Happy Valentine’s Day to all you lovers out there. And, of course, to mine. This will be my Valentine’s present to Doctor Dash. Unorthodox, admittedly, to post before purchasing, but what can I say? It gets the job done, no? What a cute print! And where to hang it? Mudroom? Bedroom? I suppose we’ll decide together.
xo
I can’t believe I’m married to a 40 year old man. Never mind that he’s more smokin’ now than he was at the age of 20 when we met. Sigh. Damn these men and their flattering aging and crinkly eyed distinguished good looks. Happy Birthday Doctor Dash! Happy happy happy! This little family we’ve created – this little family loves and adores you. This little family is lucky to call you their Papa Bear. And me? Well, I’m damn lucky too.
Besos, mi amor.
In our kitchen we have one little spot, with one little stool, at which we keep the laptop. It’s the spot where Doctor Dash and I each have our first sips of coffee in the morning, checking email through bleary eyes. It’s the spot where Dash has a beer after work while I finish cooking dinner. We chat, a little or a lot, depending on the vagaries of mood and stress. It’s the spot where we listen to and download music. It’s the spot where I do a lot of my writing and most of my surfing. It’s not the most comfortable spot in the world, but if we’re downstairs, it’s most likely to be where Dash or I are sitting.
So if you’re a boy who likes to snuggle, you figure out a way to fit in that spot. I can’t tell you how many times he has come down in the morning with crazy bed head wearing his blanket like a shepherd and slipped in behind me on the stool. Taking a cue from the other primates of the world, he seems to understand instinctively that even when you’re too big for mama’s front side, there may still be room for you on mama’s backside. It wasn’t until I saw Saint James sidle in behind Dash that I took note of it with the part of my brain that actually notices things. Perched as he was, he reminded me of a lemur or a monkey. But unlike a lemur or a monkey, who might cling to a parent’s back for protection or mobility or warmth, Saint James perches just because.
Because he can still fit.
Because he wants to.
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.
And I’m afraid he’s going to start looking like this before too long. Actually, he already does kind of look like this. As of last night, he has started working a 10 pm to 7 am shift. He should have more time off and it’s only for a year, so we’ll see how it goes. We’ll have to work extra hard to stay in sync, since we won’t even have our circadian rhythms to take for granted. In that spirit, we got a sitter and are heading to a 4:45 yoga class. Nearly the end of my day and nearly the beginning of his. My wine will be his coffee. My coffee will be his sleepy time tea. Last night I watched him shave at 8:30 pm, my heart in a small knot. Yep, we’ll see how this goes.
We recently discovered that the shower head in our bathroom has two settings: a cleansing, reasonable and perfectly lovely setting and then a wretched, awkward, freaky, horrible setting. One is a proper shower, the other is more a violent sputter – like when you laugh with beer in your mouth and it comes out your nose. Dash likes the latter. And apparently he is not ashamed. He is also impervious to any and all mockery and bullying I can throw his way on the matter.
Every single time I step into the shower, I am taken by surprise by the erratic sputters of water, prodding me like a gangly adolescent boy giant trying to give a back rub to a girl giant at a campfire at the top of the beanstalk. Every time, surprise turns to annoyance. Every time, annoyance turns to incredulousness and I think to myself: OhmyGod, like, for real Doctor Dash? Again? Seriously? I cannot believe this matters enough to go to the trouble to change the setting every single blasted time you get in the shower! UG! Seriously!
And every time, I change it back.
We went up north for Labor Day weekend. Hastily assembled, last minute planning yielded three days, more relaxing and action packed than I would have thought possible. Sometimes, last minute is the best way. We pulled the kids out of school on Friday and set off due north with a minivan chocked to the gills with food, fishing poles, water colors, and anything else I could think of to keep our short attention spans from unravelling into pervasive, crotchety boredom.
I needn’t have worried.
The lake. It was beautiful. Deep. Almost primordial. Its dark, velvety waters were cold enough to make swimming something for which you had to summon up courage. It was cold enough to feel curative. And it was vast, with undulating shorelines, eddies and bays, silent islands, promontories and fingers of land, beckoning or accusatory, depending on how you looked at them. There seemed to be a secret code of earth and water we had to approach with caution and respect. Dash and I had to navigate, eyes skimming the horizon and darting back to the map, to reconcile the two dimensional with the three, to keep our bearings, to find our way home. It was challenging, but it got easier. We learned something new. We grinned madly, feeling slightly less the rubes on a pontoon. We squinted into the sun, proud, almost seaworthy.
Fish. There are fish in Lake Vermillion. All hungry for worms and willing to be caught by Saint James and Supergirl (Dash too, but with less success – I think the jerky line of a child-held rod must make those worms dance extra seductively). They fished off the docks, they fished off the boat. It was the go-to activity for three whole days. It was what filled up the hours in the sun. And Devil Baby watched and cheered, played with the worms, touched the slippery bodies of the fish, and essentially hung around doing nothing in a way I’ve never seen her do before. It was gratifying to watch them do something contemplative, something that requires patience, quiet, sustained attention with eyes trained on the water.
Kitchen. More time and less stuff, I found myself enjoying the simpler, pared down ritual of preparing meals. I found it meditative: the opening and shutting of drawers, looking for a potato peeler, a whisk, a bottle opener; stopping to take a sip of wine and gaze out the enormous kitchen windows at the lake; washing dishes by hand, keeping my workspace neat. Without the rush, meal preparation is a completely different animal and in the silence of the cabin, broken only by the occasional triumphant whoop from the nearby dock, I remembered everything I love about cooking.
Reading. I was forced to unplug. No wireless, no phone. No twitter, no blog. Just my books. I have been feeling scattered lately. Unmoored. I have been finding it hard to focus, to lose myself in a book. Perhaps it’s because there has been so much end of the summer action to attend to. Perhaps, I too am losing the power of sustained attention, giving way to the rat-like compulsion to check my email, tweet and surf every few minutes. In the quiet of the north woods, I became that mother – the reading mother. On the chaise, with her nose in a book, occasionally peering over the pages with narrowed eyes and an amused smile, luxuriating in the act of reading deeply while her family plays almost, almost, out of earshot. They fished, I read. My heart slowed down. Everyone was engaged, so I could disengage and dive into my books: Snow by Orhan Pamuk, challenging reading, testing my patience, but a book whose layers slowly unfold drawing you further and deeper. It’ll be worth it, I think. Time will tell. And Dangerous Laughter by Steven Millhauser, a tightly wrought collection of short stories, the few I have read so far are intriguing, smart, mildly menacing – he is a beautiful writer.
Fish. Each catch was followed by a few seconds of tense hook extraction. Saint James and Supergirl would bow their heads in concentration, working against the ticking seconds and the struggling fish to get the hook out as gently and quickly as possible. They’d toss it back in the water, peer into the depths and inevitably yell “Yep, he made it!” with joy and relief. For them a fair fishing bargain involves no more than a few seconds of discomfort on the part of the fish. They are tender and respectful toward nature. I am not sure whether this is something you can teach, or whether this is something that just naturally occurs in a child. 
Kitchen. I brought everything, even my sharp knife and cilantro. But even when you bring everything, there are things you wish you had brought. As I made salads and salsas, mixing and matching my ingredients like edible Garanimals, I thought of Jumpa Lahiri’s piece in the NY Times earlier this summer. I thought of all the things I would remember next time (honey, white pepper, soy sauce, hot sauce, gin, the pickled eggplant I just made) and all the things I was so glad to have brought (my knife, sea salt, avocado, cilantro, olives, strawberries, fancy cheeses, sauvignon blanc, baby spinach, garlic, tomatoes, baguettes, Hope Creamery butter, two kinds of vinegar and olive oil).
Fire. Doctor Dash made two fires a night. One with charcoal for grilling steaks and salmon. One with wood for roasting s’mores. The fire drew the children out of the brush, away from the beach. Like young natives, they watched the flames, flicking and dancing against the darkening sky. Or maybe they were just hungry.
Fish. One morning I glanced up from my book and saw a stout fireplug of a man talking to Doctor Dash on the dock where he and the kids were fishing. Our cabin neighbor had ostensibly come out to introduce himself to Dash, but in fact needed to flip Dash’s rod right side up before showing him a picture of the 53 inch Muskie he had caught the day before. We chuckled about this the rest of the day, picturing the poor guy grimacing over his coffee mug as he looked out the window watching Dash cast with an upside down rod. He probably muttered through his pain and agitation for a good fifteen minutes before getting so exasperated he burst through his back door to save Dash from himself. Hilarious.
Watercolors. I’m so glad I brought them. Devil Baby painted and painted. Busy, quiet, happy. Just how I like her.
Feathers. The bald eagles. They were incredible. We had no idea they all hung out in the north woods. We saw more eagles than seagulls, yet they never lost the power to startle us, to elicit a gasp, a pause in the action to watch their muscular flight, their graceful hunting, their branch shaking landing in the tops of trees. There was an island where a bunch of them seemed to perch and to hover right below them in a quiet kayak was pure magic. And then there were the loons. My kids said the cries of the loons reminded them of our neighbor, Evan’s, cry. Somewhere between a giggle and a sob, suspended between joy and loss, the loons stopped us in our tracks over and over again.
Haunting and beautiful. Just like that lake.
Yesterday was my birthday. And it was lovely. I’m not one to make a big hooha out of my own birthday. But I must admit, it’s kind of nice when others make a hooha for me.
There were flowers on the kitchen counter, which had to have been purchased sometime between ten at night on Saturday and seven in the morning on Sunday because Dash has been on call. A+ for effort, my love. Beautiful swollen peach roses and sunflowers. Sunflowers are so straightforward and happy – they’re my favorite.
There was a precious half hour alone with coffee and the New York Times.
There were sleepy birthday hugs. They woke up remembering.
There was a trip to the Kingfield Farmers Market and my window sill is bejeweled in tomatoes, glowing orbs of yellow, red, orange.
There was a yoga class, which always does me a world of good.
There was a fortuitous bump into Salt and Pepper Polymath at the supermarket. He wished me happy birthday. I’m not sure how he knew.
There was a late afternoon trip to Bush Lake where some of my book club ladies awaited with their hubbies, resplendent in sun hats and laughter, vodka tonics and cheese. They sang to me and I felt as if I would burst from happiness before melting into the sand from embarrassment. Dash and I lingered in the warmth of the waning sun, long after they had all left, our toes in the sand, our kids feeding the remnants of sand speckled cheese to the seagulls.
There were phone calls and messages throughout the day from all the people I love.
There were grilled rib eyes, tomatoes sliced and drizzled, a little salad of farmers market radishes and carrot, thinly sliced, in a chive mustard vinaigrette. My perfect meal.
There was angel food cake with whipped cream and berries, rowdy singing and plenty of help blowing out the candles.
There was a dance party which ended in a crash. The portable disco ball is kaput, which is just as well because ever since we moved into this house I have been politely requesting a disco ball. A real disco ball. Doctor Dash thought he could mollify me with the disco boobs* he got me for Christmas, and it worked for a while, but I’m afraid that’s all she wrote on that one.
There were tears and words of truth in the bathroom before bed. Supergirl was crying over the disco boobs, Devil Baby kept repeating that it scared her when they crashed and I hushed and shushed, promising another disco ball, a better disco ball, a real disco ball. Saint James took his toothbrush out of his mouth, looked me straight in the eye in the mirror and scolded: well this isn’t going to help us save up money for Costa Rica.
Touché, St. James, touché. But it IS my birthday.
*Coined by Supergirl.
Doctor Dash can be a very wise man. There have been times in our marriage when he noticed things about the kids or put things into words in a way that made me stop, blink, and sheepishly acknowledge the lightbulb suddenly swinging above my head. I am drowning in the kids. I can’t see the forest for the trees, but he, with his hours away, sometimes brings a new perspective that is, frankly, right on.
Example: when Supergirl was about a year and a half old, she was a total wild child. She was a climber and a runner and her mission in life seemed to be to find the highest and most precarious perch from which to exhibit herself to the world. She always had a naughty smile on her face as she watched me staggering around below, trying to talk her down, ready to catch her if she ever slipped (she never did). She was (and is) a coordinated and strong little monkey with no fear of heights or speed. She was (and is) a girl in constant motion. We found ourselves gasping and clutching our chests, shaking our heads in exasperation, telling everyone who would listen what a “handful” she was. Until Dash wisely noted that if she was a boy, we would think nothing of her level of activity and risk taking, and that maybe we just needed to stop talking about it. Simply put, just because she’s a girl, doesn’t mean she doesn’t have the right to careen through life at top speeds. Of course. Of COURSE! We didn’t want to change her, wouldn’t be able to even if we tried, so what was the point of belaboring the point? No point. Right. So we stopped making such a big deal about her hair raising antics, learned to trust her as much as she trusted herself, and have come to quite enjoy having that kind of kid in our brood.
As I’ve mentioned before, we have been trying to give Saint James and Supergirl some freedom to roam our neighborhood. We want them off the couch and into the brush. We hope that by giving them a little space, they’ll gain a sense of confidence in themselves, a healthy sense of safety in their surroundings, and maybe some smarts along the way. Earlier this summer, we let them walk two blocks to Sweet Jessamine and Ivory Tickler’s house to turn on their sprinklers while they were on vacation: a chore adventure hybrid – genius. Doctor Dash made the observation that the two of them seem to get along the best when they get to go out alone on their little excursions. Normally, Saint James and Supergirl are notorious, insufferable bickerers, making the Costanzas look like swooning love birds. They have turned quarreling into an art form, refusing to agree on anything, dividing the universe of ideas in half and planting themselves firmly on either side of the line. They argue, they parse, they quote and misquote, they poke holes in reasoning, they unveil inconsistencies, they split hairs, they tit for tat, they begrudge, they demean, they scoff, they tease, they bully, they quibble, they scrap, they wrangle, they aha, they I told you so. In short, they fight. Constantly. Except, it seems, when they go off on an adventure. Yes indeed Doctor Dash, I do believe you are right! What an interesting bi-product of our little freedom experiment!
They don’t exactly walk off hand in hand, but they do go side by side and it’s as if the expanse of the world unfolding in front of their feet makes them feel less chafed by each other. Simply turning the focus away from the other to a point over the hill or down the creek allows them to coexist in peace, at least for a short time. Or maybe, when they are walking alone, they feel a bit of us against the world. They always come back happy, having seen one dead animal or another, having caught some insect or another, or, most recently, having had a relaxing little visit with neighbors. Yesterday Supergirl asked if she could walk to Red Vogue’s and Salt and Pepper Polymath’s house with Saint James, under the pretense of showing them the tie dye shirts they had made at camp. They came back about an hour later, their smiles ringed with the telltale mark of blue Gatorade. I find it amusing that they walked over to our dear neighbors’ house, accepted a little refreshment, chatted them up, (hopefully) didn’t fight with each other, (hopefully) said thank you and good bye. How civilized of them. And all NOT under my watch. It’s actually a small miracle. And another interesting bi-product of our freedom experiment.
Thank you Red Vogue and SPP, for being part of a little world that allows them to feel big. And thank you Dash for discovering one small way to curb the bickering. Their mucky water shoes are parked at the front door and if you see them touching dead things in the creek, just know that . . . I’m kind of, totally OK with that . . . as long as they’re not fighting.
I’m at a bit of a loss. I’m finding it hard to write about the Golden Delicious Apple wedding. It’s just too big. Too complex. Too lovely. It’s like my words are shiny marbles and a big jar of them has been upended, sending them pinging all over the floor and I’m trying to gather them up with thick woolen mittens, sending them scattering ever farther, slippery, shiny and elusive. Or maybe I’m a cowboy and my words are my herd of cattle who are acting mighty peculiar. No matter how hard I try, the cows just ignore me and mill around, some of them flop on to their backs, laughing hysterically, a little group of them is dancing over the hill yonder (where did they get those maracas?), impossible to wrangle. Or maybe my words are shards of a champagne glass, exploded into a million pieces after a dramatic fling into the fireplace. Pick whichever absurd metaphor you like, but I’m at a loss. For words. For once.
This wedding is the first in our family after mine and Dash’s exactly twelve years ago, putting us in the unique and lovely position of bearing witness from what feels both up close and far removed. I remember my wedding like it was yesterday, and yet so much has happened since August 2, 1997: four moves, two law firms, graduations from med school, residency and fellowship, four homes and three children. Not to mention all the minutiae of life that piles together seamlessly and invisibly to make a day a day, an hour and hour. How many diapers, cups of coffee, baptisms, first communions, bandaids, popsicles, plane trips, glasses of wine, first days of school, baby teeth in, baby teeth out, date nights, books, broken bones, middle of the night fevers, bowls of cereal, bike rides, frogs caught, screaming matches, kisses, hugs, counters wiped down, mosquito bites, apples, paychecks, birthday cakes, new shoes, dinner parties, walks to the bus stop, dances in the kitchen, piles of snowy boots and sandy towels are behind us? How many are ahead? And what else lies down the road?
How many ways are there to measure life?
I fully expected to have a lot of fun at this wedding. But watching Golden marry his beautiful bride, Delicious Apple, had the unexpected effect of bending a page in our book, of bringing into focus where Doctor Dash and I are as a couple and where we are as a family. I feel like we are pretty early in our journey together, yet look at all that has happened already. Everything Golden and Delicious Apple have been doing since they fell for each other in high school, every last detail of their beautiful and rowdy wedding, all of it, is so that they will have what we have. It all starts here. Everything is in front of them.
And although I clearly remember the feeling of just starting out, of excitedly setting off for our honeymoon, of settling in to our first home on St. Botolph Street in Boston’s South End, I can now look in the other direction, at my parents, and feel a vague heart wringing whisper of understanding for what they must be feeling. Chuchi and Lelo are a lot further on in their journey than we are and what a rich, complicated, brave and blessed journey it is. They are in a great place. They got to watch their Golden boy marry the woman he has always loved. They got to watch their other son, El Maestro de Bife, give a masterful toast, working over the room with more humor and tenderness than I would have thought possible in a single speech. They got to watch all their children and grandchildren throw down on the dance floor and love each other up. All their work, all their worrying, all their love has propelled them to a point where they can finally watch, and smile, and breathe a huge sigh of relief.
And now I see that every single thing Dash and I do, is so that someday we will have what our parents have: children who have grown up thinking love is a given, eventually realizing love is a treasure to be held close and cared for; children who hopefully find a love big enough to spark a whole other story, a brand new journey uniquely their own.
We’ve been plagued by death. The second and final guppy has moved on to fresher waters and while the exact cause of death cannot be determined at this time, let’s just say Devil Baby played a role. She started the chain of events that led to his demise. Coincidence? I think not. Here’s how it went down.
8:30ish – I hear a huge crash in the kitchen and run in to find Devil Baby sprawled on her back, covered in fish food, mouth agape working up to the big waaaaaaah. Pingo’s tub is practically opaque from all the food in there and he’s going nuts trying to eat it all. I have to work fast. I quickly dechlorinate some water in the green bowl I use to make crepes, scoop him into it, clean out his bowl, fill it with water, dechlorinate it and run to check on Devil Baby, who is still wailing her head off. (I know, I should have checked on her first, right? This fish thing has made me a bit crazy.)
9:00ish – I go back to the kitchen to put Pingo back in his tub and am fiddling with the pump when he pulls a total Tale of Despereaux move and leaps out of the bowl, brushes my arm, and lands with an inaudible splat on the tile floor. I yelp and try to pick him up, but the wriggling makes that too disgusting, so I scream for Saint James while I frantically try to get him to hop onto a spoon. Just as Saint James and Supergirl slide panting into the kitchen, I slip Pingo into his water with a sigh. Phew. Disaster averted. Again.
9:05ish – we watch him swim around for a while, wondering how, why he should have taken such a death defying leap and slowly it begins to dawn on me. Ohhhhhh, good sweet baby Cupid, can it be? Why am I always so obtuse when it comes to matters of the heart? Pingo is in love with me. After the loss of Pearl, he transferred all his affections to the next best thing – me. The combination of watching my heroic efforts to save him and sheer piscine gratitude so overwhelmed him that he found himself with no choice but to risk everything, for just a touch. When he saw me hovering near the crepe bowl, he saw his chance and took his leap of love.
10:30ish – Doctor Dash comes home from call and sits on the edge of the bed, rapt, as I regale him with the hair raising events of the night and my cool-under-fire heroics. He seems dubious about my theory about Pingo’s fish crush, but then, Dash is prone to a bit of jealousy in such matters and probably doesn’t want to fan the fire.
10:35ish – Doctor Dash, having gone downstairs to decompress from work, comes back to the bedroom and announces that Pingo has died. We both sigh. I find sleep elusive, my mind racing to figure out what killed him. Was it the food, the fall, the water temperature or did he simply, quietly, die of a broken heart?
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.
I’m in the dog house for having stayed out too late last night celebrating Nanook of the North’s birthday. It was supposed to be a delicious celebratory feast at 112 Eatery with a dozen and change of her BFFs – a lovely evening dinner strategically timed for all of us to miss having to put our respective offspring to bed, but not meant to extend beyond what would otherwise be considered prudent or proper for a Sunday night.
If intention counts for anything, and I would argue that it should, it was not my intent when I got picked up at 5:30 in my new spring coat, to come rolling in the door at two thirty in the morning. Not at all. If it had been, I wouldn’t have taken my gigantic purse and no lipstick. And no cell phone.
Our dinner was delicious and loud and funny and when it was time to go, Nanook, Crackerjack, Pretty Young Thing and I looked at our watches and made a snip snap decision to stay downtown. It was only eight thirty, after all, the night but a fresh faced choir boy. Some of the other ladies were tempted, but begged off in an enviable display of good judgment. We four miscreants finished our drinks and traipsed to the elevator where Crackerjack did a standing splits for whatever reason sending us into peals of laughter and a trip to nowhere. When the doors opened we spilled out onto the same floor, giggling and completely befuddled by how our waiter had managed to beat us downstairs, that sneaky fleet-footed bastard. And so it began.
Downtown is pretty dead on a Sunday night, but it turns out there is plenty of mischief to be gotten into when all you need to be completely entertained is some drinks, some tunes, and some really funny lady friends. At about eleven I called Doctor Dash to let him know I would be staying out after dinner for a few drinks. I patted myself on the back. Responsible. Considerate. Later that phone message came back to haunt me.
But I called you – I left a message, she said.
You sounded like you were only going to stay out a little longer, he said.
And you believed me? she did not say.
Here’s the thing. Asking me to peel myself away from the forcefield of hilarity that we manage to conjure up any time we go out is like asking Pepe Le Pew to keep his stinky paws off the cute petite fille skunk. I simply cannot tear myself away because there has not been nearly enough crazy laughing and unfettered shenanigans in my life since college. And I miss it terribly. Back then my college girlfriends set the baseline for female friendship and good times – there was no recapturing that once we scattered around the country after graduation. Then came many years of babies and young children and the attendant exhaustion and general inability to take on anything else. But now I’ve made some new girlfriends and we’re all coming out of that bleary-eyed time, trying to figure out who we are again, what we’re going to do with our lives. In many ways, it feels like we are revisiting those uncertain times of our youth. There’s a lot to talk about and break down, there’s a lot laugh about and now, more than ever, we need to laugh. Age-appropriateness, situation-appropriateness be damned. What kind of a person can tap her watch and say, ok, that’s enough fun for me. I am powerless. Utterly powerless to walk away from a good time. And these girls are nothing, if not a good time.
Doctor Dash totally knows this about me. He knows I can’t say when. He knows I always want just a few more minutes, one more song, one more drink, one more laugh, one more long goodbye.
But just because he knows he married a party barnacle, it fails to mitigate how annoying it must be for him to be woken up as I try to eat girl scout cookies and balance a flashlight in bed so I can read myself to sleep at three o’clock in the morning. Crinkle crinkle. Or having to get up to let me in because I forgot my key. Or being blanketed by a vague sense of worry until he hears me clunking around the kitchen scavenging for food. He can go through all the motions of going to sleep, but poor Doctor Dash can’t really sleep until I’m back home safe. When I was sixteen I wouldn’t have understood. Now I understand. And I am deeply thankful that I happen to matter this much to someone.
Chastened and hungover, so much of this little scenario sent me shooting right back to my youth – I stayed out too late, I was unreachable by phone, I screwed up, my dad er husband was mad because he couldn’t go to sleep and he had a tough day at work ahead of him. When you’re young and you mess up, you skulk around trying to avoid your parents. You suffer the consequences. Maybe there’s a shouting match. But in the end, what can you do? When you screw up at this age, you fix it. There is no other choice. And the beauty of it is, you have the wisdom to acknowledge when you need to apologize, when you need to own up. And now, unlike then, you’ve got a few tricks up your sleeve.
So what did I do? I started cooking like a motherfucker. I decided I’d do an asian-style pulled pork and with coffee and Advil in one hand and ginger, soy, fish sauce, onion, garlic, and thai chilis in the other, I concocted a beautiful bath for a succulent pork shoulder to spend the day slow cooking. The smell that filled the house by ten a.m. was amazing, and if that didn’t say I’m sorry – then at least my text message would. Actually, I get a bit of the clam hands when I try to text and after the third try, the best I could do was spqqxy. I pressed send, hoping Dash would know what I meant.
I am really really spqqxy.
I’m not quite sure what happens to Doctor Dash when he’s faced with an unopened box of cereal or crackers, but whatever it is – it never ends well. Today I went to pour some fruit loops for Angel Baby and when I tipped the box over the bowl, they went flying everywhere in an avalanche of artificial fruit flavors. It was as if Toucan Sam had vomited all over my dining room table and what’s worse? When I untipped the box, half of its contents ended up trapped outside of the bag. The food stuck between the bag and the box? Like nails on a chalk board for me. Intolerable.
The box had been opened by Doctor Dash and was shredded beyond recognition, a huge gash traveling down the side of the cellophane. It’s as if unopened dry goods send him into an uncontrollable Lou Ferrigno moment and after a bout of painful temple rubbing and teeth gnashing, he ends up with superhuman strength and clams as hands. It drives me bananas. Especially when he mangles resealable bags. Faced with a zip lock, he will rip open the bottom. I just don’t get it. Normally, I’d say he has above average manual dexterity. He does these cool little pen and ink drawings from time to time. And he even performs actual medical procedures on real live human beings.
What gives, man?
