The weight of empty boxes

As I opened my freezer and picked up the box, I fully expected the weight of the sugar, fat, and general deliciousness that I had been craving would, naturally, resist my urges.

 Instead, my hand launched up to the wire bars of the shelf above it, quite possibly sustaining a bruise that would slowly develop as I stood

there and fumed.

Why doesn't anyone in the house throw out empty boxes?

 It was a rhetorical complaint that could as quickly ricochet and cover me

in sickly sweet irony.

 As if they didn't come from me - my children! Don't they know, I asked the air quite plaintively, how much of their own gratification is lost by this lazy omission to the effort of recycling?

 Don't they understand that if I knew the icy fudge-ribboned delicacies had been scarfed or the cream-filled treasure boxes had been scraped to barren that I would dutifully replace them?

Who do they think does the shopping?

OK sometimes their dad ... but he never buys the good stuff.

I'm the one buying the food that I wish they wouldn't eat and hiding it in plain sight. 

The temptations I face in the middle of the night would not weigh as heavily in the morning when I can't face the scale. 

As I stand there holding the box, letting the cold of the freezer escape, I can't help but think of younger me.

I wish I didn't know where I had tucked the dollar store cookies and the fun-sized candies to

pulverize one at a time and sprinkle on top of a mountain of ice cream. 

Oh, the rub that I should be so vexed.

Wasn't my college mini-fridge stocked with empty containers?

Milk, eggs, orange juice containers all rang hollow.

"Why don't you throw these out," asked a laughing guest with an unquenched thirst for vitamin C. 

I just shrugged my shoulders and admitted I didn't want my oft-visiting parents to notice the cupboard was bare. 

It wasn't so much that I didn't want them to worry as much as I didn't want them to judge my choices. 

The shame of which I realize I might not have outgrown.

Ticked

The fan overhead makes a smooth whirring sound, interrupted every so often by a temporary grinding of bearings as they must somehow realign. 

Now is not the time for repair.

It's nighttime, and the lights are out, but I know from my daytime

experience with the old air-moving device how precarious the propellers seem to the naked and non-handyman eye. 

The fixture doesn't look entirely fixed as it circles overhead. It spins awkwardly and dangles like a time warped grandfather clock. Jutting out in super circles that were they hips, any yoga teacher would gently try to make more rhythmic.

"That thing is not entirely safe," I've said to myself and the deaf ears of my husband for years.

It's on his list ... or so he claims. But not exactly a priority.

Besides, it adds the amount of white noise he requires to sleep, and I have learned to tolerate. 

During the daytime, this one concern is out-of-mind.

The thing hasn't come crashing down while we sleep, potentially killing a cat and dispersing its thick coating of dust into the form of a mushroom cloud, the way my mind has imagined it will one of these days. We take such things for granted.

Until then, I'll continue to avoid sitting directly underneath. So does my husband, a point of self-preservation that hasn't gone unnoticed.

In the hallway, a door opens. A line of light walks it's way up the wall and trespasses into our room. The bathroom door closes. 

The doors in this old house are creaky. They echo at night with preternatural amplification. 

And although the sound was bothersome in the way loud noises are, it didn't jolt me awake.

My annoyance seems like a hot flash moment: As if it were an omen awakening me with a silent alarm. An instant later, the reason I can't sleep through the night washes over me.

It's like my body doesn't want me to miss a single, heart palpating moment.

I can tell by the knob clattering around in the lock mechanism that my daughter is awake. Her brother's door

sounds entirely different. His door doesn't rattle when it slams. Its knob doesn't fall out and rolls around on the floor every fifth or sixth turn.

That's also on the list.

A list that ticks me off rather than itself.

My list is s constant revolution of things. Laundry. Dishes. Lawn. Laundry. Dishes. Lawn.

All of them -- when addressed -- are just as noisy as the rattletrap door and the cantankerous ceiling fan. 

My daughter will grumble about my waking her sleepover friends with my cacophony in the kitchen. 

It would seem that the annoyance amplification is just as robust in the morning time.

Lately, I've been letting them pile up. 

The laundry silently collects on their floors. The dishes precariously telescope in the sink. The lawn is a carpet of shag.

I'm not taking complaints. That department has closed. But I will consider applications for future employment.

They can be ticked off by my list. 

Panic at the disco

"This is what we do now," I say to myself as I look at the freak show before me in the mirror.

Of course, the words echoing off the tile walls sounded more like "nis ith waaa eee loo naaw."

And the reflection looking back at me is the epitome of frightful: forehead askance; lips cartoonishly drawn back and around some clinical-looking plastic thingamajig; a blue light reflects out of my mouth and up my nose with an eerie glow. 

I'm not going to mention the foam.

Suffice it to say it looked like my teeth were special guests at a powder room rave. And even they might be planning to revolt.

I hadn't actually heard the As-Seen -On-TV pitch, but I could imagine it might have sounded something like:

"Now you, too, can experience the joys of professional-strength teeth whitening in the privacy and comfort of your very own home!"

What did I have to lose?

Just a half an hour at this disco and the cover charge - $39.95 the top price of which I am willing to part.

Forty. Bucks?!

Somehow, when I wasn't paying attention, the maximum amount the average sucker/consumer would pay for snake oil (without demanding a full refund) had doubled.

Nevertheless, it seemed like an impulse-item bargain (right at eye level above the whitening pastes and battery-operated toothbrushes in Aisle 27).

I like to think I did due diligence.

I paced around the shelves long enough to Google the product and gathered that its buyers had bestowed on it a four-star rating ... on average. 

No mishaps. No pending lawsuits. A plus on both accounts.

So I buried the box in my cart under shampoo and several rolls of paper towels and hurried off to the cashier.

I lined the conveyor in the order in which I imaged judgment would multiply: *holds head high* produce, meat, dairy and laundry detergent; *murmurs* personal care products, potato chips, and bakery bag; finally *shrieks in horror* three kinds of ice cream!

The clerk will undoubtedly hold up the box of low-self-confidence booster and ask if I've used the product before?

It never fails.

The reddening of my face that is, as I chat with a stranger who is asking about my coffee-colored teeth. ... not the product. 

I assume the product with its gadgets and gizmos and intricate instruction manual will amount to forty dollars I might as well have ripped into tiny pieces to toss in the air during the little pity party my teeth will invite me to attend in 30 days.

I will not RSVP. 

By then, I will have given up on pearly whites and accept the invitation of another dubious suitor … the one who likes to obsess about the calluses and rough patches that just seem to be hanging out in the neighborhood of my feet.

I saw an electric pedicure tool at the end of Aisle 26.

And it was only $19.95: a bargain at twice the price.

As I held the battery-powered sandpaper roller in my hand, the mumbly voice in my head was already talking me into it: This is just what we do now.

Not our first rodeo

The man with the microphone had a charming lilt in his voice. He wore a cowboy hat tipped ever-so-slightly to the side. His red cowboy boots gleamed strikingly against his pale blue jeans. The ensemble curiously matched the slant in his elongated vowels.

It was Rodeo Day at the county fair and the vibe around us seemed unusually sedate. Even the dust that tended to float in the air of the grandstand had been tamped down by a sudden and thorough rain. 

The loudspeakers pushed out a mix of country music that in another place, at another time, might have passed for bumble gum pop.

The announcer claimed he didn't care about our politics or religion, but sent his own views as messages out into the air. Praying first for the athletes that would, against all of Willie Nelson's advice be defying their mothers in what profession they grew up to pursuit.

My daughter called "bull-shirt" and smiled as my gaze followed her pointer finger toward the arena, where a very fine bovine specimen was depositing a specimen of his own in the freshly raked footing.

We sat and waited as the rodeo clowns took their positions. 

Now, I could say that I knew what to expect as I'd seen plenty of bull riding film footage to understand the basics, but this would, indeed, be my first time at the rodeo. But I wasn't exactly prepared for the realities of watching a human rag doll flailing around on top of a pointy-horned-animal that weighed more than our family sedan. 

And for the first four seconds (which, as it turns out, is the equivalent of the combined rides of two or three cowpokes) I was able to harbor the misguided belief that rodeo riders, like cats, are prone to land on their feet.

But just as my shoulders started to

receded from my ears, a third bull and

and rider burst forth from the gate. The tension renewed as my daughter started counting Mississippis.

Rounding up to eight Mississippis, we realized the excitement had somehow shifted to panic as the crowd realized the rider had dismounted but couldn't get his leg free of a rope that connected him to the bull. Together they continued to spin awkwardly on the dirt footing.

It seemed like it could go on like this forever when the rider fell facedown in a direction that from our vantage point seemed to be squarely under the bull.

I couldn't watch. 

My daughter couldn't turn away.

There was a gasp from the crowd.

I opened my eyes in time to see the man hop up unharmed as the rodeo clowns guided the animal back into the chute.

The crowd let out a collective sigh and began to cheer.

But I couldn't hear the applause from the heartbeat pounding in my chest. My daughter stood up and announced she was done, thankyouverymuch. ... she sounded just like she had when she was five, and the animated leopard seal tried to devour the primary penguin in what felt like the first eight seconds of the movie "Happy Feet." 

Neither spectacle wasn't for her.

But I had to admit the potential for real-world suffering seemed to be at least part of the appeal.

This time, I didn't try to talk her into toughing it out. I just stood up and walked out behind her. 

Maybe this wasn't our first rodeo after all.

Sunday drive

She's waiting for me in the car — my sidekick on an errand in which I will buy milk and eggs. On our way, we'll rehearse our own lost episode of Gilmore Girls.

"Will you teach me how to drive?"

"I don't know, will I?"

"Be serious."

She looked at me with almost the exact same expression of the little girl who had informed me in earnest not ten years prior that she would never, ever, ever, no way, no how, not ever, not even in a million years, EVER, want to be the person behind the wheel of a car. 

And yet here she was, six months before reaching the grand old age of vehicular viability -- feet finally reaching the pedals -- begging me to let her take a spin in the family sedan, slow, on the driveway.

I had laughed way back then as her sing-song voice insisted that she would never leave home, or get married, or learn which petal makes the car move and which makes the car stop. Of course, I told her that her tune would change one day, she would just have to wait.

The waiting was but the work of a moment.

I'm going to admit that I demurred for a bit, knowing full and well that this was a moment her father would savor. He would draw out the process so that it would be a rite of passage.

Just as my father once explained to me.

With him, she would learn about tire pressure and brake fluid and checking the oil. He would teach her to use jumper cables and know how to extract the jack from its hiding place behind the spare tire. He would explain the lights and signals and make her practice using the windshield wipers for hours -- or possibly days -- before he'd ever let her turn on the ignition.

Each task a test of her worthiness to navigate my old clunker slow around the circular drive.

There's a part of me that thinks he will be the better instructor. Not that his Y chromosome gives him an advantage over my double X for explaining Y-Turns or how to approach various X-ings (from pedestrian to railroad to four-way stops) ... it's just that he drives trucks for a living ... and understands (to a more substantial degree) the mechanics of mechanical tinkering. 

I don't want to take that away from him. But I also know he doesn't have to be the first person to orbit this particular moon. 

Because right now she's asking me: The person whose driven her to and from the babysitter's house, and school events, and doctors' appointments and dance class. To gymnastics and to summer camp, and to play practice and back-to-school shopping. To friends' houses, and to summer jobs, and functions where it's expected I will wait in the car (perhaps slouched down below the window level, so as not to embarrass her) not that I do.

This is where I learn about her day. She shares her thoughts and ideas. Sometimes she just talks to herself, and I just listen. 

So I turn the car off and get out. Wordlessly crossing in front and opening the passenger side door as she watches me, mouth slightly agape.

"Go on. Get behind the wheel."

She doesn't quite believe my intentions are real as she retraces my steps back to the driver's side. She automatically buckles up.

I make her adjust the seat and check her mirrors.

I notice how she moves for the brake with her left foot and explain how that's a bad habit she should jettison now. "Right foot only for automatic transmissions.

I give her one instruction only. We're going to move slowly. Apply little to no pressure on the gas pedal at first, let's see how we roll."

Practice makes perfect.

"Start the car."

Which she does, easily and without the metal upon metal grinding a newbie often sparks until they realize the engine has already caught on.

She'd already learned that mistake this past winter as her anxiety to get to school early outpaced my dawdling to plunk myself down into an icy cold car seat, and I let her be the remote starter.

I do have a slight tinge of guilt. It passes.

Her dad will revel in this work.

He would have her check off a list as long as the driveway before he'd ever let her sit behind the wheel. He'd have her changing tires and washing windows and draining and replacing all the fluids. 

I was going to let her drive the car forward fifty feet, up one small hill, around one slight curve, coming to a stop a car's length or more from the intersection of a sparsely traveled roadway at the end of the driveway.

Surrounded by trees and loose gravel.

I was beginning to have second thoughts ... There are so many trees I just never noticed before in this forest.

In fewer than two minutes, the ride was over. 

We were unscathed. Yet in those 120 seconds, I had instructed my daughter to ease forward, press on the gas slightly more and tap the brakes gently. I also held the wheel so the car would edge leftward at least twice. I'm only the least bit ashamed to admit that I braced myself for the possibility of being launched (at least metaphorically) through the windshield. 

And yes ... I pressed hard on the imaginary passenger-side brake, which comes standard on most vehicles but only appears when the primary driver is seated on the passenger side.

Success.

No quarter panels (or trees) were harmed in the making of this memory, partly because I helped steer us around that first corner. Only a minor rut in the recently grated and pressed gravel resulted. (Totally fixable with a rake).

She didn't need to ask, "How was my driving?" as we switched places and moved on with our tasks.

The most important lesson she learned first hand: that it was in equal parts easier than she expected and more complicated than she imagined. Totally something practice with her father would make perfect.

Instead, she asked how her driving would affect me.

"I will certainly miss these talks."