Ben Franklin Was Right

Shrek is dead.

We killed him, but we didn’t mean to.  We just didn’t know how to take care of him. And chances are pretty good he wasn’t doing too well before we even knew of his existence. We don’t even know if he was a he, and none of us were getting close enough to find out. Not to mention, he smelled really bad, even before he died.

Shrek was the name we gave the accidental hermit crab we brought home from the beach. I guess he was kind of like that kid who stowed away on a flight to Hawaii, only I don’t live in Hawaii, and I am pretty sure that hermit crab had no desire to leave the comfort and relative safety of his own spot on the beach. Which is to say, it was nothing like that stowaway kid in Hawaii.

Anyway, enough about Hawaii and Shrek for now. Here’s the part where I tell you how we had the opportunity to kill him, unintentionally of course. What kind of monsters do you think we are?

My family went to the beach for the first week of summer break, a week often referred to around these parts, cleverly, as “First Week.  After several days of beautiful weather, we decided to do something a little different to break the monotony that is a relaxing beach vacation. My husband found a shelling and lighthouse cruise in nearby Georgetown, South Carolina, which involved an hour ride to a deserted island, an hour romping around, and an hour ride back.  We packed a cooler with drinks and sandwiches, put on some old sneakers and a generous slather of sunscreen, and drove down to the marina where the cruise launched.

The boat could hold thirty uncomfortably, but luckily we had less than that on our voyage. We got settled for the ten mile ride out of the harbor, a surprisingly slow trip with lots more wave and splash that we had expected. Our boat had a captain and a naturalist who sat on some steps near the front and shared all sorts of fascinating historical tidbits and shelling advice to entertain and enlighten us. We headed for North Island, a federally protected island that houses a solar powered lighthouse and some old ruins from better times. We were not going to have enough time to explore the island proper, but with the fifty some odd minutes, we should have been able to find a pretty shell or two, which was the whole idea.

We finally got to the island and disembarked using a rickety plastic staircase that was chucked on the beach. I followed the naturalist’s advice and headed towards the jetty around the side of the island, passing fellow tourists who stopped to pick up every ugly oyster shell along the way, because, as one rather obese mother put it, “Them rocks is too far for Mama to walk.”

Just as the naturalist had said, all sorts of things could be found near the jetty. I saw an old whelk shell and dipped my hand into the water to grab it, only to find a rather large spotted crab taking refuge there. My younger daughter still delights in the memory of my shrieking and jumping. I’m not scared of crabs, but that doesn’t mean I like them skittering across my hand.

 Along another tide pool, I found what looked to be a leg bone. I showed it to the naturalist, who told me it was a deer femur, but I am still not convinced it wasn’t the remains of a medium sized child. I found another whelk and a couple of moon snail shells, also called shark’s eyes, which I put in the bag along with the bone.  

My younger daughter and I joined my husband and older daughter along a sand bar, where my husband was doing this little shuffle dance in his all-terrain Keens. He might have looked silly, but he found an intact sand dollar and another large whelk to add to the bag. After almost stepping on a skate, which is kind of like a sting ray without the sting, followed by another scream, I traipsed behind my family back to the boat.  We boarded and rinsed our hands with bottled water before settling onto our plastic benches to eat our sandwiches and drink our real sugar Mexican Cokes.

After returning to Georgetown, we went back to our condo and tossed the bag of shells we had collected on the table, whereupon we proceeded to ignore it for the rest of the weekend before we packed it, along with the rest of our crap, for the drive home.    

After an uneventful five hour drive, we pulled into the driveway and unloaded all of the crap, along with the bag of shells. We each unpacked our suitcases, and as I started a load of laundry, my husband decided to look through the bag of shells and clean them. He put a dish towel on the counter, filled the sink with some warm water, and rinsed them each by swishing them around to get the sand off of them.  When he had finished cleaning one, he  would set it on the dish towel to drain before getting another shell out of the grocery bag and rinsing it.

By the time he reached the bottom of the sack to get out the bone, he noticed that one of the shells was walking along the counter. It was one of the small moon snail shells. Despite our best efforts to make sure all the shells were uninhabited, a small hermit crab had slipped by unnoticed and hitched a ride some two hundred and fifty miles from the coast. He had not only gone undetected, but he also had been surviving on air in a plastic grocery bag for three days.  You can’t even imagine the guilt.

My husband, being the caring sucker he is, set up this whole elaborate terrarium environment for him. He used playground sand from an old bag in the garage. He made a salt water solution using the finest of organic sea salts. My  younger daughter helped out by researching what hermit crabs eat on the computer. She opted for organic green grapes, diced finely and set inside a cockle shell for a food dish. You know, his normal diet.

The hermit crab, which my fourteen year old daughter named Shrek, seemed shy at first. After a day in his new home, however, it became pretty obvious that he was not going to be with us for a long time. He ate all the grapes and excreted something unusual in his water, but then he stopped doing much of anything. We put him in the water, but nothing. I suggested mouth to mouth, but no one could tell where his mouth was, plus he stank. He stank of sorrow and death and low tide.

It was up to him whether he lived or died. It was out of our hands.

The next morning, his shell had moved, but no one took credit for it. We decided he preferred the privacy that nighttime afforded him, and perhaps he would live to see another day. About an hour later, he left the safety of his moon shell, which I learned about through frantic texts I received from that teenager of mine. They were full of hyperbole and exclamation points.

Have you ever seen a hermit crab out of the shell? I am pretty sure that was what the alien from the movie “Aliens” is based on, not the full sized one, but the one that pops out of the guy’s stomach.  It was just nasty, with its curled up body that just kind of ends, a disgusting living comma. If it were on the floor, I would have stepped on it with no hesitation or guilt.

 

But it wasn’t on my floor; it was on my kitchen counter. Stinking. Dunking what I think was its head in the water bowl. No one wanted to put it out of its misery, but no one wanted to do anything to save it, which seriously, wasn’t even a possibility. Shrek didn’t even attempt to go back in his shell, opting instead for the comfort of the sand. He couldn’t bear the weight of it anymore. Shrek was just so tired, so tired.

And then, the next morning, it happened. Shrek had passed in the night. I couldn’t find a black cloth to drape over the cloche of the terrarium, so I just avoided the kitchen, hoping my husband had the time to dispose of his remains. The teen said Kaddish for the crab, which might be considered good practice, because you just never know when you might need to say Kaddish. 

Around dinner, I noticed my husband had very kindly taken care of the situation on the counter. My younger daughter commented that Shrek had gone on to a better place.  “Yeah, the trash can,” I smirked. 

I can promise you one thing. Never again will I hold a shell to my head to hear the ocean.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

A Crying Shame

I love going to the movies. I love everything about it, the anticipation of waiting in line for a ticket, the little stub that you forget in a pocket for a few weeks, the ever present smell of popcorn, the dark cold room filled with strangers, the  endless previews that make you think the feature presentation will never start. It always feels like an event, an experience, one that just can’t be replicated at home even with a big screen television and an HD projector.

Alas, my love for going to the movies only applies to going to a movie that I actually want to see.  If all that's playing is a G movie based on a board game or a bunch of robots destroying large American cities with lots of explosions, well, I'll stay at home, thank you. If I do find myself forced to sit through what I call a bad movie, I try to rationalize that at least I get some dark and no talking for a good two hours. In theory, it is enough time to sleep, but who can sleep with all that exploding and jarring music and laughing or shrieking or crying or some other loud expression of emotion? Plus, movies aren’t cheap. I don’t want to pay ten bucks for a crappy nap, so I sure don’t want to pay that for a crappy movie.

Spoiler alert: I am going to talk about a movie now. If you are reading this, chances are good you have either already been forced to see this movie, or you have no intention of ever seeing it, or you have never heard of it. In all cases, it’s not really that much of a spoiler alert. "The Fault in Our Stars" was the last movies I wanted to see, somewhere under Spiderman 2 or anything with Tom Cruise.  If you are familiar with it, you already know it’s a love story about two kids with cancer. Someone is going to die. Duh.

My daughters were dying to see “The Fault in Our Stars,” and I, as usual, couldn’t say no to them. They made plans to go with friends, and I begged for the other parents to take them, but apparently I am the only mom with nothing better to do. I picked up other people’s children and we headed to the local theater for an afternoon of first love, melodrama, and death.

I have heard the book is awesome, and no one has anything but glowing words to say for its author, John Green. I didn’t read the book, but both my girls did, along with their entire demographic, so this movie was a big deal in the under 17  girl world, which I allegedly was a part of a long time ago. I sucked it up because, shit, at least they don’t like Justin Bieber, so the amount of horrible teenage girl crap to which I am exposed could be hella worse.

I didn’t exactly hide the fact I didn’t want to see the movie. Mostly, I whined like one of them. Why do I have to go? I don’t have anything to wear. How long is this going to be? Don’t you have anybody else to go with? Why are you making me do this? Why do you hate me?

I am sure it could be a beautiful love story for some people, inspirational as the young lovers put aside their diagnoses for regular life experiences, like falling in love and making out and listening to indie music and aren’t our parents clueless? It encompasses so much of what it means to be a teenager, and if you take out the literal dying of cancer part, isn't growing up like a dying of sorts, a metaphor for the loss of childhood, of innocence? And also, the lead actress has short hair, so should we all cut our hair short for the summer? Boys will still like us, or maybe just boys with one leg, or no, wait, her hair is growing back in, so never mind.

I don’t need to pay money to see that, I live with most of it, except the cancer part, knock wood. But watching it? Ew. I don’t want to watch kids making out. I especially don’t want to watch kids making out WHILE SITTING NEXT TO MY KIDS. I haven’t seen my own daughters kiss, yet, but I would equate it to watching your parents make out. No one wants to see that. It's jarring.

What really made the movie horrible for me was the undeniable fact that, no way around it, I would cry, and even worse, I would do it in front of my daughters’ friends. I can’t even get through a Publix Mother’s Day commercial at home without tearing up, so there was no way that a cancer flick would leave me dry eyed. And once I start, I don't really stop.

So I cried. I wasn’t the only one in the theater, judging from the very loud sniffling that surrounded us, but I was the only one in my row that cried. The problem is, I can’t just tear up at the movie. My mind started racing with all sorts of suppressed reasons to cry, which set me up for some significant sobbing if I couldn’t get myself under control. I was able to bring up the memory of being a teenager at my father’s funeral, which fit in well with the theme of the movie and the general feelings it induced. Yes, I was a teenager once, and cancer affected my life, and killed my father at a ridiculously young age. Wahh.

I took it a step further, though, as much as I didn’t mean to. I couldn’t shake the thought of watching a movie about teens with cancer while sitting with my own teens. The idea of losing my children, of watching them struggle with a terminal illness, of having to let go and say goodbye, those were the worries that fueled my tears. No amount of concentrating on the lead character’s narcissism or the awkward smiles or the hand holding or the overly clever dialogue could stop the emotional breakdown that I was ramping up while sitting between my daughters in the dark. Parents should not outlive their children. Bad things shouldn’t happen to innocent young people. No one deserves cancer, especially not young men and women who don’t even know their own potential. Why didn't I remember to stuff some Kleenex in my purse?

I cried, for the movie, for my daughters, for people with unhealthy children, for my father, my own loss and pain and forgotten youth, and even at what I perceived as my daughters' insensitivity for not crying. I cried in the theater, in the bathroom after the movie ended, on the car ride on the way home, dropping the other kids back home, later in the shower, and after my daughters went to bed.

The last thing I wanted to do was cry at the movies, especially over a movie I didn’t want to see that I didn’t even like.  It was predictable and histrionic, much like me. Also, it didn’t make me laugh, and the lead actors played siblings in the last movies in which I saw them, which made the whole in love thing borderline incest.

Don't waste your money, unless you need a good cry.

Graven Images

[The following post contains grammatical errors, specifically subject/pronoun agreement surrounding the use of "everyone/everybody...their." I am aware. It just sounds better. Deal with it. If you know the rules, you can break them.]

Last year about this time, Facebook was taken over by everyone professing their love for their fathers. People began changing their duck faces to old photos of their daddies, in an effort to let all their friends know how much their fathers meant to them. At some point it became unbelievable. Was it possible that every person with a dated picture of Father really felt that close bond? Weren’t some of those dads unavailable emotionally? Didn’t some of them take a spanking too far? Wasn’t at least one of them cold and distant, or a drinker, or a wife beater, or just a run of the mill adulterer? Was it possible that so many people of the world were that lucky to have good daddies that loved them?

I wasn’t one of those lucky people. My father was a generous combination of all of those unpleasant traits, a real rat bastard, in a nutshell. Generally, I don’t really give him much thought at all, seeing as how he’s been dead since I was seventeen, and was barely alive before that, as far as I could tell. I saw him maybe three times a year, and though I went eagerly most every visit, it wasn’t about seeing him so much as wanting to have a father that also wanted me. We don’t always get what we want, some of us more so than others.

But enough about him. He’s dead, and nothing is really going to change that. I don’t think about him much, which is the way I like it, until , well, Father’s Day rolls around, and everyone I know celebrates their fathers and puts up their pictures and reminds me of what I never had.

So last year, about a week before Father’s Day, I was lamenting to myself about how tired I was of seeing all those damn daddy pics. If everyone was going to change their profile pics to showcase Daddy, I would do it too.

I decided to do a little online research to see if I could find a photo of my father’s grave. I figured if I could find a copy of someone’s term paper in California or a woman fellating a donkey, surely I could find an image of a headstone from the late 1980’s. I did a little Googling and stumbled across a website that would be the key to my search, www.findagrave.com. What an amazing find. Armed with only my father’s name, year of death, and city and state where he currently rests in peace, I located the cemetery wherein he is contained. Isn’t the Internet a remarkable thing? Thank you, Al Gore.

But wait, that’s not all. This amazing website could do more than just find my father's grave. I could also request that someone take a photo of his final resting place. Here was the very opportunity for which I searched. I could ask someone to snap his headstone, and then bingo, new profile pic. Take that, people on Facebook with your happy fucking childhoods! I filled out all the information for my photo request, and sat back and waited.

And waited and waited. After a few days of waiting, I heard nothing, decided that feature of the website was a crock of shit, and avoided Facebook until the third Sunday of June had passed. After a few more weeks, I totally forgot I even requested the information, much like the rest of my childhood memories of Dad. Life continued as normal.

Until one day in May, almost a full year later, when I had an email in my inbox. It was from www.findagrave.com, and the subject line was Success! It wasn’t so much that the internet had every photo of every person living or dead at the ready, but rather a small army of kindly strangers who kind of enjoy going to cemeteries and don’t mind snapping the occasional head shot, if you will, if someone requests it.

In my case, a lovely couple in the York, Pennsylvania, area were frequent explorers of my father’s haunting grounds and graciously took it upon themselves to locate Dad on my behalf.  I sent them an email to say thank you for taking the photos, an opportunity I doubt I would have any time in the foreseeable future. I left out the part where I only wanted the photo for a dig against Father’s Day on Facebook, not just because it makes me look like a schmuck but also because I truly did appreciate what they had done for me, a complete stranger with a small request on the Internet, the modern day message in a bottle. They replied it was merely by chance that they even found him, which is why it took almost twelve months to respond. Apparently, my father shares a final resting spot with a great many other dead folk in the south central area of Pennsylvania. Go figure.

I looked over the two photos they had uploaded to the website, my father’s headstone, a sight I only saw the day of its unveiling several decades ago. I marveled at its Jewishness, its boasting of loving family, its odd layout and cryptic Hebrew inscription. There lies my father.

I decided to forward the email to my two sisters, along with a brief explanation of how I came by that particular information to share, a story I find odd more than amusing, more funny weird than funny haha. I think they appreciated it, although, as one of my sisters said, “It certainly stirs up a cocktail of emotions, doesn’t it?” Sister, you said a mouthful.

And now, here it is, the eve of Father’s Day again. This time I have a photo that I could use for a profile picture. I am choosing not to, in the same way I choose not to use an actual photo of my father while alive. Not every man who sires children is a father. Not every memory is for a blessing.

Instead, I am choosing to share that picture here. My rabbi tells me the Hebrew inscription is his Hebrew name, Pesach something or other, and the date of his death in the Hebrew calendar, not the regular one. It seems pretty standard headstone information, in two languages no less, but I am still having trouble with that Beloved husband and father part. I am not the only one who continues to take issue with that claim.

 

 

 

Bless Their Hearts

I have some very good friends with young children. Poor little things, those mothers. It’s not that their kids are bad; it is that they are just, well, three. Each of them has a three year old son, and, well, three year olds are kind of dicks.

My children, now fourteen and twelve, were three at some point, which means surely I had a taste of hell, but like any victim of PTSD, I have blocked out the majority of the trauma. I prefer to remember the positive things, like the cute clothes they used to wear and how adorable their speech impediments were.

Little did I know it at the time, my girls were easy. They mostly followed the rules. They didn’t get in trouble at school. They weren’t bundles of energy. Mostly, they dressed up and colored and played with toys and puzzles, quietly. If they were irritable, they would be soothed by a Disney movie, or at the worst, the Wiggles. Remember them? God, I’m dating myself.

My friends with the three year olds don’t have it so lucky. Their boys are much more physical than my girls ever were. For example, EL’s little boy likes to express himself with words for adults, but with his peers, he prefers biting. Chomping down on his classmates has become the go-to way for him to show his displeasure, shock, surprise, or anger, depending on the situation. Every day EL waits for the school to tell her not to bring him back anymore. So far, they are convincing her that it’s all good, mostly age-appropriate, and something he will hopefully outgrow soon. He’s only broken skin a couple of times, so he shouldn’t have to be put down, but he might need a muzzle.

My other friend with a three year old son, MJS, has a different set of issues. Her child has decided to accept the challenge that preschool is offering his immune system. This kid has been sick at least once a month since August of last year, and sometimes violently. There is not much worse than a little kid puking. They don’t quite understand what’s going on yet, not enough to run to the bathroom and hang their heads over the toilet. I can only imagine what that Restoration Hardware sofa that she had to have looks like these days.

I know someone who bought her furniture at Big Lots specifically because she knew it would be ruined in less than two years. We refer to it as disposable furniture.

Yesterday, MJS’s son refused to get dressed for school. Adamantly refused. She was late for work and basically didn’t have time for that shit. She strapped him in the car seat, buck naked, his clothing in the front seat next to her. She talked to me while on the way to his day care. I could hear him screeching like a baby dinosaur in the background. Later, she told me that he had crumbs from the car seat stuck to his bare ass. Also, she forgot his sneakers.

The other day, I saw a picture on Facebook of him pooping in the backyard, under a tree. He is literally being raised by dogs.

I’m not judging, because that’s something I prefer to do in line at Walmart. These are people I love, both my friends and their children. But every time I hear another tale of horror, I thank the gods of all the major religions that that isn’t me. I have done my time, and I don’t want to wipe anymore adorable little asses or fight over irrational things like cutting the sandwich in squares instead of triangles.

Now, if a child of mine says, “I think I am going to throw up,” I can scream back, “Don’t just stand there; do it in the toilet!”  If I make them turn off the television so we can go run an errand, they don’t throw a car at me. If no one wants to eat the fabulous Brussels sprouts I am making for dinner, then they don’t. What the fuck do I care? I like Brussels sprouts, dammit, and I am going to slice them thinly and sauté them in a good Spanish olive oil and dust them with Pecorino, and if the children don’t like it, then they don’t have to eat it. I know they aren’t going to starve. They also aren’t going to break down crying, turn their plates over their heads and collapse on the floor in a heap of kicks and flails. They can get up and make their own goddamn dinners, right after they get over their fear of knives and the toaster oven.

Adding Insult to Injury

Yesterday, my twelve year old daughter S became a woman. It is important that you know she gave me permission to write her story. If you see her, don’t congratulate her, commiserate with her, or tell her she is blossoming before your very eyes. Whatever words of wisdom you feel the need to impart, stuff them back inside your gaping maw. Make like you don’t know, or she will never grant me such permission again. Here we go.

Is there ever a good time to get your period? I mean, other than when it’s late, obviously. What about when you are just a kid, minding your own business? You know eventually it is going to happen to you, since everyone has assured you that yes, you too will bleed once a month for approximately half your life.  Until it finally happens, though, you probably don’t think about it too much. You might carry a little bag with pads in your backpack or your purse, hoping that you never need them. Chances are pretty good that when it does start, you will be without your little bag, or your mom. Just like a real grown up.

All year, S was looking forward to the sixth grade field trip to the U.S. Whitewater Center in Charlotte, North Carolina. Due to budget cuts and everyone’s general contempt for middle school aged children, the middle school has no other field trips for sixth grade students, not that this actually counts as a field trip, but more of a parent funded day away from school, one that the entire sixth grade dreamed of for the entire school year.

I dropped her off at school at 6:45 in the morning. She wore old clothes and carried a change of clothes along with a towel in a backpack. She left everything else at home, her hair brush, her spending money, her little bag of pads, because she really didn’t have any room in her bag for any extras. She didn’t even have her phone since the kids had nowhere to leave their belongings except on the seats or in the storage under the bus. I recall offering to chaperone back in the fall, but S thought it would be better if I didn’t, since even she realizes we need to have some time apart.

About three hours later, my phone rang. It wasn’t a number I recognized, so I let it go to voice mail. The phone rang again right away, the same number, which is never a good sign.

“Hello?” I said.

“Waaaaahhhhhh,” my daughter cried loudly.

Oh lord. No mom wants to hear her child cry like that, especially not when said child is on a school trip in another state.

“Calm down, baby. What’s the matter? What happened?”

“I got my period, and it’s all over the place. It’s like someone died down there!” She cried and sobbed and choked a little on her hyperbole.

“It’s ok, sweetie, it is. Aww, I’m sorry this happened on your field trip, but congratulations?” It came out like a question. Emily Post doesn’t have much to offer either under these circumstances. I just went with the first words that came out of my mouth.

“But Mom, I went to the gift shop, and all they have are tamponnnnnnssssssss!” she wailed.

“It’s going to be okay, I promise. Just calm down.” It was kind of hard to concentrate with all that crying. “Here’s what you need to do. Be brave, and go ask a teacher. A female teacher. Tell one of them you just got your period for the first time and does anyone have a pad? I promise you one of them is going to have one. There is no way they can take that many twelve year olds somewhere and not have at least one pad. Do you think you can do that?”

I assumed she could, because she hung up on me.

I waited about five minutes and then called back that mystery number. It was her chaperone. Her male chaperone.  

My poor baby. She just became a woman with someone else’s father.

“Hello?” he said.

“Um, hi, this is S’s mom. She just called me from this number. I wanted to call back and see if everything is under control.”

“Oh, hi, this is so and so’s dad. I’m so glad you called back. Yes, S is fine. The other girls have her in the bathroom and are taking care of her right now. You have nothing to worry about.”

“Well, I really appreciate that, and, um, I’m sorry you had to be the one to be there, for, um, you know, her first time and all.”

“Really, it’s fine. I have daughters.”

I thanked him and said good bye, and spent the rest of my day oscillating between feeling sorry for my little girl, wishing I had been there, crying, and laughing.

After dinner, I drove back to the school to pick her up. I had been dreading it all day, assuming she would burst into tears the minute she saw me. When she got off the bus, she waved and walked over to me, but no tears. I thought, cool, she is saving her melt down for when we get in the car, but again, nothing. She just chattered away about how much fun it was with the rafting and the zip lines and the ropes course and so on and so forth.

“Were you able to find a pad?” I asked hesitantly.

“Let me tell you what happened. I got off the phone with you and walked over to a group of teachers who were sitting doing nothing by the buses. I told them what happened, that I started my period and needed some female products. One of the teachers got out the first aid kit from the bottom of the bus and started digging through it to see if they had anything for me to use.”

I imagined them creating a pad for her out of a wad of gauze and some cloth tape. “Did they have anything?”

“Yes, she found two pads, and she gave them both to me.”

“Well, that was lucky,” I said. “What if some other girl got hers too? Someone wasn’t going to be happy. I’m glad you got them first.”

“I know,” she said. “But listen to this. While she was looking through the first aid kit, a cute little field mouse came out from the bus compartment where they keep the bags. He was so cute, Mom. He was small and brown and so sweet almost like a gerbil but with a small little tail. He kept darting about between the bags. But then one of the teachers said he was hurt. I looked, and it was so sad, he looked like he had been injured, there was blood all over his side.”

“Maybe he got his period?” I asked her. Sometimes I am the only one who thinks I am funny.

She rolled her eyes at me and continued. “The teachers looked at that poor little thing and decided he needed to be put out of his misery, you know, cause he was hurt. And then the science teacher, that one man? He just walked up to the mouse and stomped it to death. He stomped and stomped and stomped until the mouse stopped moving, and he did it all right in front of me, while I got my period. Can you believe that?”

“No, I cannot,” I said.

“It was so sad, Mom. That poor little thing. And you want to know the worst part?”

“There is something worse than crushing a mouse in front of you? Maybe I don’t.”

“On the way home, you want to know what movie they showed us on the bus?”

“No, what was it?”

“Ratatouille.”

“The one about the French rats that cook?” I asked.

“Exactly,” she said. “I had to watch a cartoon movie about mice. Mom, every time I close my eyes, I can still see him stepping on that poor little mouse, crushing it.”

I fed her a lovely dinner of boxed macaroni and cheese, and she watched television afterwards while holding her pet hamster. And that’s when she cried, fat tears raining down on her pet rodent, Sponge Bob blasting in the background.

She might be a woman now, but she is still my baby.

Worth a Thousand Words

What is it about school portraits that make them so horrible? It’s uncanny, really. The photographers take these photos for a living. It is what they do every day. Why are they so bad at it? I have no doubt the lighting in the cafeteria sucks, but surely Photoshop is available to these alleged professionals. And it’s not like they don’t get any practice. They do this photo stuff twice a year at every school in the country, and there’s got to be at least 100,000 of those, right?  

I hold, in my hand, the proofs of both my daughters’ school portraits. I would post them along with this blog, but I have been forbidden not only from purchasing them but also from snapping a picture of them with my iPhone. My children prefer to pretend that these photos never existed, dreading the possibility that these unflattering images might resurface in a few years, as most embarrassing things on the internet tend to do. And I even considered buying this year’s portraits because they aren’t half bad. My daughters almost look human. Well, one of them does. The other one looks like an unfortunate hunchbacked troll with its teeth clenched in a grimace, but still pretty.

Part of why  the photos suck has to be the mass produced quality of the portraiture. If you had half a day to snap almost two thousand portraits, you better believe you would have some eyelids barely open and a snarled lip here or there. No one can make an entire school body look good, especially when virtually none of them want to have their picture taken. It’s not like a piece of their soul will be taken from them, but still, students, normally obsessed with selfies and Instagram and all things photogenically narcissistic, treat every school portrait like they are standing for a mug shot.

This year’s batch of pictures features a lovely natural backdrop, complete with an artificial tree trunk. If you look closely, you can see that the tree trunk is actually part of the back drop and not a free standing photo prop against which to lean. The photographer had to direct two thousand surly teens to pretend like they were standing against a tree, pantomime style. No wonder there is an undercurrent of “are you fucking kidding me?” evident in both my daughter’s eyes. What would have made it even better is if all the kids posed in plaid flannel shirts holding axes. Hell, if they did that, I guarantee parents would be lining to buy those photos. I know I would.

When my daughters were little and students at the local Montessori, they had fabulous portraits taken at school. The photographer would set up a bench near some blooming azalea bushes in front of the school, arrange a few potted plants around the bench, and then seat the children in a modest fashion. Combs were handed out for smoothing unruly hair, and angelic faces would beam beatifically at the camera. All the parents bought those portraits, not because they were guilted into it, but because those portraits were fabulous.

Can you imagine if you gave combs to all the students in middle school? They would be used for weapons, or possibly some sort of MacGyvered drug paraphernalia. Not to mention at least half the kids couldn’t use a comb if they tried, thank you Axe hair paste. Even if the hair was smoothed, it wouldn’t distract from the nasty facial expressions and tight lipped fake smiles hiding braces. And don’t forget the soulless eyes. Seriously, post-mortem photography is livelier than a school portrait.

Parents look forward to school photo day when their kids were younger. I know I put great thought  into the dresses the girls would wear, deciding on flattering hairstyles, how if they pulled their skirts down just so, the bruises on their knees might not show. For middle school, photo day isn’t even an afterthought. My daughters didn’t mention it, hoping to avoid it entirely. One child even wore a hand me down of her sister’s from the fifth grade, a shirt that has at least three years of wear and tear on it. Can you imagine if you showed up at Target on a Wednesday morning and someone announced to you it was photo day?

I thought about my own school photos from many moons ago, which also began as an every year purchase before petering out.  I bet my mother stopped buying them around seventh grade, and I know I fought for that one because I thought I looked good, rocking that Lacoste shirt and some wicked center parted bangs. Once you hit the early teens, you don’t really look that much different from year to year, except perhaps for the braces covering yellowing teeth and more than one acne breakout and the rebellious makeup and hairstyles.

I bet most people buy pictures of their kids from kindergarten to fifth grade and then senior year. Face it; from about ten to maybe sixteen, awkward is the dominating trend. Most of us would be better off forgetting some of those choices we made. As far as I know, no photographic evidence exists of my purple hair, circa 1985, much to my children's disappointment.

On second thought, excuse me while I go write a couple of checks to School Portraits, Incorporated. My kids might not want me to buy these shitty photos, but I know my future grandchildren will thank me.

 

Close but No Cigar

[Part three. This one is more graphic, and probably less funny. Surgery isn't really funny, so I don't know what you expect from me. Also, I need to apologize to those of you who thought my surgery was today. It was last week, and I am recovering quite well. Thank you for your concern.]

I tried to be optimistic, really I did. I felt confident in my doctor’s ability. I had back up help with my daughters if needed. The laundry was washed and dried and folded. The fridge was stocked with all the necessities. I was prepared to have a day or two of down time. I was ready to go.

The night before my surgery, I shoved one pill in my vagina and a melatonin in my mouth and slept well. I woke up in the morning, had a lovely shower, gave my legs a courtesy shave, put on comfortable clothing, and made the morning routine as close to normal as possible for my girls. After making their breakfast, I made my own and took my other pill orally. I slipped my other prescriptions, my vaginal morphine suppository and my Xanax, into my purse. We all got in the car to take the girls to school before heading over to the doctor’s office.

By the time we got there, whatever that cervix relaxer was had kicked in pretty good. I can’t vouch for how relaxed my cervix was, but the rest of me couldn’t walk a straight line. My husband signed in for me and then the nurse called us back to a waiting room. She handed me a cup for a urine sample and then told me to insert my suppository anally after I peed. I must have given her a baroo, complete with head tilt, because she explained that she knew the prescription was written for a vaginal suppository, but it’s not supposed to be.

I stepped into the bathroom and stood there for a few minutes trying to figure out what to accomplish first, the peeing in the cup or the shoving a suppository up my butt. I went for the pee, getting some of it in the plastic cup, the rest all over my hand. I put the container in the little cabinet marked “urine samples,” then flushed and washed my hands.

Next, I attempted to open the bottle containing the suppository. The bottle said to squeeze the sides to open the top, but hell if I could figure it out. I stood there squeezing and pulling and tugging, but it wouldn’t open. I stuck everything else back in my purse and stepped out of the restroom. No nurses were loitering in the hallway, so I wandered a bit until I found the lab and asked the woman who may or may not have been my nurse to open the bottle for me. She smiled and took the bottle, popping it open expertly before handing it back to me. “It’s kind of tricky, I know,” she said without a hint of condescension. I went back into the restroom and inserted the little waxy bullet in my ass, marveling at how easily it just slipped right in. I was still marveling about it when I sat back in the waiting room, next to my husband.

“It’s in there,” I whispered loudly. “I can feel it. Am I supposed to be able to feel it?”

“It has to get to body temperature to melt,” he told me.

“Gross,” I whispered back. "I have a candle wax bullet melting in my ass."

A different nurse came and collected me, and we passed by my doctor on the way to another room. I gave her a friendly little wave. We sat down and the nurse asked me to take out my medications, then expressed surprise at not seeing any pain medicine. I told her I already had ibuprofen and the cervix one and the other thing in my ass. Then I apologized for saying ass. She handed me a cup of water and instructed me to swallow my Xanax, then led me to an exam room, where she gave me an injection of something in my left butt cheek. I curled up on the paper on the exam table to rest because I really needed to rest. The nurse came back a little later and I asked her if I could put on some socks that I had brought from home, but I needed help finding them in my purse and then getting them on the right feet. My nurse was very patient. I didn’t feel quite as sleepy anymore, so I read the book I brought with me, only it was more like I read just one word over and over.

The nurse then led me to the surgical room. I removed my skirt and panties as she instructed me, then got on the table with my feet in the stirrups. She covered me up with a paper tablecloth and left me to pretend to read a bit more. After a few more minutes, my gynecologist came in with the nurse. She settled herself between my legs, turned on the monitor and a bright light. I thought how nice it would be if it weren’t so bright, but then she might not be able to see, and it would definitely make reading trickier. Still, she could do the same with a head lamp, which comes in handy while spelunking.

My doctor inserted a speculum, and then began giving me a series of shots in my cervix. You know how you go to the dentist for a filling and you get those shots in your gums and they are supposed to feel like a pinch but really feel like a hornet attack? Yeah, it was that. A hornet attack inside my forbidden zone. Satisfied, she stepped back out of the room to check her Facebook or something while she waited for me to get numb.

She came back in after some time and settled back between my thighs. This is where shit got real.  My doctor stuck something in my cervix; I think it was a dilator, or a series of graduated dilators. Each one was more uncomfortable than the last. Seriously, messing with a cervix is guaranteed to make you see stars with just the gentlest of contact. Ramming it repeatedly with different surgical instruments was a level of pain I can’t find words to describe.

Okay, graphic time. With everything she put in me, something wet flowed, flooded, gushed, shot, squirted out of me. I'm pretty sure it was a large quantity of blood. I held my book up over my face so that I wasn’t tempted to see what was happening to the bottom half of my body, from which I was becoming increasingly detached. I couldn’t even look at the words, but only used my book as a shield.

“There’s the culprit,” My doctor said. “You have a polyp. Let’s just biopsy that first.” That biopsy was the best part. I couldn’t feel it at all.

Then it was time to put a camera up my cooch to see what was going on in the farthest, darkest regions of my uncooperative uterus. Of course she couldn’t see well, which meant she had to move it around a bunch. Every movement brought a new level of pain. She decided to try without the speculum.

“Is this because of my wonky uterus?” I asked.

“Yes, it’s not easy to get in there and see what’s going on.”

She tried next with a shorter speculum. She tried with a longer one. Finally, she stopped trying and called another doctor in to look with her. Someone kept moaning, and it was really annoying.

The nurse came over to me and held my hand. She was a good nurse. She knew this wasn’t fun or easy or normal.

The other doctor watched the monitor as my doctor manipulated the camera around and around and around. They might have talked to each other, but I could only hear my own breathing, my inability to control it, and that annoying moaning.

“Well,” she said, removing the camera and the speculum, “We can’t do this. I’m sorry, but it’s just not worth the risk. You have a lot of scar tissue in here from those C-sections. Looks like you’ll need a hysterectomy, but at least insurance won’t be a problem since we tried this first.”

“Can we talk about that later?” I mumbled.

“Someone go get her some ginger ale,” she said. “You were a champ. Sorry it didn’t work out. But you’ve had a D and C now, so that’s something.”

And with that, she left the surgical room.

I stayed there with a heating pad on my belly, sipping ginger ale through a straw from a cup another nurse held for me. I don’t know how long that went on. At some point I remember my couch at home. And pain. A lot of pain. My husband found some old oxycodone from my daughter’s wisdom tooth extraction, and I took one of those, which I threw up some time later. I slept. I woke up cramping. I slept some more. There might have been a slice of pizza consumed, followed by more sleep and more cramps. Later, I was pleased to see I was still alive.

My follow up is in a week, at which point I get to talk about the next step. I definitely don’t feel ready for anything that involves any more poking and prodding in my baby maker. I thought about this whole experience today, and I’m curious why general anesthesia wasn’t an option. I had five pills at home, a morphine suppository, a shot in my ass, multiple shots in my cervix, and another pill to help me relax. I probably didn’t feel everything, but I felt enough. You would think with all that, I wouldn’t feel anything. This seems to be one of those in office procedures that probably shouldn’t be, or perhaps it’s so fast when it goes according to plan that some level of pain is acceptable. My question is, acceptable to whom?

I’m healing, but I am certainly not back to my normal. I am having a period from hell, as my very angry uterus retaliates for all it’s been through. And lucky me, no tampons for a week.  At least, I assume none. My doctor told me to not put anything in my bottom for a week, but I am pretty sure that is polite Southern for pussy. So I’m using pads, and no swimming or baths or other activity down under, which is fine by me, because I am just as angry with my lady parts as they are with me. And I am disappointed, that it didn't work, that it wasn't easy, that I went though all that and didn't even have surgery. That too will get better with time.

I’m sorry I don’t have a happy ending to share, but what did you expect? Happy endings are only for movies anyway.