OTC Ode (from The Batmom February 2013)

Oh Benadryl!
Oh Benadryl!
My favorite pill,
pink Benadryl.

My nose is snotted
and I’m besotted.
You make me high.
You make me fly!

What is my ill?
Who cares? I thrill
to you, my pill,
my Benadryl.

My nose is red
and I’m in bed.
You make me sleep
fuzz-thick and deep.

To you I trill!
My worries? Nil!
I’ve got my pill,
my Benadryl.

I love you, pill,
sweet Benadryl.

 

IKEA (from The Batmom January 2013)

Lacking a theological system into which I can shove the universe, I drive south to IKEA seeking an organizational system into which I can shove my stuff.

The move stinks desperate, the final bead in a devil’s rosary of a string that began in November and includes deaths, diagnoses, disgust, dissatisfaction, and disorder. 

While conveniently onomatopoeiac, the mysteries overwhelm and signal chaos. I pay heed only to the winding road leading past the chapels of lesser deities to the ugly top-heavy rectangular we pilgrims access via well-marked rotary.

I’m not neat I’m not clean I found Cheetos behind my grandmother’s writing desk, the desk wedged between our bed and the wall, the Cheetos wedged between the desk and the baseboard heater. I found them and I left them, inviting mice and signaling sloth. I saw them and I gave them my middle finger and I walked away.

Die another day, shitty delectables.

This is me, Mz Topsy-Turvy, impotent housemistress, domestic fail, the unlikeliest and neediest of supplicants at the Temple of Order, the Big Box promising little boxes within which we can insert our lives, placing each worry and every last LEGO into its own compartment. After we box we will be clean again, like the innocent suburban babies resting in their Hensvik cribs.

I’m hopeful as I park in row E1 between a CR-V and a cement pillar; expectant as I plow through a crowd of thick, spend-ready Marys great with child and dragging Josephs, well-versed in web architecture but useless with a hammer.

I ride up on the escalator and push down on the panic that resembles the heartburn that necessitates the plastic antacid bottles I hear rattling from the depths of every third Mary's wipeable satchel.

I can’t think for the storage.

Tall shelves with small bins or stair shelves with red bins or moveable bins with removable shelves or bunk beds that transform into rentable storage units with separate compartments for lost teeth, single socks, lost minds, and single earrings.

Which suits? My needs? Which are?

Order. Ontological clarification. An affordable and generically attractive despository for my comic books.

I walk and I watch the Confident with their decisive golf pencils and under my breath I chant my catalogue of needs and I wonder how the Confident moved from their lists to salvation, because I can’t even locate the Living Room Storage.

Jittery and near-frenzied with indecision I call my husband (the Frog), but no matter how descriptive my descriptives, he’s no more able than I to discern a hierarchy among the contents of a half-floor-full of the false rooms of imaginary families who own nothing but invisible books, figmental tchotchkes, and endless solid shelves named after Scandinavian luminaries.

With no stars to guide and the Yellow Shirts hovering around Mary, my tentative golf pencil desperately scribbles coordinates for the BjornBorgvik in brown-black and a handsome Skarsgård in blonde.

Faith sparks as I carry, unassisted, packaged slabs from Aisle 7 Bin 15 to E1 Mazda 5, but exiting the rotary I feel as empty and heavier than I did turning in. Back home I unload my new unwieldies, placing their bottoms in my kitchen fireplace in front of the cat food, leaning their tops against my kitchen mantel littered with fragrant candles, preschool artwork, and spare change.

The boxes stand ready for days, until my felt-tipped children have covered them with unfathomable scrawls.

 

Receiving at 6:59 (from The Batmom January 2013)

When you are 4 and when you are 7, Christmas is all about the Get: When can we open? What did he bring us? Is there anything more.

Parents try to instill the necessary recognition of those who won’t get and can’t give. Parents take 4 and 7 to the angel tree. Parents have 4 and 7 choose farm animals for other families. Still, when the eyes open on Dec. 25, 4 and 7 think only of what the wrapping paper obscures.

Parents want 4 and 7 to develop more empathy and awareness of stupendous good fortune, but parents are also immensely grateful that 4 and 7 are immune, at least for today. What on a dark night of the parenting soul appears 21st century pixellated greed, under soft colored retro-round Christmas tree bulbs is revealed as the simple, happy pleasure of receiving.

I’m old, Father William. But not so old that I can’t properly receive; not so jaded I can’t thrill at the get. This week my friend Danielle reminded me how much joy an unexpected gift can bring. As I sit on my living room couch one minute to 7, I indulge in a little stuff-ery, a small moment of “look what I have!”

Diorama

A few posts back I wrote Low, during a month when I experienced several challenges on the personal/emotional front and couldn’t do much but mope and wring my hands. Good friends did what good friends do: brought meals and chocolate, sent texts and e-mails, babysat my kids. And Danielle made me a gorgeous little box, a visual expression of the words I dramatically splatted up here on your screen.

I’m sure all of you re-read my posts to the extent you can quote them back at me, but in case you’ve forgotten, I wrote about my excessive editing that week. “If I whittle anymore, I’ll be left with five blank sheets and a pile of words on the floor demanding a dustpan.”

See the little housewife and her broom? See those words she’s sweeping? There I am! Those are my words!

How lovely is that? I mean, seriously. Danielle took my words and made of them an image, three-dimensional and tactile, filling a square and sturdy cigar box. I’m not sure I’ve ever received a more thoughtful gift, one that made me feel not only appreciated, but also read. Plus it looks cool sitting atop a pile of old books.

 

Ring

I wear a rectangular aquamarine on my wedding finger because I, in typical Batmom/ADD fashion, lost my wedding ring. Down the drain, under the radiator, in the beak of a burglaring crow … god knows. The aquamarine, no second-stringer, substitutes beautifully.

My grandmother gave the ring to my mother when my mother was 21. My mother gave it to me when I was in my 20s. I am not a jewelry kind of a girl (travel travel eat read travel, please!), but I love the ring because I love my mother and I loved my grandmother. Also, it’s the birthstone of my felines, The Cat and The Grey.

 

 

Shakespeare the Stuffed

This guy swings from the branches of our Christmas tree every year, and while I like him as much as the next ornamental mister, I love what he represents: My friend Rene’s devotion to the well-chosen gift. She has given me a number of velvety ornaments from England, all picked with me in mind, as well as excellent reads (The Book Thief, The League of Extraodinary Gentlemen) and personalizedcomic-centric art

 

The Monk on the Shelf

Keep your smiley, spying elves! I’ve got a monk. In one hand, he holds a book. Hidden behind his back, he clutches a bottle of wine. Poet B gave me the monk long ago; the holy brass man once belonged to a professor and now reminds me that the best days include good words and a quaff.

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

Rich is my self-confidence and my focus. I’m a flibbertigibbet who needs grounding; He grounds me and is relentless about his desire to see me pursue my desires.

When we first moved up to Mass., he tracked down Gertrude Stein’s Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas in its original form: serialized in the Atlantic Monthly in the early 30s. I wrote about the book, and several others, in my graduate school thesis. This gift’s exact perfection has always symbolized Rich’s belief in what I can do, and his dedication to helping me do it.

Happy New Year. May 2013 bring you great gifts and the grace to receive them well.

 

Low (from The Batmom December 2012)

I’m a bobber. I frequently dive down to a dark place, scream and cry and fuss, then just as quickly bob up again and get on with it. My psychology is similar to that of the rubber ducky. And Chumbawamba.

The last couple weeks I’ve dived into mud, and it’s grown thicker, an oozing combination of grief + holidays + old problems needing new approaches. I’m not clinically depressed, though I'm incredibly sad. I’m not unmoving, though I've considerably slowed. My life has not reached the melodramatic status of a Lifetime movie. (Should it become one, I assume Meredith Baxter is available.)

But I’m not bobbing back up. And I'm overwhelmed.

I skipped a writing session this weekend because my mind was muddled, and I haven’t been able to properly write for days. I’ve spent my sprints editing poems again and again and again, but if I whittle anymore, I’ll be left with five blank sheets and a pile of words on the floor demanding a dustpan.

I vow that this week, I will write my four sprints. I will update my blog. Because it’s good for me, but also simply because life has become a mental clusterf*** and I need to impose order.

I got up this morning to a faulty coffee machine (because sometimes the little things jump aboard the Shit Train too) and now I’m babbling to you so I can e-mail my GLOWing friend Rebecca with the subject line “Sprint #1 Done.” Which will signify accomplishment + the imposition of order, at least for 35 minutes of today.

The cliché thing to note right now is what a blessing children are, but it’s 100 percent true. The other night, after a day of mourning, my small niece crawled onto my father’s lap, and it made him smile and it made me smile.

Kids don’t have to be cute to keep you going. Much of the time they’re tiny tyrants. They’re hungry, bored, naked, dirty, thirsty, late, tired, not tired, overwhelmed, underwhelmed, missing a crayon a book a sneaker a sock.

Thank god for that. The reason I got out of bed this morning was not to greet the rain or write this post, but to fill my son’s Star Wars lunchbox and to fold my daughter’s endless supply of leggings.

The reason I won’t climb into bed this afternoon is because we are, finally, going to pick out the Christmas tree. We will cover it in fat colored lights and tacky beloved ornaments and we will shatter a few glass balls along the way. We will listen to obnoxious Christmas music and I will still be sad but I will be happy, too. Because I am, still, lucky. Lucky to have had the people I'm now missing, and lucky to have the people I still have. And because I do, every day, have solid and worthy reasons to get out of bed.

It’s 6:59. At 7:00 I will e-mail Rebecca.

Sprint #1 Done.

 

Cherry Ames, Cruise Nurse (from The Batmom December 2012)

I spent two excellent days Christmas shopping at the Used Book Superstore, where the large and ecelctic collection more than compensates for the prosaic name. Finds include “Mercy Watson,” “Jumanji,” and the controversial “Sir Fartsalot Hunts the Booger.”

By far the greatest gem I uncovered was “Cherry Ames, Cruise Nurse” by Helen Wells*. In my many years studying literature, I heard nary a word about Cherry, though she seems a fetching and plucky heroine.

Let's meet Cherry mid-book, on pages 91-92, in the chapter “Timmy's Mysterious Visitor.”

When her alarm clock jangled an hour later she sat up dazedly. At first she didn't know where she was, had forgotten she was aboard an ocean liner. The tiny cabin, which she had hardly glimpsed since coming aboard, was coldly impersonal. The throbbing of the engines blended with the dull ache in her head.

Then it all came flooding back - Timmy's wild tale that she had deliberately interrupted. How much of it was fact; how much fantasy? His description of the girl with the long blond braids fitted Jan Pauling exactly. Had she been watching from her stateroom door, waiting for a moment when Timmy would be alone in his suite?

And who was the man - the nice man?

Someone tapped on her door. It was Brownie, the plump young stewardess. "Lunch in ten minutes," she said. Taking in Cherry’s disheveled appearance, she added, “Oh, ‘scuse it, please. I didn’t know you were sleeping.”

Melodrama. Mystery. Wild tales, blond braids, a nice man, and a stewardess who sounds like a treat I’d order at Starbucks. I mock at 42, but round about 9 I would have sucked Cherry down like a Slurpee and asked for more. For me, 9 was the age of chaste and spunky heroines: Trixie BeldenAnne ShirleyCaddie Woodlawn.

Cherry would have had a white-stockinged leg up on most of them, as Cherry is a proper adult with a proper adult job. In this book, she works on a cruise ship, and on the side helps an excitable simpleton thwart a pirate in search of precious ambergris.

I assumed ambergris was a rare and precious metal or gem. It’s whale shit. Rather, a waxy substance produced somewhere in the whale’s vast belly and released along with whale shit. Sometimes, in whale vomit. 

Why would a pirate want whale shit? And were a demented, dung-crazed pirate to seek out whale shit, why would a Cruise Nurse ignore her medical duties to stop him? 

Because ambergris is valuable. Really valuable. Last January, it was worth $20 a gram. Gold was selling for $30. 

Ambergris smells like whale poop when fresh from a whale’s arse, but after years in the briny ocean, the grey matter develops near-magical, possibly aphrodisiacal olfactory properties. Rich and deep and near-musty, ambergris complements more dominant substances in perfumes, such as a scent worn by Marie Antoinette, recreated in 2005 and sold for $11,000 a bottle.

 Now I got you, pirate.

After I finish Still Life with Woodpecker and my backlog of Captain Marvels, I will dive headfirst into the warm waters of the Caribbean and swim alongside Cherry’s ship to find out how the mystery plays out. 

Should I fall in love with the spunky nurse, I’ll have a lifetime’s worth of adventures to share. “Cherry Ames, Dude Ranch Nurse” will git me yippee-ki-yaying on a draggy day. I can read “Cherry Ames, Army Nurse” to the kiddos on Veterans’ Day and “Cherry Ames, Ski Nurse Mystery” to celebrate the winter solstice.

When I reach the end of my road she’ll be there, holding my hand. They’ll find me dead in my rocker, clutching “Cherry Ames, Rest Home Nurse.”

 

Bedtime; or, Why I Am Downstairs Again (from The Batmom November 2012)

1) I have a secret. The secret is that I would like you to buy edamame and green beans.

2) I would like Daddy to know my secret, too. The one about the edamame.

3) I am bleeding. Right there. RIGHT THERE! Where’s the magnifying glass? See. I’m BLEEDING. Right there. I need a Band-Aid. I need a Barbie Band-Aid. Right there. Where I’m bleeding.

4) My brother had a bad dream. What? He DID fall asleep! He just fell asleep and he just had a bad dream. I just wanted you to know. In case maybe we should hold off on bedtime for a while. You know, ’til everything settles.

5) Look, here he is. My brother. The one who had the bad dream while I was talking about soybeans. He’s really upset. I KNOW he’s playing with that toy on the kitchen table, but he’s totally distraught. Also, remember the edamame and green beans? You do? Good. You need to buy them TOMORROW.

6) You said you would check on us. You said you would check on us in 10 minutes. It’s been 10 minutes. Has it been 10 minutes? Why not? How long is 10 minutes?

7) I heard a noise. I thought it was a monster. What are you doing? Wait, that’s the noise. Why are you doing that? You’re hurting the table with your head. Do you want a Barbie Band-Aid? Do you have the edamame yet? Has it been 10 minutes?

 

Chess (from The Batmom November 2012)

My 7-year-old taught me to play chess today. Here is a picture of our game, mid-game. I have no idea what's happening.


I learned:

1) TIE fighters can only attack diagonally and Darth Vader is the MVP.

2) My son will lie to his own mother to win a game.

3) Not only will my son lie to his own mother to win a game, but his lies will be cloaked as advice.

4) Learning chess with non-traditional pieces is not a good way to learn chess.

5) Learning chess from a lying 7-year-old is not a good way to learn chess.

6) If the Emperor dies, the game dies and I lose.

7) The faster the Emperor dies, the faster we can go do something more fun than chess. Like floss. Or refill the cats' water bowls.


Blast Mommy (from The Batmom October 2012)

Son has invited me to play a game he invented called Blast Mommy.

His blaster: a yoga mat

My blaster: a roll of paper towels

His fortress: a laundry basket + a cardboard box sandwiched between the wall + the bed

My fortress: stale air and dust motes swirling uselessly around me

His bullets-to-kills ratio: 1-to-1

My bullets-to-kill ratio: 19384920-to-1

I’m not liking my chances. But I’m going in.

MAMA GU BRATH!

 

This Morning on Essex (from The Batmom October 2012)

A raggedy man walked up.

"Christa McAuliffe was my daughter. The one in the space shuttle."

He reeked of madness, cousin to grief, and so I pondered believing him. 

"Also, I'm the guy responsible for the jelly beans."

Jelly beans?

"You know, the Ronald Reagan jelly bean thing."

Here endeth the ponder.

"Also, I saved seven guys caught in a space shuttle. They were out of air. I rescued them. The government kept it quiet."

Mum's the word, sir. Mum's the word.

I should be going. Nice talking to you.

"Merry Christmas!"

You too, sir. And a Happy New Year.