Rules for the Southern Rule Breaker

by Katherine Snow Smith

  My profile continued to generate interest, but most of it seemed to be coming from men with tattoos of purple parrots on their shoulders or guys posing on all fours on cheetah-print sheets. “I haven’t met anyone I’d leave my couch for yet, but at least my new profile is getting a lot of response,” I told my friend Kate one night.

  “Well, yeah, you’re getting responses from these guys who want to meet you in an hour because you use the word ‘tits.’”

  “But I use it as in ‘I don’t have fake ones.’ I have wits not fake tits.”

  “Katherine. They aren’t that impressed with your clever rhyme. They see the word ‘tits’ on a dating website and think you can’t wait to hand yours over. You’ve got to take that line out.”

  I did and the responses dropped dramatically. Finally, one nice looking man from Tampa messaged me, and we struck up a good conversation that lasted several days until he asked me to see Phantom of The Opera. I was going out of town that weekend but asked for a rain check. We texted more the next week, and he asked me to meet him for dinner Thursday night. By late afternoon that day I hadn’t heard a word from him so I texted and suggested a couple places we could meet.

  He never replied and I learned a new word: ghosted.

  “He met somebody else he likes more,” a friend in L.A. and veteran online dater informed me. “He ghosted you. It happens all the time.”

  She went on to tell me she pays to get a background check on every online date she makes. More than half the time, she learns the man is using a fake name and about one in three times she finds out they’re married.

  Cheaters. Facial hair. Ghosted. Fake names. Married men. Herpes. My confidence-shredding 20 percent “buzz” rate. I deleted Hinge and signed up for Hulu.

  22. Never Let Them See Your Scars

  When things aren’t going well, friends can say something that somehow breaks the tension to bring laughter and momentary relief. Other than dropping off a casserole, making someone laugh is sometimes the only thing they can do to help.

  My former father-in-law, a wonderful man from Mobile, Alabama, choked to death during dinner at home with his wife and two friends. It was a terrible, desperate moment when the elderly male dinner guest tried to perform the Heimlich maneuver to no avail. Two days later the gentleman confided to my former mother-in-law that after her husband died that night, he asked his wife: “Do you think we’ll be invited back?”

  The exchange brought the first bit of laughter the newly dubbed widow had experienced in days.

  Three years before I got divorced, there was a time when my husband and I were briefly separated, all three of my kids were dealing with stuff, and both my parents were in the same hospital in Raleigh. After I tucked my mom and dad into their respective beds two floors apart, I went to spend the night with my friend Beth. Her husband greeted me with a hug.

  “What can I get you? Wine? Diet Coke? Maybe a gun?” he said flatly. I burst out laughing and the stress fell away for at least an hour.

  I remembered his line when I was diagnosed with colon cancer last year. Over the past eighteen months, I’d gotten divorced, sold the house where my children grew up, left the newspaper where I’d worked for more than twenty years, started a new career and faced an uncertain financial future. My parents were aging. I was their only child living 700 miles away. My three kids were navigating divorce, high school, and college. All this and cancer were a lot to get through.

  Fortunately, though, the cancer was caught early thanks to a colleague at my new job who was about thirty years old. As we walked to the parking lot one day after work, she asked me my age.

  “You should never ask a woman a question that’s answered in numbers,” I replied with a laugh. “That goes for weight, bank balance, number of times down the aisle, and age.”

  She then explained her dad died of colon cancer, so she makes a point of reminding people to get a colonoscopy if they are fifty or older.

  I was fifty-one at the time, so I scheduled my screening and found out I had cancer. My friend from work may well have saved my life, so I’ve taken up her same cause and now ask everyone in my age group if they are due for a colonoscopy. It’s turned out to be quite the cocktail party fodder.

  “Yes, I’ve had mine. And when I woke up afterwards the doctor told me I was quite combative during the procedure,” my friend Louis shared. “I said, ‘Damn right I was combative. You were putting a camera up my butt.’”

  Another friend got a much better review from his gastroenterologist. “My doctor told me he could tell I took the cleansing of my colon very seriously and really appreciated that,” Joe bragged. “I may not have many talents, but I can really cleanse my colon.”

  When my friends learned I would be in the hospital for five days after the tumor was removed and my intestines were restructured, they went into action, deciding who would take me to the hospital, who would be there when I came out of surgery, and who would stay with me at home while I was still recovering. Gift cards for Chick-fil-A and other restaurants for my kids piled up in our mailbox before I even went into the hospital. Care packages with soft blankets, magazines, and books arrived as well.

  My friend Burchie told me she was on the hunt for a pretty nightgown and robe to give me until I reminded her I’d have to wear one of those lovely tie-in-the-back hospital gowns that could accommodate an IV.

  “Well, then, I’m going to get you a bed jacket,” she declared.

  For any readers born after 1955, a bed jacket is a short jacket worn to cover the chest, shoulders and arms while sitting up in bed. Hollywood starlets in the 1930s popularized bed jackets by wearing elegant versions with feathers and lace when lounging in their boudoirs.

  In a 1962 episode of The Andy Griffith Show, Aunt Bee wants nothing more for her birthday than a pretty bed jacket she spotted in a store window. Through a confusing turn of events, the mayor of Mayberry buys the bed jacket first as a gift for his wife, and Andy must trade his favorite and luckiest fishing pole to procure the jacket for Aunt Bee. He explains to Opie that Aunt Bee’s happiness upon opening her gift means more to him than any fish he would ever catch.

  “Burchie, you are so thoughtful,” I told her, “but I think they quit making bed jackets about the time women were no longer required to carry a pot roast in order to be let out of the kitchen.”

  “Then I’ll find St. Petersburg’s Aunt Bee and borrow hers,” she laughed.

  So, all bases were covered down to the bed jacket, yet it was the first time since I got divorced that I felt utterly alone. Friends happily volunteered to be with me through every moment, but no one person had to be with me the whole time.

  At my pre-op appointment, I filled out all the paperwork and listed a friend instead of a husband as the emergency contact. I checked “self” when asked repeatedly who was financially responsible. I checked the box labeled “divorced” instead of “married.”

  Why does that matter if I’ve already given my emergency contact? Do they offer speed dating in the recovery room?

  And why was I slightly ashamed to check “divorced?” I guess I wanted to check the box that said, “Marriage ended after numerous marriage counselors, but we get along well for the sake of our children.”

  I left the appointment with a goodie bag containing this super-sonic-triple-anti-bacterial soap that I had to wash with the next morning before my surgery. It reduced the chance of infection. I cried on the way home for the first time since my diagnosis.

  “I don’t know why I’m suddenly terrified,” I told a friend. “They caught it early, and I’ll be fine. But if I have to use this soap to ward off infection, then it’s like anything can go wrong.”

  “The soap made it real,” she said. “This is real, Katherine. You can’t control it. You just have to get through it and face whatever happens.”

  Later that afternoon, Burchie came by with a beautifully wrapped present. I don’t think Aunt Bee was even half as thrilled as I was to open the white satin
bed jacket. “I know it’s the last thing you need or want. Don’t even take it to the hospital,” she said laughing. “Just know we’re here for you.”

  I showed the bed jacket to my kids and tried to explain that it was this antiquated, ridiculous, hilarious thing that just made me laugh and feel loved. Wade, my most cold-natured child who regularly ranks blankets on their level of coziness, said he wanted his own bed jacket. He tried mine on and declared he was never taking it off.

  The bed jacket was the last thing I packed in my little travel bag the next morning, before I washed with the soap. Instead of thinking of the cleansing as a last-ditch effort to prevent infection, I told myself it was a strong shield. I prayed for the surgeon’s incredible mind and deft hands.

  My friend Hope arrived at 5:15 a.m. to pick me up.

  “Let’s go kick this cancer’s ass,” she said when I opened the door. She insisted on carrying my bag as if I was already on bedrest.

  Two more friends were allowed to join us in my curtained off pre-op alcove, and we laughed and talked like it was a girls’ happy hour. Well, except I was the only one catching a buzz and instead of $6 Chardonnay, it was $6,000 anesthesia.

  Soon their voices drowned into a low hum and a few hours later I woke up with the next shift of friends watching over me. My children came to visit late that afternoon, including Wade who had just gotten his driver’s license that day. Nothing says teenage independence quite like driving solo to St. Anthony’s Hospital to see your mom practice getting in and out of bed with a catheter hanging out of her gown.

  When my friends and family weren’t around, the hospital staff provided compassionate care and slices of reality.

  “Is that a bed jacket? I didn’t know they made those anymore,” said Susan, my first night nurse. She had worked at Thalhimers department store thirty years earlier and remembered selling them. By the end of her shift, I’d learned that Susan’s husband was shot in the head at age twenty when he was delivering a pizza, then a bullet fragment in his brain was shaken loose when he rode a roller coaster at Busch Gardens at age forty. Within hours, he was blind and by the end of the night he was dead.

  Rose, the housekeeper, told me she arrived in St. Petersburg from Haiti a decade earlier as a seventeen-year-old in urgent need of open-heart surgery. When American doctors decided she needed continued medical care that wasn’t available in Haiti, Rose moved in with a Haitian family in St. Petersburg that she’d never met and has only seen her parents once since then. They’ve been waiting ten years to emigrate.

  Kevin, an ambulatory aid, came in twice a day to help me move around. He was from the Philippines and had immigrated to Florida a few years earlier with his wife. His excitement and praise in slightly broken English over every step I took as my abdomen healed, more than made up for coming in last in the duathlon at the beach. On my fourth day at the hospital, with no shower and tangled, matted hair, Kevin quietly whispered to me: “You want some comb Miss Katherine? I can get you some comb.”

  My roommate Lisa, who was dealing with an infected wound from a previous surgery, lived on the other side of the mauve curtain that divided our hospital room. It was not as romantic as the one that separated Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert in It Happened One Night.

  She watched the ESPN Classic station while I binged on Friends. Occasionally Lisa flipped to cable news, which was obsessively reporting the curious jail cell suicide of accused pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

  “He didn’t die. They killed his creepy little ass. Cause he was gonna’ talk. He was naming names,” she said with authority. I wasn’t sure if she was speaking to me, to herself, or the newscaster, but I didn’t want to appear rude.

  “Yeah, but who did it? I bet a lot of people didn’t want him to talk,” I called out over the curtain.

  Lisa went silent, and I sensed annoyance, as if I’d been listening in on a private phone call. She switched the channel back to the 2018 Peach Bowl between Florida and Michigan.

  Before my operation, the surgeon said he couldn’t predict how long I’d be in the hospital waiting for my intestines to start working again because my get-out-of-jail-free card would be a big, loud fart.

  Yes, one of the most respected surgeons on Florida’s west coast, freely used the word “fart.”

  My friends, the hospital staff, and I started Fart Watch within two days of my surgery. It was funny, small talk with Rose, Kevin, and Susan. But when the hospital doctors discussed my bowels like I had no idea what needed to happen, it was insulting.

  “Have you passed gas yet, Mrs. Smith?” Dr. Alamante asked. (Clearly, he hadn’t seen the check mark in the divorced box.) “Because you can’t leave the hospital until we know your bowels are working.”

  “Now tell me Miss, Mrs., Msssss. Smith, have you passed gas yet?” Dr. Adler inquired. “Your wound is healing nicely, but you can’t check out until we know your digestive system is back in action.”

  “Good morning, young lady,” Dr. Dahari greeted me. “Now tell me, have you passed any gas? You need to pass gas before you can go home.”

  “No, I have not passed gas. But I fully understand the rules of the game. Y’all don’t have to keep explaining it to me every time you stop by. I fully understand. I will tell you and everyone on this floor the second I feel one coming,” I hissed, on day four of no food and no gas.

  The next day, I passed gas. In fact, I passed gas three times and each time I called a nurse who excitedly informed all the higherups, including the charge nurse, the doctors, TMZ, and Pope Francis. Yet nobody with authority authorized me to start eating soft foods for almost twelve hours.

  Finally, it was time to check out.

  “You pray for me and I’ll pray for you,” Rose said, as we hugged goodbye.

  My friend Page, from Charlotte, came to stay several days while I recovered. Along with regularly delivering meals and painkillers to my room, she cleaned out my refrigerator, picked out the dead flowers from the arrangements I’d received, washed and folded three loads of laundry, and made Jell-O. She also went on a Target run for basic provisions I needed to feel caught up on life including reading glasses, phone chargers, new underwear, and thank-you notes. I no longer felt lost without a husband.

  A week later I learned the cancer had spread to only one of the fifteen lymph nodes sampled, and I didn’t need chemo or radiation. I’ll have screenings every year for quite a while.

  When I visited Charlotte at college a couple months later, we shared a hotel room in Burlington, Vermont, and she caught sight of the scar running across the right side of my stomach as I changed clothes.

  “Mom! That is so awesome,” she said. “You should wear a midriff shirt so everyone can see it.”

  That would require a whole other procedure and I don’t think my insurance covers liposuction. We all have wounds and scars we can expose or tend to alone. I choose to expose mine, because that’s how you end up with bed jackets, one-liners, and support from friends through all the lows and the highs.

  Afterword

  Several months after my divorce, I approached an aisle seat on a flight to Raleigh and started to heave my heavy rolling suitcase into the overhead bin. The gentleman sitting next to the window jumped up and insisted on helping me.

  I thanked him, then settled into my seat, put in my earphones, and hung out the do-not-disturb sign. I wasn’t interested in a ninety-minute chat, though I did take note of his bare ring finger, having already mastered the skill of looking for the absence of that little gold band using only my peripheral vision.

  After a while, I worried I was being rude and handed him a Southwest drink coupon when the flight attendant came through taking orders.

  “Karma for helping me with my bag,” I said, but kept my earphones in place and returned to my reading.

  When the drinks arrived, he toasted me with his bourbon and ginger, and I decided I should at least make a little small talk. We had a good conversation about weather, kids, life, man’s inhumanity to man.
Normal stuff. When the topic of divorce came up, he was a veteran to my novice status and gave me perhaps one of the best pieces of advice I’ve received yet. I’ve shared his morsel of wisdom with friends in all stages of life many times since. One of those friends, a Pulitzer-Prize winning Tampa Bay Times reporter half my age, was leaving the paper to start a new job at the Philadelphia Inquirer recently. I hosted a going away party for her, and in an unexpected reversal of celebration protocol, she brought me a gift.

  Inside the ornately wrapped box was a personalized wine glass with my flight companion’s wise words etched onto the glass.

  “There’s a reason the windshield is bigger than the rear-view mirror.”

  I make a point of choosing this glass whenever I finish an essay, land a new client, or simply book a flight to some exotic location like Charlotte, and toast the unknown that lies ahead.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to Stephanie D. who insisted I wear her shoes. Thank you to Margaret who told me several years ago to just start writing. Thank you to Stephanie Hayes, a great editor who found the string of broken rules running through these essays. Thank you to Sam, another great editor who was mildly helpful and humorous.

  Thank you to SheWrites for believing in this book and all that they do for new writers. Thank you to Cathy for her great attention to copy editing. Thank you to amazing friends who were integral parts of these stories. Thank you to the staff at the Vinoy hotel who never laughed when I told them I was always on the front porch with my laptop because I was writing a book.

  Thank you to Olivia for telling me ten years ago that a laptop was a better gift than jewelry because I would use it to write my book. Thank you to Charlotte for telling me her British friends cried when she read them the story about our hearts. Thank you to Wade for teaching me how to highlight a document and other complicated IT help all along the way. Thank you to my parents, the ultimate storytellers, for showing me how to observe and share life’s moments, big and small.