The original silver-toned handles were ripped off or smashed, the framework was split apart and busted, the beautiful oak was gouged with deep scratches from the shoulder’s gravel, and grass protruded from the cracked woodwork like fanciful decorations.
I was too shocked to cry. Most people would have cut their losses and abandoned the wreck on the side of the road. But with amazing optimism, my husband suggested we try to load the remains back into the truck.
In a matter of seconds, my chagrin over the bookcase turned to true terror as car after car whizzed within inches of my husband as we wrestled with the wreckage. Together, we struggled to hold the heavy piece together while lifting it on the slippery slope. There was the distinct possibility of me falling back onto the huge chunks of glass or my husband getting hit by a car. Using every muscle in our bodies, we finally maneuvered our wreck back into the truck.
Standing on the fender to help resecure the behemoth, I suddenly heard peals of gut-busting laughter. I glanced in the truck’s open window to see if we’d left the radio on in our hurry to retrieve the bookcase, but everything was off. Baffled, I scanned the horizon, and my eyes caught sight of the farmhouse we had passed earlier about one hundred yards away. There in the driveway stood three big burly men beside their ATVs, looking our way and laughing their heads off. Even with the roar of the wind, I could hear their boisterous belly laughs, which continued for the duration of our struggles.
It was like a laugh track from an old TV show that just wouldn’t turn off.
Driving at a snail’s pace, we made the precarious journey home. My new fear was that the shredded remains would somehow escape the ropes once more and hit one of the many cars that were now following slowly in our wake. Worse than injuring ourselves was the horrific possibility that we could inadvertently injure someone else. Add to that thoughts of being sued for all our worth and spending the rest of our lives in jail, and I was living one big nightmare.
At last, we arrived home safely. Our driveway never looked so good.
With a flurry of effort and thirty-six years of the Reader’s Digest Do-It-Yourself book under his belt, my husband set about putting the mess together again.
He sanded. He stained. He varnished. He glued. He measured for new glass. He hunted for matching handles. He filled cracks. He nailed. And unlike Humpty Dumpty, he succeeded.
As I write this, a lovely re-refinished Amish bookcase stands regally to my right. You’d never know it had been retrieved, shattered, from a ditch. Any subtle scratches or nicks that might remain (and you’d have to look closely to find them) are like laugh lines on a face—they only add character and history.
The bookcase reminds me that my husband’s actions speak volumes of love; that many things that seem hopeless are not; that in the scheme of life, earthly possessions are meaningless; and that missed chances to help one another are missed moments of grace.
Sometimes, when I replace a book behind the cabinet’s reglued and revarnished doors, a piece of ditch gravel will tumble from some unknown crevice. And then, I can’t help but stand back and laugh at the miracle. All of them.
Guys? Can you hear me over the wind?
Blest Be the Ties That Bind
Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of joy you must have somebody to divide it with.
—MARK TWAIN
Dance Lessons
It was dark when I bolted out the door of the dance club. Darker than I thought. Colder than I thought. But I was steamed, really steamed, and there was no stopping me.
I had taken just enough time to grab my coat before I made my exit, which was a good thing. The frigid night air whacked me in the face.
Some unknown Chicago street stretched out before me, lit only by the glow of infrequent streetlights and the ice-covered red of taillights passing by. If not the cold, the darkness, or the unfamiliarity of my surroundings, common sense should have stopped me. It did not.
I was outta there. These legs, these tapping toes, were not going to sit on the sidelines of the dance floor for one more minute. They were takin’ a walk.
And baby, that’s exactly what they did. Like a steam engine flashing sparks, I hit the track. It was seven long city blocks in two-inch heels before my husband and his buddy caught up with me.
“What’s wrong?” my husband asked with the care of someone defusing a bomb.
“I’m tired of watching everyone else dance fast,” I answered, the subzero temperature having exhausted my anger to a smolder.
The two men, best friends from high school, nodded sagely, instinctively knowing further conversation was fruitless. The three of us traveled the long walk back in silence.
The rest of our party, being the lifelong friends that they are, pretended as though nothing unusual had occurred. The festive atmosphere of our rare night out for dinner and dancing, however, lost its warmth when I blew back in the door. It wasn’t long before we were putting on our coats and heading home to pay the babysitters for fewer hours than they had anticipated. I take full blame for throwing ice on that good time.
Although this angry winter walk occurred long ago, it still stands out in my mind because not only did I act foolishly but also, in nearly thirty-five years of marriage, it remains our most significant (and public) eruption. All because my husband wouldn’t dance fast.
I have always loved to dance. My husband has not.
As high school sweethearts shuffling around the gymnasium floor draped in each other’s arms during the mid-1960s, our dancing differences didn’t matter much.
Through the years of our married life, when the tunes turned fast at a wedding reception, business party, or philanthropic event, we’d head to the sidelines, content to visit with friends or grab some refreshments. When the slow music came on at these occasions, we both meandered to the dance floor for our old cheek-to-cheek two-step, but it was the fast dances that continued to sideline us. I began to feel like a benched basketball player watching all the fun and action on the court. My feet itched to be out there.
Over the years, to my husband’s credit, he occasionally (albeit reluctantly) tried to dance fast. And although he is a standout athlete and musician, gyrating beside me on the dance floor made him feel like a cork bobbing aimlessly in a windless sea.
“Just move to the music,” I’d say.
“This is stupid,” he’d respond.
As a result, over the decades we’ve not danced together to the twist, the monkey, the swim, the holly golly, the disco dancing of the 1980s, or the macarena of the 1990s. Don’t even mention the “YMCA.”
Some would say that we haven’t missed much, but I guess on that frigid Chicago night, my inner-dancer had had enough.
It wasn’t until the upcoming marriage of our oldest son, nearly three years ago, that my husband decided to take action. The thought of having to dance in front of over two hundred people must have produced a cold sweat.
“We need to take some dance lessons,” he casually mentioned several months before the wedding.
To say my chair virtually tipped over backward is an understatement.
“Why?” I asked in astonishment.
“Well, we’re going to have to dance at the wedding,” he said. “And I don’t like doing things I can’t do well.”
“OK,” I answered, refraining from jumping into midair and executing a jubilant John Travolta spin.
To my further surprise, he’d already done the research and checked out available lessons at a local community college. By the next day we were signed up.
To my delight, my husband took to the dance lessons like Sammy Sosa to a corked bat. He had found his groove. Here was something that made sense to him: counting and actual steps, not just mindless shaking on the dance floor. Our dancing began to take shape. Frank Sinatra and Glenn Miller became our new best friends.
Amazingly, and before we knew it, we were cruisin’ around the dance floor. “Rock step, slow-slow, rock step, slow-slow” was our man
tra. As the weekly lessons went by, we were not only doing the steps but actually adding turns, twirls, and twists. Besides the swing, our repertoire included the waltz and the fox trot. Our dancing confidence climbed.
After a midlesson break, my husband was the first on the dance floor when the music started up again, dragging this exhausted wife with him. At home we’d practice, practice, practice. Round and round the dining room table and across the kitchen floor we’d go, me in faded robe and slippers, he in jeans and flannel.
“Slow, quick-quick, slow,” we muttered in time with the beat. We’d circle the porch pool table to the tunes of “Chattanooga Choo Choo” and “Tuxedo Junction.” We’d cruise past the coffee table to “Stardust” and “In the Mood.” On occasion, we had to pull out our cheat sheet to remember the steps, but on we danced.
Knowing that Dave Matthews, not the Big Band sound of the 1940s, was likely to rule at our son’s reception, we tried more modern musicians and were delighted to discover that our new dance steps (depending on the tempo and the count) worked just fine. We could rock step to the Beach Boys and fox trot to the Beatles. We were set. Or so we thought.
After a beautiful wedding, we found ourselves confused by the DJ’s mix of music at the reception (even the “Anniversary Waltz” was not a waltz). We couldn’t find our beat, but our son, his new bride, and all their energetic friends did, packing the dance floor and dancing joyously the whole night through.
For once, I was content to watch all that happiness from the sidelines.
Other dancing occasions have come our way, however, and despite a few nervous flutters at the start, we’ve gotten up and out there. Sometimes, in fact, we are the only ones on the dance floor, which makes us feel a little like Fred and Ginger, until one of us stumbles. Then we simply stop, laugh, whisper the beat to each other, and start over. The sidelines are no longer part of our dance card.
As our second son’s wedding draws near, we will start our practice regimen again. He and his fiancée favor jazz, so perhaps we’ll try a little improvisation to Wynton Marsalis. Who knows? If all else fails, we can always revert to our old standby: a slow, shapeless shuffle across the dance floor, arms around each other, cheek to cheek.
I have to admit, it’s still the best.
Mission Impossible
Our hair was long and our skirts were short. We were the first generation to wear miniskirts. Striding around campus, we strutted our stuff in knee-high boots and platform sandals. We were lean and hip and we had attitude.
And now, alas, the fashion industry has passed us by. Like a forgotten dress hanging faded and limp in the back of the closet, we middle-aged moms with children of marrying age cannot for the life us find dresses for their weddings.
With the spring and summer wedding seasons approaching, millions of formerly miniskirted women are now scrambling through every department store, mall, or boutique known to womankind, like a bevy of buzzing bees searching frantically for the perfect flower.
“Have you found your dress?” we ask each other at work, the grocery store, the post office.
“Have you found your dress?” ask our friends, our family members, our dentists.
The answer is a resounding no!
As mothers of the brides and grooms, we have high hopes. We want to look good gliding down that aisle on the arm of a handsome son or childhood friend.
After the beautiful bride and lovely bridesmaids, we’d like to hold our own. These are joyous moments for our children, and we want to shine right along with them.
Listen up, fashion industry! Is that too much to ask?
Yes, we admit, these many years later, time and gravity are taking their toll. Our skirts are longer, our hair shorter, and most of the time we wear sensible shoes.
But does that mean we have to look like duds?
Yes, it is true, the tummies that produced those beautiful babies are a bit rounder, the arms that hauled thirty-pound toddlers for hours on end are not so toned, and the faces that peered through a window searching the darkness for a teenager returning home safely are a bit more lined. But we are not down for the count. We’re up and swinging and trying to hold it all together (so to speak).
This is my second time attempting the nightmarish hunt for a wedding dress. Three years ago, I made my dress hunt debut when my first son was married. I searched high and low, crossed field and dale, forded streams and climbed mountains. In a moment of desperation, I succumbed to an incredibly svelte, twenty-something saleswoman’s pitch that I looked “fabulous!” in a beige, satin, spaghetti-strap dress in a size smaller than I normally wear. To add to the duplicity, the store used those trick mirrors you find at the circus that make you look twenty pounds thinner and a foot taller.
“Not bad,” I thought to myself. “I’ll take it.”
Doubling the national debt, I paid the piper, took it home, and hung it in my closet until ten days before the wedding, when I decided to try it on again.
Horrors of horrors! I looked twenty pounds heavier and a foot shorter. Sleek and slim, I was not! Honey, it would take the grip of an industrial strength girdle to hold this gut in for ten hours of wedding and reception.
What had I been thinking?
Out I raced like a mouse after the last piece of cheese on earth, scurrying through rack after rack of drab and dowdy mother-of-the-bride/groom dresses until, miracles of miracles, I found a lovely, blue floral silk with a pretty neckline and matching shawl. With a few minor alterations, it was ready to go two days before the wedding.
Not wanting to repeat that scenario, I started looking earlier (one would think four months’ lead time was enough) for my second son’s upcoming wedding. On the pretense of celebrating my husband’s birthday, I dragged the dear man into Chicago for a hike up Michigan Avenue, figuring a second trusted opinion would save me from my past mistakes.
We started our search in the dress department of a well-known store, assuming they would surely have a vast selection. As my husband and I began wandering through the racks, I became increasingly dismayed.
“See what I mean,” I said. “There’s nothing here.”
Like the knight in shining armor that he is, my husband attempted to come to his lady’s rescue (because his lady was getting grumpier by the moment).
“Where would we find the mother-of-the-bride or -groom dresses?” my husband innocently asked an incredibly svelte salesclerk as we stood in the middle of a long aisle surrounded by hundreds of dresses.
“Well, any of these would work,” the incredibly svelte salesclerk answered, as though we were a pair of blind bats.
“Well, how about something for someone her age?” my prince suggested. (I’m not taking him again.)
“Just look around,” the incredibly svelte salesclerk said.
And so we did.
If I was going to prom, the dresses to my left would have been perfect: slinky, strapless numbers with no backs and bunches of what I can only describe as foofoo shooting out from the butt and bust in iridescent shades of orange, limeade, and raspberry that would have blinded a possum at night.
If I was going to a fancy funeral, the dresses to my right would have been just the ticket: long, shapeless jackets over long, shapeless dresses with strangle-hold necklines in deathlike tones of smog gray, dirt brown, burnished black, and, that perennial fashion industry joke, the ever-present milquetoast beige. To add insult to injury, for what one of these novelties cost we could have made a down payment on a car.
Suddenly the absurdity of it all struck a funny bone, and we started to laugh.
“How about this one?” my husband asked, gesturing to a satin sack the color of mud.
“Or this?” I countered, seductively winking from behind a blazing yellow tube of a gown that could be worn at auditions for Ms. Chiquita Banana.
It was all great for a good chuckle except for the sobering fact that I still needed a dress.
Out the door we bolted, a pair of old fogies on a scavenger hunt
, zigzagging up Michigan Avenue into one boutique and out of another. Nada, nada, nada. It was all the same.
Finally, we rested in the lounge of a favorite hotel, ordered a drink, and took inventory of my choices. My husband’s only comment was that his birthday beer never tasted so good.
Back home, I made the usual rounds through local stores and boutiques with the same results.
“Oh, most mothers with summer weddings have already purchased their dresses,” snipped one salesclerk. “This is all we have left.”
Silly me. It was already February!
One evening, I poured out my dress dilemma to a valued friend and longtime neighbor. “Do I go to my son’s wedding as a thirty-something wannabe, or do I go for safe and dowdy in a grandma gown?” I asked.
In a nanosecond she replied, “I’d err on the side of a thirty-something wannabe.” This from a seventy-something grandma. With attitude.
And so, girls, I’m going for it. I have found a lovely spaghetti-strap dress in a size smaller than I normally wear. I have a shawl. And I have replaced all the mirrors in my house with the ones you find at the circus.
I would describe the dress in more detail to you, but, alas, it’s just about time to start my new daily routine of two hundred sit-ups, fifty-pound weight lifting for the arms, and my five-mile walk. Then it’s on to a lunch with no salt, mayo, cheese, sugar, butter, et cetera.
Middle-aged bridal mothers, unite! Throw off the bonds of dowdy and dull and alert the fashion industry to our revolt!
We aren’t asking for much! Just pretty colors that aren’t so dark or washed out that we look like death warmed over, a little sex appeal in the neckline or hem, the suggestion that we still have waists, and a few fashion details that camouflage you-know-what, and we’d be happy.
Throw in a reasonable price tag that doesn’t require taking out a second mortgage on the house, and wedding celebrations everywhere will be filled with moms strutting down that aisle happy, hip, and with a just a smidge of attitude.
On a Clear Night Page 7