Ski bummer

I lovehate the family ski weekend.

The second annual of which swooshed down its southern Vermont mountain of ice and gale-force winds this past weekend.

I love it because it puts me in the direct vicinity of the 30 or so wonderful folks who make up my extended family. And I hate it because, unlike the majority of them, skiing isn't my strong suit.

I'll just come right out and say it: I'm jealous.

Oh sure, I sat in the lodge, conversing with all the other folks who had done the math and come up with a negative 25 degree windchill equaling at least minor frostbite if not total doom, but I was a little sad every time one of my clan came in red-faced and panting, looking for someone brave enough to go back out into the world.

Obviously wasn't me.

Well … ok … it wasn't OBVIOUS … I was wearing a ski jacket and talking a good game about the past three years, which have been my skiing-est years on record.

I've gone down many a bunny hills alongside my children, practicing our pizzas and french fries until we are ready for lunch, after which we all had the courage to brave the lift and traverse the greenest of all the green trails.

I am always the least ready.

“I can get down the mountain,” I tell people, “but it isn't going to be pretty … and it isn't going to be fast.”

That's not to say I don't pat myself on the back for making the attempt. Powdery snow and zero-drop hills have given me olympic-sized delusions about my abilities.

“I find it easier to downhill ski than cross country,” I pontificated to I don't know how many kind people. It felt true at the time. Nordic skiing on hills was always a struggle. Out there in the alpine, stopping was easier, turning was easier, I didn't fall nearly as much.

Of course what I didn't understand, and what I still struggle to do, is get better.

I tell myself I will practice during the week … when rates are cheaper and there were be fewer people to avoid as I careen down the mountain as slowly as possible.

But it won't matter.

All the gains in confidence doing run after run at one resort will be undone in an instant as I fall spout over tea kettle time after time at another.

Failure tastes like ice and tears stinging your face. Failure feels like snow in your boots.

I wish I didn't want to do this.

I wish I could happily go shopping with the other non-skiing members of our clan during the interim.

I wish I could relax at the lodge with a book by the fireplace. That is where my mind tells me I belong.

But gas flames and retail therapy can't cover up the fact that I want to be out there with them. Following down the mountain, gracefully, shifting from one side to the other.

Even if I can't possibly keep up.

I know I can't get there by wishing. If I want to be a ski bum next year, this year I have to stop being a ski bummer.

Bricks and mortar

She huffed and puffed and rolled her eyes but alas, her mother had become a brick house. Immovable.

“You're so mean!” the little wolf screamed as she stormed off, slamming doors as she went.

The walls trembled with each clattering thud.

The Pig just returned to the task at hand: slathering peanut butter on whole wheat sandwich bread, dutifully cutting the crusts off and making a hammer-shaped impression with a cookie-cutter.

“At least the boy, still piglet-like, is easily pleased,” she told herself, sealing the luncheon craftwork in a re-closable plastic bag and nestling it in among a banana and packet of fruit jells.

She had to admit, as a mother, she'd been dreading this moment.

Even though she'd been talking about it non-stop since her eldest was born -- a tiny little piglet, with a perfect little nose and ten little piggy toes – she wasn't prepared for the shift.

And now it was here. The emergence of strange shapes. Hair and angle in places that had been plump and pink. The low growl. The quick bark. The baring of teeth over so little provocation.

The change.

Mother and daughter. When did we become such strange creatures to one another?

Yesterday, I think? Last week.

“I know what I'm supposed to be doing,” she'll bark. “You don't have to keep REMINDING meeeee!”

Until I don't remind her. Then the tune changes:

“Why didn't you TELL me it was time for the bus? Now I'm going to be late and it's ALL. YOUR. FAULT!”

Honestly, I don't take it personally.

Oh sure, there are times the hair raises on the back of my neck and I bark back. But I know who I am. An adult. With an adult perspective on what it takes for a being to grow up.

I can't help but think of my own parents – my mother especially – and feel a sense of solidarity but not remorse. I can not be sorry. This is what has to happen. I know that, too.

I find it strange and comforting how we have to build our houses, all the same.

We're so busy doing other things, we tend to forget we've built our starter homes out of straw. But we are young. When the first strong wind knocks it down, we fortify it with sticks.

There's a point, of course, that we mourn for the loss of our cool, straw abode. It was light and airy, and sweetly fragrant. It would have been so quaint to raise children here. To bad the kids are allergic to the tall grasses.

The stick house seems better when the kids are toddling about. Marking up the walls with their crayons and your permanent markers. You just shave off little bits and everything's good as new.

But eventually even that wears thin. You hate saying no. But it strengths the house.

Then the teenagers move in with their sullen faces and alienating anthems. They are testing the waters right now, deciding which shade of black fits them best.

You, dear Pig, are merely part of the furnishings. Someone who makes the lunches.

You just need a thicker skin.

Yes … Brick-and-mortar … that's your best defense.

s

Grub kind of rhymes with Ugh

I grunted.

Couldn't help it. Honestly. 

There we were, waiting in line at a sandwich shop for an out-of-the-ordinary, mid-week lunch date with my girl.

Clearly, I wasn't myself.

She eyed me suspiciously.

“Why are you ordering salad?”

“Because I want it,” I lied.

She wasn't buying it. Especially after I asked for a few lemon wedges instead of ranch dressing.

“It's because dad's all gung-ho on his resolution to lose weight, isn't it?”

“No!” I drawl, sounding like a petulant child. “It has nothing to do with him.”

She just leaned back and grinned.

“Just because he's tightened up one belt loop doesn't mean … Oh, never mind.”

Stupid, smart kids. Of course, I'm jealous.

The man stops eating one bowl of ice cream per night and jogs around the bedroom while he watches a half-hour of Netflix, and he loses 10 pounds in a week. I run 15 miles a week for a year and gain three pounds.

Maybe that's why I've gotten a notion in my mind that the weight he loses will somehow find its way to me … as if fat were an element on the periodic table that can't be decomposed by either physical or chemical means.

It's just floating in the house somewhere, waiting for me to let down my guard. And when I do, all havoc will break loose … Ketchup won't be a vegetable, and broken cookies will pack twice the caloric punch, not the half I'd always been calculating, on account of the missing crumbs.

See, this is what dieting does to me.

Shhhhh. I know that's crazy talk. You don't have to rub it in.

And I know … I don't like that D word, either.

Diets. They never work. Especially not when the word is defined as a "plan of caloric intake reduction so as to achieve a desired number on a scale," which is significantly lower than the number currently mocking you whenever you step on the infernal device.

For as long as I can remember, I've used the term as a way to express the dietary habits of a particular species. For instance, in my case – a middle-aged suburban homo sapiens – a typical diet consists of bread, cheese, sugary things and liberal amounts of a certain caffeinated beverage. This diet is randomly supplemented with heartily-consumed salads containing at least a week's worth of calories in the dressings alone, but we only record the first part of the latter.

Oh right ... it also consists of eating popcorn for dinner when I'm the only one home.

But now that my husband has embraced this plan of eating like a Neanderthal … You know ... the species of creature that safely grazes along the outer ring of the supermarket, where its food is free-range and organically grown. It NEVER wanders into the center aisles where the Oreos and Fruit Loops live. Those things will KILL you.

Makes sense, right? Well, it made sense on December 31st when we were all too veshnookered to think straight. But the next day, I sobered up enough to rationalize a life without cheese, wine or espresso chip ice cream might not be worth living.

Of course, all that was before the big, protruding-forehead guy who lives in our house lost a pant size.

So help me, if I end up finding his pant size taking up residence in my closet, my new diet will include twigs and nuts and berries and organically-raised beef sliders with capers and caramelized onion between two slices of roasted sweet potato, too.

You know … just like the cavemen.

Zombification

Zombification.

Bat, bat, bat. Purrrrrrrrrr.

It starts with soft paws at first, then a sandpapery tongue.

Can you feel it? A warm, fluffy kitten sitting on top of your chest as the soft light of a cold January morning filters in through the curtains?

Yeah … Neither can I.

Honestly, I WISH a warm circle of fur purring under my chin was my new wake up call.

It's still dark when that alarm sounds.

First there's a truncated bark. Just a yip, really, and then a thud followed by the skittering of many claws. More barking. More skittering. And an avalanche of quadrupeds tumbles downstairs into separate corners.

I am not fully awake – haven't even opened my eyes – but I can guess what's been happening in the dark. “Old Cat” has had enough of "New Cat's" antics, and "Deputy Dawg" – the self-appointed sheriff for these here parts – is laying down the law.

I reach for my phone. It's 4 a.m. There's no hitting snooze on this skirmish, either. There is no way the volleys would be evenly spaced nine minutes apart. Once waged, this war will last until kibble is spilled.

Jerks.

Daggers of cold stab at my knees when my heels touch the floor.

Torture.

Of course, this isn't an alarm. It's become routine, like a possessed cuckoo clock bestowed by a doddery old aunt. A new surprise is waiting every hour on the hour, beginning four minutes after my head hits the pillow, which is a full seven minutes after my husband has entered REM sleep.

First it's the barking. A yip you ignore, hoping the dog will settle and go to sleep.

“What does she want?” my husband will ask me accusingly. As if I understand Dog but refuse to speak it, thereby making him an unwilling emissary to the animal kingdom.

“The dog wants to go out.”

What? Of course I speak dog.

So, down the stairs I go ... dink, dink, dinkdinkdink … and let the dog out.

Ten minutes later … Back up the stairs …. dink, dink, dinkdinkdink. Back into bed.

I am wide awake. The dog gets a slobbery drink and circles from one room to another, deciding where she will hunker down for the first watch. This means I have to distract her until the children fall off to sleep. I will have to stay awake.

The girl has already closed her door to the pitter-patter of furry feet.

Oh, it was cute at first … The way the New Cat wanted to snuggle up and sleep among the toys. Until she displaced Old Cat and found that stuffing was delightful to pluck out of plush victims.

And can you guess where the dog wants to be? … Of course, you can.

“But Mom! … I can't sleep when they are in my room. The dog lays on my feet, and the kitten tries to eat my hair. It's TORTURE!”

The boy doesn't want them either. “The kitten jumps onto my curtains and the dog chews up my dinosaurs.”

So I wait and try to appease the quadrupeds until sleep comes for the children, and I can open their bedroom doors a smidge.

I don't feel bad about my deception. They sleep like the dead, but I sleep like the undead.   

Unspeakable

Most mornings, I wake up to the sounds of breakfast already in progress: Pans shifting on the stove, cereal tumbling into hard plastic bowls, the last surge of water coming through the fancy coffee machine.

My husband wakes early, gets a fire going and stands in front of the stove rubbing his hands together as if a genie will magically appear and fork over a steaming plate of eggs Benedict.

“Morning ...” I'll say as I brush past him and reach for a mug from our precarious pile.

I won't commit to a “Good morning” just yet.

The kids crunch away at the cereal as their Christmas-delivered devices bleep frantically in a last-moment frenzy of activity before they must be set aside for the duration of another school day.

Aside from the sing-song voice on the television (which is on), no one has said another word.

My husband and I don't talk to each other anymore, either.

That's not true, really. But that's how it seems anyway, especially first thing in the morning.

He just hands me his phone -- usually with a shrug or an "I-don't-know-why-I-read-the-news" disclaimer -- and I come face to face with what's bothering him.

Last week it was ...

"Two-year-old shoots his mother with her own gun at Idaho Wal-Mart."

This week …

"Shooting at Paris satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, kills 12.”

“Have you see this?” he'll ask.

It doesn't matter what the headline reads, it feels as if the experience of it all has become unspeakable.

“No, I hadn't,” I say as I reach for the coffee.

Accident? Crime? Shooting? Death.

There's never a shortage.

Every day brings something we'd rather not see. Rather not know. Every day we are reminded of all that seems senseless, and virally so.

Neither of us wants to argue any of our usual points. We don't want to place blame or try to put it into context.

I skip over the comment sections more and more.

It's not about being right or wrong, I tell myself. It's about being neither without compassion.

Honestly, I don't know what to say.

This month we had two phone calls from school about worrisome incidents. Two 22 caliber bullets were found (a week apart) on my second-grader's school bus.

Questions were asked of the children:

“Did you see anything?”

“Do your parents hunt?”

Students were searched, asked to empty pockets. Lockers and book bags, as well.

Nothing was found.

The investigation will continue, claimed a sheet of paper sent home in a backpack.

We should feel better about that, I suppose. No other bullets. No gun. No apparent threat.

… But we don't feel better.

So much of this life boils down to some form of luck, good, bad or indifferent.

We don't speak about that, much, either. There's always someone waiting out in the world – maybe at the mechanic … or in the grocery store … or on the next treadmill at the gym – who will know exactly what's wrong in the world.

At one time or another, that person will be one of us, too.

What else can we do but keep on moving forward … and keep on hoping for the best?

Maybe tomorrow I'll wake up early and make eggs Benedict.  

Great expectations

I knew exactly what to expect.

We'd walk into a den of iniquity laid out like a user-friendly kitchen of the most thoughtfully designed suburban home. Every member of the family would be hustling about, pulling together the eight thousand loose strands that would tie the whole evening together.

Tension would be high. And not just because we would be among captains of industry and the intellectual elite within our clan, but also because we would have to wrangle kids whose beeping, whirring, running at top speeds and disappearing acts always keep their parents perched on the edge of a sharp blade.

We'd stand there for a moment wondering if we should remove our shoes. The dog would make the first move, scampering around with a smile drawing up her long face, suddenly remembering that she'd been here before. The resident dog would oblige.

There would be peace among dogs, at least.

“You did mention we were bringing the dog, right?”

Drinks would be offered immediately and dinner, hints of which we could already smell on the air, would be homemade and plentiful. And, no doubt, detested by my youngest child, whom I can only hope will be quiet about his preferences.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

We are early, and the meal is at least six hours away.

First, of course, we'd be shown to our rooms. The beds would be comfortable but foreign. No doubt we'd toss and turn, fretting about all the things people fret about when they are out of their element.

Will the kids ever go to sleep? Will the dog bark and wake everyone up?

Back downstairs in the kitchen, the nerve center, my daughter is dancing around with her new device. She is video conferencing with a friend, showing a virtual stranger all the miraculous features of this elegant home … like its pantry and the double oven.

“It's amazing!!! You can roast beef AND bake cakes at the same time!” she gushes.

She introduces her aunt … and her cousins. … and then we all take turns saying hello.

“Kids!” We say sheepishly. And we pray she'll grow tired of her new pocket-sized world before it's time for dinner.

Who am I to complain? It's not like I haven't checked my emails six million times since I got here … and all I ever get is junk mail.

Soon, I find myself planted in front of the kitchen sink … using hand soap to wash the pots and pans because it makes me feel useful ... and I don't know that dish soap has a dedicated pump built right into the sink.

The hot water is comforting as is scraping the remains of a rich stew off the enamel bakeware. I am happy in my work.

My husband helps with the cooking, which I only resent a little. He is more skilled in that department, and as a more skilled department is more highly regarded. I have never claimed to be more than an assembler of parts. If you need someone to dish out pickles, I am your man.

The conversation never lags.

It meanders smoothly around the matters of the kitchen – the braising and the baking, the bechamel, and horseradish sauce. “How much fat goes into Brussels sprouts? Holy Moly! No wonder why the kids love them.”

From time to time, we see hard looks and hear the flat voices … yet these moments of tension all seem to pass without hard feeling. … melting right into the simmering froth, never coming to a boil. Even the taboo topics of politics and religion are touched upon gingerly enough to be acceptable.

We retire to the living room for a game we've never heard of – a version of Botticelli – all you need is a dictionary, some paper and pens and a fertile imagination.

For more than an hour we take turns choosing impossible words and making up our own cockamamie definitions. There is laughter, sometimes to the point of tears.

No one checked their phones.

Not that it really mattered.

Eventually, we all made our way toward some semblance of sleep. And we all awoke to each other, and the same laughter from the night before.

Soon it would be quiet again. And the traffic sounds would mingle with the pings and beeps of the machines that keep most travelers hushed and complacent.

I would be sad the visit was over.

Of course, I expected that, too.

Age appropriate

I had just left the room for a moment. A millisecond to be exact. I didn't even see the wrapping come off the package, which had seemed to arrive out of nowhere. But I heard it. The sound of paper tearing in long, continuous strips.

This can't be good.

No sooner had they unwrapped the Christmas Village building set, ripped open the box and dumped out it contents -- several pillows of multi-color parts -- than the bottoms of my feet began to tingle in anticipation of the pain that would undoubtedly follow.

There was no time between the crinkle and burst of cellophane bags to stop what was happening. A cascade of hard plastic building bricks hit the soft carpet, surging like a waterfall.

It didn't matter where I was in the house at that moment – the basement … the attic … or the garage 500 feet away – because the sound of the bricks clinking together like tiny champagne glasses could have easily pierced lead.

The heavy sigh that left me that moment, if you are a parent you know, was the unmistakable sound of despair ...

A sound that is exactly like twelve-hundred sixty-three pieces of LEGO raining down from the air and covering the entire eight-by-five area rug with an inch of debris. My living room was now a minefield of holiday cheer. Which meant it was only a matter of time until the whole place erupted.

I started to count …

Three. …

Two …

“MOMMY! Can you help me?”

I took a deep breath and chased it with a slurp of coffee that had grown cold.

“Nope. Can't. Says as much right on the box: Ages 12 and up. I am much upward of eight. Sorry (NOT) sorry. ”

“Awww!” he said in momentary protest before raking his hands through the bricks.

“I'll help him,” said his big sister, in a voice that took on the sweetness of a much younger child; a child who didn't need to talk herself into the belief that Santa Claus was, indeed, watching.

She knew it to be true.

They hovered over the plastic carnage and I went back to my work.

I didn't get far. I could hear the low growl, a warning sign and stopped in my tracks.

I started to count …

Three …

Two …

“MOMMY! The kitten is stealing pieces we need.”

“I think she ate one of the connecting rods!”

“Maybe if you feed her, she'll leave you alone?”

I pick up the cat and take her away. A tiny kitten will not be the reason Rome in Toyland falls.

Silence. How long will it last?

Three ...

Two …

“MOMMY! She is not even helping.”

“BUT MOMMY! He's already messed it all up.”

I roll my eyes and push my luck … “Do what you can. Try not to fight.”

I take another deep breath and hold it …

Three ...

Two ...

One ...

Silence? I can't believe it worked.

Still quiet. A true Christmas miracle.

Chore after chore completed in blissful quiet. It certainly seemed miraculous. Now, some people might object to the singing of several rounds of “Jingle Bells, Batman Smells, Robin Laid An Egg,” being classified as either blissful or quiet, but in the absence of a full-on sibling war over which of them is holding the illustrated instructions upside down, there are a great many things I'm willing to overlook. Repetitious caroling among them.

Oh, to be a silly rube.

Turns out the silence had nothing to do with harmony. Christmas Village was abandoned. A few small buildings dotted the living room landscape in various states of completion, while the makings of a large, working carousel lay scattered on the floor like confetti. Any moment, I expected dog hair to float by like tumble weeds.

The children were gone. Both of them. Scattered to the wind … or their rooms. … or to Netflix once they realized the project they had started was a little beyond their pay grade. After all, neither of them had reached the ripe old age of 12 and up.

Still … there was the matter of the mess. ...

Carefully, oh so carefully, I eased my way into a seated position on the rug.

“I'm definitely older than 12,” I said and began raking my hands through the rubble.

Christmas spirit ... and other holiday casualties

I can't find my Christmas spirit.

I've looked for it everywhere. Somehow it's just gone missing.

I hope the kitten didn't get it. She's a feisty one. Always chewing the corners off Christmas cards and tearing up wrapping paper.

I would blame her if I could, but I know it's not her fault.

For a time, I thought that someone had stolen it. Shoplifted, as it were, from the storage room of my brain that usually contains all of my warm and fuzzy thoughts. Ordinarily it's not difficult to find. It's the room adjacent to the ones that harbor nostalgia and gratitude. The Spirit of the Season stuffed into a dented cardboard box with all the tinsel and construction paper ornaments I so carefully saved over the years.

But I don't think that's possible. Who would want my old, worn out joy?

Oh sure, the 24-hour news offers a lineup of possible culprits. …

There's no shortage of rampages, whether deadly or just damaging to the psyche. There's no shortage of depravity, which, over time, will tend to sap your reserves of good will.

Keep clicking through channels. Then turn it off. What else can you do?

Still can't get away from the feeling ...

As if the world around me has turned into a sales pitch.

But that's just white noise …

Something I should simply tune out.

I plug in the Christmas tree. Maybe the warm glow from “traditional” twinkle lights will thaw my icy heart.

It's a possibility, I tell myself. After all, I had rejoiced a little at the hardware store when I found strings of incandescent mini-lights at half price. I am done with the cold, lifeless LEDs.

Maybe this was all I'd need. A dose of white, environmentally unfriendly, light.

Still nothing.

Maybe it's the dread of more stuff entering the house, taking up space we no longer have. All the pretty parcels brought late at night by a guy in a sooty beard and wearing a red suit.

For a moment, shouldn't it bring happiness?

The hours he spent at the mall, or online, searching for the “perfect thing.”

Of course, you know there are no “perfect things.”

It's not about things at all. It's about change.

The kids are growing up. The Christmas card list gains one person and loses two others.

I try not to dwell in the inevitable future. I know it's unwise. The future exists in one form or another, not both. There's no point in trying to set up housekeeping there until it becomes the present and you know the address for certain.

I need exercise and fresh air. I'll take the kids sledding. That will help.

And for the twelve minutes the stars align and the children are racing the dog down an icy hill on their toboggans with unbridled glee, I am calm.

It doesn't matter that I wore the wrong socks and my toes are beginning to turn blue.

It doesn't matter that in a matter of minutes a fight will break out over who was faster, or who's allowed to use whose sled.

Christmas will come. I will find that stupid, ratty box in an unexpected place, and when I open it, it will be filled with the spirit of the season.

Hopefully, I can catch it before it gets loose again. It won't stand a chance against that kitten.

Snow day

Outside, the world looked like a juggled snow globe.

Fat flakes swirl around in icy water, frantically at first and then slowly, as if deciding where to land. It was all beautifully precarious.

Inside, our world seems equally tumultuous.

A boy and girl dance around the house, celebrating this unexpected day off with mirth and glee, as well as a fantastic fight over the remote control.

“It's my turn to pick the movie,” shouts one as the other hollers: “You picked last time.” Of course, it doesn't matter which one said what, they both believe it should have been their turn.

I used to love snow days. The sledding. The snow fort building. The snow-encrusted mittens drying on the radiator. A day made of frozen sweet confection, wrapped in white icing and offered up insistently by Mother Nature.

She wouldn't take No for an answer.

Unlike myself. I take No as a question.

Wouldn't you like to play a game? No?

How about we make Christmas cookies? No?

I suppose the idea of you kids going out into the snow isn't going to happen either is it? No?

No.

I didn't want to do any of those things either, truth be told. If we played a game, they would just fight over the rules. If we made cookies, it would just be the “Royal We” baking. And if we went out in the snow I would have to be out in it, too. Freezing.

Let's just skip to the hot chocolate, shall we? The kind with mini marshmallows, of course.

No cocoa? You've got to be kidding.

Of course, I'm not kidding … Now I remember what I forgot at the grocery store.

The snow has turned to rain. Freezing rain.

I feel better. The fact that we're not outside has shifted from failure to fortune. Which means now the kids want to build a snowman.

“This is the worst snow day ever,” says one of them.

It doesn't matter which one. They speak for each other, even if they don't admit such sibling harmony exists between them.

It's cold all of a sudden. In the living room. The fire's gone out.

As I get it going again, the kids huddle together on the couch under a blanket.

They are whispering, which is good, since the weather and the bickering have left me with a tension headache. And then they are gone.

“Do you have any boxes?”

“Can we have some wrapping paper?”

“Tissue paper?”

I am happy for the truce and show them where they can find such things.

They disappear upstairs, where I hear not a peep nor a rustle for more than an hour.

One after the other they traipse down with packages and bags festooned with ribbons and bows and rolls' worth of Magic tape, and tuck them under the tree.

Each strangely shaped package was marked with its intended recipient: Dad. Mom. Grandma. Grandpa.

The biggest ones were dedicated to each other: My Little Bother and My Big Blister.

So much for sibling rivalry and snow days.

fixers and breakers

My friend had just arrived. We had made plans to brave the cold and go for a brief jog through the neighborhood. …

But I wasn't ready.

Instead, I was stuffing a small mountain of denim and Perma Press into the front-loader.

“I can finally do laundry!” I said with all the excitement I usually reserve for a sale on the pricey yogurt at the supermarket.

She knew exactly what I meant …

The washer hadn't been working for months. It wasn't broken, but there was something wrong with the outlet that connected it to power.

My husband had finally gotten around to “fixing” it.

“It must be nice for you ... that he's so handy,” she said, earnestly congratulating my husband for being a gen-u-ine Mr. Fix-It.

The equivalency of a husband who can repair a leak in a faucet or rewire an outlet in the laundry is calculated against an outrageous hourly fee. With or without plumber's crack.

I can't compete.

Even if one were to combine the wages of the babysitter, the maid and the school bus driver, who make up the basis of my unspoken worth, we're not even close. Of course a babysitter who swears in front of the kids, a maid who never mops the floors and a bus driver who plays inappropriate music on the way to and from school wouldn't likely have union representation in her corner.

But I digress.

Nice wasn't the word I would use to describe the way my husband fixes things. Humorous is more to the point.

Truth be told. It's not as if his skills are any more marketable than mine.

I still remember the cumbersome instructions we had to review for guests after he fixed the lighting in our first house:

"Ok. If you need to use the bathroom, remember to turn on the track lights in the dining room first. They are on the same circuit, and the bathroom lights won’t turn on without the dining room lights on. … And if you turn on the hall lights and they go off by themselves don't worry, it's nothing. Just turn them back on, making sure the switch located all the way to the left is turned on first. Oh. ... and the light over the bed works with a remote control. If you can't get them to come on you'll have to go to the main panel on the wall, make sure that the switch is pressed DOWN, and press the sensor – located on the right – seven times until the little green lights on the left side of the switch glow orange."

Yeah … those were the days … Strange no one ever asked to be shown the location of the fire extinguisher.

In retrospect, he has evolved rapidly since those early days of do-it-yourself electrical work.

In our current home, most of the lights do what one would expect with a simple flip of a switch. But not all.

Eventually. … the perfect confluence of boredom and ingenuity would meet one rainy afternoon … and he would descend into the basement to finish what he'd started.

Fingers crossed, I listened to clanging and muttered curse words as they wafted up from the cellar, and dreamed of doing laundry without tripping over an extension cord, which had snaked up from the depths of the house for far too long.

But I didn't need to be clairvoyant to understand the price for such a wonderful development in the at-home washing business had been paid inadvertently by the dryer. In 40 minutes – the time, it takes for a load of heavy-duty duds to cycle through all the prescribed rinses – that crazy thought would become a fact.

For one machine to work, it seemed, the other had to be on hiatus.

Breaker, breaker. … who's got the breaker?

Saving grace

Growing up, my family sat around the Thanksgiving table, bowed our heads and said grace:

Bless us Oh Lord

and these thy gifts …

Which we are about to receive

through thy bounty …

Through Christ, Our Lord

Amen.

We never rushed through it to get to the meat. No one ever really seemed to pay attention, either.

Unless my uncle was visiting.

On those occasions, he would have the honor of leading the prayer, and he would lead as if the whole thing were a single, meandering word set apart by taking the lord's name in vain:

BlessUsOLordandthesethygiftswhichweareabouttoreceivethroughthybountythrough JESUS! CHRIST! ourlordAmen. Someone, gimme the bird!

I loved my uncle. Bespectacled and bearded, he was a hippy and a mystery. Above all, he had swagger.

And boy, did he have stories. The way he told them, you couldn't help but to believe.

He had spent most of his 20s playing golf pros for cash until the greens were white with snow, and then he'd hustle pool for the rest of the winter.

At least that's how he claimed to have made his living up until he graduated college and began teaching juvenile delinquents how to type.

He had just the right amount of nonchalance.

Everything about him was irreverent.

The conversation over dinner was always preposterous. She'd just listen as he cracked wise. He'd laugh and drink milk. Tell us sweets were poison, and that he never ate them … and then polish off two huge pieces of Mom's special cheesecake.

And of course, my devout and reverent mother, loved him fiercely.

It seems odd, somehow, that we didn't make more of the ceremony of those occasions. The saying of grace.

It may have been a jumble of words to us, but to her the words had profound meaning.

My mother just closed her eyes, determinedly oblivious to those among us who would put all the emphasis in the wrong places or snitch bites from our quickly cooling plates.

I don't remember any other tradition. We never went around the table to talk about that for which we were thankful.

Being thankful, was something you kept to yourself. Like a superstition. Wouldn't want to jinx it.

Is it strange to wake up the day after Thanksgiving and realize you and the nine or 10 guests who sat across a table from one another never once shared in conversation the things for which we are thankful?

Is it horrible that we never took the time to reflect on what it was that got us to this place?

History?

Happenstance?

Luck?

Good or bad?

Perhaps.

For a moment I felt a twinge of guilt ... as if the failure to verbally examine gratitude made me as callous as if I'd spent the last Thursday in November greedily shopping for things I would never be thankful for.

It didn't last long. I know what I am grateful for and for whom, and trying to put those thoughts into words doesn't give them any more weight.

I am grateful for everyone who has ever made me laugh ...

or smile ...

or feel like a part of something more than just myself.

And yet, perhaps more surprisingly, I'm just as grateful for everyone who has ever made me irritated or anxious or feel at loose ends. For all the things that have frightened me. Saddened me. Made me think about the world and all the parts of it I can't control.

As I sit there, looking at my family, I feel thankful that we have this complicated history. I am thankful for unspoken acceptance.

And I know if I cleared my throat to make a speech about gratitude, it would seem more awkward than silence.

Cat fight

What was I thinking? Bringing two cats to the veterinarian at the same ...

Don't answer that. There was no time for that question … 

I was late and there was a problem.

No sooner had I stuffed the winter-widened mound of aged feline into one soft-sided carrier, than the wiry, wiggling strand of kitten flesh had nudged her way out of another.

I followed the scamper of little feet down the hall and under the corner cabinet.

Darn it all to heck!

Of course, I didn't mince words.

I didn't have time. I had to haul a caterwauling kitten out from under a china cabinet, stuff her into a make-shift cat carrier and schlep her into the car. Careful to place her far away from the growling cat who has, thus far, been her nemesis.

But I was getting ahead of myself. First things first.

I patted the floor underneath the cabinet, and, to my surprise, out she came, covered in fluff and dust bunnies.

Got ya!

A five-minute car ride later – a ride filled with the howls and growls of my two, non-traveling companions – we arrived at the veterinarian's office.

I struggle up the stairs with my lopsided luggage. Ariel, the canned ham of a cat, weighing down one bag, while Mittens, superfly kitten, floated around in another.

They were all waiting for me ...

The vet. The technicians. Even the office pet, a paraplegic cat that goes by the name of “Hope.”

“Go right into Exam Room One,” said the smiling woman, flapping the wings of a crisp, new manilla folder. “Mittens is the new one, right?” she asked as she stole a peek into the bag hoping to catch some of the magic that we believe encircles all baby animals.

“What a sweetie,” she exclaimed.

“Oh … you just wait. …” I sneered under my breath. “She had us fooled, too.”

Hope had heard me. As she quickly dragged herself in the other direction, I could tell she knew what mayhem I carried under each arm.

It wouldn't be long before the tiny terror was unleashed.

“I'll take Mittens,” said the nice lady, grasping the handles of the bag and whisking the kitten away to the lab located just behind a Levolor door. I put Ariel's bag on the stainless exam table, unzipped it, and waited.

A long hiss came from behind the door, followed by a deep, wet roar that went on for longer than a natural breath. And again. And again. Ariel and I both stiffened at the sound of it.

I couldn't picture our tiny cat making a noise that big.

There was scuffling and the low murmur of voices. I held my breath. Ariel's ears pricked forward. I could hear the team regrouping.

Even bigger cat noises followed.

Then silence.

The door opened and our tiny kitten was marched in at arm's length by the scruff of her neck.

“She's a firecracker this one,” said the woman at the end of the cat, miraculously still smiling. “Though, I think you might consider changing kitten's name from Mittens to Boxing Glove.”

“She is a firecracker,” echoed the vet, stepping into the room, bearing good news. “Everything's negative.”

The doctor even downplayed the attempted disembowelment we had overheard from the other side of the door.

“There is an age where young cats can be feisty,” he explained with patented calm. “We might have just gotten her right at that age,” he adds with a shrug.

Ariel started to growl as the woman approached the table with the kitten, who was wide-eyed but now purring.

“Don't worry, Ariel. It's all over. Your friend is fine,” said the woman soothingly.

“I'm not sure she was worried about the kitten ... My guess is Ariel was rooting for the Vet.”

Virtual tour

Dinner was over, the kids had scattered, but we adults sat silently in place with our hands protecting the remaining swallows of our stemware. In every dinner party there usually comes a lull in the conversation.

The door opened and a cold wind entered carrying my father and one of my re-sealable containers with a half gallon of homemade soup.

“Why, I'll take a glass of wine, seeing as how you're offering.”

I'm happy to see him. Happy to take the container and stow it in the fridge. Happier still when he sits down and sweeps away the silence.

He's the kind of guy who has a smile in his voice. It makes you smile, too.

In no time we are making connections, meandering around in our childhoods, which are separated by geography and at least one generation.

“Do you remember Montgomery Ward?” my father asks, painting a picture of the trips he made there as a child. How he had taken a bus from Troy to spend the money he made from his paper route on model trains. Money that burned a hole in his pockets. He went on to describe how he bought his first lawn mower there as well. A machine to expand his after-school earnings.

“I loved going to Monkey Wards,” I said, remembering only the toy department and a catalog that rivaled Sears' Christmas Wish Book.

I remembered my mother taking me there in person to see the doll I'd pined for in the printed pages.

If it was going to disappoint, she thought, better it do so before Santa set in under our tree.

“It's all offices now,” said our guest, who had worked there for a time.

Small world.

While we sat and chatted, I image we all were probably looking at the dishes on the table in front of us, but seeing the white, art deco behemoth in Menands with a million square-feet.

“Where is that again?” ask my husband.

“He grew up in Maine. He can't help it,” I whisper to my friends.

He shrugs his shoulders. His connections to this place are older than ours, even if the lines didn't stay tied.

His grandfather once told us a branch of that family tree was named Covenhoven.

Small world. Smaller world that our friends' parents may have traveled in the same circles. Probably know all the same people.

It's funny how a conversation that doesn't have much weight can still feel like a warm blanket.

For an evening, we travel around my dad's 1940s neighborhood. We meet his neighbors. We go with him over the train tracks and into the cemetery that was his playground.

As his story continues, I'm revisiting all the people who have faded from my life. Our guests are meeting them for the first time. … The stable hand who taught him how to hand-feed a horse. The train engineer who took him for a ride. The man at the Oakwood, who invited him to witness a cremation.

We hold our breath as he tells us about how he once stopped to tie his shoes and looked up to see a freight train 60 feet upwind.

“All I could hear was my mother's voice telling me never to play around the tracks.”

And just like that time reversed.

I saw my grandfather again as my dad introduced him. A postal carrier, whose only vice once paid off the mortgage.

“It was the late '40s and he'd gone to Saratoga with his postal pals. He won the daily double, it paid out at the highest amount at the time: $1,900.

“Of course, he didn't want to have that much money on him over the weekend, so they wrote him out an IOU on a brown paper lunch sack and a check arrived in the mail the following Monday.”

The room filled with a sense of awe, not only at the idea of being able to pay for an entire house after a day at the track, but to pay it off for under two grand.

For more than an hour, a steady stream of people – many we've never met in person – paraded past that table in a strangely woven tale of colorful, albeit minor, history.

Small world. I bet they all had their own fond memories of Monkey Ward.

Two old friends walk into dressing room ...

It was an epiphany. And it hit me like a cartoon train.

In a dressing room, at the mall, with a woman standing outside the door wearing a measuring tape as a necklace, I was staring into the mirror and seeing another woman looking back at me. And she was in her underwear.

This was a mistake, I thought to myself. I shouldn't be here. I should be searching through racks at a discount store. But there was no going back.

I had been wide-eyed and fully clothed when the sales clerk circled my torso in two places. Looking intently at the spot where her fingers had pinched the pink-colored ribbon, she announced a fact I wasn't prepared to accept.

“32DDD.”

I couldn't help but laugh even though I really just wanted to cry.

Those are cartoon proportions. Proportions that would have my husband -- Wild E. Coyote – calling me “Mudflaps” under his breath.

“What size have you been buying?” the sales clerk asked with an efficient flair as she flopped a handful of push-ups or demis or bralettes over the door for me to try.

“Medium,” I said sheepishly, knowing that I had never abided by the laws of base-layer structure.

“A proper fit,” it is well known, “makes all the difference.”

All these years I'd been lying to myself.

Lying, and squashing my chest into the undergarment equivalent of an ACE bandage, trying to rebel against all the authority vested in mother nature.

Stupid mother nature. And her vests.

Despite appearances, this epiphany didn't start in a swank lingerie dressing room. It started on page eight of a 34-page booklet my daughter brought home from a special “Your Changing Body” workshop she attended in fourth grade with the school nurse and most of the other female students of the fourth-grade class.

She, of course, wanted nothing to do with the “maturation kit,” which included the booklet and a few sample products. After the class, she'd stuffed all the things back into the drawstring bag and hidden it at the bottom of her backpack. Where I found it ... looking through a fist-full of homework assignments and graded papers.

It was fascinating. … all the biological facts that I suppose I already knew, but hadn't exactly thought about for years, or thought about in elementary-school terms.

“Starting at the Top,” offered a simple math equation for bra fitting that confounded me:

“Measure around your chest just below your breasts … If it's an odd number, add 5. If it's an even number, add 4. This is your frame size.

To find your bust size, measure around the fullest part of your chest. Compare your frame size to your bust size and if they are the same, you need an AA cup. If they differ by 1, you need an A-sized cup. If they differ by 2, you need a B. If it differs by 2, you need a C.”

But the grade-school equation only went up to D.

Which, I guess, is probably appropriate given the audience for the pamphlet I was holding.

Even so, I was getting an education in middle age that I had probably received in Middle School but likely stuffed into my own backpack after the presentation.

Honestly … I had NO idea THIS was the trick to properly measuring one's bust line. Adding. Subtracting. All these years television commercials had me believing it was all about lifting and dividing.

Numbers. Letters. I'm still at a loss for how all this mysterious algebra works.

“How do they get to 3Ds?” I wondered aloud.

“Are you ready to try more?” the voice called from behind the door as another set of garments flopped over the transom.

“I'm not sure I'll ever be ready.”

Love worth celebrating

My parents were married on Halloween.

Fifty years ago, to be exact.

My mother swore she didn't actively plan to wed on a day when grade-school ghosts and goblins prowled the nearby cul-de-sacs, following the lure of porch lights and filing their plastic pumpkins with sugary snacks.

All she had planned was a small, church wedding on the last Saturday in October.

When she realized the coincidence, she laughed it off with her famous nonchalance.

“I went to my wedding as the bride. Your father went as the groom,” she told me I don't know how many times.

“The song your mother chose for our wedding was 'Oh what a fool am I,” my father laughs.

Every year on October 31, save for the last four, my parents celebrated the same way: at home, with fun-sized candy, the music of the doorbell and the serenade of “Trick or Treat.”

I used to feel badly for them.

They didn't mind. My mom always said it was just as much fun staying home. “Who needs a candlelight dinner with your father when you have a bowl full of candy and perfect strangers coming to your door?”

For most of those years, business was brisk. It was a young street, with young children. My mom counted the parade of children by subtracting the sugary remainders of the once-full bags.

It was a sweet accounting that always left plenty of peanut butter cups for an anniversary dessert.

Over the years, of course, the leftovers grew more plentiful. The children who haunted our neighborhood grew up and moved into newer, bigger developments. The street aged and grew feeble by comparison, until only a trickle of grandchildren visited.

Still, the thought of turning out the light and going out never appealed to my parents.

This year should have been different. By custom alone, this milestone should have included a catered gathering of all their friends and family. A grand party to rival their wedding.

It's a shame we didn't get to plan that party.

My parents don't live under the same roof anymore. They have been separated by medical necessity and the cruelty of aging. But they are never really apart.

Instead of sipping champagne and cutting a replica wedding cake with my mother and their friends, my father, still full of love and devotion, sits at the end of a communal dining table and feeds her a meal of pureed food. She asks him “Who are you?” I don't know how many times. He always answers “I'm your husband.”

Despite this not being the story I wanted to tell, this isn't a tragedy. It's just another kind of love story.

This is the kind of love we promise, but hope we never have to deliver. In good times and bad. In sickness and health. For as long as you both shall live.

It's the love we all secretly worry we can't provide, or that won't be provided us.

It is the unknown. Trick or treat?

We all have to walk up those steps one day, ring a bell and wait in uncertainty for a door to open. If my husband and I stand outside of that door, I hope we get to go inside dressed as my parents.

Because that kind of love is always worth celebrating.