Losing it.

I am not myself.

I'm listening to Tom Brokaw's book, An Album of Memories: Personal Histories from the Greatest Generation. I should say that I am listening to this book on tape in my car.

I took this cd out on loan from my local library because I have always thought that World War Two was an interesting period of American history. And I liked the idea of just quietly listening to stories as I drove here and there. I tried having Liv listen and she just wasn't into it, so we switch back to the classical channel when she is with me. Bing HATES audio books, she likes to jump back and forth on the radio until she finds something she likes. So, I am alone when I listen.

And I am getting educated about a generation of people who were so incredibly strong, stoic, and moral that I feel a little ashamed of myself as I listen.

It always bugs the hell out of me when I go to Bing's mother's home and find that she has been collecting rubber bands or once I was horrified to find that she had actually gone through her late husband's underpants and cut out the elastic waistbands (Fruit of the Loom, anyone?) to wear on her head when she worked out in the garden to hold her hair back. And then she used the underpants for dust rags.

But, now I see that well, she is from THAT generation. The one that saves everything, that you either use it, make do, or go without. Because they had to. It was really that bad during the war. And here I am, bitching because I hate to be bothered with recycling....I have no idea what true sacrifice is.

I was driving to my favorite Office Max (where the nubile Office Max girl works...eye candy) a few days ago, and listening to a man named Glenn talk about his memories of surviving the Bataan Death March in Japan and then living in a slave labor camp there until they were liberated. Three years. He was in that camp for three years. He spoke (well, he actually wrote and an actor spoke) of how he was so beaten down for so many years that when he was finally free, he found that he could not just jump back into his old life. He spoke movingly of thirty years of nightmares. He literally woke up screaming from nightmares night after night for thirty years. He never sought help for fear that people would think him insane.

I sat in the parking lot of Office Max, listening to the end of that story and wondered how I would survive three years of a slave labor camp and then come home to thirty years of nightmares, of having to drink myself into a stupor as he did, just to cope. I thought about never marrying, living alone because I did not want to put a partner through my misery. And I thought about Glenn as a little boy, maybe a child who once ran around the yard with a stick and pretending it was a gun and having a great time in imaginary land and then running inside to warm up and have some cocoa that a mother made for him. I thought about the teenaged Glenn lying about his age in order to enlist and then being taken prisoner at the ripe old age of 16 and forced on a death march of miles and miles of no food or drink or rest. And then living in a slave labor camp and having so many bones in his body broken that he prayed for the peace of death. Glenn's story ended and I realized that tears were running down my cheeks. I looked around hastily and wiped them off.

I went into the store and the lovely Jade was in there, doing her Office Max duty. I handed her some pictures that Liv had drawn for Bing that I was going to laminate for her as a Christmas gift. Jade took them and looked down on Liv's Christmas tree with the obligatory Santa and angels and the other picture, a smattering of reds and greens, a mini child's imitation of a reaction to a Jackson Pollock painting. Jade smiled and complimented the artist. I nodded and looked around the store. She gave me a longer look, but finally went back to the laminating room and took care of my business.

When she came back, she asked in a very sweet voice if I was okay.

"You look as if you have been crying," she said.

I started to explain about the book, realized that it was too long a story and just shook my head, said I was fine, fine.

When I left the store, she was frowning a little at me.

I pulled myself together and met with a few clients, got some work done (why is it in freelance that when it rains, it pours?) and picked Liv up at school.

On the way home, we listened to the classical radio station and there was an ad for a night time showing of the movie It's a Wonderful Life.

"What is the synopsis of that movie?" Liv asked. (And yes, my precocious little daughter actually said the word synopsis.)

I tried to put it into a nutshell. I said it was about a man named George Bailey who got to a place in his life where he felt as if it would have been best if he had never been born. So, an angel-in-training named Clarence shows him what life would have been like if he hadn't been born and George realizes how incredible life is, how precious it is and....

I completely choked up. I was so close to tears that I surprised myself and felt embarrassed. I am not a crier. Well, I cry in private, never in public and seldom in front of Liv.

Liv was looking at me, a little nonplussed, curious.

"Why are you trying not to cry? Does the movie end with someone dying or getting hurt?" she asked.

I told her no, it had a happy ending, that we would surely get a chance this season to watch it as it is on every year. I told her that I was thinking about how she had changed my life, made it so wonderful.

She smiled, pleased. "Ohhh!" she said.

"Even though I had colic and didn't let you sleep for four months?" she asked.

I laughed. Yes, I told her. Even when she had colic. I told her that knowing her had made me a better person because I had to be. FOR her. I wanted her to be proud of me, proud of her mama. I wanted to be a good role model, someone she looked up to and felt safe with.

"I DO feel safe with you," she said. "And I am very proud of you. I think you are one of the smartest people in the whole galaxy. And you are funny, too. And pretty. I think you are pretty!"

Wow. It is this high opinion that she has of me that keeps me on the straight and narrow. I never want to disappoint her or for her to have one day when she feels unloved or unimportant. It is like that bar is set pretty high, though, you know? It scares the hell out of me.

"Would your life have been sad without me?" Liv asked.

I thought about it. I always try to be honest with her. So, I told her the truth. That my life would not be sad, really, because I wouldn't know what I was missing. But that having her in my life has made me a better person, a nicer person, someone who works to make the world a better place, mostly because I know that she will inherit it from me and her children from her. And grandchildren from her children and so on and so on.

"You sort of saved me from being mediocre," I told her.

"What is mediocre?" she asked.

"Ordinary," I told her. "You make me rise to the occasion on just about every level because I know you are watching me."

She nodded. "So, would you like be a bum woman without me?"

I told her no, I wouldn't be a bum woman, exactly, just not as interesting or committed.

I think she knew what I was trying to say. I hope so anyway.

I haven't endured a slave labor camp, I have led a life that has been hard at times, but nothing horrific. And because of Liv, I am bawling at the drop of a kleenex. My tough broad rep is out the window.

I am officially a marshmallow.

That night, I heard Liv telling Bing that I was crying in the car.

"Mama was telling me about a movie called It's a Wonderful Life or something and she got really teary," Liv told her.

Bing winked at her. "Your mother is much more emotional than she wants everyone to know," she said.

"I know," Liv said. "Even though I had colic and she didn't sleep for four months she's still nuts about me."

God, they read me like a book, huh?

Santa Claus isn't coming to town this year.

And I am sort of relieved. Liv was teetering on disbelief last year, she asked a lot of pointed questions about the usual things, like how he can get to everyone, why some of her classmates get so many gifts that it takes all day for them to slog through them while she gets exactly three each year. And of course, who is the real Santa? Is it that guy at Sears? At Target?

She has always been a practical child. When she was three, I attempted to do the Easter Bunny thing and she was not open at all to it. Even I was forced to admit that it sounded scary when I told her that a giant rabbit was going around hiding baskets of candy and easter eggs in children's yards every year. She was properly terrified and took to refusing to set foot outside unless I checked the yard for giant rodents. I finally explained that it was just a story but she was not to ruin the story for other children who believed. Even at age three, she understood not to say anything when her cousins came over and exclaimed over what the Easter Bunny brought them. For us? Well, I filled a basket and hid the eggs and she knew it was me and we made a game of it.

For some reason, Santa has never scared her much. She was told that he came down the chimney or through the back door, whatever the parents picked. That he left gifts and yes, that he drank the milk and ate the cookies that she left. And Rudolph enjoyed his carrot. She seemed grudgingly fine with it all but when we would be out and about and there would be a Santa around, she avoided eye contact and wild horses couldn't have gotten her to sit on his lap. She seemed slightly freaked out on Christmas morning and not in the least bit excited the night before as she went to bed. She acted more like this was some stupid event that I had invited into our lives and was being a good sport about it. She did get three gifts each year and she appreciated that, but she was always relieved, I think, when the season was over. I had painted a picture to her of a kind, generous, saintly fella who DID NOT come into our house when we were sleeping, but that I let him in after she was asleep....

And it was ALWAYS just three toys. It was the same each year. I would buy her one big toy, a book and something small. Her stocking always held small things: hot wheels, a new ruler, a dollar, a whistle, a deck of cards, a bracelet. This year, she is getting a new skate board for her big toy, The Golden Compass book and a new chess set. She gets other gifts too from my sisters and our friends. She gets plenty. But, it has always been just three Santa gifts.

I think our worst time with make believe was the tooth fairy. She lost her first tooth in kindergarten. I hadn't even known she had a loose tooth, so hadn't prepared her or decided really what to do. Then, she came home with a little white tooth in a box from school one day. She told me that her teacher, a well meaning woman, told her that if she took the tooth home and put it under her pillow, that the tooth fairy would come in the middle of the night and take it and give her money or a small toy for it. She told me all of this, honestly sickened and appalled in the car on the way home:

Miss Crispin says that the tooth fairy is a little old woman with lots of wrinkles who has wings to fly and she sneaks into your room while you are sleeping and then reaches HER HAND under your pillow and takes the tooth and leaves a surprise. MAMA, I don't WANT a surprise! Please don't let her in! Why does this old woman collect children's teeth anyway? I mean, don't you think that is sort of creepy? WHY DOES SHE COLLECT CHILDREN'S TEETH????

Well, now. I didn't know. And she had a point. I mean, here I was her protector and was supposed to keep her safe. She was not allowed to even talk to strangers and there I am letting some strange old woman with a children's tooth fetish in our home in the middle of the night? So, I told her the truth. That it was simply a little story that parents made up to be fun for their children.

She looked at me with what I have since come to know as the are-you-freakin'-out-of-your-mind? look. She was incredulous. Who on earth would think this was a good idea, a good story to tell children? By the time we finished talking about it, she had me agreeing with her.

So, we came up with our own solution. Whenever she lost a tooth, we would celebrate by going to Starbucks and getting lattes and lemon pound cake. I did tell her that the truth about the tooth fairy must not be ruined for other children and while she honestly thought it would be a kindness to tell them the truth, she agreed not to spill the beans. She DID privately tell Miss Crispin the next day about our new arrangement. Miss Crispin's eyebrow shot up, but she smiled gamely. To this day, I am sure that she sees me as that crazy parent who lets her child drink coffee. Well, I do. Liv has either chai tea or coffee with cream and sugar with her breakfast every morning. Shoot me. She isn't allowed to drink sodas, so give me brownie points for some damn thing, will ya?

But, Christmas and Santa were never challenged until this year. Yesterday, on the way home from school, I asked Liv if she wanted to send a letter to Santa this year. She looked at me kindly. It was clear that she had something difficult to tell me and she was solicitous.

Liv: Mama?
Me: Yeah?
L: I need to tell you something and I hope that you will understand and that your feelings won't be hurt.
M: Um, okay. Shoot. Go ahead. Spill it, lovebug.
L: I don't think that Santa is a real person anymore. I think it is one of those made up fairy tales like the easter bunny and the tooth fairy.
M: Well, yes. You are right. And no, my feelings aren't hurt. I'm kind of glad to be over the hoopla, to be honest.

It was that simple. Liv wondered if her Santa gifts would stop now and we discussed it. I said that I was fine with doing what we always do. Christmas Eve, she gets to open her gifts from other family members and friends and then on Christmas morning, instead of Santa gifts, she can open her gifts from Bing and me. We both agreed that this was acceptable.

I am surprised at how good I feel about this. I thought that when she stopped believing, it would be a sad day for me. But, the truth is that she figured this whole Santa thing out a long time ago, I suspect and has been humoring me for years, not wanting to hurt my feelings, etc. She is practical, as I said, but she is also very kind.

And, if any of you are hungry for the perfect Christmas story, you MUST read Six To Eight Black Men by David Sedaris. I actually listened to this story read by the author on tape in my car. Big mistake. I literally laughed so hard that I started crying. I was hooting like a totally insane old woman who had no business driving. I have a very clear memory of being stopped at a red light and glancing over to see another driver looking at me in concern as I put my head on the steering wheel laughing. It is hilarious.

I can't wait until Liv is old enough for me to read her THAT story.....

Before and After

I sometimes wonder if I am the only person in the world who dislikes family get-togethers, holidays. I dread it. Every year.

If there was some way to dodge it, I would. I would LOVE to just spend Thanksgiving with our friends, those whom we consider to be our real family.

But instead, we slog over to my sister's house. The sister who is married to Tom, who is my brother in law and the family bigot, the one who struts like a rooster and laughs like a hyena and is so gosh darned thrilled with himself that he cracks himself up with his lame jokes and asinine remarks right and left. The rest of my family doesn't win many points either, with their ignorant remarks about how the world is going to hell because black people just refuse to stop having babies and how "those mexicans" are dirty and smell and they all live twenty to a room. I am ALWAYS the lone dissenter, the one who refuses to back down. Tom knows that if he utters one racist syllable in front of my child that I will walk out, so he is careful to look around to make sure that Liv is in the basement playing with her cousins (who don't really regard her as family as my other sister has informed her children that Liv is going to languish in purgatory after she dies because she was not baptized a Catholic) or outside playing.

But, still. I get weary of him, of the rest of them. Instead of ranting, I will just give four actual sentences that were said this year at my supposedly good Catholic family's Thanksgiving dinner:

1) Uttered by Tom, of course: Anyone who doesn't pay taxes should not be eligible to vote. Right, Asshole. Those who are jobless should have no say in this country. Let's just let the rich creepy pee butt people like you, who inherited wealth, have a say.

2) By my sister, Patrice, sainted wife of Tom: I don't shop at that mall. There are too many "brownies" there. They smell. You walk in a store and they all have 9 kids who are screaming and they just stink up the whole store. I went into the bathroom after you used it, sis and yeah...your shit really does stink.

3) Tom, quizzing my sister, Jessie after she came home from a tour of Bing's high school in a poor part of town: I'm glad you're back. I was worried that the "jigaboos" would see such a fine white woman and think they'd died and gone to heaven. Tom, your sophistication astounds me. Do you always lift one leg to fart and then ask a grandchild to pull your finger? Where on earth did you come to believe that this was funny or that you were in any way, shape, or form better than anyone else?

4)Toby, Jessie's husband, after seeing a commercial on television with two brothers hugging: Wow. None of my brothers better go all "Brokeback" on me... Toby, I hate to break it to you, but I have met your brother and I think he plays for my team. And he wouldn't want to hug you anyway. Have you noticed how no one wants to sit by you? It's your breath, buddy. Maybe some Listerine would be a good stocking stuffer this year?"

Waving goodbye to my family as we got in our car (freedom!) was the best part of my holiday.

Driving home, I was grousing to Bing that I don't know why we subject ourselves to this every year. Wouldn't it be so much more fun to just spend holidays with our real family? She calmed me down,as she always does. Told me that it was just a few times a year, and family was family and didn't I just love the way my niece, Lyndsay was turning out? And hey, it was important for the other kids to see someone who had different views than their families. Maybe they would think about things more.

She's right, of course.

And then last night, we were able to spend time with our real family. Bing was in an all female rock band in college. They played the college circuit and were pretty successful until they all graduated and dispersed. There were five in the group and 4 were lesbians. After college, only one went on to play professionally and that was Ally, the lone straight girl and lead singer. You would know Ally (not her real name,of course and Bing and I swore years ago to protect her privacy). She has been nominated for two grammys. Never won. But, she is a Nebraska native and a great person. Well, she was home for Thanksgiving and for the first time, so was everyone else in the band. We all decided to get together for a day after Thanksgiving party.

I can't remember having such fun in a very long time. It was like the opposite of my family Thanksgiving. For one thing, the theme was "backstage band food." We brought brownies that we joked were laced with hash (they weren't) and slim jims. Ally brought Taco Bell, two of everything on the menu. C brought all kinds of chips. J brought giant chocolate chip cookies and krispy kremes and S (whose brother generously opened his house to us) supplied beer, wine coolers and Jack Daniels and co-cola.

No kids were allowed, although almost all of us have them.

The band had not played together in twenty five years. But, everyone brought their instruments.

At first, we all just caught up and talked. And laughed. And teased Ally about not winning her grammys. We renamed her Susan, ala Susan Lucci. Everyone was thrilled that Bing and I were finally together. (We had been best friends during the band years but apparently I was the only one who didn't know she had the hots for me..) We remembered old faces and old places. They reminded me and Ally that our nicknames used to be the rubberneck women since we were um....kind of cute back then and got lots of turned heads at the bars we played at. God, was that really us?

C brought pictures and...HOT DAMN...I WAS kind of pretty, wasn't I? But, Jaysus...my HAIR. I looked like I must have used a can of hair spray on it. And I looked like I put my makeup on with a trowel. We joked about Ally's red leather mini skirt. How at the end of the night, it was so rank that you could stand it up by itself. And S's blue spandex pants. Could she still wear them? Um, no. Not since baby number two.

Everyone looked so much older and all of us except Ally were fatter. Ally maintained that the only reason she wasn't fat as a pig was because she had to work out and look good for the paparazzi. She actually used the term paparazzi and we ribbed her about it all night long, told her that she was a movie star snotty bitch. She said, "Well, this rich bitch owns a farm in Massachusetts now and do you think any of you redneck Huskers are ever gonna be invited? NO!" She had food thrown hard at her.

It was so much fun. And easy. And heartwarming. And like....a family.

Then, the band jammed and we spouses and significant others, and partners and friends all sat in chairs and clapped and screamed until our hands were raw. I even got up and danced with everyone, although not with the abandon that I had when I was in my twenties.....

After a song, someone shouted out, "Jesus, you broads look OLD!" And C shouted back, "Hey, I used to have college boys trying to climb the stage and now I have to look at chubby middle aged women and men with bald spots. Listen losers, it isn't any better from this side." We all laughed and laughed.

I ate like a pig and all the wrong foods. I also drank too many alcoholic beverages, but refrained from sucking on the bong. Hey, I AM 49.

On the way home, at the wee hour of 2 a.m....

I curled up next to Bing and said, "This is what I want holidays to be like...."

Bing answered, "Me too, babe. Me too. But, hey....you can choose your friends. You can't choose your family."

She was right. But, I still think Thanksgiving would have been more fun if my sisters and I could have just got up and danced, maybe had a few hash brownies.....

And P.S. My vote for the new Husker Coach? Turner Gill! Please!

Nightmare

Too much Harry Potter, I suppose. Liv and I are slowly slogging through the last HP book. It has been slow going because we only have time to read at night and she has been conking out after just a page or two. Third grade is a bitch, I think. She is all tuckered out after a day of school.

We are about three fourths of the way through, but as anyone who has read this book knows, it gets pretty intense from about the middle on.

So, we finished the part where Snape meets his destiny with Nagini and it must have been on my mind as I fell asleep.

The last thing I remember was laying my head down and snuggling down into my soft pillow. Bing was staying up to watch the news. I was just too beat.

And then I opened my eyes and there it was! A dementor bending over me. It was just inches from my face and I could feel it's freezing cold stench trying to suck out my breath.

I did what any normal person would do. I sat up in bed and screamed bloody murder.

I could not stop screaming. I just screamed and screamed and screamed.

And suddenly Bing was there, bounding into the bedroom, turning on the overhead bright light and running to me.

"WHAT?? What's the matter? Why are you screaming? Are you okay?"

I grabbed her hands, yanking her down next to me.

"It was a dementor! There was a dementor in the room with me! He was trying to suck out my soul, I know it!!

Bing, to her credit, did not start laughing. She simply held me while I shuddered and shivered and finally got some sense of control. I was blathering like an idiot, kept saying things like, "He was here! I swear it!"

I have had nightmares, but this felt almost unbelievably real. I honestly felt like I had just shut my eyes for a second and then opened them to find a dementor standing there. Bing stroked my hair and tried to get up to get me a glass of water but I held on to her like a child. I was terrified, afraid to let her go for one second.

So, she sat back down and just rubbed my back and kept talking softly and clearly.

"Sweetheart, you had a bad dream..."

"NO! I did not have a bad dream. It was REAL, Bing. I know it!"

After a few moments, I managed to calm down enough to know that yes, it had been a dream. Dementors were not real. I knew this. But...god...I found it so hard to believe that it wasn't real. It felt very, very real to me.

I let Bing go into the adjoining bathroom to get me some water. I told her to run the cold water for a long time. I wanted it very, very cold.

I heard a sob and looked over to find Liv standing in the doorframe, hunched in her blue flannel nightgown with the cows jumping over moons on it. She was crying.

Well, THAT made me come firmly back to my senses. I held my arms out to her. She came flying into them. I pulled the covers over us both.

"I had a bad dream," I told her. "I must have cried out, I'm so sorry that I frightened you, honey."

Her voice was whispery. "You were screaming," she said. "I've never heard you scream like that. You were SCREAMING," she repeated.

"I know," I said to her, nuzzling her cheek and kissing her face. "I had a terrible nightmare. I can't remember the last time I had such a terrible one."

Bing showed up with two glasses of water, one for me and one for Liv. We both sat up and drank thirstily.

Liv wanted to know what I dreamed about and I sort of reluctantly told her. I didn't want to scare her any more than I already had. But, I think it was a good decision. She looked at me with wide eyes.

"I would have screamed too," she said.

We all sat in the bed for awhile talking about how sometimes dreams can seem very real and how nice it was to wake up from them.

Liv offered to sit with me until I fell back asleep and I told her no, that what I really wanted to do was take her back to bed and sit in the rocker and watch her go back to sleep, so that is what we did. Bing and I tucked her back into her flannel zippy monkey sheets and I sat in the rocker and Bing at the foot of her bed until she fell back to sleep.

And then, arms around each other, we shut off the rest of the house lights and started back to our bedroom. I noticed she was limping and asked her what was up.

She sat on the bed and showed me her big toe, badly bruised and swelling.

"What the hell did you do?" I asked her.

Well, I was sitting in the lazy boy watching an old movie and good hell, you suddenly started caterwauling and screaming. I thought a burglar was climbing through the window or something. I was running to you and accidentally ran into the end table and I guess I must have hit my toe harder than I thought. I was so scared, I barely felt it...

"Did I scream that loudly?" I asked.

Jesus Christ, honey...I have NEVER heard you scream like that in my life. I mean, think about it. You woke up Liv and she is in the back bedroom...."

We shut off the lights and settled into our go-to-sleep positions, me on my right side and Bing curled around me like a comma, her hand resting lightly on my hip. During the night we would shift around until we were butt to butt.

It took me a long time to drift back to sleep. I mean...I kept coming back to that feeling. That feeling that it was real, that dementors were real and one was after me.

I sorely wished for a wand and wondered what my patronus is. Because I just might need that sucker.....

Them's fightin' words....

I was watching a story on the news the other night about a couple who were celebrating their 70th wedding anniversary. The interviewer asked them what advice they would give to newlyweds.

"Never let the sun go down on your anger," the woman answered. Her husband nodded sagely, agreeing. And then he added, "Hold hands when you fight."

My response: Oh, bloody bullshit.

I have heard those pieces of idiotic advice more than once and I have never agreed with them.

I think this only works when you have two people of the exact same temperaments.

This does not work for Bing and I.

We were raised in families that were like night and day. Bing grew up in the deep south. Her father died when she was a baby, leaving her mother with 4 children ages 3, 2 and 1. (Bing has a twin brother. They were 2 years old when her father died.) Her mother cleaned houses to earn a living. They were dirt poor. Her mother was bi-polar and undiagnosed. Bing grew up in a family where her mother was a staunch believer that if you spared the rod, you spoiled the child. She could make a family dinner by the age of eight. She did her own laundry too. She is the most self sufficient person I have ever met.

Bing's family is alarmingly frank. They simply do NOT understand the meaning of the word tact. They say exactly what they think and damn the torpedoes. I have been at more family dinners at her mother's house (she ended up moving here several years ago) where I was convinced that the people fighting would either end up dead or maimed. And then they hugged and kissed goodbye. It was as if that terrible fight where she called him a dick and he said she was a bitch in front of all of us had never happened.

Bing has a short fuse. She gets angry easily, vents it and lets it go. She says what she thinks. If you ask her if that dress makes you look fat and it does, she will say so. She is honest to a fault and like the rest of her family, seems unable to self censor.

I both love this and detest this at the same time. And she will be the first to tell you that I am giving her a crash course in tact and simple social manners.

I, on the other hand, grew up in a very devout Irish Catholic family. We prayed over all meals, before bed and just whenever one of my parents felt like it. They felt like it a lot. I have three sisters and we were not allowed to argue or even raise a voice to each other. If we did, we were sent to our rooms where we were instructed to write ten things that we loved about the sister we were fighting with. We could not come out until we did this. And then we had to hug and apologize. Our home was not only tidy, it was very mannerly and extremely quiet and serene.

Well, on the surface anyway.

I was the kind of child who could knock off ten things that I loved about my sister on one sheet of paper and then secretly write ten truly sinister, wicked traits of theirs in my diary. It helped with the pent up anger.

But, the result is that I do not know how to fight properly and Bing does it too easily and with little tact or grace.

We are very, very different.

If I had to make up after a fight before I could go to sleep, I would stubbornly force myself to stay awake for days. Bing is fine with making up. In fact, ten minutes after she has had a hissy fit over some dumb thing, she will come sniffing up to me to make up. She has since learned that while she is usually ready, I need time and space.

Here is an example:

One night last week, Bing called me from work to say that she had to keep several kids after school, so she would be late going to the gym for her daily work out and not to expect her for dinner. I said okay.

I figured that this was a perfect time for Liv to bake her plate for Bing. Liv had purchased a porcelain plate at Goodwill and then bought some porcelain paints at the local paint store. She painted Bing's plate, but it needed to bake for a half hour to set the paint. So, she and I stuck it in the oven and were sitting and eating cream of wheat for dinner.

Bing came through the back door looking mad as hell.

Turns out she had forgotten her gym bag and therefore had to skip the gym and ride the stationary bike in the basement instead. She was crabby; it didn't take a genius to figure that out.

I told her not to peek in the oven as her gift from Liv was in there. Liv sat beaming at the kitchen table at her.

And Bing said, "Please tell me that you didn't make a big mess in that oven. I just cleaned it last week."

I glared at her and told her that of COURSE we didn't make a mess.

Bing then went to the kitchen sink for a glass of water and commented that the sink was dirty. I told her that I would clean it out after Liv and I were finished with dinner. She sighed and got out the Comet cleanser.

"I know how you clean. I'll just do it...." she said. She didn't notice that I was shooting her a heated look. We have a recurring argument that I don't get things clean enough. I think I clean just fine.

She then went to throw something away in the trash and that was it. Her temper flared.

"God! Would it KILL YOU to empty the trash before it is overflowing?" she half shouted at me.

That did it for me too, but I am always very careful not to argue in front of Liv. I just won't do it. So, I went up to her and said very, very quietly that she had told me to please not empty the trash anymore. I was emptying it too often and "wasting paper bags."

Bing is very green. She is a champion at recycling.

Bing sighed and said, "Fine. Never mind. Don't lift a damn finger. I'll just do it."

She muttered something else that I couldn't hear. I glanced at Liv who had carefully sidled out of her chair and headed to the living room to watch television.

I ended up following Bing to the bedroom where she was changing into her workout shorts.

I hissed at her. Told her that she was mad because she forgot her gym bag and decided to take it out on me and she could just stop this shit right now. That I wasn't her dog to kick when she came home. I told her that making a snotty remark about the oven when Liv had her Christmas gift baking in there was tactless and rude. And then I told her to stay clear of me for awhile. If I had felt forced to hold her hand while I was saying all of this, I probably would have sunk my nails into it.

I stalked out.

She stalked down to the basement to ride the bike. She cranked up her music so loudly that it was pulsating in my feet as I walked across the kitchen, tidying up. I took Liv's plate out of the oven and she and I admired it. I put it on the back porch to cool off.

I read to Liv and put her to bed. Bing came back upstairs and I could tell by her face that she had seen the error of her ways and wanted to cozy up.

NO WAY, RAY.

See...she had cooled off. She was mad, she vented, and then it was over.

Not me. While she was riding her bike, I was silently seething as I had learned as a child. I am a master at holding it in.

Bing tried to talk to me twice. Twice I ignored her. She wisely backed off.

We didn't sleep together that night. Bing also knew not to even try to get in that bed with me. She slept in the guest room. Luckily, we do this occasionally. If Liv is sick, she sleeps with me and Bing sleeps in the guest room. If one of us has a cold, we sleep in the guest room. If I snore (this is a wicked falsehood....Bing says that I sometimes snore. I DO NOT. No. Absolutely not.), Bing will sleep in the guest room. If her RLS (restless leg syndrome) kicks up, I will sleep in the guest room rather than wake up because she has slapped her hand over my face like a dead fish or kicked me hard in her sleep.

Liv doesn't know that we also sleep separately when we argue. Or maybe she does. I guess I don't know. I only know that it isn't unusual for us to sleep alone sometimes.

The next morning, before work, Bing came in and apologized, said that yes, she HAD been mad about her gym bag and overreacted, etc and that she would make a big happy fuss around Liv and try to guess what had been in the oven. She said, "Can we start the day fresh and kiss good morning?"

Yes, we could.

But, I am telling you right now, I had not been ready to make up the night before. I had to sleep it off a bit. Time and space work wonders for me.

So, I am not keen on the arguments for holding hands when fighting and not letting the sun go down on your anger.

What do you think? Yea or Nay?

The librarian.

I love my neighborhood library, The Jorgensen branch. It is small, smells like a library is supposed to smell and Sean O'Shea works there.

I've been going there since Liv was an infant. After she was born, and I quit my job and went down to part time freelancing, I knew that I was going to have to say goodbye to book stores on a regular basis. I knew that now I would only allow myself to buy ONE book per month. The rest I would have to obtain at the library. I pulled out my old library card that had not been used in a decade of having a high paying job with plenty of money to buy any book I desired.

I looked up my local library, was delighted to find that it was only 9 blocks away and I set off on foot, with Liv in her stroller. She was barely 3 months old. I was 41.

I renewed my card and took a look around. I found that the librarians there were very nice and helpful. They told me that virtually any book I desired could probably be found in interloan library. Liv and I became regulars. We went weekly and I was soon knee deep in good books.

Liv went to toddler story time, to pre-school story time and now joins the summer reading club each year. She knows that the library is a sacred place. We use hushed tones in there and the books are treated gently and with reverance.

Over the years, the librarians have come and gone with the exception of Miss Blanco. I don't know her first name and I would not dare ask her. She is an imposing looking woman who looks like she could take you down if you needed it. I like that about her, especially when patrons bring their loud, bratty children in the library. They soon learn to toe the line or leave Miss Blanco's house.

What they don't know about Miss Blanco is that she has a warm, loving heart under her stern exterior. She has always treated me with respect and deep kindness and I return that to her tenfold.

The children's librarian has changed a lot over the years, but Miss Ex Nun has been there since Liv was 6. She is a small, bird wristed woman, an Emily Dickinson come to life. She has skin that looks like it has been dipped in white porcelain. She knows Liv well and knows her tastes better than I do. She finds books that Liv will like even though she knows that I sigh a little when I see them in her stack. She knew that Liv would adore the Goosebumps series and of course, she does. She also knows that I want her to read the classics, so she makes sure that the chronicles of Narnia are in that stack too. Liv loves everything she selects.

But, my favorite librarian is Sean O'Shea. He reminds me of John Krasinski from The Office. He is 27 and not gay. I know this because that is one of the first things that he told me after he checked me out several times and we chatted. He actually said that exact sentence. He and I were talking about James Michener. We are both fans and I asked what his first name was since he already knew mine. He said, "My name is Sean. Yeah, I know...IRISH!"

I told him that since he knew my last name, that he knew that I was Irish too. I said I liked the name Sean.

"Yeah, well....I like it too. My Da is a Sean, so I am his oldest son. I'm 27. I got my degree in library science a few years ago, but I'm not gay, I just like books. Alot."

I told him that I never thought he was gay, that I WAS gay and he had passed my gay radar test. I said that he was the only other person I knew who called his father "Da" like I did and that I had wanted to be a librarian when I was in high school, but changed my mind and now I regretted it.

He blushed. "I'm sorry. You're a lesbian? I don't have a problem with gay people or anything, I just...well...people assume I am and I'm not and that bothers me. It's bad enough that my Da says I am a nancy boy because I am a librarian..."

Since then, he often checks our books out. I love the way he dresses. Unlike Miss Blanco and Miss Ex-nun, he does not wear librarian gear. He wears jeans and shirts with store logos. He must have a hundred of them. Sometimes, he wears a mechanic's shirt from Sinclair. Other times, he will wear a Goodwill Industries shirt or a Bob's Bar and Grill shirt. He looks like he is just working the desk on his lunch break from somewhere else. I once asked him how he got away with that under Miss Blanco's watchful eye and he told me that she understood that underneath his clothes he had a librarian's heart. She can smell a kindred spirit a mile away he told me.

Yesterday, he had on a Woellner's Grocery Store shirt. Liv had not come in with me, she hadn't finished her books from the previous week yet, so she and Socks the puppy just walked most of the way with me and then stopped at her friend, Wallice's house so that they could play while I went on to the library.

I walked into the library and took a long deep sniff like I always do. This place smells like home to me.

I glanced through the new book section and selected one and then went to check out and to pick up some books that were being held for me. Sean was talking animatedly to a tall, willowly blonde girl in front of me. She looked to be about 20, maybe a few years older. She had on that young girl's must-have low riding jeans and a tiny grey sweatshirt. About an inch of bare skin showed. I remembered when I could get away with an inch like that. Not any more. Her hair was about chin length and very blonde, almost white. She was laughing and doing that flipping of hair gesture that signified I like you a lot...look at me...keep talking to me, you handsome Sean O'Shea....

I was drawn to them, watching, mesmerized. Ah, I thought. God. Young love. When you are at that point in your life where you are looking and hoping and dreaming and then you see someone that just might be that one. Yes, I remember it well.

Eventually, they both noticed me standing there and she smiled and he blushed and she sort of waved and said, "Well....see you next time then!" and he said, "Okay, Sure. Um...yeah." She left and he smiled at me sheepishly.

I smiled back. I leaned over the counter a little to say, "She is very pretty, Sean."
He blushed again and this made me laugh. He laughed too. I waggled my eyebrows at him and he shook his finger at me. Briefly we laughed into each other's eyes again and then he went on to check out my books.

"Well," he said, "I see that you have Hitty, Her First Hundred Years on hold and the new Haven Kimmel book. I am guessing that the first one is for Liv, it's a children's book about a doll, right?"

I said yes, (and by the way, THANK YOU, Kate over at Anthology of Suburban Minutiae for pointing the way to that book for Liv) it was about a doll. I wasn't sure that it was Liv's sort of book, but I was hoping it was.

He went and got the books, noting that you can never go wrong with Haven Kimmel.

"Haven is never disappointing," he said. "A Girl Named Zippy was her best, though."

I agreed. I glanced over to see the blonde girl pretending to be deeply engrossed in a bulletin board about Angelina Ballerina in the children's section.

"You know, Sean," I said. "I think she is hoping that maybe you have some children's books to put away..."

He blushed again and this time, I had to snicker a little wickedly. God, I could practically smell his hormones bursting through his clothes, wanting desperately to go over to the blonde girl and check out his destiny. If he had been Socks, the puppy, he would have shamelessly went up and sniffed her ass.

I turned to go and as I pushed open the door to step outside, I saw that Sean had indeed meandered over to where she stood. They both had high color in their cheeks and they were beaming at each other. Sean looked a little disoriented.

Yeah, get used to that, buddy. I thought to myself.

I picked up Liv and Socks and as we walked home, we kicked the leaves and watched the sun setting and stopped every 20 steps to let Socks smell what he hoped was a bone.

Liv and I shared our day's events, I showed her the Hitty book and she tried hard to look interested and then we drifted into silence, caught up in our own private thoughts.

I went back in my head to Sean and the blonde girl. I just may have been the witness to a story here, I thought.

I can just see them fifteen years from today:

Well, I was a librarian at the Jorgensen branch library when this pretty blonde girl came in and checked out some books. I didn't know it then, kids, but it was your mother. Anyway, we fell in love and.....

Books, part 2

Wow...I can see that a lot of people read out there.....I had no idea how universal some authors are. I picture a whole group of us with our copies of A Secret Garden, tucked away in our little corners as children.

When I hit junior high, I became an even more earnest reader. Most of the books I liked were not available in my school library, so I would make a list and save up and whenever we hit a city with a bookstore, I would go buy my stash. To this day, I can't read The Catcher in The Rye without crying.

"Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids and nobody's around--nobody big. I mean--except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff--I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be." Catcher in The Rye.

God, it just breaks my heart all over again.

I went on to read To Kill a Mockingbird and decided that if I had a daughter, I would name her Scout. (I didn't. But, I would have named a boy Jeremy.)

ATree Grows in Brooklyn is still on my shelf. I bet I have read it ten times. And every time, I think to myself that I will never begrudge a child anything, be it health care or whatever. There is always a Francie Nolan in any group of children. You just have to take that on faith and act accordingly.

Thanks to a nun, I discovered William Shakespeare. I was unprepared to fall so deeply in love with his works. We read Romeo and Juliet and it is still my favorite of all of his plays.

"Two households , both alike in dignity. In fair Verona, where we lay our scene. From ancient grudge break to new mutiny. Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. From forth the fatal loins of these two foes, a pair of star crossed lovers take their life...." Romeo and Juliet.

And....Mercutio's wild lament:

"A plague o' both your houses! They have made worm's meat of me...."

Who can resist the first moment of realizing that you are in love? As Romeo says:

If I profane with my unworthiest hand this holy shrine, the gentle sin is this. My lips to blushing pilgrims, ready stand that smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss."

I think I must have watched the Franco Zeffirelli movie of Romeo and Juliet about twenty times. I can still recite whole sections of the dialogue. This once bewildered Bing as we sat with some friends and I discovered a kindred soul in a table mate and she and I actually said whole pieces of the play back and forth to each other.

Now, as an adult, I still ready daily. DAILY. I take a book with me everywhere, the bathroom, in the car when I have to wait to pick up Liv in the school line, at the dentist's office. Everywhere. My tastes are firmly in place and I like all kinds of books.

My favorite authors are many. I like David Sedaris, Bill Bryson and Garrison Keillor when I want to just relax and enjoy myself. David Sedaris is so funny that I have actually snorted soda pop through my nose in public while reading him on an airplane. Bill Bryson and Garrison Keillor are of a more gentle humor, less biting, less cynical, but just as good.

I will read anything that Anne Lamott writes. I first discovered her when Liv was an infant and I came across Operating Instructions while sleepily browsing in a book store. I immediately identified with her love of her child, in spite of having deep misgivings at the prospect of being a mother:

I am much too self centered, cynical, eccentric and edgy to raise a baby..."

Amen. I had met my match. I have since read all her short stories, all her fiction (Try Rosie or Crooked Little Heart if you want a great read) and even her books on spirituality. I am not the die hard believer that she is, but I just like the way she doesn't smack you across the face with her beliefs. She lets them sneak up on you. My kind of gal.

I love Elizabeth Berg too.

"When it's new and important, you have to rest in between time. And anyway, even when I like a person there is a weariness that comes. I can be with someone and everything is fine and then all of a sudden it can wash over me like a sickness, that I need the quiet of my own self. I need to unload my head and look at what I've got in there so far. See it. Think what it means. I always need to come back to being alone for a while. I guess I sort of got used to it when I was younger and now it's mixed in my character like eggs in a cake. I wonder, does this mean I'll have to be a nun or something?" Joy School.

I read her books and feel as if she can see inside my head. And heart.

Anne Tyler rocks. I have so many favorites of her books, that I need to list them:

1) A Slipping Down Life.
2) Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant.
3) The Accidental Tourist.
4) Breathing Lessons.
5) Saint Maybe.

I mean, how can anyone resist a book that starts out with:

"Maggie and Ira Moran had to go to funeral in Deer Lick, Pennsylvania..." Breathing Lessons.

Kaye Gibbons wrote Ellen Foster, which is as far as I am concerned, the best book written. Her writing is spare but packs a huge wallop.

"When I was little I would think of ways to kill my daddy. I would figure out this or that way and run it down through my head until it got easy..."

And...I can't leave out Alice Hoffman. I love the magic in her books. She doesn't worry about the boundaries between imaginary and real, she skirts all over them and it works. I would love to live next door to her. I think everything she has written is well, magical...but At Risk and Practical Magic are my favorites.

I now feel very sure that I am leaving some important books out. Let's see...a few more...

Oh, yes...Rough Strife by Lynne Sharon Schwartz and Miracle Play by Susan Richards Shreve and...yes...yes...Tending to Virginia by Jill McCorkle.

And god...it goes on and on...Lorna Landvik, Bobbie Ann Mason, Jo-Ann Mapson...

So many books have shaped me, changed me, helped me....

I've heard about your childhood book favorites...how about your current ones?

Books

I was a lucky child. My Da was a reader. He loved books, therefore I loved them too. I think parents often forget this, that their habits are being watched carefully by their children and copied. My Mother was not a reader, but she took us to the town library every single Saturday and it was a family tradition that on our birthdays, we got a book. We were a poor farming family, so we didn't usually get anything else from our parents on our birthdays, but what is better than a book? I still have my copies of The Wind in the Willows, Anne of Green Gables and the whole set of The Little House books. It didn't matter that my Da loved history books, what I saw was him READING. I also saw that he treated his books with something near reverence. It stayed with me.

Liv is not the voracious reader that I was, but she does read daily and every night I read to her before bed. This is set in concrete. No matter how tired or crabby I am, she gets a chapter read, or maybe just a few pages if she falls asleep. Liv much prefers drawing or playing the violin or piano and her book choices are not what I would select, but she reads.

I feel a little pang that she doesn't like the books that I adored as a child. She found the Ramona Quimby books boring. She was twitchy with yawning when I tried Little House in the Big Woods. But, once we hit Harry Potter, she was a goner. She was the same for The Hobbit, The Land of Oz and any book that involved some sort of magic or adventure. She loves to jump on the thrilling bus, I was more content to read the Betsy-Tacy books by Maud Hart Lovelace, the Beany Malone set by Lenora Mattingly Weber. Liv and I do share a love of Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden and A Little Princess. And what child would not be pulled into this from The Secret Garden:

"If tha'goes round that way tha'll come to th'gardens," she said, pointing to a gate in a wall of shrubbery. "There's lots o' flowers in summer-time, but there's nothin' bloomin' now." She seemed to hesitate a second before she added, "One of th' gardens is locked up. No one has been in it for ten years."
"Why?"asked Mary in spite of herself. Here was another locked door added to the hundred in the strange house.

Wow. That paragraph just begs you to come find out, doesn't it?

I can't get through my day without a book. It pleases me that I have a stack of books that I haven't read yet, that are sitting in my bookshelf in that special waiting place, just sitting quietly, knowing that one day I will slide them off and dive into them. My favorite gift is always a book store gift certificate.

On my waiting shelf now are:
1) later, at the bar by Rebecca Barry.
2) To my Dearest Friends by Patricia Volk.
3) Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen.
4) The Maytrees by Annie Dillard.
5) The View From Mount Joy by Lorna Landvik.
6) The Love Season by Elin Hilderbrand.
7) Harmony by Joanna Goodman.
8) Anything For Jane by Cheryl Mendelson.
9) Julia's Chocolates by Cathy Lamb.
10) Feeling for Bones by Bethany Pierce.

They are all library books. I can't afford to buy all the books I want, so I go to bookstores armed with a pen and paper and write down all the titles I see that look interesting and then get them from the library. Sometimes, this involves waiting several months for the books to get to be my turn to read them. This is very good for me. It reminds me of when I was a kid and had to wait for my birthday. And it is good for Liv. She goes with me to the library and has her own card. She learned at an early age to be gentle with books, never to write in them or smear them up. Our happiest times are when she is on one end of the sofa reading her Stuart Little and I am on the other end, reading my When Charlotte Comes Home (which, by the way, is simply brilliant.)

I will save my junior high, high school and adult favorites for another post. My childhood favorites besides the ones mentioned above were all the colored Fairy Books by Andrew Lang (green yellow, red, pink, grey, violet, crimson, brown, orange, olive, and lilac....and I vote The Olive Fairy Book as the most exciting, how about you?)

What were your favorite books as a child?

What you will remember

When my neighbor, Orna, was dying, she and I talked a lot about her memories. I asked her about her happiest days. She told me that her best days, the sweetest times of her life were not what everyone would suspect.

Her wedding day was "sad." She said that she felt that they should have waited longer before marrying and that the war sort of pushed them both into a place that they weren't ready for. She remembered feeling shellshocked on her wedding day.

She said that graduations, promotions were not star kissed. "The first time someone called you doctor?" she said. "I bet that was nothing compared to listening to Liv singing in her crib after her nap on a sunny afternoon on a non specific day in March."

She was right. Of course.

"What I really remember are moments," she told me. She spoke of how her husband used to laugh with his head thrown back. She thought that was thrilling to see. She said that he had the sexiest adam's apple imaginable.

She remembered how delicious a glass of orange juice tasted on the first day after a really bad cold where she went for weeks unable to taste anything.

She told me that she loved watching her bird glaring at cars out the window.

Today, I thought of this as I was driving Liv to school. I thought about all the great times of my life, the best memories. The truth is that they were not what most people would think.

The first time that Bing and I made love....? The earth did NOT move. In fact, it barely pulsated. I remember thinking that we were a bad match physically.

We improved with time and LOTS of practice.

And one of my best memories is of tucking my foot under hers in our bed and feeling her heart go from a fierce pounding to a slow, steadiness as she fell asleep after a particularly nice romp.

All of my graduations, promotions? I barely remember them except to recall that I was sick with nerves.

I do remember watching Liv play the harmonica on a summer afternoon in harmony with Bing and her father. I remember looking over at Tinton and the stark love that I saw in his eyes that mirrored my own for our child.

I don't remember my birthdays, really. I do remember that taste of carrot cake when I was in high school and I was sitting in a booth with my friends, talking about tryouts for the school play.

I do remember Liv's firsts. Her first staggering steps, her first tooth, her first word. But, more importantly, I remember looking at her sitting in the bathtub with a perfectly shaped orb of a bubble perched on her shoulder, smiling at me.

I remember sitting at the computer yesterday and Liv coming up behind me to plant a kiss on my shoulder as she walked by. "You smell like strawberries," she told me.

I remember my friend, Nirand, and I out taking a walk and him telling me that something in him reached out to something in me and that he felt that we were tribe mates extraordinaire. I remember that feeling of yes! that pulsed through my nerves, knowing that he had hit on just the right one that would thrum.

I remember my Da playing his guitar on the back porch steps, singing a song about a chicken who lost it's head. I remember him smiling at me and laughing, his eyes crinkling. The sheer pleasure it gave me when he would reach out and pull my head against him in a hug.

I don't remember the first time that I told Bing that I loved her. Or vice versa. I do remember that rainy afternoon when she called to check in and we said goodbye and hung up and she called back. I forgot to say I loved you, she told me.

I love you too. More than I can verbalize. There are no words for what I feel, it is like a warmth, a heat, a coolness on a fever, a sweet tart on the tip of my tongue. It is just everything and nothing and all of it together. It is us. Something that lifts me and holds me steady and sometimes knocks me for a loop, all in the same day.

I remember the phone ringing as I was drying off after my bath. Lying down on my bed with just a towel on and chatting with my sister. I remember Bing coming in and gently tugging away the towel to wickedly kiss and nip me a little on my inner thigh. I remember shivering with pleasure and fighting to keep my voice steady with my sister and trying to shoo Bing away at the same time while she grinned with sheer huckleberry finnity.

I remember being outside and sitting in an adirondack chair on a summer's day while Bing and some friends jammed together on their instruments. I remember Bing playing the opening bars of Ventura Highway and holding my eye as her fingers raced expertly over the guitar strings and her body made a slight wave as the music went through her. I remember the heat of desire that welled up in me just watching her play. Her joy in playing. And her obvious pleasure in watching what it did to me.

I remember car rides and looking out the window, feeling Bing's fingers seeking out my own as she drove, asking me where I was, that it felt like I was a thousand miles away. And I was. But, I came back.

I remember Liv as a toddler walking through the grocery store with me and running firmly in front of my legs to hold her arms up and insist that she come "up, up" into my arms. I remember leaning down to scoop her up with one arm and balancing a loaf of bread and a jar of mustard in the other.

I remember a bout of the flu when I was in my twenties and how good it felt after a night of burning up to lay my cheek against the side of the cold porcelain bathtub and have nowhere that I had to be just then.

I don't remember all of my neighbor Sven's games, but I remember him playing football in his back yard with his buddies and them all yelling with glee as testosterone pumped through their veins as someone threw a ball for a touchdown.

I don't remember all of my Christmases but I do recall how great it felt to wrap presents one cold winter afternoon and settling the packages under the tree with the lights on. I remember putting the backs of my legs against the radiator to warm them up as I looked at that tree.

I think I understand what Orna was getting at. It isn't the big days of your life that you will pull out to comfort yourself on your deathbed. The small, perfect days will be the ones that you slide out of your head and heart and turn over and over in your mind.

Sinking into a hot bathtub full of lily of the valley scented water. A good, thick wash cloth to clean under your armpits.

Clocks ticking.

Watching Seinfeld with your family and laughing in unison when Kramer comes crashing into a room.

Biscuits in the oven. Honey in a plastic bear on the counter just waiting to be spread on the melting heat of them.

Cashmere sweaters.

The smooth wood of your desk as you sit down to write a thank you note to someone with that perfect pen.

No wonder poets go mad so easily. There is so much to overwhelm us if we just stop and think about it.

Nothing is really mundane, we know that. But, you can't lose yourself too easily or you will risk weeping at the drop of a hat and irritating everyone around you.

But, in general, yes...Orna had it right.

What you remember are the gods in the details.

TV

Is anyone else as enamored of the new show Pushing Daisies as I am? I woke up this morning and my first thought was It's Wednesday! Pushing Daisies night! This sort of bothers me. I dislike being taken with TV. But, this show has me. It's the main character, the pie maker. I just love this guy. I SO want to invite him over for dinner.

I am not a TV hog, but I do have my shows. On Sundays, we always watch The Amazing Race as a family. On Mondays, Bing and I watch Heroes. On Tuesdays, Bing has to watch Nip Tuck which I tend to think is sort of stupid. But, now that she informs me that there is going to be a lesbian story, I am warming up to it. On Thursdays, I can't miss 30 Rock or The Office. And until Lost comes back on, that is it for me. I still feel like a TV hog.

I am lucky that Liv isn't one. She watches Hannah Montana occasionally if she gets her homework done on time. If not, she doesn't sweat it. She seldom watches TV and when she does, she likes cooking shows on the food network. I have no idea why she loves this network so much. She doesn't particularly enjoy cooking and neither do I. In fact, if Bing isn't around, we usually have grilled cheese sandwiches or oatmeal for dinner. I have even been known to slave over a Stouffer's TV dinner.

What are your favorite shows? And those readers not in America....what's on in your neck of the woods?

A strange series of events....

I was talking to Socks this morning and....

Yes. I was talking to our dog, our 3 month old (he was born on July 31st, Liv's and Harry Potter's birthday too) puppy this morning. I do this regularly and if you tattle on me, I will hunt you down and kill you.

I also feed him on the sly. Luckily, Bing does not read my blog with regularity or I would be in big stinkin' trouble. She does not believe in feeding dogs table scraps.

I do. I often share my leftover egg or pancakes with Socks. He is a smart dog and so far, has not given me up by going all nutty every time I stand up with a plate in my hand when Bing is around. He and I are in cahoots and know it.

And I don't have conversations with him around Bing either. But, when he and I are tooling around the house alone, we often share tales with each other. I tell him what is bugging me and why and he listens attentively and then agrees wholeheartedly with me that I am so totally right about everything. He lets me know when he needs to go outside by dancing this very strange dance right next to the back door. It is actually pretty damn cool and I like a dog who isn't afraid of looking a little Elaine Benes.

So, anyway, today I was reading interesting bits to him from The Advocate. I also showed him this quite smokin picture of Cate Blanchett and he agreed that she was certainly one hot woman, dude. I came upon an article about Aaron Toleos and after reading it aloud to Socks, we both agreed that it needed to be shared with my blog readers.

If you don't get The Advocate, go to this website. It is this great little site where you can check out who has signed petitions to place antigay measures on ballots in Florida and Massachusetts. It looks like some other states are gearing to sign up too and I say YES to that. I would love to see one from Nebraska. I want to know who the bozos are who are trying to mess with my rights. Aaron Toleos had a quote in The Advocate saying, "I don't understand how you 'protect families' by attacking the families of gay people."

GO AARON.

And, now a bit of other shameless begging. If you go to this site and search for a film called Eye of the Keyholder, you will find a film made by some of my favorite students in Nebraska. Please feel free to VOTE for it...They worked hard and I would like to see them win. This is an Apple film making competition for students and their teacher is um....near and dear to my heart.

And lastly, a big shout out to my long lost dear friend, Jo. I ran into her in a bookstore and we hadn't seen each other in nearly 40 years and for some strange reason, she remembered me. How odd is that? Here we are in a totally different state and she manages to pick me out and not only remember me from grade school but also remembered that I consistently beat her at spelling bees. And she liked my arrogant ass anyway. Actually, she heard me talking to some one else and they said my name out loud and she came over to say, "Are you THE Maria Lastname who used to go to St. Adeletrude's Academy for girls?"

I was. We had coffee and plan to have lots more cups together. I also told her about this blog...so hey, Jo....SEE. I TOLD you that I would put you in it. And thank you so much for not being a Republican, for saying the word shit so that I knew that we were both foul mouthed and I didn't have to keep my good manners coat on. But, mostly thank you for telling me that I was aging nicely. Everyone needs a new old friend who is willing to lie their ass off to make you feel good.

So, time for me to go sneak Socks some ham and then head off to pick up Liv at school.....

Shhh.

Putting the garden to bed

It's a beautiful Sunday here in the Husker Nation. We are still smarting from a humiliating loss to Kansas yesterday, but most of us are trying to make the best of it and say Well...next week, huh?

We are all outside. Liv is running around the yard with Socks, the puppy. They look like a dog food commercial, she lays down in the leaves and he crawls all over her, tail wagging furiously while she laughs so hard that Bing and I keep looking over at them and back at each other, smiling.

Bing is cleaning out the gutters while I put the garden to bed. I yank out the dead roots, break them up with my hoe and mash them back into the earth to feed it for the next year. After we finish, Bing and I meet on the patio to start putting all the lawn furniture into the shed. Later, she will put her motorcycle in there too after one last, long mournful ride. It is hard for her to say goodbye to her purple hog.

We lug pots that once held petunias and shasta daisies. Pots that once spilled all over with purple and yellow. The picnic table benches and table are carried between us in workmanlike fashion to take their place in the shed beside the adirondack chairs. The chairs where we sat outside on hot steamy July nights and held dripping glasses of iced tea on our legs, shivering briefly in the heat as the cold met our bare legs.

Everything is put up except for the grill. I grab one end of it and raise my eyebrows at Bing to take the other side. She stops me.

"What do you say we make turkey burgers for dinner one last time on the grill and then I will put it up?" she asks.

I agree. It is supposed to hit 60 degrees today and we have just enough charcoal for one more feast. I let my mind wander to our cupboards and think that we have some baked beans in there, some wheat hamburger buns and a half a head of lettuce to make a small salad. Sour cream and onion chips. Maybe I will run to the bakery and buy an apple pie and some vanilla bean goat milk ice cream to top it. Wine. I think there is a half a bottle of a nice merlot left, too. Liv can have a Dr. Pepper for a goodbye-to-Indian-summer treat. We have onions and some of that good yellow French's mustard for our burgers. We can have one last summer dinner. It is too cold to eat outside and it will be dark by 5:30 anyway, so we can eat inside where it is warm, but the turkey burgers will taste like summer, like the grill.

I look around the patio and note that everything is all ready for winter now. Good.

I start to head in to the house to put a load of laundry in.

Bing stops me. She has the portable cd player in her left hand and she sets it on our back steps. She comes to me and takes me in her arms, hugging me.

We haven't really made up from our argument, we have simply sidestepped it for awhile. She has told me that her next phone interview is on Tuesday with the non profit company. We hold each other, her chin on my head, both of us watching Liv playing tug of war with an old white dish towel with Socks.

"I love you," she says, quietly, her hand in my hair, rubbing the back of my neck that always tenses up.

I tell her that I love her too. I feel close to tears, but fight it. I WILL NOT start crying. Instead, I tell her that I am feeling a little scared right now.

"Me too," she admits. "Don't move," she says and goes to the cd box. She puts in a cd and comes back to me.

"Let's just dance and listen, okay?" she says.

The song Babylon by David Gray comes on and we hold each other close and let him say everything that we wish we could say to each other but can't find the words to fit yet. We kiss as the song ends and it is the first real kiss we have shared in a long time.

Another song comes on, Please Forgive Me also by David Gray.

"This is how I felt when I first met you back in that dorm room, thirty years ago," she tells me.

We sway again. This time, I am really fighting not to cry. I love her so much and there is so much at stake here. I pull her as close to me as I can get her and I don't have to say a word because I know that she just...knows.

The song ends and I whisper, "What are we going to do, Bing?"

She says firmly, "We are going to figure out what works best for us as a family, you, me and Liv. And, yes, Socks too. He has a voice now. No matter what. I am right here. I've got you, I will always have your back and you will always have mine. But, for right now, for today, we are going to make turkey burgers for dinner and then you, Liv, Socks and I are going to watch The Amazing Race on TV and joke that if we were on there, we'd kick everyone's asses all over the place. After that, you will give Liv a bath and read Harry Potter to her and I will finish up some school work and then we will meet in bed and hold each other and fall asleep, safe and sound together, Okay?"

I say okay and we squeeze each other and let go. Bing goes off to put the ladder away and I yell to Liv, who has been so engrossed in her puppy that she has missed all the drama, that it is time to come in and work on her poster for her school project.

Life is going on in the Husker Nation. And we are going to be just fine.

Stress

I saw a piece on the news a few days ago that argued that people without children have more stress in their lives than parents.

I sat there gaping.

WHAT?

I don't know about you, but my life was much simpler before I was a parent. I am not saying that I was happier, but my stress level was ridiculously lower than it is now.

The argument given was that when you have a child, you learn not to sweat the small stuff and to relax more.

So..I guess my question to you is this: If you are a parent, do you believe that your stress level is less? If you are a non parent, do you believe that you have more stress than you would have if you had children?

I just don't get it. When I was childless, I didn't worry about not having money. I wasn't wondering how I was going to put a child through college.

I bought LOTS more clothes than I do now. Now, I buy for Liv first and I get the leftovers. If this means not buying that leather jacket, I don't buy it. While this isn't tremendously stressful, it is frustrating.

I have to be a fucking role model 24/7. This means that even if I WANT a hot fudge sundae, I don't make one because 1) I will have to share it or duplicate one for Liv and 2) She doesn't need sugar at 8 p.m. at night and frankly, neither do I. I also have to refrain from road rage, learn the art of patience and be a good sport far more often than I prefer to be.

Time. I have so much less of it now that I have a child. I find myself jonesin for my David Sedaris book but I need to help Liv with her school report on South Dakota, so I am sitting next to her at the computer looking up Crazy Horse and The Battle of Litle Big Horn instead of sprawling on the sofa and reading my book.

My view of the world is different. Now, I look at things differently. I read accounts of child kidnappings and feel as if someone has put a knife in my heart. I used to feel a little sad and scared at these stories, now I am horrified beyond words. I read the articles with a golf ball lodged in my throat, aching for the child's parents and wondering how in the hell they manage not to throw themselves off of a cliff in their grief. If something like that happened to Liv, I would need a straitjacket.

I am totally responsible for another person now. This means that EVERY single decision I make has to take my child into consideration. My life reverberates all over hers. And vice versa.

I have a very limited social life. Weekends no longer mean sleeping in and going to a bar or even to a movie or a play without planning it weeks in advance and knowing that everything is tentative. If Liv sports a cough or a fever or the babysitter does, all outings are canceled.

I look back on my pre-parent days and wonder what in the hell I did with all that free time?

I have more stress with a child, that is for certain.

I also have more joy. I am happier because of Liv, but am I less stressed? No. Absolutely not.

So...opinions?

Strange days

I gave a test to my night class last week. After grading it, I could see that I had made it too easy. Out of 50 kids, 40 earned A's, 8 earned B's, 1 earned a C and only 1 D. So, I was sort of surprised when one of my B grades, Kirsti, took advantage of my office cubicle hours an hour before class to challenge her grade.

I was sitting and reading David Sedaris' incredibly funny book, Barrel Fever, when she showed up to ruin my perfectly okay mood.

I swear this is how it went:

Kirsti, a junior psych major, has long blonde hair and is inclined to wear clothes that look like they are either wet or very shiny. Her regular speaking voice is nothing to write home about, but she carefully practices with a whispery Marilyn Monroe voice that sets my teeth on edge. She is smiling in a purposeful bashful way as she enters into my department room. I am the only one in there except for Morton Philmer who sits in the cubicle next to mine and is eating a sandwich that reeks of garlic.

I look up and motion for her to take a seat.

Maria: So, what can I do for you today, Kirsti?

Kirsti: Well, I am here because...um...I don't think my grade was fair on the test.

M: Oh? What are you challenging?

K: It's just that I'm not a B student! Ask anyone!

Short silence while I figure out just how to answer this. I decide that I will go into a just-the-facts-ma'am approach.

M: Ok. Let's take a look at your test.

We do this.

M: Well, Kirsti, there were 35 multiple choice questions, worth two points apiece and you missed ten of them. There were two short answer questions worth 15 points apiece and you got full credit for those. So...you have a grade of 80. Are you disputing some of your answers?

Kirsti is trying to look flustered, shy. It is not working. She has far too canny of a face to even try this shit.

K: Well, no. I did get those questions wrong, but they were pretty hard!

M: Do you feel that the questions were not covered in your textbook or in my lectures?

K: No. I mean, they were covered, yes, but I wasn't expecting them to be so hard!

M: I'm sorry that you are disappointed, Kirsti, but I stand by this grade. Now, if you wish to dispute it further...

K: NO! I think it was fair. It's just...I am not a B student.

WHAT THE HELL? JAYSUS...WILL YOU IDIOTS JUST LISTEN TO YOURSELVES? I AM SUPPOSED TO GRADE YOU NOT ON YOUR PERFORMANCE BUT ON THE FACT THAT YOU SAY YOU ARE NOT A B STUDENT???

M: Kirsti, I'm not sure what your point is....

K: I was wondering if you might consider changing my grade to an A.

M: No. I would not. You earned a B.

Kirsti goes into a kitten face and smiles winningly at me. She really does look amazingly like a cat.

K: I was hoping that we could maybe....make an arrangement...Maybe, I...would you like to go to dinner sometime? We could talk. I would buy...

I stand up immediately. Walk to the outside of the cubicle and say that no, I would not and she needs to leave. She shrugs and smiles at me as if to say that she had to try and leaves, doesn't even have the intelligence to look sheepish.

After I hear her boots click clacking down the hall, I lean over to Morton's cubicle and ask him if he heard all that. He says yes and that he has my back if something should come of it.

CHRIST.

Morton and I talk about whether to notify our department head. I am inclined to do this, he thinks I should not. That she had her shot and failed and I should just let it go. I decide to think about this later. Later, I will decide to act on it just to cover all of my bases and Morton will write a witness account for me.

For now, he goes back to his sandwich and I go back to my book. I keep cracking up at the sheer wit of David Sedaris. Every time I laugh, I go into a coughing fit.

Finally, Morton can stand it no longer and says, "Um, excuse me, Typhoid Maria, but what the HELL is so hilarious?"

I tell him about the book, say that the essay, The Last You'll Hear From Me, is just about the funniest thing I have ever read. Morton, who also likes Sedaris, asks me to pass him the book so that he can read the story. Then, the smart ass asks me to please spray it with Lysol before I pass it over, though, as he doesn't want to catch whatever I have.

I pass it to him unlysoled. I hear him turn a page and then burst out laughing.

I can't stand it and ask him where he is in the essay.

"I'm at the point where she is asking her mom for sympathy and is told that she can find sympathy between shit and syphilis in the dictionary."

We both chortle. He goes on reading and every time he laughs, I make him read me the part that got to him.

"When she says that her ex boyfriend's dick is the size of her little finger and that's when it's hard..."

"When she asks everyone to stone Randy and Annette with paperweights..."

By the time he hands the book back to me, we are both cackling like the two witches we are. He offers me half of his gross meat and garlic sandwich and I think what the fuck about my breath and take it.

I notice that it is nearly time for my class, get up and start getting my stuff together. Morton offers to go with me and kiss me in front of the class to show Kirsti that she is SO barking up the wrong tree. I decline and he says he is relieved because, man...I sound so toxic with that cough. Will I be able to lecture? I hold up a DVD about the Haight Ashbury free love summer and another one on The Feminine Mystique.

I stop at the student lounge on my way to class and get a large cup of chicken broth. I have had it before and it was surprisingly bracing.

When I get to class, Kirsti is right where she always is in the second seat in the second row. She doesn't look like a girl who just tried to sell herself for an A an hour earlier. I don't look at her, but I don't NOT look at her either.

The class goes off without a hitch and on the way home I keep thinking that October has been a very strange, difficult month and that I need November to be better. I say this out loud while I listen to a Les Paul with Mary Ford cd that Bing told me was worth listening to. I listen while Mary Ford sings of losing her darling while The Tennessee Waltz was playing as Les Paul accompanies her.

Strange Days.