peevish mama

I’m still here. All is well. I have much to report, much to celebrate and digest, but I have no laptop at the moment. Saint James + intriguing toy wrapped in plastic + coffee cup = no laptop for mama. And since my chitlins are all up in my business all the time, requiring food and rides and sunscreen at all hours, I can’t very well duck into Doctor Dash’s man cave to use the desk top. Night times are simply not an option. I am falling asleep as I type.

I leave you with a question. At what age does a girl begin to notice when her swimsuit is stuck in her butt? I don’t know the answer, but I do know the answer is not four. As if I don’t spend enough of my life sunscreening the porcelain-skinned Devil Baby, now I need to watch out for her adorable, chunkalicious bootay because sister has got a wedgie, like, ninety percent of the time.

G’night.

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.

OK, deep breath. I can’t believe I’m even going to utter the C word on this blog. No, the other C word, you dirty dogs. Cougar. There. I said it, and just because I said it and just because I’m writing about it, doesn’t mean I am one, or close to being one, or preoccupied about being one. Or maybe I’m just kidding myself, depending on your definition, which is, my friends, the crux of the problem. The term “cougar” is bandied about with such frequency these days that it’s hard to avoid it – especially if you just so happen to be a woman approaching the age when such a term might apply.

Listen, I’ve had my ear to the ground and my whiskers in the air on this one. I have been paying close attention and the only thing I’ve concluded is that everyone seems to have a different definition of a cougar. Which makes it very difficult to know if one needs to be offended or flattered should one ever happen to be called or deemed a cougar.

A quick wikipedia check yields this definition: a woman over forty who sexually pursues younger men, typically more than eight years her junior. Pretty clear, no?

About a year and a half ago I emailed my brother, El Maestro de Bife, who has an exhaustive and deep knowledge of all things slightly inappropriate. I knew he was my go-to guy and asked him to distinguish between a MILF and a Cougar. MILF, of course you know, is the crass acronym for “Mother I’d Like to Fuck” – which is just a puerile male way of saying Hot Mama. While I don’t love MILF, I’ll grant you MILF. There are many many hot mamas out there and it is most definitely a distinguishable, identifiable subset of the population and therefor worthy of a name and this is the one that has seemed to have stuck. So fine, I get it.

But what about these cougars I was hearing about? El Maestro responded that while a MILF still has her cubs around her, a Cougar hunts for her fresh meat alone. Interesting! Hunts. Alone. Fresh meat. OK, so as long as I have my chitlins in my wake and as long as I’m not on the prowl, then I can’t be a cougar. In fact, barring a piano falling on top of Doctor Dash, I will most likely never be a cougar. This is part of the popular lexicon that I can daintily sidestep, demurely holding my skirt to my side so as not to be sullied.

Then Barbie turned 50 and she looks fantastic for her age. Her breasts are still half way between her shoulder and her elbow as they should be, if not a titch higher, her feet still tiny, her hair radiant, her skin as creamy as a Coppertone Vanilla milkshake. But someone comes up with Cougar Barbie, imagining Barbie’s natural trajectory (never one for subtlety, it actually would be hard to imagine Barbie growing old gracefully à la Isabella Rosselini or Lauren Bacall). If you haven’t seen it, watch it. Hilarious, no? Heh, heh, ho, ho, ho! Hilarious! The paunch, the leopard print, the Journey – oh Cougar Barbie, you are too much! Still, this does nothing to disavow me of my notion that cougars are not something I need worry my pretty little head about.

And then. And then. Because you knew there had to be a then, in June we went out to the Jersey shore to hang out with our friends Chief Big Voice and Saucy-licious Duddy. Saucy and I were grooving to a really great live band at the Princeton, minding our own business, when I was approached by a young fellow whose opener was an enthusiastic, surfer intoned “Heeeyyyyyyy, a couple a cooouuuugaaaarrrrs!” My head swiveled around, my eyes turned bright yellow, I punched him in the trachea and snarled: “Are you fucking kidding me?” Actually, I only did that last part, but it was accompanied by my most withering Catholic high school girl staredown. I was pissed. COUGAR? Me? Us? We were just having a good time, digging the music, drinking many drinks, laughing our asses off. OK, so maybe we looked super hot, but it’s not like we could help it and we certainly weren’t on the prowl or giving the impression of being on the prowl – we were simply a couple of moms, out on the town, wrapped up in our own hilarious shenanigans. Nothing more. Nothing less. Simple as pie. Rowdy but uninterested. Needing to look no further than the band, our glasses and the people we came with for all the fun we needed. And then. And then, on our way out of the bar someone called Saucy’s sister, Little J, a cougar and she’s even younger than us! 

Screeech. Hold on one sharp shootin’ high fallutin’ minute here folks. Something was afoot. My feathers were ruffled, but not ruffled enough to have missed the look of complete and utter shock on the young lad’s face when I shut him down like a noxious Jack in the Box. It was but a second, because I immediately gave him the scapula of ice, but there’s no denying it – he was surprised, perhaps even dismayed, at my reaction. Could it be? Could he possibly have meant it as . . . a compliment? 

Nooo! we railed, Saucy-licious, Little J and I – No way! We’re not out trying to snag young dudes! We’re not even old enough to be cougars, anyway! Unacceptable! Unfathomable! Unprofessional! Unpalatable! Unfreakingbelievable! Now we were all pissed! And yet. And yet. Because like a then, there’s usually a yet, I think these guys meant no ill. Quite the opposite, I think they were trying, in that broad blunt simian way of youth in bars, to be nice. Well, maybe not nice, exactly. (I may not be a cougar, but I wasn’t born yesterday.) Simply put, these guys seemed to be operating with a different definition of cougar than we were. Maybe.

You need to write about this on your blog! insisted Saucy-licious, Clear this shit up! But all I could do was shudder. No, I couldn’t possibly. To even contemplate the word, to type the word, would feel like an admission, a toe dipped into fountain of age. Peevish and Cougar simply could not be seen together. It was not right. Not yet. Not for a long time. Not for a very very long time. Shudder. Shudder.

And then. And then, because there are always more thens, my friend the Magnificent Bastard sends out a tweet a couple weeks ago asking for top 5 hollywood cougars because he needs them for “work.” His were Julianne Moore, Sharon Stone, Catherine Zeta Jones, Cate Blanchett and Sophia Loren whom he deems “extreme coug.” Then another twitter friend, KC, replies almost immediately, so it obviously didn’t take a lot of thought: Maria Bello, Sharon Stone, Marissa Tomei, Liz Hurley, Vivica Fox and more! OK, fellas, let’s just hold on one more sweet salty snitch snatch second, because these chicks are some seriously hot stuff and not at all the compadres of Cougar Barbie; in fact, I think I may need the definition re-explained to me because if that NJ guy meant anything even approaching this, then perhaps a punch in the trachea was a tad harsh. (Before you start to feel too sorry for him, just know that he was undeterred by my smack down and followed up with an equally compelling: are you Brazilian? for which he received another punch in the trachea.) So I tweet/asked and they both answered that it pretty much just boils down to hot over 40. Cubs and hunting have nothing to do with it. 

Hmmm. Well then. Much ado about nothing. Maybe. Wait, you know what? No. Even assuming you remove the desperado aspect from the term, I’m not sold. Far from it, I’m still troubled and I’ll tell you why. I think forty is a bit young for Cougarville. Forty is the new thirty. Forty year olds have babies and toddlers. Forty year olds are still figuring out what they want to do with their lives. Forty year olds like to play. Forty sounds old because we all remember our parents turning forty, but it feels young. Hell, we all feel downright adolescent half the time. (For the record, I’m not there yet, but fast approaching.) In this day and age, forty just doesn’t feel old enough to be a delineating factor, a parenthetical tacked onto the sentence: she looks good. 

Women my age deserve to be unencumbered by parentheticals for a few more years. It’s only fair. Most of us just got done wiping butts, for crying out loud! So let’s all be peaches and pals and agree to leave the fine foxy forty somethings out of this discussion and move the Cougar line to um, say, fifty. And we’ll talk again in another ten years.

Meow.

Supergirl has taken to calling me Bubble Butt. These days she can often be found hovering around my derrière, karate chopping or poking or jiggling said (allegedly) bulbous protrusions. I’m not sure what the appeal is, aside from the fact that my butt is most definitely more prominently on display these summer months, what with bathing suits and all. And we do shake our booties in our house. In fact, I often shout it out as an explicit instruction: shake those booties, shake ‘em, shake ‘em, uh huh, that’s right! My kids are half French Canadian, after all, and I need to cultivate the Latin in them as far as dancing goes, so we don’t end up with a family who thinks a big grin and a slow jog is an adequate substitute. It comes from the hips, child, but since you don’t have hips, well, shake the next best thing, that’s right. Shake it! Shake it, baby! Moreover, Supergirl’s face is pretty much at ass level, so it’s simply the first thing she sees if I happen to be around. I suppose it makes some sense – she sees asses, like we see faces. Maybe two year olds are fascinated by knees, only lack the words to say so. And we know twelve year olds are fascinated by breasts, only they know better than to say so.

To tell you the truth, it took me a while to even register the recent scuttlebutt. I am by and large impervious to being ogled, prodded and otherwise fondled by my offspring. Privacy and personal space are more than abstraction, they are downright fiction. One becomes accustomed to all manner of  sticky bodies scaling one’s limbs, digging their fingers in one’s ears, probing one’s clavicles and such. Moreover, after a hard yoga class, I can think of worse things than a bit of a glute massage while I’m doing the dishes.

The truth is, far from being offended or annoyed, I am heartened by Supergirl’s silly fascination because although she doesn’t necessarily mean it as a compliment, I am choosing to take it as one. Johnnny Depp captured my imagination when he used the term “high water booty” to describe his then girlfriend Kate Moss in an article I read over a decade ago. My buns may not go so far as to hike up their skirts to avoid the rising waters of the bayou, but say what you will about six year olds, they know their shapes. If Supergirl thinks there is anything “bubblish” about my buttocks then I must have, as of yet, escaped the dreaded “triangular factor” coined by my father and unwittingly illustrated by countless bathing-suited older women walking by us on the beach over the years; women whose slightly atrophied glutes had come to resemble a heart, a triangle, an upside down party hat, an icecream cone, an inverted volcano, a tornado, etcetera. So bubble butt? Ya, I’ll take it. And I’ll take another one of those mini massages too.

We ended up with some adenoid wrestling this summer as I imagined we might. Saint James had his surgery this morning and it went great, although he’s sleeping the deep blue-green sleep of fairy tales right now. I have brought my laptop to Saint James’ quiet, dimly lit room because this is where I want to be. As he snores softly beside me, I can scarcely keep my eyes off him. His lips are still stained purple from the popsicle he had in post-op. But here he is. On the other side of the surgery, the anesthesia. Tanned, relaxed, sleeping soundly under his plaid sheets. The moment I’ve been longing for all summer. 

There is nothing more humbling, more perspective focusing, than taking your child in for a minor surgery. When Saint James was two he had to have a small dermoid cyst removed from the delicate pillow of flesh between his eyebrow and the outside corner of his eye. We knew it was benign, but it was the type of cyst that could get messy if it ever got hit and burst. (Incidentally, he’s gotten bonked in that exact spot at least three times since the surgery, and every time, I thank my lucky stars we had it removed). I was mere weeks from giving birth to Supergirl and a basket case about sending my baby off to surgery. I was boohooing in the waiting room with Dash, indulging my fears and worries, wallowing in the drama, when I noticed a big family camped out in the corner. They had a cooler with a bunch of food and the grandma was doling out sandwiches while a few of them played cards. It was clear they’d come from far away and that this wasn’t their first visit Minneapolis Children’s Hospital. They had the look of veterans – comfortable, patient, resigned. They were upbeat and gracious when the doctor came out to give them a progress report. It sounded like the child in surgery had some sort of invasive growth in his face and neck and the surgery was so extensive, they had to keep him in a coma over night. At that point the doctor was pleased with how the surgery was going. They thanked the doctor, gave each other relieved hugs and pats on the back and resumed their cards, their lunches, their very long wait. You can imagine how quickly I got my shit together after seeing that. Within ten minutes, Saint James’ surgeon came to get us and as we left, I glanced over my shoulder at the family, silently wishing them well.

Today, six years later, I found myself in the same waiting room only this time Doctor Dash had stayed home with the girls. I kept myself in check and read my book, but couldn’t help overhearing the people behind me telling some other people about their eleven year old daughter who was diagnosed with leukemia last Wednesday. “We’ve been here a week!” the dad chortled as a conversation starter. When asked how they were doing with the news, he said “Oh, you know, better . . . better. Hey, when she does better, we do better. She plays soccer. She’s a fighter!” The words on the pages before me blurred and I held my breath. 

How many stories have been shared in the hush of that waiting room? How much suffering? How much hope? I closed my book and thought about that sporty eleven year old girl whose life changed a week and a day ago and how her parents’ lives had been reduced to one simple equation, both beautiful and frightening: when she does better, we do better.

And I thought about the lessons of the waiting room: hear the stories, count your blessings, and don’t forget to look over your shoulder and send out a silent prayer for the others if you’re lucky enough to be walking out of there first.

It’s amazing what you discover when you change things up. Doctor Dash is out of town for my little brother’s bachelor party, so I told Saint James and Supergirl they could sleep in our bed with me. I didn’t sleep a wink until I finally picked up my pillow and beat a hasty retreat to Saint James’ bed. Holy Moses, he sounds like a cross between an obese man and a wild boar. He sounds like the Industrial Revolution is unfolding up his nose, with cadres of child laborers slaving away at top speed in a tin cup factory. I had to keep opening my eyes to make sure all the snoring and sniffling and snarfling and clanging was coming from one small eight year old boy. Mystery revealed, it is no small wonder he wakes up every morning, his hair on end, looking like he’s been up all night popping No-Doze and writing a paper on Kant. He puts the grog in groggy, the phlegm in phlegmy. First thing Monday morning, I’m calling the ENT. Something tells me we’re going to be wrangling some adenoids this summer.

We got donuts before school today. Not that there needs to be a reason to get donuts, but boy, was there ever a reason. Legaus‘ handler came and took him away today. My knee contraption is gone – off to get tuned up for the next unlucky soul. I almost wish I could have tucked a note into it somewhere, a message to be discovered to lighten the monotony, to put the tiniest chink in the frustration. But I’ve got nothing inspiring or clever or enlightening to say. Nothing other than Dude, this sucks so bad. Sucks. Sucks. Sucks to be you. Ohmygod, this suuuuucks. And that hardly seems like a helpful sort of message.

I think I’ve finally done it. I think I’m finally all out of words. I’m off my crutches and the process of climbing out of my head and back into my enfeebled body has left me tongue tied. Like a kid who used up his alloted amount of tokens within the first twenty minutes at Chucky E. Cheese, I feel slightly bereft, slightly sheepish after my greedy, glutinous spew. During my six weeks on crutches, this blog was my lifeline – it was the only thing I could DO, produce, create.

I am surprised to find myself with absolutely nothing. Nothing. Left. To. Say.

When my world shrunk down to my house, my car and anywhere I could painstakingly get to on my crutches, my mind started racing. I felt chafed by my confinement and the words in my head were my only way to run. Now I can go anywhere and I have circled the wagons tight. I have redrawn my circumference within a few feet of my knee. I focus on watching my step, smoothing out my gait, lifting my way to a normal looking quadricep, taking this knee of mine across the finish line. Also in this little circle are my family and the small stuff of life that needs my attention. The angst, the anxiousness, the twitching antenae, the mental chatter, the monkey mind that drive this blog and usually drive me, seem to have quieted. Peculiar.

Nothing about this experience has been as expected. I thought I would go wild when I got off my crutches. I thought I would be euphoric and bristling with energy. But I find myself strangely quiet. Relieved. Cautious. Sated by the simple blessing of being on my own two feet.

1. About three days after my knee surgery, all hell broke loose deep down in my guts. Frantic calls were made, hasty plans drawn up, and copious amounts of overtime were doled out in the frantic construction of a patience factory. This factory, while built under duress and fly-by-night circumstances, has been churning out brand new patience at top speed, and although the quality has been less than consistent, the very existence of this heretofore unknown commodity has been both a blessing and an improvement. 

2. I am actually looking forward to stepping back into my life and doing all the things that, a few weeks ago, I felt were chores especially designed to wear me down into a nonsentient nub: groceries, laundry, cooking.

3. My children, Devil Baby included, no longer rely on me for every little thing.

4. The love I feel for Doctor Dash has swelled to weepy, hormonal, postpartum proportions when I would look at him and look at my new baby and think thank you for helping me do this. Dash, thank you for helping me do this.

5. Because of some really sweet people in my community, I have a new understanding of what it means to be aware, to be kind, to follow through. I will never again assume someone is OK. If I have an inkling I could help, I will help.

6. My knee is going to kick ass.

Yesterday, in a rare moment of solidarity, Saint James and Supergirl stood in front of me, grinning secretively with their arms hooked around each other’s necks and asked what I wanted for Mother’s Day. I practically had to clap my hands over my mouth to stop the words from tumbling out – Nothing, I don’t deserve anything. What? WHAT? Have I gone insane? Have a mere four weeks of disability basically annihilated nearly nine years of mothering? Just because I haven’t cooked them a meal, met them at the bus stop, washed their clothes, made their lunches, picked up their rooms, bathed them or gone to the supermarket in weeks, doesn’t mean I’m not still their mother and deserving of all the love and attention and little kid handcrafted goodness they choose to shower me with! I still clip their nails, read to them, fold their laundry, chat with them, drive them to school, watch their soccer games, but what? Is that not enough? Apparently not for this fool.

Consistently through out this recovery process, I have been confounded by what a mind fuck it has been. The physical upheaval does not begin to approach the mental. I thought I was just feeling humility slash humiliation at having to depend on others for everything. I thought I was just feeling guilty for leaving so much work for everyone else to do. I thought I was just feeling foolish about boohooing my own situation when other people have it so much worse. I thought I was just feeling angered by my physical limitations, with my inability to work out my excess energy, angst, and emotion by moving my body, by sweating. I thought I was just feeling lonely, with only Legasus as my friend. I thought I was just going crazy from the stillness, the introspection, the time in my head. As it happens, that’s not all. I was also losing my identity.

I am floored by this. It turns out that motherhood is more a state of doing, than a state of being. It sounds like crazy talk, but stripped of my “jobs”, I feel useless, superfluous, more like a coddled visitor than the beating heart of this family. I know that’s not true with my head, but I can tell you that in those seconds my kids stood in front of me, half dressed for school, my heart felt undeserving and that’s just sad. And unnecessary. 

So I collected myself and said what I always say. I would love it if you wrote me a story.

I think my friends are afraid of me. I think they think I’m really really feeble right now. Scary feeble. Feeble. Forlorn. Frightening. There’s nothing specific that leads me to believe this. You could say I’m simply being given wide berth. Time to recover. Get my shit together. I think they’re afraid.

I can’t say I blame them. It’s spring. It’s life. Everyone is skipping, stretching, going about business as usual and then some. I’m just the beat up orange pylon tipped over on the side of the busy road.

And let’s face it. Injury. Illness. It makes us uncomfortable. It renders the other less easy to predict, less easy to understand. Is she up for a visit? Is she tired? Does she want to be left alone? Is she hurting? Is she angry? Is she tainted? Is she different than before? All fair.

I would avoid me too, if I could.

Yesterday Dash and I snuck out for a movie. As I navigated the sloped, carpeted aisle with my crutches, my sunglasses slipped down my nose and I had to leave them. The fact that I had them on at all in a darkened theater is ludicrous enough, but such is the dilemma of a person on crutches. You can walk (sort of) but you can’t use your hands. And if you are using your hands, you can’t walk. Hands or feet, but not both.

I spotted a handicapped seat. Actually it was a big spot for a wheelchair and a handicapped companion seat. It is entirely possible that there was more leg room in that seat, but I didn’t want it. It was an irrational, visceral and entirely immature reaction. I am not handicapped. Those seats are not for me. Those seats. Who am I kidding? 

It’s temporary, but I am indeed handicapped. I can’t move with anything approximating grace or speed. I can’t hold anything in my hands and change locations at the same time. I even spend most of my day in a contraption. A CONTRAPTION! How about that? It’s a machine, a Continuous Passive Motion machine, that bends and extends my leg over and over. I’m supposed to use it for six hours a day. Sexy times. The harness that supports my leg is covered in a pearly gray synthetic wool substance, like the fleece of some superfly celestial sheep. I’m obsessed with this faux pelt because when I mentioned to Doctor Dash that I was glad they changed it between patients, he gave me look that I can only describe as a heartbreaking coalescence of dubiousness and pity. The machine itself is total Miami Vice – turquoise, fuscia, white and yellow – made from the same plastic as Crockett and Tubb’s speed boat.

And the best thing, the best thing about my knee bender, joint juicer, flexor-in-crime is its name: LEGASUS. As if I will soar to the heavens once I’m done with this penurious convalescence. Whoever thought that up deserves a certificate. Maybe even a ribbon.

We all feel the sap rise in our veins when it’s spring. I know I do. I feel lusty, antsy, frothy, a little bit wicked, almost adolescent. This is a bad time of the year to be hobbled. My trusty minivan is my only ally. I cruise around, windows open, my hair dancing in wild wips, listening to Hip HopNation waaaaay too loud. Thank God for satellite radio. Slim Thug, Lil’ Wayne, T.I., Young Jeezy, Jay Z, Fiddy, Diddy, Kanye, Dre, Snoop and my girl M.I.A. I drive around, my van fulla my homeys, warm breezes and bass. Spleefs and 40’s passed around, the windshield a movie, the soundtrack our own.

Except. Except. Not.

It’s just me and the music and the wind. I pull into the driveway, my ears ringing and the yearning in my chest only slightly abated.

Damn you spring.

There are 142 crutch steps from the physical therapy office to my car. Not that many. Like a girl with a heavy bag of pennies, I am underwhelmed once I count them out. It is a disappointingly paltry number which belies my pounding heart. But 142 crutch steps take enough time for plenty. Enough time to break a sweat. Enough time to be passed by an old woman with a cane. Enough time to receive a kind smile from John Denver. I know JD is dead. But this was him. Denim, little glasses, bowl-cut of straw. I am not sure why, but he smiled at me today. And I almost lost count.

I promised myself I wouldn’t post again until I could post about something other than my knee, but sadly, I’ve got nothing. My knee still rules. I am its simpering bitch. I pamper it, strengthen it, bend it, medicate it, hydrate it, coddle it. Curse it behind its back.

Here in Minnesota we are breathing in the first of spring – with great inhalations of relief, we are greedy for the smell of green – sweet, sweet chlorophyll. This week has been but a string of days that feel like sun-kissed gifts from Mother Nature. I have taken to sitting in my adirondack chair in front of my house in the afternoons. I feel like a proper invalid from the olden days taking my fresh air, my sun, my constitutionals – minus the white blanket, the buxom nurse and the Swiss Alps in the foreground. I am a feeble convalescent – outside of everything – nothing more than a passive bystander as an orgy of bipedal existence flaunts itself in front of my eyes.

I sit in my chair, my crutches glinting in the grass beside me, and I watch Devil Baby ride her tricycle on the sidewalk. We amuse ourselves by creating elaborate dinners, with her riding her tricycle to the little tree to get each ingredient. Yesterday she went to the “lake” and caught some fish, which I cleaned and breaded and fried in a cast iron skillet. Then she raced off to the little tree to buy blueberries. Then back to get spinach, carrots, cream for the berries, sea salt, a baguette. She is a tireless food shopper. It’s a game – part charades, part pretend, part fetch.

As she pedals away, her little blue rain boots pushing like mechanical pistons, I slip into one of my infamous calamitizations – my reveries of doom. I imagine a rusty van stopping and someone jumping out to pluck my Devil Baby off her red tricycle. What would I do? Normally, I envision leaping out of my chair and running like the bionic woman until I catch the van – my reflexes so cat-like that they wouldn’t have gotten far. I lunge and grab hold of the side of the van, working my arms into an open window while the culprit tries to shake me off, thwacking my legs against the side of the van like a rag doll. I rip off the rear view mirror and bludgeon the driver in the face until he swerves, swearing and crying, and hits a tree. I am thrown from the van, but I jump up and grab Devil Baby from the floor of the back seat, collapsing into the grass. I cradle her, a trickle of blood snaking down my temple, as the camera zooms out and the music swells. Cue the distant sirens.

But now, NOW, I’m on crutches and I won’t be able to leap out of my chair and put the smack down. Now, I must rely on my wits, my keen eyesight. I, who couldn’t tell you the make of most of my friends’ cars if you offered me a million dollars, will have to get my shit together and start to identify all those amorphous sedans and suvs with the precision of a trained detective. 1997 Buick Lesabre. Sage-mist metalic. The brake rotors are shot, passenger side wiper stuck at 30 degrees, I will rattle off through gritted teeth. Crucial, above all, I must memorize the license plate number. Gotta get those plates. Suddenly, it feels irresponsible to be sitting outside alone with Devil Baby and no cell phone. So exposed, helpless. I know every second is critical.

Tick. Tick.

I decide to practice.

Devil Baby is buying a peach pie at the little tree. A maroon minivan snakes by, a bit too slowly for my taste. Downright predatory. Soccer ball decal in the window. Check. I squint into the sun and – Mother Mary – I can’t make out the license plate! I can’t even read it, let alone memorize it, let alone make a lightening quick phone call to alert the authorities so they put out an APB and smack a tail on that van faster than you can say crazy.

So I put my head back and close my eyes, the sun thumbing dancing sparks against my eyelids. I take a deep breath and wait for my peach pie.

     Photo by Kathy Quirk-Syvertsen

On Monday I had my knee surgery. On Tuesday Saint James got his cast off his arm. There will be one day when we have two injured people in our family, he said. He thinks that the simple removal of his cast, ipso facto, changes his status from injured to non-injured. To him, an injury is something easily identified by external markers: bandaids, casts, splints, crutches. He is, at the age of eight, blissfully unaware of hidden injuries, bodies broken in places unseen – in some cases unknown.  To Saint James, I wasn’t injured when I was seventeen – I was injured on Monday, when I came home with a bandaged knee and crutches.

Ironically, Red Vogue took this picture while she was watching the kids during my surgery. Later she wrote in an email that she was fascinated by Saint James’ empty cast – that the soft and cozy interior reminded her of a nest. I just love that. A nest.

From what I could tell, the cast allowed Saint James to forget about his broken arm. Where he had gingerly cradled his arm for the 24 hours before we got him x-rayed, he seemed to have no pain and no memory of the broken bone magically healing therein once he got his cast. In true kid style, it was business as usual – he was able to write, swim, play soccer, and navigate the monkey bars as always.  Piano is the only thing that went by the wayside for six weeks, and he was none too sorry about that. Instead of slowing him down, the cast freed him up – let him get back to the business of being a boy.

I on the other hand have been spending far too much time contemplating my knee. It has almost taken on a life of its own. Sometimes, it’s just a knee. Sometimes, if I’ve fallen behind on the pain killers, it expands in my imagination – the hurt emanating out in a perfect pulsating orb – swirling and electric like a crystal ball. And sometimes, when I’m fighting back tears of frustration because I can’t carry my own cup of coffee to the table, it grows even bigger, expanding to fill the room, threatening to burst the walls, to suffocate me. 

I have been thinking a lot about a book called The History of Love, by Nicole Krauss, so I asked Doctor Dash to find it for me in the attic. It took me about a minute to locate the passage I remembered and when I did I just clutched the book to my chest and sighed. These are the ruminations of an old man named Leo Gursky who is at once hilarious, ornery, fatalistic and a hopeless romantic – a beautifully written character and one of my personal favorites of all time.

“My heart is weak and unreliable. When I go it will be my heart. I try to burden it as little as possible. If something is going to have an impact, I direct it elsewhere. My gut for example, or my lungs, which might seize up for a moment but have never yet failed to take another breath. When I pass a mirror and catch a glimpse of myself, or I’m at the bus stop and some kids come up behind me and say, Who smells shit?- small daily humiliations – these I take, generally speaking, in my liver. Other damages I take in other places. The pancreas I reserve for being struck by all that’s been lost. It’s true that there’s so much, and the organ is so small. But. You would be surprised how much it can take, all I feel is a quick sharp pain and then it’s over. Sometimes I imagine my own autopsy. Disappointment in myself: right kidney. Disappointment of others in me: left kidney. Personal failures: kishkes. I don’t mean to make it sound like I’ve made a science of it. It’s not that well thought out. I take it where it comes. It’s just that I notice certain patterns. When the clocks are turned back and the dark falls before I’m ready, this, for reasons I can’t explain I feel in my wrists. And when I wake up and my fingers are stiff, almost certainly I was dreaming of my childhood. The field where we used to play, the field in which everything was discovered and everything was possible. (We ran so hard we thought we would spit blood: to me that is the sound of childhood, heavy breathing and shoes scraping the hard earth.) Stiffness of fingers is the dream of childhood as it’s been returned to me at the end of my life . . . Loneliness: there is no organ that can take it all.”

And me? Helplessness, vulnerability, loss of innocence – that all goes straight to my knee.