Bedtime Story

CHAPTER ONE

Once upon a time, there was a family. A mother, a father, and three sisters.

CHAPTER TWO

Shit happened. Repeatedly.

CHAPTER THREE

Then one day, many years later, one of the sisters opened her door (her arms her heart), and there on the doorstep was another sister's (four-year-old terrorized) grandchild.

The sister whose porch it was bolted the door behind her, got an unlisted phone number, and cleared a space on the upstairs bookshelf for "Mother Goose." She rolled up her sleeves (her carpet her novel-in-progress) and rid the (terrorized) baby's long brown hair of generations of lice, and wiped the (terrorized) baby's frightened brown eyes of generations of tears, and introduced the (terrorized) baby to a black-and-white dog and a green backyard and a yellow bedroom, and settled in and waited for the terror to subside.

An ongoing process, as it turns out.

Time passes. Seven-and-a-half years, to be exact.

The (formerly terrorized) baby is now a Willful. Smart. Funny. Affectionate. Difficult. Beautiful. Angry. Conflicted. Adolescent. With an attitude. Who makes life for those around her Interesting. Exhausting. Extreme. Exhilarating. Challenging. Sometimes miserable. Often unpredictable. Always enlightening. Who breaks their balls and their hearts. Repeatedly.

Call it the "Cliff Notes" version. Call it a "Fractured Fairytale" for the 21st Century.

Call it what happens when the shit hits the fan.

Speaking of which.

CHAPTER SEVEN-AND-A-HALF

My life is shit.

Last Friday, I'm shopping for shoes at The Mall. I'm sitting, minding my own business, waiting for the salesperson to bring my size, when I catch a distinct whiff in the general vicinity of my personal whereabouts. After discreetly checking around, sure enough, I discover it right there on the sole of my left flipflop: a big smear of dogshit.

Then earlier this week, I'm staggering through my sixth day at my new job teaching preschool. I'm circling the room like a shark, doing my rounds, making sure the little darlings aren't maiming one another with the dollhouse furniture, when I catch a distinct whiff in the general vicinity of little Johnny. After discreetly checking around, sure enough, I discover it right there on the seat of his OshKosh ByGoshes: a big smear of kidshit.

Then there's my daughter.

I don't know about you all, but I never gave this kind of lip to my parents at this age. How can I say this...it never even occurred to me to give this kind of lip to my parents at this age. Put it another way...it simply wasn't an option to give this kind of lip to my parents at this age. Not that I was a Pollyanna. It's just that I wore my attitude on the inside. And my father wore his on the outside. Things were very, very clear around our hacienda.

I ask other mothers about this lippy behavior in children, and they're all, Oh that's just the way kids are these days! And I'm all, What the...but this is not acceptable! Half of them roll their eyes in agreement. The other half stare blankly at me, then go back to planning their 32nd birthday parties.

Not that I expect a Donna Reed household. I don't even want a Donna Reed household. On the other hand, I don't want to have to call in Max Von Sydow to do an exorcism.

The thing about my daughter is, it's complicated. Like, how much of this...attitude...is typical adolescent insanity. And how much is due to the fact that, as a baby, we found her under a rock.

Well, not exactly.

Actually, we found her on the doorstep. In a basket, with a note: "Incoming."

Well, not quite.

Actually, the Gypsies found her. And sold her to us.

Hmmm.

The truth is, we found her in California. Where she was born. I was in another state at the time. And have been ever since.

EPILOGUE

By a certain age, most people have figured it out that everything is cyclic. Stories. Lives. Campfire smoke. Bodyweight. Someone breaks your heart, you'll break somebody else's further on down the line. You can count on it. It's the Nature of Things. There's no beginning, no "Once Upon A Time," no ending. It's all the same continuous narrative, looping back on itself. Repeatedly. Forever. From the cellular level on up.

Speaking of which.

Is it true that the cells in our bodies completely replace themselves every seven years? Make that seven-and-a-half. I heard this somewhere, a long time ago. I don't know if it's true, but I'd like to think so. Who wouldn't? It speaks of redemption. Second chances. Hell, it speaks of tenth and twelfth chances. It lets us say things like, I've changed, I'm not the same person. Or, Next time it will all be different, just wait and see. And for once, every time we say such a thing, it will be the truth.

Jean Therapy

I found the jeans I want to die in.

Bring on all the nose-bleeding, carpet-wetting, pudding-haired preschoolers. The You're The Worst Parents In The Entire World I'd Rather Live In The Car! adolescents. The I'm Sorry, Ma'am, But We Don't Seem To Have What You're Looking For department store clerks. Suddenly, I'm not afraid any more. Suddenly, there's a light at the end of the tunnel. Suddenly, I turned around, and there they were. The Jeans.

My husband's theory is that the aging female executives at Levi's finally got mad as hell and announced (hollered! shrieked! decried!) they weren't going to take it any more. No more jeans with a waistline one centimeter above the No-Fly-Zone. To which, heretofore, the only alternative has been "Mom Jeans." And all you women of a certain age know what those are.

It seems our sisters in the control room felt our collective baby-boomed-out pain and corralled all that fashion angst into demand for a jean designed for the females of Our Generation, one with style, attitude, Spandex, and a waistline where god meant for there to be one...at The Waist, Stupid.

I hate to tell you, Girlz of Gen X, but it's going to happen to you, too. All you hormone-rampant hotties with Scarlett O'Hara stats (do you even know who Scarlett O'Hara is?!?), enjoy it while you can. Push those jeans down as low as the law allows. Walk it, flaunt it, parade it on YouTube. One day you'll be strutting around, minding your own personal space, text-messaging Jupiter, and the next thing you know, you'll be bellying up at Starbucks for your daily bagel-and-latte and you'll be all, what the?!? What's that...that thing in my pants?!? How did a pair of rolled-up socks get stuck in my waistband?!?

Dream on, Sweetie. That is not a pair of socks. That is your heretofore-unbeknownst-to-you-and-the-rest-of-the-world waistline, burgeoning even as you gasp, even as you remind the gods and all their brothers that you run eleven-and-a-half miles a day and eat all your 800-calorie vegan meals standing on your head stark naked in a sauna and sleep on a slant board to counter the effects of gravity.

And it is, Dear Ones, a situation of the utmost gravity. Because the gods Do Not Give A Flying Lowrise Fuck. Because try as you might, you cannot counter the effects of this seismic shift in the nature of the universe, the universe that is You, Baby. That universe is in the process of expanding, inevitably and inexorably, and there's not a thing you can do about it. You might manage to remain marginally buff if you work at it 24/7 for the rest of your natural life, but, after a certain age, your silhouette will be more Gumby than Scarlett. Trust me on this. Best to learn to accept the things you cannot change, and the wisdom to know the difference between one pair of bootcuts and another.

And so I raise my glass...which is no longer an hourglass but a beer mug...to all those aging heroines at Levi's. I bow down before you. I genuflect. I thank you for your bravery, your doggedness, your hormone-loss. I suggest a National Night Out of Our Minds with (Tummy-Control! Sits-at-the-Waist! Two-Percent-Spandex!) Glee, to celebrate the bringing to fruition of Your Vision. Your Vision on behalf of all of your sisters out here in LeviLand who have been hollering from the windows for long enough.

You Heard Us! One for All and All for One! 512s* Forever!





(*Senior Discount does not apply.)

The Name of the Song

Yesterday my silver necklace breaks, falls into the laundry basket in amongst a load of back-to-school clothes, all of it fresh and clean and wrinkled, and I don't find it until after midnight as I sit, stupefied, folding the clean fresh wrinkled things my daughter will soon stuff into her dresser drawers like cotton candy, like insulation, like caught dreams, and I can only be grateful that I found it at all, broken though it is.

This morning I focus the Nikon through back-to-school emotions, and find her there, in the center, where she belongs, all straight-banged and Nike-clad and holding the black-and-white cat while the black-and-white dog watches through the screen, and drive her down the hill toward The Lake and let her listen to that station I hate, the way my mother used to do with me, and watch her climb out at the curb and disappear into the crowd of Nike-clad adolescents of which she is now a part, and drive back up the hill while that station I hate fills the car with a sound like perfume, like the perfume she might choose if she were ever to choose one.

The upscale market where I shop, this morning for apples and coffee, is empty but for that ubiquitous grating background noise people who have no ears call music, so I cover my own to drown it out, and make my hastened choices, complaining again to the uncomplaining checkout girl about the lack of appropriate ambience, I actually say that, but the girl needs some ambience of her own or at least a dictionary, and I'm fighting something all the time everyday wherever I go and particularly this day and I don't know what and so make my hastened departure.

I drive home through the end-of-summer haze, edgy and tired and somehow heartbroken, for everything, for all of it, and turn the radio to that news station I like, and turn into my driveway just as she tells me, just as the voice on the radio tells me, and now I'll always remember where I was, like JFK and Elvis and John Lennon and Mama, I'll remember I was in my car in my driveway when I heard the news, back from dropping my daughter at her first day of school, and having heard it, felt my heart break finally, for everything, for all of it, and sat in my car in the driveway and wept.

I unload the groceries and let out the husky and feed the cat and wander the house, and I want to hear it, right then, right now, that song that I love, the one that I play when I'm at The Cabin alone with the husky and a bottle of wine, red sauce on the stove, when I crank the volume on Great Moments of Opera so loud the husky is forced to join in, only to hear one song over and over, and I don't know its name or the opera or composer or the meaning of the words, though I surely know the singer, and with that small clue I find it, here on this computer I find him, and now I'll always remember where I was, and the name of the song.


http://youtube.com/watch?v=VATmgtmR5o4