Thank You

Thank you.

For sliding that note under the conference room door: “I love you Mom so much.” For the day we corresponded only in song titles because our everydayness was too thick and muddy and scary for our own words. For hot rolling your hair and slipping into a rouge dress for the Godfrey’s drag brunch (and then spilling out into the street sobbing over how much we love-need each other; falling to pieces and picking up pieces and making peace right there in the middle of Grace Street). For your grace. For the running of half-marathons and whole marathons. For marching Onward! For being an Iron Woman. For the DJ who drops sick beats and spins mad sounds and calls me from time to time to talk men’s fashion. For the friendraisers. For the believers. For the Dirty Blondes and The Orderlies. For the army of brave hearts that come at the evils of epilepsy, cancer, diabetes, chronic illness, broken bones, cracked hearts, lice, stomach bugs, skinned knees, snow storms, death – the toughness of life. For coming at tough with tougher; for coming at heavy with lighter; for coming at dark with light. For your force, fortitude, and LOVE LOVE LOVE. For your inappropriate laughter. For gathering. For village-ing. For caroling. For shucking good times. For gaming. For the Cave. For the porches. For the backyards. For your country party field. For Smith Mountain Lake. For the Rockies. For the pirates roaming Bald Head Island. For that day we rooster-tailed through rain puddles in Duck, North Carolina. For your dad’s place in Chatham. For the Lewis Ginter Recreational Center. For Friendsgiving. For fireworks. For Friday family pizza nights degenerating into discos. For theme drinks and costumes. For the vans, station wagons, SUVs, canoes, kayaks, bikes, scooters, skateboards, Radio Flyers, unicycles, airplanes, trains, ferries, trailers and feet that hold us, that carry us, that get us to each other. For the high-school excitement about bands. For Jim James in Asheville. For a Charles Bradley hug. O’ that Screaming Eagle of Soul! For Monday nights with Jason Isbell (and the long, long road home) and The Lone Bellow. For declaring emphatically that we’re not staying out late on a school night. We can’t; we just can’t. For staying out late on school nights. For that Tuesday with Pearl Jam, for your grandmother’s chicken salad, for that Baba O’Riley cover, for a full cooler, for your full-of-coolness. For Sunday night suppers. For The Eagles documentary. For shotgunning that beer before the Drivin’ N’ Cryin’ show at the Paradise Garage. You sure do Fly Me Courageous. For the big bad brass and banging drums sound of No BS! while we carved pumpkins. For the train rumbling by and the James tumbling by and the air full of mighty tunes at Friday Cheers. For locking me into Lock’n by trick-telling me it wouldn’t be “too jammy.” For refusing rushed hugs and handshakes, for holding on tight, so tight I feel like I’m going to break. For blazing into my house on a weekday afternoon while your son’s at baseball because that’s the only time we can steal. For showing up. My goodness, you show up! For wedging in a half-hour for our Lord of the Flies boys because a little time together is better than no time together. Because that moment might be the moment. For pouring me tea in a mug that says “The Universe Knows.” For knowing. For giving long distances the middle finger; nothing will keep us apart. Not ever. For redefining “apart.” For being a part, a huge huge huge part of me. For meeting me behind the scoreboard at halftime at the UVA-Duke game so that our little divas could twirl together, so that we could twirl together. I love that twirly feeling. For hauling me out of tennis retirement because you knew that I could. Because we did. Almost. For recognizing that my “we probably need a break from dogs” statement was my giant, raw hurt talking. For knowing my heart needed a pillow-eating, sock-destroying, panty-raiding, cheese-stealing, toe-breaking, mud-splattering lab-hound rescue. For rescuing me. For curse-badger-encouraging me to swing by your tailgate during a monsoon. For tackle-hugging me in the parking lot and never losing that across-the-street-neighbors lovin’ feeling, even though we live in different towns. For helping me make grown-up decisions, not all the time, but just enough. For reminding me it’s time to schedule summer camps. For the night we drove to DC for that drink we’d been talking about for the last few years. For the homemade Whiz on the cheesesteak we devoured post-runway show. For causing my mascara to run black rivers down my cheeks when you told a crowd of five hundred that I brought joy to every day. For being a joy crusader. You are joy, man. For that Friday afternoon we Just Dance-d before gathering our children from school; Just Dance-d, just ‘cause. For partnering with me on world-changing projects. For believing change is possible. For Convivencia. For telling me to write write write every day. For wander-wondering about why saying someone is nice is an epic compliment to a five year old and somehow just shy of an insult some thirty years later. For being nice – five-year-old-gentle-deep-kind-best-friends-forever-blood-sister nice. For that poem that chiseled through my stone. For being poetry. For those YouTube videos that rocked ‘n’ rolled me out of what was rocking and rolling over me, that funked me out of my funk, that grooved me into the right grooves, that unjammed me with jams. For all those electronic links that link us. For connecting – any and every which way we can. For the radio show we shimmied and shook to in your mama’s living room on a Saturday night. For the brunch at C Street and your whispered wisdom: special takes effort. And for making the effort. For family time. For walks in the woods, fishing adventures, rock-hopping, mountain hikes, South of the James market strolls and Mrs. Yoder’s donuts. For that Kindness Lights street art wall. For that behind-the-back-corner-pocket shot. For singing at the tops of our lungs. For holler-singing with me in cars, bars, basements, river cabins, and beach houses for more than three decades. For tying on aprons and pulling Pernil. For lighting lanterns and tipping light by the lake. For asking me to play H-O-R-S-E. For letting me read Good Night, Gorilla to your cherub and share lipgloss with your princess. For that soak-up-our-sins morning feast around your Seattle table. For feeding my soul. For climbing on the kitchen counter to boogie down to Roar when we should have been working on your math worksheet and rainbow writing. You’ve got the eye of the tiger, baby. For calling me at five o’clock knowing this is the soccer-practice-homework-dinner-prep-report-writing-can-someone-pour-me-a-Scotch-already part of the day. For talking to me right on through all that chaos. For that turkey noodle soup you left on my doorstep when a virus shredded me. For all things left on my doorstep: freshly caught rockfish packed in ice, CDs, concert posters, hoodies, shoes, gloves and other clothes we’ve left strewn about your houses, lipstick, camping gear, a bottle of wine, a growler of beer, a book, homework assignments, and that Gladwell chapter you printed for me. Damn, you keep us together! For playing through pain and age and ache every Sunday on the football field. For yell-coaching me on Monday mornings as if I were an NFL playa. For your fire. For talking “writer to writer” to my daughter. For the spirit of Chancey. For the inspiration of you. For that morning we gabbed about families, moonshine, feuds, music, and the bridging magic of story. For your story. For the artsy, heartsy box of notecards with the van Gogh quote, “Love many things.” For being one of those things. For Cezanne and a plate of ham. For small batches and Christmas sweaters and Ray’s late night. For a spoonful of fried chicken crumbs. For the two ladies on the train, one doing all the talking and the other saying, “Mmmm. Hmmm.” For that fountain in Augusta. O’ that fountain! Was there a more joy-filled and splashed hour! For inviting me to sit down to a long lunch knowing I usually eat a PBJ at my kitchen counter while sorting through mail and making a grocery list. For sharing your masterpieces, your brilliance – written, painted, glued, shellacked, sewn, sung, performed – you add so much color and glitter and splendor and thought and joy-noise to this world. For asking about my disease in a way that doesn’t say, “You poor, frail thing,” but rather “You go, girl!” For those two troughs of coffee downtown on a sunny morning before the James River Writers conference. For feeling WOW WOW WOW about our tomorrows. For ditching fancy, sit-down, date-night-y dinner reservations to go dance for four hours at Terminal 5. For LEE FIELDS! For this reminder from The Dynamites, “Whatever you do, do it with soul.” For doing it with soul. For Charles Walker’s shiny, silver suit. For shining. For Trombone Shorty’s mind-blowing horn-blowing. For not judging me for eating a three-meatball sub after midnight. For embracing my sandwich obsession, no matter where we are in the world. For taking care of my children and for taking care of me. For your advice, your counsel, your help, your pats on the back, your bear hugs, and even those kicks in the ass when I needed ‘em. For switching carpool days, for the sleepovers, for loaning blazers and dress shoes and cat costumes, for happy hours – for all that pinch hitting when my good mothering was in jeopardy. For calling me out when I’d gone silent or dark or tired or martyr-y or sad or angry. For asking me, “Mom, before you go downstairs, will you lie down next to me and listen to the rain?” For inviting me into your calm. For enduring my mad-swirl. For weaving and looming friendship bracelets. For braving snow, ice and drunken Santas on the trains to squeeze into the back booth at Cookshop. For squeezing me into your busyness, for tight-squeezing me. For laughing about the old days and dreaming about the new. For driving thirty minutes WAY out of the way with kids whining, wives bitching, wheels coming off, holly-jolly ripping at the seams and Mariah Carey belting it out in the background so that we could take in the Rosedale light show together. Glory, man. So much Griswoldian glory. For sharing your journey, your heart, your path, your festivals, your art show, your books, your life, your curiosities, your fears, your mixtapes, your work, your plans, your hopes, your drinks, your meals, your seat, your time with me. For turning my head to wonder, to magic, to love, to light, to laughter. For you. For beautiful, hilarious, strong, clever, bold, courageous, generous, bright, outrageous, fresh, zany, electric you.

Thank you for you. Each of you. And all of you.

So this is Christmas.

Snake's Alive! It's a Jungle . . . in Here!

Before there was Keith, the eliminator of hornets and wrangler of reptiles, there was an old, orange shovel and a man willing to country-song save me.

My house doubles as an office and, apparently, as a jungle.

One morning I paced from room to room talking target audiences, messaging and media mix on a call with a client. As I passed through the den, my son’s rubber snake – oddly hanging out in the back corner beneath the cabinets – snared my attention. Well, I thought it was a fake until it so slowly and so silently slid its onyx head up the wall and tongue-zapped a lone spider from a web I hadn’t noticed until that flash kill. So much for Issa’s haiku, “Don’t worry, spiders, I keep house casually.”  I stared at the serpent hunting along the baseboard.  I continued my conversation, or at least tried to, but my brain kept flipping to this reptile stretched across the floor. Finally, I confessed my dilemma, “Kelly, I hate to do this, but I need to call you back.  There is a snake in my den.”

She shouted, “WHAT?  Oh, my God!  That means something, Syd!  That’s symbolic. A sign. Go! Go! Get it out of your house!”

I didn’t know what it meant. But it couldn’t be good. I didn’t know how it got there. Or if it was alone. I did know I wanted it out. O-U-T, out!  I surveyed my sleek visitor, particularly the shape of his head. Deciding he was a rat snake or a racer – in either case more helpful than harmful – I strategized on how I might return him to his wilderness.  When I was about eight, my brother taught me how to handle his pet slitherer, Sammy. It had been about three decades since I had done this, and that was a positively identified grass snake, in an aquarium, a very controlled situation, not a maybe-it’s-harmless-maybe-it’ll-end-me nuisance on the loose in my house. Breathe in. Breathe out.

I envisioned that I could lift the snake by its head, zip to the back door, and fling him gently into the brush and mulch down the side of the yard; but there was something about his position, just beneath the cabinets, his seeming awareness of me without looking at me, the flicker of his forked tongue and his distinct markings that caused me to reconsider a bare-hand removal. 

I began reformulating my plan . . . and wishing I hadn’t donated those rusted fireplace tools.

I couldn’t lose my visual. What if he disappeared into a vent or a cabinet or under a chair? Would I wake up to strangulation by a snakeskin choker?  I decided that I could dart to the mudroom, grab two brooms and a cooler within about ten seconds.  In my mind, I would chopstick the snake, drop it into said cooler, take it outside and release it.  Clearly, I had watched too many episodes of Python Hunters and River Monsters with my kids because that all seemed exceptionally logical, very doable, even normal. Anyone could do this, right?

I snagged my equipment without losing the snake.  I placed an Igloo cooler next to him, but to my dismay, realized the lid would not stay open on its own. I wedged a sofa pillow into the hinges.  I strode quietly over to where the racer lingered under the lip of the cabinets. My heart was cartoon-beating out of my chest. Holding a brush of a broom in each hand, I firmly, but ever-so-tenderly, caught its body with the broomsticks.  I swung toward the cooler, accidentally whacked the pillow, and the snake wiggled out and thudded to the floor. Those Townes Van Zandt Snake Song lyrics You can’t hold me / I’m too slippery played mockingly in my head just as that now biting-mad wriggler’s hiss-strike-hiss-strike-coil-hiss combo sent me six steps back and up onto the couch.

I no longer believed it was harmless.  And, now, needing to feel a bit less alone in battle, I called to my trusty watchdog.  I could see Blue laid out lazily on the floor two rooms over.  Blue didn’t so much as lift his head.  I called again. Nothing.  Shit. This snake bit my dog.  No, this snake killed my dog.  My Mama Bear instincts fired up, as did my rabid imagination, which until then I had kept mostly contained.  Mostly. The snake, still coiled and hissing at me, had taken on pit viper-like proportions, and now I aimed to kill it.

 

The phone rang.  It was my husband breezily checking in at noon.  I cut through our usual hey-how’s-your-day-fine-and-yours pleasantries and asked with a hint of urgency, “Any chance you could come home now? I’m not asking what you’re thinking. There is a snake in our den, and I tried to catch him, but I’ve pissed him off. I mean, really pissed him off. I can’t get Bluedog to respond to me.  I want to kill the snake, but I can’t leave . . .”

“HOW THE HELL DID THE SNAKE GET INTO THE HOUSE, SYD?” my husband boomed in before I could finish.

“Well, I don’t know, maybe a vent, maybe the back door; the kids always leave the doors open. Maybe I dragged him in that rolled-up rug that I’d aired out earlier. I don’t know how it got in.” I swallowed, and something that tasted like pride slid down my throat. “I need help. I can’t leave it because I don’t want to lose it. And Blue’s either being worthless or dead on the living room floor.” I further detailed my failed catch.

“Alright, Syd. Please, don’t do anything else to that snake. I am headed home. I mean it; leave it alone until I get there.”

I thanked him, sort of, but firmly instructed, “When you do get here, bring me that orange shovel.  I think it’s leaning against the house.  JP, don’t come in here without that shovel.”

Time passed. Or maybe it didn’t pass; maybe it just sat there, still, like my dog who hadn’t budged, like that hissing snake. I, on the other hand, standing on the sofa, was anything but still. Scanning the bookshelves for potential weapons, my mind churned and sparked Wile E. Coyote-newfangled ideas about taking out this malingerer. Finally, I heard Jonathan’s car, and I watched as my husband headed for the artillery. When he walked in, neither of us even said hello, but rather at the same time, he asked, “Where is it?” (about the snake), and I demanded, “Where is it?” (about the shovel).

My husband, who loathes snakes, I mean, doesn’t even like to see the pythons behind the glass in pet stores, eyed the twist of darkness on the floor and then eyed the mad-swirl of a wife on the sofa.  And probably thought for a minute to run the fuck for the hills. “I’m not giving you the shovel, Syd,” he said, rightfully reading my body and assuming in my now murderous rage I might put a hole in the floor when I brained the menace. I also suspected he didn’t want to finish the tale he would later tell his buddies over beers, “My wife killed the snake. I just came home to bring her a shovel.”

Instead my cowboy in khakis ambled to the back of the room, floorboards creaking under his leather lace-ups, sunlight slanting through the blinds. Jonathan swallowed hard and gave me that are-you-sure- about-this look that I sometimes see in my son. I wasn’t really sure. Even after comparing hundreds of pictures on my iPhone to this scaled, live loiterer, I couldn’t identify it definitively as good or bad, but I nodded to my husband. I just said, trying to channel some of that Under Armour commercial bravado, for both of us, “We must protect this house.”   

That much I was sure of. Dead sure.

Catching More Than a Buzz

Gravel crackles under a banged-up truck. They’re here. They’re going to save me.

I open the front door and reach my hand through a plume of Marlboro smoke into July’s thick, wet heat, greeting Keith and his shirtless, white-bearded sidekick from Paul B. Davis Bat, Bee and Hornet Removal.

Before I can detail (in other words, launch hysterically into) the two separate hornet issues going down at my house, Keith is zipping into his jumpsuit and hollering through a protective veil, “You've got a hot mess out here, Mrs. Petty. A hot mess! Those suckers are mean. Mean, I tell you. They sting you just ‘cause they can. They’re eating through your walls. Do you hear me? They’re coming through your walls, Mrs. Petty. And when they break through, they’re going to sting you. Sting you ‘cause they can.” 

Keith is rhapsodizing about the swarm of livid beasts driving between the slats of our home’s exterior and, apparently, feeding their way through the interior to our living room. The wall is buzzing and ticking with bees. Not the bumbling nectar gatherers and pollinators. Not the flower dancers. Not the honey makers. No, the wall is buzzing and ticking with raging, ravenous, devil bees and has been for sixteen hours. Sixteen effin hours.

“You go on back inside. We’re going to shoot a killing agent right into the walls. We've got you, Mrs. Petty. We’ve got you.”

I return to my office but can’t concentrate on the white paper I’m drafting because I’m not really sure that Keith and his partner have indeed got me. I put my head in my hands and close my eyes. The vibrations of the wall-eaters are soon layered with the drumming from a pump motor, and only now is it occurring to me that I should have asked if it was safe for me to be in here as insecticide is blasted into my home.

The pump stops, and I hear a knock. Again I swing the door open to a smoke-laced swelter and Keith’s voice, this time asking where the other hornets are. We walk around back, and I point to these wickedly huge wasps that are flying giant arcs across the yard and then disappearing through the lattice at the base of our deck.  Keith explains that these are cicada killers, and they’re hunting. They don’t hive; they burrow. The females have serious stingers, but they’re not aggressive; they’re just downright terrifying because they’re loud and marked for war. They’re big enough to take out a cicada and drag it down into a tunnel for larvae to feed on. Keith tells me the only way to kill them is to spray chemicals into each hole and then gouge it.

He and his partner send me back inside saying it might take a while since we counted at least twenty active wasps during the pop-up Entomology class. And there are probably a lot more, Mrs. Petty. I go back to my desk, try to settle into some research, and almost achieve focus when I hear a thunderous ruckus kick up outside, complete with cursing and yelling and what sounds like the bee killers running. I start toward the kitchen to see what’s going on in the backyard, when the doorbell rings. I nearly trip over the dog getting to the door, which I open to a humongous and very much still alive and angry copperhead thrashing on the end of a snake stick, and Keith is screaming, “This was under your deck! This was where your kids go up and down the stairs! This would KILL you. KILL your kids. KILL your dog. I came within a foot of being killed dead myself! This is the biggest one I’ve ever caught. Can you take a picture? Send it to my boss? My girlfriend? Do you want the snake? Can I keep the snake?”

I assure Keith that I am cool with him keeping the snake, really cool, in fact, but I’d appreciate it if he would please strangle it first. We lay it out on the brick walkway and measure it at 36.5 inches – three feet of pure evil. I snap a picture of Keith and his kill and ping it to his people and to mine. Keith’s boss calls me immediately, and says, “That’s a right big snake. Good thing Keith’s there.”

After we cool off on the porch, relive the serpent-snaring legend a few more times, and come down from the afternoon shock, Keith bags the dead copperhead and throws it in his truck. He straps a tank of repellent on his back and tells me he’s “gonna go Rambo out there” to create a protective barrier. Just before Keith unleashes his hell on my yard, he turns, stares me in the eyes, and then nods, “Like I told you, Mrs. Petty, we've got you.”

The Heartcracker

“There is a crack in everything / That’s how the light gets in.” – Leonard Cohen

This one is for the mamas. You all have stories about a child who did something(s) that made your chest tighten, your teeth clench, your neck stiffen, and your head spin. I have those stories, too. Lord knows, my mom has those stories. But don’t forget those moments that broke you wide open and put you back whole at the same time – you know those moments when you can’t see anything but light, can’t feel anything but love, can’t do anything but love back.

  

She came at me all grin and firecracker eyes, slap-wrapped her body around my left leg, and asked in a conjured honeysuckle voice, “Mama, will you come to a Mother’s Day Tea in my classroom?”

My heart cracked open.

“Oh, I’d love to, Bunnyhop. Thank you so much for inviting me.”

She untangled herself and flung her arms out, mad-giggling, “Well, who else would I invite? It is a Mother’s Day Tea!”

My heart cracked open.

“Will you help me pick something out to wear, Mama? I want to look extra special, but I don’t want you to see me until the tea. Just help me come up with some possibilities.”

We skittered upstairs. She turned, blocking her door so that I couldn’t enter, and said, “Oh, Mama. Ohhhhhhh, Mama, my room is a wreck. A wreck. A wreck. A wreck. You’re not going to like it. Not going to be happy one bit. It’s okay though. Let’s just work on the outfit for now.”

This was my six-year-old master-distracter giving me a focus lecture. She undersold the wreckage. I walked into some place unrecognizable as a room in our home. My chest tightened. My teeth clenched. I rubbed my neck and massaged now throbbing temples. Syddie, reading and redirecting me, just said, “Outfits, Mama.”

We sorted through option after option after option after option after option. One dress was too tight on her arms. Another, too short. She wanted to wear a sweater like her friend Maddie, but she didn't own one. She wanted to run out to Target that instant. Her white shoes with bows pinched her toes. Hand-me-down dresses weren’t special enough. Her flower girl frock, too fancy. Her lips quivered. Her eyes puddled. She crumbled. And now, next to the mound of strewn, wrinkled misfits and unfits was a pile of huffing, puffing, sighing, sobbing Little Syd. I wanted to cry, too.

I said, “Come on, Bunnyhop. This doesn't feel very Mother’s Day-ish. I’d rather see you wearing a big ole smile than anything else!”

I bear-hugged my little heap and tickled her ribs and made up a silly song about a girl who couldn't find her outfit and couldn't find her happy and almost made her poor mama cry because the girl was looking in all the wrong drawers and behind all the wrong doors, and really she just needed to open her heartcloset.  She said, “You’re SO crazy, Mama.” And I said, “For you, Syddie.” And in the softer light of a little laughter, we fashioned a few ensembles that had at least a fighting chance of living up to her brand of special, but she said she’d have to sleep on it still.  I asked if I should wear something special, too, and she said, “Oh no, Mama. You should just wear your jeans. I like you best when you are just you.”

My heart cracked open.

“I like you best when you are you, too, Syddie.”

“Just maybe not those jeans with all the holes,” she adds.

And just like that, I can’t see anything but light, feel anything but love, do anything but love back.