We Are Not Morning People

We are not morning people, not back then and certainly not now!

I don't even think we come to life around here until sometime after dinner...Well the boys don't. They stumble out of bed, bleary-eyed from watching The Colbert Report, bump into walls as they stagger to the shower and stand for what seems like hours beneath the hot water, sleeping.

How do I know they are sleeping in the shower? Well, after fifteen minutes, when I bang on the bathroom door and yell at the Youngest Who Must Remain Unnamed, he calls back, "I'm coming! I just have to rinse the shampoo out of my hair!"

Yesterday I was on him again. "There's no hot water left for your brother's shower! What are you doing in there?"

At dinner he offered this explanation of his prolonged, underwater experience. "The conditioner bottle says to leave it on your hair for six minutes. That's what I was doing."

He says this with a straight face.

This morning I couldn't tell you how long he was in there because I was in a coma. Apparently the puppets I made for his AP World History project were such a smashing success a few weeks ago that he's again volunteered to "make" the puppets for this next project.

Six Dollar Store Barbies gave their all, and most of their hair, to become a Japanese Post-Classic era peasant (and the leather shag area rug also gave up a few stray strips), a Buddhist monk, a Samurai warrior and two aristocrats. It took two of us, working hard until midnight to finish.

I would've taken pictures but I was so sick of the little shits I just shoved them in a plastic file box and locked them all away. Besides, if there is a Barbie Humane Society I don't want them over here banging on the front door with picture in hand, screaming, "You have defiled the sacred image of American womanhood!"

Yeah, as if...

The Youngest Unnamed One seems none the worse for wear this morning, but I am a total loss.
I guess I'm not a morning person and not a late night person either.
Damn, I must be getting old!

P.S...I am mentally smacking myself on the forehead...It has occurred to me, just as it must be occurring to you, there is one other activity that could explain the length of time it takes my adolescent boys to shower....Ewwww! Okay, I'm taking the Tilex in there right now!!!

Do you see this face? This cute, innocent, trusting face?



That is a picture of my baby brother, John, taken when he was about five. Doesn't he look sweet? Who would want to hurt a little fellow like John Andrew?

I'll tell you who.

Kim Nichols, that's who. The bane of our existance. Our nemisis.

Next door to the old rectory where we lived, there was a duplex. It crouched between our hulking wreck of a manse and the Smith's house where my best friend and her five brothers and sisters lived. In order to reach the oasis that was the Smith's house, you first had to pass by the rowhouse where Kim Nichols lived with her grandmother and her grandmother's 26 chihuahuas.

Kim Nichols was the troll that lived beneath our childhood bridge.

Every day, without fail, Kim beat me up. If she didn't catch me on the playground, she trapped me on the way home. She was my age, maybe a year older, and she was a torn-down terror of a girl. Redheaded with horrible buck teeth and freckles. She would outrun me, overtake me and knock me down no matter how I tried to escape and I lived in fear of her throughout my elementary school years.

Little did I know she was torturing my little brother at the same time.

I guess we each thought we were the only weakling tormented by Kim and it was our private agony to bear in silent shame.

But my brother was five years younger than Kim. He wore a heavy metal brace on his leg, the result of running through a plate glass window. He was a very easy target.

The only relief we had from Kim came at dinnertime when her grandmother would step outside onto the back stoop and surrounded by her yapping menagerie would yell in a high, shrill voice "Kim-eeeee!!!"

The screech would echo across the narrow back yards, bounce off the the brick walls of our homes and signal blessed relief from our tormentor. Kim's supper was the equivalent of a Christmas Truce in wartime. It lasted as long as it took Kim to eat and elude the clutches of her grandmother.

Late every afternoon we all smelled supper cooking at the Nichols' house. It was always the same odor because Kim's grandmother cooked a homemade meat and rice concoction for her 26 dervish dogs every single night. I have no idea what she fed Kim.

I only know that I loved supper time at the Nichols' house.

It was just never enough of a respite.

This past April, as my family gathered to be close to Dad for Spring Break, John finally gave up his secret.

"That bully beat me up every day!" he said, taking a pull on his Corona. "And I was just a little kid!"

"She did it to you, too?" I asked.

He nodded. "Yeah. I hated her. She'd knock me down and I'd run home cryin' every single day...Until one day when I'd had enough." John looked around the table at the adults, a mischevious smile bringing a gleam into his eyes. "Do you guys remember Ultraman?"


Unbidden, the long forgotten theme song of the Ultraman T.V show streamed into my conscious memory. Ultraman, the precursor of the Power Rangers.

My brother doesn't wait for the answer, he sees it in our faces.

"I watched that show every day," he said. "Every single day."

I remember my brother, inches from the T.V, soaking up shows that feature superheroes, believing every bit, every word...crying for an entire week when Robin got swallowed by a giant clam in a cliff-hanger episode on Batman, unconsolable until the following Sunday night when Batman saved his fearless buddy. Of course he watched Ultraman.

"This one day," my brother said. "She knocked me down, hard, and I just lost my shit! I got so mad I cried. I screamed at her, 'I'll get you!'" And then I ran back home, only this time I knew what I had to do. I was going to turn into Ultraman...You know how the guy stuck his fist up in the air and lightning hit him and he turns into Ultraman?"

I am nodding, trying to see how a five year old boy could actually believe he could become a superhero.

"No," John insists, reading my mind. "I was going to be Ultraman. I was going to show Kim Nichols!"

He is laughing, tears streaming down his face, reviewing the home movie in his head.

"I ran into the kitchen and I was crying and saying "I'll show her! I'll get her!" And I pulled open the drawer, took out the tin foil and wrapped myself in tin foil!"

Our eyes widen, we are now laughing with him, seeing the sweet, little boys swearing vengence and believing himself capable of exacting his revenge with super powers given to him by a roll of tin foil.

"I ran back outside. I was screamin' for her and there she was, still standing out on the sidewalk, looking at me like I'm nuts. I mean, here's this little kid screaming he's going to kill her and he's covered in tin foil...which of course comes flying off while I'm running but I don't even know...I'm Ultraman and I'm going to kill Kim Nichols!"

We all want to ask, "What happened?" but we are also dreading the inevitable answer. My brother sees all of this in our eyes but for a long moment he is laughing too hard to continue. We are at once horrified and unable to look away.

"I run up to her and I'm screaming, 'Ultraman!' I punched her as hard as I could and then I turned around and kept on running right back to the house."

"What did she do?" We ask.

"When I got to the front porch, just before I ran in the door, I looked back and she was still standing there, looking at me, like she knew I was crazy or something...But I didn't care because Ultraman had defeated her!"

He was laughing. We were all laughing, big, fat tears pouring down our reddened faces. We were John, we were victorious against the neighborhood bully.

"Did she leave you alone after that?" someone wants to know.

John shrugs. "I don't know. Probably not, but I don't remember it happening again. I think she thought I was crazy and maybe that's why she left me alone. But it didn't matter anymore what she did. I was Ultraman!"

I try to remember when Kim stopped beating me up and can't. There was a brief period when I tried to befriend her. I don't know if this was before or after Dad told me Kim lived with her grandmother because her mother was a biker and had run off with Kim's father, leaving her mother to raise Kim...like a 27th chihuahua.

I remember taking Kim to church, kneeling on the thin, red velvet cushions as Dad read his way through the communion litergy, the church hot and stuffy, quiet except for the sound of Dad's voice. Dust motes danced on a shaft of sunlight that lit the aisle beside us. That is what I saw just before Kim fell out onto the floor in a dead faint.

I was petrified, frozen in a self-conscious panic. I didn't know what to do. Was I supposed to stay respectfully kneeling and not make a scene? I ignored her, watched as the ushers rushed to her aide and finally, as her eyes rolled back in her head, moved to follow her as the two men carried her out of the sanctuary.

I have only one other memory of Kim. We are in her house, in her small bedroom where the wallpaper is a sepia memory of rose sprigs and her bed is hard and covered with a cheap chenille spread.

We sit side by side and I realize, too late, that she is staring at me with an expression I do not understand.

Without warning she turns and kisses me, hard, on my lips.

I am once again frozen, incapable of reacting for what seemed like the eternity it took to inhale and run down the steps, out her front door and back to my own bedroom with its bright colors and pink cabbage rose wallpaper. I slam the door behind me, sink into my bed and try to erase the entire memory from my head.

But here it still is.

I remembered her kiss when I heard years later that she'd died riding drunk and high on the back of a Pagan's chopped Harley.

And for a brief second I wondered if it were somehow my fault. If I hadn't run, if I'd somehow avoided that kiss, come up with another way to deal with her advance, rushed to her side when she fainted, known, understood, read her better...would she have made other choices? Would she still be alive?

I hear my father's chuckle in my head..."You are not that powerful," he would say. "You can't make anyone do or feel anything. That is up to them...You don't have that much control, no one does. We all create our own reality."

I know, in my head, that what my father says is true. I am powerless to change anyone but myself. The only demons I can defeat are my own.

I didn't understand Kim then and even if I had, that knowledge alone wouldn't have been enough to save her. One gesture, one word would not be enough to take away her anger and pain any more than it would be enough to push her over the edge into a self-destructive end. I couldn't stop the sea of rage and unhappiness that led her to attack others and eventually destroy her own life.

We can only control our own lives. This seems at once freeing and selfish and I think long and hard about it, wrestle with it until I can flip the concept over and face its other side...

My brother changed his life the day he became Ultraman.

We're All Bozos On This Bus!

Marti and I are at lunch today when she leans forward across the table and says, "Your sister said something to me in New Bern before right before your father died and it's haunted me ever since. I can't get it out of my head."

"What?" What could Becky have said to Marti that made her feel both haunted and unable to ask me about it until now?

"Remember the day your dad was out of it and he thought he was on his sailboat?" I nod. "He was annoyed with you and your sister, which I completely understand," she adds, as if I need the reassurance...which is also odd for Marti- to feel I would need to know Dad's behavior that day was not something she found to be unusual.

It was, of course, unusual. It freaked everyone but me out. Dad was mad. He wanted tools to fix his boat so he could begin his journey...so he could leave us...and we didn't, at first, know what to do. It took me aback for a moment, until I realized where he was in his head.

I work in nursing homes with elderly demented patients. I know delusions and I also know it is far better to join in with them than to try and force the person to see a reality they can no longer accept. So, I simply did as my father asked.

I walked across the room to his dresser, looked back over my shoulder at Dad sitting upright in bed and said, "I'm opening the Lazarette hatch. I'll have the tool you need in a second. Hang on."

Becky and everyone else left the room. My friend, Martha, looked scared. They didn't understand that it was all right. We were playing the same game I'd played with my children years ago when they were toddlers. We were playing Make Believe.

I am remembering this while Marti continues. "Becky and I were out in the hallway and she said, 'Now you know what we grew up with.'" Marti looks at me. "What did she mean by that? Was your father an angry man?"

My first instinct is to laugh. Dad, angry? The most patient man on earth? How could my sister think that was how we grew up- with an angry father? But at almost the same time I am seeing flashes...

I see me at age eight, a streak of motion flashing past, wearing my favorite wine-colored dress, the one with the big sash that Dad always had to tie and re-tie for me, the same dress I was wearing the day I got stuck in the toilet and called and called until he came to pull me out. He had been mad at me then. He was mad the day I ran around and around our massive, dark walnut dining room table, trying to escape the spanking he wanted to deliver.

We called the dining room table "The Bombshelter."

We hid under the table when Dad got mad, when he came home irritated by his day, or by us or by something three little kids couldn't understand but knew was somehow their fault. When you are little, all the ills of the world are your fault, the consequence for your bad behavior.

"No," I say to Marti. "He wasn't an angry guy at all!"

I hear his voice in my head. Pieces of a lost conversation come drifting back into my memory. "I was unhappy," I hear him say. "I wasn't in touch with my feelings, so I was angry a lot. That was before I went into therapy."

"He didn't know himself very well back then," I tell Marti. "He was tired. He worked all the time then had to take care of us, too. His unhappiness leaked out and he would blow up every now and then, but it wasn't often."

I scour my memories, wanting to be completely honest with my very best friend. I can't call up any violent episodes. I can't remember him losing his temper with me after elementary school. Instead I remember him telling me we create our own realities- that nothing can bother us unless we allow it to. I wonder if this was something his therapist told him.

I remember the last time I saw Dad get angry and it makes me smile. We were building my front porch when he realized he'd mis-measured. He gritted his teeth and growled. "Arrrrgh!!!" Then he tossed down the hammer and said, "Damn, damn, damn!"

And I laughed because it was so out of context there on my front stoop. I was a grown woman now. I had children inside the house. He was their grandfather and yet, here he was, having a mini-temper tantrum right outside my open doorway.

I remember him doing this exact same irritated dance whenever he was extremely agitated and vexed and I remember laughing at him as a child, a teenager and now as somebody's mother. It happened rarely and perhaps it made me uncomfortable, maybe this is why I always laughed. I was nervous.

I think hard about this for a long time after lunch and conclude that while I may have been nervous when I was very little, the laughter of my adolescence and adulthood was more about finding him vulnerable to the same emotions and foibles as me. Otherwise, he would've been too Christ-like to remain human.

His mess-ups were my reassurance that he was after all, just a person.

I remember coming home from work one night and finding him at my kitchen stove, preparing spaghetti for dinner. My boys were toddlers, running around and around the center island, in-between his legs, growing louder and louder with every pass.

As I stepped into the room I heard him. "Argggggh!!!"

My mother is sitting on the sofa at the edge of the kitchen, oblivious to the chaos swirling around Dad and his irritation. She does not see that he is worried they will get hurt if they bump up against him and cause the sauce to spill, or burn themselves on the oven door. She is out of it until he yells.

"Dick," she says. "What do you want me to do?" She sounds half-hearted and helpless, truly clueless.

"I don't give a damn what you do, just do something!"

The children are not traumatized by this. They don't stop running but they do make a wider circle. The are smiling, laughing up at him as if he has just made a joke...which, in his own way, he has.

I want to applaud. I want to say, "Well, it's about damned time you got mad!" But of course I don't. Instead I step into the room, scoop up my two frisky children and kiss their wiggly bodies, set down my bag and begin to set the table.

"Need a drink?" I ask, not waiting for the answer and instead pouring two glasses.

Our eyes meet when I hand him his tumbler, his preferred glass of choice. He sighs. "Hel-lo, Nanny Poo!" he says. The frown lines vanish from his face, his shoulders relax and he gives me an apologetic grin- as if he is sorry for not being Superman, for not being able to be both mother and father to me, grandmother and grandfather to my boys and all things to all people, single-handed and invincible...

But of course, in my eyes, he is all of those things and more.

His frustration with himself and the way he runs his universe, his willingness to share his imperfections...they are all the permission I need to be more tolerant of my own mis-steps and tarnished expectations.

Later, when I lose my temper with my own children, when I do the wrong thing, fail yet again to be the Best Mom in the Known World, I remember my role model and find it so much easier to go to my guys and say, "You know what? Mommy was wrong and I am sorry."

I have shared my father's bemused grin with my boys and had the amused glint of validation returned to me in their understanding and delighted gaze. We are sharing the insider joke that travels between the generations of my family....

Arrrrgh!!!! Damn, damn, and double damn! We are not perfect after all!!!

We are only human beings doing the very best we can...and sometimes this just pisses us the hell off!

Cookie Update...

I went to see Cookie in the nursing home today. She was in her room, sitting in her wheelchair, just like always. But unlike even a month ago, Cookie is very different...Her beautiful white, perfectly styled hair is dull and disheveled.

The bruises on her face from falling out of her wheelchair have faded to an ugly greenish-yellow. The bruising on her hands is worse. They tell me she has been wandering, trying to escape, banging into walls, against doors, at windows and this is why her hands are bruised.

Her shoes were off. Cookie always wore shoes. Her clothes were stained and mismatched. Cookie has always been meticulous about her appearance.

She stared up at me, uncomprehending. I spoke to her and she didn't respond, just gave me a slight smile, like maybe I was speaking Japanese and while she knew I was a friendly person, my words meant nothing.

For one long minute I thought she was completely lost to me.

And then she said, "You are my sweetheart. I know that's right."

The nurse came in and had to almost yell in Cookie's ear in order for her to hear. That's when I understood that it's not that Cookie doesn't understand me, she just can't hear me. Her hearing aid is still lost.

"I think the facility is going to pay for a new one," the nurse said.

I should hope so.

And while they're at it...maybe they could sink some money into paying the staff a living wage, employing good people and enough of them to insure that patients like Cookie don't sit in their own urine, hurting and looking homeless or afraid or both.

Clogging for Jesus and Little Elvis...

This is me and Marti indulging in our passion...Clogging.

For the unenlightened, clogging is kind of like southern tap-dancing and it's usually done to bluegrass music, although it can be done to just about anything as long as it's got a lively beat. Clogging's kissing kin to Irish Step Dancing.

I got started on this peculiar hobby when my marriage was taking a turn for the worse and I needed a life. Sad but true, this is the only life I could find that both piqued my interest and didn't cost an arm and a leg to learn.


I was thrilled with the idea but also terrified when I started. I mean, I can't dance. I can't even walk and chew gum unassisted...Still I showed up that first night and that's how I met Kenny.

Kenny could teach a brick to dance. And he did...much to my total amazement. Big Kenny's the guy in the picture below standing on the back right, hands on hips, watching the team dance at my house. I'm there on the front row left. I know it's not a pretty picture...but if I don't share my little life traumas how will I ever let them go?




Sometimes, under the influence of Margaritas, we just bust loose in Marti's kitchen. That's how we can tell if we're still sober or not...If we do a routine without messing up or falling down, we're not drunk yet.


Sometimes we all ride out to Brown's Barn on Saturday night. We love to go out there because the local farmers who host the entertainment are all in their 90s and refer to us as the "pretty clogger girls." Do you know how long it's been since I was called a girl?

Marti and I dance to whatever the band's playing...that is, assuming they're not top-heavy with ballad singers like Little Elvis:


Little Elvis wears a black, combed yarn wig, a white denim jumpsuit studded with huge fake jewels, a faux-leather, rhinestone-encrusted wrestling championship belt he found at Goodwill and a white cape lined in red satin.

He believes he is Elvis. "I ain't never worked a day in my life," he tells me proudly. "If I need more money than music's bringin' in, I just go pick up cans along Highway 29."

He arrives with his wife, Baby. Baby goes 5'7" and 250lbs, all packed into size 10 red polyester stretch pants. One day she'll have enough in cans to buy teeth, but for now she's gummin' it. Still, Baby always has a smile for a stranger, along with a Little Elvis trading card.

One night, when Pretty Amy the Clogger came out to the Barn with us, Elvis gave the three of us big rhinestone rings. Then, perhaps feeling a tad guilty, he walked up on stage and dedicated "Love Me Tender" to "The love of my life...Baby..." He pointed her out as if there was anyone who didn't know her by this time and she smiled back at him with a delighted, cockeyed grin.

It's sweet to find true love still alive and flourishing.

Of course, I've had my own magic moments out at the Barn.

One night a guy I hardly ever get to see, Harvey from England, came with us. Harvey is a small, wiry fellow with huge, soulful eyes. On this particular evening he'd been up two days straight studying for finals at the School of the Arts. He was ready for a good time, remembered my tales of the barn in the middle of nowhere and decided this was the night to take me up on my promise to show it to him.

He was itching for a party.

And can you believe Harvey had never even heard of Wild Turkey?

He took the bottle, stared at it curiously, then poured himself about 3 inches worth. Before we could warn him, prepare him, caution him or at least slow him down, Harvey drank it-without pause or hesitation.

Of course, he about choked to death.

"What the hell was that?" he asked.

We told him and then found out he hadn't eaten in two days either. Harvey is younger than us. He lacks survival seasoning.

Marti and I have had a few shots, but not on empty stomachs. So when our designated driver, Marti's husband, drove us out to the barn, we felt no pain. Harvey seemed none the worse for his half-glass of straight bourbon and in fact, seemed almost sober. He was talking about doing a documentary on the barn. He was definitely excited about soaking up southern culture.

This seemed like a harmless, worthwhile thing to do...take Harvey to see The Barn.

I forget sometimes that Harvey's an actor. He's just blends in with his surroundings and I don't realize he's up to anything until it's too late.

After I'd danced with Marti awhile, I thought maybe I'd better go check on him. I didn't want him to think we'd just brought him and dumped him.

I shouldn't have worried. I find him standing in the center of a circle of old men, jabbering away. When he spots me, he pulls me close and begins introducing me as his sister. He says we used to sing together and would just love the opportunity to sing with the band. He says all of this without one trace of his British accent. In fact, he sounds every bit as southern and country as any of the folks standing around him.

I give Harvey the eye, the same eye I give the kids when I want them to know I'm going to kill them if they don't knock off whatever it is they're doing. "Now, Harvey," I say. "You know we cain't do nuthin' like that!" I say this in my very best southern accent. "I ain't sung a lick since Daddy died. I just cain't bring myself to...After all, he died in the pulpit. Singing the old songs just makes me relive that awful day."

Harvey gives me an admiring glance. I'm in too deep to turn back now.

Harvey is one with his redneck entourage. They hang together like long lost brothers. Harvey and his fan club insist and before I realize what we're doing, he's pushed me into a shed and we're rehearsing, well, I'm rehearing...Harvey's faking it.

Ten minutes later I find myself marching out onto the stage with my "brother," past the bass player who is a dead ringer for Einstein. The stage lights half-blind me but not enough to blot out the shocked, delighted expression on the faces of my friends, Marti, Mertis and Gary.

I find that I am now 100% sober. I do not think this is necessarily a good thing to have happen when I am about to pretend I'm one half of a hymn singing brother and sister act.

But the band begins the intro and there's no turning back. I open my mouth and begin to sing "Where Would I Go But To The Lord."

Harvey tries to sidle away from the mike but I grab him, clutching him to my side in an absolute death grip. "You're gonna sing, you little bastard," I hiss between verses. "And you're gonna like it!"

Harvey lip-syncs.

This does not work well if you're singing a two-part harmony, but whatever. I'm stuck. Harvey looks at me with huge, puppy-dog eyes and I find myself forgiving him instantly. It doesn't matter that I am totally humiliating myself...not that I was that bad...I'm just not a duo.

The song ends and Harvey soaks up the applause. I escape off stage, behind the barn and collapse laughing against its rough brown wall. I would never have done something like this if it hadn't been for Harvey. I would never have stepped that far outside my conventional and insecure self without Harvey nudging me on.

Harvey has somehow taken our everyday fun and cranked it up a few notches. And I am not the only one who feels this way...

The old guys still ask for him every time I show up. I tell them he's in California and won't be back for a long, long time. I let a wistful expression cross my face as I slowly walk down the line, shaking their hands and kissing their grizzled cheeks on my way up onto the dance floor.

I smile to myself..."Yeah, I still miss my brother but my aim is getting better!"

Paybacks are a bitch. I'll run into him on his turf sometime and when I do, there's no telling who I'll be...

The Merry Gamesters

The Gamesters



The Team- Back in the Day

Losing and Winning

When I separated from my now ex-husband, my biggest fear was that I'd lose my boys-that they'd quickly see the grass was greener on his side and leave me for the better pastures. After all, the ex'd moved into a Disneyland-style apartment complex and he made much more money than I did. It was all I could see- the glitter and the money.

Friends said, "Those boys love you! They won't leave you!"

But what match is my love to the allure of new toys and a Par 3 golf course? They were only little boys...kids like stuff.

I couldn't see it then.

All the reassurance in the world wouldn't convince me.

When a friend brought over a board game and announced we were all going to play, I felt like I was slowly being suffocated. A board game up against Disneyworld? "Surely you jest," I told him. "It'll never work."

The game was Heroquest, a precursor to Dungeons and Dragons. Each of us was assigned a role. I was the Elf. The oldest boy was the Wizard (he likes control.) And the youngest was the Barbarian as well as the Dwarf. Scott played the role of Zargon, our enemy, the Evil Sorcerer and controller of the game.

The four of us were to do battle with the evil forces of Zargon in order to save the empire. We had to travel past goblins, orcs and warriors on our way to finding a hidden relic needed for the empire's salvation...or something like that. At every step, Zargon would visit various challenges upon us.

The two Unnamed Ones and I lost the first game within eight moves.

Scott smiled, every bit Zargon. "I told you, you have to learn to function as a team."

In our competitive and customary thirst for individual victory, we'd set ourselves up for defeat by not working together.

That Scott was a pretty bright fellow.

That day we became the team we are now, a loving, unstoppable force. It was the beginning of a beautiful love affair...

Not with Scott...with boardgames and not just any boardgames, either, we wanted the new, the unusual, the un-boring...In short, anything other than Monopoly or Scrabble.

It didn't cost a lot of money. It didn't involve air fare or golf clubs or swimming pool memberships...but it did involve time and in that time we laughed and deepened our respect for and understanding of each other.

Okay. Not completely. You can't change genetics. We are totally competitive and, as you probably know, live to whoop up on each other.

One day a few years ago the ex arrived by to pick up the boys while they were in the midst of a Scrabble game with my dad. I was in the kitchen but I could hear everything.

"Here, bud," he said to the youngest, "I see a word in your letters. Let me see those tiles."

"No!" The Youngest Unnamed cried. "I know what I'm doing!"

"Come on, bud, give me your pieces. Let me show you."

He insisted. He took the tiles out of the child's hand, placed them on the board and then turned back to the Youngest Unnamed, clearly expecting congratulations and gratitude. But the Youngest was so angry, he cried and left the room.

I never worried again about losing my kids.

But I did worry about him losing them. When he called a few months after the Scrabble fiasco to ask "Why won't the boys ever talk to me?" I tried to help the man out.

"Because you don't listen to them. Because when they try to tell you how they feel, you say 'Now, Bud, you don't really mean that!' and just roll over them with the way you want them to feel. You compete with them and have to win. You didn't like it when your mom did that to you. Try not doing those things to them."

Six years later he is still relating to the boys in the same way and expecting different results. It is sad to watch because the kids are almost grown and he is losing them.

This is hard for me to watch. My dad was the opposite of their father and I am so much richer for the gift of his respect.

My ex is missing out on such an opportunity because he hasn't learned that winning and being in control isn't at all what love is about...it's about mutual respect and teamwork.





Boardgames We Love or Have Loved...

Tribond
Wiz Dumb
Wise and Otherwise
Apples to Apples
Man Bites Dog

Blowing Smoke and Leaves

You will not catch me outside blowing leaves off the grass. No way.

If I were going to blow leaves, I certainly wouldn't do it while there were still leaves on the trees. That, I think, is pointless.

My friend, Mertis, begs to differ. She spent a lovely fall afternoon this weekend carefully blowing all the leaves off her grass.

For about 2 whole minutes the lawn was once again green. Then a gust of wind hit her big maple tree and now the lawn is yellow.

Now, she says, she has to do it all over again.

I ask her why she doesn't just let them stay there for awhile.

Mertis shakes her head. "Can't. It'll kill the grass."

Okay, I don't want to be stupid here, but isn't winter going to do that anyway?

Mertis looks at me like I'm stupid- which I may be but blowing leaves seems about as pointless as say...dusting my attic...or dusting underneath stuff that no one can see under...or maybe even dusting areas where no one's really going anytime soon...like the dining room.

We go in the dining room, what, three or four times a year? Why dust in there unless someone's coming over you don't know all that well and you're afraid they'll ask you to show them the chicken feeder you had made into a chandelier because no one else had one like it and you wanted to be the first...

Blowing leaves is as pointless as, oh, I don't know...balancing my checkbook.

Is the bank ever wrong? And if they are, is it ever enough to really make a difference? Like, has anyone ever gotten rich off a bank mistake? Have they ever gone to the Carribean for a vacation courtesy of bank error? I don't think so.

Besides, it's not like I don't know how little money I have in there. Why reconcile my checkbook with the statement? Isn't that like closing the barn door after you've given someone a taste of the cow's milk? I mean, balancing my checkbook will only make me feel worse about my miserable fiscal state. It could affect my self-esteem and do enough psychological damage to impact my motivation.

If I'm not motivated, how will I ever earn enough money to worry about balancing my checkbook?

There are so many more productive things I could be doing with my time...Like writing a blog every day for a month because I thought it seemed like a good idea. I told myself it would get me back into the habit of writing every day.

It has gotten me back into the habit, all right...the habit of being neurotically obsessed with what I'm going to write about!

Still, talking into cyberspace beats blowing leaves in the cold any day!

Flea Sisters to the Rescue!

There we are, my sister Flea and me. She looks like an earthy, Italian actress and I look like a runaway from the Grace Kelly School of Making Nice.

She is two years younger than me and throughout our lives we have struggled with sibling rivalry and the usual assortment of crap that comes with every dysfunctional family. (As if there were any "normal" families.)

As adults we have grown closer. In fact, I even made the two of us main characters in Sophie's Last Stand, a novel I set in New Bern. I call her Darlene in the book, make her a little bit goofier than she really is but kept her insight and wisdom true to life.

I only thought we were close a year ago.

That was when we found out Dad had Pulmonary Fibrosis and would probably die within two years. Sibling rivalry and stale family baggage is no match for death- especially when the person dying was our beloved father, the hero of our lives.

During the last few months of our journey with Dad, the hospice nurse coined the nickname we still use. We are The Flea Sisters- You can swat at us, cuss us and scratch all you want but you just can't get rid of us. We hung in with him right up until the end of the ride and then...we were lost.

I waited until I'd been back home almost two weeks before I called her for the first time since the funeral. That's when she told me that our adrenaline rush of coping skills was gone now and we were entering into hard grief. That's why I'd been bursting into tears at odd moments, picking fights, feeling put-upon and generally losing my mind.

Just talking to my sister made me feel better. We were sharing the same load again. We were Fleas and we could take anything...even Dad's death.

Of course, I didn't call back for another two weeks, almost three. I'm just so damned phone-avoidant. Actually, I didn't want to talk about it. Talking about it is somehow different than writing about it...Talking is less predictable. You never know where you'll wind up when you're in a conversation. You might talk about things that unexpectedly make you cry.

But my eternally wise friend, Kim, was on to me...

"Your sister and you have a lot of work to do with the new definition of your relationship. Don't let your sense of loss and distance manifest into something you cannot repair. It is hard to redefine what you are when you are in the midst of change, but you need to address it (change) and set the rules up right from the start. What the hell am I talking about? Well, I'm saying that you already know you have the propensity to go long stretches without contact. It's likely your sister has that too. If you don't set the paramaters for conversational stretches now, it can become all too easy to lose each other, and that would be such a shame. Grief this profound can turn a heart hard by nature, because hardening is the easiest way to block pain. You two need to wallow in it together and keep that softness between you. I'm no authority, but I've seen it happen too many times."

I promised Kim I wouldn't let this happen to us Fleas and I would report in when I reached her. I am so glad I called.

Of course, she was at work and I had to leave a message. When she called me back I was writing the blog about the Oldest Unnamed One turning 18, so I was already blubbering. She said, "I can make it through the week, but I'm a basket case on the weekends. And last weekend Mom rode me about making copies of the funeral CDs."

"Did you listen to it?" I asked...another "Is this normal?" check-in. I made a copy of the CD and I so far, haven't been able to even entertain the idea of listening to it.

"What, are you kidding? No! I just heard the organ start up for the opening hymn and I was crying. I'm not gonna listen to it, not now."

Then she said, "I feel him around me...At least I think I do. I mean, I see him acting in my life and I talk to him all the time." She paused for a second and I wondered if she was crying. "I have to believe he's there," she said softly. "I couldn't take the alternative. He can't just be gone."

I feel my throat tighten up and my eyes are burning. Where are you, Dad? I know the answer is supposed to be "I'm everywhere," but I don't feel it. Maybe it's just that his absence is so large in my life. Maybe I can't feel the shadow of him. Maybe the bleed-through from the other side isn't enough to even hit the bottom of the well that is my missing him.

I tell her of course he's there. But then I tell her my truth, that I can't feel him very well. And we both deny that he isn't there. "Even if he's still looking around," I say. "He's checking in now and then. He'll be back."

But I am not doing so well at believing this.

So I talk about Thanksgiving. I am dreading Thanksgiving but I don't tell her. Instead I invite her to come up for Thanksgiving- after she's had dinner with Mom. "You could spend the weekend," I add.

The relief in her voice is palpable. "Oh, really? Oh, Flea, that would be great! I didn't know what I was gonna do!"

She says she will farm out "Horrible Hanna," (her new nickname for her daughter A.K.A The Black Angel of Death (See Sept. 21st blog entry) to her father for the weekend and really get away from everything.

We will pile up on my couch with a thousand happily-ever-after movies like "Little Miss Sunshine." I will even endure "The Lake House" because she says I really need to see it.

We will have a Slug Fest- we will lie around like slugs not feeling pressured to go out and shop with the masses because, hell, we are flat broke these days. We won't have to apologize for it, either, or explain how we feel. We can just be.

We will wear matching T-shirts I intend to get for us. "Today's not your day and tomorrow's not looking so good either!" I'm going to Costco to see if they still have those electric blanket-like throws so we can have matching heating pads and feel even more cozy in our Slugdom.

We will be doing exactly what Dad would want us to do. We will be starting a new tradition and honoring the old ones.

But best of all, we will be thick as fleas.

Parenting Mistakes: A How-To Guide

Warning! Promise Me You Will Not Do This!

There will come a time in your parenting life when, I promise you, you will want to show your children that you, too, were once young.

This moment will come shortly after they have rolled their eyes when you try to make some comment about something they are about to do, or have done, that you, too, have done. They will look at you with pity and you will be overcome with the need to show them just how “cool” you once were.

It has happened to me and I do not want you ever to experience the utter humiliation I was forced to endure at the hands of my offspring.

See the pictures? Are they not just sweet? A showcase of young love heading off to the prom. Me, a ninth grader, going with the total coolest, best-looking guy in the senior class- the guy who was sooo cool he even started Earth Day at our high school. He was, to use an only slightly dated term, the total shit.
So I searched and finally found the old pictures and brought them to the dinner table one night. I am ashamed to have to tell you this, but if I can spare one human being the embarrassment and pain, well, it’s worth it.

“See?” I said proudly, spreading the pictures out across the table. “I went to the prom…and with the most handsome boy in the senior class!”

Kiss of freaking death.

“What kind of car is that?” The Younger Unnamed One asks.

“A Corvair. Martin called it Frodo and it had a guest book you signed…”

“Frodo!” They snicker, completely forgetting how into the Lord of the Rings they were only two years ago.

“What is that guy wearing? A white tux jacket? He looks like a band leader or something!”

“Hey, that white jacket was very cool,” I protest but they have moved on.

“Hey, hey look at this!” The Older Unnamed One cries. “Look! The guy is like smiling the same exact smile in every picture! His face like never moves! Dude, that is strange!”

I grab a picture, examine it and then pull a second one over, and a third. How did I never notice this?

My sons are rolling around on the floor now, sobbing they’re laughing so hard. “Look, look, look!” They scream, over and over. “The loser isn’t even real! Mom, what were you thinking?! He’s an alien!!”

I was thinking I was cool back then, back in “The Day.” I was thinking we could connect and relate on an intergenerational level. I was thinking I had been dating the hippest, coolest guy in the school. That’s what I was thinking…But never mind…

I gather up my pictures, take another peek at the smile that is the same in every, single picture, the expression that is always the same from frame to frame to frame and think why didn’t I ever notice this?

Later I stand in front of the mirror and smile at myself. I walk away, come back and grin again. I do this several times thinking, it’s my smile. Don’t you always smile the same way? Yes, by now alcohol is involved…but not enough to make me feel young and cool again.

I study the pictures and see that while my smile is the same, the rest of my face moves…my eyebrows lift, I stick out my tongue, I appear to be embarrassed…but his face does not change.

I go up into the attic later and pull out huge tubs of photographs- the ones I promised I’d put into albums before I forgot which baby is which and when each shot was taken. I search and search for signs of my former “coolness,” and realize most of my “cool” moments were not witnessed by a camera for very good reason…but of course, I can never tell Them that…

So I am un-cool and I must accept my role. After all, what teenager wants to compete with his mom for the title of coolest? (I know, it’s called something else by now, but you know what I mean!)

The worst part of this is…I don’t stop showing them pictures. I have enough photographs to entertain them every night at dinnertime for months, but I don’t do this. Instead, I wait until they bring girls over and then I whip out a few treasured pictures from Their childhood.

It is a low blow, I know, but in the jungle that is parenting there are no rules, only survivors.

Bird- Then and Now

Then












Now

Flying Into His Future

Tomorrow, November 3, 2006, at 11:35 p.m. my Oldest One Who Must Remain Unnamed will turn 18.

It is hard for me to believe I have kept track of anything for 18 years, let alone a child, but somehow I have and he is wonderful.

I remember thinking shortly after he was born and I was totally postpartum emotional, that I could not bear to think of letting this precious bundle go in 18 years, that it would break my heart.

I even remember saying "My life will be over. There will be nothing left once he's gone."

Oh. My. God. Was I ever that melodramatic?

Well, I am also the same woman who, upon returning from the hospital with my bundle of unnamed joy, watched E.T for the first time and sobbed because I thought my baby looked just like poor, lost E.T!

Still, I knew I loved this boy way too much to ever cut him loose, yet I knew I would...I knew I must. It is what a good mother does, she gives her child wings and one day watches him soar away.

Tonight he is with his beloved at a Guns N Roses concert. And if he is flying high on anything other than the joy of being 18 and in love I will kick his 18 year old ass...But I digress and he won't, fly high that is, not digress.

This child-rearing stuff...the books, the magazines, the experts, the current studies...they're all crap when it comes to getting down into the trenches and actually raising this baby. Also, despite my best attempts and careful monitoring- he has managed to turn out perfectly fine and wonderful all by himself. He is his own self and I realize I have merely been the inn keeper these past 18 years.

I'm the one who taught him to look both ways before he crossed the street and other useful stuff you need to know to stay alive- but developing into the wonderful man he is, well, he pretty much did that all on his own.

But he will always be my baby.

I suppose tomorrow I will have to call him "a man" or "an adult male," but I won't do this around him. This is the same boy/man who, when he turned five, cried as if his heart would break, all because I said, "You're a big boy now!"

"I don't want to be a big boy!" he sobbed. "I still want to be your little boy!"

I suppose he thought that if he were a Big Boy he'd have to leave home or become someone he wasn't ready to be.

I remember that night holding him while he cried in his red bunk bed in his Mickey Mouse bedroom, rocking him and soothing him. Telling him over and over again..."You will always be my little boy. No matter how old you are, you will always be my little boy."

So tomorrow when he wakes up, bleary-eyed and staggers out of his room grumpy because he has school, I won't call him a man.

And when he heads off to school and calls back over his shoulder, "Love you, Mama!" I won't say it then either.

I will keep this knowledge to myself and leave it unspoken between us because after all, he doesn't need a label to know who and what he is...and I am not sure which one of us would be the one crying over the pronouncement. Because if he is a man, he will soon be leaving to build his own nest and start his own world- a world I can only hope to orbit around now and then, when invited.

I will not rush him into becoming the Big Boy. I will not shove him out of the nest before he is ready to take wing...Only then will I watch him soar away and whisper to myself, "There goes my baby, my big boy...the man I helped learn to fly.

Claiming My Personal Style

Okay, pour yourself a cup of coffee, Sheria, it's time to talk style. (And by the way, thanks for your kind words. I totally admire what you're doing with your life!)

Dad was right. When I asked him what he did in his 50s he said, "I quit shaking."

Right on, Dad!

Well, I'm still shaking in lots of ways. I'm neurotic about lots of things...like making or returning phone calls. It's just some internal glitch. I know I should call. I want to call. But this mule-like part of me digs in its heels and refuses. I hate to make phone calls. The shrink in me says, "Honey, it's fear of rejection. You are not secure enough in yourself to think the person on the other end will want to talk to you." Pitiful, if true. I should be past that by now. And Kim
one of the wisest and funniest bloggers in the known universe, is right...I do tend to let time pass between phone calls to the important people in my life because, well, because I don't know why! But, to quote Chuckie on Rugrats, "As God is my Witless," I will call the Flea sister today and report back here to you guys....Maybe that'll get me off my ass!

But I digress...I am trying to say that now I'm 51, I have become comfortable with my style...at least my clothing style.

Every year, every freakin' season, "They" come out with the new, must have, look for the season. For years I kind of felt bad about not exactly living my fashion life to the letter, but still I remained a bit of a maverick. I would wear some of the stuff They said I should, but the rebel always branches off.

Today I am announcing my true fashion sources. I am here to admit where I shop and how I come up with my "Look." And the reason I'm giving it all up and claiming my source is the recent issue of Style or People or Vogue or whatever magazine which claims we must now move from hip-hugging, low-cut jeans to skinny-legged, straight jeans.

Give me a freakin' break!

Do you know how hard it was to shove my pear shaped ass into low cut, hip-huggers? Do you know how bad that looked? Do you know how hard it is to stoop down and retrieve a can of peas from the bottom of the pantry without your shirt riding up, your pants riding halfway down your ample ass, exposing your lime green thong panties and a generous portion of plumber's crack?

Damn! It meant I had to buy all new shirts and low cut thongs and STILL sometimes I would hear the unsuppressed titters of the Unnamed One and his girlfriend...the signal that once again, I was overly exposed.

This is not good for my reputation as a formidable mother, let alone a sexy, red-hot mama.

I forced myself into those jeans after seeing a show called "The 10 Things Not To Wear" and realizing I wore at least 4 of those items, including Mommy jeans and overalls.

Damn! They were comfortable...but I gave in to vanity and insecurity.

However, I draw the line at skinny jeans. I'm going right back to what I like, to my own funky little out-there style. Aging hippy meets....hell, fill in the blank, it varies from day to day. And even on my meager budget I can afford this trendy, chic style.

I like to call it Goodwill-Closet of Mertis Rejects.

It works for me.

Face it, whatever was in style will be back in style soon. That is why God made Goodwill. I mean, I have a Dana Buchman, cashmere jacket and I only paid $4.75 for it. The skinny jeans are there along with the broomstick skirts we wore last year and the western wear look and the hip-hugging bootcut jeans. It's all there and it's cheap. And you can buy stuff that needs to be dry cleaned because when it's time to dry clean it, you just give it back to Goodwill.

And when that fails, there's Closet of Mertis Rejects.

My friend (in the interest of Unnaming People my friend has been given the following alias) Mertis, is a quasi-recreational/therapeutic shopper with a low tolerance for the frustration of actually trying stuff on or returning it if it doesn't work. She gets tired of stuff. She changes her mind about stuff. Thank God!

She is like most of us only she is my size, so I hang around when she's cleaning out her closet and Voila! I'm back In again!

Mertis is providing a great service to humanity. She is donating to a worthy cause AND she is still shopping. Mertis does not confine her love of kindness to only me- if said item doesn't work for me, Marti steps in to try it on, and if not her, then another friend benefits.

It is charitable recycling at it's best and we are so totally grateful.

It has made it possible for me to become the fashion maven I am today...and I'm good with it. After all, fashion is temporary but friendship is forever.

I Miss My Mind

How has it come to this?

Today I couldn't find the keys to my office. It's private practice day. I had patients lined up and scheduled on the hour throughout the day...And I couldn't find my keys anywhere.

It is beyond walking from the bedroom to the laundry room and forgetting why I wanted to go the laundry room in the first place (paper towels, which for some unknown reason I then turned around and grabbed from under the kitchen sink.)

I thought I was doing better with this losing-my-mind stuff. I put my keys in the same dish in the front hallway (not there.) I put my purse in my office (depending on whether it's the brown or the black one. Whichever one's not in use is allegedly in my office closet but then, so is every other valuable piece of paper, photograph and piece of equipment I own but don't use...like the fax machine I pull out from beneath all the photographs only on occasions when I MUST send a fax before a nursing home day.)

The keys to the office stay in my purse or my car. Period. End of story. So where the hell were they? I know, the last damn place you look, that's why they call it "the last place I looked!" Why would you keep looking after you found the lost item? Unless of course you're me and you forgot what it was you were originally searching for.

I had to send my 8 o'clock patient home, run back to the house and try to find the spare keys. There are six keys to get into my office, but I make do with three....It's a long story so just trust I can do it with three.

I found two. Luckily when I returned just before 9 someone was already in the building, so my two keys worked fine. (Until this afternoon when I realized they did not work fine after all, I'd just left my office unlocked for five days!)

I dash off at 11 to let the dogs out and meet Marti for lunch and this time I leave my glasses in the office! Be afraid. I am driving without glasses and in a hurry and I REALLY need to wear my glasses. I'm just so used to wearing one contact lens that I forgot and drove off blind. (I wear one contact lens because then I can see, kind of, things in the distance and still read small print.)

I'm only wearing glasses today because yesterday I tried to multi-task too early in the day and without enough coffee. I tried to clean the shower stall while also cleaning my body. A bit of Soft Scrub with Bleach somehow missed the tiles and flew into my eye.

I hate when that happens.

I think maybe I have PMS. PMS makes me nuts like this but I'm not real regular, so who knows?

I tell all this to Marti as soon as we're seated.

She shakes her head. "That's not it," she says. "We're just stressed."

The waiter is having a worse day than I am. He has to try four times to bring me my lunch...but then it was my lunch and not Marti's so maybe losing my mind is contagious.

Whatever.

My one o'clock has wonderful tie-dyed socks and I covet them.

At two o'clock I have a free hour. I run home, throw a pork loin roast into an oven bag, coat it with cranberry jelly and Thai chili sauce, set the oven to slow cook and dash back to the office for the next session.

My three o'clock isn't quite as depressed as last week. He looks more animated. He talks without me having to drag the words out of him and I am relieved to see him better.

My four o'clock is a couple.
I marvel at them. They are so young and I am awed by their ability to keep their marriage going for ten years without enough money, with her working three jobs, 7 days a week, and both of them coming from dysfunctional families of origin. They are back on track after a tense time and it is time to send them back out into the world.

I say, "Think of me like a shovel. You don't carry a shovel around everywhere you go, do you? No, you keep it out in the shed until you need it. When you need me, I'll be here."

I will miss them.

My five o'clock I am seeing for the second time. She had to cancel our last session. I picture her in my head, a middle-aged woman with a deeply lined face. I am shocked to see a woman who looks a good fifteen years younger walk in and sit down on the overstuffed, white loveseat.

She is working, going back to school, caring for a brother's family, and driving to Duke hospital three or four nights a week to be with her mother who she thinks is getting better maybe, but I know is dying.

She says, "My mom died three days after our first session. Is it bad for me to feel relieved and lost at the same time? I mean, I miss her but for some reason I feel as if a burden has been lifted from my shoulders."

I smile at her. "That is absolutely normal," I say. "The journey is different for everyone and you will have lots of ups and downs. You will get better at life without her, but you will never forget her. You will never be the same person you were before she died." And then I asked, "Do you find yourself seeing more of your mother in your brothers and sisters, in yourself, since she passed?"

The woman's eyes widened. "Yes!"

I nod. The journey is different, true but it is also the same- grief is a worn pathway we all will travel at some point in our lives.

My five o'clock leaves and I check my cell. Two missed calls and a text from one of Those Who Shall Remain Unnamed- The Youngest Unnamed One. "Where are you?! I need $30 for judo and you have to sign some forms!"

I text back "I'm on my way. B hm n 5."

I drive, listening mindlessly to the radio, pull up in the driveway, step out of the car, and just like that three words jump into my head. "Brown leather jacket."

The keys are in my brown leather jacket. I know this suddenly, without question or hesitation. They are in the jacket I have only worn only one time this year, five days ago during a cold snap.

I come through the door, slip the car keys into their dish, walk to the coat rack and slip my hand deep inside the pocket.

I wrap my hand around the six keys and four supermarket "VIP" tags attached to a plain silver keyring.

And I am even wearing my glasses.

It has been a good day after all.

Unconditional Love in the Time of Teenaged Angst

Once upon a time, a thousand years ago, that was me. I lived above a print shop in a small town and went to college six blocks away, down the hill, past the New Haven Pizzeria and the laundromat where I once watched a crazy man with a tin foil triangle on his head talk to his mother on the pay phone, trying to convince her he needed money and couldn't risk coming home because the aliens were everywhere and nowhere was safe.

I lived in this two story apartment with three other girls and my dog, Wombat, or as I like to refer to him: The Great And Mighty, All Powerful Wombat...The dog who set the standards for all other canines and who, still today, was a dog's dog and a swell being if ever there was one.

In fact, when Dad wasn't able to talk, just a day or so before he died, Sister Flea and I got him to smile when we told him Wombat would be at the gates of Heaven to welcome him.

I loved Wombat, but he was Dad's best companion when we kids were older and Dad was still driving all over suburban Philadelphia, visiting shut-ins and taking communion to old people. Dad would swoop into my apartment, whether I was home or not, spring The Great And Mighty, and off they'd go in Dad's tin can of a Ford Fiesta, or Vega, or Datsun B210.

Wombat was part-terrier, part-schnauzer, with only a nub of a tail- but when he saw Dad, he'd wag that stump so hard it would knock him over. Wombat was happy a lot, so most of the time it seemed Wombat walked like a crab, sideways, because he was always wagging that nub.

I suppose that's why he and Dad got on so well...but then, everyone got along with Dad.

All my roommates adored Dad and it was a mutual thing. JackOHarps is right when he says Dad was "open and honest and funny as hell!" We girls made over him like he was the coolest guy in the universe, even then, when we were still teenagers. In fact, even in high school my friends wanted to see Dad...when things were bad at home, or they'd done bad acid and needed him to talk them down, or when they just wanted to sort out how they felt about God or life or whatever. They sought him out because he never tried to tell them what to believe or how to be. He never condemned them or tried to control the outcome of their lives.

It's that kind of unconditional respect for another's ability to be okay and sort things out in the end that I miss in my life right now. He never made me feel small for not knowing something. He was too secure in himself to need to make anyone else feel small with his emotional and intellectual superiority. He didn't talk about other people unkindly. He always tried to see the world from the other person's perspective. If he felt you weren't quite "getting it" he would work to understand why you thought the way you did. If he truly felt what you were feeling then he could better offer you a platter of wiser alternatives...but if you chose to stay with your original stance, he never treated you as if you had failed to grow.

When Dad visited the Rubber Rose Ranch 2 we never had to clean up, put away, or be anything other than who we were.

So we decorated the place with antiques from one roommate's attic and barn, wore antique ballgowns to our parties, served champagne and home-made egg rolls, always had live music at our gatherings and sometimes Dad was there, hanging out in a corner, listening to us grow up.

Sometimes it would make me mad that Dad never took my side when a boyfriend broke my heart. I wanted him to be like TV dads and threaten to kill the poor kid. But my father never would. He would listen to me rant, let me run out of steam, and then, just as with every other issue, serve up a healthy dish of compassion and understanding for us both.

I can't find that kind of acceptance and understanding now and I don't really expect to. I can't be that perfect with my friends and family either-I am too insecure. But knowing how it felt to be loved like my father loved me makes me want to strive to be half the person he was.

I know I'll never be on a par with Dad. Really. And that's totally okay. But I would like to be more like him because I know what it feels like to be on the receiving end of that freely-given respect and compassion.

Being so loved by my father makes me want to be a better person.

I think that's a pretty wonderful legacy for a father to leave his daughter.

How Are You...Here in this No-Man's Land?

It has finally happened.

Today Cookie didn't know who I was.

Last week I thought maybe she was having trouble, but today I knew for sure. She rolled up to the entrance of the Social Services office where I was getting reports on my patients and gave me a blank stare.

"I can't go through here," she said. Her voice was dull, her expression flat.

I smiled at her, said her name, gave her cues, did anything and everything I could think of to bring her back, but it was no use. We rolled down to her room and I pointed to the witch on her door, the witch her daughter hangs up every year. Cookie didn't even respond to her daughter's name.

I crossed the threshold and sat down on the end of her bed with Cookie right behind me. She looked around and said, "Now that is unusual!" She was pointing to a second bedside stand and she was right, it was unusual.

"That doesn't belong in here, I said."

Cookie gave me a look like "Tell me about it!" and moved on.

"I'll tell you," she said. "I'm not going to do that again. Not with those women. Those..."

She was wearing maroon knee socks with a clashing red skirt and top. Mary would never have allowed her to look like this, but Mary quit and now a young girl with no common sense is her new aide. She doesn't seem to care how Cookie looks. She bathed and dressed. Enough.

I point to the wall of pictures that is Cookie's link to her family. "Do you know who they are?" I ask, hoping.

Cookie stares a hole through me. "Yeah. I'm not going to do that again!"

But I hope in my heart of hearts that she does because it will mean she's come back to herself. This is how it's going to be from here on out. Cookie may appear in fragments, for moments or hours or days. She may never come back. Or she might be right as rain on Thursday when I see her next. They'll tell me she has a UTI (urinary tract infection. Old people get them a lot and it frequently makes them psychotic.) They'll say she's on an antibiotic and coming around.

And that's just not going to happen.

Sometimes I think of the rooms full of people I've lost. I remember their names, their smiles, their tears. When I walk into a room where one of my people has died and find someone new in their bed, it always sets me back. I have to catch my breath before I take their hand in mine and say, "Hi, I'm Nancy. How are you?"

How are you here in this cinderblock-walled institution where people come to die? How are you, now that you know you'll never ever go home again? How are you now that all you have left to hold onto are your memories and even those are soon going to leave you? How the hell are you?

I Miss Him Swell, I Do

A month is not a long time to miss someone. Not really. There were times when I went a month without calling Dad or visiting. These times came after we moved to Greensboro and left him and Mom in Atlanta. That was the beginning of our separation after day upon day of hanging out, raising my babies.

All my life I wanted time with Dad. The three of us kids would be forced to steal what minutes we could with him- often by accompanying him on his various errands- visits to shut-ins, communion to parishioners in the hospital, trips to the grocery store or hardware store. We were content to sit alone in the car for hours, waiting, just to spend a few precious moments talking with him on the ride to or from his destination.

When he retired and they moved south to be closer to my young family, I suddenly had everything I'd ever wished for from him. Dad immersed himself in our lives, pitching in to help me with the kids while my then husband was working, puttering around my house fixing things or constructing monuments...

One time he arrived to find me busily nailing twigs together in the backyard. He watched for a few minutes then said, "What are you doing?" I said, "Building a trellis." He shook his head. "I don't think that's gonna hold up," he said. "Want some help?" The result was a lattice arbor, covered in four varieties of clematis with an attached swing. The neighborhood called it The Monument because they all knew it was Dad's way of saying he loved us.



On another occasion I wanted to build a fountain I'd seen in a magazine. It was made out of Terra Cotta pots and we had to drive almost an hour away to find all the materials needed to build the damned thing. My memory of that trip was not of the end result. What I remember is that I was standing a good fifty feet away from Dad and the boys, who at the time were like 2 and 4, when I turned around to hold up a piece of black tubing. The three of them were standing by a huge fountain, making anything more than gesture and sign language impossible.

As I held up the pipe and Dad squinted to inspect it from all those yards away, he forgot the two little boys behind him. As I watched they both walked to the edge of the huge pool that framed the fountain, clasped their hands behind their backs and slowly bent forward to dunk their heads in the water. They looked like the little bird toys that perch on the edge of a glass and with a tiny shove it dives down into the water.

By the time Dad caught on and I'd reached them, the boys were soaked and blissfully proud of themselves. What could we do but laugh?

When John got laid off and we had to move to Greensboro it was the end of an idyllic era. Gone was the house on Lake Lanier, the nights out on the sailboat, the afternoons spent floating in the cove on rafts, the dinners and parties. It was all over.

Until they moved once again to the water, this time four hours away in New Bern. It wasn't an every day existence but Dad was so obviously overjoyed to see us we couldn't bear to stay away any more than we absolutely had to. But sometimes soccer season prevented our visits, or life got in the way, and it was more than a month between visits.

Dad and I don't like to talk on the phone. It's just not the same and so time would pass without a word. But once we were all together in one place, the magic just seemed to happen all over again. As the eldest Unnamed One said, "Grandaddy was New Bern."

So in this brief month since Dad died, I have grieved...but I have also deluded myself into thinking it's just one of those busy times. At any moment the phone will ring and plans will be made for a weekend of sailing and eating and general loveliness. All the unconsciously stored up issues will be placed out on the table and dealt with and by the time we leave, our lives will be immeasurably better.

If only this were true.

Instead I find myself lost. The unconscious issues become all too conscious- like the old house not selling and us trying to pay two mortgages without a book contract or a good-paying, reliable source of income; like my not-so-secret feeling that I am a failure in my life because I don't know how I'm going to save us from bankruptcy. I know I could talk to him and without him telling me what to do, the answer would come clear and the burden would lift off my shoulders and leave my soul feather light.

It has been a month and I need him.

I watched 60 Minutes tonight and saw an episode about the medical teams trying to save lives in Iraq. One nurse, Mary, hit a nerve when she talked about fighting to save those boys, about remembering the names of the lost ones and how she still calls on them for strength when facing a particularly difficult case. She talked about fighting to beat the black spiral of death and how she feels like a failure when she loses.

I listened, started crying and had to leave the room for the bedroom where I watched the rest of the segment and sobbed. I know it triggered every weak spot in my all too vulnerable soul. I feel like Mary does when one of my old guys dies. I feel like a failure for not being able to save Dad and I still talk to my old guys and a few times, even Dad.

But he doesn't talk back, at least not yet, and it has been a month since he left. The logical rational part of me says, this is the way it is, kiddo. Welcome to the rest of your life. But the rational, sensible part of me says, he's just taking the tour. He'll be back. But my heart knows differently. My heart knows denial when it sees it.

So no, for me a month is not a long time to be missing someone- not when the rest of your life stretches out before you and the future without him is unfathomable on such a foggy, starless night.

I miss him bad, I do.

I must call my sister, Flea, and find out what she's feeling...I can tell with us, no news is never good news...

Sweet but Still Corny

I'll get over Candy Corn soon. I'll stop nibbling the tiny white tips, then the orange middle and tiny, yellow bottoms. I'll walk past the Jack O' Lantern candy jar without stopping. I won't slip the lid off, or slide my hand inside the slick, ceramic globe to grab an indiscriminate handful. I won't crave the honeyed-sugar "finish" on my tongue. I will beat this. I don't have a problem.

I mean, I beat the tiny orange pumpkin things...sort of. I don't search for them anymore when I'm corn-diving. If I happen to snag a few while I'm grabbing little corns, that's fine. If not, oh well! I'll survive without them.

You see, I can quit anytime I want to. I can control my life on sugar.

I can beat Candy Corn.

Excuse me...I need to go check something in the den...Yes, I know that's where the jar is...I'm only going to see if I left the light on or anything...

Sigh. Alright, fine!

Hi, my name's Nancy and I'm a Cornaholic...

Toenail Moon in a Ten Cent Town

Driving home tonight the moon hung just above the road, a huge sliver in the sky, a “toenail moon” as one of my boys used to call it. It is silvery-white and hangs so low in the sky I almost believe I could reach out and touch it.

I made it through an hour and a half of clogging practice this week and only thought of Dad a few times. Tomorrow it will have been one month. It all seems so long ago…How could this only be one month and not a year or a decade?

Cookie held my hand when I went to see her today. We sat in her room, her in her wheelchair; me perched on the side of her narrow hospital bed. Her hands and legs are full of bruises. They say it’s the medication she’s on. But today she kept rubbing her leg, just above her knee.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know. It was just so unnecessary.”

“What, Cookie? What was unnecessary? Did you hurt your leg?”

She nods, frowning. “Yes, I guess I’m a sissy,” she said and smiled.

“You’re not a sissy. You’re one of the bravest women I…”

“Well, it was just so unnecessary,” she says, interrupting.

“How did it happen?”

Cookie’s face clouds and she shakes her head. “They say it’s my…What that word? I can’t think…I don’t know.” She is frustrated. “This is so unnecessary!”

I would do anything to give her back her mind. I grasp for words, a thesaurus of possibilities. “Birthday?” She shakes her head no. “Anniversary?”

I’ve found the word. She nods. “I say it doesn’t matter. I don’t care if it’s my…What was that word?”

I’m wondering, who would tell her it’s her anniversary with her husband long dead? I can’t remember, is it her birthday? There wasn’t a Happy Birthday sign on her door.

“This is all so unnecessary!”

But it isn’t really. It is very necessary. I can’t tell her this though. Cookie has reached the place where she can no longer hear my complete sentences. She barely retains phrases.

“So, what do you…” her voice trails off as she forgets the question.

“Know?” I supply. “Oh, nothing. It’s cold…”

Cookie is rubbing her knee again, not listening. That is when I notice her hearing aid is missing from her ear. I check the box on the dresser. It isn’t there. An aide comes in and I ask if she knows what’s happened to it, but she’s new.

“It’s been a long time,” she tells me seriously.

The girl hasn’t been working at the place more than a week. How the hell would she know? I think she is just giving me whatever answer she thinks will make me give up and go away, believing that she is doing her job and caring about her patient.

Puh-leeze.

Cookie’s nurse is tired too. When I tell her Cookie’s knee hurts and is swollen she gives me a vague look, like she’s surprised I think she should do something about it. When I ask about the hearing aide she frowns and says, “I think it’s been missing at least three weeks. Her daughter says she doesn’t know where Cookie lost it.”

Given that Cookie can’t retain a sentence- I am not surprised to hear this- only sad.

“Maybe that’s why she’s been more confused lately,” I suggest. “She can’t hear us.”

The nurse nods, measuring out meds for another patient and only half listening. “Yeah, when I get right up next to her, she answers me,” she says.

I realize then that no one thinks it would be a good idea to replace Cookie’s missing hearing aide. No one seems to think hearing will be of any benefit to someone who is losing their memory and their mind.

I take the elevator to the second floor where sweet Hilda gives me a hand-crocheted Jack O’Lantern pin. They are doing something to her bladder with electrodes, she explains, pointing to a small black box. “I keep peeing in the bed, so they’re trying to train my bladder to hold it.”

I look at the box, the squares of sealed-up electrodes and realize she’s serious. I feel like I’ve slipped into Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory. You can train bladders not to pee?

I roll my eyes at Hilda. “So, you’re telling me if your bladder’s bad, they’ll zap it and say ‘Bad bladder! Bad! Bad!’ until it gets the message?”

Hilda chuckles and rolls her eyes back at me. “They don’t know what in the hell they’re doing!”

I wonder if she knows how true that is. Hilda’s pretty with it. She probably knows exactly what’s going on.

By the time I reach the second nursing home I am almost too tired to get out of the car. I have made the mistake of listening to “Running With Scissors” while I drive. Dysfunction is everywhere. Nursing homes are little better than insane asylums, I think. I wonder if I do anybody any good or whether I’m just fooling myself.

And then I get a grip and instruct myself to stop feeling sorry for myself.

I walk up the long, walkway carrying my heavy, black backpack. Wayland is sitting by the door in his wheelchair. He’s a chunky black man wearing a ski hat and bug-eye dark glasses. He sees me, breaks out in a big grin and says, “Hey baby!”

I rub his shoulder. He’s eating a piece of pound cake and clutching a Pepsi can. As I walk past he calls after me, “I love you!”

“Back at ya, Big Man,” I say. I walk into the dining room where the activity director and, I kid you not, the director of the local funeral home, are divvying up cake and serving it to the residents.

The funeral director sponsors the monthly birthday party. He comes with his wife, wearing his unctuous smile, pretending to dance with residents in wheelchairs. He treats them like stupid babies and all I can think when I see him is that he’s trolling for future clients. Over time, you learn to ignore him. The residents do. The activity director does and now, so do I.

But my buddies greet me like a long lost daughter. Toni cuts cake and gives me grief for not getting there sooner. Little old ladies hug me and one dirty old man makes a smooching gesture and winks.

I know they don’t pay me enough to make the mortgage here and the paperwork is horrendous, but the love…Well, even on a flat-broke, dead-dog-tired Thursday, their love slices through my fatigue. It hangs out there in front of me, forcing me to pay attention to its beauty. Their love is as big as the toenail moon that lit up my drive home tonight and it is every bit as glorious.

Bounty Hunters Like Me and My Brother

This is my brother, John, talking to Dad about the meaning of life, checking his opinions out against the Buddha of our household, because what Dad says is important.









This is Dad listening. This is what he did best, listen to the questions without placing so much emphasis on the answers because he said the questions were what was important, they indicate where the asker's true interests lie. Dad listened without judging, without making you feel stupid for saying what you thought. He listened with his heart.

It is very hard to use the past tense when I am talking about my father. It makes him more dead, if that's possible. Which of course, it isn't.

He leaves huge shoes to be filled. I think all of us try, with the bits of Dad we do best, but my brother is the only male. I told him this made him the patriarch of the family now. He seemed uncomfortable about this, as if accepting the role made him a traitor, or like it is with me and the past tense, maybe stepping into Dad's role made John feel like Dad was more dead.

We are all changing. Shifting to accommodate the void in our circle. Trying to make a new balance for ourselves.

And then, just when I think I can't watch, hear or read one more thing about people losing their fathers...I see last night's bounty hunter show, the one that features this guy, Dog, and his wife, Beth a.k.a Baby.

Her father dies and in addition to chasing bad guys and lecturing them about their lives and second chances for redemption, old Dawg has to deal with losing his father-in-law and helping Baby through the loss.

Baby pats the box of ashes (and it was not a cardboard box either) that sits on top of a casket covered in flowers. She is sobbing. She points out a chocolate covered cherry atop the formal portrait of her dad and then a candy-filled funeral wreath sent by her father's buddies.

Now why couldn't we have had something like that at Dad's funeral? I mean, candy. It would've been the seventh inning stretch sandwiched between the cloying flowers. We could've broken open a pack of Skittles when the Hotrod Priest got too wordy or carried away with himself. It would've given us something to do with our mouths besides biting down on our lips and trying not to laugh hysterically when they dropkicked Dad into the ground.

Dog even cries because his grief gets triggered when his wife asks if he wants biscuits and gravy for breakfast, because this is what his father-in-law always made. He sits there, wiping his eyes, in his black leather vest, his bleached blonde hair hanging down around his shoulders, his wraparound black sunglasses perched like a headband on top of his head.

The camera follows this family everywhere. They force Little Baby, or whatever the daughter's name is, to come catch bad guys with them because this is their family identity. It's what they do. They even pray and say this day of catching bad asses is dedicated in their dearly departed's honor.

It's what gets them through. They tell the bad guy this when they catch him...In addition to telling him they're sorry his life is so awful and he's hooked on ice and has to go to jail. They're sorry BUT they're taking him to jail because maybe now he'll get sober. Maybe he'll take this second chance. They tell him it's what his father would want him to do...And then they talk about Baby's father a bit and how the bad ass can still turn straight while his father's alive.

I watch this like it's an oncoming train wreck.

Little Baby even says she likes catching bad guys now and her mother teases her about crying all the way to the scene.

I'm sitting there watching and realize this hokey show has a theme whether they know it or not. They are carrying on, showing how the next generation will try to fill the shoes of their dead hero.

I can't decide whether to laugh or feel touched by their genuine emotion. I am watching a carnival and seeing some real gold amongst the tacky glitz.

Today I am wearing a black leather jacket as I go forth into the world to fight insanity. I have had an epiphany...

Our lives are all reality T.V shows, only most of us forgot to put film in our camcorders.