Ready or Not

My latest Sisyphean challenge is keeping my house “show ready” with children ages three, six and forty-one (yes, I am talking about my husband).  It seems just as I clean and de-clutter the kitchen countertops, someone either clogs a toilet, pitches their pants or panties on the floor, or takes on a Lego-building enterprise of epic proportion.  Push that rock up, and it tumbles back down.  Repeat.  Repeat.  Agonizingly, maddeningly repeat.

Yesterday, after wrestling my daughter into her car seat and ensuring my son was buckled up as well (currently, there is a goldfish lodged in his latch), I pointed the car in the southbound direction headed to a birthday celebration at Monkey Joe’s.  I calculated we could get there by four o’clock, but only if the traffic lights were kind.  We had no time to spare.  As we gabbed about the highs and happenings of our days, my ringing BlackBerry broke up our chatter.  Our real estate agent wanted to show the house at 4:15 PM.  I looked at my watch, 3:45 PM.  F-bomb…cubed.  Running logistics and scenarios quickly in my brain, I agreed that I would swing back to my house, grab my grumpy, growly dog (read: Cujo-like canine not welcoming of strangers on his property), drop him by my sister-in-law’s house, and keep the train moving toward the party for which we were soon to be late. 

I texted the mom of the birthday twins that we were behind schedule, knowing she would understand, having just gone through a similarly frenzied buy-sell-move house cycle.  I rang Weazie (my darling sister-in-law), but wound up having to text her, too, because my signal was cutting in and out…naturally.  I thought to phone Jonathan (my husband), more to express excitement about prospective buyers than anxiety about preparations, but I had slipped into a “Can you hear me now?” conversation-dropping vortex so that call had to wait.

I curbed the car and started to leave Eli and Syd in it while I leashed and dragged Blue back to my rig, but a couple of street-roaming characters holding brown bag wrapped bottles made me think better of this plan.  We three sprinted to the house, sort of.  En route, Eli dropped a deck of cards (yes, scattered all fifty-two of them), Syd stubbed her toe, and I began hallucinating that my children were not actually humans, but rather slugs.  Slugs in quicksand.  We recovered and stumbled inside.  Blue guiltily jumped from the sofa, leaving a drool stain and swirling dog hair in his wake.  I flipped the cushions, Fabreezed the room, and noted that I was now barking more than my dog.  Meanwhile, my little diva decided to don a different gown, and as she made her way to her room, she tossed her socks, shoes, sweater and dress like Hansel and Gretel’s breadcrumbs behind her.  I tripped up the steps, picked up the jettisoned pieces and jammed them into a drawer.  

Five minutes before show time, I finally corralled the crew in my car, and we rode off into our rapidly deteriorating afternoon.  While counting to ten in my head and trying to breathe deeply and slowly, the phone rang again, and I answered without checking the number, thinking it was the agent asking where to stash some flotsam or jetsam we had strewn about and overlooked in our flurry.  However, it was Jonathan, asking with rife irritation, “Do we have a showing right now?”  Upon hearing my answer in the affirmative, he thundered, “GODDAMMIT!”  Apparently, his day was going no better than mine.

He and his law partner had just arrived at our house to facilitate a conference call, which they had already rescheduled once, as their office information and voice systems were being upgraded.  I was slightly sympathetic, really I was, but as he was telling me this, my daughter was thrashing and sobbing, Oscar-award-winning-performance style, because the party was a no-girls-allowed affair.  Further, Eli had just punched her, harder than he had intended, because he saw a convertible “Punch Buggy” parked on Monument Avenue.  Blue was frantic, thinking he was going to the vet, and thus tearing back and forth and side to side among the seats, creating a funnel of fur and slobber, and temporarily obstructing my vision as I drove.

In reciprocal huffs, Jonathan and I agreed to divide, conquer and just deal.  He handled the agent, and I continued down the trail with my crazed blue heeler, my dazed daughter and my somewhat un-phased son.  It was no wonder I was sweating through my silk shirt, especially since Blue had accidentally activated the seat heater with his paws.  In the middle of this wholesale unraveling, I stopped for a second to think about the seemingly seismic spiral we’d just spun down in less than forty-five minutes.  At that moment, as if someone were playing the soundtrack of our life, Michael Franti and Spearhead cheerfully chimed in from the radio (and Eli and Syd sang in unison)…and that’s the sound of sunshine coming down.  I laughed, truly out loud, at the irony, and joined in the chorus with my kids…and that’s the sound of sunshine coming down.

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Dish out some happy and be kind, good people.  More later.

Ashes to Ashes

A handful of people dear to me are going through some extraordinarily tough, extremely adult, and pardon my language but there is no other word, shit.  On the surface this story is a bit more "Pass the Absinthe Please," but really for me, the experience was a reminder that I can hang my head and shed some tears for a little while, but I have to keep my eyes open, too.  Even in the middle of the muddle of life’s circumstances, there are glimmers and garnishes scattered through our days, often in the most unexpected places.

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July 2010

I had to pick up my dog's ashes today.  I waited until the last possible minute, and even though I had made peace about Molly-Girl dying, the idea of her incinerated and put in a little box made me jittery, haunted me even.  One of my stall tactics was a six-mile walk in a stiff and stifling heat.  I stopped to help a woman with her groceries, and as I turned back to the sidewalk, a hornet – the size of a hummingbird – stung the back of my knee.  Reeling sideways in agony and fearing a second attack, I then somehow caught my lower leg on an exposed and jagged barb of a chain-link fence.  The crease behind my knee swelled and throbbed, and blood streamed down my leg and soaked through my sock.  I could hardly breathe, panicked that an allergic reaction was underway.  It wasn’t, though.  The little lady in her wide-brimmed hat said, “Darling, sit down on my steps, and I will be right back with some lemonade, a cigarette and gauze.” 

I think it took her ten minutes to get that out of her mouth, and I felt in addition to the sting and the gash, that the hot, painted-black concrete was searing the skin from my thigh.  All this, I tell you, for helping someone take their bags inside.  She returned, cheerily, broke the cigarette in half, spit on a clump of tobacco and handed it to me for the sting.  She then gave me the gauze, which had yellowed from the smoke of years of a bad habit kept indoors.  She didn’t have tape so I just tied the bandage like a tourniquet.  She sat down on the steps and sipped lemonade with me, from delicate, etched glasses that she had garnished with mint.  Something about that garnish, that touch, was beautiful, better than a hug, better than a clean bandage.  I would be fine, even if I did lose my leg eventually to gangrene.

I made it home and surveyed what more could be done to avoid my task.  I settled on baking a cake for a friend’s forty-first birthday.  I thought she would like a particular cream cheese pound cake, which calls for inordinate amounts of butter, flour, sugar, eggs and yes, cream cheese.  I was not sure I had enough of everything, but I started creaming and sifting and beating anyway.  I poured the batter in a Bundt pan, put it in the low-heat oven and calculated whether or not I could make it to the Emergency Vet and back within an hour and a half.  I decided I could and left.  I was dizzy from heat.  I was dizzy from pain.  I was dizzy from the fragrance of friendship in the form of a cake cooking in my kitchen.

I manned up, though, and made my way to the clinic.  I immediately saw a woman crying, rocking in a chair, waiting for news about her Pug.  I sat with her for a minute and held her hand.  I was this woman a few weeks ago.  We hugged and I then headed to the front desk.  In a hushed tone (trying to keep that poor woman from seeing one of the darker possibilities), I told the receptionist that I was picking up Molly Petty’s ashes.  She rifled through a bin, pulled out a box, checked a certificate and handed it all over.  I slipped out of the building and into my car.  I just put everything in the passenger seat and turned up the music and rolled down the windows, headed home to get back to that cake. 

Before I turned onto the Interstate, my phone rang.  It was the vet.  They gave me some other dog’s ashes, so sorry for the inconvenience, please come back, etc.  I turned around, blinked back tears, but couldn’t keep them from coming.  And oh Lord, did they, and I, fall.  I parked the car, took some deep breaths and wiped my face dry.  I headed back in.  Take Two: Buck up, Sister.  The woman who had been crying about her Pug took one look at my red eyes and streaked face, and she just fully decomposed, sobbing like someone in one of those evangelistic churches who is on the verge of being healed.  I hugged her again and tried to say something helpful.  I then switched the boxes and my gears.  I left and started to worry and wonder about that damn cake.

I got home.  I unlocked and opened the door.  The answer slapped me in the face, hard and charred.  Burned up cake, burned up thigh, burned up dog.  I might have been burned up, too, but for Miss Ida’s mint garnish.  Better than a hug.  Better than a bandage.  


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Dish out some happy and be kind, good people.  More later.

Pick Me Up

I miss the pick-up ritual at my son’s old school.  Instead of entering the paved carpool loop (which sometimes was a bit Bermuda Triangle-ish in nature), I parked on a side street and then walked across a field to try to find my son in a clump of classmates at his teacher’s side.   I would often bump into friends and just kind of natter and zigzag my way across the expanse of grass.  Usually, Eli’s teacher would see me at some point “mid-social,” wave to get my attention and release my boy to me.  My then five year old would bound my way, top speed like something on Wild Animal Kingdom.  He would crush into me with a monster hug and snaggletooth smile to match.  More than once we both lost our footing in a crash of excitement, resulting in either dust or mud kicking and spitting up around us.  While these after-school reunions were chaotic and messy at best, I knew they were some sort of cosmic gift, our secret handshake as we transitioned from the business of our days.

This year pick up is a much more formal, coordinated, straight line affair.  There is not really a curb-the-car-on-a-side-street-ramble-and-rattle-about option.  Instead to keep things running smoothly, there are a lot of rules.  I try not to talk or text while in line, I stick to the A lane, boldly display my carpool number, move up to the appropriate spots, do not park or leave my vehicle, have the door unlocked and ready for Eli to be ushered in by the helpers, exit quickly upon retrieval of my child, remain alert at all times, etc.  Really, I know most of the rules, and I try to follow them, too.   However, one day I blew it…really blew it, apparently. 

One sunny Tuesday afternoon, I maneuvered into the pick-up lane and came to a point where I had to veer to the right.  I remember seeing a line of cars, but they were edged up to the curb, as if they were parked.  I wondered what event was going on at the school and I made a little mental note to pay more attention to the calendars and notifications sent home each day on Eli’s clipboard.  Anyway, I turned right, buzzed by the “parked” cars, and slid into what I thought was the end of the line of waiting parents.

Probably somewhere between patting myself on the back for arriving a little early and discovering a hole in my shirt’s seam, two impeccably dressed and well-maintained women materialized beside my car.  I turned down the radio and slightly regretted that I had on a skull-emblazoned Pearl Jam t-shirt and a faded, picked exercise skirt that was riding high as I sat behind the wheel.  For a second, I thought maybe they were going to rush me to volunteer at the parent picnic.  They didn't.  Between the rather severe once-overs and gleaming, glossed grins, I couldn’t tell if horror or pity was registering in their eyes.  One of the ladies did the talking and the other kind of half shook her head at me and half nodded in agreement with her friend.

“Well, we want you to know that we are not mad at you.  But you do realize that you just cut about twelve cars in the line?”  Um, I do now.  I apologized; honestly, I thought those cars were parked.  I apologized again (and probably one more time for punctuation and good measure), and I vowed that this would not happen again, never ever.  Pinky swear.  Before turning to whisk back to their vehicles, the talker sweetly reassured me, “We just wanted you to know so maybe you wouldn’t do it again.  It will be okay.”

Trying not to crack up visibly and audibly at the perfectly framed segment of Mean Girls: The Mom Years that just went down on school grounds, I rolled my car forward and collected my child.  Eli piled in, buckled up and said, “Cool shirt, Mom.  Guess what I did today?”  And it dawned on me that the gift of picking up my son is that he picks me up, too, every time.

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Dish out some happy and be kind, good people.  More later.

Pass the Laughter Please

Back in the late nineties, a friend from college asked me to write and read something during her wedding service.  I agonized over this a bit, thinking perhaps I was better suited to planning her bachelorette party or donning a pretty pink dress of her choosing than standing before her nearest and dearest and flowering on about everlasting love.  I had only been married for a split-second, and I was in the middle of my I-have-no-real-responsibilities-but-I-am-very-important twenties.  In other words, my experience on the subjects of marriage and life was a tad thin.  However, whenever I thought about this particular couple, a smile just reflexively swept over my face, for they were, and are, two uproariously funny people, just popping and locking through their days with self-deprecation, wit and spunk.  I love that not-taking-yourself-too-seriously quality in people, being slightly prone to seriousness myself.

The following work was written with two side-splitters in mind, but over the years it has been tweaked for and shared with others, including a pair of sunny Californians who got hitched in the Santa Ynez Valley and are godparents to my firstborn.  I often think that if for some reason I cannot raise my own children, then I know that these two will be part of a caring (and assuredly comedic) ensemble that softens the edges and fills my little lights' lives with color (albeit way outside of the lines) because they are no strangers to the better-laugh-than-cry universal truth in which I wholeheartedly believe.

Twelve years of wedded bliss, two children, four dogs, a few moves, a career change or two, and a handful of "crises" later, I do not have the answers, but I do have a story or two to tell.  There is magic in a good soul-shaking chuckle.  Seriously, let's all loosen up, lighten up and laugh a little more.

Pass the Laughter Please

August 1999

An alarm sounds breaking the silence of your slumber

You leave the warmth and shelter of your best friend’s embrace

Your feet hit the floor and the rush begins

A shower, a bagel, two sips of your coffee, a quick kiss and you’re off

Out of the door you’re running to work, bites of a deli sandwich, an afternoon call

Perhaps groceries at the store or a full tank of gas

Pay those bills, sometimes it’s so tough to relax

Prepare dinner for each other, have a glass of wine, watch the shows

Sometimes that’s just how fast one day goes

What’s one to do with so many tasks, chores, errands and responsibilities

Just take a deep breath, together, and say, pass the laughter please

Slow down, tell a joke, tickle your husband, hug your wife

Stay in bed for one more snooze, snuggle for those seven extra minutes

Sit down for breakfast, share your thoughts, kiss for a moment longer

Call each other twice a day, if only to say hello or what’s for dinner

Pick up a treat, cookies or his favorite cheese

Have a conversation in lieu of TV, look at each other

Enjoy youth, flexibility, take advantage of hours you have, even if you think you don’t

You really do have plenty of time right now, and one day you won’t

How’s one to seize all of life’s wonderful opportunities

Just take a deep breath, together, and say, pass the laughter please

A child tugs at your nightgown and whines in your ear, no need for a clock

Late for school, scramble out of bed, dress your child, dress yourself

Eggo waffles and juice, eating on the go, a quick kiss, if you’re lucky

Carpools, buses, work, juggling still, phone calls from teachers

Soccer practice in the afternoon, homework, tests

Best friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, no friends

Winning, losing, growing, changing, all the time learning

Your children will grow, and they will grow fast

Take care to grow with them, make special moments last

How in the world can you keep up with so many memories

Just take a deep breath, together, and say, pass the laughter please

All the days ahead of you will be different, hopefully each rich and full

Whether novel or routine, there will be success and failure

Challenge, questions, answers – love will see you through time and again

If and when you stumble remember your soul mate will break your fall

When you excel that same best friend will smile, hug you, encourage you

Work, children, school, mortgages, car payments, marriages, grandchildren

You will never be alone, never short on things to do

You have friends; you have family; you have lobsters in Maine

And surely you know you have each other in times of joy or pain

How will you find the courage, strength, and energy to endure so many activities

By now you know the answer, by now you have the keys

Just take a deep breath, together, and say, pass the laughter please