Hurricane Envy

Last night Keith and I sat cuddled under a blanket (we're having our first cold spell and it turns out our furnace is kaput) and watched the news coverage as Superstorm Sandy ravaged New York City and the Atlantic states. Given our experiences in the many storms that have hit so hard down here over the last several years, we of course felt this profound sense of connection, of shared vulnerability, of our common humanity, with our East Coast brothers and sisters.

Well, not really.

I mean, we're not totally terrible people. We thought with concern about our friends in New Jersey and in D.C. and we don't wish pain on anyone. But I have to admit that as we watched the coverage, we did behave rather like high school seniors who smirk and snicker at the freshmen who can't open their lockers and get lost on their way to P.E. When the anchorman reported with horror that three feet of water had flooded the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, and then added with a gasp, "And it's a wooden floor! In an historic building!", we burst out laughing. Water on wood floors in historic buildings--not quite gasp-worthy in southern Louisiana.

Yes, we're being pitifully petty. Because it's not just that we're the hurricane seniors smiling at the antics of the storm freshmen. It's that hurricanes are our thing, you know? We don't have much. We don't have Broadway or Central Park or good public transit or riotously colored autumn leaves or great Ecuadorian and Ethiopian food or mile-high buildings or a sandy shore or great museums or some of the best universities in the world. We're not a swing state. We're not an economic incubator or a transportation corridor and we don't have a high tech valley or triangle or hub. So forgive us if we feel a bit proprietorial about hurricanes. A deprived people can become a bit deranged.

A Moment in a Marriage

The pinched nerve still has Keith in its grip. Pale and pained, he steps gingerly, as if he expects the floor suddenly to crack open and tumble him into the abyss.

Meanwhile, my decision to resume my morning walks against the podiatrist's advice means I'm now limping; my too-enthusiastic return to yoga has triggered a massive three-day-and-counting headache, and the vulvodynia continues to lurk. Crippled on the bottom, burning in the middle, aching on the top. Pathetic.

The living room looks like a cross between a sex toy shop and a physical therapy treatment room, littered as it is with weights of varying sizes, heating pads, lavender-scented microwavable neck buddies, freezable gel packs, and the vibrator-wanna-be massage tool.

We update each other on our symptoms, exchange prescription ibuprofin and muscle relaxants, and watch massive amounts of tv. We kiss chastely, celibate siblings-in-pain. "We are not this old!" I tell him. He smiles. We take more drugs.

Not Doris

When I resumed this blog a bit ago, I promised myself I'd post twice a week. I broke that promise last week, I admit, but it wasn't my fault, it was my vulva's.

I hate my vulva. I know that's not very nice. One should cosset one's vulva, call it pet names like Rosebud or Doris, affirm it regularly, enjoy its company, give it special treats. And I would do all of that, I really would, because I am a nice person.  But my vulva is not nice. My vulva does not deserve to be called Rosebud and definitely does not rate Doris. My vulva, in fact, is downright mean.

In hindsight, I now realize that even when I was in my 20s, my vulva was beginning to be a problem. I figured it was just moody, or tired, or you know, having a bad day. But then I hit my 30s and gave birth, and somehow that act sent the vulva over the edge. I don't know why; I ended up having a C-section so never in fact actually involved the vulva. Maybe that's why; maybe it's sulking, feels left out, deprived. I dunno. What I do know is that the process of giving birth set my vulva aflame-constant burning, with intermittent spikes of severe, sharp pain, as if someone was stabbing me up the yahoo, just for the hell of it. For the next ten years, my life--and to a large degree, Keith's-- was vulvar-centric. Could we have sex? "Absolutely not," was the usual answer. Could I wear jeans or leggings? No, not really. On bad days and for a very long time, most days were bad days, a long skirt and no undies was the only option. Could I sit down? Not very comfortably. Was I a bitch? Oh, totally.

Doctors at first called the problem "vestibular adenitis." That was a comfort; it was good to have a diagnosis, even if there was no effective treatment. And "vestibular adenitis" is such a satifyingly scientific and diseasey name. It sounds like something that hurts. Somewhere along the line, tho, the name shifted. Now I have "vulvodynia." I do not approve of this name change. "Vulvodynia" sounds like a dance--can't you just hear the wedding d.j.: "OK, everybody, on your feet for the Vulvodynia!"

After ten years of burning and spiking pain, the vulvodynia got tired. Little by little the time between episodes grew longer and longer; bit by bit the epidodes grew less and less extreme; gradually I claimed a largely vulvodynia-free existence. Still had to be careful--couldn't have sex too many days in a row, couldn't spend much time in chlorinated pools, couldn't go on long bike rides--but I could have sex, I could wear jeans and leggings, I could bicycle. A Good Life.

Til last week. When the vulvodynia came raging back in all its burning, spiking fury.

You know, when someone asks, "How ya doin'?" I know that one is not permitted to reply,  "Oh geez, my vulva really hurts." But one is tempted. 

Neighborly

Keith has a pinched nerve in his back and so one of the neighbors has just sent over a "back massager." Hmm. It's long and slightly curved, can be extended, heats up and vibrates, and is best when used with lubricant.

I know that Southerners take the whole neighborly thing really seriously but still. . . .

You Can't Go Home Again

Of course you can go home again. It's just that it will make you feel like shit.

Just back from Chicago and a family wedding. Took Owen on the Chicago Architectural Society Boat Tour--as fabulous, with views as breath-taking and guide as witty and knowledgeable as I remembered--except that most of the buildings that dominate the river tour rose up long after I left the city. Damn. Nothing like a couple of spectacular skyscrapers to make you feel your age.

Then we were on the El. And as soon as we boarded, a young woman popped up and gestured to her seat. Poor child. Raised well, she was just doing as she'd been taught, offering up her seat to elderly passengers. Except that said elderly--Keith and I-- were horrified.

The trauma of Lutz's brought the message home. I was first introduced to Lutz's by my beloved Gram V. It was quite a trek from the suburbs, driving in on the tollway and down crowded Montrose Avenue, but well worth it: this little slice of Vienna, transported to the Midwest. A plush dining area that evoked the parlor of the early 20th-century bourgoisie, cakes so rich and ornate that you felt they'd have satisfied even Mozart, coffee served in fancy little pots with real whipped cream on the side, buxom waitresses with their hair in buns and pronounced German accents, and--an essential part of every visit--the most elaborate women's restroom I have ever encountered. When I grew up enough to live in Chicago, my roommate and I would regularly set aside several hours for a trip to Lutz's: a walk to the bus stop, a long bus ride, a walk to another bus stop, another long bus ride. . . but all worth it. One memorable day, we stayed in the Lutz's patio garden for several hours, consuming several slices of cake and plates of cookies and quaffing countless pots of whipped-cream-laced coffee in the process. Amazing we didn't launch ourselves into a diabetic coma then and there.

So when Keith and I married in my mother's backyard in the western suburbs of Chicago, of course Lutz's cakes bedecked the festivities. And of course I dragged Keith and Owen to Lutz's this trip. Except all was changed. Shrunken. Literally shrunken--the dining area halved, stripped of its plushness, just a set of utilitarian diner chairs and tables on linoleum; the wait staff now a couple of adolescent girls; and, horrors, no women's restrooms, just a single unisex toilet. And the cakes? Fine, but not fabulous. "It's ok," shrugged Owen. OK. A part of me died inside. Lutz's was never "ok."

So, yes, you can go home again. But maybe you shouldn't.

Jubilee

My apologies, blogovians. I have been bad. Blame my kids. (There's no actual reason to blame them, no empirical data, so to speak, but blaming the kids is my default mode. It works.)

Anyway, I'm back. A bit worn out, however, from celebrating the Queen's Jubilee yesterday. What Queen, you ask? As did the lovely little girl behind the counter at Baum's Bakery. "THE Queen," I replied. "You know, Queen Elizabeth. She's been on the throne for 60 years!" The little girl was so impressed. "That is so cool! So, how do you celebrate a Queen's Jubilee?"

Silly girl. You eat cake. A $40 Baum's Half Lemon/ Half Chocolate Dobasch Cake (http://www.baumspastries.com/index.php/cakes/specialty-cakes/dobasch-half-and-half.html) which, I'll admit, looks a bit wonky on the website photo but is ecstasy encapsulated in six layers of delicate, moist cake, enfolded by delectable lashings of buttercream and fondant. And then you get the star-struck, lovely, silly girl to write "God Save the Queen" on it. And you combine it with a sandwich and salad buffet and a very last-minute gathering of somewhat mystified Baton Rougeans, and you watch BBC-America with the sound turned off so that you can all shout out questions like, "Good lord, who is that woman?" and "Wait, who sucked who's toes?", and you mix in lots of champagne, and there you have it. A respectable Queen's Jubilee celebration.

But not the best we've done, actually. Ten years ago we were living in Manchester and 7-year-old Hugh's primary school marked the occasion of Elizabeth's 50-year anniversary on the throne with a "garden party." Completely bowled over by the event, Hugh came home from school that Friday afternoon and--unbeknownst to us--invited all our neighbors on the street to a Garden Party that evening. Somehow, we got wind of the plans and were able to convince him to walk round and change the invitations to Saturday afternoon. Keith and I figured most of the neighbors would not come; the few who did, we were sure, would show up, smile fondly at Hugh, eat a small piece of cake, wink at us, and head home five minutes later. So the next morning I toddled down to the local bake shop and picked up a couple of small "Jubilee" cakes--simple single layer sponge cakes with fondant icing and a picture of the queen. We chilled a bottle of wine and made a pot of tea, and set aside 30 minutes.

That afternoon the neighbors poured in, all of them thrilled to be invited and massively ashamed that it took "the Americans" to whip Grange Avenue into shape and make sure that we observed the Jubilee properly. Gobsmacked, Keith and I ransacked the cupboards and fridge for snacks, party food, anything edible, really, and after our embarrassingly substantial wine and beer collection was completely drained dry, the neighbors began making periodic forays to their own kitchens to restock the liquor supply. By the end of that long, glorious, sunny, booze-soaked, cake-filled, amazing afternoon, we felt like we were honorable members of the British tribe. We moved to the U.S. just a month later--and coming back to Louisiana, in many ways we felt like ex-pats, far from home.

So, Happy Jubilee, Liz, old gel.  God save you, luv. You've been good to us.

Ebbs and Flows

The ebbs and flows of marriage fascinate me. You'd think, after almost 22 years of married life, that we'd settle into some sort of stasis, no more ebbing and flowing, just you know, a pond that sort of sits there, quiet, with barely a ripple on the surface--except without the algae and moldy odor that that implies. Or maybe that we would sort of drift along gently like the inner tubes in those quiet water park rides, the ones that carry you softly along a well-defined path, far from the screaming of the water slides and wave pool. But no, life keeps doing its thing and so we change and the marriage changes too. To demonstrate:

As a result of my botched foot operation two Christmases ago, I can now no longer walk very far without a certain amount of pain. Sometimes walking even just a wee bit, like the distance from the bedroom to the kitchen, poses great difficulties. Foot pain, I have discovered, makes a daily aerobics workout rather tough. Running, jogging, walking, and even doing the elliptical at the Y have all become distinctly problematic. And, because the pain slices through the ball of my foot, the exact region that presses down on the pedal of a bike, bicycling does not offer much of an option. I could swim, I suppose, that is, if I could swim as opposed to doggy paddling rather ineffectually.

Anyway, the point is, while I sit with dicey foot (and sit and sit and sit and. . . .), Keith continues to pursue his somewhat fanatical "dammit I may be about to turn 60 but that doesn't mean I have to be fat" program: vigorous basketball and tennis several times a week, supplemented by running, walking, and weight-lifting. He's never been in better shape. It's great--he's thin and hard and energetic. But it's the matter of timing. We both get home around 6 or so. He then goes off to do his sporty exercisey fitnessy stuff. I, tired and starving, pour a glass of wine and pull out a box of Triscuits. A couple hours later, he returns, all sweaty and virtuous and healthy, whereas I, by that point, well, I'm slightly (or, depending on the day, totally) looped, as well as saturated with salt.

It's not a winning combination. In the ebbs and flows of married life, it's definitely on the ebb side. One does not like feeling sloshed and salty and soft. One then tends to take one's feelings of inadequacy out on one's sweaty and virtuous husband. And then one has another glass of wine, followed by something involving saturated fat and sugar in vast quantities. And thus, in the ebb and flow of marriage, one ends up not only ebbing but in fact stuck in the noisome mud of a trash-strewn bank while scaly creatures bite and tear at one's limbs and large flying insects lay their eggs in one's eyeballs.

Maybe a return to yoga is in order.

Gather round, little children

My niece sent me a link to a hilarious post about the failure of "bikini condoms." Evidently women just did not flock to use a latex G-string panty with a "condom pouch," which I gather is something like an empty hotdog skin, hanging down between your legs, awaiting the male member. (Such a strange term. Is there a female member? Does the clitoris count as a member or is there some kind of size requirement?)

I'm disturbed that I had no idea there was such a thing as a bikini condom. In my defence: As soon as Hugh's adoption was finalized, Keith ran off and got fixed, so scared was he that we would become one of those legendary legions of couples who adopt and then immediately get pregnant.** And since I'm not inclined toward adultery, that means it's been 17 years since I've had to think about birth control in any personal way. But still, I keep track of all kinds of things that have little direct impact on me personally--dissent in Syria, the strength of Springsteen's marriage, what's hot in the West End and on Broadway, the gender disparity in literary awards--I mean, you know, I 'm alive, alert, aware. . . but evidently not so much on the contraception front. I just hate that.

But I'm even more disturbed by "In Bed with Married Women" blogger's description of the bikini condom as "a pouch-like tube (oh yeah), a belt reminiscent of grandma's old-timey maxi pads, and cream-colored latex, which we all know is the very sexiest latex color." It's the "belt reminiscent of grandma's old-timey maxi pads" that arouses such discomfort. Because I wore that belt. And I do not feel like "grandma" or in the least bit "old-timey", tho' maybe the fact that I did not know about the bikini condom completely undercuts my argument here.

Ahh, the sanitary napkin and the belt. Gather round, little children, and let me tell you about long long ago, in the days before maxi and mini pad technology. (OK, yes, tampons did exist. . . but I was 10. I was just a little kid and my body suddenly transmogrified into this horrifying, alien thing sprouting hair in weird places and growing breasts and then gushing blood. Not until I was 17 and much more comfortable in my own skin did I relax enough to insert a tampon.) Fifth grade, then. A belt with little clips and a rectangle of cotton fiber with these tails on either end to stick in the clips. One size fits all, supposedly. . . which of course meant that rectangle jutted far in front and behind of my bottom. It moved. Not my bottom. The napkin. It moved. Ah, little children, remember that adhesive technology had not yet been invented, at least not in the realm of Ladies' Monthlies. The belt went around your waist, the pad was clipped on, and then, well, a 10-year-old kid did what 10-year-old kids do--swinging on swings, climbing the monkey bars, playing tether ball, rolling on the grass--and the pad traveled. I'd find it on my left hip, or all the way up my backside, poking out of the waistband of my skirt as I sat at my desk completing my spelling words.

So yes, little children, we have made progress. Despite the bikini condom.


**Factual note: couples who adopt are no more likely to have unplanned pregnancies than couples who don't. Really. There are stats and everything, except I can't find them. But you can trust me. I am a Reliable Source. Even if I am on the Internet.

Streaming

Long time no blog, I do realize and I do apologize. I could blame the hot flashes--the decision to go off the Prempro was definitely not a good one (and must be remedied very very soon). Or I could chalk it up to the stress of parenting an incredibly smart, incredibly smart-ass 17-year-old--honestly, that should give me a "Get Out of Jail Free" card for eternity. Or I could point the finger at the Republican presidential primaries, because, well, why not?  I suppose I can no longer blame anything on Katrina or the Gulf oil spill, tho' those definitely provided rather handy excuses for quite awhile.

But the fact is, I've been streaming.

Ah me. I used to live a productive life, filled with a variety of cultural and intellectual activities. I mean. you know, sort of, kind of, occasionally. But now, I appear to be fated to be a 21st-century version of Miss Haversham. Years from now a modern Pip will find me, clothed not in the tatters of a wedding gown but in what remains of my comfy jeans and oh-thank-God-the-bra-is-off tank top, sitting on a dust-covered sofa in a darkened room while the rats and roaches nibble their way through the remnants of pita and hummus on the coffee table.

If you haven't read Great Expectations, the precediing paragraph will have made no sense. Go read it. Quick! Before you start streaming, because once you do you'll never read again.  At least if you're a weak-willed soul like me.

It all started when we bought  a flat-screen high-def Google TV. It comes with this groovy remote that looks like you can program nuclear war. But instead of sending the planet to Armageddon, what you actually do is: Stream. You click a button, and you are watching whatever you want to watch, right there and then. No trip to the video store. No dvd. No envelope to return. Handy for movies, yes, but far far more handy for watching entire television series. You don't have to wait an entire week for the next episode, you don't have to order the next series online. It's just there, saying "Watch meeeeeee. Waaaaaatch me NOW." And so we do. To the exclusion of everything else. We (can't believe I'm admitting this. . . oh, the shame) actually walked out during the intermission of a Swine Palace production of "Pride and Prejudice" to hurry home and get back on the couch. Swine Palace, mind you, is THE premier professional theater company of Louisiana, which probably doesn't sound like much, but actually really and truly frequently matches what I've seen on stage in Chicago, New York, and London--and yet, even so, we left halfway through the play to resume streaming.

Now mind you, I am talking about streaming high -quality tv. We have not sacrificed our social lives and our intellectual development to "The Jersey Shore." [Honesty check: I have never actually watched "The Jersey Shore." Maybe it's a really great stuff. So if it is, just fill in whatever tv dreck you want.] We watch amazing programs that prove that the "idiot box" needn't be so idiotic, that actually this medium is capable of mind-bending, artistically innovative, spiritually challenging, extraordinarily well-written, stunningly acted original drama. (No really. Check out "The States of Tara." Watch "Friday Night Lights." Be in awe.)

Still. No matter how good the programs. Still. I have come to this. Me.  A sofa. A remote. A flat screen. A bottle of wine. Pita and hummus.

And Keith. That's the redeeming factor. Somehow as long as I'm not sitting and decaying on the sofa on my own, as long as there's this sentient being next to me who is also slowly descending into total tv-passivity, it's ok. We can just call it "together time." Amazing what you can get away, with as long as you're in a couple.

A love poem

Keith always tells me I'm not romantic.

Every Valentine's Day he gives me a beautiful homemade card with a carefully selected love poem. And, yes, it's true, most Valentine's Days I come up with nothing. But the thing is, I always intend to. I always have plans. They just never quite work.

Like this year. Despite my truly awesome head cold, I leave work and stop by the funky little shop on Government Street that has great cards. But, go figure, this year the selection isn't so hot. OK. I will make this work. So after about 30 minutes of reading every card on offer and deliberating with great care, I choose one--it's good, it's fine, and I know how to spice it up--and then I discover I have no cash. And no, they won't take a credit card.

I go home. Nose is too runny, chest is too congested, head is too achey, cough is too racking to return to the damn shop. No, I will write a poem. I will make my own card.

Well, it never got onto a card. But here's the poem:

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
I'm coughing up loogies,
But I still love you.

You're the chicken bone for my hungry dog,
the litter for my kitty.
You say that you still want me
Even when I'm feeling shitty.

You're the saline in my Neti pot,
the Kleenex for my nose,
the compress for my feverish head--
that's what love is, I suppose.

Ok. Not a Shakespearean sonnet. But don't tell me I'm not romantic.

Choosing Y

I'm typing with great hesitancy because there's enough of a third-grader left in me to believe that if I acknowledge the wondrous thing that seems to be happening, I will jinx it and the wonderful will all go away. But--into the breach she leaps, quietly [I'm whispering now]: We've just concluded our third conflict-free weekend in a row with 16-year-old Hugh. Yes, that's right. No arguments, no shrieking, no swearing, no slamming doors, not even any eye-rolling. How weird and wonderful is that?

The cynical me thinks, "yeah, it's just because you've been sick and so too doggone weary to fight." But that's not it because the point is, the sharp-skewering-eureka point is, that Hugh has not picked a fight. Which counts as a totally "holy cow!" development.

I imagine it's just serendipity, the right alignment of hormones and school successes and driving privileges and what Keith made for dinner. But I would like to believe, in fact I am going to believe until facts intrude and force me to believe otherwise (just hate those damn facts), that we, Keith and I, that we did this. At least in part. Because, you see, these good weekends follow a somewhat epic clash with Hugh's boarding school authorities. (Ok ok, maybe not epic, maybe not even supermarket paperback, still, this is our life, you know, so it does seem to matter.)

School. Such a strange thing, really. You have a baby and you obsess like mad over every little detail and then the baby is 5 and whoop, total strangers have control of him for most of the day. You can assiduously investigate various school options and agonize over private vs. public and spend huge chunks of your life touring facilities and reading brochures and interviewing principals--but in the end, he spends most of the day in the hands of individuals that you do not know and that you have no say in selecting. And you have to trust them, support them, back them up. . .particularly when you have a kid who tends to lie, so of course you believe the teachers and you align yourself with The Authorities and you lecture your kid about respect and consequences and obeying the rules even when he doesn’t think they make sense.

But sometimes you confront a situation in which your gut, your heart, your instinct, all cry out: something just seems awry. I’ve been in that situation, and made the wrong choice. When Hugh was 7, his classroom teacher became seriously ill and for three months he was in the hands of a substitute. Hugh's behaviour and academic work deteriorated immediately and I knew, no, I felt something was wrong, but I stuck with my head, ignored my heart, supported The Authorities, did as I was told—and hurt Hugh. The sub, from her first day, labeled Hugh as Bad and treated him as such--and "documented" it with vindictive glee in a little notebook that the regular teacher, horrified, discovered after she returned. And I let it happen.

"Err on the side of love.” I don’t know where I heard that, but it’s become my mantra. So now, here we are, several years later and the school says X and Hugh says Y, and everything I know and feel says only Y makes any sense--despite the record, the history, the apparent evidence.

Err on the side of love. We chose Y. At least, if I screw up my kid, it will be because I believed in him too much, trusted him too much, gave him too much of my heart and my soul. Not because I didn’t.

Crime and Punishment

The big story in Baton Rouge this week is the arrest of a high school girl, who stole the identities of almost 200 of her fellow students, filed fraudulent tax returns, and received rebate checks worth tens of thousands of dollars. Much angst about the breach of confidentiality, school policies, the security of important documents, etc. and of course rightfully so. And of course the girl's actions were wrong, completely and totally. But still-- I have to admit I'm impressed by this kid. She's  still a teenager and she's figured out the public school computer system and the U.S. tax system?! Golly, get her on the right road and she can go anywhere.

It all reminds me of Hugh in the second grade. The school then had a strict policy: whenever a student didn't complete the assigned homework, that student's parent received a phone call. The school secretary and I were soon on a first-name basis, as she was calling me every morning. I was so confused. Every night I'd sit down with Hugh, look over his daily homework assignment sheet, and then spend a tortured hour forcing him to do the pointless but required worksheets. But then the next morning, yet another phone call about everything he was missing. Finally, when Hugh received the dubious distinction of being the kid with the most missed homework in the entire school, the principal, teacher, Keith, Hugh, and I had a meeting. Utterly frustrated, I pulled out Hugh's last homework sheet and went down the list--did it, did it, did it. His teacher grabbed the piece of paper, examined it carefully, and then turned to Hugh with a look somewhere between horror and admiration. Turns out the kid was running a scam. Every day the teacher required the kids to write out their homework list and every day she checked Hugh's. So he swiped a bunch of blank homework sheets and every day after the homework sheet check,  he'd fill out a different sheet, with far fewer assignments, and that was what he brought home to me. As the adults in that conference room gradually figured out what was going on, Keith muttered, "Good lord, the kid's discovered double entry bookkeeping."

Driving home that morning, we took comfort in the fact that if Hugh was headed toward a life on the wrong side of the law, at least it would be white-collar crime. "Minimum-security prison," said Keith, in a tone of relief.

Never mind

So the night before last Keith was in the mood and I was not. Such an odd situation, sigh, we wish. Anyway, we both went to sleep with no canoodling. Then, in the wee hours of the morning, Keith began to kick me. Not "kick me" as in he's sleeping and rolling over rather restlessly and his leg bumps mine. I mean, Keith began to kick me: he grabbed me and started to kick the daylights--except I guess they were nightlights--out of me. I hollered and woke him up; he's all confused and apologetic and out of it; the dog, standing anxiously at the foot of the bed, is wondering what he's supposed to do now; the cats have hightailed it out of there. The next morning, Keith vaguely recalls his dream: he was running from someone and had to kick a door.

OK. Except that evening, as I'm walking the dog, I start thinking about the whole sequence of events. And the proverbial light bulb winks on, as I realize, hey, wait just a sec, I say no to sex and he's kicking open a door!! I'm outraged and horrified, I'm in total feminist mode, I can't believe my husband was trying to kick open my door. I hurry the dog on home, a cruel act as the dog has a hard time hurrying these days, and storm inside and confront him. Him. My husband. This lovely man who has suddenly descended down the evolutionary ladder and now looks to me like some sort of primitive beast. "Do you realize what has happened? Do you realize I said no to sex and then you have a dream where you're kicking in a door?? And you're really kicking me? My door!?"

Keith looks up from the football game. He's a tad surprised. He says, "But honey, in my dream I was kicking the door closed."

Oh. Well then. Never mind.

Cats and Funerals

I'm typing this on the less comfy sofa, because the kitties are happily ensconced on the comfy sofa and I don't want to disturb them. This alarms me. I can see that, if I fail to exercise due diligence, I'll become a Crazy Cat Lady.

Crazy Cat Ladies are not, in general, Good People Persons. I am not, by nature, a Good People Person. I have become one through sheer will power. But I grow old. Will power, like everything else, droops these days. I find myself less and less inclined to make the effort. Crazy Cat Ladyhood beckons.

Today, for example, I directed parking at, and attended the funeral of, one of my fellow church members. I didn't know Jack well but I respected him a great deal, and as the funeral wound on, and I learned more and more about him, I realized how much I regretted not knowing him better. I sat there and reflected on previous funerals I'd attended for church folks, and realized I had felt this way many times before--this sense of, "I had no idea" and "Gosh, I'd have loved to talk with him/her about that" and "Shoot, that is so cool--I wish I had known that before." And then the funeral ended and I zipped past the fellowship hall where the reception was being held so that I wouldn't have to talk to anyone. I drove home to my cats.

Keith is a trained Myers Briggs assessment giver and counselor--you know, the personality profile that puts you on a grid of Intuitive/Judging/Sensing/and something else that I can't recall. He's a Myers Briggs cheerleader; as an historian trained to look for the particular and the unique as opposed to the general and universal, I'm a huge skeptic. But I have learned one very valuable thing from M-B: some folks, like Keith, get energy from being with people whereas others, like me, draw energy from solitude and find other people's company to be energy-draining--and (here's the Important Bit): one way is not better than the other; it just helps a lot to know who you are and what you need.

Which is all well and good, until one day you wake up and realize it's just you and a bunch of cats.

Skill Set

A follow-up to my post of January 8:

Owen has a skin rash and so took himself off to the doctor and got a prescription for a medicated ointment. When he got home, however, he couldn't get the ointment tube open so he handed it to Keith. "Dad, what's up with this? I can't get this foil thing off." Keith then showed him how you have to flip the cap over and use the pointy end to break a hole in the foil seal. And then he called over to me, "See, hon? We still have important skills to pass on to the next generation."

A Phone Call--and a Good Hard Cry

I talked on the phone for quite awhile with my good friend Joanne. Her mom's mental state, ravaged by vascular dementia, has deteriorated rapidly over the last few months. It hurt, that talk. After I hung up, I cried.

I cried for Joanne. She and her mom somehow escaped all the craziness and hurt that accompanies most mother-daughter relationships. They were always just so right--close, but not in that creepy way that makes you wonder if the mother is trying to relive or somehow make up for something that she lacked; no role reversal; no shutting out or closing in. Somehow they did it--Carol remained the mom yet Joanne grew up and they both recognized and rejoiced in that and were just so damned right with each other. I've rarely seen a relationship so solid and decent, so the way it is supposed to be.

I cried for Joe, Carol's husband and Joanne's dad. One of the most loving and genuinely kind men I have ever known, Joe cared for Carol through years of debilitating arthritis, and somehow made it seem simple, just love, you know. Somehow he made you think, "Oh right. That's the way love is. That's what people who love each other do." Until you looked around and realized, no, no, most don't.

And I cried for me. Joe and Carol never knew, even Joanne never knew, but those two, their marriage, their partnership, their Joe-and-Carolness, shaped my life in such important ways.

It was during college. Our third year? Maybe our senior year. Joanne and I shared a Calvin College apartment, with four girls, er, young women. Geez. We were girls, so unbelievably utterly girls. I was visiting Joanne in New Jersey and her parents took us into Manhattan. I don't know about most New Jerseyites, but Joanne's parents were not in the least intimidated by New York City. No, Joe and Carol made Manhattan their own. They may have lived in Paterson, but they were New Yorkers in their soul. We had gone to a show, I think, or perhaps dinner. It was late but of course the streets were full and we stopped for ice cream cones. And Joe and Carol walked ahead down the sidewalk--this New York sidewalk, teeming, bustling, bursting with life--and they held hands and Joe, a tall  man, bent to hear Carol's quip and then tossed his head back and roared with laughter.

I looked at them and thought, "I want that." I wanted it all. The nighttime.The city street. The laughter. But most of all, the hand-holding. I often saw my parents hugging or kissing, but I had never seen them hold hands. I had never seen any of their friends or any of my aunts and uncles hold hands. Up until that point, frankly, I had no idea people over age 40 held hands. And I think--ok, yes, I'm probably giving my 19-or-20-year-old self way too much credit here--but I think I got it. I saw that hand holding for what it was: the obvious comfort in each other's company, the affection and amusement, the companionship.

My parents loved each other but they were opposites. They sparred and sparked and tussled and tore. Their relationship was the stuff of romance and drama, so appealing and exciting that most of my siblings chose a similar sort of marriage. But sparks can so easily ignite a raging fire that shrivels the skin and leaves lasting scars. I didn't want that. I didn't know how much I didn't want that, until that night, walking behind Joe and Carol, I saw a different sort of marriage, one in which the sparks glowed steadily, like a warming fire flickering behind the grate. Without even realizing it, I made a choice that night.

We've been so lucky. Keith and I have walked on so many city streets--New York, New Orleans, Chicago, San Francisco, Houston, London, Dublin, Glasgow, Amsterdam, Orvieto--and we've walked holding hands.

So I hung up the phone and I cried. Cried in sorrow for what is gone and will be so missed, cried in thanks for all that was, and cried in wonder for the way the simplest things--an ice cream cone, a burst of laughter, a couple holding hands--can change, and make, one's world.

A New TV

Today we bought a new tv. A Google tv. We can access the Internet and stream Netflix in Hi Def.

Good lord.

Me: "You should know how to do this. Why don't you know how to do this? You're a teenager. Teenagers know how to do this stuff."
Owen: "Way to stereotype, Mom. You gonna start telling racist jokes now?"

I'm traumatized. We're all traumatized. Owen, upset by all the drama, has mounted his bike and disappeared into the gloaming. Over on the sofa, Hugh is glowering and muttering, sure if we'd only left it to him, all would be well. Keith is on the phone, trying not to cuss out some poor minimum-waged peon at the Best Buy Help Desk. And me, well, I'm blogging to y'all.

I remember tvs. You bought 'em. You plugged 'em in. You watched 'em. Life was Good. Or at least ok. We didn't know any better. Life was at least simple.

Our old tv is 10 years old. Huge, in terms of space consumed, small in terms of screen, pretty basic in terms of sound. Seemed ok to me. Except lately I found myself asking, "Gosh, why are they filming in such muted colors? Why do directors want everything to look so drained?" And it took College Son, home for the holidays, to point out that, no, no, Mom You Moron, directors aren't filming that way, it's your horrible tv.

We've talked and talked about getting a new tv but the whole process always seemed so overwhelming. And the tv prices so high. But then the holidays came and both the boys showed up at home, moaning about our rotten tv. Nothing too new there, but then my mother-in-law, my friggin' mother-in-law, queen of Never Spending Anything, arrived for a visit and actually commented on how bad the tv was. Geez. But of course the clincher, the thing that made it all happen, is that the Saints have a Big Game tonight and the LSU Tigers have A Really Really Big Game on Monday. So  now we have a new tv.

Sort of.

The new tv sits on the antique chest-with-drawers that has served as our tv stand since Keith cut out the back of the cabinet for all the tv and vcr wires way back before we married.. He always meant to sand and refinish said chest, and of course he never has. So now there perches upon this lovely, battered wooden chest a totally up-to-date 42" flat screen. You can tell the new tv is wondering how and why it ended up in such a downmarket environment. Well, fine. Be snooty, ye wretched rectangle. "Just plug it in and follow the instructions on screen," said the cute Best Buy salesguy. Right. The 15-minutes set-up has now consumed ten hours and counting, several phone calls to the Best Buy Geek Squad (they've hung up on us no less than four times this afternoon), two phone calls to the Direct TV Satellite people, one quick trip to Radio Shack to buy a cord with blue-green-red thingies to replace the cord with yellow-white-red thingies, the conscription of Owen's somewhat technically inclined buddy Conrad, and several rather volume-intensive discussions between and among the various inhabitants of this household. These included a number of helpful exchanges along the lines of the following:

Hugh: "Here, let me try something. Hand me the controller."
Me: "It's not a controller. It's a keypad."
Hugh (rolling his eyes): "It's a controller. It controls the tv remotely. That means it's a remote control. A COOONNNNTROOOLLLLEEEEEERRRRR."
Me (by this time determined to show my obnoxiously condescending offspring that I do in fact possess useful and up-to-date knowledge): "No, no, no, if you say "controller" to the Best Buy Guys they'll think you're talking about this (I brandish the remote control that goes with our satellite tv box) but the problem is the KEYPAD ( I hold up the Star Trekky groovy device that's come with the new tv and that looks like we now have the capability of initiating nuclear war) . It's a KEYPAD."
Hugh: "MOM. It's a controller."
Me: "No, honestly, it's an important difference I think. It's a keypad."
Hugh: "Why are you acting like you know anything about any of this? It's ridiculous. And it's a controller."
. . . .
I'm embarrassed to admit how long we continued. So I won't.

Keith is now maniacally chopping vegetables in the kitchen--never a good sign. I'm not sure our marriage will survive this purchase. Should've gotten a new bathroom sink instead. At least then we wouldn't have discovered we'd need to spend $10 more every month for high definition reception (we had no idea we were even buying a "Hi Def" tv). Water comes without definition. And I know how to turn the faucet on and off and I understand the difference between hot and cold.

I don't remember there being such a huge technological gap between me and my parents. Certainly they didn't like the music I listened to--but they didn't have to ask me for help in operating the radio and record-player. My mom didn't know the difference between "The Waltons" and "Little House on the Prairie"--but she could work the tv. They got mad about how much time we kids spent on the phone and once to my mother's horror I ran up an enormoous monthly long-distance bill talking to my boyfriend in Kalamazoo--but she knew which buttons to press to make a call. And when it came to home movies--there my mom was completely in charge, the only one in the entire extended family who knew how to use the movie camera, how to splice the little reels of film to make the big ones, how to run the projector. It does seem, in fact, that not only childhood but early adulthood followed the same pattern:  my mom showed me how to do things, how to make things, how to fix things, how to run things, how to operate things, from the hi-fi to the stickshift, from the lawn mower to the Christmas lights, from checking the oil to cleaning out the dryer lint.

I don't think--oh for pete's sake I know--that my sons don't have the same sense of me as a competent person. I need help with the remote and I can't figure out my smart phone and I have to ask Hugh to take pictures because I can't seem to make the camera work and I'm a little unclear on the whole Hulu thing.

Maybe this greater equality in parent-child relations is a good thing. Maybe the fact that my kids have no doubts about my limits and utter faillibility makes it easier for them to head in new directions. Maybe. But I dunno. The sense that your parent knows all the important stuff--that's a rather powerful protective shield to wield as you face the dragons of daily adolescent life. Still, I imagine there's an app for that.

Into the Gap

I just realized that today is Nov. 6, which means yesterday was Nov. 5. (See, I may be in menopause, but I'm still as sharp as ever.)

The Fifth of November--how could I have forgotten? I feel like I've betrayed a fundamental part of my family's history. Not "my family" as in "my lineage." We're all Dutch, nothing to do with Guy Fawkes Day or the Gunpowder Plot, nothing interesting or important in my family lineup, just a bunch of impoverished Calvinist mud farmers from Drenthe. No, by "my family," I mean my real family: Keith and Owen and Hugh. And by "history," I mean our history, our past, our life in England.

Our first Guy Fawkes Day, or "Bonfire Night" as most people in Manchester called it, was quite a revelation. I had lived in London in November and so expected something along London lines--a few firecrackers, some film clips of bonfires in vacant lots on the evening news. But Bonfire Night in our working-class neighborhood turned out to be something more akin to a night in Baghdad during the U.S. invasion. The explosions began early and just did not stop. At one point, a cascade of bottle rockets came whizzing into our back garden (aka back yard) and slammed into the kitchen door, but that was small beer compared to the bombs detonating all around us. To my utter amazement, this society--which did not allow anyone to purchase a 12-capsule pack of ibuprofen without first listening to a lengthy lecture about the proper use of painkillers, which had banned lice-killing shampoo because of the damage it could do if overused, which did not have Jungle Gyms in its school playgrounds because of the potential danger--this society allowed the purchase and recreational use of major explosives without any apparent control or limit.

By sunset, when we were supposed to show up in a neighbor's back garden for a genuine bonfire and BBQ, four-year-old Hugh was as close to catatonic as one can be without being thrown into a hospital bed. At this point in his young life, he was acutely frightened of loud, sudden noises (so strange, given his own capacity for noise-making). If a balloon popped in Hugh's vicinity, he would go silent and freeze, his body rigid, his big dark eyes staring fixedly ahead. Even the possibility of such a noise reduced him to rigidity: the mere sight of a balloon or a party popper was enough to transmogrify all his liveliness and curiosity and endless chatter into something closer to severe autism.

Owen so desperately wanted to attend the bonfire. On the whole, life in England was just one long misery for him, so desperately, stupidly, I tried.
--Where was Keith? Usually, at this point in our lives, at some church meeting or service or event, given his position as pastor of four Methodist congregations in Manchester, but surely not on Bonfire Night? No, definitely not, and yet. . . he's not there. In these memories, he's not there. Maybe I'm transferring all those times in Manchester that he wasn't there to this particular night. I honestly can't say. But in my memory, Keith is nowhere to be found.--
All on my own, then, I jollied poor Hugh along. There must have been a hiatus in the bombing, because he did walk over to the neighbor's, and Owen was so thrilled, so enchanted with the darkness and the sense of rules being broken and the utter edginess of the night. But almost immediately the whistles and bangs began again and Hugh couldn't cope. Our accommodating, if puzzled, hosts had no problem with keeping Owen but he pleaded with me to stay; only eight, he still wanted/needed/flourished in my company. When I headed out the gate with Hugh in my arms, Owen just stared at the ground and refused to say goodbye.

And then came one of the most surreal walks of my entire life. Down this dark lane (was it dark? surely the streetlamps were on? yet I remember it as so dark) I carried my eerily silent Hugh, his body stiff, his eyes glassy, while all around us things zoomed and shrieked and zzzzed and banged and boomed.

Such a strange night. The next two Bonfire Nights were much the same: Owen eager to join the anarchy, Hugh driven deep within himself, while I sought somehow to encourage the one and comfort the other, and felt myself falling, slipping, tumbling down the gap between the two.

Neighborly

The dog next door is barking. The dog next door is always barking. I have actually contemplated buying a pound of raw ground beef, lacing it with rat poison, and tossing it over the fence. Except I don't throw very well and we'd probably end up with blood dripping down our side of the fence and glops of poisoned meat all over the flower beds. The thing is, I like our neighbors--the human ones. They're good-humored, good-hearted folks, just, you know, with a dog problem. So I grit my teeth and swallow hard, avoid the meat section of the supermarket, and try to focus on being thankful for my own quiet dog. He may be prone these days to bleeding and vomiting, but he's not a barker, bless him.

Plus my hunch is that the folks next door with the incredibly annoying dog often have to grit their teeth, swallow hard, and hold themselves back from sending us a nice neighborly plate of brownies flavored with arsenic. In fact, I fear that everyone on the street, or actually two streets since we occupy a corner lot, is having to do a lot of teeth-gritting and insult-swallowing these days, for we have become Bad Neighbors. More precisely, we have become The People Who Do Not Take Care of Their Yard.

I blame Keith. Now, "Blame Keith" is the default mode in most areas of my life but honestly, the yard has always been his thing. When we married, he had a condo with a small back yard, in which he'd fashioned a series of raised flower beds and vegetable plots. I had spent years as an apartment dweller, with nary a potted plant to my name. So he kept doing the gardening and lawn care, and I didn't. And when we moved to this corner house with its large front yard, side yard, and back yard, Out into the Wild he went, encircling the house with serpentine beds, laying out an enormous herb garden, experimenting with lettuce, planting perennials, grappling with ground cover, trimming, digging, culling, mulching, mincing, dicing, slicing, pruning, cultivating, and whacking away,

And then he changed jobs. And now he's far too busy, far too intellectually and emotionally and physically engaged in his work, to have time or energy or interest in the yard. And here in the semi-tropics, where plants grow several inches overnight and veritable armies of insects wage constant warfare, even a momentary lapse of attention allows nature to thrust in and take back its own. On our beautiful street, a boulevard lined with live oaks and a variety of flowering bushes that guarantee splashes of color all year round and a series of carefully cultivated lawns running in front of wooden porches, our yard stands out--and not in a good way. It's like the students who stumble into my 8:40 class at 8:55, their hair greasy and clumped, traces of last night's pizza still on their unwashed faces.

I get these moments, when I look at at the tangle out there and think, "I could do something about this. I should do something about this." And then I think, "why?" The homeowner gene seems to have passed me by. I realize I'm incredibly fortunate to own a house, but I've never found it in the least bit interesting.

So. The dog next door barks. Our weeds grow. I grit my teeth and my neighbors grit theirs. We meet periodically for drinks and remind ourselves how much we all actually like each other. And someday soon, I hope, we'll move. Maybe the new owners will be enthusiastic gardeners. Deaf enthusiastic gardeners, even. And all manner of things shall be well.

Bitter Woman

Keith is watching football. LSU vs. West Virginia. God. I hate football.

I shouldn't be bitter.

I'm not. I Am Not A Bitter Woman.

The thing is, we had a very short courtship. So it came as something of a surprise that I found myself married to a sports fanatic. Somehow, this fanaticism just hadn't really surfaced in the months, umm, weeks, of our pre-marriage romance.

You might think that as the younger sister of five older brothers, I was prepared for Sports Fanaticism. But my big brothers were more into cars and cigarettes and beer and drugs. We were Cubs fans, because my much-loved grandma was a Cubs fan. And being a Cubs fan went well with beer and cigarettes, frankly-- add a hotdog with mustard and relish, and Life Is Good. But football?? Dad watched the Bears on Sundays in the depth of winter when he could laugh at "those idiots" floundering in the snow. And my brothers were far too stoned to care.

So, here I sit, with this man who cares intensely. Who actually just now said, as he moved the chair so he could be right in  front of our rather small tv, "Can you see?"--as if I cared. But he can't imagine I don't care. Which is so sweet. And just so damn weird.

Weird as it is, I'd be ok with it, if it were just LSU football. I mean, I get obsession. Obsession is ok. I have my obsessions. Doctor Who. Bruce Springsteen. And everything Paul Newman has ever done. And I ritualistically, fatalistically, follow the Cubs, as part of my birthright. So, if Keith were simply obsessed with LSU football, really, I'd be ok with that. But, here's the deal: I thought The Game was this afternoon. Because Keith spent the entire friggin' afternoon watching football. But that was other football. Gettin' ready football. Preparatory football.  Foreplay football.

Keith is watching football. LSU vs. West Virginia. God. I hate football.

And yes. I Am A Bitter Woman.