A Long Time Coming....

New Rules

2011-12-28T08:40:00.000-08:00

The veterans say the first six weeks are a complete and utter blur. However, I have managed to jot down a few quirky revelations amidst the foggy haze that hovers over the carcass of a new mom.

First and foremost, our baby is adorable. Brad and I are completely smitten. The most perfect button nose, darling squeaks and squawks, and a soft spot speckled with fuzz divinely designed for smooches. We could stare at her expressions for hours. But, life has changed dramatically. We now live in a world where Baby writes The Rules.

Rule #1: One-handed finger foods are the only realistic options. Get creative and ditch the silverware. Cookies for lunch = perfectly acceptable. Peeling a banana with one’s teeth – practically driver’s ed for motherhood. And don’t feel bad if you drop a few crumbs on your mini bundle. You can lap them up the next time you smother her with kisses.

Rule #2: Shit happens...on your shirt. Typically when you about to leave the house for the first time in five days so you don’t have to scarf down pretzels for breakfast AND after you have meticulously planned to ensure your little stinker is breastfed, diapered and sleepy before passing her over to Daddy. Shockingly, this will not faze you. You! You who is convinced the world’s amoebas are out to infect you with the bubonic plague. You who scrubs up to her elbows with Purell after you ride the “el” in the city. You who uses a separate sponge (good and evil) for the dishes and countertops. Suddenly, it is “poop schmoop”. It’s not like you won’t have a coat on over it and besides, people will just assume it’s Dijon mustard.

Rule #3: Speaking of poop, the baby will always wait to take that giant dump three minutes after you have changed her, reswaddled her, and settled back into bed with the boppy on your lap and your boob hanging out, dripping breast milk onto her forehead. Clause A: If you risk waiting to change her until after she is done feeding, said poop will invariably seep out through the side of the diaper like ectoplasmic slime onto your pajama pants. This actually can feel pleasantly warm, especially if you are fighting to keep your eyes open. Until, of course, the waft of stink hits your nose.

Rule #4: When she is finally settled down after methodical rocking, back-patting, and singing The Muffin Man refrain fifteen times (which by the way is an incredibly dumb song), you will come to realize that everything is just out of your grasp. Your water glass will taunt you two feet away on the coffee table. The TV remote will cackle. You will suddenly discover that your lips are incredibly chapped and you have an insanely violent itch on your right hip.

Rule #5: At 5am, after finally getting your little fat-cheeked cherub to sleep after a two-hour marathon of her staring at you wide-eyed and expectant, you will spy the early morning sun streaming through the windows. A sense of doom will set in as you realize your opportunity for sleep is shrinking like a ninety year old man. This will be a low point. The point at which you will become so cranky and crabby that you will actually consider grabbing that slobbery silicone pacifier on the nightstand and sucking on it yourself.

Rule #6: As tempting as it may be, refrain from playing “nap roulette”. If you put off zzzzz’s to finish those thank you notes, she will invariably wake up approximately twelve minutes after you have finally tucked yourself in and started drifting. And on the rare occasions she doesn’t wake up, you will be expecting her to, anticipating those slight tell-tale grunts, so you won’t be able to snooze anyway.

Rule #7: The crevices in her neck will befuddle you. No matter how many layers of cute baby fat you attempt to lift up to wipe off the dried milk during bath time, the neck will remain elusive. Attempting to clean this body part might be on par with fracking in North Dakota. It is a two-parent job that is not for the rookie couple. It demands skill, choreography, and cunning trickery to get a washcloth under there. And trust me, she will be pissed the entire time.

Rule #8: Your baby may occasionally give you the finger, especially while nursing. Yes, your sweet innocent Tabula Rasa will flip you the bird now and again. Try not to take this too personally. Focus on those impossibly cute little phalanges. You will attempt to document this phenomenon, but the fact that your exposed boob will appear in every photo might be a tad inappropriate for posting on Facebook.

In the last six weeks, I have come to discover that life now is all about choices and two hour intervals. Do I want to eat breakfast before 11am or wash the grease out of my ponytail? I am also boggled by how few nursery rhymes I can actually recite by heart. Weren’t those ridiculous songs about rainbows and farm animals drilled into my hippocampus? I have been chanting Puff, The Magic Dragon (which I believe is actually about marijuana) and You are My Sunshine on banal repeat to the point that I want to blow my own brains out. Even worse, I have been making up lyrics. I know that “If that looking glass gets broke, Papa isn’t gonna buy you an artichoke”, but for some reason that seems to make excellent sense at 2am. In fact, “If that artichoke should rot, Papa’s gonna buy you.. a bag of snot”. Sadly, the night this slipped out of my mouth, I giggled like a six year old and consequently woke her up after a significant rocking-chair investment. I am so desperate for fresh options that my sister came over the other afternoon and was singing Old Mac Donald to her son. I was ready to nominate her for a Grammy. What a revelation! This opened up a whole new repertoire of pig snorts and duck quacks that could be incorporated into our playtime. Totally the highlight of my day.

And so, we are slowly adapting to parenthood and making up our own Bill Maher version of New Rules. This about knocks out my two hour interval for today. In fact, I think I hear her grunting. I’m coming, darling... “Puff, The Magic Dragon lived by the sea and frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honah Lee...”

Big-Boned and Beautiful

2011-09-14T06:00:00.000-07:00

My fetus thinks she’s fat. That’s right. Body image issues in utero. As the mom, I can take all the looks, comments, and flabbergasted exclamations when the mailman or the grocery clerk hear that I STILL have two more months. Your retorts ring in my ears at bedtime, “You’re Huge.” “YOU ARE about to POP!” “Gee, I’d hate to see you at 9 months” and my new favorite that seems to be paired with a hearty open-mouthed cackle, “You’re sure there aren’t two in there, darlin’?” Yes. Pretty sure. Now shut your trap, meth addict. Your teeth look like you have been gargling with coffee. I can take it all, but my baby. My sweet little 3 lb. baby. Thanks a lot. Now she has issues. She can hear, you know. That’s why Brad has been serenading Big Brown Eyes on the guitar at night and why I enthusiastically read aloud from that awful book, Goodnight Moon, in the nursery rocking chair with inflection in my voice.

She is taking it all in. Every suggestive comment about the importance of exercise and how I really only need to be ingesting a maximum of 300 extra daily calories. 300? You don’t say? And here I thought flabbing it out on my couch, eating sticks of Land-o-Lake’s like summer popsicles was what the doctor ordered. I will have you know that the OB says I am perfectly in range. No gestational diabetes, no swelling. My kid is just big-boned. Now leave me alone.

I find myself rubbing my belly in front of Dove Commercials while telling the Seed she is beautiful just the size she is. I still think years of therapy may be ahead of us. My sister is having the opposite problem. She has been suffering the skinny girl ridicule. Strangers on the street coming up to her, probing if she is eating enough. “You know you really shouldn’t diet when you are pregnant – your body needs at LEAST another 300 calories.” I told her to flick ‘em off and say she is doing just fine with her celery sticks and diet coke, but thanks for the unsolicited advice.”

So, here is the script. Pay attention and repeat after me. “Congratulations! You look absolutely wonderful. In fact, you are glowing.” And that’s about all that you need to say. Even if you have to lie. Just stick to the script and everyone will be fine. The only person that is actually exempt from this rule and allowed speak her mind is the maternal great-grandmother. She gets full reign. Or at least in my experience, it is impossible to put a muzzle on her. Baba has gone around introducing my sister and me throughout our mutual pregnancies this summer, beaming with pride. This is her standard opening: “Yes, Amy is having a boy in September and Emily, well, we think she is having a girl. You know how they say that girls steal their mother’s beauty.” Wink wink. Fantastic. But, hey, as I said, I can take it. As long as I have my stick of butter to pacify me.

The City

2011-07-07T13:00:00.000-07:00

Tonight, thirteen strangers pranced through our apartment to discern if they could make it their home. I am glad Brad and I both left. I didn’t want to watch them mentally mapping out the next few years of their lives: curling up in our living room, frying onions over our stove, and sorting socks on our gray pile carpet. It is still ours.

This type of resistance floods my pores when change is perched cat-like on the horizon. I am a wistful soul. I find comfort in the familiar. But, our “Seed” is 22 weeks now and we have succumbed to the migratory pull of suburban parenting. It is fitting in a way – my parents brought me home from the hospital to a sunny yellow nursery on Bonnie Brae. Brad and I will be doing the same for the Seed. Three blocks down. It will likely be the house where she takes her first tentative steps, learns how to say Dadda and blows out a solitary birthday candle with frosting on her nose. But, right now it holds no memories for us.

I bought a card the other day that I tacked up on my bulletin board: “Sometimes ‘right back where you started from’ is right where you belong.” I think it may help me leave the life we have started here at 1211 W. Newport. It makes me think of that board game Amy and I used to play as kids. Life. The one where you plugged along in your mini-plastic station wagon at the mercy of the addictive rainbow spinning wheel, dodging financial ruin and social hiccups along the way. It was a twisty, curvy crapshoot if you hit prosperity or poverty – but everyone ended up a mere inch from the starting space anyway. Some just had more pegs in their cars.

I will miss this apartment. I will miss the buzz of the city – the parade of people clapping down Southport in their flip-flops, the over-priced corner coffee-houses, Ray’s Italian Ice shop that sells homemade soup in the winter, the open air patios, and even the local florist who charges $8 per hydrangea stem. I’ll miss the distant roar of the Wrigley crowd five blocks away and the playful score of the organ carried in on the breeze. I may even miss having to pause the TV every time the Brown Line thunders through our backyard at rush hour.

This was the apartment a cab dropped me off in front of one cold snowy mid-December night in 2008 after I had brushed my teeth and tongue at least five times. I stood outside and mused if I would be coming here a lot. And then Brad greeted me at the door with a preposterously thick, itchy wool sweater as part of my Christmas dare and I knew. Yes. I would be back many times.

These are the very walls that enveloped us as a new couple, the floors that creaked in protest when I “feminized” the interior. This is the living room nook that is transformed daily into the Hyatt St. Louis. The back door that attracts an obscene amount of spiders after dusk in the summer. The storage closet that graciously conceals the chaotic menagerie of two adult nostalgists. The whirlpool tub that lavishes the ultimate bubble bath. The hall threshold with the stubborn nail that has ripped multiple right footed cotton socks. The counter where one late wine-soaked night...we sorted the mail.

Our children will never know this place. It will be the street we drive them down one day on the way home from a customary Cubs’ loss and say, “Hey, see that stone building with the big tree out front? Your mom and I used to live there when we were first married. Yup, right up there. That front window is where I ‘d see your mom every morning sitting at her computer with her ponytail and pjs after I’d come home from working the night shift.” They’ll look up for a second – but won’t believe it. Mom and Dad – urbanites? Not a chance. Everyone in the city is so...hip.

Naturally, we are excited about what awaits us on Bonnie Brae. A subsequent chapter. A new home to claim for our expanding family of pink and blue pegs. A fresh coat of paint. There are good layers under there from the people before us who have moved on to their own next adventure. You can hear the echoes in the walls. Children’s squeals, backyard bbqs, and bedtime stories. I know this to be true. We are adding to an already solid foundation. I suppose that is what we leave to the new tenants on Newport – whoever you may be. We leave you some truly exceptional layers. Take care of them.

Announcing.... The Seed!

2011-04-30T10:40:00.000-07:00

It may appear to the untrained eye that I have been letting myself go. Sweatpants. Sofa. Wheel of Fortune. Munching on Golden Grahams, Matzo, and the occasional pretzel rod. I’ve stopped cooking. I’ve ceased blow-drying. “Shower” is actually scribbled on my daily to-do-list. AND I feel incredibly proud when I can cross it off. I seem to have somehow activated a sadistic resurgence of adolescent acne in my T-zone. The giant ones. Band-geek worthy. With a pulse. I’ve completely given up on the YMCA elliptical while flipping through Us Weekly, even when discretely encased by Newsweek. I sob during State Farm commercials. I cannot open my own fridge without sporting one of those SARS masks you see in Asian airports. Oh yea, and most importantly I have turned the exact greenish hue of the Grinch who stole X-mas.

There is a creature inside of me, sprouting webbed hands, tooth buds and eyelashes. And some other important stuff, like organs. Brad and I are both ecstatic. It is a miracle. A miracle the size of a lime that has me sprinting to hurl over the toilet whenever I see a hamburger, think of pizza, or smell anything other than cantaloupe and pineapple.

I have been trying to bond with the little “seed”. I tell her everything is okay. I gently rub my tummy. I take long leisurely naps. But, I have a sense she is mocking me from her little amniotic command zone. I am pretty certain we are dealing with a girl. There is too much drama going on in there to suspect a laid-back lad. I have even given her an identity. Secretly and very maturely, I have been calling her a name that Brad impulsively “vetoed”, but that has been my childhood fantasy ever since I dressed my first Barbie doll.

The doctors all nod enthusiastically when I tell them I am feeling like shit. “That’s fantastic,” they grin. “Lots of hormones surging around in there! You should see things taper off around Week Twelve.” Week Twelve. I have been awaiting this Week Twelve like the coming of the Messiah. I have been counting down, pacing, salivating like a school kid for summer. Well, week 12 came and went. And the only apparent “tapering” is in the form of that invasive little worm that continues to starve me every ninety minutes.

I was thinking, maybe this kid is just looking for some good old-fashioned public acknowledgement. After all, we have kept this pretty hush-hush. Maybe I am gestating a star who will be the next Scarlett O’Hara and she just needs a sprinkling of narcissistic attention. So – here you are…public acknowledgement, kiddo. Everyone (aka my 17 loyal followers) is virtually adoring you on my blog. Now, it would be just swell if you would consider giving dear old mom a break – after all, I hate to manipulate your sweet little developing brain, but pretty soon you will be at my mercy. That’s right. Mom will be wielding all the power. I can’t wait for you to come out so I can introduce you to these things we call boobs.

Flour and Water

2011-01-20T08:00:00.000-08:00

I picked up the bread. It was my routine. Every Tuesday around 4pm, I’d clap my laptop shut, grab my water bottle and surrender myself to the 100-degree Arizona sun. I’d swing by the post office, organic markets on Skyline Drive that curved around the Catalinas, and then the “piccolo” Italian café for their famous focaccia. One loaf, sometimes two, depending on if I had a spare propped up against the ice cream sandwiches in the freezer. It was – without question – the most ethereal hearth-baked carbohydrate I had ever devoured: Sweetly charred where the flames had tickled the crust and subtly glazed with rosemary, olive oil, and a shy sprinkling of sea salt. The inside remained so moist and chewy that when you pulled it apart the gluten resisted like elastic. Flour and water - in symbiotic harmony. I craved that bread with a palpable savagery normally attributed to hyenas in heat on the Nature Channel. It was obsession at first bite.

I heard of the place when I first moved to Tucson and polled every person I met about the city’s hidden gastronomic gems. “Quaint little place. Only a few tables, so go early. Pasta is all homemade, but the bread...Oh, the bread!” This was inevitably conveyed with a certain drunken delirium – a smacking of the lips, rolling back of the eyeballs, with arms raised in the air. “Absolutely orgasmic. You must go.”

And so we went. Friday night dinner at the petite café in a disconcertingly drab strip mail devoid of all ambiance. We had been warned, “Don’t let the location fool you.” That afternoon, I had read online how the store’s owners, Massimo and Margarita, a young couple from San Francisco, had migrated west in search of a place to conceptualize and conceive their Italian café. A lone ravioli in a town of rellenos.

The modest room was brightly lit and separated part-store and part-restaurant by a precariously high stack of canned San Marzano plum tomatoes. Every item was authentic – imported kalamatas, infused balsamics, dried pastas in every contorted shape – peeking out from their cellophane windows like eager orphans waiting to be claimed. Sautéed garlic and lemon zest smacked you in the nostrils when you first stepped in the door, but after a while the wafts matured into rich boar ragus and eggplant caponatas. The colors in the deli case were mesmerizing – bulky tubes of beet-red salamis, polka-dotted with peppercorns, grilled calamari tossed with purple capsicums, and almond-toned panna cottas expertly molded into moon domes. We regularly devoured several baskets of bread and I was never shy about asking for refills.

It became our go-to spot - the local treasure we took visitors after the obligatory first meal at one of many spicy Southwestern joints. Sometimes, if we weren’t completely engorged, we’d round out dinner at the artisan gelato shop across the street that decorated each flavor with edible embellishments. After a few months, stopping by for a to-go loaf of the focaccia was tacked onto my regular Tuesday schedule. Gradually, I got to know Margarita and recognize her thick walnut hair pinned back with turquoise-rimmed sunglasses. She was always perched at the bar, bent over her purveyor orders, calculator in hand as a lemon wedge frolicked around the bubbles in her San Pellegrino. We exchanged small pleasantries, usually about food - What elaborate new recipe I had attempted that week or how quiet the town was since the snowbirds headed north. She always laughed and shrugged when I begged her to relinquish the trade secrets of her dough, “It’s pretty much just flour and water. It’s the pecan wood and oven that do all the magic.”

I’d like to think she was flattered that I drove four miles every week to pick up a loaf of her $4 focaccia. I’d like to think she thought of me as a local – a neighbor – a friend. But, maybe she was just being kind, gauging my loneliness. My listlessness. Maybe she knew all along what I hadn’t yet discovered. That I was busying myself, running futile errands, whipping up gourmet meals on weekdays - all to provide purpose – to fill in the gaping holes of a marriage that was turning porous. Maybe she sensed I was keeping my life glued together with her bread.

* * *

Three years later, I am curled up on my love seat in Chicago to watch the NBC Evening News. I spot a familiar storefront in the background of the makeshift TV set. The blood drains from my face and I drop the remote from my fingertips. I know as soon as I read the caption scrolling beneath the broadcast, Gunman opens fire this morning at a political gathering in a L-shaped Tucson shopping center. Six confirmed dead. Fourteen wounded. The sidewalks are already littered with teddy bears, votive candles, and pollen-dusted lillies. A “Get Well, Gabby” banner blows gently, tied with string between two Agave stalks. Before transitioning to commercial, the camera zooms in on poster leaning up against a brick wall, “God Bless America.” - child’s scrawl in red and blue crayon. And there – just behind Brian Williams’ left shoulder is my Italian café.

How many times had I driven through that center, toggling over speed bumps, waving on pedestrians pushing grocery carts, before I took an automatic right onto Ina and accelerated for home? How many Tuesdays did I reverse out of my parking space, tearing into that bread before spitefully tossing the whole thing in the back so there’d be some left for dinner?

That night I sit up in bed and think a lot about timing and chance and mortality. I wonder how a place that once brought so much comfort to me, so much normalcy, could suddenly evoke such heartache. I weigh how much more complicated the world gets as you get older - how you begin to understand questions that start with ‘why’ don’t always have satisfying answers. How some holes are just too massive to be mended by something simple.

I think of Margarita and wonder if she is still making her focaccia or if routine is something that was sacrificed that morning in Tucson. And for the first time since I left, I can’t quite recall how it tasted. I swallow and my mouth feels thick and viscid and gummy. I am reminded of paste. All that comes to mind is flour and water.

A Witness on Bonnie Brae

2010-12-20T18:00:00.000-08:00

Last month I became a statistic. No, I didn’t start watching Glee. I witnessed a crime. Okay fine, the aftermath of one. But, an actual crime with real-life deadbeats. I can spot them anywhere. I conduct weekly research in front of my plasma 49-inch Samsung while scooping frozen yogurt and granola into my mouth and tracking the plots on CSI, SVU, Criminal Minds, Castle, and The Good Wife. I am well aware that the creepy dude you find huddled over the body with a bloody knife is innocent and that the docile deaf neighbor carving rocking chairs in his basement and nuking TV dinners for his ailing mother is actually the psychopath. You see, I know my stuff.

I just happened to have been gazing out my parent’s front living window. 12:20pm on a peacefully average Saturday afternoon. In an instant a black SUV whipped around the corner and screeched to a halt in my family’s driveway, directly behind our startled Chrysler mini-van. Three teenagers tumbled out like socks from the spin cycle and sprinted across the street into our neighbor’s backyard with the yippy Bichon Frise. I blinked. Rubbed my eyes. But, no. There it was. That black SUV with the doors flopping ajar, quivering in my family’s driveway like a giant insect. I grabbed the phone and dialed 911.

Within minutes, a dozen squad cars from three local townships had surrounded our property. White middle-aged cops darted between houses, guns drawn, searching garages, bushes and birdbaths for any sign of the three delinquents. Several detectives began processing the vehicle, snapping pictures, bagging evidence, breathing hushed observations into hand-held recorders. My mom and I glanced at each other from the front steps – Who were these guys?

I repeated my account to two detectives with pocket-sized spiral notepads. The taller one had a ketchup stain on his cuff.

“Teenagers,” I declared. “3 of them. Maybe 16 – 18 yrs old. African Americans. Dark jackets – maybe jeans. One with a dark cap. They took off down that driveway over there. Probably thought they could get to Harlem Ave over the back fence and hop on a bus.” I felt smug. Like I was one of the unit, illuminating them with my stealthy deductions and rock solid eyewitness account. I glanced around. The neighbors had started gathering, clustered in wool sweaters, cupping Starbucks’ Ventes and murmuring in low-pitched voices.

“Do you think you could recognize them if you saw them?”

I glanced back at the detective. “I didn’t get a good look at the driver. His back was to me, but I saw the face of one of the passengers. The one with the dark hat.”

Dark hat. Dark hat? Or maybe it had just been his cornrows? Initial doubts began to creep in. Was my mind filling in the gaps? Unintelligible commands and static bounced off the radios clipped to their belt buckles, harboring their guns. My hands were shaking. I wanted to help. Here was my chance to be the neighborhood hero. A vigilante servicing the 700 block of Bonnie Brae Place.

Bonnie Brae Place. The name of my childhood street even sounded like a nursery rhyme. Plucked from the script of Our Town with its landscaped lawns, seasonal wreaths, and porch swings. Bonnie Brae Place - where kids do their math homework, moms buy organic celery, dads recycle their Diet Coke cans and the dogs pick up their own shits - on command. It is a street of dreams. The pinnacle of annual excitement occurs when a baseball accidentally flies through a kitchen window. That’s why everyone subscribes to cable.

After twenty minutes, half the block was out on the curb, staring at that SUV like it was some alien life form, infecting the neighborhood with its leprous fumes. One neighbor approached my mother and asked if she thought it was safe to leave his wife and kids at home while he went to take a DMV test. Another offered up his house down the block as a safe haven – in case we wanted to spend the night – since our place had clearly been compromised. One woman, new to the block, fell to her knees and buried her face in her hands, exclaiming that the entire town had gone to pot. Seriously. Fell to her knees.

The irony is Bonnie Brae is really not that far from the actual ghetto. Drive about 25 blocks due west and you will find poverty, pimps and powder. But, our quaint little hardware stores, old-fashioned ice cream parlors, and independent bookstores keep us pacified. They put up a nice little facade – but sometimes dark, menacing automobiles have the audacity to slip through the electric fence.

Apparently, the police had been chasing this car for several miles. Shots had been fired as it fled a local shopping mall and if you peeked through the back window, the car was brimming with stolen merchandise and bags of drugs. Condiment Officer muted his radio and filled me on the details. “The Melrose Park unit has a suspect in custody a few blocks away. Can you take a ride with me to see if you recognize him?”

I took a step toward my mom, secretly hoping she might accompany me. “Will he be able to see me?” Images of this kid’s relatives breaking into my parent’s house at night to plant a bloody horse head in my childhood bed caused my voice to crack.

“No, don’t worry. We’ll keep our distance. He won’t be able to make you out.”

With the neighborhood watching, I buckled into the cop car and set off to do my civic duty. Suddenly, the gravity of the situation impaled me. I was being asked to condemn this individual, to place him at the scene and declare his guilt with my gavel.

I thought back to my Intro to Psych lectures as a pimple-faced freshman in Palo Alto. How my professor began class one day by showing a random clip of a purse-snatching incident on the projection screen. It lasted all of fifteen seconds and after it was over, he nonchalantly continued with the syllabus. By the end of the hour, the majority of us had completely forgotten about the bewildering start to the morning. Before we were dismissed, he displayed a group of individuals dressed in similar attire up on the overhead. He took a poll, counting hands as each student was asked to identify the purse snatcher - A, B, C, D, or E in the line-up. There was great disparity among the class, but B was the clear winner.

A girl piped up from the back of the room, ““What’s the right answer?”
He paused for a moment to make certain we were all listening.
“None of them. He’s not even in the line-up.”

I remember reading an article on Southwest Airlines Magazine about the Innocence Project, a national organization responsible for over 250 exonerations due to the evaluation of DNA evidence in some old cases. They talked about how fallible human memory is and how a misidentification had caused a wrongful conviction in over 75% of those instances. I contemplated all that on my ride over to the detained suspect. It was only a flash. A spit of time. No one had warned me that car was going to come barreling into our driveway. No one urged me to pay explicit attention to every facial feature, physical attribute or discerning characteristic through the living room window. I had been confused. Shocked. Even a little bit scared. How much had this become me wanting to remember rather than how much I actually saw?

When we approached the intersection where another gaggle of cop cars had assembled, the officer pulled off to the side and radioed the other vehicles.
“The witness is here.”
“10-4. Bringing out the suspect.”

As I spied the officers jockey the suspect into position on the street about sixty yards ahead, I wished I could just rewind the whole scene – to see what I had missed or failed to glimpse the first time. As the kid came into focus, I shook my head. The hair was all wrong. He stood there, hands pulled back in cuffs, surrounded by bright lights and badges, shivering like prey.

“I’m not saying he wasn’t in the car, but he wasn’t the guy I saw on the passenger side.”
The officer nodded and then relayed the message into the other car. I got the sense that I had disappointed them.

As he dropped me off back at the house, he asked “Can we give you a call later if we locate any of the other suspects. We’d like to have you take a look at a line-up.”

“Sure,” I answered tentatively. “I am willing to try, but I don’t know how much help I’ll be. It all happened so fast.” I contemplated how many times he must have had heard those same words this month.

I walked up my parent’s driveway where several officers were still dusting the car for prints and cataloging the stolen stereo equipment. It was the same driveway where I learned to ride my bike without training wheels and mapped out an entire town one summer in pink chunky chalk. The same stretch of cement on which I practiced throwing a curveball to my dad dressed in full catcher’s gear while perched on a painter’s bucket. Over the years, there had been knee scraps, games of freeze tag, and lemonade stands on lazy summer Sundays.

I secretly hoped they wouldn’t call me.

In the end, all those cop shows that fed my 8pm craving for amusement didn’t seem so glamorous any more – so neat and tidy and unthreatening. This stuff happens. All over. People out in the world, entangled in ugliness. Cops, public defenders, junkies, gangs, judges, kids keeping their heads down instead of worrying about their math homework. Maybe a tenth of the time they catch the bad guys and sometimes…well sometimes, there are no witnesses.

A few hours later from the same front window, I watched a tow truck drive off with that black SUV on its back. I thought of those three young men. I wondered where they might be at that moment. Huddled on a bus, smoking a joint, eating a hamburger, rehashing their dramatic escape. They could be real punks – dangerous even. But, I bet they didn’t have lemonade stands or slip-in slides or tulip beds on their front lawns. I assume they don’t watch Law & Order reruns for mindless entertainment. And I guessing one of their kids will never hit a wiffle ball through a window on a street called Bonnie Brae.

Emily Dressel: R.I.P.

2010-10-20T07:00:00.000-07:00

Once there was a girl named Emily Dressel. She was born with a tuft of white hair and a stubborn expression. She hated naps and adored soup. She was shy around the boys, inquisitive in class, and poker-faced on the pitcher’s mound. She blossomed in college with the discovery of $3 Boone’s Strawberry Hill.

My name has served me well over the last thirty years. Dressel. D (like David)-r-e-s-s (like Sam)-e-l. It is a good name. Near the top of the class roster – but not too high up so you had time to mentally prepare yourself if Mrs. Swanson asked everyone to spontaneously recite a haiku or name the Presidents backwards. Strangely, pizza order-takers and restaurant hostesses were universally compelled to lump a “LER” at the end. Apparently, Dressler flowed better in ink. Then, of course, there was that painful instance in 5th grade when some clever chump during recess unleashed utter humiliation in my initials: “E.D. = Explosive Diarrhea”. He wrote it in orange chalk next to the Four Square corner, albeit with several misspellings. His initials were “BC”. The best zinging retort I could spit back at the time, amidst pure playground-peer-pressured-panic, was “Birth Canal”. I can still feel the oppressive heat of jungle-gym stares.

I never personally ran into another E.D. Although one of my pals in high school told me that at her regional swim meet in Michigan, an imposter named Emily Dressel, banged her shoulder on the diving board during a routine back-flip. Apparently, “klutz” runs in the letters.

A few weeks ago, I said “I do”, setting into motion the daunting name-changing process. DMV, Frequent Flier Miles, Credit Cards, ROTH IRAs, Netflix, Work Email, Passport, USPS – the list goes on and on. Using www.knot.com as my “professional” guide to seamless marital transitions, I first bounded over to the Social Security Office. I am quite confident the waiting room chairs had maggots hatching on them or at least head lice, so I opted to stand in the back for fifty minutes while defiantly clutching my purse and attempting to look tough in my Ann Taylor sweater and pearl necklace. There were about a dozen screaming infants and toddlers running amuck with snot crusting on their cheeks, sucking on car keys and cell phones. There was one crazy white-haired lady with a walker who repeatedly shouted “What line?!” to the automated computer check-in screen and a woman in black tights and 5-inch stilettos who strutted past the police officer, dragging her 90 lb. Boxer, insisting that he was a seeing-eye-dog. I overheard two men in knit caps exchanging prison release dates and one androgynous individual, completely horizontal in row 12 appeared to be passed out or possibly dead. When my number was called, I clutched my tidy folder, containing all forms of identification, including my library card and gym membership, and marched up to Counter F. She took one look at me, half-smiled and said, “Let me guess. You just got hitched.”

There is a funny kind of mourning that comes with changing your name. In some ways, it feels like slicing off a pinky finger. True, it’s superfluous. After all, it is just a name, but yet it is subtly sentimental. Who am I if I am not Emily Dressel? My very identity.

It was the name my parents spoke aloud after kissing me on the forehead and some random nurse typed up on a birth certificate. It was the name bathed in incense during my baptism and the one that awaited me in my first grade cubbyhole on masking tape so I knew where to hang my Punky Brewster lunch box. The name appeared on T-ball trophies, in Wednesday Journal articles, and was carved into high school academic plaques. Emily Dressel was what was written on the front of the oversized Stanford University envelope next to a 72-font YES! that plopped through the mail slot one Tuesday in April. This is the name I have signed for decades on homework assignments, permission slips, petitions, and on the back of my first Visa card. The sound of it makes me turn my head, look up, and feel recognized. In fact, I get a bit jealous and competitive when I fumble across another Emily Dressel on google or Facebook. I mean who exactly do they think they are living with MY name all this time? And with that haircut?

This whole pursuit of legal reinvention is my choice and my choice alone though. Many of my female friends have kept their maiden names for various personal or professional reasons and Brad would have been happy with whatever I decided. This is something I wanted to do. A cutting of one cord and a Tarzan vine-leap onto another as Brad and I set off as a family, awaiting whoever or whatever may join our little duo along the way.

And so I am practicing my cursive H’s. It is one of the few capital letters that require an exhaustive pen lift. Several pen lifts, in fact. I can’t seem to get it to look just right. Hampson. It is harmless. Alphabetically acceptable. In the middle of the pack – not too cocky, but not too timid either. And thus far, only one person actually thought I was marrying one of the Hanson brothers with mushroom hair. It is a benign, next-door-neighborly, quaint, all-American kind of name. It will fit easily on the backs of my kids’ Little League jerseys or on the cover of my great American novel. No one will get hurt. It could be so much more controversial. My sister-in-law, for example, willingly adopted the new last name of “Gross”. (No offense, Mike, but that is true love right there.) But, still, it is going to take some getting used to. I don’t know Emily Hampson yet. I’m sure that will evolve after many cross outs, corrections, and voids in my checkbook. I trust she will eventually become broken in and comfortable and start to feel like sweatpants.

Fortunately, I have wracked my brain during quiet moments and commercial breaks and can’t come up with any disgusting gastrointestinal ailments that can be derived from E.H. The worst I can formulate is Excessive Halitosis. But, give me time. We’ve only just met.

You say potato – I say pomme de terre.

2010-08-17T17:00:00.000-07:00

Hello, my name is Emily and I am a Foodie. That is...major schnoz-in-the-air, fancier-than thou-hierloom-varietal, organically-au poivre snob. You say beans, I say haricot verts. You say mushrooms, I say chanterelles. I won’t be caught dead with American cheese singles or Wonder Bread in my cart. Those are for the birds or toddlers with four teeth. I adore over-priced farmer’s markets and pray to the God of prix fixe. I will spend $200 on one dinner for two without blinking but refuse to buy a pair of shoes for $75 that will last me ten years. Priorities.

I blame my mother and grandmother, Baba. Raised as the daughter of a peasant farmer in the Czech countryside, my Baba mastered simple ingredients grown in the garden or butchered in the barn. There was beef with dill gravy, dumplings and cabbage in the winter - grub that stuck to your ribs and made you sleepy before sundown. In the summer there were tomatoes to strain, cucumbers to pickle, and peaches to peel. In the morning, chicken bones clinked like chimes against the soup pot while Baba braided strudels that bubbled of yeast and apricot jam. Her family used everything - down to the grease that was packed and perfumed into laundry soap.

The thrifty resourcefulness ingrained in that generation’s DNA immigrated with my grandparents to their eventual home in the West suburbs of Chicago. As a child, my mother became accustomed to traditional homemade Czech meals, but she quickly developed an itch to experience the American concept of “dining out”. This was an extravagance not in my grandparent’s vocabulary. When my mom set the table, she often daydreamed of dining downtown in a fancy room with linen tablecloths, crystal chandeliers, and waiters with silver trays who folded your napkin when you got up to use the ladies room. She longed to peruse a menu written in cursive and order something French or Italian that she couldn’t pronounce. She vowed that one day her daughters would know about champagne, caviar, and seafood forks.

My family’s love affair with food was evident decades back on my dad’s side as well. The story goes that his grandmother, Emma, was so fat that they had to saw down the front door upon her death in 1949 to remove her from the house and special order a mega-coffin from California. But, I argue that there is a critical class difference between being a compulsive eater and being a Foodie – besides the cholesterol. Where bingers love to eat, Foodies put equal stock in admiration. We are a discerning, adventurous, and fastidious breed. We are awed by the purple pigments in Dragon tongue beans and the subtle plantain flavor in a Butterstick summer squash. We could chat for hours about the hint of mandarin in a cardamom foam or discuss what herbs to add to a mirepoix to properly flavor chicken stock. We are enamored with gastronomy and fatigued by flourless chocolate cake. We subscribe to Food and Wine Magazine, Gourmet, and watch Top Chef on Wednesdays. We maintain a bucket list of restaurants to spend five hundred dollars at before we die. And we brag. Foodie to Foodie. Under the pretense of recipe collaboration, we truthfully love to pound our own chests.

My brother and I do this - indulge in culinary chatter. He painstaking describes how he basted a honey-dijon glaze over grill-skewered brussel sprouts on Friday and I see his “BS” and raise him a homemade butterscotch semifreddo drizzled with a rocky road brittle. He pauses. Considers. And folds. I win this round. To boost his ego, I casually mention my last encounter dining with savages.

“Last week I overhead this girl at a bistro ask her date what cream bro-leigh was. I turned around, thinking that the guy would be mortified, until I saw he was trying to eat the cedar plank under his salmon.”

We both laugh and snivel, basking in the warm glow of superiority.

But, this type of taste-bud transcendence produces an unfortunate side effect. We are commonly bored. I refuse to support restaurants that aren’t churning out something I can’t parboil, poach, or puree at home. Frequently I scan dessert menus on-line to see if they reek of the ABC’s: Apple tart, Bread pudding, Chocolate cake. It doesn’t even have to be expensive – just give me something original and sexy and deconstructed. Give me a meal of a lifetime.

When we do hit that crescendo - that orgasmic, trifectus climax of peak flavor, texture, and presentation - we cannot help but spew to all of our Foodie friends. Each of us, broadcasting our most elite conquests like decorative patches ironed proudly on a Girl Scout sash.: “Oh yes, we ate at Charlie Trotter’s for George’s birthday last year. The maitre d’ even gave us a private kitchen tour.” or “Bill was so romantic this fall – he surprised me with a garden table at Commander’s Palace for jazz brunch!” Even if you happen to know someone who has visited the Super Elite - like a sister-in-law who once ate sashimi at Nobu in Toyko - you can earn partial credit. At least you are in the game and fellow Foodies know, “Ok, he gets it.”

Which leads me to my latest conquest during our upcoming wedding weekend: Thomas Keller’s impervious 15-table magnum opus in Napa Valley, The French Laundry. The Crème de la Crème. A place where just securing a reservation earns you a patch. It has been on my list ever since my family visited wine country in 2002 and the concierge cackled in my face, “French Laundry!? Honey, the next time they have a table open, you’ll be a grandmother.”

For the past fifteen years, it has been ranked as one of the top restaurants globally. This is the holy grail of the West Coast. Every night, approximately one hundred chosen disciples indulge in a hallucinatory orgy of culinary lovemaking. Foodies will give their left pinky toe for a chance to feast on Keller’s ambrosia: “Oysters and Pearls” or “Foie Gras en Terrine”. If only appendage amputation was so easy…. You actually have to put in the work. It may be about as difficult to snatch a table at The French Laundry as it is to win the Indiana Lottery – twice. And so, I set off to do my research.

First, I sensibly google ‘How to get a reservation at the French Laundry?’ I am bombarded by an obscene quantity of posting boards and chat rooms. Foodies in Portland and Charleston lamenting on Trip Advisor that they have been trying unsuccessfully for five years, perhaps searching for some sort of miracle fertility treatment to increase their chances. There is a message board where you can trade dates and tables with other couples who have reservations on days that they can no longer attend. It all reads suspiciously like a personal ad, Silver-haired San Francisco couple with a secured 4-top, searching for fun-loving pair to join them for Late Seating on Tues, September 14. Must love food, red wine, small talk and be willing to spend a fortune. Gay is a plus! There are numerous references to a mysterious man named Aren Sandersen who will guarantee your party a reservation on your selected day if you give him 70 days notice and hand over your Visa number.

The French Laundry currently takes reservations two months in advance to the day. Their largest table is a six-top and we have eight anxious Foodies in our group. I need two tables of four (13% of the restaurant!). October 4th is our night. We have one shot at this. Like the hunky astronauts in those Hollywood Blockbusters attempting to reroute apocalyptic meteorites and save the human race from total obliteration with one last Hail-Mary computer algorithm.

I call on August 2nd, just to make sure they haven’t changed their policies. I call again on August 3rd to double check and confirm the first person I spoke with wasn’t a vapid idiot. During the night, I have a nightmare about getting stuck in an elevator when the reservation office is about to open and having to tap out a SOS in Morse Code to the emergency responders who don’t seem to appreciate the magnitude of my distress. I have my fiance stationed on his overnight shift, stalking Opentable for any possible loopholes per online rumors that the website releases one table per night. On August 4th at 11:30am CST, I arrange my notebook, credit cards, pens, back-up pens in case the first two run out of ink, and stress ball in front of me on the bed.

11:45am - Begin calming breathing exercises.
11:50am – Text my sister to remind her for the fifth time to call on her phone.
11:55am – French Laundry voicemail, “Our reservation office will reopen at 10am PST”.
11:57am – Quick breathing exercise
11:58am – French Laundry voicemail
11:59am - Busy signal
11:59:32am – Busy signal. Shit.
12:00:02am – Busy signal. Double shit.
12:00:13am – Busy signal. Triple shit.

I redial every eight seconds for the next twenty-two terribly tedious minutes. 165 calls. At one point around 12:19pm, I peer down at my index finger, blistering from redials, and think, What the hell am I doing? Dinner at this place is about as much as Baba’s annual social security check. I must be nuts. But then, I come to my senses and realize I have just wasted eleven precious seconds. At 10:22:46am I actually hear a ring. I screech with excitement as the drone announcement comes on, “Thank you for calling The French Laundry. Your call is important to us. All representatives are currently with other clients. Please remain on the line and the next representative will be with you shortly.” I glance at my watch. 10:23:55am. I am probably screwed. More bad elevator music. A voice cuts through the other line - a formal British accent – “Thank you ever so kindly for holding. This is Victoria”. Very proper. I think they must only hire reservationists with proper British accents so all the bitter Americans don’t become irate and vulgar on the phone once all the tables are lapped up. You just can’t take a tone with Victoria.

“Congratulations,” she says breezily. “We have exactly one table left for October 4th. A four-top at 9:15pm.”
“I’ll take it.”
As I rattle off my credit card information and put my name on The Wait List for an additional table, I am already scheming – Who out of my eight family members is expendable? Amy is skinny. Maybe she can sit on my lap.

A week later, I get a call that their private event room has opened up and would we like to secure it for our party of eight? More breathing exercises. Absolutely! I actually do heel clicks and sashay across the living room all afternoon.

Many of you will probably think I am certifiably crazy. For those who don’t – welcome to the club. You are definitely a fellow Foodie. I leave any aspiring Foodies with this small piece of advice. As my mother always instructed my siblings and I, growing up: Fake it until you make it. I recommend investing in an excellent French/American cookbook and dictionary. And remember, everything sounds better and more expensive in French. Meme quand c’est la laverie. Or as we say here....even when it’s the laundry.

Ode to The Smurf Hearse

2010-07-03T07:48:00.000-07:00

Although you never technically transported miniature blue cartoon characters from funeral parlors to crematoriums, you would have been the car they cast had they made the movie: Smurfette and her Erection Collection. You were, however, my leading, although somewhat effeminate, “man”.

I picked you out of a conformist lot of white, grey and black sedans when I was twenty-two. You may have been the runt in the litter, but you were electric blue and somehow, I found you endearing. Practically speaking of course, I knew I would never lose you in parking lot. You were my first new car – a Chrysler PT Cruiser – promising tailgates out the hatchback and parallel parking for dummies. I signed on the dotted line and you were my wheels to adulthood as we chugged along together, hugging life’s curves with your stubby little Firestones.

You and I withstood criticism. People wondered why I was with you. My sister called you hideous and refused to go for a ride - horrified some college guys might assume she was white trash from Melrose Park. Once while stopped at a red light on a beautiful summer day with the windows down, four teenage girls in ponytails taunted and pointed at you, “That’s a really UGLY car!” I know you wanted me to run them over, but I didn’t want to get blood on your blue hood. It would have looked a bit too patriotic.

You were my steady companion through seven years, five moves and three states. You silently tolerated honks, tears, egregious profanity, and twangy country music. You even saved my life once while parked outside a gelato shop in downtown St. Louis. The windows from a twenty-story building blew out, raining down on you like icicles, but you shielded me from debris as I dug around your seat cheeks for meter coins. I don’t dismiss the little things either. Throughout the years, you helped transport dry-cleaning, suitcases, and even that egg custard dessert I brought to a dinner party that sloshed around on your floor mat for twenty minutes until there was nothing left in the casserole dish. Your heated seats more than once tricked my friends into thinking they had wet their pants. And your brakes pads could rival any baby-on-a-plane in a screeching contest, especially after some rain. But, you never judged me. You were my steadfast companion, refusing to gossip even when I had to pee in a McDonald’s cup over your cushions while stuck in a Thanksgiving blizzard on I-55.

Granted, you have to admit to being a bit high maintenance. Always racking up hospital bills with some random hydraulic tube, coolant fluid, and new tires – not once or twice, but three times. You were always falling apart and frankly, your neediness began to reek of desperation. In your later years, you became a heavy breather – wheezing and gasping down the road - insinuating that I should just get out and put you on my back. It almost seemed as though you forgot that you were supposed to be the reliable one in our relationship. So, are you surprised I went and traded you in for a younger, hipper, bronzed model that has less girth? What can I say, you lost that spark plug. You didn’t really think I meant forever?

I will always think of you, my Smurf Hearse, when I see one of your relatives parading down the road. I will recall you fondly, remembering us both in our prime and our youth – wondering if you are somewhere, gallantly delivering Papa Smurf to his final resting place. After all, the dude’s getting old. I write this ode because in the butterflied excitement of my new motor of love, I forgot to even say goodbye. So think of this as a last little pat, one tender farewell. You looked so forlorn, so frightened, so alone - discarded and abandoned - in that brightly lit Hyundai dealership with foreign models sticking their grills up at your chubby handles. But, take comfort, my friend, as much as I cursed you, you were the car for me. And remember this when you are feeling your most blue - they always say you never really get over your first.

The Camping Clause

2010-06-24T09:00:00.000-07:00

So my darling fiancé confides he can’t possibly commit to a lifetime of harmonious matrimony until we have officially camped together. Dirt. Tent. Sleeping bags. Pork & Beans. Spiders with legs like Heidi Klum. Peeing over poison oak in the pitch black with mosquitoes feasting on my ass. Camping. Did I mention I work for Hyatt? We are actually entitled to free room nights. Free. That is usually something he can get behind.

Historically the only aspect of camping I enjoyed in my naïve youth was the cornucopia of jumbo marshmallows. They always seemed to taste better around a bonfire, but that was before I realized how many calories were in an entire bag and before I wore contacts. The way I see it, contacts are my crutch. An evolutionary signal, if you will, that if I were primed for the outdoors – I would’ve inherited perfect version. As it stands, I would have been mauled long ago by some saber-toothed cheetah or fanged wild boar while I stood by, squinting, and wondering what the heck was tearing off my arm. The truth is, it’s just not in my blood.

I confess the notion of zipping up in a cozy nylon tent with my honey in the middle of nowhere with the crickets chirping and the wind howling sounds rustically romantic. But, I am not some savage pioneer woman who chops wood, churns her own butter, and gives birth on the floor of a wagon train. I hate to set a precedent that camping will be alive and well in our future. In my defense, I don’t think Brad would classify me as high-maintenance. I still don’t know how to apply eye shadow, I refuse to buy jeans that cost more than $60, and most of my shoes are flat with rubber soles. (The ones that do have heels more closely resemble toddler’s building blocks than deadly instruments that could be used to impale an intruder). But, I do like hairdryers, arugula on my salad, and the clever names on nail polish bottles.

Weeks later, the invite comes: A 40th birthday / high school reunion celebration with Brad’s hometown friends. Our camping site is four hours north in Little Bear, Wisconsin. (I think I will be the judge of their size – thank you very much) The torturous part being that the rest of the crew will be rationally slumbering in the well-appointed farmhouse while we will be bear bait on the back lawn. But, these are the sacrifices we make for love.

We opt to start our drive from Chicago in Brad’s CRV – incidentally, the car without air conditioning instead of my effeminate Smurf-blue PT Cruiser with air conditioning that reeks of mold.

“It will get us in an outdoorsy mood. We are roughing it this weekend,” Brad declares while playfully punching me in the arm.

I pack the car with toilet paper, pillows, towels, diet coke, and enough Wet Ones to change an entire nursery. The temperature reads 91. About ten minutes into the drive we acknowledge in mutual defeated silence that we have made a colossal mistake. The regret pulsates through the car as exhaust fumes and damp heat plow into our pink cheeks. I focus on a tiny droplet of sweat on Brad’s earlobe. Somehow the idea of retreating and repacking the PT Cruiser seems more barbaric than driving four long hours through Hades. But, we probably had heat stroke.

The Gods smile upon me as we approach a pee stop near Lake Geneva. As the Cubs’ radio announcer alerts us to a nasty storm system brewing due West, the clouds roll in – big boorish cumulonimbus threats that promise to wreak havoc. I have horrific flashes of sinking into a muddy sleeping-bag soup later that evening as buzzing mosquitoes lay their larvae in my belly button. But, as the first droplets smatter onto the windshield and smear the insect guts, it dawns on me... this could be my out. Only a crazy person would pitch a tent in a thunderstorm. Tent poles and lightning - not exactly soup and sandwich. I am fairly confident Brad did not intend to martyr us in effort to fulfill this wedded-bliss camping clause. Sensibility will prevail and I begin to do a nonchalant rain dance with my toes.

The storm is torrential. Hailstones, strobes of lightning, trees snapping like toothpicks. We drive on through the countryside and my mood brightens as the sky darkens. We arrive just before sundown to a house with one convenient extra bedroom and puddles in the back yard.

Before we lie down in a creaky attic bedroom on two twin beds, I inspect the mattresses for bedbugs. After all, it is the country. Satisfied that I won’t be devoured by microscopic Pac-mans, I coo my remorse to Brad with as much sincerity as I can muster.

“I am so sorry the camping didn’t work out tonight. I was really looking forward to a night in the great outdoors with you. If it wasn’t for that darn storm.”

“That’s okay, honey,” he pats my hand softly and rolls over on his side. “We’ll just have to postpone the wedding.”

Something Marvelous

2010-06-20T21:02:00.000-07:00

On a beach in Korea with seasoning-salt sand and the breeze combing through palm fronds, I pulled out a stiff new paperback, creased the spine a few times and flexed the pages like one might warm a muscle. I flipped it over in my hand, obligated to read the chorus of testimonials before committing to the first page. The pages smelled of ink and bread. By page five, I was engrossed. On page 9, I hovered over a passage with the vigorous persistence of a fly determined to land on a ham sandwich. I wanted to dive in to the words as if they were a summer lake, offering up their coolness and placidness to me. I peered into the water and saw a beautiful reflection.

“On the girl’s brown legs there were many small white scars. I was thinking, Do those scars cover the whole of you, like the stars and the moons on your dress? I thought that would be pretty too, and I ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But you and I, we must make an agreement to defy them. We must see all scars as beauty. Okay?…Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.

In a few breaths’ time I will speak some sad words to you. But you must hear them the same way we have agreed to see scars now. Sad words are just another beauty. A sad story means, this story-teller is alive. The next thing you know, something fine will happen to her, something marvelous, and then she will turn around and smile.”
---Little Bee (Chris Cleave)

I shut my eyes and replayed the words over in adoration. It was of course, our “human story” - where no one is immune to pain or loss or derailment. But, reading that passage smothered me with pride as if I alone were being honored in the front row of a graduation ceremony. As if I alone were being reminded that grace is both earned and dispensed in this life - One just has to hope that whatever omniscient being up there, dosing it all out, will balance out the scales in the end.

I thought back to a vignette I had started writing in the fall of 2008 when my own wounds were not yet scars. I never finished it. At the time, I wasn’t quite sure how it was all supposed to end.

************ ************** *************

October 2008

She left pieces of her life behind her everywhere she went. ‘It’s easier to feel the sunlight without them’, she said.
-Brian Andreas, Artist

I own a print with that phrase etched on canvas. It balances on top of my vanity so I both blink awake to the words and subliminally bid them goodnight. I am not a collector of art or gimmicky quotations. Although I admit to posting the Footprints magnet on my college fridge for two months before overhearing the Lacrosse Boys ridicule it in the hallway. “Never date a Footprints chick. They don’t put out.”

P-I-E-C-E-S. That particular word endears itself to me because that’s what it felt like for a long time. It implies that a WHOLE can disintegrate into PARTS - that loss is tangible. That it has body and blood and flesh. It admits that there is throbbing, bruising, tearing, and scabbing. It is physical. It amputates. And pieces shed, sever, and scatter like shards of glass.

Slowly, I’m morphing. I suppose that is the essence of all healing – the sloughing of the dead and regeneration of the new. But, it’s not pleasant – it’s pink and raw and tender like the blisters on the pads of your palm after playing hours of tennis. It’s wet. It’s messy and soggy in wads of Puff’s tissues and shapeless sleeves of college sweatshirts.

I don’t know why the word “healing” typically elicits such a positive connotation. I don’t think it deserves it. It’s not at all soothing. But, the print’s message is pacifying - coating me like balm and invigorating like eucalyptus.

I bought it down in New Mexico while visiting my friend, Nik, in August. I had just packed up my Tucson condo into generic brown boxes and watched them roll down the black asphalt on a 42 ft. Mayflower moving truck. I handed over the keys to my Chrysler to a chain-smoking trucker with a trailer who vowed to make it to the Midwest in 28 hours flat. I glanced around at the empty 1286 square foot unit - #3212 - and realized I was no longer home. I locked the front door, mailed the key to the rental office and boarded a Southwest 737 with a melting granola bar in my pocket.

When I arrived in Albuquerque, I was damaged and broken and sat contemplating a cheese omelet around Nik’s breakfast table. Her dad, a psychologist with a kind face and wise eyes, was seeding grape tomatoes over the sink and listened to me bemoan my choices in a life mate.

“It all goes back to the mother,” I admitted. “She never could demonstrate love.” I spiraled a piece of mozzarella around my fork and stared at the antique clock on the far wall. I groped for something deliciously insightful – some tidbit that might convince him that I was capable of intense introspection. “I think I over-compensated. I think I wanted to make him whole.”

“It was doomed, Emily.” His voice was quiet and calming – an impressive subtlety when articulating a word such as ‘doomed’. He paused before turning on the faucet. “But, I think it might be too soon to self-analyze.”

I nodded and took my first bite.

It hit 102 that afternoon, but Nik and I decided to hop in the Jeep to peruse the neighboring pueblos and tiny towns surrounding Sante Fe. We scalded our fingertips on the metal seatbelts and blasted the air conditioner to a volume that drowned out Garth Brooks on the radio. She drove. I plopped my feet on the radiator.

The highway sliced through the mountains, curving over boulders and blooming agave. The sun was high and every few miles we passed a patch of spiny cholla cacti that conjured up an image of Bob Marley’s lopsided dreadlocks. Eventually the highway deferred to small country road and isolated artist’s colony about ten minutes outside of Santa Fe. We parked diagonally on a patch of gravel outside of the Wheelbarrow Inn as the smoke from grilled hickory burgers leaked inside the car vents. I hopped out, securing my sunglasses over my ears, and wandered into one of the first galleries.

Instantly, I recognized the sweet scent of hyacinth and the store clerk pointed to a circular table brimming with homemade bath soaps. I inhaled the fragrance. They had been the centerpieces at my wedding. It was then I spotted the prints, polka-dotting the back wall in splashes of red, yellow, purple, and aqua like painted blooms in a tulip garden. "Story People" - the artist dubbed them, a collection of geometric design blended with poetry. I had seen them once before in a boutique in San Diego and adored his elegance with words, but the primary colors didn’t match my motif. My home had been a shrine to coffee-bean brown and African khaki. That day in New Mexico, I spontaneously announced that it was time to embrace some color. Maybe color would bring some healing.

With my new purchase laid out carefully in the backseat, we continued our meanderings through the neighboring reservation. Not a mile up a desolate road, we noticed a caravan of cars bleeding into a vast open terrain, stirring up a haze of dust. We turned into the parade of traffic and filed into a make-shift spot in between two rusted pick-ups.

“What on earth?” I gasped, scanning the bustling crowd of Native Americans with scores of jewelry, pottery, and leather merchandise perched under table tents. A old radio was emitting static mariachi as three mangy strays shuffled by with their tongues hanging out like lizards waiting to vacuum up grasshoppers. A flea market on steroids.

As I stepped out of the Jeep, the clay vibrated beneath my flip-flops and my ears perked to a deep-throated rumble in the East, ricocheting off the San Juan Mountains. Drums. We instinctively followed the noise down a barren stretch until the road ended and a colossal wood fence guarded a crowded entry arch. The winds intensified, plastering the dust across our cheeks into streaks of war print. Clouds churned into thick gray clumps, skirting briskly across the sky like they needed to be somewhere by sundown. The vibration was deafening as we pecked our way to the front.

Suddenly, the narrow passage funneled open to a spectacle that could have been plucked from a scene in Indian Jones. A giant coliseum of aboriginal dancers. There had to be over a 1000 of them, men and women adorned with crowns of feathers in their hair and cloaks around their waists, striking their heels and pelting drum hides. I approached a young bystander with two different colored brown eyes and murmured, "What is all of this? A festival of some sort?”

As if to compensate for his small shoulders, he lifted his chin and looked at me curiously, “An ancestral healing ceremony. It’s been preformed for hundreds of years.”

Nik and I exchanged glances. I knew instantly that we had been led here. The world swelled at that moment, watching this colony of Native Americans perform their ancient healing ritual. I felt the planet spin for me as the dancers moved in hypnotic, choreographed rhythm until their stomping failed to kick up even a smattering of red dust. They had pounded all of the loose soil into the core of the earth.

It was then that we heard the thunder. Claps layered over the drums as if we were being sandwiched between the earth and sky. The rain came down in pellets. The drenching kind that seeps in your underwear and stings your scalp. There was nothing to do but laugh and blink away the water from our eyelashes as we sloshed back to our car with water-logged sandals and soaked pony-tails. It felt like a baptism. It felt like healing.

*********** ************** **************

I glanced down at the book across my knees and focused on the landscape around me. The sun was white and I could feel the tingle of sea-spray from the ocean’s spank against the rocks. From behind the rock wall, a sprout of bamboo shoots swayed in union with the tides like a darting school of herring. Brad and I sat in the shadow of a 150 foot volcanic cliff at the foot of the Pacific with the clouds moving overhead. Two inconsequential humans in the sand. And as the birds darted in and out of the beards of moss billowing down from the cliff in a tangle of Rapunzel’s hair, he proposed to me. This beautiful man. Four tiny words in a lifetime’s crater of sentences – “Will you marry me?”

I had to look up at the sky and smile. We spent the afternoon nestled on our beach, digging our toes into the sand and tracing constellations in each other’s freckles. By mid-day as I nonchalantly nipped the sand with a dried bamboo stalk, I noticed a flickering gleam on the dune to my right. A dainty prism of colored light, hop-scotching about as if Aquatic Tinkerbelle was flicking her crystal wand in careless frivolity. I watched the light in amusement, ever so subtly dart this way and that, until I reached up to sweep a strand of hair from my lips. And in that movement, I understood. My engagement ring. My white sapphire was bathing in the sunshine, casting rainbows on the sand.

She scars. She heals. She sun-bakes. Because indeed, this ending was something fine. I would venture to say, it was something marvelous.

Cockroaches

2010-05-23T08:11:00.000-07:00

With my family gathered around, my mother turned to my sister two days before she would walk down the aisle and reminded her, “Amy, you and Bryan are incredibly lucky. You will have three grandparents in attendance at your wedding. Think about that. I will never get to be at a grandchild’s wedding. I did the math and it is what it is. It isn’t terrible or tragic. It is just how the timing worked out. I just wanted you to appreciate how special this weekend is… for all of us.”

Recently, my friend’s 95 year-old grandma passed in her sleep. I spent the following night, puddling tears into my glasses, quaking and trembling. My teeth chattered. I burrowed into a nest of crumbled and shredded Kleenex. I wasn’t crying entirely for Grandma G, although she was a wonderful lady and the family gatherings just wouldn’t seem whole without her – poised next to her walker with rouge on her cheeks, cradling a Manhattan on ice. But her passing radiated shockwaves of fear inside me. My own Baba will turn 85 this month. And I kept seeing an image of an hourglass in front of me; sand draining the upper basin in a curtain of sediment.

The idea was – Feel it Now. Maybe if I envisioned the end, soaked up the grief like sponging mussel juice with bread, I could spare myself some portion of the devastation later simply by anticipating. Of course, it was foolish. But, I felt charged to make some changes. The day after the wake, I called in sick and spent the afternoon with Baba, assembling salami sandwiches and sipping black tea, pouring over pictures I had taken of Brad and I a few weeks back.

Looking around her home, I realized it would be the remnants that would singe me. The movies left in the Netflix cue. Clumping flour that wasn’t dumped into a mixing bowl and kneaded into kolachies. The ham bone in the freezer developing an icy fuzz. A half bottle of perfume. Fine white hair in her comb. A calendar left, bleeding open to the month of April…August… or November. Her homemade pickle jars in the cellar, dated with masking tape. The sweet smell of her robe. The mail – Aldi ads, voter fliers, AT&T bills – collecting on the table- her name still bringing printed on envelopes. Marie Novak. Hyacinths, the following spring – little stalks of color poking out of the dirt, having survived another harsh Chicago hibernation.

All the beautiful, simple things would morph into cockroaches.

My friend told me she was washing dishes a few weeks after her grandmother’s passing when she spotted a vase perched on the windowsill that had been passed down through the generations. One of the items she had gotten in the distribution of “stuff”. It had been her great-grandmother’s and it stood boldly, almost tauntingly, in her kitchen as her five year-old practiced writing her name on construction paper with stubby Crayolas. This stubborn, ugly old vase. She felt like grabbing it by the neck and shattering it- taking pleasure in its demise – shards of glass, glistening like wet diamonds in her sink basin. It was only an object and yet…it had survived.

When I asked Sarah how her daughter had taken the news she told me that she had wondered if Grandma G was in heaven. When she nodded, her daughter replied, “But Mom, who will pick up her mail now?”

And that is the crux of it. That it falls on the survivors to trudge through the swampy bog of leftovers – items that may appear harmless to an outsider, but bite, burn and bruise those who have loved. They are our pacifiers and our poisons. We know they are the only tangibles left – a finite number of them - and we cling. We cling to them like driftwood because we are afraid to assess the intangibles, take stock and recognize how we could possibly have enough memories to sustain us. How could there ever be enough?

When my family traveled to Florida last week for Amy’s wedding, we were returning to a place that was warm for us. Warm and woven into our childhood memories of vacations, beach, family and sand. It is where my paternal grandmother’s ashes were tossed from the Grand Marco Bridge to settle in the sun-dipped sea, dance with the coral, and lap with the tides. It was where we had fished for minnows as sun-burnt kids, learned to swim without water wings, and hunted for lizards at sunset. It had been our spring playground.

Throughout the wedding weekend, I did think of that hourglass. It could very well have been Baba’s last plane trip. I noted the pitch of her laugh at dinner while chatting with Bryan’s relatives. I watched her gently pat Brad’s hand and defiantly complain about the wheelchair. I stole a glance at her face when Amy walked down the aisle.

The raw truth is, it will still hurt later. That is for certain. I suppose all I can do is soak up the mussel juice. That is all anyone can do. So that later, we may have the strength to sort through the mail.

Circus Peanuts

2010-03-22T20:00:00.000-07:00

Admittedly, my blog has been starving lately. Underfed. Malnourished. And neglected like the mangy mutts down the alley licking the underbellies of pizza boxes. It’s not healthy for “it” or for me. So, tonight I write to feed and remind myself to keep throwing out the occasional bone.

When I was around ten or eleven, my mom used to pile Amy, Blake, and I into the minivan and dodge the potholes down Harlem Ave en route to the North Riverside Mall. It became a family routine most Friday nights and our visits incorporated two major objectives – books and candy. The mall wasn’t as seedy back then, although our jackets always stunk faintly of Orange Chicken and sesame oil when we got home since you had to cut through the mega food court to reach Walden’s and Mr. Bulky’s. The two stores lined up at the end of the mall, side by side like the complimentary halves of a ham and cheese sandwich.

We’d hit up Mr. Bulky’s first, our eyes glistening with sugar crystals and artificial food coloring. We’d gaze upon endless rows of teeming plastic bins, revealing sleeping delicacies of gooey Laffy Taffy, fruity Ring Pops, and gelatinous ice cream cones with real wafer tips, coaxing our saliva glands into drool as if we were teething infants.

“Only one kind,” My mom would warn us, reverting us back to the task at hand as she assisted my brother with scooping the bright blue shark gummies into a plastic bag. Four year-old boys were terribly predictable. I prided myself on variation – sometimes going “Swedish” while on other visits surrendering to the puckering tang of the Sour Patch Kids. Alternatively, I adored hearing the satisfying crunch of Ferrara Pan’s mini Jawbreakers against my molars or savoring the oddly addictive banana flavor from the chewy Circus Peanuts. But only if they weren’t stale. It was necessary to sample one to be sure or at least squish a few with the scooper if the store clerk had his eye on me. I don’t think enough kids liked them because it always seemed a tough order to find a fresh batch.

After we bundled, twist-tied, weighed and paid for our loot, we’d file next door to Walden’s Books. Mom would confiscate the candy in her purse after a quick sample so that we wouldn’t get the books all sticky. Walden’s was my haven. I knew the store as intimately as my own bedroom. As Amy and Blake would scamper back to the kid’s section with the red Clifford stools, mom would retreat to the Romance Row where men with long dark hair and bare chests embraced women with billowing blouses on the jacket covers.

The bestsellers prominently framed the front of the store within tall regal white shelves. That is where I would roam, gazing admiringly at the proud hard covers with titles in cursive and names in bold. I’d flip to the backs and stare at the authors’ photographs, perched at their desks or poised in their rose gardens. I’d nod in concurrence, utterly assured that I would be there someday. My very own book. My photograph. My name in bold. It was an absolute certainty that I would be among them in the towering bookshelves with the pretty covers. I just had to wait my turn and become a grown-up. And only then, when I was satisfied I had adequately interacted with my predecessors, did I mosey on back to pick up a new Nancy Drew.

I don’t recall when exactly that absolute assuredness began to waver, when perusing the bestsellers began to feel precarious or elicit that slight twinge of doubt. I know at some point I began to focus on the ages listed in the bios. I was appeased when I saw the author was forty-five or fifty-two or had gone to graduate school or was married or had two sons a daughter and a dog. They were older. That was what it required. Of course, they had arrived. After all, I was only nineteen. Twenty-three. Twenty-five. And over time, the jealousy - the haunting spirals of ineptitude began to cloud like moisture on a mirror.

We stopped going to Mr. Bulky’s and Walden’s when I hit high school. I think they both wound up closing and some awful frilly accessory store where teenage punks pierce ears at card tables likely filled their place. In those years since, my spirit has noticeably waned. When I was twenty-three, I got seriously burned. I was in Borders one Sunday sipping chai, when I picked up copy of The Devil Wears Prada and flipped it over to the back. There she was staring back at me with venom in her eyes - Lauren Weisberger - a young fresh face with blonde hair and high cheekbones. She was twenty-five. I had to put my cup down and read the bio twice. Born March 28, 1977 in Scranton, PA. Cornell graduate, contributor to various prestigious magazines, and now best-selling author. I counted it up. She had me beat. Even if I started that night, working tirelessly on some ethereal and hypothetical manuscript and submitted it to every possible literary publication and chiseled it down to its perfect state, and by some miracle found someone who adored it, I could never compete with her timeline. Lauren Weisberger was living my dream.

After that, I stopped browsing through bookstores as much to avoid the pinpricks and obvious reminders of my perpetuating stalemate. I stopped envisioning my title or jacket cover or clever font. I had always longed to be in this extremely select club and the reality was - the odds were bleak.

Just this past week, I attended the Virginia Festival of the Book, rather by coincidence and consequence of visiting my friend, Nikki in Charlottesville. “I think this was meant to be, Em,” she insisted, always having been a fan of my “voice” as she calls it. “I just know you are supposed to be here with all these writers.”

Throughout the weekend, I wandered through the conference, ate at the local restaurants, and dawdled through the downtown mall, absorbing the others around me – many hopeful paupers in tweed, some local editors, and a sprinkling of literary stars. All of them, struggling with their own doubts, burdens, inadequacies, and failures. All wanting the same dream. I stood in obedient lines with panting fans, anxious to get novels signed by the “Recognizables” – the ones who had made it and thus, sat patiently, scrawling autographs on the title pages of their very own Labor of Loves. I wondered if the repetitiveness of it all had desensitized their fame. I wondered as countless hands reached up, waving gluts of their paperback clones if they remembered a time when they strolled the bookshelves.

The festival did spur a reflection on my summer before the seventh grade and the three months I spent furiously writing cliché poetry. I was relentless in my craft, composing with an insane furor most twelve year olds were channeling toward papering their closet doors with magazine cutouts of the Backstreet Boys. I ventured to the library and checked out every possible book on publishing poetry. After that, I stuffed all my babysitting money in a horrid purple LeSportsac and pedaled over to the local bookstore to pick up some newer editions. I scribbled down list after list, noting genres, editor names and addresses, highlighting the ones I thought looked promising. I spent the summer submitting my poems in giant yellow manila folders, making sure to secure the envelopes with proper postage and duck tape so that nothing could mistakenly tumble out.

I only received one acceptance that summer and it was from the Book of American Poetry that required an upfront payment of $65, but you would receive your very own special copy of the bound Anthology right at your doorstep. All 434 pages. Of course, I leapt at the chance and I still have that thick wad of sucker poems in my bookshelf, not so much as joke, but to remind myself how hard I worked that summer. How much I believed in myself. Sadly, I doubt I have given that much gusto to my writing since.

This fall, I will turn 30. It will be an inconsequential occasion, except for the fact that it will inevitably mark a time in my life when I no longer have anyone or any circumstance to blame for my lack of pursuing fairy tales. As I enter my third decade, I realize I could use a dose of that slight, tow-headed, Nancy Drew sleuth who saw her name in print. I could use some of that zeal because I don’t want to enter my fourth decade, admitting I have yet to even reach up to see if there is a spot on the shelf.

When I returned from my trip out east, I lumbered off the train and toted my luggage behind me back to my new apartment. When I rounded the corner, I remembered with a smile that there happens to be an old-fashioned candy store at the end of my street. Mary Janes, Necco Wafers, bubblegum cigarettes – the whole bit. Books and candy. It might be time to renew the old Friday night ritual. After all, I’m sure I can dig up some stale Circus Peanuts if I need some familiar inspiration. I may even be able to sneak a taste in the store if no one is looking.

When the moment is cold, will I be ready?

2009-12-18T20:00:00.000-08:00

I am taking Cialis.
Yes, you read that correctly. I am a 29 year-old female in the suburbs with Bachelor episodes on my DVR and organic milk in my fridge, swallowing erectile dysfunction meds in 5 mg tablets.

Allow me to explain while you choke on your diet cola.
It is for my appendages.
Okay, bad start. Not that appendage.

The story originates during my junior year in college while studying abroad Down Under. I decided to hike Franz Josef’s glacier during a blizzard - in jeans. I froze my cheeks off. All four of them. And when I returned to Sydney a nice pudgy pink welt flew back with me, protruding from my middle finger.

My housemates quickly organized a pool that leaked out to the majority of University of New South Wales students. Bets were on about whether I had lecherous fungi living off my knuckle or if the rare Themognatha Yerrelli Beetle had taken a bite out of me. The clear favorite was that the alien bump was in fact a venomous Funnelweb spider sac and that one imminent night while I lay sound asleep, a stampede of scampering baby specimens would rupture through my skin. And kill me on the spot.

Horrified of being an arachnid-hatching host, I poked and prodded at the protrusion with violent force, but it only grew more swollen and painful by the day. By the time I returned back to The States, I had resolutely accepted the fact that a promising career in hand modeling would not be in my future. Still, I was a pro at concealing my blemish by sitting with my hand tucked under me or making a fist on the commuter train. It became a part of my anatomy and I affectionately referred to it as my “nodule” among friends.

After college, when I irrationally traded in California palm trees for Chicago sleet, my bump decided that it was time to start a family and procreate. This conveniently coincided with the only six-month period in my life when I depended solely on a slimy serpent for health coverage- Cobra. I was young and naïve and thought it prudent to visit every dermatologist, rheumatologist, and hand surgeon in the county before my Hyatt Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance kicked in. Of course, 22 year-olds are riddled with expensive life mistakes as much as sixteen year-olds are clogged with colossal forehead pimples. I’m chalking it up to a rite of passage.

The doctors were puzzled. They ran tests, biopsied flesh, drew blood, analyzed pee in Petri dishes, and informed me that I was a medical outlier. Young and healthy, but with hands like an arthritic great aunt. It was quite the accomplishment. One rheumatologist even took high-resolution photographs to show his doctor buddies over Thanksgiving in effort to generate a differential diagnosis over cranberry sauce and stuffing. That January, he included a photo of my fingers in a medical textbook he was publishing. My nodules had made it to Hollywood.

The resounding hypothesis was that I had a type of Raynaud's disease. Finally, a name by which to define my oddity. This pretty much meant my circulation was lousy and blood was not making it to my extremities, especially in colder temperatures. Yet, doctors were still puzzled why the vascular swellings had latched on to just two of my fingers. Typically Raynaud’s does not show preference to certain piggies, but rather infects all fingers, toes, and sometimes even the nose for abysmally unfortunate saps.

It was only a matter of time.

I remember having cold fingers since I was a little girl, but it wasn’t until I reached the age of holding hands with the opposite sex that I realized how frigid they actually were. Of course, I had always received a range of shocked expressions when I offered “peace” at church, shook hands at a party, or changed a diaper while babysitting. Growing up, my grandmother, Baba, affectionately called them, “Rucichke zaba” (literally “hands like a frog” in Czech) as she rubbed them warmly between her own. They were hands from the morgue, but I didn’t actually feel self-conscious until a boy in college labeled them cold and clammy. An excellent combination for the ocean, but not for boosting the confidence of a shy, pale, pubescent girl.

By the time I hit 24, I exhibited a classic case of Raynaud's – painful toe nodules that throbbed when I shoved them into socks and knuckles that could have been cast over the cauldron in Snow White. I did everything a good Raynaudee should do in the winter. I raided L.L. Bean catalogs and North Face websites with feverish desperation, hoarding Thermo fleece mittens as if they were cans of spam during Y2K. My hands were so restricted under the layers of wool, I could barely pick up my own purse let alone steer a car. I began buying shoes two sizes too big to accommodate my “sock sandwiches” and I clopped around the house in wool slippers fit for the arctic. I cranked up the heat and even broke down and bought a pair of Uggs. Still my nodules hung around like a family of stray alley cats.

And then I met the pharmacist. Convenient, you say? I agree, but I promise I am dating him for more than his drugs. For one, I appreciate his meddlesome curiosity. This is a guy who thinks outside the box. Way outside. He figured if Cialis can increase blood flow in sexually defunct men why wouldn’t it help Emily’s incompetent circulation and deformed paws. This is the kind of forward logic that put pineapple on pizza and the internet in our pockets. I was willing to give it a whirl, but not without a fair bit of scientific interrogation first.

“You’re absolutely sure I won’t be humping my desk chair by this afternoon?”
“I’m sure.”
“Or orgasming during dinner?”
“I’m sure.”
“And, I won’t....grow a penis?

That, I just got a look for.

And so, here they are. Little white Cialis pills on my nightstand and I’m hopeful they will offer some relief or at least save me from an overzealous glove-buying compulsion. But, I implore you. Please. If you spot me lounging naked in some bathtub with feet, gazing out a vast emerald lake while clutching hands with an old guy in the next tub – by all means, intervene.

Especially if it’s cold outside.

Fuzzy in a Techie World

2009-11-17T17:00:00.000-08:00

Bring on the Boogey Man, Swine Flu, Slasher films with flannel-shirted babysitters, and rabid dingoes that stalk baby carriages. I can handle it. I don’t tremble during power outages or avoid public transportation after 9pm. I won’t glance up from French Women Don’t Get Fat during cabin-rocking turbulence or hide under the covers during a thunderstorm. I am that tourist who tiptoes to the edge, off the path, around the bend, past the warning signs – just to get the best camera angle. As the novelty t-shirt I bought after bungee jumping through a New Zealand canyon declares, “If you aren’t living on the edge, you are taking up too much room.”

That said, I admit I feel a bit squeamish around spiders and experience a disproportionate glee after sucking them up with my vacuum hose from corner crevices. After all, everyone has his or her kryptonite. But, my paralysis, my blood-draining fear - what keeps me awake at night and triggers the sweat glands on my forehead is that black rectangle on my work desk.

I am petrified of my laptop.

Sure, he may appear innocent enough, but I know his true colors. And when heads are turned and the Geek Squad has vacated, he can be devious.

Ever since college, I have bought into the doom and gloom approach of making my acquaintance with technology. I was one of the last standing to get a cell phone, I use only five buttons on my remote control, and the VHS player had to be pried out of my hands in my first apartment. On campus, every student was pre-labeled. You were either a “Fuzzy” who studied allegory and alliteration in Beowulf while huddled in drab 10x12 quad pods or you were a “Techie” who wrote computer code in the shiny, twenty-story edifice with stadium seating, water sculptures and glass elevators that Mr. Packard donated in the late 90’s.

My destiny was written and it was not in code. The one Computer Science class I elected to endure senior year in a quest to break down barriers and challenge my young academic mind - (I was in Silicon Valley after all) - was wrought with disillusionment. A fellow psych Fuzzy and I decided we would coax an odd Pac-Man looking cartoon to dance the jig on screen using complex java script algorithms for our final project. After two consecutive all-nighters with empty Sugar-Free Red Bull cans and O-KE-DOKE popcorn wrappers strewn about our workstation and only three lines of elementary code, we decided to call in the paramedics – my partner’s tech-savvy boyfriend. I still say it wasn’t quite selling out since I didn’t sleep with the guy, but we were fuzzy damsels in cyber distress and thus, instigated my rocky relationship with the computer.

Gigabytes, megabytes, RAM, PPI, Hyper Text Transfer Protocol, IP addresses, processors, memory sticks. It is the language of nerds. Those skinny, pimply guys named Ben whose hands sweat and couldn’t get a date to prom have since inherited the right to ridicule. I find myself flirting with “Herald” on the Geek Squad, offering him a plate of homemade ginger cookies if he can get my modem to blink properly and humbly promising to name my first-born child after him if he can actually get me back online. Herald - for goodness sake!

You see, I work from home. The privilege of pony-tailed conference calls in bunny slippers with coffee breath comes at a cost. There is no IT person in the cluttered office down the hall with wires exploding from industrial cabinets like the crazed tentacles of a giant squid. When the mega-shit hits the fan, I am on my own. The Geek Squad and I. And the awkward fifteen year old sophomore down the block who graciously set up my network, router, and vonage device last summer, only to slip an invoice on frizzed spiral notebook paper for $225 in labor fees through my mail slot four months later.

But, when the screen goes blank, when the error message appears where the adorably outfitted Google icon is supposed to be, I panic. All I know to do is to jiggle the Ethernet cords, quietly shut it off, take a deep breath, retrieve a giant bowl of ice cream and then return, peeking out of the corner of my eye as I hit the power button. If that doesn’t work, I go for a long walk. Maybe he just needs some space. Maybe I’ve been suffocating the guy. I remain stumped.

There are days at a time when the computer is working brilliantly, only to then be arbitrarily followed by a morning of total system failure. My only rationale is that there are these miniature, glassy-eyed creatures prancing around when I sleep, injecting cryptic viruses, worms, and bacteria into my hard drive because they can smell my vulnerability. It is not dissimilar to the modern day TSA where rules are shrouded in mystery. Where there is fear, there is great power. Suddenly, Evian water bottles are a national security threat as are my lip gloss and Speed Stick, unless properly buckled down in a benign quart-size Ziploc.

To my dismay, a few weeks ago, a company technician informed me that I needed have my laptop reconfigured so that they could install a firewall in my home office. I nodded professionally on the phone and agreed to drive out to the Oak Brook location to pick up said firewall.

Firewall? Firewall? What the heck is a firewall? I was picturing a shoebox diorama you might find in a 2nd grade classroom with bright orange construction paper jutting out at jagged angles. I fought the desire to ask, “Is this something that I can fit in my car?”
I had some notion that this device was supposed to ward off those very glassy-eyed creatures that prey upon my laptop at night, threaten to steal my identity, and use my credit card to fly to Tahiti. But, in all honesty, the guy could have handed me a geranium plant and instructed me to place it on top of my desk and water it three times a week with 7-up and I would have probably believed that I'd successfully installed my security system.

It turns out a firewall is a pretty boring looking grey box with countless jacks and drives lining the back and blinking yellow lights up front that I glance at suspiciously every few hours to confirm its good behavior. We are monotonously cohabitating and thus far, my laptop doesn’t seem to mind his new comrade.

However, I was reminded just yesterday that we, Fuzzies, still have fleeting moments of vindication in this tech-laden world. In the late afternoon, there was a soft knock on my door. I pulled it open, ready to tell the Seventh Day Adventists that I couldn’t pledge $5, when I saw the fifteen-year-old neighborhood kid with shoulders slumped forward on my front stoop.

“Yes?”
He peered up at me with red-cheeked abashment and handed me a manila folder, “My mom told me I should have you edit my English essay.”

Tonight, I write my invoice.

No Dice

2009-08-19T19:00:00.000-07:00

So, I have this theory.

That there may be an indirect correlation between basic intelligence and junk dangling from people’s rear-view mirrors.

Essentially, the more Mardi Gras beads you have strung up in your Subaru, the less chance I want you constructing Macy’s parking garage or programming my PC. Don’t we have enough arenas for self-expression that our four-wheeled vehicles can martyr themselves to just being practical? Can’t they simply be an exoskeleton for transport?

It seems our Hondas and PT Cruisers have been morphed into the cluttered living rooms of the open road. People drape rabbit’s feet, crystals, dream catchers, metallic crucifixes, and those ridiculous furry dice their 4th graders snag in quarter-claw machines at dingy pizza joints.

But, the regurgitation of paraphernalia doesn’t end there. The mullet seeps around to the rear dash with choirs of stuffed Snoopies, grinning Garfields suctioned to the glass, and hairy felines with creepy bobbing heads. More often than not, I find myself staring at the likes of a deranged taxidermy display or a fantastical cartoon petting zoo while I’m bumper to bumper on the Eisenhower.

Somehow along the way, our cars became microcosms of who we are as individuals. Whether we like it or not that Prius screams worm-composting, cloth-bag toting, sans-deodorant wearing hippie. And that Lexus SVU has khaki-colored, pedicured, Estee-Laudered, private-school suburbanite written all over it.

Just as an ironed dress shirt can make or break an interview, the swinging of rabbit’s feet in your windshield may determine whether or not I find you worthy of a friendly merge. I offer no apologies. I am telling you outright. Flaunting the car bling is on par with sporting a pitted-out wife-beater to the movies or cut-off jeans to church.

So I ask you? What messages are you projecting about yourself when you dangle the dice? Frankly, you look dumb. I’d personally prefer to have my fellow stop-sign runners focused on the interstate rather than being mesmerized by their bouncy pink prisms.

Now, I’m not judging the decaying autumn maple chards littering your floor mats or criticizing the paint nicks on your passenger door. I view those love pats as normal wear and tear. But, I do wish to reintroduce the notion of “car etiquette”.

I’m even speaking to those of you who swallow the “scented leaf kool-aid” or swoon to the seductive stature of its more masculine cardboard cousin, the pine tree. You know who you are. You are desperate for your stinky interiors to exude subtle whiffs of sarsaparilla, orange sherbet, or Colorado mountain air. You crave that causal compliment from carpool friends, “Wow, your car smells so……..western.”

So you lost that lovin’ new-car-smell feeling. It happens to all of us. Don’t swallow the potpourri Prozac from your local 66. There has got to be something a little classier we can use to lavenderize our upholstery.

After all, those stuffed animals take a lot of shits.

365

2009-07-07T22:00:00.000-07:00

Desiree, today I passed on the baton.

You’ll know what I am talking about – the 2 x 3 inch magnet that has clung obediently to my refrigerator door, pinning up Tide coupons and Hair Cuttery business cards. For a year.

Initially, I’d glance at it every morning when I went to pour milk over my oatmeal. Sometimes, it would invigorate me -feed me a fighting-feminine vitamin boost - while other mornings it just made me chuckle. Mostly, it made me think of you, Desiree, and what a compassionate friend you were to me during my short time in Tucson. Admittedly, after a few months, I stopped noticing it. Occasionally, a visiting friend would point at it, wheeze with amusement, and I’d smile and say, “Yea, that’s on loan.”

Well, today I passed it on.

“Here, you need this more than I do now,” you had insisted, securing it inside the palm of my hand. “Keep it until you don’t need it anymore and unfortunately, discover someone who does.”

Desiree, I want you to know that it is going to Wichita. It is bound for Wichita with a childhood friend who found her way into my life this afternoon after a chance encounter at Gap among the khaki shorts. She is moving there in three weeks to start over. To live forward and mark each day as one sluggish step towards healing. It will reside on her fridge for a while or maybe on the file cabinet where she stashes her tax returns from the last five years. Either way, it has a new home and after hearing her story, she deserves it.

I told her what I think you advised me, but was too in shock to remember verbatim. I admitted that it won’t be easy - that the pain and anger is real and raw and eats at you for a long time. I told her your story and my story and that our club is not anything to envy, but the only thing positive about it being larger than anyone would ever want is the amount of support out there. And I asked her to pass it on – when she was ready – to peel it from her Wichita kitchen and seal it in the palm of someone just starting out on her journey.

It’s funny. I wondered quite frequently when and to whom I would give that magnet away. I somehow knew I would recognize the precise moment as vividly and surely as someone senses deja vous or exclaims out loud that they are in love. And it seems fitting that tomorrow is the first anniversary of the rest of my life. July 8th. Something eerily ritualistic, yet poetic about the timing of it all, but I have stopped being as surprised by how much life can surprise you.

Three hundred and sixty-five. 365 days and a lifetime of difference.

365 twilights ago I was on the other side of the country, tucked in bed under a desert moon, oblivious to the fact that dawn’s arrival would forever alter the course of my life. Oblivious to the fact that 365 nights later, I would be drifting off to sleep in my hometown, guiltily happy, thoroughly loved and at peace – having bid goodbye to a simple magnet that had zigzagged from DC to Tucson, to Chicago and now onto Wichita.

A simple magnet handed to me by someone who recognized my grief as her own: “It is better to have loved and lost than live the rest of your life with a psycho.”

Safe travels.

Pipe Cleaners

2009-03-04T15:00:00.000-08:00

Today, I hugged my therapist goodbye.

Eight months of 50 minute sessions in her office with the scruffy green couch and mammoth space heater that resembles a robot. Early on, I’d sit rigid and serious, recounting my story, giving my grief voice. I only cried once or twice. The Kleenex box was always in the same place. On the right side of the coffee table next to a smattering of twisted pipe cleaners in fluorescent tones that inexplicably changed shape every week –sometimes in hearts, spirals, or squares. I often wondered who played with them. If it was part of some child’s play therapy or perhaps for adult patients who needed something to fiddle with while recounting the most vulnerable details of their lives. One visit last September, they had been molded into a set of stick figures, all holding hands: a family of neon orange, yellow, pink, and green. The next week, they were crooked lines again.

After a few months, our time together diminished from once a week to once or twice a month as our topics expanded past the divorce to work anxieties, family relationships to uncertainties about dating again. Our sessions always concluded the same way. After I had zipped my coat and placed the check on the table, she’d inevitably smile and firmly shake my hand by the door, “You’re doing great.”

I consistently left feeling a little bit lighter, a touch more confident than when I had stepped in. And I always felt compelled to race home and write. Sometimes, I’d scribble notes on receipts from my coat pocket while delayed at a stoplight, anxious that I’d forget her catch phrases or morsels of wisdom by the time I pulled into my driveway. One afternoon, I even wrote, “Your pain has purpose!” with eyeliner on the back of my Southwest Frequent Flyer card out of a desperate lack of paper. Once home, I’d whip out my hardcover journal and douse the page with scrawled ink, emitting thoughts and emotions like sweating pores.

This afternoon, I mentioned to her how fitting it was that I had just run out of paper. I had written on its final page the week prior. It is a rare occurrence to suck so much life out of a notebook and this one had stood by me, steadfast, as I penned and jotted. Sometimes resting on my knees. Sometimes retrieved in the middle of the night. Sometimes absorbing my teardrops in its binding.

I had glanced back earlier this week at the first entry dated in August, a month after I returned from Arizona:

I went downtown yesterday to attend the Northwestern Continuing Ed Session on Creative Writing. Fascinating to know what is out there, but maybe not for me yet. I took the “el” home, watching the neighborhoods, trees, headlights, and abandoned tricycles whiz past me below. I spotted a cozy apartment on Oak Park Ave through its slits in the shades. Twin Chinese lanterns cast a butterscotch hue on a beige couch and burgundy throw pillows. The television flickered in the background and two figures reclined, their arms around each other in shadowed comfort.

I had owned the same lamps in my home in Tucson. My home. I could locate the light switches in the dark. I knew where to find my keys or a water glass when I returned, parched after errands at the market. I had memorized the precise sliding factor of my cotton socks on the tile. I recognized the chirping of quails at dawn and exactly where he was in his morning routine by the noises he made from our bathroom vanity – if he was rushed or had time to eat muselix while I complacently sipped my tea.

It is not as if I do not know the house I grew up in or could potentially get to know a new one, but it was mine and I liked it. I wasn’t asking for a replacement. He was gambling it away while I was sleeping upstairs. I know I am enormously lucky to have parents who welcomed me back and took me in. But, this is where I did my fifth grade math homework and the driveway I learned to reverse in. At this moment, there isn’t anywhere else I’d rather be, but I suppose there was just something about those lamps that made me sad.

This morning, I talked Mom into driving up to the lake house, despite the 90% chance of thunderstorms. I knew I had no memories of him here. He never came. It evolved into a glorious afternoon and we strolled the beach at sunset, savoring the cool lapping of water and the reds and browns and grays of the lake stones. I started collecting sea glass in my pocket.

I watched the sea gulls congregate on the sandy slopes and take off in synchronized flight when I neared and then marveled as they circled back once I had past. There could have easily been a thousand of them.

Tonight, I am curled up in bed, having discovered my muse. I feel recognized. Writing to Save your Life by Michele Weldon. Her words slice through me with a poignancy I have never gleaned from any other book. It is as if she is sitting perched on the edge of my mattress, granting me permission, fueling me forward, aware that I have a story to tell.

I was only on page 4 when I reached for this journal.
********

Afterwards, I flipped through 250 crinkled, dog-eared pages of black and blue cursive, scanning a paragraph here and there, reminiscing about the waning of summer, my endless evening walks, laughing again, the coming of autumn, another birthday, new friends, exploring the city, the falling of leaves, spontaneous vacations, Hyatt co-workers, holidays, a first kiss, a budding romance. Eventually, I reached the finale, my entry from last Wednesday.

********
Haven’t written for a few weeks, but I have an excuse and a scapegoat. I have been busy falling in love. It seems entirely appropriate that this will be my last entry in a book that has buoyed me through a journey of transition and growth.

Journal, I want you to know that I am genuinely happy. Elated, inspired and optimistic to the degree that anyone feeling like crap may just want to strangle all that obnoxious positive energy right out of me. But, I don’t care. I have met someone amazing.

He is gentle, but strong. Thoughtful and witty. He buys flowers, yet rocks out on the guitar. He remembers how I take my tea. He uses adorable, salt-of-the-earth, Iowa expressions like “Holy Smokes”, but can still drop the F-bomb for emphasis when recounting a story. He is willing to drive 45 minutes after working a 10-hour shift, standing up, to meet me for pancakes. He looks great in a tux. He knows my birthday. He listens. He appreciates a well-poured Guinness draft. He repairs his own doorbell and shovels the snow so his landlord doesn’t have to be bothered. His brother is his best friend. He can name every player on the Cub’s starting line-up – probably from the last five years. He tells me he misses me. He savors the chunky bits in Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream and eats around the marshmallows in his cereal to save them for the end. He owns a vintage Price is Right t-shirt that smells like pine. He recycles and turns the thermostat down – often too low. He can talk wrestling with my dad. He is the only other person I know who has multiple cans of black olives in his cabinet. He sends postcards to his nieces and nephews. He recites nostalgic commercials from his childhood – verbatim. He is starting to finish my sentences.

********

Today, instead of a handshake, I hugged my therapist goodbye and stepped out into the March wind. The sun was blinding white and although the air was cold, I thought I sniffed the first fragrances of spring daffodils. “Keep writing,” she exclaimed from the doorway. “You’re doing great.” I glanced back and nodded. I would go home as I always did and write, but first I needed to stop at Border’s to buy a new home for my words.

When I got to my car, I paused and looked back at the building that had become a familiar sanctuary to me this year. I grinned and put my head down. I only wish I had remembered to ask her about the pipe cleaners.

It's a Wonderful Life

2008-12-26T15:00:00.000-08:00

This year our Christmas tree shrunk by six feet. Three-fourth of our ornaments never made it out of Birkenstock shoeboxes and we didn’t once watch Flick freeze his tongue to a flagpole or Clarence, the angel, ultimately earn his wings. My uncle and aunt were missing around the dinner table and for the first time in thirty years, we opted to assault the neighbor’s buffet on Christmas Eve instead of drying out the tilapia in our own oven.

It was a season that defied tradition. We did bake gingerbread cookies and my mom’s once-a-year raspberry bars that inevitably burn on the bottom, but they were more out of duty than festive fanfare. There was snow, copious amounts of driveway salt, and radio carols, but somehow the varnish seemed to be wearing thin on our holiday gaiety. It was not a banner year for the Dressel household. There was illness and betrayal, depression and mania. There was adultery, addiction, anxiety, aging, and agoraphobia. There were 401K depletions, moving hassles, sleeping pills, career shifts, leaking roofs, and one divorce in a pear tree. Our 2008 calendar frankly read like a parody of the Twelve Days of Christmas.

On December 25th when I awoke and peered out across the wintry crust of meringue glazing our backyard, I didn’t feel magical, merry, or jingle-bell jolly. I felt queasy and irritated like a passenger boarding an airplane with an empty stomach. I tapped away at my computer, pretending to be preoccupied with important corporate emails and vital office tasks. The sun emerged, melting the snow banks on the roadsides into a Seven-Eleven Coca-cola slush. The hours ticked by. As my brother seasoned the filets, I dutifully pureed broccoli soup and popped open Cabernets with the cadence of a practiced waitress. By the time darkness descended, I found myself showered, dressed and even blow-dried. I genuinely looked the part.

And then they were here. Family and friends clustering in the doorway, discarding boots and mittens and shedding cold coats onto a mound forming on the leather chair. Suddenly, the house was chattering and alive, flushed with fireplace warmth and cranberry cashmere sweaters. For the first time that day, I relaxed into benign normalcy, calmed by the clamor and frenzy that I have come to recognize as Christmas.

After the meal, we loosened the buttons on our pants and sank into the family room couches. O’ Holy Night was playing on the stereo and I glanced around at the faces of those who share my genes, memories and history. Our modest tree’s colored lights danced off the windowpanes, showcasing ornaments from our annual December treks down to Marshall Fields and pancake breakfasts in the Walnut Room. Despite it’s stunted stature and mangy branches, the tree somehow radiated as the lustrous centerpiece that we had known in Christmas’ past.

My sister played ‘elf, passing out presents and gift cards in dutiful rotation. When the underbelly was bare, she handed me a square oak box with polished borders and an old-fashioned latch.

“This is for you, Em. Inside are letters. I collected them from all the people who wanted to tell you how much you mean to them. This is a box of love and support. From all of us.”

She hugged me. I swallowed and gripped the box with the intensity of a child climbing a tree trunk. My eyes watered and I blinked back the burning of tears.

You see, there are moments that defy articulating the precious privilege of having a sister. Someone with whom you can be naked, self-pitying, and unremarkable. She will offer soul and sweetness in the right doses and anchor you when you are your most uprooted. She is someone who senses when to push, pull, give, or take and synchronizes these needs with the ease of waving ribbons in the wind.

I retired Christmas this year with that box on my lap, reading and rereading messages from friends all over the country from many different phases and facets of my life. I was humbled. I cried, cackled out loud, smiled gregariously, and glowed in recognition. I was tickled by memories long forgotten and touched by eloquence. I can’t recall a time when I felt more whole.

Around 11:45pm, I ventured down to the family room and turned on the television to one of those stations that play around the clock holiday movies. Instantly, the room was filled with Bedford Falls townsfolk singing Auld Lang Syne while George Bailey embraced his family and cradled a copy of Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer. The camera zoomed in on the inscription, “Remember George - No man is a failure who has friends.”

And then a bell rang.

I looked down at my watch, curled the fleece blanket around my shoulders and gratefully realized, I just got it in under the wire.

Baba's Cream Cheese Kolacky

2008-12-04T08:00:00.000-08:00

We were so excited for our Tribune debut this past week and my Baba's #1 Holiday Cookie Recipe! Here is the link to the article that ran on 12/4/08 and the essay that accompanies it.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/food/chi-holiday-cookies-3dec03,0,7691018

I asked her once if she ever burned a batch.

She smiled mysteriously and shrugged her shoulders. “To the moon and back,” she exclaimed, extending her hands from her apron pockets. “That’s how many kolacky I have made in my life.” There was a brief pause as if she was considering if that could be an exaggeration, but then she met my gaze. “That’s a lot of practice.”

My grandma was one of the last War brides from what was then, Czechoslovakia, to sail to the United States before the communists closed the borders. It was winter 1947. “Baba” was 21 years old, thin, feisty, and mopped with curly chestnut hair that she detangled with her fingers in nervous habit. She brought only the clothes in her suitcase, recipes in her head, and the expectant dreams of becoming a young American wife. My grandfather was waiting for her at the port authority when she demanded they marry that afternoon before boarding the train to Chicago. Two sisters en route to the market were plucked from the New York streets to be their witnesses. My grandparents would never know their names.

While my grandfather, a carpenter by trade, renovated their west suburban home, Baba perfumed the kitchen with familiar scents from home. She stewed pork shoulder and sauerkraut, simmered dumpling soup over azure flames, and baked poppy seed strudels on cool, cloudy Sundays. Every few months, she manufactured her own laundry soap out of bacon grease in the basement (which to this day is the only product I am convinced can combat a ketchup stain.) She had nothing written down – no cookbooks or recipe cards. She had grown up with her mother performing these same domestic tasks in their small Moravian village. Baba had simply watched.

Over the years, my family has pinpointed their favorites. Of all the delicacies Baba has mastered, the most traditional, drooled-over, anticipated varieties are her kolacky. Friends insist they trump a stiff drink or scalding bubble bath. Flaky, golden nuggets quilting a dollop of savory apricot, sweet cheese, or walnut paste. Each one, hand-sculpted and pressed so that the corners don’t unravel in the oven like lotus petals. They are the gossip at every bridal shower, gala, fundraiser, or afternoon coffee clutch. They decorated the dessert table at my mother’s wedding and were devoured thirty years later at my own. Every December, at her insistent protests, we help Baba stock up on flour, cream cheese, and butter in preparation to craft dozens of kolacky. The neighbors each receive a tray as do the priest and nuns down the block and the quirky receptionist at the doctor’s office. The grandest cookie platter is reserved for our own holiday gathering, each row flaunting ruler precision and a doily dusting of powdered sugar.

This past May, Baba turned 83. When I bake with her now, my primary goal is to keep pace with her spontaneous moments and carnival of ingredients. My notes are a blizzard of hasty cross-outs, rewrites, and minute scribbles in the margins. I often stop her mid-pour to inquire exactly how much of this or that.

She typically laughs and shakes her head. “You have to just sense it, Emily. The dough will tell you what it needs.”

I always look at her skeptically as if she is reciting some obscure aphorism, but I know it to be true. She whispers to the cookies and they blush with butter cream perfection. I only provide the ingredients and pen in hand, stand back to watch, hoping my Czech instincts seep in like grease on a hot cookie sheet.

Baba’s Cream Cheese Kolacky

This recipe is an alternative to yeast kolacky that require additional ingredients and preparation time. The unsweetened cream cheese dough also pairs well with the variety of sweet fillings that can be homemade or found in the supermarket baking aisle: poppy seed, almond, apricot, cheese, or prune.

Have at room temperature:

8 oz cream cheese
2 sticks butter
2 cups flour

Blend together butter and cream cheese in a mixing bowl. Gradually blend flour into this mixture. Finish mixing with your hand, adding more or less flour depending on your need, so that the dough can be shaped into a ball. Refrigerate overnight or 4 hours minimum.

Preheat oven to 350’. Divide dough into thirds. Roll out 1 segment at a time into oblong shape on a floured board to approximately ¼-inch or 1/8-inch thickness. Cut into 2” squares with a pizza cutter.

Place 1 teaspoon filling in the middle of each square. Fold each corner into the middle and pinch together in the center. (Moisten fingers with cold water droplets if dough is not sticking)

Bake 12- 14 minutes until golden on an ungreased cookie sheet.

Let cool on wire rack. Sprinkle cookies with confectioner’s sugar.

Apricot Filling:
Cover 8-12oz dried apricots in pot of cold water.
Soak overnight. Apricots will absorb the water.
Simmer over low heat, adding water as needed
to prevent burning. Mix frequently and use a
fork to mash up the skins. Gradually add 1/2 cup
sugar to taste. Cool completely.

The Labyrinth

2008-11-23T12:00:00.000-08:00

(NOVEMBER 2008)

Truthfully, I am more of a skeptic.

I’m not a big believer in spiritual healing, Feng Shui, or acupuncture. I don’t put much stock in superstition, stain removers, or the South Beach Diet. I scoff at strange men in jumpsuits practicing tai-chi in the dog park. I dismiss shrinks. On weekends, I pity glassy-eyed vegans in Whole Foods, stockpiling capsules of St. John’s Wort and fish oil pellets into their carry carts like gluttons at the Old Country Buffet. In all honesty, I sweep them into the same dustpan as horoscope junkies and tarot card party-goers. I cringe at the term, “soul mate” (especially during saccharin-sweet romantic comedies), roll my eyes during yoga, and jeer every time I read an article about the supposed health benefits of chocolate. I stopped believing in Santa Claus at nine. I struggle with the concept of an omniscient almighty Creator. And even as a child, I never accepted that a chapped kiss from a gay prince aroused Sleeping Beauty from eternal slumber.

However, I am willing to try anything once. Especially something that defies cliché.

Last week, my friend, Sarah told me about a wholistic health spa southwest of Chicago run by a gaggle of Franciscan nuns.

“Nuns?” I defied, certain I had misheard.
“Yes, nuns. Petite virtuous ladies with sandals and short hair. Their answering machine signs off ‘Peace be with You.’” Sarah paused, insistent. “They are the real deal.”

My interest peeked. A Catholic convent operating a full-service spa with bikini waxes, gong vibrations, and reiki meditations? This was definitely worth a 65-minute drive down LaGrange Road next Saturday. Did the bishop know?

*****

We steered the mini-van down meandering asphalt lined with massive quaking oaks, skinned of their leaves for the winter. The grounds were dotted with miniature Nordic chapels that conjured images of the Seven Dwarves returning from lumber work on a stark frigid night. A dried-up ravine veined through the acreage and ducked behind the main structure, the Motherhouse. Along the bushes, two fake deer posed as lawn ornaments and in the distance, a dijon-tinted country house squatted under the shaded arms of an evergreen tree. I guessed before I had even spotted the sign, Sacred Sound and Wellness Spa.

A tinkle of a bell chimed when we entered through a glass door and into an intimate waiting room, smelling faintly of jasmine blossoms. Four oversized plush chairs ideal for napping curled around a coffee table and trickling water statue. On the far side, a tidy assortment of herbal teas with ceramic mugs hugged the edge of an old cherry work desk while the shelves above stocked books on prayer and Catholic meditation. A small needlepoint crucifix dangled off-center above the entryway.

Sister Anne emerged from the hallway with a radiant smile on pale skin, extending both arms as if we were family visiting from abroad.

“Welcome,” she cooed in the soft caress of a mother with an infant asleep in the next room. “We are so delighted you are here.” She embraced both of our hands by cupping them within her own. “What services can we offer you today?” Her fingers were thin and warm.

I scanned the brochure card tented on the coffee table:

Massage Reiki Spiritual Facial Gong Vibration Floating Meditation

No waxing. But, the prospect of being slathered in lotion and rubbed down in nothing but my underwear by a sacred sister of the church was a tad shocking. I had memorized The Sound of Music. Those women were pious, solemn, and cloaked in yards of matronly dense black wool.

“Do you perform the actual massages?” I asked, cocking my head to the side, sizing up her four-foot stature.

“Oh, no,” she chuckled easily. “We have certified therapists for all that. I’m just here to ensure everyone departs with positive energy.” She curved her hands in front of her as if outlining the circumference of a basketball.

I raised an eyebrow. It sounded incredibly Berkeley-esque for the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit doctrine.

Sister Anne beamed at us and gestured to the front door. “While you are waiting, you must walk the labyrinth before your session. It is so peaceful and really aligns the spirit. It is just down the path before the creek.”

Labyrinth? Had I ventured into a C.S. Lewis novel? Sarah and I exchanged glances.

*****

The labyrinth wasn’t nearly as impressive as I had envisioned. It was a pancake flat concentric pattern of linear bricks and paths of white stone, half-buried in decaying autumn leaves. I had pictured a grand mysterious structure with eight-foot walls like the hedge maze in The Shining. Instead this obstacle elicited the thrill of a slide on a preschool playground.

Sarah rounded to the opposite side and began treading up one of the entry points. I grimaced into my scarf, but not wanting to appear unenthusiastic, strided up the path in front of me. The gravel crunched beneath my sneakers and the eerie echo of a crow reverberated off the tree skeletons. The daylight was beginning to fade as the wind picked up and bristled the skin around my coat collar. This was so ridiculous. I could see the next turn. Where were the challenges? The dead-ends?

I plodded along in silence, staying within the bricks and swerving around the corners, pivoting in the opposite direction that I had just traveled. I could hear the shifting of stones on the opposite side, but I didn’t speak. I wasn’t sure how seriously Sarah was taking this. For all I knew, she was praying.

As soon as I figured I was getting close to breaking into the core, the path would divert and clip me back out to its outer rings in blatant defiance. I trampled along in avid concentration like a schoolgirl stepping over sidewalk cracks in the pavement. I spotted the back of Sarah’s red jacket. She was stationary in the middle. She had reached the coveted center. I still lingered pathetically along the far edges. What kind of trail had I gotten on anyway? The extra-long route? I scanned the alleyway ahead. It couldn’t be more than a few yards now.

I quickened my pace, but still the twists and curves paced on in lethargic sequence, relentless and haunting. What was wrong with me? Had Sarah figured out some secret method? Was this some kind of practical joke? I felt my face flush and breath accelerate as I contemplated leaping over the bricks a few times to cheat closer to the center. I panicked and whipped around, ready to abandon the mission.

Suddenly, I realized Sarah was no longer perched at the axis. She had slinked off in the distance and was meandering toward a field of long-necked Canadian geese, pecking at the November earth. I was alone.

I came to an abrupt halt and closed my eyes. I breathed in the cold and felt the vapors of exhale moisten my chin. I rarely shut my eyes during the day. I rarely ceased all motion. But, I was alone and the opaque darkness pacified my mind like a child’s blanket. Stillness seemed to settle over my body and I heard my voice in a foreign whisper, “No one is timing you.”

I would walk. Steadily. Calmly. In patient rhythm. Even if twilight descended and the stones disappeared beneath my feet like the ocean floor in deep currents. I would walk the path. Trust that I would get there eventually. Trust that I would not be led astray or looped in a revolving circle.

I would walk the path.

I did reach the center. Just a short distance ahead. I followed in sequence as the space converged and filtered into the vast gray core of ancient design. My confidence swelled. I stood there for a few minutes, my heels pressed together to fit within the precise center stone and I heard their wings. The flock of geese paraded overhead in gorgeous geometry, exchanging places in silent negotiation. Their massive wingspan churned the air, rocked the ginkgo branches, and fixed my gaze on their flight. All within fleeting seconds. I wondered how I appeared to them from the sky, standing straight as a bicycle spoke, in a labyrinth of lines and circles and ashen rock.

“Is your spirit aligned?” Sarah’s voice startled me from behind.
I turned and nodded with a smile, surprising myself. “I’m sorry I took so long.”
She looked at me quizzically. “I hadn’t noticed.”

*****

We were quiet as we traced our way back along the cement and I found myself contemplating her question. Is your spirit aligned? My spirit. I knew she meant the question in jest, but I did feel absolved of something. Something elusive and intangible.

My spirit is twenty-eight years old. Divorced. I am coming to know her. Last July she visited her OB for advice on pre-natal vitamins. The following Tuesday she discovered her husband’s affairs. She is not on the path she thought, but she’s beginning to accept a divergence to one that will inevitably compose another life. One that might just stretch and wind. One that might be just as good.

As we walked away from the labyrinth that late afternoon and into the warm blonde light of the center for our treatments, I recalibrated. Although, I generally consider myself to be a skeptic, I’m willing to admit that I can also sometimes be a believer.

Voting Undrama

2008-11-03T12:00:00.000-08:00

(NOVEMBER 2008)

My voting experience was quizzically ordinary. Maybe it was all the hype from this election that forecasted its disappointment like the Blair Witch Project curse or Oprah’s last book, The Secret. But, I was expecting more bells and whistles. I was envisioning departing the exit booth with a swagger in my step and flip in my bob. There were no palpitations, flutters, or spontaneous sighs of patriotic satisfaction. There wasn’t even a line.

Okay, so I voted early. I was one of those neurotic type A’s who speed over to City Hall during a lunch break the second morning of early voting. I tactically avoided Day #1, anticipating the growing pains of paperwork, procedure, and 82 year-old volunteers with orthopedic shoes, flag pins, and no concept of efficiency. Who else can they get on duty at 11am? I figured they’d have at least memorized the routine by Day #2 lunch.

I stepped into the main vestibule, expecting the air to be orchid-house thick - the exhaust from vicious political friction and oppressive body heat. But, it was quiet enough to hear my boot heels click on the linoleum and a lovely October breeze fluttered through the three inch gaps along the lobby windows. It was a perfect 71 degrees. I approached the reception desk and nodded at a balding man in bifocals, bearing a lopsided nametag – Hello, I’m Hank. He grinned widely, adjusting his frames, and gestured to a far table by twisting his entire body to the right. Had he actually been reading a book?

“Just fill out your name, address, and county and be sure to get your driver’s license all ready. That is very important.” He winked and I smiled with the forced civility of a frequent flier being reminded by TSA to remove their loafers.

“Will do.” I raised a hand in attempted affability and reached inside my bag. I had stuffed my Social Security card, passport, voter’s registration, original birth certificate (with the seal), and several major credit cards deep within my Marshall’s purse. Having been scarred from multiple disasters at the DMV that made traveling to the Middle East appear as trivial as a game of Frisbee, I was determined to arm myself with reserves.

A younger woman with an eye tick checked my license behind a laptop computer and I waited, eyes darting around the room in search of someone to share my elated anticipation of voting for the first Black President. Where were the crowds, the buzz, the tactile evidence of history in the making? I may have even frowned when she neglected to ask for a second form of ID. The public library isn’t even that lenient. Instead, she pointed to one of the open stations with Tylenol-red plastic stools and I settled along the back wall to secure my privacy. The touch screen was a cinch – no dimpled ballots or poorly punched chads to incite drama or panic. Behind the viewing glass, the system printed an itemized receipt like you get at the local hardware store and then rocketed it off into oblivion - my Vote for Change officially counted.

I cleared my throat and peered up, hoping I’d discover a snaking line of citizens shoulder-slumped behind the registration desk. But, no jittery mob appeared to confirm my brilliant tactic of arriving pre-lunch rush. I suppose I should have been gushing with gratitude that I didn’t have to wait three hours like those voters in Gary with their single machine. Channel 2 news had videotaped them napping with heads pressed against the wall and shoes strewn to the side like stranded passengers at an airline terminal. I felt an adverse tensing of my jaw. Those folks were truly making a statement.

Perhaps, the early voting consequentially spread out the excitement like a thin layer of mustard on rye, but I did expect to endure something unpleasant– a faulty machine, whiny toddler, or at least a line worthy of womens’ ballpark bathrooms. But, my experience was as boring as brown corduroy. It wasn’t until I exited the building and turned my car onto the local road that I finally had my moment of tickled inspiration.

They were there in masses – plastering the bumpers of all shapes, sizes, makes, models, and colors. White with block letters, round ones, long rectangles, cursive, bordered, bold-faced and blue. Obama and Biden. The stickers were everywhere as lights changed, horns blared, and pedestrians careened down crosswalks. I just had not noticed the sheer quantity before. They were a part of our everyday environment and yet, a rhythm of our revolution. Our voices and words and commitment to a movement. The voters would be there - in their own time on their own day. I was sure of it. I peeked down at my “I voted” sticker on the back of my hand and felt a swelling of pride. I patted it gently and ultimately understood, change did not always have to be measured by the length of a line.

Facebook Frivolity

2008-11-01T12:00:00.000-07:00

Sallie Smith has requested your friendship.

I must confess, I do relish in being pursued. Since I joined Facebook last week, the names have flash-danced across my yahoo inbox: some familiar, some unknown, some unleashing insecurities last endured in the sixth grade locker room. Still, the majority of notifications elicit the smug gratification of a well-timed high five. It feels good to be liked. It is good to have friends. And even better, to flaunt them out in the open.

What is this Facebook phenomenon? Is it simply the latest in e-trends, propelling the streaming shift from letters to phone calls, from email to texts, from messaging to “friending”? Is it coincidence that this new generation of communication is even less communicative than the one prior? Could Facebook just be another way to indulge our friendship sloth?

Composing letters demand time. They are drafted with measured penmanship on crisp stationary and sealed with actual human saliva. You search in vain for the correct address, sized envelope, and currently valid stamp. You tromp three blocks in the snow to a squatty blue-boxed oasis with a squeaky metal shoot and then, trust it all to the US Postal Service. You wait. You have invested the time and energy and now you endure the quaintly old-fashioned delay of receipt. But, then it is received, and for a moment, you cause someone to feel as idolized as a first born grandchild.

Chatting over the telephone allows for more spontaneity and instantaneous banter, but still, consumes the clock. Phone talk demands a chunk of our day to truly catch someone up on our life, especially those out-of-the-loop, long distance friends we feel obligated to ring on major holidays. Personally, I tend to delay those calls, knowing thirty minutes will never suffice – only to determine a week later than the required minimum time has swelled to a deterrent forty-five. If you’re like me, we spot certain names on caller IDs and usher them straight to voicemail, especially if they’re brazen enough to call halfway through Grey’s Anatomy.

Alternatively, emails are succinct, colloquial and uninhibited. We don’t have to spell correctly, remember “i” before “e”, or edit for parallel structure. They are as unobtrusive as midnight custodians, doing their job, but not expectant of gratitude or fanfare. Unfortunately, they can also reek of self-indulgence. Emails are dispensed as blithely as they are dismissed. We are all guilty of dropping the dutiful, “What’s new?” without having to commit to an actual conversation. We check the person off our “to-do” list and strategically, it becomes their “turn” – their prerogative to respond when they have time. After all, we have to get to the gym, pick up the dry cleaning, refuel the sedan, and order pepperoni pizza. We are busy. They are busy. No one has to sacrifice.

T2UL Talk to you later. Anyone over twenty-five, may find it increasingly vital to enroll in a class on the language of text. In this adolescent universe, complete sentences are discouraged and the least number of letters to convey a point is studied, revered and emulated like primate tool use in chimpanzee populations. Brevity reigns and eloquence is discouraged. Texts can be typed and transmitted in a span of seconds – in the cab, under the dinner table, or in a movie theater, simply to irritate the patrons behind you. Dude, this flick blows – LOL.

And now, with even less effort you can connect to your peers with an instant search and swift click of the mouse. To “friend” someone has been conjugated into an active verb without any action or verbalization. This behavior is catapulting forth a generation of students who connect primarily online. Any alternative fraternizing rarely occurs sober. The solidarity of a handshake, an intimate phone call, or shared experience is not vital to the modern concept of friend. All you need is a name, modem, and sleek Mac Air.

As of this morning, I had 79 friends. I don’t think that is considered impressive, although I am doing better than the suburban moms who signed up to post photos of their kids and months later can’t remember their log-in codes. Still, it is not college sophomore caliber either. I do presume my list is more qualified. In fact, I ventured into this process, curious to discover whom I might unearth, but also weary of polluting my posse with former high school classmates I never respected, let alone extended a solitary thought to in twelve years. But, these random friend requests nudge their way into my utopia and threaten its very purity. Like sex without a condom, these outliers are hard to resist. This guy would put me over #80 and after all, I don’t want to damage an ego. In this spirit, posting on Facebook seems to mimic the rituals of thumping on chests or flaunting of feathers. Maybe it is more muted and certainly less barbaric than thrashing vines in the jungle, but it is a popularity contest. Plain and simple.

Web-based communication seems to have evolved into a sly craft. Suddenly, we can bypass having to nurture real and tangible relationships that involve coffee steam, nonverbal cues, and, if you’re lucky, a parting embrace. With the adoption of Facebook, we can “tickle”, “poke”, or send a clip-art carrot cake cupcake, but we are not touching anyone or turning on an oven. We reach out through wires, cables, and technology, but not with our hands or voices. Sallie Smith may post that she has a headache and Joe Johnson may have devoured an entire bag of Peanut M&M’s, but we are not invested. The communication is passive and suddenly the intimacies of friendship are reduced to a bulletin board of futile online post-it-notes.

Let’s consider how many of these freshly found pals we will actually develop any form of bond with over time? Perhaps when bored at work, we’ll spy on the attractiveness of an ex-boyfriend’s spouse or scoff at an old classmate’s smutty pictures from a bachelorette party. Maybe these tolerated voyeuristic opportunities will lead to envy, lust, or even appreciation. Or maybe it is all benign. Alternatively, we all could be threading a sharp needle.

Personally, I am terrified of inhabiting a world infected with indifference where friends are traded as cheaply as GM stock. Shouldn’t we be demanding personal investment, accountability, and reciprocity from the select individuals we call friends? I idolize a society steeping and swelling with spit-in-your-eye laughter, passionate kissing, and firm handshakes. Perhaps Facebook can work in our favor as long as we actively own our relationships and recite the golden rule of quality over quantity. New technology can latch on as innocently as our morning addiction to caffeine, but the consequences can be staggering if we displace the human element of socialization. I am not advocating for its demise, but I caution its utility.

Of course, Facebook might be an excellent tool for locating one’s freshman roommate or discovering fellow alums who live in the Bay Area. But, while we are gathering and hoarding like toddlers at an Easter egg hunt, perhaps we should take pause to ensure we aren’t just using each other to one-up our friend meters. After all, we may be tallying up the comrades, but if they are a bunch of limp handshakes, what’s the point? Besides, I’m certain all 79 of them don’t know - I prefer my cupcakes to contain actual calories.

San Francisco Calling

2008-09-10T21:00:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

It is one of those glorious, guiltily perfect Midwestern September days worthy of one last kool-aid stand and gallop down the slip-n’slide. My muscles twitch with the urgency to extract as much lemony sunshine out of the daylight before the wind picks up and the sky blushes pink. I consult my to-do list and decide to buy myself a new desk chair at Office Max. “The Executive Task Master” – named as creatively as kindergarten crayolas.

Mission complete, I reverse out of my parking spot with the car windows down and the lyrics to Tom Petty’s Free Fallin’ bursting forth from the baseboards. I crank up the knob in nostalgic approval, still flushed with the satisfaction and spontaneity of making an expensive purchase. It is the ideal summer tune, carefree and cocky, and I am flooded with the memory of its uncanny timing after skydiving with my Stanford dormmates freshman year.

I was sardined in the backseat of a Civic that reeked of gym socks and housed floor mats littered with Ritz cracker crumbs. The five of us were already high off our daredevil excursion when the song came spilling through the stereo speakers. As we drove the hour back to campus, the Australian guy shifted to put his hand on my knee and I scooted my arms forward to discourage the maneuver. I blushed at his brazen interest, secretly hiding my own giddiness that someone could so unabashedly fancy me. Still, I didn’t want to seem easy.

It was an empowering year for me. Not only did I make death-defying decisions such as jumping from a plane above an artichoke field in Hollister, CA, but I actually allowed myself to embrace fun. I had been a serious child, diligent and industrious. I measured my self-worth with parental approval, academic success, and athletic achievement. Failure was unacceptable. Excelling was essential. It wasn’t my parent’s expectation. It was mine. And that was almost worse.

I wore a stigma of severity in high school. I raised my hand in history class, conversed with the faculty, and figured blatantly ignoring guys I idolized would ultimately prove an effective strategy. Thankfully, I claimed enough friends to elevate my status out of the loser or nerd category. My other salvation was that I threw a vicious curve ball from the pitcher’s mound and never missed a volleyball serve. However, I was not a partier. I was not the chick you called up on Thursday night to transport a keg in her parent’s mini-van to the new spot in the woods that the cops hadn’t discovered yet. Heck, I didn’t even know about the woods. I actually had a deal with one of my more social friends that I would do her Spanish homework, if she would dish the week’s gossip at our lockers in the morning. Muy bien!

I let down my arms in college. I laughed hysterically, played pool until 2am on beer-stained billiards’ tables, hiked through the foothills, fell in love, ate sushi, drank Goldschlager, karaoked to Cher's Believe, cut my hair above my shoulders, wore bright-colored tank-tops, talked on tattered futons with my legs curled under me, and I wrote. I wrote a lot.

It felt strange and dizzy and delicious. I didn’t abandon all sense by any means, but I reinvented my identity into someone who was waiting to emerge but never could give the egg that last final crack. That’s why I long to return to California. Even if it’s only three days. I feel as though I can reclaim a version of myself that emitted beauty, radiated youth, exuded creativity, and most importantly, came before.

That’s why I want to go to San Francisco.
My heart used to beat there.

Tossin' and Turnin'

2008-08-25T21:00:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, August 25, 2008
I heard that old 1961 Bobby Lewis song on the radio, “Tossin' and Turnin”, while driving home tonight. I could just picture the sway of background singers, their beaufont hairdos stiff with spray and bobby pins. It is such a peculiar song – about being up all night, obsessing about this "unnamed" person, raiding the refrigerator, and hearing the milkman drop off the pre-dawn dairy. The milkman for god’s sake. That definitely dates it.

It made me consider the trademarks of that time – fifty years ago when men reached for pocket combs and schoolgirls sipped sarsaparillas on corner drug store stools. I suppose it wasn’t all simplistic – people worked hard and strove to appear satisfied at least for society’s sake. I’m sure women were being beaten in broom closets as Jimmy Jr. watched I Love Lucy after his pot roast dinner. I’m certain housewives ran off with their tennis instructors and Mr. Cleaver was banging his secretary. But, everything was impeccably folded, ironed and pressed and there were a lot of quaint goodbye pecks between man and wife on the way out the door in the morning.

I am suddenly grateful I am not a woman in the 1950’s with twenty-three white apron smocks, scrubbing diapers and crying into my pillow while the children are napping, secretly aware that my husband is a chronic adulterer. There would be no divorce. It would be too much of a stigma. I would be ostracized in the community. My kids would be treated as lepers and the taboo would stamp our house like pink paint. I would befriend silence.

Today is the anniversary of the women’s right to vote. Today, I listened to Senator Hillary Clinton strive to unite the Democratic Party at the convention in Colorado. Today any woman, if she is brave enough and empowered enough, can stand up and say, “Screw you.” And her neighbor will not think less of her. Even if she paints her own house pink.

I find myself grinning when Lewis’ ridiculous, redundant chorus circles back again. “I was a’ turnin' and tossing. Tossing and turnin'. A’ tossing and turnin' all night!” I realize I have never heard this song with him. There are probably not many out there after six years and a backlog of road trips– but this is definitely one. Waves of intuition slip over me – comforting, like watching twilight roll in on a back porch.

I feel as though I will sleep well tonight. And certainly, I know, there won’t be any milk deliveries in the morning.

Creatures in the Night

2008-03-18T08:00:00.000-07:00

I have fully come to terms with the fact that I would not be the ideal candidate for an Amazon canoe guide. I almost went into cardiac arrest last night. I was home alone when catastrophe struck and was left to solely defend my humble abode. "I am woman, hear me roar." (Or rather, hear me shriek with terror.)

There I was, content, comfortable, lazily reclined on my puffy brown sofa, indulging in my perfectly laid plan of frozen yogurt / granola and the ultimate "Cat's Meow" - aka - 2 hour Season Finale of LOST! Innocently, I meandered my way into the hallway during a commercial break (you know I can't make it more than an hour without having to pee) and spotted something moving out of the corner of my laser-defined, cat-like eyes. (Okay, I had my –4.5 correction glasses on. And, yes, thank you, I did on one occasion mistake a gecko for a cockroach without my contacts. BUT, they are both creatures that should not be in one's closet, I don't care what state you live in). In any case, there was movement in my line of vision. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, the image became clearer and more horrifying - dark creeping legs, ghastly antennas, and a hard enormous shell of invertebrate DNA against our lovely off-white front door.

My mouth was agape. It was inside! Wild creepy thing in my house! My adrenaline surged and my legs began to wobble in all directions - 1 step forward, 1 back. What the hell was I supposed to do!? I quickly scanned my surroundings, desperately seeking any primitive tool that I might use to defend my dwelling. But, it was pitiful. Only a floppy entry rug and a limp brown sandal that looked to be the size of what this prehistoric dinosaur beetle could devour for dinner. I felt myself gag as I blinked back at the repulsive invader and sprinted to the kitchen to fetch the most dreaded concoction of toxic chemicals I could find under the sink. I began tossing products over my shoulder: Organic Lemongrass Window Wash, All Natural Thyme and Ginger Counter Rub, Lavender and Rose-hip Dishwashing Detergent, some Seventh Generation, 365, Method crap…Shit! I was in no mood to save the planet. I needed to kill. The more toxic, pungent, horrible-for-the-environment, gas-mask-required-for-use, don’t-dare-get-in-the-water-supply - the better.

Then, I saw it - a forgotten canister pressed way in the back with rabid-looking hornets outfitting the label. Perfect. How specific could this stuff be anyway? I sprinted back to the hallway and positioned myself around the corner wall, squaring off with the beast. I stretched out my arm and unleashed the poison, watching in both delight and horror as it convulsed amidst the spray, twisting violently, until it fell exhausted to the floor in a puddle of toxic suds.

When I saw the twitching subside and its underside exposed to the ceiling, I resumed my breathing. That's when I noted the stench. I began to feel light-headed and dizzy, the fumes rising like spirits from the murder scene. What the heck was this stuff? I turned the bottle of wasp killer over and read the large bold letters in extra large font over and over, "NEVER USE INDOORS! NEVER USE INDOORS!". Shit!! Shit!!! I braced myself, ready to flee next door to the neighbors we don't even know and call poison control. Quickly, I scrambled around the house, blasting open doors and windows, activating ceiling fans and bathroom vents. I violently snatched a damp checkered dishtowel from the counter and tied it around my mouth and nose like a bank bandit from the local psych ward.

I yanked on yellow plastic gloves and my heavy duty Chicago boots and went to work, sopping up my self-inflicted home chemical spill. The Thing just laid there - its stringy legs protruding, its tiny fangs and vacant eyeballs reflecting light off the floor, causing me to question if it was in fact actually dead. I imagined it springing up in surprise retaliation like a crazed Kathy Bates in Misery, and attacking the flesh on my face. I think the chemicals were taking effect. The neighbors would find me strewn about on the tile, my brain overtaken by fumes while the creature indulged in the last laugh of the night.

I did eventually force myself to scoop up the Thing with two plastic plates and dispose of it on our front porch. I don't know why I didn't march directly to the garbage bins and wipe my hands of the whole experience. I suppose part of me wanted to boast about what I had accomplished like a cat that toddles home with a rat in his teeth to place on his owner's doormat. "This is my gift to you. I did this. Me. All by my lonesome. This is what I am willing to do to defend our home." The other motivation may have been slightly influenced by the fumes. I felt like a warrior positioning my kill in front of my castle as medieval beheadings on a fence post. An ominous warning to all the other creatures that creep and crawl in the night: "This is what will happen to you if you choose to venture in."

In any case, somewhere between hunting the beast and exterminating our front room, I did manage to stealthily zip over to the TV and press record on Lost. After all, I do have my priorities straight. One definitely could argue that perhaps my phobias are a bit out of control and I might greatly benefit from some intensive Fear-Factor-Inspired Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. But, one would also have to agree that even in the face of ultimate doom, I do remember the important things. Which reminds me, where are all the gigantic bugs on Lost???? Uninhabited island! Come on!. There must be some real doosers out there, lurking behind the TV cameras, ready to pounce.

Maybe that’s all coming in Season 5.

Cement - Impressions from a Stanford Reunion

2007-11-15T08:00:00.000-08:00

(NOVEMBER 2007)

I confess. I finally succumbed to the most selfish of modern human curiosities.
I googled my name last night.

There they were - all the articles I had written for The Stanford Daily as an aspiring young journalist, in my quest to emulate the perky blonde version of Louis Lane. Each one, cataloged in perfect order, collecting virtual dust on the world wide web.

I scrolled down and a feature story I wrote my junior eye caught my eye, “Farm-Sick in Sydney.” I had been abroad, studying at the University of New South Wales that semester, basking in the Aussie sunshine and backdrop of the 2000 Olympics. And yet, come October, I was overshadowed with a sense of longing.

“It was as though I never expected life at Stanford to go on without me. I didn't actually realize I'd be missing out - that there would be basketball games and bike accidents and Frosty Mints at the CoHo and that I wouldn't be there for them. It was the first time being abroad didn't feel so glamorous, so superior to Stanford.”

The words could be interpreted as the nostalgic musings of a twenty-year old girl, caught thousands of miles away in the Southern Hemisphere, having forgotten she was there to experience the new, fresh and wonderful. In truth, all she yearned for was to return to the familiar.

Admittedly though, a similar sense of longing prompted me to visit the Farm this past year as a real veteran this time, a five-year alum. I hadn’t been back since graduation and although life was good, I was anxious to return to a place that had been home for four enviable years.

In the beginning of Reunion weekend, there was a tangible flutter of anticipation through embracing old friends, fretting over names, and running into old loves. However, by Sunday morning, I found myself alone for the first time in days.

A hush seemed to have settled over the foothills. I decided to take a stroll and breathe in the campus before I left it again for another five years. I didn’t set off with any particular destination in mind, but I found myself passing some of my cherished spots- Moonbeams Cafe, the trees behind Castano, the shaded steps off the Quad.

It was a glorious Stanford morning, crisp and cool, although the sun was burning through the haze and heating my neck under my sweater. I soon found myself at Wilbur Field, glimpsing across the drive at my old freshman dorm - a building I had resided in for half my college years. Once as a skinny 17 year-old novice from the Midwest and again as a senior RA, queen of all dorm-planning and to be brutally honest, masking throw-up stains on carpets.

I walked around the side and into the back courtyard. I studied the tiny middle unit on the first floor and wondered who was living there now. Did he/she know about the little angle of cement that fanned out every so slightly from the foundation, forming the perfect step up to the window if you ever got locked out? Probably, I thought.

The familiar hint of yeasty waffle batter wafted past me and I glanced around at the swarm of bleary-eyed students in sweatpants and flip-flops, dangling key chains and negotiating their spots on the crooked picnic benches sorely in need of a paint job. They looked unbearably young. I flinched with the unexpected pangs of jealousy.

I wondered if I might still blend in. If they might mistake me for another freshman or perhaps a mature upperclassman, here to visit some privileged bottom-feeder. But, then I glanced down at my conspicuous Stanford bookstore bag, bursting with paraphernalia. The truth was that I was bikeless and showered at 11:30am on a Sunday morning. Probably not, I thought. I just hoped they didn’t think I was somebody’s mother.

I turned back to the building and all the memorable vignettes it housed for me. I heard far-off giggling from the maroon lounge sofas, the sharp sound of cues hitting pool balls, the muffled melody of clucking keyboards from the poor saps in the lab who didn’t yet own a PC. Faces I had struggled to picture en route to the reunion took shape for me now. I smiled, remembering. My time here had been a happy one.

What a tribute to Stanford that even now as an adult, its sights, smells, and sounds were able to evoke such nostalgia in me. Perhaps even more as an adult as I stood there, yearning for a life before taxes, mortgages, wedding debt and yearly reviews. I suppose this is what every passing reunion must bring – a wistful reminder of a time of youth.

I tried to picture myself in another five years, ten years, on that very spot, peering out at a new batch of freshman inhaling doughy waffles on wobbly picnic tables, and reminiscing about a simpler time, before potty-training, aging parents, even bigger mortgages, and those extra ten pounds.

I think it would again feel like a privilege to return to my roots and bathe in its essence for a while. Even if by then I really did look like someone’s hip young mom.

I just hope in the meantime they don’t sand down that sliver of cement. That, I think, should remain for the generations.