“How’s teaching?”
“Fine.”
“Radio commentaries?”
“Cool.”
“Any new book ideas?”
“Not really. But it’s okay. I’m enjoying a creative sabbatical. Good Lord, sometimes what sounds really tempting is to take five years off just to…sleep.”
He puts down his paper, now fully engaged.
“I’ve been…worried about you.”
Well, this is a turn for the worse. This breakfasting out, in restaurants, among people—I’m so out of practice…!
“Me?”
“It not that you seem depressed exactly. But I’ve noticed that—Maybe it’s since the kids have come but—” He releases the cat out of its bag, it hesitates—he gives it a little extra push. “You don’t seem to have women anymore. Friends who are women. Women friends. You know…” Here he lifts his hands, makes that uncertain waggling motion with his fingers, as though afraid to touch exposed live wires. “Women.”
“I have women!” I retort, stung.
“But you don’t hang out with them. When I’m depressed I go fish. I think your women…are like my fish.”
I think about it. It is true all the women friends I had in my twenties and thirties…? What did I do with them? In which Rubber-maid bins did I store all those girlfriends, to make room, when that mountain of baby gear started arriving?
My husband, now, he’s on a mini-aria:
“I think you need more women around you. Women. Whatever happened to your women? Of course, I know what happened to…you know…her—”
“Don’t even say her name.”
“Okay. Forget her. But what about, um…” He reaches into the attic of his memory, pulls out a dusty box. Aha! “What about that—that women’s book group you used to go to?”
I groan.
My women’s book group has been together fifteen years, aka fourteen years too long. By now we’ve gone through our vampire phase, our geisha phase, and our Bridges of Madison County phase. Most recently, we’d waded into this frantic Perils of Pauline phase filled with nonfiction books about how working mothers are BLOWING EVERYTHING. The titles were all in HUGE BLOCK LETTERS…“CRUSH! You’re Working Too Much!” “SMUSH! You’re Mothering Too Much!” “SQUASH! Your Obese Bipolar Children Pine for You!” “CRASH: Even in the Simple Act of Reaching for That Coffee, You’re Hemorrhaging Future Retirement Benefits, Not Just Social Security But Tax-Free Funds That Should Have Been Placed in an IRA Yesterday!” All the covers had women in business suits, collapsed weeping over steering wheels while all around them a tsunami of frantic sippy cups tumbled.
This was the very Tower of Literary Pain Mike cleared off my nightstand and replaced with what he thought would be a much more restful…28 Beads.
“Do you really want me to tell you the details of WHY my women’s book group became so tedious?”
“No,” he replies abruptly, thinking better of that. “But how about…Oh, what’s her name, from USC…Nikki?”
“As a matter of fact, Nikki called recently,” I say, smartly. “Apparently she has finally met her dream man. Again. But this time he is so not like all the others. Again. They spent seventy-two hours straight together laughing. Again. Within two months something will go terribly wrong, so they’ll be crying, they’ll go into therapy, she’ll be curled into a fetal position, he’ll move to Portland…Then Nikki will rise again with her new mission, a line of jewelry or—Oh, the last time? Here was her plan…New head shots! Nikki is forty-seven and has literally never enjoyed paid employment as an actress. As Kaitlin would say, ‘New head shots? Conversation number 331.’”
“What about—Why don’t you just, ah, set her up with your ex-boyfriend Bruce?”
“’Cause HE doesn’t do yoga and SHE isn’t a vegetarian.”
“What’s the difference?”
“I don’t even know.”
Mike shoots a surreptitious glance down at his paper. I feel him, too, eyeing the sudoku, the deliciously blank sudoku.
But now the floodgates are open. He wanted to talk! I’ll talk!
“Yes, my friends! My tiresome friends!” I say. “Then we move to the category of unbearable couples. On the one hand, as you saw last night, Jonathan and Aimee, the neurotic über-parents, have become intolerable. However, their polar opposite, Kent and Maria? Just as intolerable—”
“Uh—I’ve changed my mind,” Mike says to the passing waitress, resignedly. “I guess I WILL have some coffee.”
“As opposed to Jonathan and Aimee, Kent and Maria seem unaware that, within the past five years, we have even HAD children. They’re always calling on Friday for a spontaneous Saturday eight-thirty P.M. dinner party. I believe Kent and Maria are literally the latest-dining people on the planet. They’re basically on Barcelona time. They’re always going, ‘Things will really get rolling at ten! Supper begins at eleven! We’ve got some great ARCHITECTS coming over—you’ll love them! In case you ever need an architect!’ At some point, with Kent and Maria, I want to ask them, ‘Really, is there ANYTHING AT ALL you remember about us?’
“So once, I think two years ago when you were on the road, I hied myself off to one of these dinners. I’m introduced to all the other couples—their names are, like, Carl and Sumiko, John and Jon…They’re all childless, which means, as Maria puts her hand on my arm and hilariously announces, ‘NO PARENT TALK, Sandra! PARENT TALK IS NOT ALLOWED. We know you’re a parent…But there are no other PARENTS here. NO PARENT TALK.’
“And the point is—I think—made, but Maria keeps running with it. ‘And you know WHY no Parent Talk? Because PARENTAL CONVERSATION IS SO BORING. What is more boring than the conversation of PARENTS? Take my cousin Dara! I’m on the phone with her the other day, and it’s all blah blah blah Kyle, blah blah blah FOOD allergy, blah blah blah PEANUT allergy, blah blah blah WHEAT allergy, blah blah blah PEDIATRICIAN…”
Mike is openly reading his paper by this point. The waitress is putting down our breakfasts, so I conclude my monologue…to her.
“And Maria goes, ‘But what haunted me about Dara’s tale, many hours later—if I can even call it a tale, given there was no beginning, middle, or end, only this phlegmy gray middle that hung on and hung on, as though the tale itself were a kind of allergy—’”
“Ketchup?” the waitress asks, reaching in her pocket.
“Please,” I reply. “And do you have Tabasco? Thanks. Anyway, and Maria says, ‘What haunts me about Dara’s tale is what I call the Illogical Piece. Dara had said her pediatrician suspected Kyle might have a wheat allergy because Kyle has blood type O. But I ask you: Is O not the most common blood type on the planet, and is wheat not one of our commoner grains? Does that mean the majority of the human race—your Basques, Tutsis, Hmong, your Bedouins—are naturally allergic to bread, croutons, pita, halvah?’”
“And…Tabasco,” the waitress says. “Be right back.”
“But get this, Mike,” I say. Bolstered by the first few bites of corned beef hash, color flooding back to his face, he manages an assenting grunt. I press on: “NOW Sumiko’s phone beeps. It is a call from, you guessed, their dog sitter. Because Carl and Sumiko have—of course—three pugs. ‘Oh my God,’ exclaims Jon, ‘you have pugs, too?’ John and Jon have five pugs…and a greyhound. All four NOW tear off onto parallel monologues about all their little dogs, which include sleep habits, walking habits, pooping habits, and yes, there were photos. Even Kent and Maria produce a photo of Bailey, their giant, leaping, slathering dog, remember him—”
“Urgh.”
“—that I may well take a rifle to one day. My entire left rib cage is bruised from, over the years, having practically been RAPED by their dog. Him jumping on me. Every single time I walk into the house. While they do nothing. So let us review: I am not allowed to bring my children to Kent and Maria’s, to discuss them, and I have never so much as proferred a photo. But now I am looking at wallet photo after wallet photo…of dogs. And I now suddenly realize h
ow long I have been abused by these PEOPLE, my childless couple friends, and…their DOGS!”
I lift my fork.
“And it has become clear to me that humans, as a species, have simply become intolerable to one another. In 1900 the average person could expect to live to thirty-eight. Now people live until eighty-nine and you have to be friends with them for ninety-seven years!”
“Yep, it’s a drag,” Mike says, shaking ketchup onto his hash browns. “And marriages last two centuries.”
“Ha-ha,” I say, “good one. But I don’t think single people have it much easier. Apparently even meeting NEW people is overrated. I think about what my girlfriend Rachel said. After four years on JDate, she finally canceled her subscription thingy, saying, ‘Hetero-sexual and Jewish? It’s not enough anymore. I’d rather stay in with a nice bottle of merlot and sort my mail.’”
“What happened to Rachel?” he says.
“Moved to France,” I say.
The waitress returns with a flourish.
“And…Tabasco!”
Having nothing else to do this morning, now that I have officially been fired as a mother by my two-and-a-half-year-old, I now celebrate our graduation from the State of Having Two VERY Small Children by doing something else unheard of…
Cleaning out the minivan. When did I last do this? Has it been…FIVE YEARS?
Our Toyota minivan has become like a rolling mildewed chariot of typhus. Even our own children have attempted to stage revolts over the interior of the minivan. Hannah has complained it smells too bad to actually ride in. Another time, it was our little Squid who howled—there were ants in her car seat. Reasonable protests, I agree, but not until this morning have I had the time to actually get down on my knees and hack through the layers of crust.
I begin with what I call my “office,” which is to say the front passenger seat, a nest containing all the flotsam and jetsam of collected paper, sedimentary layers of history.
We have, for instance, from the hospital, a twenty-page pamphlet on breast-feeding. Why is getting babe to breast so complicated? Let me summarize for you, in a sketch:
As we move on to solid foods, here’s a crumpled sample one-year-old’s lunch menu from Dr. Glauberman, our overprotective pediatrician:
1/2 C green vegetables
1/4 C yellow vegetables
3 tsp. organic 1% milk
1/2 whole grain rice cake w/2/3 tsp. almond butter
I particularly love the painstaking distinction between the two colors of vegetables. That really makes me laugh.
And look, here are the many lost to-do lists of yore. I ponder one made on the back of a Wells Fargo deposit envelope. It reads:
Wash. Mut.
Frst cupcks.
LA WEEKLY ART.
CIOFFI!!!
Restaurant reservations for 4, call accountant, collect tax receipts, 2003???
Acc. #1034324332
Frsdrggb???
How interesting! At some point it appears I was making to-do lists in cuneiform, literally channeling Armenian. Boy, when I don’t sleep!
And here’s a coffee-stained mini-parachute from Gymboree. Gymboree! How I came to hate that parachute.
I remember the time when Hannah was fifteen months old and I was eight months pregnant with Number Two. Even though I was pushing my usual 185 pounds, I was feeling unusually lithe and feline that day in the hip black maternity tent and leggings a (childless) girlfriend had given me. It was the NEW maternity wear: Just because you’re almost 200 pounds and have four chins doesn’t mean you should feel, God forbid…fat!
And lo and behold, standing next to me that day in Gymboree class was Cute Baseball Cap Dad. I’m enjoying chatting with him as we parents gather in a circle and begin whooshing the parachute up and down over our screaming children, up and down. The song involves quite a bit of squatting and rising. I remind you I am 185 pounds, sweating a bit in my black maternity tent. I’ve been trying to eat a lot of kale this second pregnancy, and quite frankly…
I fart.
It is almost…silent, but in fact, very deadly. Let’s put it this way: It is kale-y.
In alarm, I flap the parachute airily, breezily, a little more vigorously than usual, attempting to casually flap away the odor. And it looks like I have succeeded. No children are actually falling over dead under the parachute.
But my scheme has clearly backfired, or sidefired…because a wave of kale fart now hits, to my right, Cute Baseball Cap Dad. He starts, first in surprise, then horror, then even amazement, exclaiming:
“Whoa! They’re gettin’ busy in there!”
And I betray the children. I sell them out, saying, “Boy, are they!”
Ha-ha-ha! All my pregnancies…good times. Good times.
But now look at this.
Here is a green flier from our preschool, Valley Co-Op, announcing a program for confused Los Angeles parents called “Into Kindergarten”: ALL YOUR QUESTIONS ABOUT LOS ANGELES SCHOOLS ANSWERED, OPTIONS DISCUSSED. Whoa. The fact that this flier is still on the front passenger seat, actually kind of stuck to it, is sure indication that this is not on my husband’s radar. The sign-up deadline was of course one month ago, NO EXCEPTIONS, the seminar is tonight, and the organizer is Valley Co-Op Preschool über-mom Joan Archer.
Okay! Joan.
I know who Joan is.
Checks go to Joan. Canned food goes to Joan. Joan’s name is at the top of every committee list. Joan is at the trunk of every phone tree: All the leaves and branches spread out from Joan.
Which is to say, in our household, phone calls from Joan have tended to go…unreturned. Why? Because like an ever-renewable resource, Joan will simply call again, two, three times. She’ll leave a reminder note in your child’s cubby, which you will ignore. The next morning, Joan will literally pin a note to your child. At long last, Joan will simply throw up her hands and PAY the $1.75 for the fire station field trip, and you will see the amount added to your monthly bill with a note, “Please reimburse!” Smiley face. “Thank you, Joan.”
But now the tables have turned and I am seeking her. Joan will be delighted.
I arrive early, at the preschool, to pick up The Squid and Hannah.
And as usual, Joan is easy to locate. She is sitting right here in the front hallway, with her chestnut pageboy haircut and cheerful, slightly funky denim dress, behind a card table bearing the banner SPRING FUND-RAISING JAMBOREE.
Which may or may not have anything to do with many tiny little jams. For years I have successfully blocked any Spring Fund-Raising Jamboree details from my mind. I’m the sort of mother who will flee a “Jamboree”-infected area, preferring to simply fling a check out the window of my speeding-away car. Of course, you miss a lot of pertinent kindergarten information that way—which I now see.
Before Joan Archer, there is a line. It is not about the Spring Fund-Raising Jamboree.
Accosting Joan now is a blond springy-haired mother whose torso seems literally caved over in anxiety.
“But our moms’ group, the Booby Club, in Sherman Oaks…We HAVE to get in to ‘Into Kindergarten’ tonight!”
She goes into a cresting, keening monologue. Something about the Magnolia K–8 charter span school having not made its funding goals, so it will not open until the following year, leaving the entire Sherman Oaks Booby Club up a creek without a paddle!
While Joan listens, herself in a bit of a glaze, she tears tickets and drops them into a basket. I notice that her hands are constantly in motion, like two hummingbirds building a nest.
Joan finally gets a tired word in.
“It’s just that we’re so overbooked. There’s a waiting list of seventeen. The room only holds thirty. And now you say there are TWELVE OF YOU??????”
Okay. It’s clear I can’t just rip the Band-Aid off and invite myself to “Into Kindergarten.” To get into the workshop tonight, I’m going to have to move to Plan B—to bend Joan backward, lift her denim dress up, and blow her in the back of her Honda min
ivan.
But no. Even better idea. Crafty me, I notice the Spring Fund-Raising Jamboree committee meeting is at six-thirty and “Into Kindergarten” is at seven-thirty…in the very same room.
I wait out the other hysterical mothers very patiently, with extreme good humor, and when I get to the front, I say, with a big smile:
“Hey, Joan! I’m just leaving twenty dollars for our two Spring Fund-Raising Jamboree tickets and—Hey, is there still room to volunteer on the committee? The fund-raising committee! Love to be on that!”
“YOU want to be on the committee?” Joan’s glazed look turns into one of incredulity.
Feeling a little stung to be found out, here I actually attempt to rewrite—or at least re-interpret—my conspicuously non-committee-volunteering-mother history, all in one mangled run-on sentence. I fabricate something about a big writing deadline I have had, for several years, which all at once I am abruptly clear of, and so of course now will return to my original plan of TOTAL CO-OP PRESCHOOL INVOLVEMENT. I also make a mental note that if the whole time commitment thing gets too out of control, my youngest can always develop a sudden ear infection. That’s the beauty of the shape-shifting work/mother balance. (Is that a running pant? Is that a pajama pant? Who knows?)
“You sure you don’t have twelve people you want to get into ‘Into Kindergarten’?” Joan asks, weary, wry.
“Absolutely not!” I trill. “Kindergarten—we’re good! And Joan? Can I help you clip those tickets? Do you need a hand?”
“You know what? I do. Here…” she adds, turning.
And as she bends over behind the table, I see two matching blue Tupperwares labeled “Into Kindergarten” holding perfect accordions of manila folders whose colored tabs read “Elementary School,” “Middle School,” “High School,” “Charters,” “Magnets,” and is that…the UC System? UCLA? She can foresee all the way up to UCLA?
Unlike the volcano that is my husband’s computer pile, Joan’s files are beautifully, stunningly organized.
Mother on Fire: A True Motherf%#$@ Story About Parenting! Page 4