“You haven’t thrown out a rubber band in fifty years and you shredded letters and pictures??”
“We finally listened to you! Ta-da!” she says, opening a file drawer next to where I’m sitting on the floor, a drawer that used to be packed too tightly to add even one paper and is now almost empty.
“What was in there, Mom??” I peer in and ask, even more helplessly.
“Who knows? It’s gone now! It feels wonderful to unload some of this stuff!”
I look up from the file drawer, which is nine tenths empty, at my beautiful mother, whose life is nine tenths over. “Please don’t unload anything else, Mom.”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” She shakes her head. “We don’t want to leave this mess for your sisters and you! Who’s going to go through all this useless stuff when we’re gone?”
“My sisters and I are!” I say. “We want all your useless stuff!”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Mom shakes her head. “You’ve been trying to get us to do this for years and you were right!”
“NO! I was not right! And besides, I didn’t mean this! I meant you should part with an old envelope now and then . . . throw out a used Post-it Note . . . not this! Don’t ever listen to me, Mom! Never, ever do what I say!!”
“I’ll get the vacuum cleaner,” she says with a chuckle and nod to the pile of shreds in front of me as she walks out of the room.
I crawl right through the shreds to Mom’s desk, rise to my feet, grab her desk phone, dial Staples, and start screaming before the poor receptionist knows what hit her.
“YOUR DOCUMENT SHREDDERS SHOULD HAVE PARENTAL WARNING LABELS!” I yell into the big plastic receiver. “GREAT BIG ‘DO NOT SELL TO ANYONE’S PARENTS!’ STICKERS! NO ONE OVER THE AGE OF EIGHTY CAN BE TRUSTED! THEY MIGHT START LISTENING TO THEIR CHILDREN AND WILL NOT USE GOOD JUDGMENT! NOT MAKE GOOD CHOICES! IN THE NAME OF PERSONAL SECURITY AND IDENTITY PROTECTION, YOU ARE WIPING OUT THE IDENTITIES OF ENTIRE FAMILIES! IT SHOULD BE AGAINST THE LAW TO SELL THIS MEMORY HATCHET TO SWEET, THOUGHTFUL, RESPONSIBLE PARENTS LIKE MINE WHO GET IN AN ‘UNLOADING’ MODE!”
The cool, professional voice on the other end of the phone has been trying to make herself heard since I began my tirade and is still going on and on, utterly unruffled by my outrage. She continues calmly, almost robotically, “For store hours, press 4; for billing, press 5; for corporate accounts, press 6; for all other inquiries visit our website at . . .”
I slam down the receiver without giving her the satisfaction of finishing her big rehearsed speech. Another thing that will be lost if people keep selling new gizmos to old people, I think. The feel and sound of a receiver smashing down on its base. The wimpy click of ending a cell phone call is utterly ungratifying for the hanger-upper, and delivers absolutely no message to the hanger-upee. Only by throwing a cell phone at a wall as hard as possible can a person get anything close to that great old sound and feeling of a phone being smashed off, but as happy a moment as that is, I’ve learned, it isn’t really worth the replacement cost.
I make a mental note to add “Launch a movement to bring back less expensive and more gratifying ways to hang up on people” to my to-do list. But that’s for later. For today, I need to rescue all the beautiful pieces of Mom’s and Dad’s lives they haven’t managed to shred yet. Now that it’s all been threatened, every single scrap of paper in their house seems special.
The grocery lists written on the backs of car insurance envelopes . . .
The paper bank statements, still checked off by hand against paper copies of written checks . . .
The copies of the copies of the copies of travel plans Dad makes to be sure he remembers to quadruple check everyone’s reservations and which he hangs on to years after the trips are done just to review and reverify that it all happened as planned . . .
The rough drafts of notes written by Mom in the lovely cursive longhand they used to teach in school. My mom, who would have been a famous writer if she’d lived in a different century and had a chance for self-expression—all that talent and possibility channeled into beautiful notes to friends and family members, written as eloquently and thoughtfully as a poem . . .
The address book with names and birthdays carefully recorded, deaths gently and respectfully noted in light pencil, not the brutal electronic delete, which is how dear friends disappear from address lists now . . .
The basket of handwritten, pancake-batter-stained recipes Mom has thankfully never gotten computer literate enough to type into a nice clean legible impersonal computer file . . .
The worn file folders full of the roasts, toasts, and songs Dad wrote for decades of birthdays and anniversaries and retirement parties . . .
The old files of credit card receipts—who Mom and Dad are right now, where they went last year, what they needed at Walgreens in 1983 . . .
I can’t leave them alone with their things anymore, I think. Can’t trust them to not try to clean their desks.
I will have to move in and plant myself outside their home office door like a security guard! Install a camera that sets off an alarm in California if a piece of paper nears the trash in Florida so I can supervise from three thousand miles away! Buy boxes, pack up their whole house, and ship it to my house so they can’t get rid of anything else!
I’m back in full micromanaging mode. Hyper-hoverer. I need to watch over them and guard every little scrap of them in this house and do the same for my daughter and make sense of all the little scraps of my own life. The job is suddenly, completely overwhelming. I need my mom and dad, I think. I need them now.
I yank the shredder’s cord from the wall, wrap it in a rubber band from Mom’s ancient rubber band collection, and stuff the shredder behind one of the desks. I hurry to the living room, sit back down next to Dad, and lean my head on his shoulder, lean right back into being five years old.
“. . . the crowd is going wild after that last unbelievable catch deep in center field. Two outs and the tying run is at third . . .” I hear Mom fussing with something or other in the kitchen. I pat the familiar couch, breathe the familiar air, look around the familiar room. My eyes land on one tiny shred that got stuck to the knee of my jeans. I lift it off, squint to try to make out any letter or number that might match any of the 500,000 other little shreds I will be rescuing from the vacuum cleaner bag later. I tuck the shred in my pocket for safekeeping. Nothing’s leaving this happy house today. Not on my watch.
43.
LOVE IS IN THE AIR
Back in Los Angeles. I need a moment for me. Just to sit quietly and regroup. I flip through a catalog . . .
It’s all so romantic on these pages.
Satisfied women lounging on overstuffed floral pillows in big rattan swings. Serene women in arty tunics snipping basil sprouts from hand-hewn clay pots. Lovely tranquil women in braided sandals and embroidered smocks walking through the gardens of their quaint cottages with pretty mugs of tea.
There are no men in the pages of this sumptuous catalog. Just romance.
Not hot, urgent, looking-for-romance romance. This is deeply contented, “I-looked-I-found-and-now-I’m-just-so-happy-I’m-here-all-by-myself” romance. Romance that’s possible without a man’s gym clothes strewn all over the beautiful bedroom . . . without a man spitting mouthwash on the pristine granite bathroom counter . . . without manly scorched pans and empty tubs of jalapeño dip in the immaculate girlie country kitchen sink. Romance that’s possible when no one’s there to question why fifteen pretty decorator pillows are taking up “his” side of the bed.
Romance that’s possible when there aren’t any men in the picture at all.
These are steamy “after” pictures if I ever saw them. What a woman claims for herself after giving so much to and for someone else for so long. When it’s just the two of us: me and my American Express card.
I order up the life on page 32. Item #234, size M.
Item #47Q, size 8. Get a little giddy and add Items #309, #457, and #199: periwinkle, blush, and avocado. Pop it all into my cart. I feel the passionate need to spring for $24.95 Rush Overnight Delivery.
Click!
I lean back in my dumpy Saturday morning sweat suit, raise my old chipped coffee cup, and toast myself and the life I so richly deserve. A confirmation bings back almost immediately. Love will be in the air in a matter of minutes, and soon after that, will be on a FedEx truck to my front door.
44.
BARBIE MOM
A half-naked princess was hiding behind the china cabinet in our dining room. I found her there twenty minutes ago. Naked royalty was the last thing I thought I’d be dealing with on this busy, busy day, but I did what any mother would do. I dropped all plans I had for the afternoon, tore through the house until I found a box of clothes, dumped hundreds of tops, bottoms, gowns, cloaks, tiaras, and possibly a thousand pairs of shoes on the dining room floor and got that young lady properly dressed.
Before I could stop myself, I rummaged through other cupboards and pulled out another box. And another. In minutes, I was back sitting on the dining room floor with fifteen other princesses laid out in front of me. Some with less clothing than the first. Some amputees. Some bald, some with faces mauled from when our dog mistook them for chew toys years ago. Some perfect, as if they were just freed from the Barbie package I learned to rip open with my teeth at thirty-five miles per hour for the impatient little princess in the back seat of my car. By the day we bought my daughter’s eighth Barbie, I could free the doll, her stitched-down hair, and half a dozen tiny accessories twist-tied to the package, and partially set up Barbie’s Pet Care Center on the pull-down cup holder between the seats, all while maintaining perfect eye contact with the road.
Motherhood takes us lots of places we don’t expect, that’s all I can say . . .
Today, for instance. Instead of rushing around town efficiently checking accomplishments off my to-do list, I’m sitting on the floor of the dining room trying to wriggle Astronaut Barbie back into her silver spandex space suit.
For a beautiful minute, I pause to appreciate something I almost never, ever have: zero inner conflict.
These dolls, with their ridiculous figures, flawless faces, and unattainable hair . . . their obsession with fashion, parties, and matching accessories . . . their inexplicable fixation on a grinning blond surfer dude named Ken who was always sitting in a pink convertible on the side of my daughter’s bedroom . . . These beloved, all-wrong role model dolls helped create some of my daughter’s and my favorite memories with each other, some of the very sweetest times of my life. I love these girls.
For several more beautiful minutes, I’m back where I used to be when my daughter was six years old—right back in the happy middle of my two personas: Trailblazing Career Woman by day, Barbie Mom by night. My daughter would greet me at the front door after work with a fistful of dolls and, before I could change out of my office clothes, I’d be on my hands and knees in her bedroom—crawling around in my no-nonsense business suit and pumps, helping her stuff Beach Barbie into a tiny bikini. Trying to sit on the floor in my conservative, below the knee skirt, while squashing Neurosurgeon Barbie into hospital-green hot pants and thigh-high operating room booties . . . Lying on my stomach in my blazer,packing Librarian Barbie into a strapless purple tube dress with matching glasses . . . Orthodontist Barbie into a plunging neckline, sequined lab coat . . .
I pick some poodle-print leggings from the pile of tiny clothes on the dining room floor, find Veterinarian Barbie in the lineup of dolls, and stick her skinny little legs into them. An act more satisfying than almost anything I’ve done all week.
I hadn’t been with these girls in a long time, and the reunion is sweet. More sweet, probably, because of what’s coming from the other room—the sound of my real-life grown-up princess giggling on the couch with a real-life boy, watching a reality TV show about teens behaving badly. The living room is just close enough for me to be disturbed by what I can hear, but just far enough to not be sure which sounds are coming from the TV and which are coming from the couch. I beam all the motherly disapproval I can their way to cover all possibilities and go back to the dolls.
My job was easier back in our Barbie years, I think, clamping a miniature magenta stethoscope around the hot doctor’s neck. Distinctions between what was play and what was real were nice and clear and simple to explain to my child. All I had to do was make peace with the fact that I was crawling around in my career woman power suit helping my little girl dress her Career Barbies in what sometimes appeared to be tiny hooker outfits.
That was nothing, it turns out. Nothing compared to what a mom needs to make peace with today to help her daughter navigate the world. Distinctions between play and real are no longer nice and clear at all. Neither are the distinctions between good and bad, healthy and unhealthy, honest and dishonest . . . Pretty much everything is complicated in a way it wasn’t then.
So much had already changed in the world for women by the time my daughter was six, it was impossible not to assume that by the time she got to the age she is now, everything would be completely fixed and wonderful. Work opportunities would be wide open, pay and promotions would the same for everyone, relationships would be completely equal, companies would be set up to embrace parenthood, and rights of all people in all areas of life would be guaranteed. I could spend hundreds of hours helping my young daughter dress princesses for the ball in the Barbie castle without ever worrying that I was endorsing a life goal of being a princess or, worse, marrying Ken. This was play. Generations of women had launched a spectacular new kind of real for women. A whole powerful new path for my girl had been set.
The giggling from the other room intensifies. I don’t like it. I don’t like that I need to either give nineteen-year-olds space and privacy in my living room in the middle of the afternoon or risk having them find someplace to go where I can’t hear the things I don’t want to hear. This is not a new motherly complaint, I know, but it’s worse now. This part of the powerful new path has an extremely fast lane and I don’t like it one bit.
“Stop doing what you’re doing in there!” I yell toward the room when I can’t stand it any longer. “Hands in the air! Feet on the floor!”
I go back to the dolls on the floor and the less complicated time. I miss Ken, the grinning blond surfer dude in Barbie’s pink plastic convertible. Ken was too oblivious to be any kind of threat. Ken didn’t have a Snapchat account. No selfies of any part of himself. He didn’t even have his own car. That was Barbie’s pink convertible! I trust absolutely nothing about today’s boys or what the world has encouraged today’s girls to think is expected in relationships.
I want to see Ken again. I dump what’s left in the boxes I brought from the other room on the floor.
Where is he? Where’s that oblivious surfer dude? I ask myself silently as I rummage through the pile. I miss you, you overconfident, undeserving, nonthreatening Romeo! Where are you?? Come out! Come out and let me hug you, little plastic guy!!
“MOM!” My grown-up princess is standing over me. Apparently I wasn’t as silent as I thought.
“Sorry, honey,” I say. “I was just reminiscing.”
“Seriously, Mom?” she asks, looking down at her childhood spread out on the dining room floor. “Is this what you do when I’m at college? Play with my Barbies??”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I answer. “I’m looking for Ken.”
“Ken?”
“I’m searching for the clarity of simpler times.”
“Mom??” she asks, peering at me curiously.
“I worry about your world, honey. So much comes at you from so many directions all day long—popping up on Facebook . . . swirling on the Internet . . . life coaching by YouTubers with green hair . . . link after link to who knows what after what . . . a constant exposure to . . .”—I poi
nt toward the living room—“things like that!”
“It’s a TV show, Mom!!” she says with an exasperated laugh.
“Exactly!” I answer. “That’s why it’s dangerous! Behavior that should be shocking is edited into Netflix episodes that start to look normal! The distinction between play and real is gone! I miss Ken. I miss the good old days of Ken!”
“You’re funny, Mom,” she says, shaking her head with a laugh and giving me a comforting little pat on the head. She turns and walks back to the living room. “And don’t worry, I know the difference between play and real!”
I do a quick scan of her teeny shorts, scoopy top, perfect makeup, long flowing hair, and stacked platform sandals as she walks away. I’d be more comforted if she and much of her peer group didn’t look like life-size Barbies a lot of the time. I try to imagine all she’s already facing and is going to face in the future without calling her mom for help.
Then again, what help would I be? I spent years writing about relationships—reading, researching, trying to condense giant societal shifts into comic-strip-size stories that would help women navigate love, work, and self-esteem with a sense of humor when all the rules were changing.
But at least there were rules then. Nothing prepared me to help my daughter deal with what feels like the complete free-for-all of now. I don’t know how to shield her from pressures I don’t even know about and, when I learn about them, can’t comprehend. It makes me crazy when I see freedoms my generation was so proud to win get translated into presumptions and pressures that can make today’s young women more, not less, vulnerable to everything: being hurt, misunderstood, taken advantage of. When I learned that what my mother’s generation saved for their wedding night can be arranged in a nanosecond with a right swipe on a hookup app, I wanted to put my arms around my daughter’s whole generation. Hearts and souls couldn’t possibly have evolved at the same pace as electronics. Moms can’t possibly keep up with all we need to protect. Young women must be feeling more lost and alone at the exact time in history they should feel more in control of everything.
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