Why Boring Is Good

This afternoon, I thought, if only something would happen.  And then I wondered if I’d lost my mind.  After all, something could be something bad, and one should not resent the doldrums when they settle like stale air. 

Boring is good!  Boring means we don’t need to call an ambulance to rush a bleeding body to the emergency room.  Boring means we don’t have to telephone a lawyer to find out exactly what to do with the jackpot. 

Boring means I don’t need a new outfit and I won’t have to wear pantyhose and shoes that make the balls of my feet throb.  Boring means the kids are all in their rooms, safe and sound, busily digesting and growing another inch before morning.

But when things are so boring, I have to dredge up material from the deep recesses of my mind and boy, things are kind of dusty in there.  I find an old picture of my dad, the one I took the day he left on a sailboat to sail down the coast to California.  Steroids prescribed to shrink his brain tumor had bloated his face, but he smiled with pure joy that day.  Cancer had been his ticket out of a job he despised and he ate hot fudge sundaes and grabbed as much life as he could.  Then he died four months after the diagnosis.

That photograph hangs in my hallway and tonight, while I held my crabby nap-free daughter, I saw my dad’s face looking in at me.  He’s been gone since 1989 and I still can’t figure out what to do about that gaping vacancy he left.  It’s unfillable.

After my dad died, I was absolutely convinced that I would be next.  Nothing like stark terror to bring excitement to your twenties!  I even found a breast lump, had a mammogram, followed by an ultrasound, resulting in a surgical biopsy. 

That morning, the surgeon drew purple arrows on my skin, pointing to the spot.  Next thing I knew, I was stretched onto the operating table, arms straight out, finger-clip catching the rhythm of my beating heart. 

The sun shone into the room and upbeat music played while I laid exposed.  The needle numbed me.  I felt the tug of the knife, heard the sizzle as the wound was cauterized, smelled the burning, saw smoke.  The doctor said, “Looks like a lipoma.  Good.” 

And so I didn’t die from cancer.  It was nothing. 

A few years later, when our twins were two, my husband’s voice started to sound scratchy.  We had no health insurance, so he put off seeing a doctor, but finally, some church members insisted that he go.  So, he did. 

The first specialist assured him everything was fine.  Rest the voice, he said.  And so my husband was mute for a week.  When he didn’t improve, he saw a second specialist.  This doctor told him the growth on his larynx needed to be removed, but that it was probably nothing.

We drove to Midland, Michigan, for the surgery.  A friend cared for our boys while I sat in the waiting room.  Afterward, the doctor met with me and assured me, “You have a greater chance of being hit by lightening on the way home than of that being cancer.  But we’ll send it to the lab for a biopsy anyway.  One chance in a ten thousand,” he said.

And so, a few weeks later, we were shocked when it turned out to be cancer.  Cancer?  Laryngeal cancer threatened to steal his voice.  He went back into surgery so the doctor could make sure he got it all. 

And weirdly enough, that was that.  All of his follow-up visits showed no sign of cancer.  We hardly even remember that terrible chapter in our lives.

The thing is, boring can turn into catastrophe in twenty minutes or less.  And when things are dull, life is good.

You heard it here first.  

On Not Getting Naked in High School

The Tacoma News Tribune ran a story in the paper recently chronicling the poor hygiene of student athletes. Apparently, kids these days prefer not to shower in the locker room where God and everybody can stare and point at their private bits while they lather, rinse and repeat.

Imagine!

I still cannot shake the horror of sixth grade and the required showers we had to take after physical education (P.E.) class. I was already mortified by the changes hormones had wrought. I disguised my womanly curves in a large blue down coat during classes.

But in P.E., after stripping off our required uniforms of white shorts, white t-shirts and white tube socks, we were all expected to disrobe, scurry into the showers, make sure that the teacher saw us unclothed, dab ourselves dry with skimpy towels, pull on our clothing and run off to class.

(This was very problematic for my hairstyle–the feathered bangs went awry after contact with my sweaty forehead. How is a girl supposed to look cute when her hair is wonky? Thus is the root of my social inadequacies in sixth grade.)

I might have died of embarrassment, if embarrassment could kill. A perceptive girl quoted in the article points out that the lack of showering by student athletes “might be self-consciousness.”

“I’ve never seen girls shower in the locker room,” said Kylie Marshall, a volleyball standout at Emerald Ridge High. “It might be self-consciousness. If I were to even think about it, I’d wear a bathing suit. In society, we’re not taught to be comfortable being naked in the public showers.”

Marshall, who also plays on a select volleyball team, said that she and her teammates come to those practices in their gear. Sweats come off before practice and go back on after practice before heading home to shower.

“I think guys are more open and don’t really care,” Marshall said. “With girls, it goes back to the olden days where were brought up to be more conservative.”

Um, the “olden days”? Were the “olden days” back in 1992? Where are these modest conservative girls of which she speaks?

Everywhere I go, I see girls’ bellybuttons, cleavage, tight t-shirts and jeans (or mini-skirts) outlining their bodies.

We see mostly naked people on network television these days and pixilated naked people on basic cable channels. Not a whole lot is left to the imagination . . . and yet, kids these days are too modest to shower?

We’re told that more than half of American teenagers engage in oral s*x, and they are shy about their bodies? They aren’t comfortable “being naked in the public showers”?

We hear all about MySpace, where teenagers post suggestive photographs of themselves. And yet–they refuse to shower at school?

What an odd collision of facts. Fashions have become less and less modest, leaving nothing to the imagination, really, and yet, kids refuse to shower because someone might see them?

I wonder if teenagers are just more self-conscious, aware that their bodies don’t measure up to the image of perfection bombarding us in the media. I suspect that’s closer to the truth–it’s not about modesty, it’s about their own perceived imperfections.

Whatever the reason they abstain from school showers, who can blame them? I only wish I’d been able to do the same.

A Mish-Mashy Hodge-Podge Sans Conclusion

My daughter insisted that she would sleep outside tonight, in the backyard, in her underpants, thank you very much. “Night-night, Mommy!” she waved as I opened the sliding glass door and stepped inside.

I called her bluff and when I heard the theme music for SpongeBob Squarepants, I opened the kitchen window and informed her, “Hey, SpongeBob is on!” and she scurried inside. Then, curled on the couch, she let me know that she planned to sleep downstairs, on the couch.

I do love her polite defiance. When I tell her, “Hey, go pick up those toys,” she’ll say, “No, thank you.” After her bath (right before she went to bed in her room, as usual), she said, “I spit water right there, on the floor.” I furrowed my brows in the classic Mom Disapproval Glare and she said, “I’m sorry, Mama.” But the spark in her eyes and the impish grin said otherwise.

* * *

Today was a most glorious day. I had an eye appointment at Costco at 10:40 a.m., which I managed to stretch into a solitary daylong excursion. More on that in a minute, but first I must tell you about the eye doctor, or as I like to think of him, The Pocket Doctor.

From his tiny white shirt to his little shiny shoes, he was just like a real doctor, only miniaturized. His nose was tiny and perfect sculpted, like Barbie’s. When he leaned in close to peer into my eyeballs, the scent of Ivory soap wafted from his tidy hair.  I had complete confidence in The Pocket Doctor and couldn’t stop thinking about how handy it would be to have a replica of a doctor to just tuck into your pocket or purse.

Oh, and weirdly, my eyes are better, not worse, and so I have a lesser prescription. When we finished, I ordered the contacts, then faced the wall of glasses to pick out a new pair. (My old pair is 9 years old.)

The Costco clerk came out from behind the counter to stand next to me as I contemplated the choices. Too many choices! They were sorted into three areas: Men, Women, Contemporary. I stood in front of the Contemporary section, trying to imagine myself in these little rectangular black frames or those small oval pink ones and the clerk said, “Well, these are cute,” just as I started saying, “I don’t think I’m cool enough to wear any of these.” She said, “Sure you are!” but that was just mercy speaking.

I scooted over and picked out a pair from the Women’s section, but not before picking up, putting on, taking off, putting down the same ten pairs of glasses over and over again. I just couldn’t decide. But finally, I just picked one. Good enough for the next ten years.

* * *

Last night, my husband and I went to a movie. (Can you guess what we saw?) For the first time, I bought tickets online, which was pretty terrific. No standing in line to purchase tickets . . . and a very small crowd in the concession area. We stood behind three people in a line and I immediately wanted to switch lines. I had a hunch, but my husband, Mr. I-Don’t-Like-Change, said, “No, this is fine.” So we waited another ten minutes, finally realizing we really should have moved to another line.

As we finally headed toward the theater, I said to my husband, “You know, this one time I saw a movie on the opening weekend and when I first got to the theater, I thought, hey, it’s not even full, and then I walked into the movie and it was packed . . . kind of like this!” And we saw that the seats were full. . . and then we found two spots right on the floor, front and center. Perfect.

If I were a different sort of person, a person with a big mouth, a person unafraid of being bashed in the mouth by a stranger, I might have uttered these words:

1) ARE YOU TALKING ON YOUR PHONE DURING THE MOVIE?! SHUT UP! and

2) GET YOUR TODDLER OUT OF THIS THEATER! THIS IS NOT A MOVIE FOR TODDLERS! HIRE A BABYSITTER, YOU MORON!!

But, I’m not that sort of person, so I just said to myself, Now I have something to blog about. Aren’t you lucky?

* * *

Oh, and finally. When I returned from my daylong adventure (Costco, Wendy’s for salad, Joann Fabrics, Value Village, Trader Joe’s), I returned to my driveway in time to see my neighbor holding something at arm’s length with her index finger and thumb, hurrying across her yard.

She was walking back when I disembarked and I said, “What happened? Did something die?”

Then I heard the squawking. Two frantic Steller’s Jays were swooping from tree to fence and back again. Apparently, the neighbor’s cat had killed their baby bird and both birds had turned into John Walsh, desperate to find their missing offspring. The neighbor kept saying, “I feel terrible! I feel terrible! I feel terrible!” and scolded the cat who did not feel terrible and who was still lurking under a bush, a serial killer longing to kill again.

Did you know that Steller’s Jays form monogamous long-term pairs? They were still screeching and hopping from roof to tree to fence and back again when I finished carrying in the groceries.

* * *

Tonight, while I clipped back a wicked bush (with spiky two-inch needle-like thorns) near our gate, the boys played a game in which they threw a ball over the house to one another. If they’d broken a window, I’d really have a tale to tell, but they didn’t, so I don’t.

The End.

Hats!

I have a big head. No, really. I mean the circumference of my head is unusually large, twenty-five inches–I just measured twice–which by anyone’s standards indicates that my noggin is gigantic.

I also have all this Cocker-Spaniel hair (“yes, the curl is natural, do you think I’d pay money to DO THIS TO MY HEAD?”), so all things considered, if I were a snowman, I’d fall over, head first, into a snowbank.

The huge-headedness of mine has only bothered me on the rare occasion, like when I was visiting Tahiti as a sixteen-year old and our new found Tahitian friends gifted me with a lovely straw hat to commemorate my visit. It perched awkwardly on my head until we boarded the plane and it’s never touched my hair again. I hang it in my closet, a reminder of balmy breezes and Tahitian brown eyes, but I can’t wear it. That hat is made for a girl with a normal head size.

Sure, perhaps I need an extra-large head to encase my super-sized brain, but that didn’t offer any comfort the time I went snowmobiling in northern Michigan and the helmet crushed my eyeballs into the front of the helmet and smashed my nostrils into my upper lip, causing my breath to steam up the helmet windshield (what is that thing called?).  Who needs to see anyways?  Inside that helmet I felt like one of my kids as a toddler who snuggled his head into a flowerpot. Nice and cozy. Also, I had to undo my French-braid to lessen the bulk and when we arrived at a restaurant for a little break (thank God, my head could expand to its normal shape again), my hair looked like the “before” picture in a shampoo commercial. Oh, so pretty! 

Even if I could shove my head into a hat, I wouldn’t because I have eight tons of the aforementioned Cocker Spaniel hair firmly affixed to my skull. (I would look like Bozo the clown.)

My hair makes me hot, causes me to swoon on a slightly warm day and is the reason that I bought a hundred hair bands last time which came on a handy key-chain-like ring. My supply on the ring has dwindled down to three, so now I dig my hands deep into whatever pockets I might be wearing in hopes that I’ll fish out a hair band. Right now, as a matter of fact, I am about to push aside the 307 broken pencils in my drawer to see if a hair band is handy. (It was. Oh, sweet relief!)

One time, I remember Oprah mentioning that she has a big head, though do you think I can find any proof right now through the magic of Google? (No.) And Rosie says her head is big, too, though she is fuzzy on the details. Perhaps I’m destined for television talk-show fame, if my head is any indication. Then again, well, maybe not. I suspect there are additional qualifications, like the ability to make small talk with random strangers and the willingness to wear super-high pointy high-heels and smile at a camera.

If I ever lose my hair, I’m doomed to a life of shiny baldness because even Bartholomew Cubbins‘s five hundred hats doesn’t include one in size Too-Too-Too-How-Can-She-Even-Balance-Herself-With-That-Bowling-Ball-Head-Large.

Free Advice for Katharine McPhee and the Newscasters

So last night Katharine McPhee sang an entire song on American Idol while writhing on her knees. While I appreciated her blue toenail polish, I found her performance disconcerting. Why the knees? Why the floor? Why?

I wanted Katharine to stand up. Just stand.

On the other hand, the local newscasters, as well as national newscasters, have begun to stand through the entire newscast. I wish they would just sit down. Their casual standing delivery of the news forces me to change the channel because I cannot stand to watch them stand.

So, to sum up:

1) Singers should not kneel. They should stand.
2) Newscasters should not stand. They should sit.

Pass along the word. Thank you.

I Am No Mother Duck

A few days ago, while driving down the road with my youngest two in the back of the 1987 Chevy Astro, I noticed a car slowing in front of me. Two women standing at a bus stop were pointing and laughing and so, I slowed, too. The car in front of me sped up and so I could clearly see the spectacle slowing traffic. A mother duck and her four ducklings waddled from the middle of the busy residential street to the edge, as I waited with my foot pressed to the brake while frantically digging in my purse for my camera.

I pulled out the camera just as the little procession reached safety.

The image of that mama duck and her babies has remained in my mind, though. Her ducklings followed, hovered close to her feathered sides, didn’t run off, didn’t fight with their brothers, didn’t refuse to do grammar because it is so boring.

I’m nothing like that duck mom. Today, as a matter of fact, I would have thrown my letter of resignation at my boss, only, uh, I don’t have a boss and I can’t resign. Instead, I slammed the door and strode outside, first to the driveway where I stood by the lilacs, and then up the street a few houses where I noticed a gentle spring breeze and wondered if the neighbors were looking at the wild-haired lady in her moccasin slippers wandering the neighborhood. All the windows really did seem like eyeballs behind sunglasses, staring at me.

I didn’t go far, of course, because I was keenly aware of the littler ones in my house and also cognizant of the fact that my teenagers would keep an eye on the little kids even though those very same teenagers, well, one of those teenagers, had caused me to flee into the street, question my very status of a competent mother and resolve to turn in my Homeschooling Mother Card once and for all.

I CAN’T DO THIS! I shrieked to myself, as loudly as one can shriek inside one’s head on the street in the middle of the morning while worrying about neighbors calling the police to report a raving lunatic strolling the streets.

My son, The Reluctant Student, has some issues, some undiagnosed issues having to do with paying attention and retaining information and organization. I don’t need a label to know that he struggles with what comes naturally and easily to me and his twin brother. He sometimes stays focused and tries, but this week he’s been derailed. The picture of him as a railroad car literally off the rails, unable to move forward or backward, blocking the rest of the train from moving fills me with pity and understanding, but also frustration because we need to keep moving. Moving forward, heading toward the finish line, hurry, hurry, hurry!

When I hurry him, he resists.

I used to think that raising children was all about nurturing them properly and creating the right environment. I see now how much genetic predisposition influences and even controls behavior. I feel like I’m fighting a losing battle, like a salmon swimming upstream who finally encounters an impassable dam.

So, between a difficult morning of grammar (adverbial phrases, anyone?) and my daughter who spends every waking moment either changing her clothes or interrupting me or demanding Cheetos, I really did decide I am not cut out for this mothering gig. Really. I quit. DO YOU HEAR ME? I’M NOT COMING IN TOMORROW! I QUIT!

Blink. Blink-blink. Okay, fine. In two weeks, I’m outta here, for sure. I’m going to get a job cleaning chimneys or muck-raking cow stalls or deep-sea fishing on an Alaskan fishing boat . . . something easy like that.

If I were a mother duck and my kids were those ducklings, today they totally would have been squished by a car. Tomorrow, maybe they will be all fluffy and yellow and quiet and cute. One can hope.

(My son just sent me this instant-message: “GOING TO TRUN OFF NOW MOM GOOD NIGHT I HEART U =) AND ALSO SORRY FOR TODAY.” Okay. Fine. Whatever. I’m in for one more day.)

Life is Too Short

A couple of weeks ago, my mother brought my grandmother to my house for Easter lunch. When they left, Grandma paced inch-by-inch down the sidewalk, clutching her walker, while my mom leaned on her cane and limped to the car. I walked them out and as Grandma was attempting to fold herself into the front seat while my mother stood with one hand attempting to quell the pain in her back, I quipped, “Hey! I see my future right here,” and I swept my hand at the scene and said, “and I’m scared!”

They both laughed at my feeble joke, but the truth is, I wasn’t joking. I bent down and lifted my grandmother’s swollen foot up into the car and she winced and groaned at the pain. The hip joint has deteriorated and even that tiny movement shot searing pain up her leg and to her hip. She even said, “Oh, that hurts,” which is as dramatic as she gets.

I never liked being young. I was eager to get through my teen years as quickly as possible. I didn’t savor my high school years or wish that time would slow down. I could hardly stand the excruciatingly slow pace of adolescence and the walled off borders of teenage-dom. I wanted out and I wanted out yesterday.

My college years raced by, though, in a blur of longing and confusion and fretfulness. And before I knew it, I was married. My twenty-sixth birthday depressed me, but only because we had been trying to start a family and ended up caught in a maze of infertility and adoption attempts and all I wanted was to be a mother. I wanted to be a mother more than I wanted to sleep in, more than I wanted to have a career, more than I wanted chocolate chip cookies. So, when I turned twenty-six, I moped around.

But before I knew it, I was a mother (to twins!) and then, in a flash, I turned thirty. And the thirtysomething years marched on and then, what? My fortieth birthday arrived. By then, I had four children and I was trying to remember just exactly why I had been so desperate to be a mother. Okay, not really. Okay, well, not most days, only occasionally because, hello? I never get to sleep in anymore.

My dad died when he was forty-seven. So, on one hand, I am so thankful for every day of living and so aware of the alternative to aging. On the other hand, I see my mother’s eyelids sagging lower and lower as if are too tired to stand up any longer. And I look at my grandmother, lingering a century on this earth, and I dread the day when my eyesight fails and darkness falls, even on a sunshiny day.

How is it fair that just as you become comfortable in your own skin, your skin gets speckled with age spots and bunches in wrinkles around your knuckles? Just when you figure out what to do with your hair, a new stripe of gray appears with a wiry texture. And even your knees betray your age with tiny purple spider veins appearing over the winter under cover of your pant legs. Aging is like receiving a package in the mail that you did not order and you cannot return.

But, oh, the alternative is to never breathe in another lilac spring day and to never watch the tulips grow taller day by day.

Life is too short. Even when you live to be a hundred, like my grandmother, life is too short to focus on the flaws, on the missing pieces, on the crooked places you wish were straight. Life is too short to not take chances, to not speak up, to not stand tall. Life is too short.

Old age will come, ready or not. In the meantime, I will sear into my memory the vision of my daughter dancing a high-step in the back yard and the faces of my boys as they carry homemade bows and arrows made of bamboo in improvised sheaths on their backs. I will appreciate my body sweating on my exercise bike and I will be mindful of the fuel I give my body. I will smile at my face in the mirror and be grateful that I can clip my own toenails. I will snip an armful of lilacs to carry into the house, even though they’ll fade and die in the vase in a week and they’re such a pain to clean up.

Because today, I welcome the fleeting beauty of lilacs into my home. Life is too short and soon, the lilacs will be gone. My boys will abandon the backyard for the wider world. My daughter will find better things to do than to harass the ants on a fine spring day. The neighborhood boys won’t trample mud into my carpet. I’ll have an uninterrupted telephone conversation and I’ll think, oh, I remember when–

Act fast. Get yours now. Life is too short. Already, the tulip petals have fallen. But you can get in on the lilacs if you hurry.