Sisters, Sleep, and Yard Sales

At 6:40 on Sunday morning when Paige babbled her wake-up call, Mark and I cracked our eyes open, smacked opened and closed our bone-dry mouths, and softly groaned as we remembered the day that stretched ahead of us. We were having a huge yard sale.

For all we knew, early birds were already prowling around our front porch with the hopes of finding some ignorantly-priced Noritake china. Having to lug everything out of the garage and around to the front yard seemed torture enough, then then Kate’s tiny voice joined the chorus with Paige. “Mama! I woke up!”

My God, we also had children to tend to. And in the wake of a supremely fun party the night before–where Mike and Myra renewed their vows on their 15th anniversary and treated their friends to an exceptionally fabulous throw down–here we were, heads throbbing, lying tangled in our sheets like some suburban American version of Sid and Nancy.

Not pretty.

It’s just more validation that my on-the-fly early morning nanny service would catch on like wildfire. If I could have picked up the phone for urgent back-up, I would’ve paid $100 an hour for childcare. Easily.

Anyway, at least I’d consumed a vat of Don’s superb pinot the night before and had good reason for my state of disarray. Whereas this past Friday, I had no alcohol-related excuse for my behavior.

So Friday. When I arrive at Megan’s house for mother’s group, she’s in her garage bent over two ride-on cars she’s assembling for the twins and she mutters between clenched teeth that she’s been in a fantastically crappy mood. It’s such a gift that Megan A) admits to her foul mood but still throws a yard party worthy of the Smith & Hawken catalog, B) is the kind of friend who doesn’t sugarcoat life when she’s bedraggled, and C) manages to do her hair in cute braids despite it all. Megan is rarely off her game, and with three kids under three, no nanny, and a hubbie with a time-sucking job, I’d be enjoying the creature comforts of a sanatorium if I were her.

Anyway, aside from her admission of it, you’d never know the woman was crabby. But then in some weird transference that we tried to make sense of later, the bad mood somehow leeched over to me. There was either some fierce ‘power of suggestion’ energy out there, or maybe some as-yet-undead part of my childhood Catholicism urged me to take it on like some priest in an exorcism. More likely it was the exhaustion that’d caught up to me from waking-in-the-night children and not sleeping well with Mark out of town.

After lunch, with some help from Mary, who impressively coaxed naked Kate (long story) back into her clothes and even her car seat while I wrangled Paige, I drove home, nearly slumping over the steering wheel, hoping the day’s excitement would warrant Little Miss Never Nap into even the smallest kip. I never sleep when the kids do, but since I caught Megan’s mood like a bad cold and was generally haggard from the night before, I’d have gladly done a swan dive into bed.

No luck. Kate invoked reserve stores of energy and refused to even play quietly in her room. So when I staggered in to feign some active parenting, I was all over her suggestion that “you be the baby and I be the mommy.”  This involved her even tucking me into her bed (bliss!). And the next thing I remember, Officer, I was fluttering my eyes open after having totally conked out. D’oh!

Thankfully the curtains were not on fire, Kate wasn’t out on the sidewalk chatting with strangers, and Paige was still safely snoozing in her crib.

The rush of maternal negligence that surged through me went unnoticed by Kate who was tootling around in her room and came over to me saying, “You woke up now, Baby! You want some milk and a snack, Baby?”

And just as I was settling in to thinking “Okay, I dozed off for a bit here but everything’s okay…” I remembered that I’d taken a sleeping Paige out the car earlier with the thought that I’d come back, grab my bag, and lock up. Which of course, I never did.

“Mommy?” I said to Kate, because God knows when she is Mommy and I am Baby I can never mistakenly call her Kate. (The house could be burning down and if I called her Kate she’d sit on the floor and scream, “My name is not Kate! I’m Snooooow Whiiiiiite!” And refuse to budge.) So I’m all, “Baby forgot something in the car. I’ll be right back, Mommy.”

I’d parked on the street, since our garage might as well be in the next town over. And from the second I set foot on the porch I notice I somehow managed to park with the two right wheels on the sidewalk. My God. Had I been sleep-driving? Then I walk around to the street-side door where Paigey’s car seat is, and of course, it’s open. Not wide open, mind you, but still. And on the front passenger seat? My bag with my wallet, iPhone, yadda yadda yadda. This may be okay in say, Bristol, Rhode Island. But this is Oakland, people. Thankfully–mercifully–it was all still there.

I mean, imagine if I had been drunk how ugly that scene would have been.

Not one to stew silently in my own shame, but to share it (see: this blog) I immediately call my friend Jennifer who lives next door. And she says brightly, “Hey I saw your great parking job!” Oy! Nothing like being beaten to the punch on my own self-flagellation.

But it really was an odd day. Thankfully, no hangover was associated with this not-drunk-but-acting-like it afternoon. I also didn’t don a lampshade, call any old boyfriends, or snarf down a whole sleeve of Chips Ahoy cookies. (Not that I call old boyfriends these days, Mark…) Worst of all, Mary reported late yesterday that the Bad Mood Virus had somehow been passed on to her. I can only hope that its course of destruction ended there.

And thankfully, yesterday when I truly was hungover, my two sisters arrived to valiantly pitch in with the yard sale–merchandising items, setting prices on the fly, convincing people they needed our old crap, and collecting cash with the efficiency and security of a Swiss bank.

At the end of a long and exhausting day I looked at Kate and Paige across the dinner table and smiled thinking that they’ll be there for each other for all the good times, and for all the hung-over yard sales.

The Remote Control of Life

Am I the only one who wishes real life was like Tivo?

I mean, sometimes I feel like if I could just hit Pause for a few minutes (or hours)–freezing the rest of the world, not me–it’d give me a chance to run around like a madwoman and get my shit together, even slap on some lip gloss and smooth down my clothes before taking a deep cleansing breath through the nostrils, smiling serenely, then hitting Resume.

Wouldn’t that just rock?

Yesterday I totally needed Tivo Life functionality. We were at our local kiddie digs, Frog Park, and I was chatting with an extremely super duper pregnant woman. Kate ran up to us and asked her, “Do you have a baby in your belly?” to which she laughed and said “Yes! I do!” (I think she was in that nearly almost overdue get-this-thing-out-of-me phase. The Fourth Trimester, as it were.)

Anyway, then Kate looked up at me with a quizzical head tilt and asked, “How do they put babies in the belly, Mama?”

At which point I nearly swooned and needed to hold onto Huge Preg-o for support. Nearly.

Instead, several possible and seemingly inappropriate answers raced through my head, along with the thought “Why don’t I have a canned response ready? Why the hell am I so unprepared for this?” And also the thought, “She’s not even three, for God’s sake! Isn’t it a bit early for this question?!”

Thankfully, Large Pregster had waddled off to help her ecto-child who was experiencing some sort of monkey bar issue. So at least my stuttering, blathering answer would take place in relative privacy. But still. I needed that Tivo Pause button.

But then, in the next split second–since this dense stream of neurotic thoughts managed to whirl through my noggin at a furious pace–Kate squealed and pointed across the playground. “Look at that little dog!!” And like a blur she ran off to inspect a wee decrepit Chihuahua who was tied up to the fence, her question to me nearly instantly forgotten.

Uh, phew!

Having had some time to reflect upon this, I’m still utterly at a loss for how I’d answer her in an age-appropriate way. I’m hoping that the Friday Mama Posse will have some brilliance and insight to send my way. So cross your fingers that the question doesn’t resurface before then.

In the meantime, I think the obvious solution is to get a dog.

Mars and Venus

This weekend when I was chatting on the phone with my friend Mary, Kate asked if she could talk to her son, Will.

After their conversation, Kate handed the phone back to me and said disappointedly, “I wanted him to say more.”

On her end, Mary reported that Will said, “I told Kate all about my life.”

Typical, huh? Here’s the guy feeling like he’s bared his soul, and the girl just wishes he could open up to her a bit more.

Ah well, they’re three. They have plenty of time to work this stuff out.

Some Things You Learn in High School Really Do Apply to Life

Nothing makes me feel younger than faking sober for the babysitter at the end of an evening.
 
Back in the day I’d have to pass the gauntlet of my waited-up-for-me mother, who was typically in the kitchen working a crossword puzzle or getting herself a late-night snack. I’d make what I hoped was nonchalant (and non-slurred) small talk until it seemed a reasonable amount of time had passed and I could head up to my room to sleep with one leg dangling off the bed.

Not that this was a frequent occurrence in my youth. I wasn’t a booze-hound by any means, but I did have some nights of, uh, experimentation.

Funny how now that I’m a mother myself, I’ve had to dust this skill off. Except now I’m faking sober for a teenager instead of being one myself. It just seems so uncouth to be the boozy neighborhood mom whose kids you babysit for. I mean, I have a reputation to uphold.

Speaking of responsible winos, our friends Mike and Myra take turns being Designated Driver when they go out. But when it’s Myra’s turn to drink and she doesn’t take full advantage, Mike takes it as a sort of affront to his sense of fairness.

“Here’s Myra,” he says, winding up for a good rant. “She had one glass of wine–one!–and here I’m holding back because it’s my night to drive. I mean if I knew she didn’t want to drink anyway, she should have offered to drive! I could have been having a good time!”

Like any good conflict-averse spouse Myra’s come up with a way to get Mike off her back on this topic. She confided to me that at the end of some nights when she thinks Mike will feel she hasn’t sufficiently filled her role as Designated Drinker, she just plays drunk. You know, laughs extra loud and fumbles around a bit. Maybe slurs a word or two to ensure she’s gotten her point across.

How good is that? God, I’d love to see her act. 

Anyway, all this came to mind since it’s been a while since Mark and I have gone out on the town, leaving someone else as sentry for the sleeping kids. But today my mother-in-law, Peggy, arrived for a week-long visit. And Friday’s Mark and my fourth wedding anniversary. (What’s the gift for the fourth again? Tin foil? PVC pipe? Burlap?)

Mark booked us at an incredibly romantic, delicious, beautiful restaurant in the city called Quince. No getting up to re-supply chicken nuggets mid-meal! No ‘Please eat two more bites of broccoli’ entreaties! No ketchup present at the dinner whatsoever! All that, plus the company of my adorable smart funny husband whose company I remember really enjoying before the exhaustion of two weeks of Olympic-watching drained the life blood out of me. 

Even if we just drive to San Francisco singing songs from the radio together, it’s sure to be the best night ever. And if we do whoop it up a little, I’m not feeling any pressure to put on my sober act for Peggy. She probably wouldn’t buy it anyway.   

Other People’s Mothers

When I was a kid I was always wishing that one or another of my friend’s mothers was my mom. It’s terrible to admit, but I’m sure other kids did it too.

Sleeping over at a friend’s house one night, her mom brought hot chocolate chip cookies to us where were watching a R-rated movie on cable–a movie she knew we were watching and was totally cool with. On the couch next to Leigh’s cute older brother I sat in a state of bliss, marveling at just how good she had it.

In high school another friend’s mom used to wake up early to make us lunches to bring to the beach. “Now Kristen, honey,” she’d say. “I know you don’t like mayo so there’s none on your sandwich, and I put the sliced tomatoes in a separate baggy so they wouldn’t get the bread soggy.” For real she would do this. I mean, that woman provided exceptional service. Of course my friend rolled her eyes through it all, but I was ready to have adoption papers drafted.

Now that I’m a mother myself, the thought that Kate or Paige would ever want to trade me in or upgrade me is loathsome. And the fact that my mother’s no longer around for me to take for granted is even worse.

At some point after my mother died I remember going through a sort of panicked phase of feeling like I needed to identify the person who’d act as her Second Runner Up. I wondered whether Mark’s mom would suddenly transform from mother-in-law to Mom for me. I mean, she was there being Mark’s mom already, so I thought I could just sort of slip in on that action. I considered whether any of my mother’s old friends from Rhode Island–or even one of my sisters–would step up and start being my new mother. I even wondered whether my dad would demonstrably start filling the role of both parents. Absurd as it is to admit, I think I expected him to start calling me twice as much to pick up the slack in my parental phone time.

Thinking back I’m not sure exactly what I was looking for this stand-in Mama to do. Maybe just shower me with attention? Be the person who after a conversation where I complained of having a scratchy throat thought to call me the next day to check on how I was feeling? Though, truth be told, I’m not even sure my own mother did that.

As it turned out, no one person presented themselves to me in whatever contrived way my mind envisioned it might happen. And I see now that it would have been absurd for that to have happened anyway. First off, anyone with any emotional sense would not have wanted to step on my mother’s proverbial toes. It was more respectful to honor her unreplicatable place in my life. But anyone’s attempts to up their maternal juju toward me would likley have come off as artificial anyway. Granted, I may well have lapped it up, but it would’ve been a rebound relationship borne out of my neediness. And we all know those are short-lived. At least they tend to be.

Once the shock that my mother was gone for good started to wear off–or once I became more accustomed to it–I realized I just had to butch up. I’d been trying to sidestep the whole dismal thing by finding a suitable maternal understudy. And for me, it just didn’t work that way. At least not in the form of one person. 

This weekend I got a great dose of Mama glory from my friend Mike’s mother, Marilyn. When I first met her ten years ago I remember thinking I needed to get myself to LA as often as possible. I wanted to sit at her feet–she the regal matriarch and me the adoring wanna-be daughter–and soak in all her sassy, brilliant, loving, opinionated, intelligent Mamaness.

In fact, years flew by without seeing her again. My plan to stalk her never came to fruition. And yet reconnecting with her this weekend was all I needed to re-set my eager ‘when-can-I-visit-you-next?’ agenda. What makes Marilyn especially addictive is, as you find yourself joking, laughing, and linking arms with her and her three sons–wanting nothing more than to be an insider in their scene–she’s so down-to-earth, letting you into her home and what she’s doing in the easiest most natural way, that you realize part of her feel-good brilliance is her ability to make you feel exactly what you want–like you’re part of her family, like you’re one of them. How can you not want more more more of that?

And today, I crashed my friend Lisa’s weekly visit-with-kids to her parent’s house. Her mom hadn’t met Paige yet, and with my weird scheduling luck with seemingly all of Lisa’s parties, it’d been ages since she’d seen Kate. I can use that as the excuse for the visit, but really I knew I was positioning myself for a hearty dose of Mama-ness. Instead of wallowing in my jealousness that Lisa has fabulous–and local–parents, it seems more productive to just get in on the action. Even when I know I’m engineering myself into the setting, it’s still nice to get a hit of it.

As I’m sitting in the back yard there today, seeing Lisa’s dad pull Kate through the grass on a wagon as she sips milk like a toddler Cleopatra, then watching Lisa’s mom make Play-Doh turtles and pancakes, happily letting Kate mix up the colors and admiring her advanced verbal skills–I realized that my special stealth skill for tapping into other’s people’s mothers isn’t lost on Kate.

Today Kate and Paige were entertained, fed, and admired by two devoted world-class grandparents, if only for the day. Before conking out on the car ride home, Kate sleepily requested that I “call those grandparents to make another play date” soon. For her sake and mine, I certainly will.

What Do You Say?

Tomorrow morning we’re flying to LA to our dear friends Mike and Lorin’s wedding. To say I’m elated, verklempt, and generally fired up for a good party, is an understatement.

Mike asked me if I’d get up and say something at the wedding. To which I immediately said yes yes yes. He mentioned something about “funny and profound.” I think it was meant as more of a compliment to me than a directive. But still. Uh, no pressure!

God knows I’m absurdly enthusiastic about Mike and Lorin and this wedding and their whole love thang. From the minute I got Mike’s call, sweetly telling me that he had some news, that while they’d be on vacation in California they decided they’d get married–from that moment I’ve been so crazy excited and happy. I’m like the guy in the ad for that cholesterol-lowering medicine. You know, the one where he gets in an elevator and he’s so fired up he announces to all the other worker drones what his cholesterol level is.

I’m using every excuse I can to tell people about this wedding. My mailman drops off some letters. “Letters?” I say. “Why, I wonder whether my friends Mike and Lorin are having their mail held in Brooklyn while they’re out in California FOR THEIR WEDDING.”

Getting my eyebrows done today. “So what are you doing this weekend?” I ask the woman pouring hot wax on my head. And without giving her a chance to answer: “Well I’m going to LA for a wedding. My friends Mike and Lorin are getting married. Yeah, they’ve been together for 12 years,” I say launching into fast-talking excited detail blather about ‘Well the wedding is going to be totally casual. Like kids and stuff will be there, and swimming in the pool, and Mexican food. Oh, Mike’s mom’s house–where it’s at–is next door to Shawn Cassidy’s. Or at least he used to live there. Wait, did I tell you about Lorin’s Grammy?”

This is all to perfect strangers, so you can imagine how I’ve chattered on rapid-fire to people who I know. People who feel compelled by their good natures to feign interest and not tell me after the second hour of “so I think I might wear this steel gray strapless sundress I just got even though Mike keeps stressing how it super casual–like have your swimsuit on under your clothes casual–but I was thinking maybe if I wear it with flip flops…”–managed to not tell me to just SHUT UP.

You’d think after all this talking I’ve been doing that I’d have something to say when they want me to get up and speak. But I’m like a deer in the headlights. What could I ever say that will be good enough? Charming, funny, and sufficiently rife with homage to their epic relationship?

Of course, poor Mark gets the brunt of me prattling on this topic–the what I’ll say topic–too. Until today he said in his divine smartitude, “Um, mabye you’re overthinking this.”

To which I said, “Yeah, I know. I was thinking that.”

So essentially what I think I want to say is this. Consider this a kind of rough outline of the topics I want to cover:

I) I vaguely remember having a sort of love-turf-war kinda of feeling when Mike met Lorin. Even though by the time they got together I’d moved out of New York and had somehow managed to morph the obsessive daily-detail-sharing kinda friendship Mike and I had into a less co-dependent and more mature sort of obsessive long-distance adoring friendship. But despite my skepticism Lorin managed to quite easily crack my heart open and make me want to obsessively share my mundane life details with him too. That and drink too much wine, wear silly wigs, and sing show tunes.

    A) Lorin never felt like the-guy-with-Mike who I had to endure in order to spend time with Mike. We all know those couples, and with Mike and Lorin you get two excellent humans of equal social, intellectual and talent value. Except Lorin can cook and sing circles around Mike.

II) Somewhere along the way Lorin and I developed our own friendship. And after all these years it’s almost like I’ve forgotten who I knew first. (Thankfully I have a lot of geeky pictures of Mike and I with bad 80′s haircuts in London to remind me.) And in my twisted way there’s nothing more fun for me than to call Mike when I’m hanging out with Lorin to tell him how much fun Lorin and I are having and how much better friends Lorin and I are than he and I are. It’s a wonder I have any friends, really.

III) Somewhere in the midst of Mike and I changing our special alone-time dinners out to include Lorin and all of us getting along like a house on fire, I go ahead and fall in love too, and introduced Mark into the mix to take things up a level. And amazingly even with a fourth player, the mutual admiration fest carried on! And let it be know, I introduced Mike and Lorin to Mark in the way that you play a CD that you really love for someone and sit right next to them while they’re listening and say every few seconds, “Oh my God. Isn’t this great? Wait, it gets even better.” And despite my exceedingly obnoxious desire to get the three of them to all to love and appreciate and find each other funny, miraculously–blessedly–they did.

IV) But really I’m just blathering on about me and them and really this wedding is about them–even though clearly there’s some lingering issue with me needing to inject myself into their thing. So them. After twelve years together, two home purchases, three children, world travel, family visits, holidays, celebrations and tragedies, lasic surgery, tons of love love love and listening and processing and understanding, and sure probably some good fights–oh, and did I mention a GRAMMY AWARD?!–I mean after all that, it’s heart-wrenching and crazy and mind-boggling that these two people who are more married than some couples who have been married for decades, can finally actually get married in the State of California. Hallelujah!

    A) What’s happening this weekend was a long time coming. It’s really just the ceremony part, and the celebration of a fantastic marriage that’s been long underway.

V) I love love love them and wish them every happiness from the bottom of my heart and really think we should plan a trip to Poland together soon. Wouldn’t that be fun?

Oh God, I still don’t know what I’m going to say.

Believe It Or Not, I Have a Closet Full of High Heels

Yesterday I had an appointment to get my hair colored. I’d decided it was getting too blonde in the front. But then–in a mode typical of how I’ve been operating lately–by the time I was sitting in the seat at the salon, I decided the color looked fabulous.

So I asked her if she could just give me a trim.

As she’s cutting she’s asking me about whether I need any more shampoo or anything and I say something about Tigi products. But instead of saying Tee-Gee, as I guess the company is pronounced, I said Tig-Ee.

This causes her to laugh and say, “It’s Tee-Gee.You’re reading kid’s books all the time so you’re all Tig-EE, like Tigger and Pooh. That’s so funny.”

Uh, excuse me? She might as well have asked me if I have “Congrats Class of 2008! Go Badgers!” written in window paint all over my mini van.

And for your information, we don’t have a mini van. (Yet.)

Mark keeps pictures of the girls on his phone so he can show them off to people at work. Since I’m always with Kate and Paige, I clearly need to put some pictures on my phone from when I was a business woman.

“Now in this shot I was signing a multi-million dollar contract with a client I brought in.”

“Here’s me at the Monday morning management meeting.”

“Oh and in this one I’m running through a spreadsheet, telling my team about our finance goals for the quarter.”

The Mama Posse Rides Again

It’s good to have a group of Mama friends who you can say nearly anything in front of and they’ll not only not be horrified, they’ll suggest a great solution, rush to console you, or tell you they’ve been through the same thing–only nine times more gruesome and harrowing. You walk away either armed with answers, relieved that it’s not as bad as it could be, or both.

I mean, how can you go wrong with that kind of support? If high school friendships were like that we’d all be so secure and functional most therapists would be out of business.

A couple weeks ago I was out for dinner and a movie with my Mama posse. After downing our pre-theater beers like frat boys on a bender (even sans kids we’re efficient), we settled into chatting and got to the topic of babies. Specifically if any of us would be having more.

One friend’s a strong ‘maybe.’ She’s definitely getting that twinkle in her uterus, but she’s not sure whether it’s just her body telling her it’s that time again, or if it really makes sense for her family. Another woman was more clear-cut. “Uh, no. We are done.” And the third has already taken physiological steps to close down the factory, as it were. Though that’s not stopping her from sometimes daydreaming about adding yet another to their party of five.

As for me? Well, I can understand everyone’s position. I nod in hearty agreement with whatever reasons each of them share for wanting what they want–or what they don’t want, as it were. Which is to say, I enjoy indulging myself on all angles of the issue, even though I know it’s nearly certain that our ball-bouncing days are gone around here.

Anyway, at one point in this chatting-while-speed-eating-and-drinking meal, in some non-explicit way one friend made a comment alluding to something that I didn’t catch at all. And it sparked the ‘We Are Done’ Mama to say, “Oh, totally! I mean even I think of having another one for that reason.” Then the mother of three chimes in that even with three already, she’s had that thought too.

And I’m sitting there, having totally lost the train of conversation within a matter of seconds, and lamenting why I always miss the good parts. I’m the one cleaning condensation off my snorkel mask when all the sea turtles swim by, or up getting popcorn during the scene when the two women kiss. So I guess I should be used to it.

What’s weird is they’re all fervently–but also kind of abashedly–agreeing to something. And when I ask what it is, they all turn to me, but still can’t seem to make themselves articulate what it is. And this is a group of women with whom I’ve discussed constipation, condoms, and other issues of a fecal, sexual, and personal nature, without batting an eye. Oh, and we talk about reality TV, too.

So finally, one friend skirts the issue in an attempt to explain it to me. “You know,” she says, “If you have three,” emphasizing the three, “then if something were to…” She still can’t bear to spit it out, but as it clicks in my brain I,of course, call out loudly, “Oh! What you’re saying is if one dies, you’ll still have two other ones?,” causing the older Latino server behind the counter to snap his head in my direction and catch eyes with me. And likely causing my friends to want to take me out too. (Since, there would still be three of them left…)

More than anything I was surprised that I’d never had this thought myself. Generally I think my Mama brain has explored every possible potential horror story, wacky scenario, and what-if situation related to family, children, and marriage. That’s what you do in the many collective hours of nursing a baby in the middle of the night. In case you were wondering.

And I would like to make it perfectly clear that these mothers are adoring, devoted, and utterly first-rate at this motherhood thing. It’s not that they’re doing Britneys, driving recklessly with un-carseated kids and thinking to themselves, “Who cares if I crash? I have back-up children!” No, no, no. That’s not it at all.

This idea that they admit is, um, offbeat–though their very unwillingness to so much as say it out loud–is actually the kind of thinking that comes out of mad mad Mama love. That comes from the desperate place that you don’t want to go to but you force yourself to, which is to think of what your life would be like if suddenly you were without one of your beloved babies. And since you’ve made yourself go there, then like all practical problem-solving mothers, you need to figure out what happens next in that most unthinkable scenario. And as much as you fear that even having these thoughts might make any of them more likely (God forbid) to come to pass, the only consolation you can provide yourself is that at least you would still have another child–or children–to love.
 
See? It’s all rather bleak, but I totally get it. And I’m truly shocked that I hadn’t ever had the thought myself.

From there our conversation veered off to other morbid and mundane topics. And we shoveled down more barbeque, swilled beer, intermittently reminded each other the movie was about to start, and felt grateful that we were Mamas of sweet healthy children who were home safely with their fathers as we enjoyed a rare and blissful night out.

The Smoke has Cleared

It’s July 5^th. For me it’s like December 26^th
is for many other people. The day after all the hoopla, and when you need
to start counting down until it happens again next year.

It’s noon but we’ve already done a hearty round of visiting,
and all around town it’s the same. It’s like every Bristolian has an over
abundance of home-grown tomatoes and zucchini–but in this case it’s desserts
from their Forta July celebrations. Everywhere you go people are either foisting
off or fending off cookies, brownies and red-white-and-blue cakes. What’s that
joke about having to lock your car doors or else someone will load it up with
stuff for you?

Anyway, what ends up happening is everyone ends up with the
same amount of leftovers to eat their way through. It’s just that some of it
wasn’t yours to start with.

So of course, we decided to order out sandwiches from Leo’s
for lunch. The over-stuffed refrigerator be damned.

Close Encounters

I went on a shower-free long weekend camping trip several years ago with my then-boyfriend, the long-haired tie-dye-wearin’ Mike. We flew to Oregon for some hippie-fest where the temperatures were blisteringly hot and the fairgrounds served up billowing gusts of dust like some kind of movie set fog machine.

At the end of the trip we were chicken-fried in sweat and dirt, exhausted from excessive indulgences and poor Therm-a-Rest sleep, and each sporting our own musky funk. It was the first time I’d ever flown somewhere to camp, and as we waited for our luggage, tent, and sleeping bags to come around the baggage carousel I realized I wouldn’t have minded the airline losing my stuff. The connection I had with those belongings was like the one I had with my backpack contents after a month of collegiate Eurailing–gratitude for having served me well, along with the desire to burn it all and never see it again.

As I’m yawning and scratching at myself like a geriatric Basset Hound, I’m suddenly jolted by a woman’s voice calling from behind me at close range. “Kristen? Kristen Bruno?”

And before I have time to do a flying dive into the crowd and log-roll my way to anonymity, a perky woman in a crisp linen suit presents herself before me. She was someone I’d gone to college with. I didn’t know her really very well, but in that small liberal arts school way, with any given person there tends to be at least one person in common who you both slept with. (Just kidding, Dad!)

She seemed to want to lean in to hug me, but on scanning my rag-tag clothing–or maybe smelling it–she reconsidered and just said, “How are you? How long has it been?” All this while no doubt thinking pityingly what a shame it was that I’d become homeless.

For a split-second I considering busting out a, “No hablo Englaise.” Unfortunately though I took French in school so I’m not really sure how to say that (or, obviously, write it). My luck.

Of course, this wasn’t the first time I’ve had an encounter with my past that I’d rather not have had. But everyone has ducked behind a life-sized cut-out of Michael Moore to hide from an old high school classmate at their home-town movie theater, right? Or veered into a random store to avoid passing an old acquaintance on a sidewalk? Surely I’m not the only one to have sunk my face in Common Grounds to hide from/spy on an old boyfriend at a coffee shop. (Hey, at least I inadvertently upped their readership.)

Don’t get me wrong. There’s plenty of times when I’m actually the person to prance in front of that past-life chum and ask in a dramatic lilt, “Tracey Phillips?” There are times when I’ve managed to comb my hair before going into public, am sober enough to not slur my words, and feel genuinely happy to see and reconnect with someone I used to know. Even when it’s been since I had an asymmetrical haircut and listened to Dead Kennedy records (yes, records) that I saw the person last. Sometimes I’m actually eager to show off the life progress I’ve made!

And sometimes I’m just not in the mood to hear about the hockey team the other person’s husband just bought. So sue me.

There’s also the other problem I’ve harbored in these situations. It’s the inexplicable seemingly-incurable syndrome I suffer from which makes anyone I bump into–whether we were good friends, barely knew each other, or threw blue drinks at each other in a girl fight at a Funky Cold Medina party. No matter who it is and my level of fondness or disdain for them, for the life of me I cannot manage to end our sidewalk encounter without saying, “We should get together some time!”

Truly. I need to have some kind of electric cattle prod classical conditioning therapy to break myself of this habit. There must be some way that other people manage to just say something clever like, “Okay. Bye!” And then walk away.

How can something so simple be so impossible to do?

Anyway, these days what I’ve come to realize in a reverse engineering sort of way is that the spate of old friends that the universe recently served up to me, I’ve been happy–no, delighted–to reconnect with. And it’s not because I’ve been walking around lately in smart starched clothing and wearing a becoming shade of lipstick, with nary a speck on my teeth.

I can only deduce that I’m feeling quite happy with my life. I’ve got this little love dumpling Paigey who, lizard skin and all, dazzles me daily with her sweetness. And Miss Kate, a gorgeous blond with little braids who can talk circles around kids twice her age. Not to mention the man who made it all possible, Mark, who is either smarter than he is funny, or sweeter than smart–oh, I sometimes just can’t make up my mind which of his many fabulous qualities wins out over all the others.

Knock on wood, but, surrounded as I am by these three blessed ones, how can life not be divine?

Oh sure, there are plenty of things that if pressed to I could conjure up as “wants.” Things that I feel we should have, or do, or be like in order to be fully self-actualized. (And let’s not forget the where we could/should live issue.) But really, if it weren’t for those things existing in their state of not-yet-thereness, what would the impetus be to ever, say, go to another yard sale? Knowing there is room to grow doesn’t have to be crippling. It can just help you justify buying more crap.

Last Sunday I spent such a lovely few hours visiting with my junior-year-in-France pal Randy. Just chatting and catching up and noshing. After Kate’s initial two minutes of shyness melted away, she was having Randy carry her on his shoulders at the farmer’s market. Which was sweet in that way that it is when your dog instantly accepts the new person you’re dating. And then, in that small world thing that is frankly no longer getting surprising, it turned out Randy and Mark somehow knew the same academic-type person from some college or other.

I’m hoping to see more of Randy: Some nights where I can act like a non-Mom and hang out like a kooky kid in the Mission, and some times when he can come to Oak-town for a family dinner and to get his dapper shirts covered in baby spit-up.

The visit we had several weeks ago now from no-longer-long-lost Sydney was also great. I mean, she and I were friends long before either of us ever even had a boyfriend, and here she is walking into my living room with her husband of 17 years. It was wild. Being able to go out to dinner with someone you haven’t seen for 25 years–and really having fun–validates my childhood character-judgment and friendship selection process.

As visual aids to going down memory lane–and to really bore our husbands to tears–I pulled out an old box of stuff I’d saved from the era of Sydney and my friendship. We flipped through yearbooks, those photo albums where you pull back the clear plastic sheets and stick your pics on the tacky pages, and embarrassingly enough some of my old school papers and report cards. (“Kristen is such a bright girl. If only she was less distracted in class she could really live up to her potential.” Imagine that repeated over the course of 10 or so years by various teachers.)

Of course, it wasn’t until I put all this old stuff back in the box to stick in the cellar for another 20 years that I found a letter Sydney had written me. Assuming she’d give me her blessing to reprint part of it here, I think it’s a testament to just how long ago it was that we were friends back in my beloved smallest state. The fact that it’s a real old-fashioned-type handwritten letter is maybe proof enough.

“Do you have cable? We don’t but Sharla does. There is this new channel MTV. Do you get it if you have cable? It’s like radio but it shows the groups videos for their songs. I
t’s excellent!!”

But wait, there’s more…

“I’ve fallen in love with Aldo Nova. “Fantasy,” Foolin’ Yourself,” “Ball and Chain,” etc. I listen to that album constantly.”

Reading this letter explains a lot. I now understand why Sydney was eager to come out to San Francisco to see me once we’d reconnected. Like me, she’s not the only one who periodically feels the need to prove how far she’s come since way back whenever.

And in all honesty I was really thrilled that she came. Not only do we have the memories of our foolish Aldo Nova-lovin’ youth–though, to be clear, that was really more her thing than mine–but we’ve got the makings of a whole new now-we’re-grown-ups friendship. We’re determined to not wait another twenty years until we get together again. Hopefully Mark, the girls, and I will make our way to Austin one of these days to see Sydney and Tere and meet their kids. 

And when that does happen, you can rest assured that I’ll be wearing my linen suit to the airport.