The Meat and Potatoes of Life

by Molinari, Lisa Smith;

  At first, I thought Moby was the one with the personality disorder, but then realized it was me who’d lost a grip on reality. I’d transformed from navy mom to Pin Cushion, Pooper Scooper, Feed Bag, and Canine Concierge. I was so delusional that, despite baggy eyes, multiple puncture wounds, and a complete loss of hygiene standards, I had been utterly blinded by love.

  SEASON 4 EPISODE 13

  THE TWELVE TAKES OF CHRISTMAS

  “C’mon everybody!” I bellowed from our living room, “Let’s get this over with!”

  “KIDS!? HONEY!?” I yelled from behind my camera, which was precariously perched on top of an Anthony’s Seafood matchbook, two beer coasters, three National Geographic magazines, Roget’s Thesaurus, and our coffee table, at the precise trajectory needed to capture a centered image of our family of five and the dog in front of the fireplace.

  Knowing the tiniest slip of the hand (or the dog’s tail) might ruin my painstakingly calibrated line of sight, I was reluctant to abandon my post. But when no one responded to my wails, I marched off to find them.

  Twenty minutes later, I had managed to drag the resistant members of my family into the living room. Francis was miffed I forced him to abandon a particularly riveting rerun of House Hunters. Hayden was annoyed that he had to pause Dragon Warrior VII just as he was about to master Ranger class. Anna couldn’t fathom what was so important that she had to stop texting the cute boy from her statistics class. Lilly was pouting about being torn away from Snapchat.

  They were all sporting major attitudes, but it was now or never.

  “Listen! I don’t like this any more than you do, but our family and friends have come to expect a Molinari family photo Christmas card every year, so backs straight! Stomachs tight! And get happy, dammit!”

  My moping gaggle huddled together on the fireplace hearth, in shared irritation over being forced to pose for a family photo. “Leave a spot for me on the left, and smile!” I ordered from behind my camera.

  I gingerly jabbed the camera’s timer button, careful not to knock the lens from its matchbook-coaster-thesaurus tripod, then leapt like an overweight gazelle, across our faux oriental rug, and into my designated position.

  “Mom, the camera’s blinking.”

  “Honey, when do you want us to smile?”

  “Are you sure you pressed the button, Mom?”

  “I don’t KNOW!” I screeched through my grinning clenched teeth, “Just keep smiling!”

  “But, isn’t it supposed to fla … ”

  It flashed.

  It took two more takes before we realized the camera flashed after a prescribed series of slow and fast blinks. Hayden sneezed in the middle of take number four. The phone rang during take number five. I blinked in take number six. We all got the giggles in take number seven, when Francis belched up a pungent odor reminiscent of Genoa salami.

  We finally realized we forgot to include the dog, Moby, and it took two takes, three pieces of cheese, and a tennis ball before he would agree to sit. Somewhere along the way, I inadvertently nudged the June 2009 issue of National Geographic, and it took me twenty minutes and three more ruined takes to get the family centered in the viewfinder again.

  On take number thirteen, we were so desperate to end our torturous holiday photo odyssey, we all agreed to cooperate to take one final, flawless shot.

  With my last ounce of patience, I tapped the button with catlike precision, and pounced into position, tipping my jaw forward to hide my double chin. The kids replaced their reluctant fake grins with genuine sparkling smiles. Francis leaned behind me to hide his now sweat-stained armpit and mustered a charming pose.

  Moby sat, in perfect obedience, his ears handsomely perked.

  Like the townspeople of Bethlehem, we looked for the bright light that would finally bring us salvation.

  “Why didn’t it flash?” Francis whispered.

  After another minute, Lilly extracted herself from our frozen pose, to check the camera.

  Peering at the digital display, she read aloud, “Change battery pack.”

  Realizing that a flawless family photo was never going to happen, we decided one of the twelve takes would have to do, because reality is as perfect as a family gets.

  SEASON 4 EPISODE 14

  THE DIETER’S WALL

  About two weeks into my diet, I realized I was starving, and no low-cal protein snack would stave off my hunger pangs. Although pork products sounded mouthwateringly delicious in my weakened state, I eventually determined that the diet was a bunch of baloney. No matter how many times some rich television celebrity—who probably ate diet meals prepared by her personal chef and had a trainer who comes to her home gym—told me “the pounds just melt away,” I doubted that any diet would work for me.

  The first few days of my diet had seemed like fun. The same way raking leaves seemed fun for the first fifteen minutes until I realized it was going to take five hours and I’d have to do it every weekend. Or the way cooking dinner seemed like fun when I was first married, but then twenty years later, I would rather chew my own arm off than prepare another meal. Or the way running seemed like fun until I came to the end of the second block and suddenly felt as if my heart might explode.

  By the end of the second week of dieting, I wanted someone to hit me in the head with a frying pan—preferably one that had just fried up a dozen crisp slices of bacon—to put me out of my misery.

  I hit the wall one day while shopping at the commissary. The satiating effect of the protein shake I’d guzzled that morning had worn off, and I was beginning to feel that familiar grumbling in the pit of my stomach. I was most definitely hungry.

  I rushed from my minivan, across the blustery commissary parking lot, and into the store. Everything was fine in produce, where I followed my grocery list to a tee, except for the bagged Lite Caesar Salad Kit I decided would make a satisfying diet lunch.

  The burning in my innards was unnoticeable at first, but it slowly built as I weaved through the grocery aisles. I made it through the canned goods, baking supplies, and cereal without incident, but as my hunger mounted, things began to unravel in the snack food aisle. With each step, the burning in my gut seared deeper, until I was ready to grab a cheese ball out of the dairy case and eat it like an apple, cellophane and all. I resisted my urges, but soon I felt as if I might implode like the collapsing core of a supernova, transforming the entire commissary into a giant black hole and destroying civilization as we know it.

  That’s when it happened. Lying there, on the shelf beside the display of Pringles, I saw it. Some coupon clipper had generously left me a lifeline. “One dollar off five cans,” it read. It was such a fantastic deal, it seemed almost compulsory. Saliva dripped from my lower lip as I loaded the Pringles into my cart.

  By the time I approached the check-out area, I had grabbed Oreos, frozen pizza, apple turnovers, and a one-pound block of cheddar cheese. Blinded by desperation, I caught the tantalizing aroma of roasted chicken.

  Two rotisserie chickens soon joined the mountain of forbidden foods heaped onto the cashier’s conveyor belt. While the bagger loaded my groceries into the back of the minivan, I fantasized about sneaking food to the front seat for the drive home. Not a new ploy, and not only fantasy.

  I recalled telling unsuspecting baggers I needed to put a rotisserie chicken up in the front seat to keep it warm, knowing I just wanted to sneak a piece on the way home. I’d pull into my driveway, my face and steering wheel slick with grease, and a drumstick clenched between my teeth.

  But on the day I hit the wall, the miracle of convenience foods helped me to stick to my diet. I managed to make it home from the commissary, where I frantically dug through the grocery bags in the trunk of my minivan to find that salad kit. I stumbled into the house without unloading my groceries, faint with hunger, and devoured the salad out of a Tupperware bowl while standing at the kitchen counter.

  Hail, Caesar.

  SEASON 4 EPISODE 15

  THE OTHER MEN
(AND A FEW WOMEN) IN MY LIFE

  In my years as a military spouse, I regularly had relationships with people other than Francis. Often several times a day. Some were veritable strangers to me, while others were men I had come to know quite well. And, believe it or not, a few of them were women.

  Most of these relationships were light and friendly, a few were all-business, but all had a certain intimacy. It may have appeared that we were mere acquaintances but—make no mistake about it—they peered deeply into my psyche, and they knew my secrets.

  These men and women were the military base gate guards.

  As my minivan inched forward in the line toward the base gate, I was unsuspecting. I chewed my gum. I listened to the radio. I glanced down at my commissary list. I casually plucked a flosser or tweezers from my console and used the flip-down mirror to groom myself, unconcerned that the gate guard was about to peek into the intimate corners of my life.

  “Hi! How’re you today?” I asked after stopping at the guard shack. I fumbled for my ID, which was always jammed too far into the pocket of my wallet. “Darnit,” I muttered, licking my thumb in order to get a decent grip on the plastic.

  “There you go!” I finally produced my ID, hoping he won’t scrutinize the black and white photo taken the day my hairdryer broke last year. Without a word, he accepted my ID. After swiping it through his hand-held scanner, he stared at the ID and the machine’s display. Back and forth, back and forth, analyzing whatever had been revealed.

  All at once, I felt vulnerable, exposed, guilty for something I hadn’t done.

  He looked directly at my face, too. I smiled nervously. What is he thinking? Is he trying to match my double chin to the one in my ID picture?

  He leaned over a bit and inspected the interior of my minivan. His flashlight scanned each row of seats, the floor mats, the dark spaces under the dash. His eyes paused a moment on Moby, panting and seated in the second row on a furry blanket.

  I saw the corner of his mouth rise a little, and I detected a reaction in his eyes. Is it a twinkle?

  There were several times over the years when the gate guard ordered me to pull my van over so he could conduct a random vehicle search. Without a doubt, random vehicle searches took our relationship to another level.

  In these instances, I followed the gate guard’s orders to exit my van and got ready for him to pat me down. But instead of frisking me, he directed me to stand aside and watch, while he searched every inch of my vehicle, looking under my hood and using mirrors to peek up my undercarriage.

  Once, while stationed in Germany, the guard even had his drug detecting shepherd sniff the junk in my trunk.

  On one hand, I was always embarrassed when he shone his flashlight into every nook and cranny—I would have preferred it with the lights off—but at the same time, I desperately sought his approval.

  “You’re good to go, Ma’am, have a nice day,” I heard countless times after our little encounters. I smiled and wished him well, until next time.

  As I headed for the commissary to buy turkey burgers and fiber supplements, I knew between us there were no illusions, no commitments, no secrets. The gate guard had looked into the intimate details of my life, and he was fully satisfied.

  SEASON 4 EPISODE 16

  SNACKS IN THE CITY

  “Do you want that apple now?” I asked Anna, for the third time since boarding the train to New York City. I brought her favorite snack in my backpack, hoping a Granny Smith might keep my temperamental teen satisfied on our trip to visit colleges.

  “No, Mom,” Anna huffed, “I told you, I’m not hungry.”

  As I turned toward the window, my mind wandered to a decade ago when Anna, our fiercely independent middle child, disappeared.

  She was one of those kids who would go off with a box of toys and play for hours. Francis or I would find her somewhere in our house, surrounded by her characters, her huge brown eyes flitting from one to the other, her wee lips muttering their voices in her imagined scenario.

  On one particular occasion, she’d been off playing by herself so long, I became concerned.

  “Anna?!” I bellowed, hoping to find her in a corner, lost in a complex drama involving Buzz Lightyear, Polly Pockets, and My Little Pony. Just as my mothering instinct was about to mobilize a grid search of our entire neighborhood, I heard something in the bonus room over our garage.

  Sure enough, there she was, sitting in a heap of paper, pencils, yarn, fabric, and my sewing basket dumped upside down. “Lookit what I made, Mom,” she coughed out, her voice box sluggish from hours of dormancy.

  Anna, age eight, held up her creation, a full-length garment of white fleece. After making sketches in a Hello Kitty notebook, she settled on a sleek one-shoulder design with an elegant neckline and fitted skirt. Anna modeled her gown for us, and we looked on in amazement at the sophisticated silhouette and meticulous hand-stitching. Apparently, Anna had seen someone do it on TV, and was now determined to be a fashion designer.

  Nearly ten years later, we were on our way to the Big Apple to follow Anna’s dream.

  Sitting beside my seventeen-year-old daughter, I still saw her big brown eyes flitting, lost in thought. Intuitively, I knew she was envisioning what it would be like to be a fashion design student in NYC, walking city streets in stylish outfits, sketching on sunlight-dappled park benches, and hailing cabs to meet friends for lunch in SoHo.

  My baggy brown eyes were flitting too, but I was imagining rat-infested alleys, marauding pick-pocketers, subway stairwells reeking of urine, and catcalling ne’er-do-wells. Francis and I would much rather send our daughter to college somewhere in rural Vermont or Wisconsin, where sleepy campus police officers busy themselves writing citations for spitting on the sidewalk. But we knew Anna must see for herself.

  Emerging from the subterranean chaos of Penn Station, we began our two-day odyssey. Piles of old snow were melting, revealing a winter’s worth of grit, grime, and garbage. Dirty water dripped from scaffoldings and fire escapes above us, sometimes landing in our hair. The subway stations were a hideous cornucopia of acrid odors and filthy corners piled with discarded cigarette butts.

  The housewife in me wanted to spray the whole place with bleach and give it a good scrubbing. Anna, on the other hand, was mortified her mother acted like a quintessential tourist, fiddling clumsily with my maps and subway diagrams, stopping every few blocks to mutter, “Now, which street is this?”

  Despite her embarrassment, we managed to visit all the fashion design schools in Manhattan and Brooklyn in two days, using only a Metrocard, one twelve-dollar cab ride, and just under 42,000 Fitbit steps. After our last tour at Parsons School of Design, Anna slumped over a chair in the admissions office, sore, tired, and overwhelmed with the realities of the big city college experience.

  I thought I’d be relieved if Anna was disappointed with urban life, but my parental instinct to protect my daughter from danger was tempered by my need to support her dreams.

  “Hey, you want that apple now?” I offered, groping in my backpack. As I handed over the once flawlessly crisp Granny Smith, I saw it had become a mushy, oozing ball of bruises. I tossed it in the trash and improvised.

  “Whaddya say we take a cab and go get chocolate shakes?” I said. “I know a great place on the Upper East Side.” As we walked out into bustling Greenwich Village, I realized that no matter where my daughter’s aspirations take her, she’ll always be the apple of my eye.

  SEASON 4 EPISODE 17

  THE FIX IS IN

  I told the folks at the local dog park they wouldn’t be seeing Moby, our yellow Lab, for a couple of weeks. When I explained why, the men in the group collectively cringed and hitched their knees together.

  The appointment was first thing Monday morning.

  Moby loped out our front door into the crisp morning air just like always, his stout wagging tail on one end and a big sloppy smile on the other. I opened the minivan’s hatch door, and Moby hopped right in. He probably thoug
ht we were driving to the beach to chase balls and eat dead fish.

  But instead we took a longer trip, twenty-five minutes northward. I pulled into the closest available parking space at the veterinary clinic, jumped out, and opened the back door.

  “Hey Lil’ Buddy! C’mon, this is going to be fun!”

  Moby has never been the sharpest tool in the shed. In fact he’s a bit of a blockhead. But even he knew something was up. He was hesitant to emerge, wondering why I had left the balls in the car. When I tugged at his collar, he pulled back, causing all his neck flub to bunch up around his face.

  Finally, Moby noticed that the air outside the minivan was a veritable cornucopia of intriguing odors, so he jumped out to investigate. There were years’ worth of animal pheromones, territorial markings, and nervous involuntary spillage in that parking lot. On my way to the clinic door, the leash stopped with a jolt while Moby sniffed, then licked, then marked a tuft of dead grass peeking through a crack in the asphalt. Let him have his fun, poor guy.

  In the waiting room, Moby wasn’t sure if he should hide or jump for joy. On one hand, there were lots of fun-looking dogs and people in there, and even one small hissy thing that made a peculiar yowling sound. (Moby had never seen a cat before.) But on the other hand, there were unfamiliar smells in that waiting room, like medicine … disinfectant … and fear.

  Before Moby’s blockhead could figure it all out, the veterinarian’s assistant led him away. I watched his tail wag as he looked up at her, probably thinking he was going somewhere to chase balls. Oh, the irony.

  Several hours later, Moby was back in the minivan, stunned at having been robbed of his virility and wondering why there was a ridiculous cone around his head.

  The physical pain in his nether regions was a mere annoyance compared to the humiliation of the cone. It soon became the bane of his existence. He knocked over lamps and spilled his water. Worst of all, it got in the way of chasing balls.