peevish mama

On Friday afternoon, I packed Doctor Dash’s car with entirely too much stuff for a 36 hour getaway and hit the road. The book club ladies had left a couple hours prior, and I was anxious to catch up so I wouldn’t miss anything. I hadn’t even considered that the drive might be anything more than a means to an end, but as soon as I hit that open highway, I felt my whole body go aaaaahhh . . . 

Man, I had forgotten how good it feels to drive. Solo, no less. No kids. No stops. No satellite radio. Just me, my thoughts, some tunes and the road unfurling ahead of me like a gray ribbon.

I grew up in suburban Detroit – car country. The day I got my license was – let me see – the fifth happiest day of my life: marrying Doctor Dash, the birth of each monkey, and then, yep, getting my license. I went to the DMV on my sixteenth birthday (duh, waiting another day would have been an exquisite torture) and the first thing I did afterwards was drive my sweet ass cream Buick Electra station wagon with wood panelling over to Sweet Sue’s house. We were besides ourselves. We were crazed. We were euphoric. We went to see Manhunter at the Pontiac Showcase Theaters, because we needed a destination. The movie scared the crap out of us and we were so frazzled and giggly when it finished that neither of us noticed that I was driving south on Telegraph Road instead of north towards home. We were deep in the hoods of downtown Detroit before we figured it out and sheepishly turned around.

Not surprisingly, I was a total lead foot. Over the next years, I managed to cry my way out of three traffic stops before an Indiana cop decided he wasn’t buying my shit and slapped me with a huge ticket. I had been driving back to college and I remember wailing something about being soooo excited to see my friends because I missed them soooo much. I guess he didn’t find me and my giant perm and crocodile tears all that compelling because he said I don’t care and walked away. To which I shrieked You’re so mean! 

The summer between freshman and sophomore year in college, Sweet Sue and I convinced our parents to let us go on a tour of the East Coast. We crashed with friends and relatives, ate, people watched, and schemed about how to get into bars with only one fake I.D. between the two of us. Despite all our underage drinking shenanigans, it was the epic drive that I remember best. We drove fast (Sweet Sue got a ticket) and we drove far. There was a lot of Van Morrisson played on that trip.

And of course, college was sprinkled with so many great road trips: Dead shows, football games, Mardi Gras, spring break, camping. It was all about getting out of South Bend, maybe trading cloudy skies for some sun, scaring up an adventure in some new place. Same friends, different location – beers, laughter and running around in technicolor.

In my twenties, road trips weren’t always so frivolous. To and from law school and first jobs in big firms, I drove with angst and stress whispering in my ears. I turned up the music and wished for the road to go on forever, for the hours to stretch and multiply, keeping the crush of reality at bay for just a bit longer. As long as the wheels were moving, time might just stand still.

I had forgotten all about the joy of the open road. Call me crazy, but it’s hugely compromised by having to think about snacks and DVDs and toys that beep. Once upon a time all you needed was a joint, a pack of gum and a full tank of gas. What a lovely discovery to find that a long drive is still a total pleasure under the right circumstances – specifically, alone or with adult company and going somewhere fun. 

And say what you will, but, America, with all its warts and freaks, is a great place to road trip. Endless space, sun, wind, music, open road. It’s a good place to run. It’s a good place to chase. It’s a good place to drive far. Think far.

I opened up my comments today to find the following:

“I am very sorry I did not pay attention to you when I was in 5th grade. It only had to do with the fact that girls were not on my mind. I do miss Way School and the simpler times of life. I am glad that I could be of help with the frog.”

The comment is from none other than – are you ready for this? Jeff freaking Borglin!!! My fourth grade crush! I wrote about him in a post last year about falling in love with music and in my infinite naivete, it didn’t occur to me that this post could somehow land right in his lap. But it did. And he has reached across a span of thirty years to what, WHAT? Apologize for having ignored me when I was at dawn of my ugliest awkward stage and the high noon of my goofiest annoying stage? Who can blame the poor guy? Certainly not me.

Of course, I can think of no better surprise than to google my name (not that I’d ever do that) and discover a luscious little memoir piece written by some boy from my past, but he is not me. I cannot even begin to imagine what he thinks about all this business, let alone whether he even remembers me! His message is so terse and spare, he gives nothing away. Jeff freaking Borglin!!! JEFF FREAKING BORGLIN!!! (Notice I will hereinafter refer to him exclusively as “Jeff freaking Borglin” to thwart any further google searches. So crafty.) 

The more I think about it, the more humiliating this is. I could DIE! And by die, I mean in the fourth grade way, not the fast approaching middle age way. Incidentally, this is why I would never join Facebook. Obviously I’m not cut out for these kinds of blasts from the past. This is almost as embarrassing as the time I wiped out in front of his house whilst trying to do a dance routine on my bike to the song Electric Avenue. Almost. 

Ever the sceptic, Doctor Dash reminded me that it could be a trick. But there appears to be a legitimate email address and he used the proper appellation for our school. Moreover, who of my friends would go so far back into my archives? And wouldn’t said trickster have posted something a little, uh, juicier? Such as: I remember you, Peevish Mama, so many years ago, so beautiful in your powder blue moon boots that didn’t match your tan and navy ski jacket, which your mother told you, but you didn’t care about because you wanted those boots so bad. No, wait. Strike that. How about: I remember you, Peevish Mama, so many years ago, so lovely in your powder blue moon boots. It was only the paralyzing potion of love and fear that kept me from talking to you at the bus stop, but oh, how I wish I’d had the words to turn your sweet face in my direction. Every single day of my life, I regret not having beckoned you out of the bushes behind my house where you and your friend used to spy on me while I watched TV. And when you fell on your cool bike, it took all of my strength to stand on my lawn with my mouth agape and my football in my hand when all I wanted to do was to run to you, cradle you gently in my arms and croon the remaining verses of Electric Avenue in your ear.  Right? People, am I right? THAT might be suspicious.

I think it’s him. I do. 

OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGOD!!! 

It may come as a surprise to you, but I love Valentine’s Day. I don’t consider it to be a Hallmark holiday construed to torture lonely hearts, purge the sappy and guilt ridden of their hard earned pennies and replenish the candy coffers of children. Instead I take Valentine’s Day to be a simple and pure celebration of love. What’s better than love? And if you are lucky enough to be in love, why not have a day where the red carpet is unfurled for all sorts of showy and not so showy demonstrations of that love? Why not wallow in cupids, hearts and flowers for just a day, without feeling sheepish, without feeling cynical? Why not be a little flamboyant? A little racy? A little cheesy? Why not?

Valentine’s Day happens to be a quasi anniversary for Doctor Dash and me. In February of 1992, after five months of friendship and on again off again more-than-friendship, I finally stopped my senseless running and over-thinking. I stopped being cavalier about my friend’s feelings. I stopped ignoring the fact that if there were a hundred people at the keg party, Dash was the one I always wanted to talk to. I stopped. With Dash. And I thank my lucky stars he stood still long enough for me to run around like the fool girl I was and then find my way back. 

♥ ♥ ♥

Last night, our sitter comes at 5:00 so we can go to the wake for Circus Lady’s dad. As I look at a beautiful board of old photos, her mom and dad so young, stylish and happy, I feel my heart contract. How can it be, that you can love someone almost your entire life only to have them ripped away from you? What is she going to do now? How will she live, with her other half, her life’s partner, gone? It’s too much, I wail to Doctor Dash in the car. What’s the point of this short wretched life? There is so much suffering, it’s over so fast, WHAT THE HELL IS THE POINT? For twenty minutes we plunge in deep as we race to our next destination. We question the logic of despair and human suffering, the need for faith, our lack of faith, how the existence of an after-life seems like such an easy palliative, how incredible it is that as humans we still don’t know, we don’t really know what happens after we die or whether there is a God. In our car, hurtling through the dark, I feel like we’re careening into the yawning, impenetrable depths of life’s greatest mysteries. And then Dash says simply: I think the point is love.   

With all of this churning in my chest, we grab our mats and walk into the yoga studio for Crackerjack’s special Valentine’s class and there she is in her red shirt, with her arms open for a hug. She’s got wine chilling and a table set up for appetizers for after class. She’s greeting people, making sure everything is just so, fluttering around with that anticipatory energy that is so uniquely her. Renaissance Man is helping her, quietly lighting votives all around the studio, being the man behind the woman (and if I’m not mistaken, having a pre-yoga glass of wine, but I can’t be sure). All of this I take in as a sensation, through tear blurred eyes. Mindfully, excitedly, and with open hearts they are preparing something special, for others. And boy does that class lift my spirits and settle my angst. By the time Doctor Dash is able to peel me away from my friends and the wine, I’m feeling positively bouyant, peaceful. And a little drunk. 

It’s ten o’clock so we rush over to Barbette, one of our fave haunts. I watch Doctor Dash get out of the car and check the meter. He’s the details guy, the responsible one. When I’m with him I’m free to not pay attention to where we’re going, not carry money or keys, chatter aimlessly, make silly observations, daydream. I stand on the chilly sidewalk, dusted white with salt and frost, and wait for my friend, my love, of eighteen years.

Love is the point.

OK, that’s possibly a little misleading. Possibly a little very misleading. I’m no Kenny Rodgers, if you know what I mean. There haven’t been that many who have travelled in and out my door, if you know what I mean. I’ve loved many boys (and still do), but I haven’t luuuuved many boys, if you know what I mean. Cough. Cough. Good Catholic girl, etcetera, etcetera. And yet, and yet . . .

A couple weeks ago, I went out with my crazy girls on a Thursday night and long story short, I ended up calling up some old buddies at three o’clock in the morning. You know, just to shoot the shit. First I called The Fox, then I called Devious Knickers and then I called Tartare. By some miracle, none of them picked up, and I left them each long and ludicrous voicemails. I talked and talked and talked about God knows what until each of their respective phones cut me off. What can I say? Doctor Dash was working an overnight shift and I was bouncing around the house, snarfing Dutch Crunch Mesquite BBQ Chips and feeling chatty. I was in a state of mind that called to mind my old good time friends. I could have kept dialing, but after Tartare a seed of good sense took root and I switched gears and listened to some loud music with my cushy head phones. Like I said, I was bouncin’. 

The next morning, over a woozy and funny breakfast with some of the aforementioned crazy girls, I happened to mention that I had called my friends in the wee hours and Nanook’s eyes bugged out at me just a little: You went home and drunk dialed two GUYS? There was no judgment in her voice – just surprise. It hadn’t even occurred to me that my calls might be deemed inappropriate by oh, I don’t know, like, the whole world.

I started pondering, because that’s what I do. Was it inappropriate for me, a married lady, to call two married guys at three a.m? (By the way, Doctor Dash is also friends with them – he has a separate and distinct but equally as important friendship as mine – but I knew them first). What’s the litmus test for inappropriateness? What my mother would think? What their wives would think? The purity of my intentions? What The Fox and Devious Knickers think? What Doctor Dash thinks? What is the test?

And more importantly, WHY DOES THERE HAVE TO BE A TEST? They are my friends. Some of the most hilarious, trippy adventures of my life have happened to me with one or both of them at my side. London, Chicago, Southbend, Detroit, New York, Key West and God knows where else. We’ve wandered and imbibed and woven miles of floating tapestries with our serpentine conversations, our extravagant laughter, and our peculiar observations. They are two of my favorite people in the world. They just happen to be men.

By mid morning, I had heard back from both of them. The Fox and I chatted on the phone and Devious Knickers and I exchanged a flurry of emails. They were amused by my ramblings, sounded happy to hear from me if a little surprised at the late hour. It was great to catch up. Since he is ever willing to indulge me in my musings, to delve into the shadowy crevices of human nature, to poke holes in the smooth fabric of convention and peek his curious little eyeball through, I wrote to Devious Knickers about the issue I’d been noodling since breakfast – why did I feel like, suddenly, the friendship that I had with them was no longer legitimate? No longer sanctioned. Devious Knickers responded: “And to get back to the issue of calling boys that aren’t your husband at 3:30 a.m, yes, you are right that there aren’t too many people who would understand what was at play there.” But isn’t it enough that we all knew what was at play there? I knew I wasn’t being shady and he knew I wasn’t being shady, so isn’t it ipso facto NOT shady? And to take it one step further, aren’t we allowed to do what we used to do ever again? Eat, drink and smoke everything in sight and go on a crazy adventure in some strange place? There are socially acceptable reasons to see my college girls, but them? It seems like it just can’t happen anymore – not without chaperones. They are lost to me and I to them. We joked of going to Cairo. Exotic cafes with hookahs and belly dancers, delicious lemony mezze, dusty labyrinthian streets, bustling markets with shady characters beckoning and yelling over tables of gold, silk, and fruit. Oh, to go to Cairo!

And to be fair, I got to marry one of my adventure boys. We go on adventures – I have that in my life, but I still miss those boys, those adventures, that freedom, that youth. Doctor Dash, an eminently fair guy, who understands my friendships and loyalties, the things that make me happy, agreed that there seemed to be a double standard for old friendships based on gender. He agreed that it was unfair. He agreed that it doesn’t make sense. But the standard is there nevertheless. We talked about the fact that he could jet off to meet up with them at any time, no questions asked. On the one hand I’d be happy that the boys I love are together, having fun, reenforcing and tending to old and valuable friendships. On the other hand, I would be bereft. I would feel so left out. So sad to be missing the fun. To my surprise, he said: You could go to Cairo, but only if both of them went. Aha! Oho! I’ll take that! He is nothing if not fair, my Doctor Dash. Fox? Devious Knickers? What do you say? Cairo? Hulloooo? Hulloooloooloooo??? Ya, ok, maybe not. 

Just mulling anyway. Just mulling – missing a vanished piece – wondering if it’s vanished forever.

I don’t know if you would find this surprising or completely predictable about me, but I’m a huge fan of the fat man. The reason I phrase it like this is because at Lady Doctah K’s holiday party, my ladies were shocked, shocked I tell you, to learn that we have a fake tree. Oh, please, I can practically hear you gasping too. As if somehow, the persona I project out in the the world is someone who would sooner lay herself over the tracks of the Polar Express than forgo the bracing red-cheeked adventure, the spindly glamour, the bright piney smell of a real tree. Truth be told, I was thinking that our tree looks rather bushy compared to all my friends’ trees. And I think – well, I think I know – bushy ain’t good. Bushy ain’t good in any arena of life that I can think of, except for maybe squirrels tails and actual bushes (and I don’t mean the lady variety, so get your mind out of the gutter). My friends Rip Van Techno and Circus Lady always have a gorgeous tree – tall and leggy, like a supermodel to my hairy peasant. But in my defense (not that I’m defensive), I grew up in a stridently faux tree family, annually regaled with cautionary tales of fires, allergens, critters, and messy pine needles. As a girl, I would wrinkle my nose at the carcasses of natural trees, pathetically awaiting removal at the ends of driveways in January, thinking Hooo boy, that family dodged a bullet, they’re so lucky they aren’t dead. So it’s not surprising that the first year Doctor Dash and I were married, I went right out and bought a big beautiful fakey for our apartment in Boston. And now I’m kind of stuck with the bushy beast, unless I’m willing to step into multiple tree territory, which as of this date, I am not willing to do. But that’s not at all where this post was going.

I’m feeling the need to talk about Santa. We are on the eve of what is most likely the last time we will have a houseful of believers. Saint James is nine. I thought for sure it would be over for him this year, but he seems to be, as of yet, a true albeit muted, believer. We went to get the annual Santa picture taken yesterday and he waited in line in silence, as if weighing the evidence for and against, ticking through his Santa knowledge base: collected memories, words overheard, cookies vanished. He gamely sat next to Santa for a picture, smirked and when asked what he wanted for Christmas, answered: I don’t know. Now, I know he knows. What kid, in this day and age, with the material blessings he has, doesn’t know exactly, precisely what he wants? I think Saint James was trying to avoid bringing down this whole house of cards. He was trying to buy himself some more time. He was trying to avoid catching Santa, and all of us, in a great sad lie. I remember being crushed when I asked my mother about Santa and she told me the truth. I had been looking for affirmation, just a word to let me know that in the face of everything I was hearing at school, it was ok to keep believing – because I still wanted to believe. I remember flipping out and shrieking at my mother as I ran from the room: I don’t care what you say! I still believe in the Easter Bunny! Waah! Waahh. (Have a mentioned I was a rather melodramatic girl?) 

We go to extremes to keep the dream alive: stashing gifts at other people’s houses, buying and hiding different wrapping paper, eating cookies we’re not hungry for on Christmas Eve, keeping our antenae on the alert for those nasty third born children, wise and mouthy, threatening to ruin everything for our precious innocents. A few years ago, my son’s best friend started to mouth off about the mall Santas not being the real Santas. We had yet to cross that bridge as I had been careful to always take them back to the same guy at Southdale Mall. I’m not proud of this, but I smacked that boy down like an angry Grizzly sow. I summoned up all of my gigantic, prickly, legitimate adultness, locked eyes with him and cooly replied that WE SAW THE REAL SANTA. TOO BAD YOU MISSED IT. MAYBE NEXT YEAR. Oh, geez. Bad mama? Good mama? What the fuck? But look! It bought me a couple more years! Well worth it, I’d say.

I’ve heard talk of parents coming clean with their kids because in an era of truth-trumps-all, that’s what you’re supposed to do. This article in the New York Times has various experts weighing in on the Santa issue. It’s fascinating reading, especially for someone like me who is watching with alarm as the cobwebs lift from my son’s eyes by the minute. I like what Allison Gopnik has to say: “Why do children love imaginary figures like Santa Claus, then? Because they like to pretend. And when children pretend, they are exercising the evolutionarily crucial human ability to envision alternative ways the world could be. In adults that ability is at the core of our very real capacities for invention and innovation.” That’s a pretty snazzy rationalization for the big old guy – makes me puff up my chest like I’m doing something really good for my kid, for humanity even! 

But the whole Santa thing is so much simpler for me. None of these articles mentions the simple fact that it’s fun. It’s fun to believe. And as you grow, it’s fun to pretend. And when you’re grown it’s fun to knit together a world so your children can believe and pretend. The years where they’re old enough to understand about Santa and young enough to believe in Santa are breathtakingly few. They skip by as quickly as elves scattering out of sight. That kind of magic – it’s a big deal. I would hazard to guess that everyone remembers the moment they learned the truth: how they found out, who told them, the stash of gifts they discovered in the back of their parents’ closet. First teeth lost, first periods, first kisses, first bras, first drives, first jobs, first loves. These are the things we remember. They each represent stepping over one of the many shimmering lines between childhood and adulthood. Sometimes taking the step is messy, sometimes easy, sometimes painful, sometimes mind blowing and perfect, but always seemingly inevitable. And here, now, both feet firmly planted on the other side of the line, I can say:  Honeys, my loves, please believe me when I tell you this. Wait. Wait as long as you can. There’s no rush.

Merry Christmas my readers, my friends. May your holidays be simple and lovely, shiny and bright.

There have been some recent events, which I’m not at liberty to discuss, that have gotten me thinking long and hard about females, friendships and feelings. For better or worse, I’m not sure if I’ve ever given more than a glancing thought to these issues. I pride myself on my relatively drama free life. I love the ease of all my guy friendships and my low-maintenance girl friendships. The last fight I was in was in seventh grade when my best friend Sweet Sue and I broke up for a whole summer. I can’t even remember why. I do, however, remember seeing her on the first day of eighth grade in Mrs. Strong’s classroom and just adoring her violently Sun-Inned hair and realizing, in a rush, how much I had missed her. We made up. Just like that. Then once in college I got really mad when my friend La Peruanita took my big red boxy sweatshirt, which if I recall correctly, wasn’t even my sweatshirt and might actually have been her sweatshirt, but I had kind of adopted it and it was a crucial piece of my wardrobe. She heard about my ire through the grapevine and the wretched thing reappeared in my milk crate in due course. Crisis averted, I suppose.

When I wrote about the Babe-o-matics recently, it occurred to me that it was remarkable that six girl/women had made it four years with zero drama. But in retrospect I wonder if that was really the case. One of the original Babe-o-matics chose to cut ties with us a few years after we graduated. The rest of us have tried to work through the why’s of it, with little success. There is never a time that we get together that she doesn’t come up. It might be something that has to do with her more than us. Or maybe, something did happen and we missed it.

I have another more recent friend who would say time and time again – she doesn’t like me, or that one’s hot and cold with me, or she has it in for me, or I never know where I stand with that one. And I would listen with a mixture of fascination (because what’s more fascinating than someone else’s drama?) and scepticism. I find her loveable and thus constantly felt like Jerry Seinfeld’s mother shrieking in my best Jewish old lady voice How could anyone not like you?  And every once in a while I’d feel a little frightened by it – like is this ever going to trickle over to me? Because I have a horror of this kind of thing. I don’t think I could go through even one day suspecting that someone I deal with on a frequent basis has a beef with me. It would drive me absolutely bananas. And so I avoid the whole kit and kaboodle.

No drama for this mama.

But I wonder if my drama free life is really as drama free as I think it is. The recent episode that got me thinking about this made me realize that I sort of stomp through life in big boots and maybe I need to be more careful. The whole thing took me by surprise and I realized that I’m just not tuned into this kind of thing, at all. And because these people are special to me, I felt bad about it, even though I wasn’t directly involved in it. As a rule I don’t feel a lot of angst or insecurity or competitiveness with other women and I choose to assume everyone else is the same. Maybe in my fervor to steer clear of sticky situations, I have let myself become impervious to other people’s fragilities and feelings. Maybe my mellow, low-maintenance, confident schtick is really a cop out – because I don’t want to tangle, or tango, or whatever.

Assume socks are drama. It’s possible I’m the guy who truly doesn’t see them on the ground when he walks by. Or maybe I’m the guy who doesn’t want to pick them up, so he pretends he doesn’t see them. I really don’t know. I hate that second guy. On the other hand, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life picking up socks. Isn’t it better to turn a blind eye, sail on above it all, and if you miss a couple hurt feelings here and again, so be it? Or is it better to be open, to be perceptive, to be sensitive to the drama like my Jerry Seinfeld friend?

I don’t know. I don’t know which is better. And maybe it’s not even a choice so much as a reaction you can no sooner control than fear or surprise. In any event, I think I’m keeping my big boots. And I’m not saying I’m going to pick up any socks, but maybe, just maybe, I’ll try to see one every once in a while.

Take one.

On one end of the beach is a girl. She’s running with a huge smile on her face, her braces catching the light of the sun, the green rubber bands in her mouth strained to capacity. She’s wearing a plaid kilt, navy and dark green with thin lines of red and yellow, and an oversized white oxford shirt, tucked in only at the front. On her feet she wears knee socks pushed all the way down and loafers with one penny tucked in on heads, one on tails. The girl believes this to be a clever way of beating the odds of life. Under one sock around her ankle is a thick band of multicolored woven friendship bracelets. Months later when she grows tired of them she will cut them off and sew them to the pocket of her jean jacket. She is sporting a formidable lion’s mane of dark permed curls, scrunched to perfection, redolent of Vidal Sassoon styling mousse, bouncin’ and behavin’ as if they have a life of their own. She wears dangly earrings and a gold class ring bearing the Sacred Heart of Jesus, but is otherwise unadorned, save a scrunchy around her wrist. Her face is tan and line free. Everything is either a joke or a drama.

A woman is running toward the girl, if you can even call it running because she hasn’t done any cardio in ages and is a bit winded. Also, she’s wearing tall boots and skinny jeans, neither of which is particularly conducive to the long gazelle-like strides of the girl. No matter, thinks the woman, she’ll get to me eventually, running’s no good for my joints anyway. She watches the girl’s knock-kneed gait, her flailing arms, and wonders when she lost the unselfconsciousness, the joy of pounding the earth with the soles of her feet. Probably on this day, the day that sports died. The woman has gobs of gold jewelry stacked on her wrists and around her neck, some of it real, most of it faux, all of it gaining a certain je ne sais quois by virtue of being piled on in a more-is-more-mish-mosh, or so she thinks. One of the few perks of growing older, she believes, is the freedom to over do it with the jewelry and fur. Subtle, be damned, she thinks as she feebly slogs through the sand. Understated be damned. The woman’s hair is straightish, her future husband having extracted a vow in 1992 that she would never again perm her hair. Her face is no longer tan, no longer line free. Everything is still a joke or a drama, only less so. Or maybe more so.

There is no way to be sure anymore.

One thing and one thing only has brought the girl and the woman to the beach and set them on a collision course for each other: Jay Z’s Young Forever featuring Mr. Hudson.

CUUUUUT! That’s a wrap!

Holy buckets, Jay Z! This song is just TOOOO much! Do you know how much I used to love Alphaville? Do you have any idea how much I had to finagle to get Sister Church (her real name, no joke) to agree to let us sing this for our class ring ceremony Junior year?  Do you know that she made us replace “are you gonna drop the bomb or not” with “are you gonna sing the song or not”? Do you know that we stood in the chapel in our blue blazers and plaid skirts, our arms around each other, singing our hearts out in a teary crescendo until we were all sobbing in a florid display of adolescent group-think copy cat feminine hysteria? No, seriously, it’s true. This kind of stuff happens all the time at Catholic all-girls’ schools. Apparently, we wanted to be forever young, really really bad.

Listen, Jay Z, you better believe I’ve been trying to figure out my fascination with hip hop because, frankly, it’s vaguely unbecoming for a mother of three to drive around in her minivan with heavy base shaking the bumpers, my childrens’ heads, barely visible through the tinted windows nodding in rhythm to some seriously unsavory tunes like a bunch of bored hoods. I actually considered that I might be doing it out of peevishness. That I might be doing it because I like to imagine Lil’ Wayne standing on a corner and the look on his mug when I drive by with a little Mrs. Officer on deck. What’s that you say? Lil’ Wayne is totally down with Minnesota housewives? Good to know. I suspected this went beyond peevishness anyway. 

With this song, you helped me figure it out. Sweet Jay, you have managed to take the addled, melodramatic, swelling synthesizers of my teens, the anthem to long drawn out sighs, daydreaming and feverish journal writing and mash them up with your song (a doozy, by the way, well done). In a genius bit of alchemy, every thing I love about hip hop rose to the top like thick beautiful cream: First of all, it’s collaborative and creative. I love that artists are constantly showing up on each other’s tracks. It actually seems like the norm and I’d love to know how it happens. Do you guys text each other? Dude, I think you introduced me to Santigold with Brooklyn (Go Hard). I love that sampling is one of the building blocks of hip hop – there is nothing like decontextualizing something to give it a brand new shiny veneer, new legs, new life. I love that it’s about beats not tears, stories not drama (for me anyway). And sometimes it’s just about a party, unobscured hedonism. I love that it’s quick and dirty: the fastest way to a good time, to shakin’ my booty, to a laugh and a drink.

When I was a teen, the emotions were big and sweeping and all my synth pop seemed tailored made to wrap me up in a big blanket of ennui, all the better to wallow in. I’m done navel gazing. Now, I’m looking for a little relief from the monotony of emptying the dishwasher, of that umpteenth drive to soccer, of that mountain of clean laundry that needs to be folded. If a song makes me dance in my kitchen with my kids, makes me laugh, makes me blush, makes me lunge at the pause button so my kid doesn’t hear the rest of it, then that song is doing exactly what it needs to be doing for me.

So let’s dance in style, let’s dance for a while. Thanks for the memories, Jay.

My college girls and I used to call ourselves the Babe-O-Matics, and lest you think we took ourselves seriously, please know that it was all in jest. Mostly. Back in the day, I had inherited a tape player called the Invert-O-Matic (my dad has always been a gadget guy and this was pure seventies cutting edge stuff) which, no joke, would eject the tape, flip it over, suck it back in and play the other side. Someone covered the “Invert” with “Babe” and that’s all she wrote. I don’t remember exactly when we became the Babe-O-Matics – it feels like we just always were. And as it turns out, I think we always will be. We may no longer be running around Southbend, Indiana dressed like grungy man-girls in big Levis, flannel shirts, Birkenstocks and boots, but Babe-os we remain.

I’ve been sitting on this post for a few days – it doesn’t seem to be writing itself, as usually happens when the emotions are bigger than the words. Earlier this summer, I had intended to write about the bookend stop in Chicago on our way back from Michigan and I never did. The words sort of eluded me to describe how much fun we had overnight at Sunny’s* house in Wilamette with her hubby, Tax Man Italiano, and their four kids. Our other roommate, Shady** came in from the city for the night and we slipped right back into our old mischief, feasting, drinking, and gabbing to excess – only now we were surrounded by a gaggle of kids and a couple of indulgent husbands who seem to understand implicitly that if there was ever a night to step up and get the kids to bed and let us talk, it was then. Late night, sitting on Sunny’s porch, drinking those last beers we would regret in the morning, it struck me that after college, I was far too cavalier about the Babe-os spreading out around the country. Nothing seemed permanent back then. Nothing seemed of consequence.  We all had things we needed to do, and I figured they would always be as close to me as they were on that sad day we all drove away from our little blue house on St. Peter’s Street for the last time – weeping, desolate, inconsolable in the knowledge that we would never have that kind of fun again. 

Looking at my girls over the flickering candles on that porch, my heart caught in my throat. We could be doing all of this together. Instead, we live parallel lives in different cities, only catching up for a few golden hours every year. Shady goes to a lot of the same concerts we go to when they hit Chicago – she was at Beck and at De La Soul. What a partner in crime she would be if we lived in the same place! And Sunny’s kids and my kids paired off and scampered away like they see each other every day. Sunny and I could be sitting at the pool together, at the beach together, cobbling dinners together out of cheese and crackers and wine. I married someone who knew me way back when – back when I was young and fun and didn’t have a care in the world. I know how much humor and patience and leeway and pleasure you draw out of that pot of memories, that book of characters and references. It’s huge. Embarrassingly, I think I might have blubbered something about missing out on my Ya Ya sisterhood, but Sunny and Shady understood. When six girls spend a whole Halloween night tied together disguised as a drain hair shark, on mushrooms, well, it adds a whole other dimension to your relationship. 

We could be doing all of this together.

But we’re not. And as bittersweet as seeing each other may be, it’s also completely restorative, satisfying and necessary. To laugh like that, to be understood and accepted like that, fills us up and lets us glide on through until the next time. We all have other wonderful friends where we live, sisters, the ladies you count on. But what we Babe-os had remains utterly apart – maybe because we’ve always lived apart – it’s locked away in time, but breathtakingly accessible. All we have to do to tap into that, is put ourselves into the same room. So we do.

On Saturday three of us flew to Saint Louis to surprise Dolly*** for her 40th birthday party. She had no idea we were coming. Her lovely sisters and hubby, Soul Daddy, masterfully kept it under wraps. Tartare had flown from Seattle to meet up with Shady and Sunny in Chicago and they flew in together. When I looked up from my phone to see the three of them striding toward me in the St. Louis airport, looking all foxy and smiley, my heart did a little jump. All together! For a party! For Dolly! It was just too good. 

The surprise was perfect. We didn’t jump out of a cake. We simply walked down the street and as we approached we could hear Dolly’s daughter, Mimi, yelling Moooom, come outside! So of course, there was shrieking. Of course there were hugs and laughter. Dolly was grinning ear to ear, as was the adorable Soul Daddy. Operation Babe-O-Matic was a success.

The Babe-os were in da haaayouse and Dolly’s relaxing afternoon had just morphed into something else entirely. We chatted, drank in their three adorable kids, oohed and aahed around the house, soaking up the wall colors, the pictures, the stuff of our dear friend’s day-to-day life. We felt lucky to be sitting in her kitchen, even for a couple hours, to have our hands on the counter top where her kids color, where they spill cereal, where Dolly rolls out pies, where Soul Daddy chops and puts out cheese and olives. We Babe-os take nothing for granted, least of all time in each other’s homes. It’s just too rare. And even back in college, back when all we really cared about was the next great party, we were all about nesting, making our dorm rooms and then the house on St. Peter’s Street sweet little homes to relish, share, and make memories in. Some things never change.

A lot of things never change.

After a little adventure to Dolly’s favorite nail salon for manis and pedis, a quick beer, and that festive, oh so fun, getting ready time when we chatted and cackled and checked out eachothers’ lotions and potions, outfits and jewelry, we were off like the wind to Dolly’s bash. We knew it was going to be great because it was at the house Dolly grew up in, now owned by her sister, the lovely Maisie and her family. We had already celebrated Dolly and Soul Daddy’s wedding at that house, not to mention various stops to and fro Mardi Gras throughout the years. This family knows how to fling open their doors, hug you close and throw down for a really good time. There were pretty lights strung up in the yard, cocktail tables with candles, delicious food and bevvies, jello shots in every flavor, and tons of party people who all love Dolly.

We knew it was going to be fun. What we didn’t know, is that we were going to spend the next nine hours in a magical musical pleasure fest! Soul Daddy’s old band set up in the garage due to some threatening sprinkles, which, luckily, never ended up getting much footing and began a night of amazing music. Lordy, did we dance! Soul Daddy sang and we all swooned. Dolly sang and we swooned some more. Our girl! As the night tore on in a mad blur fueled by beer and restorative stops to the food table, all of Dolly’s sibs took a turn, and then her uncle and then her cousins and before we knew it, the night had devolved into a beautiful crazy hootenanny. It was great. And if you went inside, you had their exquisitely woven playlist to contend with. I have fuzzy memories of lurching around, dancing to So Lonely, screaming the words while gnawing on a chicken wing. It was a buh uh uh uh laaasst!!!

Just like the old days, the Babe-os would fan out at a party, flitting around, talking to everyone, only to find each other again in a riotous explosion of cheers and hugs and laughter, feeling like you were home again after a crazy odyssey. This would happen, and did happen on Saturday, multiple times a night, all night long. We may have lived together, but we were always happiest to see each other. 

A lot of things never change.

Tartare, Sunny, Shady and Dolly, you are my heart. Happy birthday Dolly. I love you rockin’ Babe-o-matics.

*Because of love of, disposition, outlook, and Coppertone always at the ready.

**Because why mess with a good nickname?

***Because she has a love for Dolly Parton, not because she looks like Dolly Parton.

Yesterday was such an odd day – it was the quintessential, hot, sunny summer day in the Midwest replete with a comfortingly familiar level of humidity and mosquito action. We swam, we idled around home, we face painted, we rode our bikes and I even broke out the Deep Woods OFF for the first time this season. It was a good day. It was a regular day. And in the midst of my morning, I find out Farrah Fawcett died, which is sad, but she was sick and it was no great surprise. I always loved Farrah in that sad sort of way a little Argentine girl living in Michigan would. She was the ideal, and I, with my dark hair, big feet, long legs and funny name, was most definitely not. Before a family vacation, I even got my hair cut so that it would “feather,” having no clue that you needed a curling iron to do it. Not to mention that my hair was so thick and heavy that it would have required mad skilz, copious amounts of hair spray and a head immobilizer for me to pull off a feathered do. Instead my hair fell around my face like Cousin It until my mom got so exasperated she bought a barrette from a Disney World gift shop to pin it away from my face. Michigan in the seventies was not a place you wanted to be different. It was a time before Benneton ads, J Lo, Beyoncé, and High School Musical. Little girls swoon when they find out my name now, but back then, Gabriela was odd and ugly – just like me. Revisiting those youthful cringes and tinges upon hearing of Farrah’s death, while not entirely surprising, amounted to more than plenty melancholy nostalgia for a hot June day.

I screamed and practically jumped out of my skin when I read that Michael Jackson had died. Michael Jackson is dead. Not that he was the picture of vitality, by any stretch, but still – it just doesn’t seem possible! Talk about a tragic life spiral. I’ve always been a fan, but like most people, had sort of let him go as he got weirder and whiter – as he finally succeeded in erasing all traces of the beautiful black boy he had once been. He was so talented that it somehow made his erratic behavior and freaky looks all that much more distasteful. It just became easier to ignore him than to try to understand what was going on chez Neverland. Oh, but what a cool little kid he was, what a voice, what a dancer! And to die at fifty, alone, and hidden away in that big weird house, living out a fantasy most certainly gone awry. Tragic. Check this out, though. The footage from Harlem is breathtaking and I could watch that all day. Hopefully he’s watching from wherever he is and has found whatever he was looking for. Good bye MJ.

And good bye beautiful Farrah.

You may or may not have noticed that new column over there to the right, down a bit, yep, there. I just sort of slipped it in casually, pretending it’s been there all along, half hoping you wouldn’t notice because God knows, I certainly don’t want to diminish my tenuous, paltry readership by pointing you in the direction of other, better blogs! To tell the truth, when I started this blog, I didn’t read many, if any blogs, so a blogroll didn’t even occur to me. Then as I started to wade around in the murky waters of the internet, I realized just how deep it is, just how vast. Wow, I could swim in this! Shit, I could drown! Fashion blogs, mommy blogs, literature blogs, food blogs, political blogs, design blogs, funny blogs, sad blogs, freaky blogs.

Easily overwhelmed, I was overwhelmed. Easily demoralized, I was demoralized. What is the point of adding my voice to this chattering chaos? Who cares? Who is ever going to find me and hear me? Maybe I really am spewing words into the ether. So I had a little freak out and stopped writing for a while until I realized, no, remembered, that spewing words feels pretty fucking good – regardless of whether anyone is reading. So I started spewing again, and here I am. Spewing and also pointing you to other, better blogs. I am one ballsy and reckless fool today.

In my blogroll live both friends and strangers whose words I have come to really like and anticipate. I have figured out that there’s a little clique of mommy blogs – funny, irreverent, mommy blogs that don’t make me want to stick my head in the oven à la Sylvia Plath. They all seem to know each other and love each other and hang out all the time and go on crazy adventures, notwithstanding the fact that they’re scattered around the country. I feel like the girl on the playground sullenly looking on with her fingers crooked around the chain link fence and one knee sock drooping down around her ankle, wishing they would ask her to join in. But they don’t know me. They don’t see me. They’re having too much fun sharing links and laughs and witticisms and Bonnie Bell Lip Smacker. So I’m just gonna turn around, sit on the crabby crass, behead dandelions and scratch my mosquito bites. 

One of the funny popular girls is Finslippy, who recently raved about a blog by a friend of hers (see? they’re all friends – I’m not making this up) called The Diamond in the Window, and because I trust Finslippy, I checked it out. It really is wonderful. It’s a blog about books and girls and books for girls (to be fair, boys too) and is written so beautifully that I just want to crawl into my yellow beanbag chair and read The Little House on the Prairie. This woman clearly loves books, but what I find magical is that she is still breathtakingly in touch with what books meant to her as a girl. Maybe it’s because she has girls, but I think it’s because you never really out grow being a bookworm. This blog brings me right back to that heady feeling of pedaling home from the library on Deep Wood Road, my backpack filled with treasures, shimmering and shivering to get out. I loved books. I read at the table, on the toilet, in the tree, in my bean bag chair, on a shag rug, in my bed, in my parent’s bed, on the bus, in the car, at recess. If I had a good book in my armpit, the only thing I could think of was finding a spot to drop and tuck into it.

If you are, were or are raising a bookworm, check out this lovely blog. 

And now, back to the playground. Mama had a baby and her head popped off.

Adventureland’s soundtrack got me thinking about music and how for me, it used to be a really tactile, physical thing – both literally and figuratively, in a way it just isn’t anymore. In 1987 we were listening to music on cassette tapes. Plastic, durable, stackable, bulky tapes with scratched cases. I can still smell the ribbon and feel the anger in my throat when it got pulled out and chewed up by a rogue tape player or a little brother. I remember spooling it back in with a pencil, holding my breath, hoping it would still play. Taping songs off the radio, making mixed tapes, it was a manual thing – you had to get the timing right, you had to listen and press RECORD and STOP at the perfect moment.

When you went to the record store and plunked down nine dollars and change for a casette, you were taking it on faith that you were going to like all the songs as much as you liked the one you bought the tape for. You listened to the whole tape as soon as you got in the car. It was cumbersome to fast forward to a particular song, although it’s a skill we all honed. Doctor Dash was exceedingly good at this, though he had had many years of practice by the time we started roadtripping together.

Music was experienced by album back then – not by song – so there was a depth of familiarity and listening that I’m not quite getting anymore. We used to listen to our tapes over and over until we wore them out. Now I flit around, clicking and dragging, making playlists, dismissing songs I don’t like in the first ten seconds. Truth be told, there’s so much music on our computer, I haven’t even listened to a lot of it. Music is an ocean now – vast, unknowable – I feel I can’t do much more than sail along on top of it.

When I was young, I would very specifically and deliberately associate certain songs with certain times or people. A song was like plastic wrap and you would wrap it around a memory and there it would stay forever. Packaged, accessible, easy to hold in your hand daydream fodder. Lionel Richie’s Hello offered direct access to the one and only time I danced with Danny Voss – hunky, blond, turquoise-sleeveless-t-shirt-wearing, cousin-of-a-girl-I-hated, Danny Voss. Talk about yearning. Talk about visceral. This song made my stomach do flip flops for months on end.

At the beginning of law school, I sat on my fire escape and cried because someone was having a party at a house nearby and loud snatches of Uncle John’s Band kept floating over to me. The late afternoon sun, the Dead, the smell of beer and pot – that was college and I missed that life so much it hurt.

Blister in the Sun by the Violent Femmes? High school dances – unfettered Molly Ringwald dancing. I Melt with You by Modern English? Also school dances – spinning, dizzy, swallowed up in the music, wishing I had a boyfriend.

The Reflex by Duran Duran was the lip synch contest at camp. A girl from another cabin peed on stage. Pee and nervous laughter as she pretended to play the keyboards. Darkening concrete beneath her feet.

U Can’t Touch this by MC Hammer was the lounge at school. Girls in uniforms dancing on the coffee table.  

Brass Monkey by the Beasties was Fourth of July fireworks. I was really really tan and my hair was really really big. I was wearing Levis, rolled and tapered at the bottom, a pink tank top and opalescent lipstick. Hot shit.

And if there’s any woman my age who can’t hum the song from the Sixteen Candles scene pictured above, I’ll get a spiral perm tomorrow.

Do kids still do this? Lock in music to moments? Or is that something you only do when you can fit all your music into a shoe box? When the rate of discovering new music is directly tied to weekly rides to the mall? Is there too much music now? Is our capacity to make music our own finite and ultimately being diluted by instantaneous and unmitigated access? Is the very fact that I’m posing these questions, proof positive of my old lady status and that I just don’t get it?

And then there’s irony, which creates even more distance between the gut and the song. A friend was complaining about how her high schooler was listening to Phil Collins, whom she had never liked and liked even less now that her daughter and her friends had discovered him. I can’t say I disagree, although perhaps I find myself softening on Mr. Honey Tones and Thinning Hair as the years pass. On second thought, Sussudio really was unforgivable.  Maybe I was uniquely unjaded when it came to music, but I always took it as it came. I certainly didn’t listen to music with any sense of irony. I do now. And kids now seem to as well. Is it their loss?

I hope not. I hope that when Saint James is 35, he can pick out a handful of songs that send him shooting to his teen years, to specific moments in time when he couldn’t breathe for laughing so hard or being so smitten, to driving with friends with the windows open and the wind on their teeth, to playing foosball in smoky basements, to wrestling in the snow because he and his best friend were both being dicks and it was the only way to work it out, to pressing a finger onto a girl’s sunburnt shoulder, watching his print recede and doing it again.

Which songs did you wrap around your memories? Do tell.

I’m not sure what the appeal of Golden Girls could have been for a young teen, but I loved it. Maybe it was the fact that my parents had banned me from watching Laverne and Shirley as a child, their reason being, and I quote: They are cheap ladies! Cheap ladies! No further explanation necessary, apparently. Perhaps the Golden Girls seemed like cheap ladies disguised as old ladies. They were certainly as sassy and brassy and funny as Laverne and Shirley. Perhaps, despite their age (which seemed ancient to me back then), it was clear to me that their female friendships were as compelling and enduring as my own. Perhaps I enjoyed them because both of my grandmothers lived in Argentina, and it was a bit of an old lady fix. Or maybe I just watched a lot of TV. 

I don’t remember any particular plot lines. Just a lot of robes, house dresses, pastel pantsuits, wicker furniture, lanais, whipped white hair and cheesecake. Their Miami condo, decorated in 80’s tropicalia, probably smelled of powder and perfume and I fantasized about all the sweet creamy confections they might have in their refrigerator, about falling asleep on the mauve couch printed in sage palm fronds. I fancied I might be welcomed there – fawned over, even. Bea Arthur was a classy lady with a great voice and wit. She could move laugh tracks with a mere look of exasperation or a raised eyebrow. I’m sad to see her go.

Every time I try to write about my upcoming knee surgery, I feel myself morphing into a paunchy ex-jock, swigging my beer as I regale you with war stories of  my high school football glory days. Not very sexy, but nevertheless, here it goes. Errp. Scuse.

It was May of 1988 and the Academy of the Sacred Heart Gazelles (I know, so cute and yet so ridiculous) had travelled to a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio for the last lacrosse tournament of the season. A few of us seniors had come straight from prom – my light pink strapless dress swung virginally from the garment hook of Marian’s mom’s car. She drove us through the night because there was no way we were going to miss this tournament – even if it meant bidding our flummoxed dates adieu at two a.m.

By this point in the season – the end of the season, we were in the best shape of our lives – we had hearts like bulls. Lacrosse is a graceful running sport and it is played with no out-of-bounds. If you wanted to burn up time on the clock, you could just take off with the ball and sprint across the next field over, pretending you were a young Native American brave thumping across the prairie in a loin cloth, your heart pounding in your ears. Our coach, Ms. Dritsas, never let us forget it was a game invented by the Plains Indians and played on vast fields that were miles and miles long and wide. The games could go on for days, with hundreds of players on each team. We Gazelles proudly played with the traditional wooden lacrosse sticks made by a guy in Northern Michigan, while all the other teams used plastic sticks, easier sticks we used to say. A stocky woman with spiky gray hair, Ms. Dritsas ate orange peels and was suspected to be a lesbian due to her habitual ass slapping. Somehow, this seems a lot less newsworthy and titillating now than it did then, but we were sheltered Catholic school girls and we liked to make fun.

The beginning of the season was a cold rainy blur of Ms. Dritsas sending us on long runs. Don’t come back for an hour. Go. We would dutifully trudge off, our pony tails flicking behind us, our colored spandex tights gleaming from beneath our oversized shorts. As soon as we were out of sight, we would drop into a saunter and go to our friend Sherry’s house to eat Pop Tarts for fifty minutes before wetting the hair at our temples in the sink and jogging back to school. Sherry isn’t alive anymore. How could we have known as girls, giggling in her house, feeling like we were getting away with something, that she would die in a tragic accident in her early thirties? It is still beyond comprehension.

I’m not sure if I felt it as much as I heard it, but mid-stride in a dead run, there was a pop. A pop that ended my world as I knew it, a world where girls played fierce and hard and felt completely invincible. As I lay on the ground, a thick fence of gold knee high socks surrounded me, but I couldn’t see past anyone’s knees. I remember screaming, over and over, I don’t want permanent knee damage. Please don’t let it be permanent knee damage. Even then, at that moment, there were too many words coming out of my mouth. Meaningless, impotent words. 

Arthroscopic surgery determined that in the last game of the last year of my high school career, I had a completely torn my ACL, screwing up my knee forever. And for the next twenty years I would put off getting it repaired, learn to favor my other leg without even thinking about it, let all the sports I used to love fall by the wayside, and generally get on with my life. 

In five days I’m having surgery to repair my ligament and the cartilage that has been worn down due to instability. If I don’t perish during surgery or from a flagrant, angry infection, I will be on crutches for six weeks. War and Peace, the Nile River, Rapunzel’s hair. Six. Long. Weeks. This is bleak, people. Bleak. Doctor Dash has a couple weeks off during that time and my mother and mother-in-law are each coming for a week, but still – how is this going to work? Who’s going to do everything that I do? How am I going to tolerate sitting around all day, lying around all day. What am I going to do if Devil Baby throws a tantrum in a parking lot? How am I going to get used to asking for help? 

I was fitted for my crutches today and given a lesson on how to get up and down the stairs. This is going to be incredibly humbling. Every fiber of my being feels like I cannot possibly be taking myself out of commission for six weeks. That this is utter insanity. That I will end up crying on the floor as my house crumbles around me, my family falling away with the debris, their faces covered in white dust. I have to dig deep – dig back. I have to rely on the fierce, fearless, selfish girl in me to see me through this, to push me through this. Why? For the sake of the old lady I hope to become. So I can walk and dance and coyly cross my legs when I’m sixty, seventy, eighty.

What is six weeks against decades? Right? RIGHT? Please tell me I’m right.

postscript: if there is a girl athlete in your life, check out this article.

Today I did a very stupid thing. I came out of yoga with Devil Baby, strapped her in her car seat and pulled a u-ey on 44th. It must have been a combination of dehydration and blissed-outness, but I took my turn too wide and somehow ended up completely wedging my minivan on a giant roadside ice floe. Fuck. Fuck. Fuckfuckfuckfuck! As I tried to reverse, my wheels spun in the air. 

I had a flashback to college when I did the very same thing to my parents’ enormous silver gray pleasure cruiser van. That time it was the two passenger side wheels that were left dangling in the air. This is family folklore, never failing to get everyone chuckling and snorting at my stupidity. She calls me on the phone, tells me she’s stuck in the snow, so I come to pull her out and there’s my van, tipped! my dad shrieks, keening to one side to illustrate, tears streaming down his cheeks. Two wheels in the air! And there is no snow – no snow – anywhere! No where!  Ha ha ha ha. 

It is true that I managed to lodge the van on top of the only chunk of ice in sight, but, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, if you stop to think about, this actually cuts in my favor. I now call myself to the witness stand.

Me: On the night of whatever night that was when you were home from college, did you or did you not take your parents’ silver gray pleasure cruiser van to the local supermarket?

Me: Yes I did.

Me: And were you alone?

Me: No, my younger brother, Mario, was with me.

Me: And why did you take your parents’ silver gray pleasure cruiser van to the supermarket that night with your younger brother, Mario?

Me: I wanted to buy chocolate chips, so I could make chocolate chip cookies for a boy I liked at school.

Me: And what did you find when you arrived at the supermarket?

Me: A&P was closed.

Me: Did you park the silver gray pleasure cruiser van to ascertain that the supermarket was closed or did you do a drive by?

Me: I parked.

Me: After you parked, what did you do?

Me: I got out of the van and walked up to the doors even though I could kind of tell it was closed, and then I jiggled the doors to make sure and then I realized it was really closed.

Me: And what was your brother, Mario, doing at this time?

Me: I can’t recall.

Me: How would you describe your state of mind when you reentered the silver gray pleasure cruiser van?

Me: I was upset. I really wanted to make cookies for Roy.

Me: Did you look around you at that time?

Me: I can’t recall.

Me: Do you remember seeing any snow?

Me: No.

Me: Do you remember seeing any icebergs?

Me: No.

Me: Do you remember seeing any large masses whatsoever?

Me: No.

Me: What happened then?

Me: Well, I probably complained to my little brother about the supermarket being closed. Maybe I even cried a little tiny bit. For sure I was mad. I might have said shit shit shit. Then I threw the car into drive and . . .

Me: Thank you, that will be all. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I think you’ve heard all you need to exculpate this young woman from the shame of having implanted her parents’ silver gray pleasure cruiser van atop a rogue iceberg secretly lurking in front of the vehicle. Surely, she could not have been expected to remember having parked behind an iceberg, when the anticipation of making chocolate chip cookies for a boy she liked at college was so cruelly dashed by her disappointment at finding the A&P closed for the night. 

And ask yourselves, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, who was really more stupid in this scenario? The girl who was in-like, who was the hapless victim of a bit of a lead foot and a shameful, furtive, iceberg? Or her parents, who showed up “to the rescue” with nothing more than a shovel and the family Golden Retriever’s red leash. Yes, my good people. You heard right. They looped Ginger’s leash onto the bumper of their SUV and the bumper of the silver gray pleasure cruiser van and attempted to pull it off the iceberg. You can imagine how that worked out.

I rest my case. 

But today was different. Today I was stupid with a capital S. Like Goldie Hawn acting her stupidest in the stupidest of her stupid movies. Having some experience in the matter of impaling my car on ice, I suspected I might be in a bit of a pickle. I threw some snacks at Devil Baby, grabbed the ice scraper, jumped out of the car and kneeled to survey the situation. Oh man, I was stuck – really really stuck, on an angry, immutable chunk of ice. I knew I needed to chip away at the ice to free myself, so I went at it. Like a fury. A few women from yoga came out and found me in my yoga pants and pink legwarmers revisiting child’s pose with the addition of violent sideways ice chipping. And bless their hearts, they wouldn’t leave. They made me get in the car while they pushed with all their little post-yoga might. One woman brought me some cat litter and sprinkled it under the wheels. I tried to protest that what I really needed to do was just – keep – chipping – off- arrgh – that – chunk. 

A sexy older cowboy pulled up in his pick up truck and sauntered over with a shovel full of sand, like he does this everyday – multiple times a day. Noblesse oblige. My yoga teacher, Annie, flirted with him a little bit. I thanked him and said something about his hat and that really, I just needed to get the chassis off the ice, making a mental note to look up the word chassis because here I was throwing it around like I knew what I was talking about, when really, I quite did not. The cowboy tipped his hat up and said, Honey, you’ll never dig yourself outta this one.

I pressed everyone to leave – this was my problem and I would get out of it. It was a mercifully warm day and the exertion of my frantic chipping soon had me shedding my coat. Eventually, my knees started screaming, reminding me I was kneeling in snow, so I pulled a floor mat out of the car to kneel on and kept chipping away. One woman, Kate, insisted on calling AAA for me. I tried to resist, I didn’t want her to have to wait around. Let me call, she said. If I leave, you’re screwed, she didn’t say. She called and went to her car to wait.  

As I kept on chipping, two older men pulled over to help me out, and unlike the cowboy, they got on their knees to assess the situation.  We’ll pick up the car, they said. Oh God, it’s so big, I thought. Let’s try. So they tried and I made them stop because I was seeing too many bulging neck veins through my dirty windshield. I knew I could get it if I just kept chipping, but they didn’t think so. I told them AAA was on its way, thanked them and got back onto my knees. For a nanosecond, I thought about calling a friend to pick me up and leaving the whole bloody mess for Doctor Dash to deal with, but that just seemed unfair. My poor father is one thing. My poor husband, another. Have I grown up at all in these last twenty years?

Shame and necessity give you strength and I chipped and chopped and scraped and dug with a vengeance. I was spitting and swearing – my big cheap rhinestone studded sunglasses slipped down my nose and my pony tail came loose. I was covered in ice and side-of-the-road grime, my knees soaked to the bone, but I eventually got through that shit bastard hunk of ice. 

Everyone had poo-pooed me, but I knew I was free. I got in my car and rocked and rolled and rocked and rolled and after a few good rocks, Kate the Angel ran over cheering to help push and another random guy in a white sweatshirt  jumped in too.  One more rock and roll and I was out, baby!  We called off AAA, chuckled at the big black plastic piece of something hanging down from the bottom of my minivan, and said our goodbyes. 

Thank you cowboy, old dudes, cat litter woman, random white sweatshirt guy, Annie, and mostly Kate – for sticking around. You all tried to help in your own ways.  And where would we be without the kindness of strangers? Not anywhere I’d want to live.

But in the end, sometimes, you just gotta chip yourself out.

Ah, Ricardo. I was indeed saddened to hear of your passing.  You will be missed by multitudes – by me. You bring me back, Ric . . . may I call you Ric?  Ric, seeing your handsome Mexican aristocratic features brings me back to a more innocent time. To my girlhood, Ric.  How peculiar that you, a gentleman old enough to be my the older brother of my father, should feel so inextricably woven with my youth – those tender years when I wiled away the hours watching TV on my belly on a musty brown shag rug in the basement of a split level suburban Detroit home. Your prominent and distinguished eyebrows, so reminiscent of my own at the time, bring back a flood of memories as softly contoured and rosy-hued as one of your fantasy sequences where you doled out wishes and life lessons with such knowing benevolence from your tropical pleasure cove. Ric, seeing you in your impeccable white suit, sitting with such ease and grace in that wicker wing chair, flanked by your trusty numero dos, Tattoo, is like opening a beautifully wrapped but long forgotten box tucked way back in my girlhood closet. Inside that box, Ric, are memories – oh so many memories. Memories of the most perfect Saturday night imaginable for a girl of eight in 1978: McDonald’s for dinner, the arrival of a babysitter, a fragrant and breezy kiss goodbye from the parents and the best night of TV in history.  

The holy trinity of TV:  Dance Fever, The Love Boat, Fantasy Island.

Oh Ric, I wish I could hold your soft tanned lovingly manicured hand as I take this walk down memory lane.  I’m sure you remember Dance Fever: four couples, four sets of razzle dazzle costumes, four shots at the big one!  All disco dancing their little hearts out under the sexy gaze and slithery pulsating hips of Danny Terrio. Oh, Ric, don’t make that face. Danny had nothing on you.  He strutted around in jazz shoes and white vests and yes, he had great hair, but he was just an acorn to your strong magnificent oak. You were a father figure to Danny, Ric. Surely, after all these years, you have come to see that?

After that extravaganza of sequins, sparkle, panache and heart came The Love Boat, setting a course for adventure, our minds on a new romance. Again with the face Ric! I’m shocked. What’s that you say? Captain Merrill Stubing was a bald paunchy nelly? Well, of course! He was just trying to be you with the white captain’s suit and all, but he couldn’t hold a candle. This is beneath you, Ric. You should feel sorry for Captain Stubing – he spent his whole career sucking in his gut and talking about you. But you must admit, Ric, The Love Boat promises something for every one – including this eight year old girl.  I might have missed the significance of most of the sultry looks, meaningful glances, and coy double entendres cast about in the soft breezes of the Promenade deck, but oh, how I loved that show. Ric, I know this is going to make you crazy, but I had a crush on Gopher for a little while. Get up, stop that! I know he wasn’t attractive, but I had to pick someone to have a crush on, and he was the only choice when you think about it.  I suppose now I would have picked Doc, but back then, well, Gopher just seemed so friendly.  Oh I know, I’m not proud of it, but I was eight, Ric! Cut me some slack. And really, it was that pool I was hot after. Imagine that!  A pool on a ship! Funny, at this point in my life, I hope to never see a pool on a ship, but back then . . . oh, how titillating that was. Do you happen to know, Ric, being such a man of the world, whether you feel the pitch and roll of the ship when you are in the pool? I always wondered.

And finally, Ricardo, your show. Be still my beating heart – the fabulously escapist and inimitable Fantasy Island came last of all. It was quite late by then, maybe ten o’clock, and my drowsy state probably enhanced the dreamlike qualities of your show. Ric, I wouldn’t have missed it for all the stickers in the world. I forced myself to stay awake. I imagined my eyelids held apart with toothpicks, like those of a sleepy cartoon character. Oh Ric, I loved that opening sequence, with the float plane and Tattoo – you really found a winning formula there. I loved the lays and the drinks and the expressions on your guests’ faces as they alighted from the plane: wonder, skepticism, confusion. Oh, Ric, it was just too much! Each episode was so exciting, an unwritten chapter in a book of wonders and you were the magician, Ric.  A dashing, distinguished, and wise magician. You allowed your guests to seek and strive, to chase their dreams, but you always knew when to step in to save them from themselves.  Danger, romance, longing. You were a virtuoso, Ric, a puppet master of unequaled skill and wisdom. Eventually I would lose my battle with the sandman, the toothpicks snapping into useless splinters. I would drift off to the sounds of your deep and knowing chuckle, the pitter patter of Tattoo’s little shoes on the dock, the propeller, revving and then fading into the distant horizon. Have a safe flight, Ric . . . and a happy landing.  And one more thing.  Thanks.