trip with luggage. I flew to Mexico with my boyfriend for Christmas, and then on to San Francisco to meet his parents. For the occasion, I splurged on a big, black duffle bag, made quite popular at the time by soccer players (I guess…who else needed a bag that big to carry all of their stuff?). I imagined the same six-year old effortless lift as I shouldered it and strolled casually along the terminal, one hand resting lightly on the strap. I packed shorts, bathing suits, and tank tops for Mexico, and fisherman sweaters, jeans, and hiking boots for Northern California. What I ended up with, as I raced for our connecting flight in Phoenix, was a bag that was not only too fat to carry, banging my shins and bumping my knees as I bumbled down the terminal, but also impossible to lift. It weighed as much as a small, Japanese Sumo wrestler, and, on the rare occasion that I was forced to hoist it to my shoulder in order to move more quickly, I lost all feeling on that side of my body for at least a half of an hour.
Two years later, on a trip to Austin, I corrected the big bag error by packing only small bags. Five of them, all with shoulder straps, all small enough to sling across my chest should the need to run from, or for, a purse snatcher arise. The trip through the airport was easier on my back, but no less annoying; I kept dropping bags as I turned sideways to accommodate the crush of people always present in the Dallas/Ft. Worth Airport. Once in Austin, I spent the entire trip dumping each bag in search of an item, only to find it in the last bag that I dumped. And, of course, on route back home, I left one of the bags either in my hotel or in the back of the rental car, losing forever my favorite pair of pajama pants and a Howard Jones t-shirt.
Ten years later, I'm still trying to work out the baggage issue, although I don't travel much anymore. Most trips are no longer than an hour north to Denver, and for those, I can load up the car with as much stuff as I want. In ten years, I haven't managed to put together a matching luggage set. In fact, that same stupid duffel bag that I bought for Mexico makes most of my weekend trips. I find that in my thirty-somethingeth year, I have moved toward an uncomfortable balance between the two baggage extremes. I always pack the one big bag, still rather difficult to lift, and dangerous to any joints below the hip area, and several small bags that multiply once I turn my attention toward the road. I spend half of my time in Denver schlepping my stuff from the car and the other half schlepping it back. It's not six-year old tidy, but, after a death, several dumpings, a marriage, and a birth, I'm resigned to the fact that I am not afforded the luxury of traveling lightly anymore.
The whole "things we carry" discussion popped up the other day with my favorite margarita/mojito philosopher, and we've both decided that life would be easier if, like the bags we drag to the airport, we could lay out for the world our metaphorical loads in a visible way. Beware the person carrying the steamer trunk, but also be wary of the person with the single carry-on who keeps disappearing to a dark, hidden corner every time he needs a change of clothes. Avoid the woman flaunting the LouisVuitton twelve-piece luggage set because even if it coordinates with her outfit, she's going to need a ton of help getting it out of the taxi. Is it necessary to look for someone whose luggage matches yours? Or can you be a Gucci girl (as if), and find bliss with a Samsonite man? Is it okay to travel with someone who has fifteen bags, if, like a good boy at customs, he claims all of them before boarding (euphemism not intentional). If your load is heavy too, at least you know he can't blame you when you both miss your flight. Or, should those that have to pay extra for exceeding the airline weight allowance, limit themselves to the annoying people who can make it a week on two pairs of underwear, a pair of jeans, a t-shirt and a sweater? The light traveler may resent the hell out of having to travel with sixteen extra suitcases, but at least he's got a free hand.
This baggage debate comes a scant week before aforementioned philosopher and I tentatively step in a car, with luggage, for our first overnight away. I have shuffled and reshuffled the childcare responsibilities, shouldered, packed away, unpacked and ironed out, folded, hung up, and decided to wear the guilt of leaving my daughter at such a tenuous time. Obviously, when I climb in the car the morning of, it's going to tip slightly to the passenger side to accommodate the weight of everything I'm bringing. I worry about this. Those of us with luggage, a lot of luggage, bang-your-shins-and-stoop-you-to-one-side luggage, may have to accept that we don't make good travel partners. Either that, or look for the people wise enough to anticipate our need for a full-time porter.
All I Ever Needed to Know...
It's unfortunate that my daughter chose this year to turn five. It's unfortunate because the divorce, which tripped her up occasionally last year like a pesky throw rug with an upturned corner, is now slamming into her like the sparkling clean glass door that you forget is not actually open. I am pre-teenage daughter mom, and she sulks, and smirks, and stomps. I forget how vulnerable she is until times like last Thursday morning, when she was standing in front of school with a Disney princess backpack dwarfing her, and I was looking at the other kids going through the double doors and wondering if they shouldn't be heading onto the bus that goes to the high school already. I often forget that my daughter is only five and we've shouldered her with two houses and parents who have difficulty speaking to each other without gritting their teeth. I'm reminded when I show up to retrieve her at 2:30 and her eyes are huge and glossy, scanning the chaos of mothers because she fears I won't show up.
Last year I stumbled through the divorce in a bit of stunned disbelief. This year, I know what we did, and I can see what it's doing to her. She awakes at night, not really awake, but eyes open, scanning the room in panic for some unseen threat. And I stumble again, sure that by the age of nineteen, she'll be staked out on some rooftop, picking off people with expert marksmanship. I joke that I've started a therapy fund, so that when she needs someone to blame for all of her misfortune, she can curl up on a plush couch somewhere where the plant leaves aren't tinged with brown and blow her nose on ninety-five dollar-an-hour Kleenex.
I find my peace in hers, so neither of us has been sleeping well. Kindergarten turned out to be a horrifying place. She ate alone at lunch, played by herself at recess, and stood by the fence waiting for me at her after-school program. After four days of tears every morning before school, I looked into other schools, private kindergartens, places where she would feel more secure. Irrationally, part of me even imagined pulling her from kindergarten, waiting a year, even though she already stands a good head above the rest of the kids in her class. If I had to justify it, I could argue that by the time she was a senior in high school, the rest of the class would have caught up with her height-wise.
My boyfriend, a wise, perceptive soul, often makes a soft whoop-whoop sound in times such as these. Helicopter Mom. Swoop and scoop when the going gets too rough for my child. I need to save her from all of this, even though I know that is impossible. Rationally, I know that everyone faces stumbling blocks in childhood that leave us scarred, and most of us resist the urge to go weapons of mass destruction on the general public. Crap happens. Boy, does crap happen. In a perfect world, crap would never happen to our kids. But this is not a perfect world. No matter how hard I swoop, no matter how hard I scoop, I can't change that for her.
We went to open house last night. My daughter proudly led me to the auditorium and swung her cowboy-booted feet back and forth in the air while the principal cracked corny jokes into his headset microphone. We walked to her classroom, and I sat in a tiny chair, knees up to my chin, while I listened in fascination at the sequence of letters that have been reviewed up to this point. She modeled her drumming skills, learned in music class, and played tag in the gym with the other kids, showing how quickly she can stop when someone yells freeze. There is that, but there is also the story today of the boy who called her a baby, and the child who spat on the ground by her feet. I listened over a glass of milk with crackers and cheese, nodding my head sympathetically. I held my hands tightly over the helicopter blades to keep the whoop-whoop at bay, and we saddled up the big, black dog for a walk around the block.
In April, signing my name to the enrollment form, I pictured kindergarten to be this warm and fuzzy world with cookies, and stories, and best friends, and teachers who talk with soft voices and have pretty faces. The reality is not an exact match. Kindergarten, like shit, happens. There are cookies, but sometimes they're stale. There are friends, but sometimes they don't want to sit with you at lunch. And the teachers, despite their best intentions, sometimes don't catch the kid who calls you mean and spits on your foot. Kindergarten is an immensely scary new world, but if I have to be honest, it really seems to have only caused lasting mental trauma to me, not to the five-year old who actually had to attend.
Last year I stumbled through the divorce in a bit of stunned disbelief. This year, I know what we did, and I can see what it's doing to her. She awakes at night, not really awake, but eyes open, scanning the room in panic for some unseen threat. And I stumble again, sure that by the age of nineteen, she'll be staked out on some rooftop, picking off people with expert marksmanship. I joke that I've started a therapy fund, so that when she needs someone to blame for all of her misfortune, she can curl up on a plush couch somewhere where the plant leaves aren't tinged with brown and blow her nose on ninety-five dollar-an-hour Kleenex.
I find my peace in hers, so neither of us has been sleeping well. Kindergarten turned out to be a horrifying place. She ate alone at lunch, played by herself at recess, and stood by the fence waiting for me at her after-school program. After four days of tears every morning before school, I looked into other schools, private kindergartens, places where she would feel more secure. Irrationally, part of me even imagined pulling her from kindergarten, waiting a year, even though she already stands a good head above the rest of the kids in her class. If I had to justify it, I could argue that by the time she was a senior in high school, the rest of the class would have caught up with her height-wise.
My boyfriend, a wise, perceptive soul, often makes a soft whoop-whoop sound in times such as these. Helicopter Mom. Swoop and scoop when the going gets too rough for my child. I need to save her from all of this, even though I know that is impossible. Rationally, I know that everyone faces stumbling blocks in childhood that leave us scarred, and most of us resist the urge to go weapons of mass destruction on the general public. Crap happens. Boy, does crap happen. In a perfect world, crap would never happen to our kids. But this is not a perfect world. No matter how hard I swoop, no matter how hard I scoop, I can't change that for her.
We went to open house last night. My daughter proudly led me to the auditorium and swung her cowboy-booted feet back and forth in the air while the principal cracked corny jokes into his headset microphone. We walked to her classroom, and I sat in a tiny chair, knees up to my chin, while I listened in fascination at the sequence of letters that have been reviewed up to this point. She modeled her drumming skills, learned in music class, and played tag in the gym with the other kids, showing how quickly she can stop when someone yells freeze. There is that, but there is also the story today of the boy who called her a baby, and the child who spat on the ground by her feet. I listened over a glass of milk with crackers and cheese, nodding my head sympathetically. I held my hands tightly over the helicopter blades to keep the whoop-whoop at bay, and we saddled up the big, black dog for a walk around the block.
In April, signing my name to the enrollment form, I pictured kindergarten to be this warm and fuzzy world with cookies, and stories, and best friends, and teachers who talk with soft voices and have pretty faces. The reality is not an exact match. Kindergarten, like shit, happens. There are cookies, but sometimes they're stale. There are friends, but sometimes they don't want to sit with you at lunch. And the teachers, despite their best intentions, sometimes don't catch the kid who calls you mean and spits on your foot. Kindergarten is an immensely scary new world, but if I have to be honest, it really seems to have only caused lasting mental trauma to me, not to the five-year old who actually had to attend.
And so it begins.
The JC Penny Fall Catalogue showed up on my mother's coffee table today, plaid and tweed draping the toothy models who grace its front cover. Aside from the horrifying discovery that the fashions from the 80's are back in full force, I also realized that my summer is over. On Monday, I will toss my flip flops to the back of my closet, hide my barely tan legs under a long skirt and shove my feet into high heels that feel unbelievably tight. I'm sitting with the same emotions that I usually feel around this time of year. A bit of anxiety (although the standing nude in front of the classroom dreams haven't started yet, thank god!), a bit of excitement (I've seen my class rosters already…there's only one or two kids that I suspect have tortured small animals during childhood), and a bit of bittersweet regret. No matter how much I accomplish every summer, I am left with a lingering certainty that I could have done more.
The emotions for the start of my school year, however, are being suffocated this year by a bigger issue: the start of my daughter's school year, her first official start. This should distress me only because she is growing older and taking her first big girl steps away from me. Kindergarten leads to best friends whose parents I've never met, to sleepovers, secrets, and triumphs and heartaches that I will be no part of. I should be worried only about that moment, that big moment, when I leave her at the classroom door and watch her step through it to a different phase in our life together.
But, as it is with all new parenting adventures, I am entering this phase not only with a ton of maternal anxiety, but also a heaping dose of maternal guilt. I'm a bit embarrassed to admit that I didn't ask about the academic reputation of her school before enrolling her. It's in our neighborhood, and it had a before and after school childcare program on site. Unfortunately, the before and after school program folded at the end of last year because there weren't enough kids utilizing it. So now, she will have to be bussed after school to one of those horrid daycare facilities (I've seen them…they're horrid). In light of this, I'm wondering if I shouldn't have pushed to get her into one of our district's "better" schools, where the standardized test scores are through the roof, the other parents are addressed as "Dr." or "Honorary", and the need for social services is almost non-existent. As a friend of mine pointed out, Title One doesn't mean Number One.
Unsurprisingly, my mental angst swam up to the surface last night. I dreamt that I left my daughter in the car while I was eating with my family. She was happily munching a McDonald's Happy Meal, and our dog was with her, but I couldn't tell you why I had left her in the car. I could see her from our table, but I got distracted in conversation, and when I looked back, the car was gone, the dog left behind, hunched over, head hanging, as if he knew he had done something bad. Normally that would be bad enough to wake me up, sweating and panting, but the dream continued, and I had to endure the looking for her, the despair of not finding her, the pain of realizing that I'd lost her. Boy, would Freud have a field day with that one (or was he only interested in dreams that involved penises?).
I like dreams whose obviousness requires no interpretation, and that one certainly pointed out how screwy my mind has been. The bottom line is this: I don't care where my daughter goes to college. I would like her to go to college, but I don't really care where. I also don't really care what career she picks after college. I would prefer that I don't have to loan her money when her car breaks down, and that I could go to her house for dinner instead of her never leaving mine. I might insist that whatever she does, it involves all of her articles of clothing firmly in place on her body. But does she have to be upwardly mobile? Only if she wants to be. What I do care about is that she is healthy, physically and mentally. I would like her to be happy and secure with who she is and able to hold satisfying relationships with other happy and secure people. And I suppose, way back in April, that's what I considered when I selected her school.
It's kindergarten for Pete's sake. And at this kindergarten, they learn violin, and they dance, and paint, and mold clay. And while these skills won't guarantee her a slot in Harvard, these aspects of her kindergarten are enough to ease the anxiety that my very clingy five-year old is feeling right now. She's just as nervous as her uptight mother. When we part at the doorway in a week and a half, both of our hearts will be pounding furiously, wishing we could step back and do this whole thing a bit more slowly. The feeling for her will be brief, and, if I've done my job, disappear entirely the minute she makes her first friend. I suspect it will linger a bit longer in me, and I'll spend the first few months doing double takes at my gangly-armed and legged little girl, sighing as I remember how small she used to be, how all mine she used to be.
Now, if you don't mind, I think I would prefer the standing nude in front of the classroom dream tonight. After last night, it should be worth a few giggles.
The emotions for the start of my school year, however, are being suffocated this year by a bigger issue: the start of my daughter's school year, her first official start. This should distress me only because she is growing older and taking her first big girl steps away from me. Kindergarten leads to best friends whose parents I've never met, to sleepovers, secrets, and triumphs and heartaches that I will be no part of. I should be worried only about that moment, that big moment, when I leave her at the classroom door and watch her step through it to a different phase in our life together.
But, as it is with all new parenting adventures, I am entering this phase not only with a ton of maternal anxiety, but also a heaping dose of maternal guilt. I'm a bit embarrassed to admit that I didn't ask about the academic reputation of her school before enrolling her. It's in our neighborhood, and it had a before and after school childcare program on site. Unfortunately, the before and after school program folded at the end of last year because there weren't enough kids utilizing it. So now, she will have to be bussed after school to one of those horrid daycare facilities (I've seen them…they're horrid). In light of this, I'm wondering if I shouldn't have pushed to get her into one of our district's "better" schools, where the standardized test scores are through the roof, the other parents are addressed as "Dr." or "Honorary", and the need for social services is almost non-existent. As a friend of mine pointed out, Title One doesn't mean Number One.
Unsurprisingly, my mental angst swam up to the surface last night. I dreamt that I left my daughter in the car while I was eating with my family. She was happily munching a McDonald's Happy Meal, and our dog was with her, but I couldn't tell you why I had left her in the car. I could see her from our table, but I got distracted in conversation, and when I looked back, the car was gone, the dog left behind, hunched over, head hanging, as if he knew he had done something bad. Normally that would be bad enough to wake me up, sweating and panting, but the dream continued, and I had to endure the looking for her, the despair of not finding her, the pain of realizing that I'd lost her. Boy, would Freud have a field day with that one (or was he only interested in dreams that involved penises?).
I like dreams whose obviousness requires no interpretation, and that one certainly pointed out how screwy my mind has been. The bottom line is this: I don't care where my daughter goes to college. I would like her to go to college, but I don't really care where. I also don't really care what career she picks after college. I would prefer that I don't have to loan her money when her car breaks down, and that I could go to her house for dinner instead of her never leaving mine. I might insist that whatever she does, it involves all of her articles of clothing firmly in place on her body. But does she have to be upwardly mobile? Only if she wants to be. What I do care about is that she is healthy, physically and mentally. I would like her to be happy and secure with who she is and able to hold satisfying relationships with other happy and secure people. And I suppose, way back in April, that's what I considered when I selected her school.
It's kindergarten for Pete's sake. And at this kindergarten, they learn violin, and they dance, and paint, and mold clay. And while these skills won't guarantee her a slot in Harvard, these aspects of her kindergarten are enough to ease the anxiety that my very clingy five-year old is feeling right now. She's just as nervous as her uptight mother. When we part at the doorway in a week and a half, both of our hearts will be pounding furiously, wishing we could step back and do this whole thing a bit more slowly. The feeling for her will be brief, and, if I've done my job, disappear entirely the minute she makes her first friend. I suspect it will linger a bit longer in me, and I'll spend the first few months doing double takes at my gangly-armed and legged little girl, sighing as I remember how small she used to be, how all mine she used to be.
Now, if you don't mind, I think I would prefer the standing nude in front of the classroom dream tonight. After last night, it should be worth a few giggles.
Relationship
I didn’t have to start dating again to realize that men were a strange breed. After all, I was married to one of them for eight years, and before that I had spent many a weekend night sitting across a restaurant table from them tilting my head sideways to figure out if they had actually just said what I thought they had said. I’m not sure, then, if I’m comforted by the idea that the bridge between male/female reasoning is still alive and full of flood waters, or if it is a major source of unnavigatable dismay.
In January, the night long ago when I first ventured back out into public after a spell of social hiatus, I was fortunate enough to meet an incredible man. We have since spent quite a bit of time together, laughing at each other’s stupid jokes and pondering some of the universe’s more puzzling questions.
Long after our first kiss, countless dinner dates, and even long after he started calling me his girlfriend, I said what I can only now realize is one of the scariest words known to men: Relationship. The first time I said it, about two and a half months into dating, I noticed his eyes bug out just a bit.
“Oh, so that’s what we are in, is it?” He laughed nervously and moved away from me ever so slightly.
I tilted my head sideways, assumed it was something he had eaten, and let it go.
One week later, as we sat side by side on one of spring’s first warm nights, I said the “R” word again. He, again, made a jittery joke.
“What’s the deal?” I asked.
“I just wasn’t sure we were in a Relationship, that’s all.”
Head tilting. “Of course we are. We’ve talked to each other every single day for the last two months. What on earth would you call it?”
“No, no, I guess you’re right. It’s a Relationship.”
“Look,” I started when I realized he was no longer joking, “I’m not picking out china patterns, I have no designs on your house, I’m quite content with where we are, but this is a relationship. I have a relationship with my damn dentist, for God’s sake.”
“Well, yes,” he hedged, “but that’s a relationship, with a small ‘r’.”
“And we are…?”
“Big ‘R’.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Capitalization.”
Alright, alright, I admit I took some liberty with the dialogue. In truth, I don’t remember exactly what was said that night, except we jokingly concluded that we’d rename our “Relationship” after some vegetable, to keep it less intense. It was forgotten, almost, except occasionally, I would slip and say relationship, and he would quip back, with the just the slightest hint of a tremor in his voice, “You mean string bean.”
This whole issue should have stopped there. And I would have avoided digging myself out of blog hibernation, had the “R” word not come up in the exact same context two months later.
I was on the phone with an old friend, who happens to be a guy, and we were catching up on each other’s lives when he asked about the man I was dating. I filled him in, and then he asked It.
“So, is this a Relationship?”
“We’ve been dating for over four months now.”
“So it is, huh?”
“Um…yeah.”
“Oh...wow. I guess that means you’re getting pretty serious.”
I relayed this story to my string bean of a boyfriend and he almost fell over laughing. In his mind, this justified his two month earlier freak out. In my mind, it made me wonder what the hell I was doing dating again (and why I had never managed to make the switch over to women).
The whole thing makes me a little paranoid that he is watching me now for signs of digging for a big “R” commitment. Does he worry if I slow my pace down in front of jewelry stores? Has he heard me sigh at random glimpses of white taffeta? Does he suspect that I am measuring the north wall of his dining room when he is not around? It also makes me wonder if maybe, subconsciously, I’m putting that signal out there. I don’t feel like I want anything more serious than what we have, but what if, just by my very female nature, I am programmed to lasso, hogtie, and ruthlessly brand his more delicate, male areas?
I figured I had the male perspective on it, so I needed to dig up some female viewpoints. I asked my best friend, the most level-headed woman I know.
“Am I just completely nuts?” I moaned over the phone while quietly banging my head against the wall.
“Absolutely not. There is no capital ‘r’ in relationship unless it comes at the beginning of a sentence.”
“So you don’t think I’m sending out some little signal?”
She snorted. “Please. And even if you were, unless he was holding a remote control at the time, there’s no way he was picking it up.”
But I’m still unconvinced, and in my desperation to figure this out, my boyfriend and I have revisited this topic over and over again until he has finally begged me to talk about the more disappointing moments of my childhood.
Big “R”, little “r”. I give up because I just don’t get it. To my female credit, I never read John Gray’s book, but I’m starting to wish that I had. He would have had me as a captive audience long ago if he had entitled it Women Are from Venus, and Men Are Just Completely Ridiculous. And yes, even if it weren’t in a title, I think that last word would deserve the capital “R”.
In January, the night long ago when I first ventured back out into public after a spell of social hiatus, I was fortunate enough to meet an incredible man. We have since spent quite a bit of time together, laughing at each other’s stupid jokes and pondering some of the universe’s more puzzling questions.
Long after our first kiss, countless dinner dates, and even long after he started calling me his girlfriend, I said what I can only now realize is one of the scariest words known to men: Relationship. The first time I said it, about two and a half months into dating, I noticed his eyes bug out just a bit.
“Oh, so that’s what we are in, is it?” He laughed nervously and moved away from me ever so slightly.
I tilted my head sideways, assumed it was something he had eaten, and let it go.
One week later, as we sat side by side on one of spring’s first warm nights, I said the “R” word again. He, again, made a jittery joke.
“What’s the deal?” I asked.
“I just wasn’t sure we were in a Relationship, that’s all.”
Head tilting. “Of course we are. We’ve talked to each other every single day for the last two months. What on earth would you call it?”
“No, no, I guess you’re right. It’s a Relationship.”
“Look,” I started when I realized he was no longer joking, “I’m not picking out china patterns, I have no designs on your house, I’m quite content with where we are, but this is a relationship. I have a relationship with my damn dentist, for God’s sake.”
“Well, yes,” he hedged, “but that’s a relationship, with a small ‘r’.”
“And we are…?”
“Big ‘R’.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Capitalization.”
Alright, alright, I admit I took some liberty with the dialogue. In truth, I don’t remember exactly what was said that night, except we jokingly concluded that we’d rename our “Relationship” after some vegetable, to keep it less intense. It was forgotten, almost, except occasionally, I would slip and say relationship, and he would quip back, with the just the slightest hint of a tremor in his voice, “You mean string bean.”
This whole issue should have stopped there. And I would have avoided digging myself out of blog hibernation, had the “R” word not come up in the exact same context two months later.
I was on the phone with an old friend, who happens to be a guy, and we were catching up on each other’s lives when he asked about the man I was dating. I filled him in, and then he asked It.
“So, is this a Relationship?”
“We’ve been dating for over four months now.”
“So it is, huh?”
“Um…yeah.”
“Oh...wow. I guess that means you’re getting pretty serious.”
I relayed this story to my string bean of a boyfriend and he almost fell over laughing. In his mind, this justified his two month earlier freak out. In my mind, it made me wonder what the hell I was doing dating again (and why I had never managed to make the switch over to women).
The whole thing makes me a little paranoid that he is watching me now for signs of digging for a big “R” commitment. Does he worry if I slow my pace down in front of jewelry stores? Has he heard me sigh at random glimpses of white taffeta? Does he suspect that I am measuring the north wall of his dining room when he is not around? It also makes me wonder if maybe, subconsciously, I’m putting that signal out there. I don’t feel like I want anything more serious than what we have, but what if, just by my very female nature, I am programmed to lasso, hogtie, and ruthlessly brand his more delicate, male areas?
I figured I had the male perspective on it, so I needed to dig up some female viewpoints. I asked my best friend, the most level-headed woman I know.
“Am I just completely nuts?” I moaned over the phone while quietly banging my head against the wall.
“Absolutely not. There is no capital ‘r’ in relationship unless it comes at the beginning of a sentence.”
“So you don’t think I’m sending out some little signal?”
She snorted. “Please. And even if you were, unless he was holding a remote control at the time, there’s no way he was picking it up.”
But I’m still unconvinced, and in my desperation to figure this out, my boyfriend and I have revisited this topic over and over again until he has finally begged me to talk about the more disappointing moments of my childhood.
Big “R”, little “r”. I give up because I just don’t get it. To my female credit, I never read John Gray’s book, but I’m starting to wish that I had. He would have had me as a captive audience long ago if he had entitled it Women Are from Venus, and Men Are Just Completely Ridiculous. And yes, even if it weren’t in a title, I think that last word would deserve the capital “R”.
I Wish I Had a River
Cold. Snowy. Again. I played Joni Mitchell over and over in the car on the slow drive down south. “It’s coming on Christmas, they’re cutting down trees. They’re putting up reindeer and singing songs of joy and peace. I wish I had a river, I could skate away on.” Even though she sings of wanting a frozen watered winter, and I could cry at the thought of more snow, the song's melody drifted in melancholy cadence with the tiny white flakes that stuck to the parts of my windshield where the wipers couldn’t reach.
The first friend I made in college introduced me to Joni Mitchell. I was a high-hair reject from the 80’s New Wave movement, and Kelly, the girl I met running at 6:00 in the morning on my second day in Boulder, was an enigma in an oversized Boston College sweatshirt. She drank way too much. She was dating a 43 year old who looked disturbingly like Jesus. She knew what tofu was and ate it religiously. We listened to “Yellow Taxi” until her roommate threatened to jump out the window. She was later arrested for trying to break into the train on display in the park on Broadway. Actually, she was arrested because she got belligerent with the cop. She told us later on that Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant”cycled through her head throughout the whole ordeal. Whenever he sings about playing with the pencils on the group “W” bench, I think of Kelly.
This time of the year under any circumstance always brings me to my knees. I joke that my toes go numb some time in early January and don’t thaw out until late May. The comfort of a warm, wool sweater has long since lost its appeal. And my diet goes to hell because I can’t stand the thought of putting anything cold inside my body (there goes dairy, fruit, raw veggies, and any water other than a cup of tea or bitter coffee).
I suppose you could approach this drawn-out wait for spring two ways. Proactively, you could crank up the heat in your house, paint your toenails and shave your legs, put ABBA on the stereo and dance away your winter blues to really bad disco music. I tend to go the other route. I sniff the crotch of the sweatpants piled up in the dirty clothes hamper, pull my robe tightly around me, huddle under my down comforter with a box of tissues, and curl up with Joni Mitchell on repeat, wishing she could skate away over and over again from the cd player across the room.
The first friend I made in college introduced me to Joni Mitchell. I was a high-hair reject from the 80’s New Wave movement, and Kelly, the girl I met running at 6:00 in the morning on my second day in Boulder, was an enigma in an oversized Boston College sweatshirt. She drank way too much. She was dating a 43 year old who looked disturbingly like Jesus. She knew what tofu was and ate it religiously. We listened to “Yellow Taxi” until her roommate threatened to jump out the window. She was later arrested for trying to break into the train on display in the park on Broadway. Actually, she was arrested because she got belligerent with the cop. She told us later on that Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant”cycled through her head throughout the whole ordeal. Whenever he sings about playing with the pencils on the group “W” bench, I think of Kelly.
This time of the year under any circumstance always brings me to my knees. I joke that my toes go numb some time in early January and don’t thaw out until late May. The comfort of a warm, wool sweater has long since lost its appeal. And my diet goes to hell because I can’t stand the thought of putting anything cold inside my body (there goes dairy, fruit, raw veggies, and any water other than a cup of tea or bitter coffee).
I suppose you could approach this drawn-out wait for spring two ways. Proactively, you could crank up the heat in your house, paint your toenails and shave your legs, put ABBA on the stereo and dance away your winter blues to really bad disco music. I tend to go the other route. I sniff the crotch of the sweatpants piled up in the dirty clothes hamper, pull my robe tightly around me, huddle under my down comforter with a box of tissues, and curl up with Joni Mitchell on repeat, wishing she could skate away over and over again from the cd player across the room.
The Pink Elephant in the Room
I used to love waking up somewhere new, experiencing that feeling of disorientation while your brain figures out where you are, slowly coming around by noting all of the unusual particulars around you. Lately, I find myself startling out of dreams with that same feeling of displacement. I can hear the refrigerator in the kitchen humming out its repetitive drone, the darkness fades to adjusted eyes, revealing my desk along the wall, and if I strain my ears, I can hear Fred softly snoring one room away at the foot of my daughter’s bed. But that feeling of waking up in unfamiliar territory clings to me like smoky hair after an evening in a very popular pub.
It’s gotten as bad as it has been. Which is not to say that it won’t get worse. I stumble along in feeble parenting attempts to shield my daughter from it all, and fail quite spectacularly. I touch her hair at random moments, rub her back as she passes me in the kitchen, and kneel in front of her, looking into her eyes and holding onto them for a moment longer than normal to try to gauge what thoughts are passing beyond what I am seeing.
When I say I know it can get worse, I speak on good authority. A year ago, I struck up a friendship with a mother at my daughter’s preschool based solely on our daughters’ passion for each other. We would meet and exchange small talk pleasantries while the two of them would tear up whichever house was available to them that week. She is also going through a divorce now, so when we meet, we don’t waste our breath with the trivial complaints of lazy teachers at their preschool, or how things are progressing at our jobs. We settle the girls in one of their pink bedrooms, ensuring that a mess will be made, and hole up on a sofa, trading war stories and examining each other’s battle scars. Hers are worse. So much, much worse. Police at four in the morning worse, so I take my unfamiliar road and put it into perspective.
Divorce is a new car without the reassuring new car smell (actually, this would be the new car that smells astounding like my flatulent dog). You make your purchase, and then notice suddenly everyone else has that exact same car. Two years ago, I knew one woman who was getting a divorce, but everyone I meet now is walking a similar path. Some are still trudging through the murkier aspects of it, while others have managed to clean themselves up and stand a bit away from it all.
I don’t think you ever put it completely behind you. Even without the memories, you walk away from something like this marked, the toilet paper stuck to your shoe that you never notice flipping along in your wake. But someday, or so I’m told, you wake up feeling familiar displacement only to realize that you are, in fact, somewhere relatively different, and as you take inventory of all that surrounds you, it’s not necessarily a bad place to be.
It’s gotten as bad as it has been. Which is not to say that it won’t get worse. I stumble along in feeble parenting attempts to shield my daughter from it all, and fail quite spectacularly. I touch her hair at random moments, rub her back as she passes me in the kitchen, and kneel in front of her, looking into her eyes and holding onto them for a moment longer than normal to try to gauge what thoughts are passing beyond what I am seeing.
When I say I know it can get worse, I speak on good authority. A year ago, I struck up a friendship with a mother at my daughter’s preschool based solely on our daughters’ passion for each other. We would meet and exchange small talk pleasantries while the two of them would tear up whichever house was available to them that week. She is also going through a divorce now, so when we meet, we don’t waste our breath with the trivial complaints of lazy teachers at their preschool, or how things are progressing at our jobs. We settle the girls in one of their pink bedrooms, ensuring that a mess will be made, and hole up on a sofa, trading war stories and examining each other’s battle scars. Hers are worse. So much, much worse. Police at four in the morning worse, so I take my unfamiliar road and put it into perspective.
Divorce is a new car without the reassuring new car smell (actually, this would be the new car that smells astounding like my flatulent dog). You make your purchase, and then notice suddenly everyone else has that exact same car. Two years ago, I knew one woman who was getting a divorce, but everyone I meet now is walking a similar path. Some are still trudging through the murkier aspects of it, while others have managed to clean themselves up and stand a bit away from it all.
I don’t think you ever put it completely behind you. Even without the memories, you walk away from something like this marked, the toilet paper stuck to your shoe that you never notice flipping along in your wake. But someday, or so I’m told, you wake up feeling familiar displacement only to realize that you are, in fact, somewhere relatively different, and as you take inventory of all that surrounds you, it’s not necessarily a bad place to be.
Diving In
The first time I learned how to swim, I was four, and we were living in Monterey, California. My mom sewed my sister and me matching bathing suits with robes, and we worked our way from the shallow end of the pool to where we couldn’t touch on our preschool tippie toes.
When I was twelve, I took lessons again. We weren’t a Club Med type of family, and my swimming skills stood no chance in the dirt of our summer camping trips, so I had to start my instruction all the way back at the beginning. I went to the Y and was placed in a class where the second oldest student was eight. Although not the first or last time in my life when I would feel out of place, certainly one of the more notable. Painful was the free time at the end of every lesson when the little kids would partner up to throw balls or dive for rings at the bottom of the pool. Painful was the time when two girls mistook my teenaged acne for chicken pox. Painful was the time when we were practicing dives, and I belly flopped on top of the floating hula hoop. So painful, that I never dove again. And I stopped my swimming lessons shortly after that.
This summer, my daughter and I drove south to visit my mom in her new home in Arizona. Actually, we drove south to visit her swimming pool. We stayed for a week, and during that week, my daughter put me on a strict, three times a day swimming schedule. Aside from the maddening task of applying sunscreen to both of our bodies that often, having a pool all to ourselves was a stupid if you don’t take advantage of it opportunity. We grew fins and gills. I invented noodle surfing. My daughter blew bubbles and drank a lot of chlorinated water. And I taught myself how to dive again.
Baby dives start on the knees, with the nose pinched shut by two fingers, the body pitched forward so that the top of the head touches the water. You have to fight your body’s natural reaction to not fall into anything head first, and to trust that the water will catch you instead of the side of the pool. Once you have taught yourself to fall forward consistently, you stand, and triangle your arms over your head, biceps pressing against your ears. Bend in half at the waist and ignore gravity as you fall headlong once again. Belly flop a time or two until your stomach gets too numb to feel the sting, and feel ridiculously proud when your mother cheers for her 33 year old daughter.
I’m going out this Thursday night with my sister, to a happy hour hosted by one of her former colleagues. She needs to network, and I’m going mostly for the moral support. I vaguely remember what it is like to worry about what I will wear to a social event that didn’t include four year olds. I vaguely remember the fear that my hair will not cooperate and that I will say stupid things. But I’m going for the moral support, so I’ll probably leave the high heels at home and simply take mental notes on the ambience. For a woman who is just a bit terrified by the idea of getting back out there, it’s a small, reasonable step. Most of my time these days, after all, is spent doing very slow laps in an area of the pool where the water is bathtub warm and untouched by the turbulence from other swimmers. So this is my plug my nose, on my knees, baby dive. I’m predicting that I’ll allow gravity to convince me to keep my head up, and I’ll most likely belly flop. Several times. Actually, I'm anticipating months of a raw, stinging stomach until the day I stop hesitating when my toes dangle precariously over the edge of the water, and falling the wrong way seems completely natural.
When I was twelve, I took lessons again. We weren’t a Club Med type of family, and my swimming skills stood no chance in the dirt of our summer camping trips, so I had to start my instruction all the way back at the beginning. I went to the Y and was placed in a class where the second oldest student was eight. Although not the first or last time in my life when I would feel out of place, certainly one of the more notable. Painful was the free time at the end of every lesson when the little kids would partner up to throw balls or dive for rings at the bottom of the pool. Painful was the time when two girls mistook my teenaged acne for chicken pox. Painful was the time when we were practicing dives, and I belly flopped on top of the floating hula hoop. So painful, that I never dove again. And I stopped my swimming lessons shortly after that.
This summer, my daughter and I drove south to visit my mom in her new home in Arizona. Actually, we drove south to visit her swimming pool. We stayed for a week, and during that week, my daughter put me on a strict, three times a day swimming schedule. Aside from the maddening task of applying sunscreen to both of our bodies that often, having a pool all to ourselves was a stupid if you don’t take advantage of it opportunity. We grew fins and gills. I invented noodle surfing. My daughter blew bubbles and drank a lot of chlorinated water. And I taught myself how to dive again.
Baby dives start on the knees, with the nose pinched shut by two fingers, the body pitched forward so that the top of the head touches the water. You have to fight your body’s natural reaction to not fall into anything head first, and to trust that the water will catch you instead of the side of the pool. Once you have taught yourself to fall forward consistently, you stand, and triangle your arms over your head, biceps pressing against your ears. Bend in half at the waist and ignore gravity as you fall headlong once again. Belly flop a time or two until your stomach gets too numb to feel the sting, and feel ridiculously proud when your mother cheers for her 33 year old daughter.
I’m going out this Thursday night with my sister, to a happy hour hosted by one of her former colleagues. She needs to network, and I’m going mostly for the moral support. I vaguely remember what it is like to worry about what I will wear to a social event that didn’t include four year olds. I vaguely remember the fear that my hair will not cooperate and that I will say stupid things. But I’m going for the moral support, so I’ll probably leave the high heels at home and simply take mental notes on the ambience. For a woman who is just a bit terrified by the idea of getting back out there, it’s a small, reasonable step. Most of my time these days, after all, is spent doing very slow laps in an area of the pool where the water is bathtub warm and untouched by the turbulence from other swimmers. So this is my plug my nose, on my knees, baby dive. I’m predicting that I’ll allow gravity to convince me to keep my head up, and I’ll most likely belly flop. Several times. Actually, I'm anticipating months of a raw, stinging stomach until the day I stop hesitating when my toes dangle precariously over the edge of the water, and falling the wrong way seems completely natural.
Stupid Holiday Story #2
How do you survive Christmas? You drink a lot. And drink a lot, right. Drink a lot and drink a lot. -Christina Applegate
I am a true believer in Murphy’s Law. You know the one I’m talking about, right? That which can go wrong...? I find that this slightly pessimistic footnote stuck neatly at the bottom of all of my optimism protects me from a huge truckload of disappointment in most situations.
Exhibit A: my daughter is sick during our first week of vacation. It started with a cough last week, and I began warning relatives to keep their distance from her lips. Saturday night, it spiked into a fever, and I spent all night popping up and down from my bed to feel her forehead, sure that the only thing that stood in the way of a febrile seizure was my motherly persistence.
Exhibit B: I am sick during our first week of vacation. My warning to others to stay away from her lips certainly couldn’t apply to me, so I’m thinking of buying stock in Kleenex this week. Or at least buying a bucketful of Cover Girl concealor so that when we sing "Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer" on Christmas Eve, everyone’s not looking at me.
Exhibit C: It snowed in Colorado, all weekend down in the Springs. It was light, floaty, usually see it at the mall around Santa’s house kind of snow. We did take advantage of the beautiful sight by sipping tea, listening to Christmas music, and making snowflakes yesterday. Today, I went out to do the final shovel of the walk, and found that shoveling was futile. It wisped right off the shovel and back onto the sidewalk, so I got my broom instead. I swept with zeal. The appraiser is coming at 11:00 to assess my house for the refinance, so all of my nervousness and frustration went into making sure that the sidewalk was clear of even the smallest hint of snow.
No snow. Bad snow. Go away, snow.
After doing the front walk, I had some energy left, so I trudged around to the back of the house to sweep off the back deck. I flisked and swooshed with full force, feeling very productive until my broom hit the corner of one of the table benches. It caught, and stopped in mid motion, but my muscles continued their full forward attack. As a result, the broom handle snapped back against my face, right smack in the corner of my right eye. After the cartoon stars and birds cleared, and I could remember where I was, two thoughts occurred to me. Thought #1: I hope none of the neighbors saw that…definite loss of cool points (after the light fiasco of last weekend, I doubt I had any to begin with). Thought #2: I have just given myself a black eye.
I reached my finger up to touch the spot where all of my angsty energy now lay in reddening proof. A bump was forming, nice and firmly in the shape of a little caterpillar. Going inside, I unbundled myself and headed straight for the bathroom mirror. The bump is not so much on my eye, but creeping down from the dead corner of it. It has turned a purplish, greenish, grayish color, and with its unfortunate location, I do not get to even look contender-tough. I look instead like a deranged, cracked-out prostitute who never learned how to apply eye makeup. If I had any social plans that didn’t involve direct family members who will be kind enough to stop laughing after the first ten minutes, they just flushed themselves neatly down the toilette.
I am currently sitting at the only safe spot in the house. The bathrooms could use a quick wipe, I need to make some phone calls, and I really should finish putting away the laundry that is sitting on my bed. But after this morning, I’m a little afraid to move.
My daughter is asking Santa for a flute, and a candy cane, and the little squishy ball that her mother broke last year. I’m thinking I might need to write my own letter out of simple desperation. “Hey, Santa, on top of a washing machine, a computer, and a social life that isn’t a bad independent film, how about a little coordination?”
Six more days until Christmas. Someone please save me from myself.
I am a true believer in Murphy’s Law. You know the one I’m talking about, right? That which can go wrong...? I find that this slightly pessimistic footnote stuck neatly at the bottom of all of my optimism protects me from a huge truckload of disappointment in most situations.
Exhibit A: my daughter is sick during our first week of vacation. It started with a cough last week, and I began warning relatives to keep their distance from her lips. Saturday night, it spiked into a fever, and I spent all night popping up and down from my bed to feel her forehead, sure that the only thing that stood in the way of a febrile seizure was my motherly persistence.
Exhibit B: I am sick during our first week of vacation. My warning to others to stay away from her lips certainly couldn’t apply to me, so I’m thinking of buying stock in Kleenex this week. Or at least buying a bucketful of Cover Girl concealor so that when we sing "Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer" on Christmas Eve, everyone’s not looking at me.
Exhibit C: It snowed in Colorado, all weekend down in the Springs. It was light, floaty, usually see it at the mall around Santa’s house kind of snow. We did take advantage of the beautiful sight by sipping tea, listening to Christmas music, and making snowflakes yesterday. Today, I went out to do the final shovel of the walk, and found that shoveling was futile. It wisped right off the shovel and back onto the sidewalk, so I got my broom instead. I swept with zeal. The appraiser is coming at 11:00 to assess my house for the refinance, so all of my nervousness and frustration went into making sure that the sidewalk was clear of even the smallest hint of snow.
No snow. Bad snow. Go away, snow.
After doing the front walk, I had some energy left, so I trudged around to the back of the house to sweep off the back deck. I flisked and swooshed with full force, feeling very productive until my broom hit the corner of one of the table benches. It caught, and stopped in mid motion, but my muscles continued their full forward attack. As a result, the broom handle snapped back against my face, right smack in the corner of my right eye. After the cartoon stars and birds cleared, and I could remember where I was, two thoughts occurred to me. Thought #1: I hope none of the neighbors saw that…definite loss of cool points (after the light fiasco of last weekend, I doubt I had any to begin with). Thought #2: I have just given myself a black eye.
I reached my finger up to touch the spot where all of my angsty energy now lay in reddening proof. A bump was forming, nice and firmly in the shape of a little caterpillar. Going inside, I unbundled myself and headed straight for the bathroom mirror. The bump is not so much on my eye, but creeping down from the dead corner of it. It has turned a purplish, greenish, grayish color, and with its unfortunate location, I do not get to even look contender-tough. I look instead like a deranged, cracked-out prostitute who never learned how to apply eye makeup. If I had any social plans that didn’t involve direct family members who will be kind enough to stop laughing after the first ten minutes, they just flushed themselves neatly down the toilette.
I am currently sitting at the only safe spot in the house. The bathrooms could use a quick wipe, I need to make some phone calls, and I really should finish putting away the laundry that is sitting on my bed. But after this morning, I’m a little afraid to move.
My daughter is asking Santa for a flute, and a candy cane, and the little squishy ball that her mother broke last year. I’m thinking I might need to write my own letter out of simple desperation. “Hey, Santa, on top of a washing machine, a computer, and a social life that isn’t a bad independent film, how about a little coordination?”
Six more days until Christmas. Someone please save me from myself.
Stupid Holiday Story #1
In the old days, it was not called the Holiday Season; the Christians called it 'Christmas' and went to church; the Jews called it 'Hanukkah' and went to synagogue; the atheists went to parties and drank. People passing each other on the street would say 'Merry Christmas!' or 'Happy Hanukkah!' or (to the atheists) 'Look out for the wall!' ~Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
I live in what is referred to as the West Side of Colorado Springs. It’s an interesting cultural phenomenon because as elitist as most West Siders like to think that they are, really it’s just a melting pot for a ton of people who have given up on trying to save face in most societal situations.
Take, for example, my neighbor Creg. Creg was the first neighbor to introduce himself to us. He has since brought us lentil soup, Christmas cookies, helped dig post holes for our fence, and donated a huge boulder for our front yard. He likes my dog. He talks to my daughter. He once hung his flag at half mast because a guy who bombed an abortion clinic was executed. You need to be careful when you ask Creg a question because if he is having a manic day (his words, not mine), he will talk to you for the better part of a half of an hour. Rough. Especially when you have ice cream in your car and it’s 87 degrees outside.
Then there is Wayne. Wayne is a 78 year old retiree who lives in a house shaped like a barn. Wayne, at 78, is quite the party animal. He will regale you at whim of stories of drinking binges that occur when his family comes to visit. When he mows his front yard with his shirt off, you worry that the huge belly might, in fact, be evidence of cirrhosis of the liver. Wayne won’t ever cross the street to talk to you, but he’ll yell at you from his porch for about ten minutes…everyone knows Wayne’s business if you know Wayne’s business.
Krista. Krista. Krista. I don’t know Krista well, but everyone else knows Krista. Krista used to know the police quite well, but we haven’t seen them around lately. Krista is missing her two front teeth. Krista brings home different men all of the time, and most of them are quite attractive. Krista is a very nice woman, but she scares me just a tad.
Most unusual of my west side neighbors are Joseph and Jenny, who live right next door. Jenny is a pet psychic. I’ve heard some pretty convincing stories that support her ability, but I haven’t seen evidence of it first hand. When my first dog was dying of cancer, after his operation that left him jawless, she walked by my house and told me that she sensed a lot of drool. I looked at my puppy with the foam dripping down onto the porch below him and agreed with her assessment. She has since told me that she would be willing to work with Fred and all of his quirky oddities…I have politely declined. Joseph talks through his dog, Lola. Joseph never asks you a question directly…he will ask it through Lola. For example, “Lola wants to know what you are doing over here.” Joseph once told my daughter that he wanted a pair of light up princess shoes just like hers. I told him that a) I didn’t think that they made them in his size and b)they weren’t quite his style. He replied that actually, they were exactly his style. When I gave the polite joke laugh, he frowned and said, “No, seriously."
I think that up until now, I have been able to claim sole residence in sanity-ville on our block. But all of that changed this weekend.
It was time to put up the outdoor lights…the weather had turned mild, and I was looking like the dark spot in an otherwise very festive street. Some households fight about what type of Christmas tree to put up year after year; in our house, it was a fight over lights. I have always favored the white lights, but my husband put up too good of a fight for the colored ones. When I opened the box this year to begin my staple-gunning glee, I counted twelve strands of colored lights, all in perfect working order. I gritted my teeth, and resigned myself to another year of lighting compromise. Money is tight this year, and my grandmother still beats me over the head every time I stray from the lessons that she learned during The Great Depression. I sang as I wound and stapled, the same Christmas song over and over again. I tried to switch over to another one, but it never stuck. The more I tried to fight it, the louder my singing became until I dimly became aware that several neighbors had gathered on their porches to watch. I waved and tried to smile through the fallen staples that I had clamped within my front teeth. They waved back warily, casting concerned glances at each other over the wide space of our street.
That night, I lit the display, and my Christmas spirit, a very timid, frail thing this year, fell and shattered on the hardwood floor. Damn colored lights.
The next day, after leaving my daughter with her dad, I drove to the store and bought out the white light display…my grandmother is old and feeble and doesn’t hit nearly as hard as she used to. Back at home, I ripped the old lights down with manic glee and tossed them on the ground next to the puddle that would later turn to solid ice. This time, I talked as I worked. I quoted favorite lines from holiday movies, over and over again. Once again, my neighbors stepped out onto their porches, but this time, no one waved back, or even attempted a smile. With their brows furrowed, they scanned my yard for signs of my daughter, no doubt fearing for her safety.
I’d like to think that when I turned on the lights that night, they oohed and aahed, and all of my frenetic, mad activity was explained. But the reality is that I am probably the person that everyone will avoid for a while as we trot out to our mailboxes to retrieve the mail. Luckily, West Siders seem to have a very limited memory capacity, so I’m confident that by the time I need more ice melt for my sidewalk, or a jump start for my car, they’ll all have forgotten this, and be back to treating me like the grand protector of the sane mind.
Odd thing this leap into the world of the slightly off-kilter. Other than quite easily annoyed, I don’t feel as if there is anything wrong with me. Everyone else seems to have the problems this year. But then again, I would imagine that the person who is being safely restrained by the little silver buckles on his white long-armed jacket feels exactly the same way. I defend my actions with this final statement: To a sane person, the holidays can be hard. To those of us teetering on the edge, off-balance by the little extra digs life is throwing our way, the holidays threaten to be the thing that pushes us over. So we cope and celebrate the best we can. I’ll tell you in all honestly, my toil was not in vain…my lights look good, and they ridiculously remind me that life can now take a different direction. Not everything that comes with change is bad. For the first time in seven years, I have white lights. I mean no disrespect to those of you who favor the red, green, yellow, and blue ones; in fact, come by my house sometime this week; I have twelve strands of those that you can have for free. And if you’re feeling exceedingly daring, and you don’t mind a plethora of nervous ticks with random bouts of Tourette’s-like outbursts, I’ll take you over to meet my neighbors. Creg makes a mean gingerbread cookie, and Wayne, of course, is sure to offer us a drink.
I live in what is referred to as the West Side of Colorado Springs. It’s an interesting cultural phenomenon because as elitist as most West Siders like to think that they are, really it’s just a melting pot for a ton of people who have given up on trying to save face in most societal situations.
Take, for example, my neighbor Creg. Creg was the first neighbor to introduce himself to us. He has since brought us lentil soup, Christmas cookies, helped dig post holes for our fence, and donated a huge boulder for our front yard. He likes my dog. He talks to my daughter. He once hung his flag at half mast because a guy who bombed an abortion clinic was executed. You need to be careful when you ask Creg a question because if he is having a manic day (his words, not mine), he will talk to you for the better part of a half of an hour. Rough. Especially when you have ice cream in your car and it’s 87 degrees outside.
Then there is Wayne. Wayne is a 78 year old retiree who lives in a house shaped like a barn. Wayne, at 78, is quite the party animal. He will regale you at whim of stories of drinking binges that occur when his family comes to visit. When he mows his front yard with his shirt off, you worry that the huge belly might, in fact, be evidence of cirrhosis of the liver. Wayne won’t ever cross the street to talk to you, but he’ll yell at you from his porch for about ten minutes…everyone knows Wayne’s business if you know Wayne’s business.
Krista. Krista. Krista. I don’t know Krista well, but everyone else knows Krista. Krista used to know the police quite well, but we haven’t seen them around lately. Krista is missing her two front teeth. Krista brings home different men all of the time, and most of them are quite attractive. Krista is a very nice woman, but she scares me just a tad.
Most unusual of my west side neighbors are Joseph and Jenny, who live right next door. Jenny is a pet psychic. I’ve heard some pretty convincing stories that support her ability, but I haven’t seen evidence of it first hand. When my first dog was dying of cancer, after his operation that left him jawless, she walked by my house and told me that she sensed a lot of drool. I looked at my puppy with the foam dripping down onto the porch below him and agreed with her assessment. She has since told me that she would be willing to work with Fred and all of his quirky oddities…I have politely declined. Joseph talks through his dog, Lola. Joseph never asks you a question directly…he will ask it through Lola. For example, “Lola wants to know what you are doing over here.” Joseph once told my daughter that he wanted a pair of light up princess shoes just like hers. I told him that a) I didn’t think that they made them in his size and b)they weren’t quite his style. He replied that actually, they were exactly his style. When I gave the polite joke laugh, he frowned and said, “No, seriously."
I think that up until now, I have been able to claim sole residence in sanity-ville on our block. But all of that changed this weekend.
It was time to put up the outdoor lights…the weather had turned mild, and I was looking like the dark spot in an otherwise very festive street. Some households fight about what type of Christmas tree to put up year after year; in our house, it was a fight over lights. I have always favored the white lights, but my husband put up too good of a fight for the colored ones. When I opened the box this year to begin my staple-gunning glee, I counted twelve strands of colored lights, all in perfect working order. I gritted my teeth, and resigned myself to another year of lighting compromise. Money is tight this year, and my grandmother still beats me over the head every time I stray from the lessons that she learned during The Great Depression. I sang as I wound and stapled, the same Christmas song over and over again. I tried to switch over to another one, but it never stuck. The more I tried to fight it, the louder my singing became until I dimly became aware that several neighbors had gathered on their porches to watch. I waved and tried to smile through the fallen staples that I had clamped within my front teeth. They waved back warily, casting concerned glances at each other over the wide space of our street.
That night, I lit the display, and my Christmas spirit, a very timid, frail thing this year, fell and shattered on the hardwood floor. Damn colored lights.
The next day, after leaving my daughter with her dad, I drove to the store and bought out the white light display…my grandmother is old and feeble and doesn’t hit nearly as hard as she used to. Back at home, I ripped the old lights down with manic glee and tossed them on the ground next to the puddle that would later turn to solid ice. This time, I talked as I worked. I quoted favorite lines from holiday movies, over and over again. Once again, my neighbors stepped out onto their porches, but this time, no one waved back, or even attempted a smile. With their brows furrowed, they scanned my yard for signs of my daughter, no doubt fearing for her safety.
I’d like to think that when I turned on the lights that night, they oohed and aahed, and all of my frenetic, mad activity was explained. But the reality is that I am probably the person that everyone will avoid for a while as we trot out to our mailboxes to retrieve the mail. Luckily, West Siders seem to have a very limited memory capacity, so I’m confident that by the time I need more ice melt for my sidewalk, or a jump start for my car, they’ll all have forgotten this, and be back to treating me like the grand protector of the sane mind.
Odd thing this leap into the world of the slightly off-kilter. Other than quite easily annoyed, I don’t feel as if there is anything wrong with me. Everyone else seems to have the problems this year. But then again, I would imagine that the person who is being safely restrained by the little silver buckles on his white long-armed jacket feels exactly the same way. I defend my actions with this final statement: To a sane person, the holidays can be hard. To those of us teetering on the edge, off-balance by the little extra digs life is throwing our way, the holidays threaten to be the thing that pushes us over. So we cope and celebrate the best we can. I’ll tell you in all honestly, my toil was not in vain…my lights look good, and they ridiculously remind me that life can now take a different direction. Not everything that comes with change is bad. For the first time in seven years, I have white lights. I mean no disrespect to those of you who favor the red, green, yellow, and blue ones; in fact, come by my house sometime this week; I have twelve strands of those that you can have for free. And if you’re feeling exceedingly daring, and you don’t mind a plethora of nervous ticks with random bouts of Tourette’s-like outbursts, I’ll take you over to meet my neighbors. Creg makes a mean gingerbread cookie, and Wayne, of course, is sure to offer us a drink.
Merry Christmas, Mr. Scrooge!
It occurred to me, as I drove my daughter home from school today, that what I need in my life right now is a Christmas movie. I don’t need to watch a Christmas movie…years of Christmas junkiedom have necessitated watching each of them enough times to memorize most of the major monologues and touching scenes. No, what I need right now is to live in a Christmas movie. Just for a few days, to gain some perspective. This thought came to me as I barked angrily at the fifth driver in front of me on my ride home tonight, sure that if he could hear me, he would repent and sign himself up immediately for a driving course: “Are you going to actually take your foot off the freaking brake, or are your taillights a sight I can look forward to seeing the rest of the way home?”. My daughter, Zen Buddhist in the backseat, said calmly, almost sounding bored, “Mom, do you need a hug?” My shoulders were scrunched, my forehead furrowed, and my fingers were gripping the steering wheel tightly enough to leave dents.
We zoomed into the parking lot of King Soopers because I forgot to buy the food over the weekend needed for the stupid Christmas box that I always get suckered into helping assemble. I threw bread, onions and celery into the wire basket angrily, resenting that my slippers and a place to rest my butt were so far away from the shopping cart with the wheel that wouldn’t roll. Back in the car, as we raced along toward dinner, I caught site of three boys pushing their sleds up a hill in the darkening twilight. It must’ve only been about 25 degrees outside, and yet they laughed as their knees sunk into the crispy snow.
My yuletide temper tantrum is a hard pill to swallow for a woman who a year ago couldn’t be trusted around any pine tree past the first of December. I need some holiday help, so let’s start here: tonight, as I sleep, I would appreciate if I could be haunted by three ghosts. Christmas Past can come and show me the Christmas nights as a child when I was too excited to fall asleep, so I lay in bed, staring at the tiny tree I used to keep on my dresser. Or maybe it can be even nicer and show me the Christmas that I flew to Mexico with my boyfriend and we celebrated the occasion drinking Tecate from a can on the beach, under the stars with our shoes off. Christmas Present might be wise to take me to the houses of the people whose names I cursed my entire drive home because they didn’t drive the way I thought that they should. As soon as I see them collapse through the door, exhausted, and push on through the dinner preparations, I would think twice about throwing the word “idiot” about so liberally within the safety of my car. Christmas Future. Well, show me thirty pounds overweight, alone and eating a turkey pot pie out of an aluminum tin while I watch the Rose Bowl Parade, and I’ll shape right up…promise
But I want more. After all of this, I want to jump into a cold river and be saved by a bumbling, but extremely well-meaning angel named Clarence. He can show me around a Colorado Springs where I never existed. He can make me tear up by taking me to the spot where my poor pound doggie was buried because no one came to take him home and save him from lethal injection. He can show me my students, frozen solid in room 227 of the high school because there is no teacher who is as equally cold-blooded to constantly bitch to the building administrator on their behalf about the never-ending lack of heat. And he can show me my ex-husband, a crazy, homicidal alcoholic because his life was never graced by the cool voice of reason that I provided during the eight years of our marriage.
That should have me feeling pretty good, but let’s go one step further. Slip me into Nation Lampoon’s “Christmas Vacation” for an hour or two, and I will slip right out of it relieved and thankful that a) my in-laws live in Florida b) I’m not married to Chevy Chase and c) I don’t talk much to any of my backwoods cousins, and none of them drive a dilapidated RV that they plan on parking in front of my house this year.
Yes, right about then, I will probably be saying, “It is a wonderful life, and God bless us, everyone.” But as it was a rough day, I’m going to ask for one more chance to sneak into Christmas cinema. Tomorrow, let me oversleep in my attic room and awake to find that the rest of my family has gone off on a plane without me. Give me a few days to putter around my house all alone, eating junk food, shooting my b.b. gun at my daughter’s big-boobed Barbies, and watching old black and white gangster films. Let me sleep in, order a pizza with toppings that only I want, and then, right after I victoriously conquer the bad guys and chase them from my house with buckshot in their rear ends, let all those that I love appear on Christmas morning, presents in hand, for a tearful holiday reunion.
Is it asking too much to insist that this time of year take on a movie-like quality, or are those days gone once you learn the truth about Santa Clause? I’d like to think that after I manage to battle the elements and get some lights strung up outside the house, my Christmas outlook will improve drastically. But maybe it will have to wait until two weeks from now, when the last final is given, my mom has come to rescue her animals that I keep threatening to BBQ, and my daughter and I have a chance to settle down for a long winter’s nap without the constant patter of dewclaws on the linoleum. Maybe it won’t come at all this year, and I will just have fake my way through it. Or maybe, I should take a cue from my four year old and shift my focus to the payload that Christmas morning always brings in our house. One thing’s for sure, I need to spend more time in front of my television, putting all of my mental energy into channeling Jimmy Stewart. I need the type of epiphany right about now that he had. I’ve hung my bell on the tree; now if it would just start ringing.
We zoomed into the parking lot of King Soopers because I forgot to buy the food over the weekend needed for the stupid Christmas box that I always get suckered into helping assemble. I threw bread, onions and celery into the wire basket angrily, resenting that my slippers and a place to rest my butt were so far away from the shopping cart with the wheel that wouldn’t roll. Back in the car, as we raced along toward dinner, I caught site of three boys pushing their sleds up a hill in the darkening twilight. It must’ve only been about 25 degrees outside, and yet they laughed as their knees sunk into the crispy snow.
My yuletide temper tantrum is a hard pill to swallow for a woman who a year ago couldn’t be trusted around any pine tree past the first of December. I need some holiday help, so let’s start here: tonight, as I sleep, I would appreciate if I could be haunted by three ghosts. Christmas Past can come and show me the Christmas nights as a child when I was too excited to fall asleep, so I lay in bed, staring at the tiny tree I used to keep on my dresser. Or maybe it can be even nicer and show me the Christmas that I flew to Mexico with my boyfriend and we celebrated the occasion drinking Tecate from a can on the beach, under the stars with our shoes off. Christmas Present might be wise to take me to the houses of the people whose names I cursed my entire drive home because they didn’t drive the way I thought that they should. As soon as I see them collapse through the door, exhausted, and push on through the dinner preparations, I would think twice about throwing the word “idiot” about so liberally within the safety of my car. Christmas Future. Well, show me thirty pounds overweight, alone and eating a turkey pot pie out of an aluminum tin while I watch the Rose Bowl Parade, and I’ll shape right up…promise
But I want more. After all of this, I want to jump into a cold river and be saved by a bumbling, but extremely well-meaning angel named Clarence. He can show me around a Colorado Springs where I never existed. He can make me tear up by taking me to the spot where my poor pound doggie was buried because no one came to take him home and save him from lethal injection. He can show me my students, frozen solid in room 227 of the high school because there is no teacher who is as equally cold-blooded to constantly bitch to the building administrator on their behalf about the never-ending lack of heat. And he can show me my ex-husband, a crazy, homicidal alcoholic because his life was never graced by the cool voice of reason that I provided during the eight years of our marriage.
That should have me feeling pretty good, but let’s go one step further. Slip me into Nation Lampoon’s “Christmas Vacation” for an hour or two, and I will slip right out of it relieved and thankful that a) my in-laws live in Florida b) I’m not married to Chevy Chase and c) I don’t talk much to any of my backwoods cousins, and none of them drive a dilapidated RV that they plan on parking in front of my house this year.
Yes, right about then, I will probably be saying, “It is a wonderful life, and God bless us, everyone.” But as it was a rough day, I’m going to ask for one more chance to sneak into Christmas cinema. Tomorrow, let me oversleep in my attic room and awake to find that the rest of my family has gone off on a plane without me. Give me a few days to putter around my house all alone, eating junk food, shooting my b.b. gun at my daughter’s big-boobed Barbies, and watching old black and white gangster films. Let me sleep in, order a pizza with toppings that only I want, and then, right after I victoriously conquer the bad guys and chase them from my house with buckshot in their rear ends, let all those that I love appear on Christmas morning, presents in hand, for a tearful holiday reunion.
Is it asking too much to insist that this time of year take on a movie-like quality, or are those days gone once you learn the truth about Santa Clause? I’d like to think that after I manage to battle the elements and get some lights strung up outside the house, my Christmas outlook will improve drastically. But maybe it will have to wait until two weeks from now, when the last final is given, my mom has come to rescue her animals that I keep threatening to BBQ, and my daughter and I have a chance to settle down for a long winter’s nap without the constant patter of dewclaws on the linoleum. Maybe it won’t come at all this year, and I will just have fake my way through it. Or maybe, I should take a cue from my four year old and shift my focus to the payload that Christmas morning always brings in our house. One thing’s for sure, I need to spend more time in front of my television, putting all of my mental energy into channeling Jimmy Stewart. I need the type of epiphany right about now that he had. I’ve hung my bell on the tree; now if it would just start ringing.
Here comes the bride, my ass!
My daughter has a boyfriend. I am conflicted about this on so many levels. While I don't want my daughter to be the girl in high school that has to go with her cousin because no one else asked her to prom, I’m horrified that my four-year old is rushing into a committed relationship so early in life
This issue first raised its ugly head about two weeks ago when she asked if I would put her hair in a ponytail for school. Hair has become a big issue in her life now that she has managed to grow it out long enough to meet with her satisfaction, so I thought nothing of it. Until she followed her request with, “Sam said he wants to see my hair in a ponytail.” I expected to reach this ground by twelve, so my surroundings were suddenly quite unfamiliar.
“Sam? Who’s Sam?”
“He’s my boyfriend. Today we pretended we were married and he brought me flowers.”
Wow. I have one child, and I am the friend in my group with the oldest child, so really, there weren’t too many places to turn here. I accepted that this was probably something that happens in preschool all of the time, and the next day, I put her hair in a ponytail. She trotted off to school and returned that evening with a big smile on her face.
“Sam likes my hair in a ponytail.”
"Oh. Um, okay, but do you like your hair in a ponytail?"
"Sure, Mom, because Sam likes it that way."
I was obviously getting in over my head so when she insisted on having a ponytail the next day, I thought it was time to sit her down and talk.
“So, tell me about Sam.”
“He’s my boyfriend.”
“Yes, I know, but tell me about him.”
“Well, he’s Taylor’s boyfriend as well.”
Was it too early to have the “All men are dogs” conversation? I was tempted, but before I could pull out my wise-mother demeanor, she continued.
“Sam kissed me yesterday on the playground, and now Taylor has to be our daughter.” Picture me crumpled on the floor here, trying to shut out the world for at least a minute while I figured out how to proceed. I sat up, swaying dizzily, momentarily confused by the light.
“Okay, first of all, no one should be kissing you at school.”
“Why?”
Why…why…why? Because you’re four. Because I’m too young to be ready to deal with the issue of boyfriends. Because I don’t have a boyfriend, and until you’re in middle school, I think my having a boyfriend first should be the requirement. “Because kissing can spread germs. It’s cold and flu season. You don’t want to get sick, do you?” This reason should hold me until at least summer, but I was beginning to feel a lot more sympathy for my mother and all of the bad advice she gave. “Second of all, why don’t you guys play something else? What about that monster game you always used to play?”
“Mom, that was Riley, and he doesn’t play monsters anymore. He and Emma play together now, and Jenna is their daughter.” Apparently miniature love is in full bloom at my daughter’s school. Where exactly were the teachers?
This Sam sounded like a bad character to me. I pictured a leather-jacket wearing, candy cigarette eating, hair slicked back, four-year old gigolo.
But yesterday, I met Sam, and Sam’s mother. Sam is shorter than my daughter, with brown cowlicky hair and a big grin. He was wearing jeans, a striped shirt, and Bob the Builder sneakers. When he saw my daughter was leaving, he ran to give her a big hug.
“Niney!” he shouted.
“Sammy,” she answered back.
“No kissing,” his mother barked, and while we didn’t smile at each other, we shook our heads in commiseration, both of us lost in the thick confusing soup of motherhood. Sam followed us out the door, and stood on the sidewalk to wave goodbye to my daughter as I pulled out of the parking lot.
I have decided that this is a phase. I am hoping that this is a phase. My parents didn’t have to deal with boyfriends until middle school; I’m kind of hoping that this may be something that is determined by genetics. There was a time when I was concerned because my daughter insisted on wearing dresses every single day, and never wanted to play outside because she would get dirty. I worried that maybe taking her camping this summer would not be the greatest idea, but once at the campsite, she ended each day filthy, falling down twice and scraping both of her knees under her very dirt and soot-worn shorts. The prima donna thing was obviously a phase; let’s hope this one is too. Because I’ll be damned if I’m helping her pick out china patterns this early in life.
This issue first raised its ugly head about two weeks ago when she asked if I would put her hair in a ponytail for school. Hair has become a big issue in her life now that she has managed to grow it out long enough to meet with her satisfaction, so I thought nothing of it. Until she followed her request with, “Sam said he wants to see my hair in a ponytail.” I expected to reach this ground by twelve, so my surroundings were suddenly quite unfamiliar.
“Sam? Who’s Sam?”
“He’s my boyfriend. Today we pretended we were married and he brought me flowers.”
Wow. I have one child, and I am the friend in my group with the oldest child, so really, there weren’t too many places to turn here. I accepted that this was probably something that happens in preschool all of the time, and the next day, I put her hair in a ponytail. She trotted off to school and returned that evening with a big smile on her face.
“Sam likes my hair in a ponytail.”
"Oh. Um, okay, but do you like your hair in a ponytail?"
"Sure, Mom, because Sam likes it that way."
I was obviously getting in over my head so when she insisted on having a ponytail the next day, I thought it was time to sit her down and talk.
“So, tell me about Sam.”
“He’s my boyfriend.”
“Yes, I know, but tell me about him.”
“Well, he’s Taylor’s boyfriend as well.”
Was it too early to have the “All men are dogs” conversation? I was tempted, but before I could pull out my wise-mother demeanor, she continued.
“Sam kissed me yesterday on the playground, and now Taylor has to be our daughter.” Picture me crumpled on the floor here, trying to shut out the world for at least a minute while I figured out how to proceed. I sat up, swaying dizzily, momentarily confused by the light.
“Okay, first of all, no one should be kissing you at school.”
“Why?”
Why…why…why? Because you’re four. Because I’m too young to be ready to deal with the issue of boyfriends. Because I don’t have a boyfriend, and until you’re in middle school, I think my having a boyfriend first should be the requirement. “Because kissing can spread germs. It’s cold and flu season. You don’t want to get sick, do you?” This reason should hold me until at least summer, but I was beginning to feel a lot more sympathy for my mother and all of the bad advice she gave. “Second of all, why don’t you guys play something else? What about that monster game you always used to play?”
“Mom, that was Riley, and he doesn’t play monsters anymore. He and Emma play together now, and Jenna is their daughter.” Apparently miniature love is in full bloom at my daughter’s school. Where exactly were the teachers?
This Sam sounded like a bad character to me. I pictured a leather-jacket wearing, candy cigarette eating, hair slicked back, four-year old gigolo.
But yesterday, I met Sam, and Sam’s mother. Sam is shorter than my daughter, with brown cowlicky hair and a big grin. He was wearing jeans, a striped shirt, and Bob the Builder sneakers. When he saw my daughter was leaving, he ran to give her a big hug.
“Niney!” he shouted.
“Sammy,” she answered back.
“No kissing,” his mother barked, and while we didn’t smile at each other, we shook our heads in commiseration, both of us lost in the thick confusing soup of motherhood. Sam followed us out the door, and stood on the sidewalk to wave goodbye to my daughter as I pulled out of the parking lot.
I have decided that this is a phase. I am hoping that this is a phase. My parents didn’t have to deal with boyfriends until middle school; I’m kind of hoping that this may be something that is determined by genetics. There was a time when I was concerned because my daughter insisted on wearing dresses every single day, and never wanted to play outside because she would get dirty. I worried that maybe taking her camping this summer would not be the greatest idea, but once at the campsite, she ended each day filthy, falling down twice and scraping both of her knees under her very dirt and soot-worn shorts. The prima donna thing was obviously a phase; let’s hope this one is too. Because I’ll be damned if I’m helping her pick out china patterns this early in life.
Regrets...I've had a few
My dad and I made Frank Sinatra roll over in his grave today.
My dad owns a player piano, which is fortunate because I’m sure that I’ve mentioned that I am an abysmal pianist. However, when the piano takes over and covers the lack of musical talent in my fingers, I am free to express myself and illustrate just how little talent I have vocally as well. I have delusions that I missed my calling as a Broadway star. These are very serious delusions, and I’m pretty sure I need professional help. Luckily, cluelessness is hereditary, so my dad joins me, and we spent the better part of the morning making my dog howl.
Within the shelves of my dad’s library, there are player piano rolls that even he isn’t aware of, and we found “My Way” shoved behind “Don’t Cry for me Argentina” and “Send in the Clowns”. Maybe it’s because we sounded so bad, or because I was trying to be cute and I changed all of the pronouns to the feminine versions, but when my voice cracked singing, “Regrets, I’ve had a few, but then again, too few to mention…” I thought for a moment about what I regret. Just like Frankie S., I don’t have too many regrets, and the ones I have probably aren’t worth the mention. But I wouldn't be writing if I didn't plan on doing exactly that, so...
For instance, I owned one of those oversized t-shirts with the big neon letters that were made popular in the Go-Go WHAM video. I went to a dozen stores in the mall to get it and then proudly wore it to the eighth grade dance.
My bangs were once taller than the length of my hand. I regret that. I would like to say that I burnt all of the pictures, but I had quite a few friends in high school, and for some reason, they all had cameras.
I owned three Simply Red records in my lifetime. I regret to say that I still like their music.
I like Barry Manilow too. I regret that "Even Now" still makes me want to cry.
Occasionally, I regret that second margarita.
I regret that one day in college, I walked all the way to one of my classes with my skirt tucked inside the top of my tights. I’m still not sure why all of that cool air on my fanny wasn’t a clue.
Fred had ghiardia last year, and not knowing, I didn’t trust that he really had to go to the bathroom at 3 in the morning. Actually, my carpets probably regretted that one worse than I did.
I regret eating that spinach artichoke dip yesterday at happy hour; I regret the fact that I have to do laundry tonight, or I'll have no clean underwear tomorrow; I regret that I never took voice lessons and that I gave up on piano way too early.
And, yes, eventually, I will regret keeping a blog. One day I will think back on the intimate details about myself that I threw out into cyber space and be horrified, much in the same way that I am horrified now that I once tried to dye my eyebrows blond to match my hair, making me look like an albino for two months (there are still pictures of this somewhere too). I just hope by the time sanity rears its head on this issue, I’ll be too old to remember what I wrote.
My dad owns a player piano, which is fortunate because I’m sure that I’ve mentioned that I am an abysmal pianist. However, when the piano takes over and covers the lack of musical talent in my fingers, I am free to express myself and illustrate just how little talent I have vocally as well. I have delusions that I missed my calling as a Broadway star. These are very serious delusions, and I’m pretty sure I need professional help. Luckily, cluelessness is hereditary, so my dad joins me, and we spent the better part of the morning making my dog howl.
Within the shelves of my dad’s library, there are player piano rolls that even he isn’t aware of, and we found “My Way” shoved behind “Don’t Cry for me Argentina” and “Send in the Clowns”. Maybe it’s because we sounded so bad, or because I was trying to be cute and I changed all of the pronouns to the feminine versions, but when my voice cracked singing, “Regrets, I’ve had a few, but then again, too few to mention…” I thought for a moment about what I regret. Just like Frankie S., I don’t have too many regrets, and the ones I have probably aren’t worth the mention. But I wouldn't be writing if I didn't plan on doing exactly that, so...
For instance, I owned one of those oversized t-shirts with the big neon letters that were made popular in the Go-Go WHAM video. I went to a dozen stores in the mall to get it and then proudly wore it to the eighth grade dance.
My bangs were once taller than the length of my hand. I regret that. I would like to say that I burnt all of the pictures, but I had quite a few friends in high school, and for some reason, they all had cameras.
I owned three Simply Red records in my lifetime. I regret to say that I still like their music.
I like Barry Manilow too. I regret that "Even Now" still makes me want to cry.
Occasionally, I regret that second margarita.
I regret that one day in college, I walked all the way to one of my classes with my skirt tucked inside the top of my tights. I’m still not sure why all of that cool air on my fanny wasn’t a clue.
Fred had ghiardia last year, and not knowing, I didn’t trust that he really had to go to the bathroom at 3 in the morning. Actually, my carpets probably regretted that one worse than I did.
I regret eating that spinach artichoke dip yesterday at happy hour; I regret the fact that I have to do laundry tonight, or I'll have no clean underwear tomorrow; I regret that I never took voice lessons and that I gave up on piano way too early.
And, yes, eventually, I will regret keeping a blog. One day I will think back on the intimate details about myself that I threw out into cyber space and be horrified, much in the same way that I am horrified now that I once tried to dye my eyebrows blond to match my hair, making me look like an albino for two months (there are still pictures of this somewhere too). I just hope by the time sanity rears its head on this issue, I’ll be too old to remember what I wrote.
Fred
I’m going to Denver this weekend. This is one of those times of the year that you all probably wish that you were teachers too because we get Friday off for Veteran’s Day and in one week, we'll be off for Thanksgiving vacation (go on, ask why you waste your tax money even paying us). I wish I could tell you that I was going to Denver for a romantic rendezvous, but the truth is, I am going to Denver to visit my dad, Shorty. My poor father not only had the misfortune to marry a woman who was taller than he was, but then had cheeky daughters who outgrew him by the time they were teenagers. My sister gave him the nickname, and my daughter has already been told that she cannot use it until she surpasses him in height (sometime next year at the rate that she’s going). There is no question of whether my daughter will be going to Denver with me; my dad probably wouldn’t let me in the door, or at the very least would charge me a hotel fee if I failed to bring him his only grandchild. No, the real question here is if I will bring my dog, Fred. Fred has his own nickname, given to him by my ex-husband. Fred’s nickname is Puke, thus the mental debate about whether I want to load him into the car for an hour long car ride.
Fred was a pound dog. I did not mean to get Fred. We just went to look, but if you haven’t been to the Humane Society lately, those people are really pushy. I stopped for less than fifteen seconds, squatting outside this black lab mutt’s cage to let him sniff my hand.
“He’s cute,” a gum popping, blond little thing in a smock said, pulling out the keys to the cage.
“Uh, yes, he is.” I reflexively stepped back to allow her in.
“Shall I take him out for you?” The key was in the lock and turning.
“Um…well…he’s a bit big for what we had in mind. We have a three year-old, and we were thinking about Beagle-size.”
“Oh really,” she’s leashing the dog at this point. “Why don’t you just take him out and at least let him go to the bathroom.”
So I did (good thing she wasn’t trying to sell me property in Florida). He really had no interest in me at all. He was obviously incredibly well potty trained and had his eyes on the prize that was resting just inside a rather unpleasant-smelling chain-linked area. After watching him bound around, happy to not have to worry about a bladder infection, he followed me back inside where I waited for someone to come and take this animal back to his cage. No one did. Finally, I sat cross-legged on the floor with my daughter and the dog plopped next to us. We pet him simply because while we were waiting, we had nothing better to do. Women with smocks kept walking past, but none of them seemed too concerned that I had one of their animals and was camping out on their floor amidst all of the foot traffic. When I was finally able to stop one of them long enough to explain that the dog was still too big, she said, “Oh, that’s too bad. Well, I think this puppy needs a name, and a sign, so that people will stop passing him by.” The evil little thing then turned to my daughter and said, “What do you think we should name him?”
Wow, they’re good, and we ended up taking Fred home.
Fred has not been an easy dog. My first dog was a lab mix too, and he chewed until I thought I would go mad. Fred was not a chewer; he was, oh, how do I put this…psycho. The first day that we left him alone, he clawed up the wood by the front door, broke a metal latch on one of the windows and ripped the phone cord out of the wall. We tried caging him. He ripped up whatever bedding we put in there with him, and once chewed the cage so badly, his gums bled. My step-dad handymanned a huge divider for the dining room so that we could try to contain him a bit without allowing him to cause physical harm to himself. He jumped it and then ended up knocking the divider off of its hinges trying to get back into the dining room. I tried leaving the television on and buying herbal doggie Prozac from the natural food store up the street. Nothing worked for poor Fred. Miraculously, just before I was about to go kegogi and kimshe on him, he calmed down.
Unfortunately, that was not where the problems with Fred ended. And that’s where we get to the whole Denver conundrum. While Fred is not aware that he hates cars, he really hates cars. The first time I put him in the car for just a short trip across town, we were on the interstate and I smelled dog food. Fred rides in the back, behind my daughter. She smelled it too. I had to stop at the next exit and try to clean huge chunks of brown Iams clots out of the car as best as I could with my windshield scraper (as a mom, you would think I would’ve been better prepared). I figured it was a nerves issue, and once he settled down, he would be as happy to go on trips as every other dog I knew. We took him to Denver in the new car (why? couldn’t tell you). He did okay until we reached University Avenue. He started foaming at the mouth, badly. I turned on my soothing voice and reached to the back seat to pet him. “It’s okay, Fred. Calm down, buddy. We’re almost there. It’s going to be okay.” It wasn’t. We broke that new car in pretty quickly that day.
I’ve owned Fred for over a year now. I keep thinking he’s going to outgrow this, but in September I took him to my sister’s in Manitou. Fine on the way there, not on the way back. He started drooling excessively, and I started in with my calm voice again. “See, Fred, we are on our street. We are almost home. Just hold it until we get you in the yard.” He lost it right as I pulled into the driveway.
My vet recommended Benydryl. This is the route I’ll go if he comes with us this weekend. We’ve tried it before, combined with no food the day of the trip. It worked on the way there. It failed on the way back.
I hate to think of Fred being left behind with my mother or my sister, although he’d be fine and probably love it. But he’s been giving me really huge, sad eyes lately, so I think he knows a decision is in the air. Like all dogs, especially labs, he’s happiest when he is with the people that he loves most in the world. But my sanity here rests on having a weekend where I do not have to wipe dog bile out of the back of my car with the towel I use to check my oil. And honestly, I worry that I’ll never be able to clean it up all the way, and come summer, when the car sits in the sun and bakes, we’re going to be smelling Fred again. I have two days to make my decision...maybe I'll sleep on it.
On a side note, my daughter and I have recently taken to affectionately calling Fred "Sir Fartsalot", but that's a story we'll save for another day.
Fred was a pound dog. I did not mean to get Fred. We just went to look, but if you haven’t been to the Humane Society lately, those people are really pushy. I stopped for less than fifteen seconds, squatting outside this black lab mutt’s cage to let him sniff my hand.
“He’s cute,” a gum popping, blond little thing in a smock said, pulling out the keys to the cage.
“Uh, yes, he is.” I reflexively stepped back to allow her in.
“Shall I take him out for you?” The key was in the lock and turning.
“Um…well…he’s a bit big for what we had in mind. We have a three year-old, and we were thinking about Beagle-size.”
“Oh really,” she’s leashing the dog at this point. “Why don’t you just take him out and at least let him go to the bathroom.”
So I did (good thing she wasn’t trying to sell me property in Florida). He really had no interest in me at all. He was obviously incredibly well potty trained and had his eyes on the prize that was resting just inside a rather unpleasant-smelling chain-linked area. After watching him bound around, happy to not have to worry about a bladder infection, he followed me back inside where I waited for someone to come and take this animal back to his cage. No one did. Finally, I sat cross-legged on the floor with my daughter and the dog plopped next to us. We pet him simply because while we were waiting, we had nothing better to do. Women with smocks kept walking past, but none of them seemed too concerned that I had one of their animals and was camping out on their floor amidst all of the foot traffic. When I was finally able to stop one of them long enough to explain that the dog was still too big, she said, “Oh, that’s too bad. Well, I think this puppy needs a name, and a sign, so that people will stop passing him by.” The evil little thing then turned to my daughter and said, “What do you think we should name him?”
Wow, they’re good, and we ended up taking Fred home.
Fred has not been an easy dog. My first dog was a lab mix too, and he chewed until I thought I would go mad. Fred was not a chewer; he was, oh, how do I put this…psycho. The first day that we left him alone, he clawed up the wood by the front door, broke a metal latch on one of the windows and ripped the phone cord out of the wall. We tried caging him. He ripped up whatever bedding we put in there with him, and once chewed the cage so badly, his gums bled. My step-dad handymanned a huge divider for the dining room so that we could try to contain him a bit without allowing him to cause physical harm to himself. He jumped it and then ended up knocking the divider off of its hinges trying to get back into the dining room. I tried leaving the television on and buying herbal doggie Prozac from the natural food store up the street. Nothing worked for poor Fred. Miraculously, just before I was about to go kegogi and kimshe on him, he calmed down.
Unfortunately, that was not where the problems with Fred ended. And that’s where we get to the whole Denver conundrum. While Fred is not aware that he hates cars, he really hates cars. The first time I put him in the car for just a short trip across town, we were on the interstate and I smelled dog food. Fred rides in the back, behind my daughter. She smelled it too. I had to stop at the next exit and try to clean huge chunks of brown Iams clots out of the car as best as I could with my windshield scraper (as a mom, you would think I would’ve been better prepared). I figured it was a nerves issue, and once he settled down, he would be as happy to go on trips as every other dog I knew. We took him to Denver in the new car (why? couldn’t tell you). He did okay until we reached University Avenue. He started foaming at the mouth, badly. I turned on my soothing voice and reached to the back seat to pet him. “It’s okay, Fred. Calm down, buddy. We’re almost there. It’s going to be okay.” It wasn’t. We broke that new car in pretty quickly that day.
I’ve owned Fred for over a year now. I keep thinking he’s going to outgrow this, but in September I took him to my sister’s in Manitou. Fine on the way there, not on the way back. He started drooling excessively, and I started in with my calm voice again. “See, Fred, we are on our street. We are almost home. Just hold it until we get you in the yard.” He lost it right as I pulled into the driveway.
My vet recommended Benydryl. This is the route I’ll go if he comes with us this weekend. We’ve tried it before, combined with no food the day of the trip. It worked on the way there. It failed on the way back.
I hate to think of Fred being left behind with my mother or my sister, although he’d be fine and probably love it. But he’s been giving me really huge, sad eyes lately, so I think he knows a decision is in the air. Like all dogs, especially labs, he’s happiest when he is with the people that he loves most in the world. But my sanity here rests on having a weekend where I do not have to wipe dog bile out of the back of my car with the towel I use to check my oil. And honestly, I worry that I’ll never be able to clean it up all the way, and come summer, when the car sits in the sun and bakes, we’re going to be smelling Fred again. I have two days to make my decision...maybe I'll sleep on it.
On a side note, my daughter and I have recently taken to affectionately calling Fred "Sir Fartsalot", but that's a story we'll save for another day.
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