Gone Fishin’

It’s been about a week or two now since my breasts retired.

Yep, their workin’ days are done. With Paige being the final output from Mark and Kristen Productions and all, these girls of mine are hangin’ it up. Cashing in after years of noble milk-making service. Buying a nice little condo in Clear Lake maybe. Or better yet, Palm Springs. You know, subscribing to TV Guide and marking with a yellow highlighter all the shows they plan to watch.

As good as it all sounds, they do experience temptation to return to work. On a nearly daily basis, in fact. Paige has had a wretched hacking late night and early morning cough that makes them want to go to her, to comfort her with warm Mama’s milk. Not to mention a kind dose of healing antibodies.

And their desires aside, sometimes the whole of me will catch a glimpse of the little tummy paunch that wasn’t there just weeks ago. The eat-like-a-farm-hand,  turn-blood-to-milk, have-baby-suck-milk-from-boobies holy trinity, which requires no use of Thigh Masters or of even breaking a sweat, but manages to keep one’s weight in check. And is now sadly over.

Trouble is, I still eat like a farm hand.

But my head tells my heart—and my heart tells my boobies—that this decision was okay. Paige is nearly 16 months old now, and I’ve done right by her nursing her for as long as I have. Whatever mother issues she’ll bring to a therapist as an adult, I’ll have victimized her with honestly, but in totally different ways than this.

In the way that mother’s forget the pain of childbirth, children forget the bliss of breastfeeding. Right?

Well, whatever the case, planner, achiever and overall anal retentive gal that I am, I’ve got a plan. Any agita I’m experiencing during this transition I’m brilliantly intending to offset with the intake of alcohol. Consuming it happily and recklessly, knowing my body’s the only one I’ll task with processing its toxins.

As for the boobies, with all the free time they’ve got themselves now, it seems only natural for them to consider taking up golf.

Manic Oakland Upswing

A homeless guy crushing cans outside my kitchen window woke me up at 5:45 this morning.

Sometimes I close my eyes and fantasize about only hearing the rattle of shopping carts at the grocery store. But knowing me, if that ever happened I’d probably get all nostalgic. “Ah Mark,” I’d lament, “Remember when people used to tear through our garbage like raccoons for cans, cardboard, and stale bread? Now those were the days.”

Whenever I want to pretend Oakland is Mayberry I go to this place called Fenton’s Creamery, which, if it’s not evident from its name, is an old timey ice cream shop. To be honest, the ice cream’s not even very good, but the teens who work there are fresh faced and disarmingly polite. I like to just breathe in the easiness and optimism that wafts off their long white aprons and crisp paper hats. I perch on the wrought iron parlor chairs outside and smile serenely at the little leaguers heading in for post-game treats.

But on Mother’s Day, and my birthday as it turned out, when I was doing just that, a fuck-you-NO-fuck-YOU scuffle broke out in the parking lot just feet from where Kate and I were awaiting Mark’s return with our sundaes. Hoping for a hit of community cuteness, I ended up acting as a witness for the cops who eventually showed up.

And as a bonus I get to look forward to Kate dropping the f-bomb the next time she stubs her toe. Delightful.

Yesterday, after Paige and I took a dreamy early morning walk, we wandered into wildly popular Bake Sale Betty. Even though she’s too young to say it, I just knew Paige was desperate for one of their sweet-tart rhubarb scones. Or rather, for me to have one.

Amazingly, there was only one person before me in line, a towering, bulked up black police officer. The kinda guy you’d like to have handy when a riot breaks out. He was pointing into the window case and requesting with delighted anticipation, “Oh, and two of the apricot hazelnut scones, three of the pear ginger…”

I couldn’t resist saying something—my insistence on interacting with strangers being the cross my poor don’t-draw-attention-to-me Midwestern husband has to bear. Though to be honest, fearful my comment could trigger a ‘roid rage, and seeing his gun holster bob up towards me as he peered in at the pastries, a little voice inside me wondered if I should try my hand at keeping my mouth shut.

Nah.

Me: “So, are you attempting to bust the donut myth?”

Him: [chuckling---thank God] “You know, we’re actually all about lattes and scones these days. Us younger police officers really don’t do the coffee and donuts thing.”

Stepping onto the sidewalk later, I jumped at the rumbling rip-cord start of a motorcycle engine, then looked up to watch the cop ride away. I kissed Paigey on the head and thought, I just love it here.

Chickens and Other New Friends

What can I say? I’m my father’s daughter.

Which is to say that I love people. To the extent that any time I encounter someone new, I get all silly excited and need to cinch in my personality girdle so as not to freak them out and scare them away with my unleashed extroversion and super power of non-stop talk.

I get all “Can I pet the rabbits, George? Of Mice and Men Lenny-like. Fearful that my over enthusiastic adoration could result in the tragic unintended death of the very objects of my delight.

So, my Dad. My wedding presented him with a thrilling experience to revel in a sea of humans. Many new people to him—friends of Mark’s and mine who he’d heard about over the years, and who represented a fine pool of pre-approved potential cohorts.

And it was so easy. They were all conveniently making their way to his small town, a special delivery straight into his social lair.

Fresh blood!

The day before our wedding, our most excellent friend Gary—whom I like to talk about here in hopes that as my most devoted reader and fervid lurker I might incite or somehow bewitch him to post a comment—was meeting us at my Dad’s house to help Mark with the rehearsal dinner booze run. (Gary being, quite literally, an expert in the alcohol arts.)

Mark and I got hung up in the Mayberry-like town office where we had to get our marriage license, running past the time when we’d asked Gary to arrive at Dad’s. Under normal circumstances this would be no big thing. It wasn’t like Gary’d not be understanding about our lateness, or frankly had much else to do that lazy afternoon on his visit to Bristol, Rhode Island. He was, quite gallantly, at our service.

But as Mark and I made our way through the painfully slow air-conditioning-free paper pushing, there was a certain low grade agitation we felt to hurry the process along. Gary was one of the first guests in town and was arriving alone and unwittingly at my father’s door. The poor guy had no idea how he was presenting himself directly into the eye of the storm. It was like my father was standing there rubbing his hands together, desperate to ensnare the first object of his charm, intellectual banter, and letter-writing. (Dad is, perhaps single-handedly, working to keep the practice of letter writing alive. He developed no less than three new correspondents at our wedding who I believe he still communicates with via the USPS to this day. Some day I’ll tell you about his writing a letter to me nearly every day I was at college. Oh, and his envelope art.)

Anyway, who was I? I mean, where are you?

Right then. My Dad. And Gary. Once Mark and I had our marriage license in our literally sweaty hands, we hopped into our car like Bo and Luke Duke, slapping the rooftop through the open windows and hooting that we needed to get to the house and pull my dad off Gary, stat.

On the short drive through town, around about the sea wall coming up to the house, we see my father’s car approaching and then, like a slow dream sequence, passing by us, with Dad driving and Gary in the passenger seat—looking out and mutely beseeching us with wide eyes.

“My God, he’s got him!” I squealed to Mark, slapping a hand down on the dashboard. “Damn it, where the hell is he taking him? Do you think we should put out an Amber Alert?”

Blessedly, moments after passing us, we saw Dad’s car slow down and turn around, heading back to the house. And in the driveway learned that, after all the waiting around in the living room, my father offered to give Gary a tour of the jewel of our small peninsula-shaped town, its beautiful harbor, or ‘HAAA-buh’ as Gary put it, not unkindly (or inaccurately) emulating Dad’s local accent.

Anyway, the fact is, Dad’s one hell of a charming and interesting guy, and was adored by young and old alike that weekend. But it’s fun to make fun of his rabid new friend fetishism, mostly because I think if I talk about him a lot, it’ll detract people’s attention from mine.

In the past several months we’ve gotten a new batch of neighbors around here. And I’m all a’tremble with the excitement of it all.

For an excessively social stay-at-home mother, fresh blood in the neighborhood is tantamount to having your best friend move into your prison block ward. These are the few people who, aside from the ones that I gave birth to and whose noses and asses I tend to wiping, I get to see and interact with every day. To most people, a friendly nod from the mail man is a fleeting blip with no notable social merit. But to me, a raging people person who’s often confined to my domestic workplace like a wild cur tethered by a chain to a spike, even the smallest outlets for social stimulation are greedily devoured, wholeheartedly savored.

One set of new neighbs are an adorable unmarried couple who happen to be the former tenants and chums of my Mama Posse friend Mary. And get this, she’s a children’s clothing designer! How lucky is that? It’s like having a member of Schlitz family royalty move in next door to your alcoholic ass. She’s even already given the girls a bag packed with beautiful brand new duds—free!

On the other side of us, a deeeelightful sweet funny couple, two guys, relocated from Palm Springs. It was all I could do to not drool on their fabulous mid-Century furniture (that aqua couch!) the day they moved in. Never mind harboring secret fantasies of us all shoe shopping, or doing home avocado and oatmeal facials while watching old timey movies—me snugged on the couch between them, them not knowing how they ever got on before knowing me.

And then across the street, the object of my latest most ardent friendship crush, is a hilarious quirky columnist for the local alt weekly, a fried-chicken crazed foodie, musician, and, get this, nanny! I mean, hell-o-ooo. Pinch me!

Each time I see one of these people on the sidewalk, it takes every morsel of my self-restraint to not wrap my arm around their heads in that about-to-give-a-noogie stance, and just squeeze them with love and unbridled joy. (Note earlier excessive-rabbit-petting Lenny-like behavior.)

Tonight we went to the kids clothes couple’s house to meet their new chickens. Well, chicks really at this point. Turns out they’re requisitioning a part of their large front yard to, yes, chicken farming.

And I must confess that, beyond Kate’s immediate through-the-roof delight to hear her very own petting zoo was moving in two doors down, it took me a bit longer to come around to this idea. Chickens? I mean, I’m not sure where chickens are supposed to live, but isn’t it in some large unsanitary warehouse-like facilities where they’re tightly packed and pooping on each other before they make their way to Styrofoam and plastic grocery store packaging? Or, barring that, out grazing on some wide open farm in Sonoma, tended to by kind hippie folk? I wasn’t sure how to meld our urban-suburban Rockridge ‘hood with the concept of live poultry.

But I can follow a social cue like a Lab on a pheasant. When these neighbors would remark about other people’s reactions to their chicken-adopting news, they’d say things like, “She was all, chickens?! Aren’t they loud?” or “Wait, won’t chickens SMELL?” And I was all laughing alongside them and scoffing at the petty ignorance of those other neighbors, when really I was thinking, “Well, uh, aren’t they? Don’t they?”

But, you know, wanting to be one of the cool people, before you knew it I was leading the scoffing sessions with other newcomers. “Can you believe she thought that chickens would be crowing in the morning like roosters? How naive!”

Tonight as we were huddled inside Chicken Daddy’s small bathroom, where the chicks are in a crate with a heat light til they’re robust enough for coop livin’, Kate and some of the other neighbor kids got turns holding the little puff balls. And another Mom and I remarked on the cuteness of the two with racing stripes down their backs, which we learned were called Americanas, which in my mind for some reason sounded like some kinda Cuban cigar. But what do I know.

Chicken Daddy started talking about how the gender of the chicks is determined by someone called a, get this, chicken sexer. (Or should that be “Chicken Sexer” with caps?) But how weird-slash-cool is that? The way a chick’s gender is determined is, he alleged, a well-guarded secret and something that’s actually impossible to assess by just looking at the wee thing’s privates. And so, these people called—I just have to say it again—Chicken Sexers, do some sort of black magic juju laying of the hands or something on these chicks and proclaim with astonishing accuracy whether you’ve got yourself an egg-layer or a crowing cock.

But I was running late for Baxter’s yoga class, much as I wanted to stay and learn more, when Chicken Daddy started to say something about some big renowned Chinese Chicken Sexer, that I really wished I could have stuck around to hear. Like this Chinese dude is the Chicken Sexer Grand Master or guru or something, who holds the secret and is never wrong. Must hear more about this person, and print out a poster of him for my closet door.

Anyway, so it looks like at some point down the road we’ll be getting some fresh fresh eggs from down the road. And Kate will start spending time communing with the local chickens instead of begging to watch Blues Clues, or taking up drugs. And frankly what a breath of fresh—if not slightly chicken-shit fetid—air that’ll be.

Plus, it’ll give me an excuse to get out there and bask in the glow of all our divine new neighbor folk, who I just can’t wait to get my hands on.

Ich liebe dich, Gustav

Sometimes Paige turns into a small German boy named Gustav.

Never quite sure when it’ll happen. She might be shoving mac and cheese into her gob with both hands and you get an angle on her neck that’s all fatty fat chin. Gustav!

Or she lets loose a machine gun round of farts when she’s in her highchair. Off that plastic seat those toots ricochet good, making nice loud blasts. Total Gustav move.

Or, I don’t know. Maybe she’s just sitting up on the rug and nodding her head up and down vigorously in some weird rhythmic affirmation of something or other that’s not exactly clear.

I mean, anything you could imagine a rotund blond German boy wearing lederhosen and oafish, square-toed, crepe-soled shoes doing qualifies for (but isn’t always necessarily) Gustav-like behavior.

And sometimes it’s just not that clear cut. Gustav isn’t a person per se, he’s more of a, well, state of mind. A spirit if you will. Something—or someone—that can be there one second, then vanish faster than a Top Dog bockwurst.

Although I was the first to identify Gustav, Mark eventually came around to tapping into his presence. Inevitably though, whenever either of us sense we’re in his midst and cry out his name, Kate skyrockets into a “She’s NOT Gustav! SHE’S MY SISTER, PAAAAAAAAIGE!!!” freak-out.

Whatever.

Until he’s goose-stepping around the house or something I don’t really think we have anything to worry about.

Paige’s Plastic Doppelganger

Kate’s bed is by far the most comfortable one in the house. But when I dove into it last week for our afternoon reading and snuggle sesh, I landed on an uncomfortable lump of hard plastic. Turns out it was the doll we’d bought at a yard sale last summer, that bore a terrifyingly strong resemblance to our own Miss Paige.

And, although I’d written about Paigey’s plastic twin back then, I realized I never posted a picture of the two of them.

The photo was taken by exquisite photographer and our dear friend Mary McHenry. Who, by the way, you should call immediately to schedule a shoot of your own family. As should I really, since nine months have passed since this picture was taken, and darling Paige with her fresh crop of sassy curls looks nothing like this doll any more. She’s even MORE delicious.

And God knows yard sale season is back in full swing. (Joy!) So it’s only a matter of time until Kate (my Saturday morning scavenging cohort) and I stumble across another previously-loved doll or toy whose likeness to Paige will cause us to recoil in horror.

When that happens, I’ll try to be more timely about posting a picture.

Under Pressure

My birthday falls on Mother’s Day this year, giving me a small (sour) taste of what it’s like for those poor souls who are born on Christmas.

And God help dear Mark, who has his feet up in the starting blocks awaiting my decision on what I want to do. He’s desperate to make the day special for me, but to date we’ve had several discussions where he’s attempted to focus my thoughts and narrow down the options I spew out. Each of these conversations has ended with him squeezing the top of his head and whimpering softly.

I just can’t decide.

So far we have lunch reservations at 12:15 at ad hoc, Thomas Keller’s allegedly (hopefully) family-friendly restaurant, and at 1:15 at a bistro called The Girl and the Fig that I’ve been wanting to try. Not that we intend to challenge the girls’ restaurant manners—or any progress I’ve made on my postpartum bod—by eating two back-to-back lunches. I just thought it’d be nice to have options in Napa and Sonoma. (And for karma’s sake, we’ll cancel whatever ressie we don’t intend to use in advance. And by “advance” I mean within AT LEAST an hour of our reservation. If I’ve made a decision by then.)

The thing is, there’s also part of me that wonders if I just want to have Mark pack a staggeringly fabulous picnic lunch and take the kids for a hike or to the beach or something.

I mean, doesn’t that sound good too?

It’s one of those times I really wish I lived in Wichita. It’d be so freeing knowing we were going to Applebee’s since it’d be the only game in town. And I’m not sure, but I don’t think they’ve got much outdoor splendor to add in as a contender.

At night we have a sitter. But that’s as far as I’ve gotten. I haven’t determined whether darkening the door of A Cote, our cherished local haunt, makes sense after a potentially big lunch. I mean, it’s so tacky getting gout during a recession.

There’s also been some talk amongst the Mama Posse about getting together for some late afternoon cocktails that day. A proposal I never refuse from those women. (Or practically anyone else, for that matter.) But we were kinda tipsy when that idea came up, so who knows.

I’ve been telling most people that what’s likely to happen is I’ll get a migraine from the stress of trying to have a fun day to the second power, and’ll end up spending it in a dark room, dry-mouthed and fraught with pain, clutching an ice pack to my noggin.

But here’s the thing. I think I’ve even made that claim enough times now that the pressure to have a migraine is also too great. I’ll probably end up having performance anxiety over that too.

I’ve never understood when people just decide to “not do” holidays like Thanksgiving or Christmas because it’s too much of a hassle, or there’s some negative association with the holiday they want to sweep under their emotional carpet. I can’t help but think that making those days not feel like those days takes more energy than just cooking a damn turkey. Which is to say, the duck-and-cover avoidance approach just isn’t an option for me on Sunday.

Ellen emailed last week to see what I’m doing for Mother’s Day. She’d spaced on it also being my birthday, and suggested we get together and do something for Mom, since we still haven’t convened for her death-iversary. And at this point I’m thinking, what the hell. Maybe we should just celebrate Fourth of July too.

Chinks in the Armour

I just got back from the chiropractor where I got the unsettling news that my seemingly bottomless wellspring of postpartum body issues—aches and imbalances which just months ago taunted me from the moment I’d swing my legs off the bed in the morning—appear to have rectified themselves. That I’m in good shape, all in alignment and shit, and getting stronger.

It’s so totally weird.

I mean, aren’t chiropractors programmed to tell you to come back next week? Isn’t that part of the Chirocratic Oath they swear to upon graduating from those New Age-ily named schools like Life University that they go to?

I feel like I’ve been in years of complex therapy and suddenly my shrink gave me a playful sock in the arm and said, “Cool, well, looks like you’re cured. Take care!”

But really, blessedly, I’m surrounded by subtle comforting reminders that my life’s not perfect. Like, every night when I go to take off my contact lenses and reach for the case, which currently has two green Right Eye caps on it. A couple of the white Left Eye caps apparently ran off together to a better life beyond my medicine cabinet.

Makes me feel like Eugene Levy’s character in the pants-pisser Best in Show, who had, literally, two left feet.

And then last night I’m rocking the responsible solo parent act with Mark away for a one-nighter work trip. I had the neighbor kid across the street—who I’m trying to sway away from going to college next year in lieu of occasional babysitting stints for us—come over for a couple hours while I went to my book group.

He’d just watched the kids at his house during our party on Saturday, which allowed for my drunk wig-bedecked friends to get into Paige’s crib and dance the Mashed Potato if they so desired. Far be it for me to repress one’s desire to make use of an innovative dance floor. Especially if they’re paying for a sitter.

So anyway last night he comes over and I have the kids fed, PJed, and both happily, safely a-snooze in their beds. I jaunt off, book in hand, reminding him my cell number’s on the fridge and the monitor’s on the coffee table.

When I get back he’s deep into one of Mark’s rape-and-pillage type video games. Such good clean educational fun. (Hey, whatever keeps him coming back at $8 an hour…) And he tells me at one point he’d turned the monitor on to check on Paigey, make sure she was quiet and all.

“But I hear this voice talking,” he says, “and I’m all thinking, what IS that? I mean, I know there’s not, like, anyone in there with her.”

And of course my mind goes to the Irrational Fear Mama Place of “everyone wants to steal my baby—someone broke into the house to take the baby.”

But I’m trying to mask my abject terror and feign relaxed light interest in his little story. While blocking out the blare of machine gun fire and screaming women from the TV.

“And I’m like, wait, I know that voice!” he continues.

And at this point I’m in a full-bore flop sweat. I’m holding myself back from running into Paige’s room to see signs of a struggle and a stark empty crib. Just waiting for him to say the voice he recognized was the leader of some violent gang from his school who was on some baby-stealing spree as part of a nothing-better-to-do-on-an-unseasonably-rainy-Monday-night antic.

“And then I listen again and I’m like, WAIT! It’s my mother! She’s all on the phone! And it’s like, wait, what?! And then I’m all, oh I got it. You guys forgot to take the other part of the monitor from our house Saturday night when you came to get the girls. So here I am all here and stuff, but I’m listening to what’s going on over at my house. How rad is that?”

And as my stomach unclenches I reach for the arm of the couch to steady myself, and emit a little sweet laugh.

“Oh, ha! Silly us. I guess we did forget to get it, didn’t we?”

Save Some Chicken Parm for Me

Saturday night we had a dancing-on-the-coffee-table caliber throwdown at the house for my birthday. Our friend Randy DJed all professional-like, and some of my favorite straight men got fabulous in wigs that were the wrong colors for their skin tones but oh so right in so many other ways. Mark even got Mitchell’s Ice Cream cake. It was bliss.

And as happily wrung out as I am from all the fun here, I still can’t help but feel bummed to have missed a different party last week.

My Godmother, Mimi, turned 95 on Thursday. And when I called her in the middle of the day, her house was rockin’.

She’s bellowing into the phone to me that she didn’t know she had so many friends and could she maybe call me back another time? It was kinda hard to hear with all the action. Oh, and there’s the doorbell! More guests.

Sheesh.

And is it wrong to admit that part of my sad-to-not-be-there feeling—I mean, how many 95th birthday parties does one get invited to, really?—has to do as much with the inevitably amazing food offerings, as it does with my desire to hold court as a long-standing member of the celebrant’s posse?

Ah, the food. These are the people who throw down a ham, a couple lasagnas (one meat one veg—as if a vegetarian EVER darkened their door), stuffed artichokes, fennel and orange salad, broccoli done guinea-style (cold with a little lemon juice), maybe something with shrimp or scallops, and no doubt a breaded cutlet of some sort. Really, Caligula ate worse than this, but these folks’ll still chastise themselves all through the clean-up and for a good day or two after that they forgot to put out the eggplant parm.

And by “them” I mean Mimi and her sister and ever present sidekick, Aunt Mary. The silly-she’s-so-spry nearly-90-year-old who lives next door, and who reigns supreme over the dessert realm of the food world.

I challenge you to not weep over her Better Than Sex Cake. And every time I’m lucky enough to have some I debate which is better, hearing Aunt Mary snicker with her friends about her cake’s superiority to sex, or the dark chocolate with coconut whipped cream frosting confection itself. You ask me, both are surefire crowd-pleasers.

Another reason it’s so tortuous to miss these shindigs—aside from my denial that there’s an inevitable limited time offer on them—is that parties that Mimi and Aunt Mary throw, even in their dazzling twilight years, are part of my DNA. Growing up next door to them (and their brother, who lived in the third house over and never I’d guess even knew how to boil water, but did an impressive Italian-style job of eating), growing up next to them they’d entreat my mother to host a “little something” for whatever event was taking place in our lives.

My first communion? “We’d love to just have a small party for Kristen.” My graduation from elementary school? Confirmation? My oldest sister’s engagement? “We’d be honored if we could have some people here to celebrate. ” And of course the standards: Christmas Eve, Fourth of July, Memorial Day? “You’ll be coming by, won’t you? It wouldn’t be a party without the Brunos here.”

They’d start cooking days in advance, filling our abutting back yards with a narcotic cloud of essence of garlic. When the party day arrived we’d be drawn zombie-like and Pavlovian out our back door to their homes. In hot weather we’d be on Aunt Mary’s glorious plant-filled patio or in Mimi’s large garage, which doubled as an airy screened-in porch in the summers. (Told you they were Italian.)

In that way that you don’t know what your life would be like otherwise because it’s not that way it’s the way it actually is, I never stopped to think that everyone didn’t have neighbors like them. I mean, Mimi, her utterly amazing late husband, my Godfather, Uncle Ant (as in, Anthony, pronounced ANT-nee, yo) and Aunt Mary—despite the Aunt and Uncle titles and all—aren’t even kin. They just lived next door.

For a while there many of the food fests took place around Mimi and Ant’s pool—an in-ground jobber they’d built when I was in Junior High. It was like the Pool Fairy had finally answered my prayers but delivered the goods one door down. No matter, since they didn’t have kids and I was at their house as often as my own. In fact, Mimi and Ant never swam in the thing themselves, preferring instead to sit at the edge dangling their feet in. (Ant often referred to the pool as “the world’s most expensive foot basin.”)

Between the vittles, the handy proximity, and the effusive Italian grandparent-like adoration, I was too young to know how freaking lucky I was to have so much love cooked into so many breaded chicken cutlets. (Come to think of it, they made great iced tea too.)

It really hit us when my mother eventually moved to a smaller house in town. She marveled that she’d never even seen the folks across the street, forget having been invited over for sausage and peppers and Scrabble.

My nostalgia for the old ‘hood drove me to dredge up an orange photo album Mimi made me years ago. Pictures of me through the years, posing in their clam shell driveway in the JC Penney clothes they’d bought me for back to school, showing off the stitches I’d gotten on my right eyebrow, snuggled up on a bench next to Uncle Ant drinking from one of their plastic orange-shaped cups with the built-in straws that I loved so much. (I’d kill to own one now.) And a bunch of me playing dress-up in Uncle Ant’s old Army hats and over-sized drooping uniforms. (He was a well-decorated Army man back in the day, and a devout fan of the show Hogan’s Heroes, having recorded every episode off of cable onto precisely-labeled VHS tapes.)

Anyway, I came across this Diary of a Catholic Girl photo from around when Mimi, Uncle Ant and I first started hanging out. (I’m the one in white. The one on the left in white, that is.)

I knew right away that Uncle Ant was a social force to be reckoned with. Anyone who wears sunglasses inside at church is my kind of bad ass.

Sadly, I’m bracing to miss another Mary-and-Mimi production next weekend, when Aunt Mary turns the big 9-0. They won’t be cooking for that one since Mary’s kids are hosting, but I still expect to spend some time that day feeling sorry for myself and wishing the Midwest’d finally just cave into the ocean to move the two coasts closer. (A favorite pastime of mine, despite the dear folks who I know and love in those middle parts. In my fantasy they’re all kept safe and are happily re-installed in homes along the new narrow peninsula-like strip of North America.)

We plan to be in Lil Rhody for July 4th, of course. (God sets his watch to it.) It’s my adored, most favorite, never-to-be-missed hometown holiday. And I can assure you that on that trip I’ll be setting aside some time and stomach space to party with Mimi and Aunt Mary. We’ve got some lost time to make up for.

Life on Earth

Kate: “Do we live on a planet called Earth?”

Me: “Yes.”

Kate: “Does Grandpa live on Earth too?”

Me: “Yes.”

Kate: “Where?”

Me: “Well Grandpa lives in the USA, like us. But he lives on the East Coast and we live on the West Coast.”

Kate: “I want to live where Grandpa lives.”

Me: “Why?”

Kate: “Because I love him.”

Now, as my handy dandy What I’m Reading widget shows, I’ve just started in on a book called Sudden Sea: The Great Hurricane of 1938. It takes place in my sweet wee home state of Rhode Island. And the rich silly Yankee history and descriptions of natural beauty—along with the fact that summer (a season Little Rhody does proud) is right around the corner—are making me jones hard for a big dose of home.

They’re also giving me real estate lust for a rambling ancient beauty of an ocean-side home in, say, Jamestown, or maybe Little Compton. Big enough to house plenty of guests, casual enough to keep the doors wide open and to welcome whatever sand gets dragged in. But stately enough to clean up nice too.

This fantasy includes us spend summers there, of course, and retreating to Cali when the skies turn gray.

Anyway, it’s probably obvious that I don’t need much encouragement to find myself in these Rhode Island reveries. But then I start reading this book, and Kate—my little pleasure-seeking alter ego—goes off about living too far away from Grandpa, and I’m pretty much done for.

I Raise My Glass to You, Mom

I spent the better part of dinner tonight trying to hold my lips the way my mother did when she drank wine, and trying (sadly, literally) to not wet my pants laughing.

She used to do this thing when she put a wine glass to her mouth where it looked like she was playing a flute. You know, like she was sorta flattening her lips to blow, with the corners slightly upturned like the early stage of a super fake smile.

It was her Fancy Wine-Drinkin’ lips that she did without fail, every time. I mean, she could have a glass of water and one of wine that she was working at the same time and she could pick either one up at random while conducting a conversation and maybe even cooking dinner and she could still somehow remember to do the Wine Drinkin’ Lips for the wine glass, and just drink like a normal human from the water glass. It was, in a way, impressive.

Unsurprisingly, this slayed my sisters and I. And not just as kids or anything. We’d howl and slap each other laughing (that’s something us Italian Americans do) whenever we saw this, well into adulthood. And of course, we’d razz her about it MERCILESSLY.

(I still regret never having done a blindfolded test where we’d hold up several types of glasses to her to see if she could somehow intuit the presence of a wine glass. My hypothesis is that she’d know.)

So anyway, as I’m here trying to do it during our heat-wave dinner on the porch, Mark is looking at me and trying to show me what face I’m making, and saying, “Okay, so this is it?” But half the time he’s holding his lips out away from his teeth like the teeth’ve got something on them he doesn’t want the rest of his mouth to touch. And of course, that’s all wrong (and frankly, I thought, not even trying very hard), so I’m all, “No, NO, like THIS.” But then unable to keep a straight face to get the flattened flute lips really right. They need to be all pulled back like a super tight face lift with just the smallest opening to let the wine come through. The small hole there is I think what she thought made it all good manners and fancy.

And hey, compared to how I pull corks out of wine bottles with my teeth and just start chugging at the end of my harried kid-tendin’ days, it WAS fancy, man.

So anyway, Mark’s all, “Wait, are your neck veins supposed to be pulsating when you do it?” And he’s sticking his jaw out real tight like a maniac. (Not, by the way, remotely what I was doing.) But hey, it’s not like I have all this isometric lip strength that my mother had from doing it for so long. I mean, it’s not like she looked like she was bench pressing twice her weight when she sipped a pinot grigio.

Finally, after ignoring the children for most of the meal, we gave up on it. Clearly Mark was not taking my attempts at perfecting the look seriously enough, and I was starting to question whether I just didn’t have the skillz any more to nail it.

Besides, in the teeniest small way all the Mom thoughts started to get me feeling a bit sad. I mean, how am I ever going to get it right if I can’t ever watch her do it again?

Last week, on Friday, marked five years since she died. And on that day the so-great-I-don’t-deserve-them Mama Posse had a lovely just-us-and-the-kids garden party as a tribute to my Mama. But I’d likely gone so extremely overboard in stressing to them that yes, a little lunch would be lovely, but please no dead mother poetry readings, or presentations of large poster board collages with pictures of her and words like “#1 Mom!” cut out from magazines. I’d made it clear in my lacking-subtlety way that if I wanted to “go there” and talk about her, I would.

Every time one of the kids called out, “Mom!” to one of us, I think the Mamas were cringing and all pulling them aside and whispering, “Owen, I told you to call me Sacha today not Mom.”

What gals.

And, as it turns out, that day, I didn’t want to go there. It wasn’t that I couldn’t for fear of what I’d unleash, there just wasn’t anything there to really go to. So aside from Mark sweetly saying to me at one point in the evening how happy he is that he knew her, her five-year death-iversary came and went like no big thing.

Usually Ellen and I and our kids get together on that day and on Mom’s birthday in January, and I cook Polish food. We’ll sometimes pull out old pics of Mom, and Ellen–since she’s kinda a hippie–tends to have some sort of special candle lit.

But last weekend Ellen was out of town, her kids with their dad. So we’ll schedule something for another day soon. And maybe then it’ll feel more normal or natural for me to think or talk a bit, or even a lot, about Mom. And if it just turns out to be another great meal with the intention of it being a tribute to her, that’s okay too.

The one thing I’ve learned about the grief thing is you never know when it’ll strike, and it’s foolish to try to summon some disingenuous desperate emotion when you’re heart’s just not going there on its own. No one’s looking to anyone to put on a big show. And not that we have to emulate her, but Lord knows, that wasn’t how Vicki rolled.

One thing I will have to make sure of when Ellen and I get together, is that she takes a crack at the Wine Lips thing. If my memory serves me, she has a knack for imitating it. And even if she doesn’t get it quite right, I’d happily welcome another laughing sesh just watching her try.

Oh, Mama. I miss you.