She later checked on me, her hand over her eyes on the off chance the laceration was still open. “I’m fine, sweetie,” I purred. “See? It’s all bandaged up!” She kept her distance in case it was contagious. Just before her long wispy braids disappeared out the door, she whispered, “Well, Mommy, you probably got a chapter for your book out of this!”
“If nothing else, a low-budget horror film, sweetie.”
As I lay back on my pillow, relieved my child would not be scarred from the aquatic ordeal, I realized an unexpected perk: I had been treated to a mini vacation. Suddenly, there were people gathering around to make me sandwiches and entertain my girls. I no longer had to drive kids to camp, recycle cans, or even return phone calls. Now, I’m not promoting a self-inflicted injury and trip to the ER, but how many of you can say that you got to watch all five seasons of Breaking Bad, uninterrupted, on Percocet?
Exactly.
CHAPTER 13
Happily Ali After
My childhood was spent taking National Gallery tours, day trips to Monticello, and summers at the re-created seventeenth-century farming village in Plymouth Harbor. We never took a family trip to Disneyland, Disney World, Busch Gardens, or any of the massive complexes that offer sausages the size of Buicks and rides with names like the Terminator and Tower of Terror. I missed integral childhood experiences like watching my vomit fly backward on a ride that swoops in upside-down loops. That said, I do know how to churn butter and am a skilled farrier (a person specializing in the preparation and fitting of a metal horseshoe). I was too busy climbing Mayan temples in 100-degree heat while my friends snapped photos at faux safari game parks, sucking on cherry snow cones. And, as with most things, when you’re deprived of them as a child, you yearn for them even more as an adult. My personal list of forbidden fruit includes Disneyland, TV, and prom (I went to an all-girls school). Secretly I hope that every time we go to a bar mitzvah my husband will hand me a corsage.
Then I became a mother. Maybe it was the food I consumed while I was pregnant, but my daughters were born with Princess Barbie blood. They would scamper through the aisles of Target in a frenzy, clutching all the princess paraphernalia they could carry to the oversize red cart. All I wanted was several hundred gallons of laundry detergent and a few bras. I would explain to them that by next week the Ariel doll’s head would be another casualty to a mysterious toilet accident, and that we already had four Cinderella dresses. They didn’t care; they wanted to consume every Jasmine multivitamin; pair of plastic Sleeping Beauty slippers; and 100 percent polyester, highly flammable Belle nightgown they could get their sticky little hands on. I completely indulged it because I didn’t want to raise them Amish and the closest I ever got to dressing up as a Disney princess was when my grandma sewed me a Little Bo Peep costume for Halloween. I looked like a German beer wench during Oktoberfest. I even let my younger daughter wear a Tinkerbell nightshirt to school so often the material finally disintegrated into a ball of neon green lint.
When my elder daughter was turning six, I had the ingenious idea of throwing a Little Mermaid birthday party. Having patted myself on the back all the way to the mall party store, I was shocked upon my arrival to discover an entire room dedicated to Ariel gizmos. I was dumbfounded to learn that other people had thought of a Little Mermaid party before me! (I was a naive mom, I also believed I invented breastfeeding.) I was obsessed with my under-the-sea-themed celebration; in my dreams I fantasized about blue and teal streamers and gummy fish and dried starfish glue-gunned to the wall. My daughter pleaded for a sheet cake from Costco, but I prefer butter cream made from butter and not lard. No offense, Costco, you know you are my go-to for chicken nuggets and Q-tips. And catch me on a particularly hormonal day and I’ll be facedown in a Costco mango cheesecake.
I constructed an enormous three-tiered cake from scratch, and by scratch I mean six boxes of Duncan Hines yellow cake mix. It was a masterpiece of white-and-turquoise wavy frosting, green licorice seaweed, and red Swedish fish and Haribo sour octopi. It should have been preserved in the Smithsonian instead of ravaged by a pack of six-year-olds.
I was hell-bent on throwing a blowout that the kids would remember well, at least until they were seven. I had witnessed a magician a few weeks earlier at another kid’s birthday party. The illusionist didn’t wear a tuxedo or a black top hat, just jeans and a Jim Morrison T-shirt. I had never met a cocky magician before. He told me Liev Schreiber was considering playing him in a movie about his life. Yeah, me too, buddy, Julianne Moore is chomping at the bit for her start date on the Ali Wentworth biopic. Chaos ensued when the magician made the mommy of the birthday boy disappear, which resulted in uncontrollable panic and a real-life rendition of Lord of the Flies. I found the mommy hiding in the coat closet and forced her to dump her glass of Diet Coke and bourbon and prove to the children she was alive and safe.
I considered dressing up as a mermaid. Look, I’m no Daryl Hannah, but I had a few old bikini tops, and how arduous would it be to sew on a shimmery fishtail to a pair of maternity jeans (yes, I wore them for a while after giving birth)? But kids always cringe when parents dress up; do you know how many of my mom friends are “sexy cats” every Halloween? A headband with ears and black lace lingerie is not a costume unless you’re really turning tricks for treats. I perused all two of the celebrity look-alike party companies in Washington, D.C. It wasn’t Hollywood, so the choices were a little rough. I’ll put it to you this way: the Marilyn Monroe was Algerian. I finally settled on a Dora the Explorer, real name Sandra Schlemmer, who claimed she had some mermaid gear.
Sandra was forty-five minutes late to the party. I had already repurposed the piñata with duct tape twice to occupy the little darlings, who were anticipating the surprise guest. She arrived in a fluorescent orange wig, which was slightly askew, exposing a chunk of ratty auburn hair on one side. She had on no makeup and carried her tail (a tail that had seen a lot of storms and shipwrecks). As she changed in my bedroom, I continued escorting Sleeping Beauties, who weren’t completely potty trained, to the bathroom and helping a little boy with a bloody nose from the way too bouncy inflatable castle.
When Sandra finally entered the garden, she was barefoot with chipped black nail polish, and a tattoo of a skull with a snake coming out of its mouth was clearly visible on her lower back. I handed her some water; I figured that being half fish, she’d be parched. And then I became Maria from Sesame Street, clapping my hands and in a singsongy voice calling, “Can all the children please gather round!” They plopped on the grass holding melted string cheese and with fruit-punch-stained mouths and waited. We all waited. Sandra just kept saying hi and cocking her head from side to side repeatedly. Why wasn’t she singing? Twirling her hair with a fork? Didn’t she have a little puppet friend who was a mackerel? Sandra did answer questions like where she went to college and if she was a boy or a girl. And then I did something more typically associated with a menopausal meltdown or an antidepressant cocktail gone wrong: I ran upstairs and started to cry. And not because I was concerned that the mermaid did not meet my daughter’s expectations, but that she didn’t meet mine! I wanted Ariel to come to my birthday party. I wanted Ariel to sing while animated crabs in a mariachi band played around her head.
My daughter didn’t care. Kids are more simplistic than we and the whole consumer world; give them credit for that. The children at the party would have been happy running around in circles looking for a hidden stick. But I had projected this stunted fantasy from my own childhood. I had believed it was satisfied years earlier at our wedding, which also featured an ocean-themed cake with blue frosting (just without the gummy octopi). But I guess it had not.
Before Sandra left, I gave her a huge tip, a ziplock bag of leftovers, and hugged her in a way that said, “Dear God, girl, get some help!”
A couple of years later, we took our daughters to Orlando during spring break to see killer whales do flips, eat nachos at the NASCAR café, and meet a real-live princess. Really, a gift
for all of us. And when we told them we were having lunch in Cinderella’s castle? They screamed so ecstatically the younger one projectile-vomited all over the minivan.
It was 100 degrees in the shade and the all-you-can-eat castle special was meat loaf and gravy. Our busboy was dressed as Prince Charming (his name tag read DIRK) and he was about as charming as ringworm. His only communication was not about an invitation to the ball, but “We ain’t got no Sprite, machine’s broke.” Still, I felt it was important my daughters knew that they didn’t need to rely on a guy to liberate them from an evil spell and that even Prince Charming gets acne.
We made our way through the sea of fanny packs and denim culottes to the Snow White ride. All of us climbed into a wooden boat that was electronically towed through a dark tunnel that smelled like a mildewed basement. There were the adorable mechanical dwarves hi ho hi hoing off to work carrying mallets and pickaxes, but when we turned a corner things became less than fairy tale. Suddenly, a papier-mâché wicked queen holding an apple bolted out of the wall. My children shrieked. Yes, everyone screams at that moment of the ride, but my daughters reacted the way they do when the nurse informs them that she has to take blood. “Get me out of here! Mommy, GET ME OUT OF HERE!” My younger daughter stood up and started rocking the boat until we nearly capsized. I grabbed her and held her tightly on my lap using both arms and legs, trying to distract her by pointing out the more soothing elements of the ride, like the wooden owls and stuffed fawns with red eyes. Her screams echoed so loud, I’m sure they could hear it over at the Alice in Wonderland spinning cups. I succumbed to the fact that we would quite literally have to ride it out.
And then we saw the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. The boat hadn’t come to a complete stop before my children leaped into the arms of the Disney guides. Mind you, not our guides, just the closest people to safety. Maybe we should have taken the Sleeping Beauty ride—I assume you just climb onto a Posturepedic bed and nap? Perhaps in my infantile haste I jumped the gun a little by taking my kids when they were too young. Although my elder daughter does remember the squirrel we met in the parking lot with gum stuck to his ear.
Five years later, my dream came true again! We took another trip to Disney World! My kids were older and my legs were in better shape. I had my picture taken with all the princesses at the character breakfast, rode Splash Mountain three times, scored high on the Buzz Lightyear ride, and kept my eyes open the whole time in the Haunted House. I have to admit, Space Mountain made me nauseated and my upper arms tingled, but Avalanche was awesome and you can never do the Peter Pan ride enough times. I purchased some adult Mulan slippers, a giant Mickey Mouse head made out of Rice Krispie treats, and the whole set of Frozen dinnerware. Oh, my kids? They were off playing golf . . .
CHAPTER 14
For You, My Pet
The only thing my younger daughter wanted when she turned seven was a guinea pig. We offered bejeweled Uggs, an iPod, even the financial backing for her mayoral campaign in New York. Anything but a guinea pig. It seemed unfair that we would pay for a bi-level habitat (with organic vegetables and dried-apple hanging toys) for a rodent whose relatives I exterminate monthly by calling Bob’s Pest Control. If I see a rat on the tracks of the uptown 6, I scream like Jack Nicholson just whacked an ax through my door. But a rodent I should name Bubbles, dress in American Girl doll clothes, and cuddle with?
My daughter was determined.
“We have two boisterous dogs who thrive on scent and the massacre of small creatures,” I pleaded.
She wasn’t swayed. “I’ll keep it in my room.”
We hit her with questions, like a press conference after a political scandal.
“Who is going to feed him?”
Without even looking up: “I am. Of course.”
“What happens when we go on vacation?”
She sighed. “My friend Darius has his grandma take his guinea pig, Twerk, when he goes away.”
I could not imagine FedExing our furry family member to my mother in Florida whenever we left town, mostly because I know she would refuse to sign for it. But more important, she’d squash it with the phone book.
When my little girl was even younger, she begged for a chinchilla. She excitedly called my husband to tell him she’d decided on her dream pet and, instead, got an intern, a twenty-year-old who thought breaking news was Britney Spears’s fragrance launch. “I want a chinchilla” (said with a slight toddler lisp), my daughter announced.
“Oh, that’s so great!” said the intern, who was simultaneously perusing a fashion blog. “But you don’t want just one, it takes like two hundred for a coat.”
My daughter is now a vegan.
We finally relented on the guinea pig, but not because we caved on the idea of fulfilling our child’s dream of caring for another living creature and all the responsibility that goes with it—no, we finally said yes because her birthday was fast approaching and we couldn’t come up with a better gift idea.
So she was given a guinea pig. She could choose amongst the millions of adoptable, rescue guinea hogs in the tristate area. She read the pet adoption section of the New York Post, spread the word at school, and searched pet rescue sites for hours. One afternoon, while I was reaching for my stash of chocolate chip cookies in the closet, I heard a shriek of “Mommy” that was more urgent than the usual “I need socks.” She had found the guinea pig she wanted. Her. Him. Well, THEM. My daughter couldn’t fall for a tiny little white snowball of a pet; no, she settled on two obese guinea pigs named Archie and Lenny.
“Those are two guinea pigs. We said one!” I pointed out, hands on my hips like a real parent.
“Mommy, they can’t be separated. They are life partners.”
Suddenly my politics were being challenged. She looked at me with her beatific face and ethereal eyes and the next thing I knew I was talking to American Airlines about flying Archie and Lenny from Pittsburgh to New York. Coach.
Pets are part of childhood. Their lives and deaths define the emotional beings of those adults the pet-owning children will grow up to be. Marilyn Monroe once said, “Dogs never bite me, just humans.” As a mother, I remember all the Marley and Me episodes in my own life and want them for my children.
I grew up with myriad pets. Except snakes. We lived in D.C. and knew too many human ones. My older sister, Sissy, managed white mice because my mother wanted something small and contained. At the time, Sissy was reading Stuart Little and assumed her precious Cavia porcellus would wear Scottish bonnets and drive miniature red sports cars. The two beady-, red-eyed vermin lived in a small plastic container where they relentlessly scratched at the lid, exposing their pink bellies and utter desperation. They were eventually moved to her trash can because they kept procreating at a rapid pace. Female mice can have up to ten litters (about six in each litter) a year, so do that math! The trash cans got bigger as generations of white mice were birthed before our eyes. One day after school we returned to a toppled trash can. We searched for them for hours, and were haunted by their high-pitched squeaking at night. But they were never seen again. I’m pretty sure we moved not because my parents wanted to downsize, but because they were overwhelmed by the infestation and it was the only alternative.
My brother John was partial to the basset hound. When he was twelve he was allowed to choose any breed of dog he wanted and the symbol of Hush Puppy, the premier footwear of the decade, was the winner. Aside from the dwarfism, ear mites, spine injuries, and yeast infections, Josephine was the perfect dog. We could hang from her pendant ears without incident and her forlorn eyes always ensured much petting and attention. Josephine was slovenly; her belly brushed across the marble floor when she walked from room to room. And her barking resembled the sound track to any 1970s prison-break film. When Josephine was a couple of years old, she took a dark turn toward canine juvenile delinquency. She decided that Kibbles ’n Bits was not going to cut it anymore and began hanging outside our local Safeway for a bigger score.
Josie would enter the store like any housewife doing errands, bypass produce and the sale on instant soup, and make a beeline for the meat department. There, she would sniff out a choice cut of New York strip steak (or, occasionally, a pork loin), bite down, and carry the package back out the door and into the parking lot, where she would consume it delicately and unrushed. She was known as the smash-and-grab pooch. And if that were not enough, after her feast she would be so bloated and fatigued that she would stagger onto Massachusetts Avenue, one of the busiest and most congested streets in D.C., and curl up for an afternoon snooze. Traffic would halt, people would exit their cars blustering, and if anyone tried to move her by pulling her tail or gently kicking her belly, she would growl and send the terrorized person back into their Acura. These jaunts became as frequent as the D.C. police’s arrest threats. Sadly, the day came when Josephine was forced by the city of Washington, D.C., to move outside the district borders. We were told she was moved to a free-range felon farm. Mutts behind Bars. Somewhere sweet Josie is some dingo’s bitch.
When I was twelve and my older siblings were sent to boarding school (another free-range felon farm), it was finally my turn to choose a pet. I took the task very seriously and methodically scoured the public library for pet encyclopedias and almanacs that I would drag many blocks home. My kids don’t know how lucky they are to have Google. I would lie in my bed with a flashlight and try to imagine myself with an Irish setter, a French bulldog, or a spider monkey. I finally chose a dachshund. And have been an avid dackel lover ever since. I share this adoration with other famous dachshund owners—John F. Kennedy, Picasso, Andy Warhol, Jack Ruby, Abraham Lincoln, the Olsen twins, and David Hasselhoff. But don’t hold that against the breed.
Happily Ali After: And Other Fairly True Tales Page 9