Ode to The Smurf Hearse

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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.