“Where are we going?” my little one asked, lips trembling.
“We are going to ride some Icelandic ponies!” I answered with fake excitement.
“I don’t want to ride a pony!” she pressed.
“Oh, but you’ve never ridden an Icelandic pony!” I don’t even know what I meant by that.
We finally found the barn and makeshift ski shed nestled into a moss-covered cliff. There was a tiny, fenced-in rink with about twenty ponies that had long wispy bangs and melancholic eyes. They looked like a brooding Irish rock band. They were caked in mud and horse poop from days of rain. We couldn’t find the manager or anyone in charge. A small girl with white curls wearing an unkempt nightgown and mismatched boots of different sizes pounded through some puddles and disappeared up into the house. It felt like the creepy opening of an avant-garde Danish horror film.
Finally two teenagers (ginger-haired twins) appeared from a secret door in the barn and slowly began to ready the horses. And by “ready,” I mean they threw on the saddles, barely tightening the belts around the girth. My younger, sensing it was not the safest environment, clutched my hand and begged us to forgo the experience. She was confused as to why we never pushed her to ride horses in the States and yet, in a foreign country with no hospital for miles and the stench of wet cement and death surrounding us, we were forcing her. I kept repeating, “Icelandic ponies?” as if somehow that would trick her into optimism.
Unsafely perched on the ponies, we started our trail ride, surrounded by a panoramic view of hills and valleys. I imagined a row of fiery red-haired Vikings standing atop one of the hills chewing on reindeer limbs and laughing at the ridiculous tourists trudging through the muck. I rode my horse at the rear in case I needed to go all True Grit on the situation. My children kept turning around and giving me the “When will this end?” look. When we had done a tortoiselike loop and commenced our clippety clop back to the eerie barn, my pony started to get antsy and rebel. She—her name was Hilda—started bucking and snorting, her eyes fixated on the sloppy corral she called home. And then off she went. A full-on gallop up the hill. Small stones were flying. And behind me I heard the familiar screams of terror. When I turned I saw my family racing behind me. Clearly, my horse was the leader, the Barbara Walters of the herd. There were no seat belts, so we clutched the tufts of horse hair next to the reins and held on for dear life.
We retreated to our car and began our long drive back to the hotel. We all smelled of horse, manure, and fear. I assumed that was the last pony ride for this family. And that includes carousels.
The next morning we lapped up our grain-filled porridge in anticipation of the day ahead. The girls pleaded to rest in the room and try to FaceTime their friends in New York. They had no idea what cultural ordeal lay ahead of them.
“Are you guys excited to climb a glacier?” my husband asked. It was as if he said, “Are you guys excited to do some math homework?”
Once again, we piled into the Volvo with our down coats, hats, and tears. As a parent I put on a stoic face of wonder as we neared the ragged peaks. “This is going to be amazing,” I faked. I loved the idea of it, I just wasn’t sure my body was prepared for it.
Our guide was an Icelandic teenager with long hair parted on the side just above his left ear. A look my older brother pioneered in the ’70s with his garage band. Frank (pronounced Frunk) was as excited about taking us up the glacier as my then hysterical little one was to being there. The tears were worse than when she had eight teeth extracted.
And then came the crescendo of indignation as my rail-thin children were handed crampons (boots with metal teeth) and ice picks. Keep in mind: the metal ice picks were the same size they were. “What are these for?” The question was delivered with a mixture of horror and disdain.
“To chip the ice,” my husband rationally answered.
“For cocktail hour,” I said, trying to defuse the situation. It had the opposite effect.
We hiked straight up, stumbled over chipped boulders, and gasped for breath. We finally made it to the peak of the ice-and-snow-covered glacier a couple of hours later. It was not a hike; for me, it was a battle for self-preservation. My children rallied (they had no choice), but if we’d been the von Trapp family, we’d be dead. And I would have ditched that guitar ten minutes in. Frank thought it pertinent to stop every few yards and regale us with some glacier story barely understandable through his accent. One story was about a shepherd leading his sheep through the glacier to reach the grassier knolls on the other side. One of the sheep fell in a crevice and when the shepherd tried to save him, he too fell into the hole. Just as the shepherd was about to eat the sheep, he realized that the sheep had burrowed himself in the ice and built a tunnel, which led them to freedom. The shepherd and the sheep made it to the village, and in celebration of the sheep saving the shepherd’s life, the shepherd cooked the sheep for the whole village to enjoy. Needless to say, my youngest burst into a fresh bout of tears. A few hours later Frank told us another tale of a father and his baby trapped in an ice cave; the father was able to save his baby by cutting off his own nipple and allowing the blood to nourish the baby. “Zat is why allza min in Iceland haff only one nipple!” I told Frank he should write children’s books.
My children couldn’t peel off their crampons fast enough when we reached the lava-filled parking area. I had never seen them so infuriated. Well, maybe the one time I forgot to DVR Teen Beach Movie.
The doors slammed and, in silence, we started the drive back to the hotel. The kids were not interested in the crashing waterfalls or bucolic pastures of goats. They were too filled with rage. “Are you guys excited about salmon fishing tomorrow?” my husband asked at the exact wrong time. At least with hiking the glacier, there was movement. I didn’t quite know how to sell standing in a frigid river in a rubber suit for hours waiting for a fish to take the lure.
And then it came. The phone call from my agent.
I could be on the space shuttle, in a cave held captive by Islamic fundamentalists, or in a fjord in Iceland and my Hollywood agent would be able to intercept any Microsoft cloud and find me.
As always he cut to the chase: “Production had to move dates, they need you on set tomorrow.”
I laughed out loud. “Um, I’m in Iceland on a glacier?”
He replied without missing a beat. “Yeah, I told them that. Can you be on set tomorrow?”
I wanted to do the movie, but more important, I wanted out of Iceland. “Absolutely, I’ll figure out a way.” I had a fleeting vision of myself in the makeup trailer, giggling and sipping tea with Nicole Kidman while my family hunkered down to another plate of poached fish in Reykjavik.
I turned to my husband. “I have to go back. They had to flip days around because of the weather and they want me on set tomorrow.”
And before my husband could even process what I had said, my girls, in unison, screamed, “Take us with you!” I had secretly relished the idea of my husband fumbling to hook flies on their poles. I, of course, would be curled up on Icelandic Air watching Grown Ups 2.
But no such luck. When Mommy is taken out of the equation, it causes fragmentation within the ecosystem and the resistance becomes weak.
Somewhere above Nova Scotia I looked over at my gleeful children in their faux leather airplane seats flipping through SkyMall magazine and taking One Direction quizzes. They turned to me and beamed. They will remember the reckless canter on the pony, struggling not to slip off a glacier, and the gamey taste of venison, but most important, they will remember that when they were teetering perilously on the brink of misery, their mother rescued them.
You can’t say that about the concierge at the Hyatt in Cancun.
CHAPTER 12
Awfully Crabby
I love crabs. Not the pubic lice or pets, but crustaceans. Hunting them, and then steaming the catch in Old Bay seasoning, cracking their shells with wooden hammers and picking out the minuscule bits of meat. People underestimate th
e skill involved in tossing a piece of string tied to a chicken wing with precision into the ocean or bay. And even once you perfect the hurl, interpreting the subtle tugs of a hungry sea spider and pulling it from the water is a whole other degree of difficulty. It’s a sport, yes, a sport of endurance. I can wade in the briny surf for six hours without food or water. Crabbing offers me an adrenaline rush I don’t find in any other area of my life. A primal, Darwinist mano a mano tug-of-war with a prehistoric creature with claws—and it’s not a video game! Others get their endorphins pumped by gambling, shoplifting, or opioids. For me, it’s the thrill of my own personal Deadliest Catch, but without cameras or battling forty-foot waves in the Bering Sea. I crab from the shore, in a bathing suit, wading boots, a cooler stocked with barbecue-flavored potato chips and a couple of Snapple lemonades.
When my kids were babies, they would sit under a beach umbrella on a quilt, wearing floppy hats and gnawing on apple slices while watching Mommy yank crabs out of the brackish water and screaming in delight when I got two in one net.
One afternoon last summer I decided to up my game and relinquish the chicken and string, relying exclusively on my proficient eyes and my weapon (a large net used for skimming leaves off a swimming pool) to comb for crabs. The sun was at peak strength and the aquatic decapods were scrambling for shade within the crevasses of the jetty. My younger daughter was content sitting on the sand in her little bikini and humming Katy Perry songs to bits of barnacles and whelk shells.
I suddenly spotted a large blue crab trying to scuttle underneath a rock about three feet deep in the water. As he tucked in his claws, I methodically raised my net. My face was motionless, but my eyes aflame. I was as focused as a lurcher (an Irish dog used for poaching game) to the flash of a fox’s tail. And then, as I tilted a few inches forward, I lost my balance and slipped.
My body scraped down the side of an algae-covered rock. I felt my feet hit the sandy ocean bed. I quickly inspected my arms for any collateral damage, but saw only a few scrapes on my left palm. And then I looked down. There was a bloody waterfall running down my leg. I located the source: my shin had an eight-inch gash. As I stared at the chunk of white bone sticking out like an ivory piano key, I felt nothing; therefore the leg couldn’t have been mine, right? The blood gushing from my leg began to color the water. The disgusting bay water filled with Canadian goose poop and dead quahogs. It’s amazing how sluggishly the mind works when it’s not willing to confront its own horrors. It took me thirty drowsy seconds for my leg to inform my brain that I was injured, that there was a piece of my bone floating in the bay, and that I probably needed medical assistance. It’s the same passive reaction I imagine people whose limbs have been bitten off by sharks experience. You’re numb and in shock and hope that you’re watching a PBS documentary about somebody else’s drama. And if you wait a few more delirious moments, you’ll realize it was a hallucination, your leg is fine or your arm is still there, it was just a big black shadow in the water.
I looked over at my daughter who was belting out “California Girls,” strutting on her seaweed stage. I felt light-headed. Thank the good lord our babysitter, Cherie, had just shown up with sandwiches. I say that because I’d probably still be in the bay now, a corpse in tattered J.Crew shorts flapping in the wind like a skeleton in the Pirates of the Caribbean ride (the irony being that I’d be covered in crabs). “Cherie! Cherie!” I screamed. She was used to equating my excitement with shoe sales and the one time I fixed the garbage disposal.
“You get a big one?” she yelled back.
I simply raised my gory limb, which led her to dive into the surf. Cherie hoisted me to the shore like a superhero; I’ll never know how, she is half my size. I could hear her heaving breaths and closed my eyes against the harsh sunlight. And then everything went fuzzy and I blacked out. When I awoke, my daughter was crying and shaking, and some women from a nearby house were tying a tourniquet of checkered napkins around my leg. They raised me up like a casualty of battle and carried me to our Tahoe, which was parked nearby.
In the backseat, my daughter held my hand. And then a strong maternal rush overcame me and I focused on the emotional toll this episode would have on her and not the throbbing pain of my largest appendage. “It’s nothing but a scratch, sweetie!” I lied. “It’s nothing, I’m going to be fine. What movie should we see tonight?”
She looked at me as if to say, “You think I’m an idiot? Don’t try to distract me; you think I want a one-legged mother?”
When we arrived at the emergency room, I was pushed, at a snail’s pace, into the building in a wheelchair. I had envisioned people flying to get out of the way as fourteen doctors and nurses ran on either side of a gurney, holding my hand and screaming, “Stat.” The staff being played by the cast of the nineties hit ER. But no, I was passed off at the administration desk to a woman who looked like Julianna Margulies if Julianna Margulies ate only pies and drank only lager. “Insurance card,” was all she said as she mechanically extended her hand. There was no, “I see that you’re covered in blood, in a great amount of pain, and about to vomit . . . how can we help?”
I filled out a clipboard of forms. Did I have to enter the hospital carrying my own leg to rouse any concern? At that point I was so delirious, I think I may have charged my hospital stay to an old boyfriend.
I was told to wait. Okay, fine. I sat in the sterile waiting room with Better Homes and Gardens magazines from 2001, blood-soaked napkins knotted around my leg, and a hysterical eight-year-old. Good plan. At one point a very bored woman (whose daughter had a sprained ankle and was getting X-rays) turned to me and said, “I think you’re so funny! What are you working on now?” On what planet, looking at the state I was in, was that question appropriate? Of course, I not only answered her but also launched into my top-ten favorite movies and why, in my opinion, Sly Stallone’s comedic chops are always overlooked.
A nurse came over—with a painkiller, I prayed—and asked if someone could please remove my daughter. I suppose a shrieking little girl in a blood-spattered bikini was unsettling for people doing crossword puzzles and sipping cold coffee. Cherie covered her in an old sweatshirt and drove her home.
I was taken into the heart of the ER with its stretch of beds divided only by sheets. As I lay on my cot, I counted the pockmarks on the stucco ceiling and listened to the groaning woman next to me. I shuddered to think what her diagnosis was. All I knew was that it involved salad tongs.
And like a game show host, the sheet was whisked open and a young doctor appeared. “Hi! I’m Dr. Cole!” Dr. Cole looked like one of my kids’ camp counselors. His hair was a little long and unkempt and he was too tan to be an ER doc. He inspected my slash and swiftly responded, “Okay, well, I’m going to inject a Novocain-type substance into the wound and after about thirty minutes stitch it up!”
I sat straight up. “You’re going to stick a needle in my leg?”
He nodded.
I blacked out again.
An hour later, once again, the sheet was wrenched open in a swift and terrifying manner. My friend Holly, who lived nearby, had come to the hospital to check on the severity of things after I texted her a photo of my wound. “Jesus Christ!” she shrieked when she saw it in the flesh (yes, pun intended).
I reiterated the plan as relayed to me by Dr. Dude. “No!” she said emphatically. “You need a plastic surgeon.”
I smiled. “Oh, I don’t care what the scar looks like. I just want them to sew it up so I can get out of here!”
Holly threw down her tangerine Hermès bag. “You’re not going anywhere until we’ve seen a plastic surgeon!”
I was relieved to have someone take charge. At that point, if someone had suggested euthanasia, I would have agreed.
The plastic surgeon was a hearty man who had just pulled an all-nighter stitching up a chain saw accident. He took one glance at my leg and gasped. “Damn, this ain’t no sew-it-up job. I’m putting you under general anesthesia, power-washing the wound,
and then stapling it up.” I didn’t care to know what power washing was, but the words “general anesthesia” made me so elated. Put me under, knock me out, and so long, suckers!
The plastic surgeon told me later that as they wheeled me into the OR I looked up at him in my purple haze and shower cap and said, “Since I’m already going to be under, how about you do the boobs too?”
I woke up with a calm and harmonious outlook. My leg was bandaged up and my IV was still dripping with joy juice. It was all over. Holly was tapping away on her BlackBerry and talking on her earphone about the size of pizza ovens. I realized I loved general anesthesia. And wondered why I’m not put under for more things, like parents’ night at middle school or anything that involves camping outdoors.
I was also relieved to see that my leg was still attached to my torso. I think I had a twilight night-terror that I had gangrene and Alan Alda had to amputate it.
I don’t recall the logistics, but I ended up in the guest room at Holly’s house. My leg was propped up on pillows and a slew of prescription vials were spilling over the bedside table. The curtains were drawn. It was quiet but for the distant giggles of children jumping in the pool. I hoped my daughter had washed the blood and visuals out of her memory. Judging from the trash can full of string cheese and candy wrappers, she seemed to be healing fast.
Happily Ali After: And Other Fairly True Tales Page 8