Sports Extravaganza
Posted on May 19, 2008
Filed Under kids, parenting, suburban joys, bitching and moaning, challenges, spring | 5 Comments
We are, so far, louse free and so I am committed to changing my playlist to a more cheerful soundtrack. No more Fallen or Orange Sky or Look After You.
Spring weekends are kid-centric and that’s okay, that’s as it should be. With sporting events, dances and the annual festival with cotton candy and nausea inducing rides, we had a full roster of activities going, sun up to sun down, all weekend long.
Friday night was baseball in the driving rain. While I huddled at the chain link fence wishing for a squall jacket and golf umbrella, G and her father were at the annual elementary school Father-Daughter dance which is an event designed for little girls to put on sweet, once-a-year dresses and eat copious amounts of frosted confections with food coloring and caloric impact from the dessert table.
Meanwhile, the Red Sox enjoyed a rain delay while the refs at little league forced our nine year olds to swing errantly at bad pitches and stagger backwards to weave and wobble under pop flies to center field, which were inevitably missed because the ball could not be distinguished from the drift of rain and the low hanging clouds. Six innings, and an hour and a half later, they finally found the decency to call the game. We came home to thaw, throw the baseball uniform in the wash, watch the Celtics and plan for Saturday morning’s soccer game and Saturday afternoon’s baseball game and Saturday afternoon’s post baseball game outing to the town festival featuring rides called the Octopus and The Himalayan (rusty, Carnie standards that inspire fear and wonder not for the insane thrill they offer but for the anxiety we all feel allowing our children to strap into these rusty ancient contraptions hastily erected by retarded people with no teeth).
There were deep lines for fried dough and candy apples and even deeper lines for games designed to fleece us of our dollars while pursuing the big win - cheaply made but impressively sized, overstuffed animals created solely to capture the eye of six year old girls who simply must try over and over to win the ring toss.
Sunday morning saw day break and mandatory 8:30 a.m. baseball practice because, I suppose, both a Friday evening and a Saturday afternoon game was simply not enough little league for one weekend. And tonight, well, there’s piano and yet another baseball game in the gusty chill of a spring evening but there’s great relief on this mother’s part that there is leftover Chinese in the fridge and no rain in the forecast.
Brilliance that surrounds me
Posted on May 16, 2008
Filed Under kids, parenting, another dread disease, bat-ass crazy, bitching and moaning, Anxiety, writing, spring | 11 Comments
I’ve been more optimistic recently. Almost giddy on the scent of spring - the distinctive mingle of lilacs, mown lawns and fertilizer in the air. There is rebirth in the vivid green of leaves finally come to cloak the poor, bare sticks of Winter. And there is the glee in the possibility of throwing up the sashes and inviting a fresh coat of pollen to fill these musty corners.
So then why do I feel compelled to listen to Sarah McLachlan sing Fallen over and over again, while sorting the woolens and placing cotton t-shirts and linen shorts in neat stacks on the bottom of bureau drawers?
Each time she pushes all that emotional energy up and out, hauntingly suffering through the refrain,
Though I’ve tried, I’ve fallen…
I have sunk so low
I messed up
Better I should know
So don’t come round here
And tell me I told you so…
there’s a wretched nest of cotton that settles in my throat and the blur of tears in my eyes. It’s positively masochistic this putting myself front row at her concert of melancholy. Totally incongruous on a May day with fragile sprigs of lawn poking up through the moist and fertile earth, with rabbits sniffing around the perennial garden and robins hopping through the grass in search of fat, fat worms. The sky is the very shade of blue reserved for Spring and sea shore weddings. I am alien and awkward in this brilliance that surrounds me.
And possibly, just possibly this sadness has a wee bit to do with the two fliers that came home in O’s backpack this week. One informing us of another lice outbreak and the other about the presence of pin worm in the school.
Now please pop on over to the scene of Sarah McLachlan drowning herself in the bath tub and her wrecked lover tearing apart their pied-a-terre and you’ll need not imagine the depths I’ll sink to should either of those vermin enter our home.
Love or Nothing
Posted on May 14, 2008
Filed Under fiction, writing | 7 Comments
I knew there was a wealth of entertainment in these tennis moments. So here’s the beginning - the first round of fictional tennis. Thanks to Ron, who has given me permission to riff on his exquisite lines about love and tennis….
Lara Shepherd bounced the ball four times on the service line before drawing the racket back behind her head and releasing the ball into the air. It rose, spinning and arching just slightly away from her. It was an imperfect toss and anyone watching, as Richard was, could see that her serve would fall short of the net. But with her service action already underway, there was nothing for Lara to do but chase the ball.
And in the momentary pause between imperfect release and rattling uncentered connection, she was busy deciding that love was too strong a word, and entirely the wrong thing to say when announcing she had nothing. Still, she said, “Love-Fifteen,” loud enough to be heard by her opponents before rocking back on her heel and hitting the ball into the net for the second time. The doubles team positioned to receive her serve, standing purposefully, one up-one back in their matching tennis ensembles on the far side of the net, was not particularly fearsome or accomplished. The duo did nothing to sway her timing or alter her resolve. It was her own preoccupation with the definition of the word Love, so flippantly tossed around here on the tennis court, day after day, that distorted her focus.
“Sorry,” she said to her partner who smiled wanly, trying to be forgiving and replied, “Take your time. Breathe deeply.” Lara quit apologizing and concentrated on being less restless and divided.
“Love –Thirty,” Lara called after the double fault, now serving from the deuce-side of the court. She still had nothing and she was still forced to call it love.
Lara adjusted her short white skirt, dragging it down around her hips and tapped her racket on the ground once before beginning the whole syncopated motion of the serve all over again. She thought, even if this love thing has grown thread bare and tattered, shouldn’t it be enough that we still have an affection for the things we share; attractive children once called cherubic but now too old at twelve and nine to be compared to angels, matching Volvo SUV’s, a new house with arched dormer windows situated in a neighborhood full of cul-de-sacs and startlingly similar colonials all lacking character but tastefully appointed, settled onto one acre tracts, surrounded by lush lawns bordered with lilacs and viburnum and rhododendron bushes.
She knew these shared affections were certainly more than nothing. But she couldn’t help but think that the effort she expended improving her athletic capability, adjusting her backhand, perfecting a top-spin lob, must underscore her certain unhappiness with the whole of things. She looked forward to her time within the cavernous hangar of the indoor tennis club, immersed in the sounds of balls leaving rackets and the emphatic shouts of out-loud scoring and the hoarse and incessant voice of coaching and encouragement because it was here that she found herself capable of broad focus, here she approached something close to suspended thought, giving in completely to the sensations of executing a proper forehand.
In this space, she had learned to quiet her mind, to suppress the dull but persistent whine of unhappiness that instantly returned once she had zipped her racket back into its black nylon cover and walked out the door into the parking lot, shoulders hunched against the wind. Usually she was just thankful for having occupied a present space, if only for an hour or two, before slipping back into a state of pressing anxiety about past and future.
Richard, sitting on the balcony, feet up on the railing, fished a turkey sandwich from a plastic baggy, the same sandwich on wheat bread that comprised the lunchtime meal he ate day after day in stolen moments between lessons. He immediately noticed Lara’s faltering concentration. The sweet way her right foot kicked out behind her when she reached toward a bad ball toss. In fact, if he was being honest with himself, he noticed everything about Lara Shepherd and he was beginning to feel slightly anxious about this preoccupation. There were other women, attractive women, with whom he flirted. It was just part of the job description, the distinct advantage of working with sweaty, scantily clad females. The constant proximity to the opposite gender made the sameness of the daily drills and stroke corrections entirely bearable. But there was something about this one woman that made him compulsive and wanton.
Startled by the obvious strength of his affection, Richard removed his feet from the balcony railing and crossed his legs to hide the swell of his excitement. He turned away from her court to collect his thoughts. He was, for the first time, thankful that his sexual arousal was no longer that of youth; his erection now a rush of blood and a stiffening but not an outward thrusting bulge that would have been obvious through his Adidas track pants.
He focused on the appointment with his accountant he had scheduled for the afternoon. He pictured his wife of thirty years in her bathrobe asleep on the couch in front of last night’s episode of Survivor, her mouth slightly open and a dribble of saliva dripping off her chin. He began the ritual of silent self-chastisement, recognizing the obvious weakness, the compulsion that drove him to position himself by the front door at just the time Lara would be leaving so he could watch her departure. He knew that it would leave him empty and wanting, but it was an exit he felt helplessly compelled to witness. He stood beside the door and kicked it open for her as she crossed the threshold.
“See you tomorrow, Richard” she called as she hurried down the steps, checking her phone for messages, searching her purse for the car keys.
“Tomorrow. See you then,” he said holding the door open with his foot a little longer than necessary just long enough to watch her turn the corner, remarking to himself just how much he loved the way she said his name.
Matt Clemens, hurrying through the lobby, heading out to Court Three to give a one o’clock lesson, spun his racket in his hand and made a chucking sound of disapproval. “Richard, Richard, Richard,” he scolded. And Richard turned on his heel quickly to hide the fact that he was blushing. He hated Matt Clemens, the timbre of his voice, high pitched and whining with disapproval. He loathed Matt Clemens in this moment for making him feel somehow obscene and predatory…
Hallelujah
Posted on May 13, 2008
Filed Under fiction, art, writing, epiphanies, friendship | 14 Comments
Great Scott! Hallelujah! Sweet Jesus! Hot Diggity Dog! I’ve never been so happy to see a damn plug in my entire life. Just imagine me drifting around the house for the past five days lurking in dark hallways, listening at doors, waiting breathlessly for the moment that MBH leaves the computer to fix a cup of coffee, don a pair of socks or visit the bathroom so I could lurch into the office and check my e-mail. I was allowed whole seconds on-line, mere minutes to absorb days and days worth of necessary communication. The return of unlimited access has made me weepy, inordinately thankful to the great Gods of the internet for the access to companionship and the Greyhound’s soccer schedule. What in the world did we do before there was such a thing as on-line? What I’m trying to say is that I really, really missed you all and I thank you for all your subtle and not so subtle urgings for my return.
My Mother’s Day was quiet and nice in the way that a Spring day that remains mostly sunny, hosts the fragrance of lilacs and viburnum and begins with good coffee can be. The kids planned a scavenger hunt complete with hand written clues on white pieces of paper, the edges of which G had treated with the special care of pinking shears. The sweet and loopy scrawl of her six year old hand led me from one plastic bag of gummy frogs found behind a framed photograph of her one year old self enjoying her first lollipop to another plastic bag of chocolate covered gummy bears discovered on the window sill amongst O’s owl figurine collection and back to a last bag of gummy letters tucked beneath the Cabernet colored throw blanket that was tossed carelessly along the back of the couch.
Long before six a.m., I could hear her, busy in her room, cutting and whispering and fluttering with purpose and the pride of being old enough to participate and contribute. She hurried to MBH’s side of the bed just past 6:30 to rouse him and remind him of the importance of the day. I groaned and turned over, trying to be cooperative by feigning sleep for an hour longer so that the three of them could plan and execute their gummy hunt and travel to Starbucks and back to regale me with a giant hot latte and a early a.m. rice crispie treat.
I’d like to say that I spent the rest of day reading and dozing and doing crossword puzzles but it was really just a regular day that involved jogging and laundry and yard work. It wasn’t until this afternoon, during the kids’ piano lessons that I opened The Short Stories of John Cheever for the first time and now believe I may never put it down. It was the perfect spot to find my new favorite writer, the vast and artful space of an old and flaking Victorian, the room with a piano at the back, flanked on one side by a floor to ceiling book case of poetry compilations and volumes on art history, a teasing, wanton sun peeking in and out and momentarily lingering on the east wall hung with portraits and weavings and pen-and-ink nudes - an art teacher’s collection of her favorite students’ work. Each corner, every inch of wall space the host to something visual and arresting. There I ran my hands along the aging spines and rested on the thick orange hard cover of Cheever’s life work. After reading two stories, The Seaside Houses and The Angel of the Bridge, absorbing every bit of brilliance despite the halting pluck of children striking off keys and errant chords, I am lost to his words, so taken with his descriptive aptitude that I worry I may never write again. Who needs my contribution when we’ve already got passages like the following to adore and admire:
“God knows where they all come from or where they go, this host of prosperous and well-dressed hangers-on who, in spite of the atmosphere of fraternity they generate, would not think of speaking to one another. They all have a bottle hidden behind the Literary Guild selections and another in the piano bench. I thought of introducing myself to Greenwood, and then thought better or it. I had taken his beloved house away from him and he was bound to be unfriendly. I couldn’t guess the incidents in his autobiography, but I could guess its atmosphere and drift. Daddy would have died or absconded when he was young. The absence of a male parent is not so hard to discern among the marks life leaves on our faces. He would have been raised by his mother and his aunt, have gone to the state university an have majored (my guess) in general merchandising. He would have been in charge of PX supplies during the war. Nothing had worked out after the war. He had lost his daughter, his house, the love of his wife, and his interest in business, but none of these losses would account for his pain and bewilderment. The real cause would remain concealed from him, concealed from me, concealed from us all…”
I’ll leave you with this, now excuse me while I go and worship this compilation just a little longer,
“…as she grew older her way was strewn with invisible rocks and lions and the eccentric paths she took, as the world seemed to change its boundaries and become less and less comprehensible.”
I’m Not Dead
Posted on May 10, 2008
Filed Under My Better Half, challenges, apology | 10 Comments
I’m not dead. Nor have I given up blogging. I’m just technologically challenged right now…MBH went on a biz. trip with the laptop early in the week and left the power cord at an office in Florida. Until I receive a FedEx package (hopefully Monday) I’ve got very limited computer access. Drag. Gasp. I can’t check on you all as I’d like to and I don’t really have time to post anything of interest.
But quick update…we did win the tennis finals. Wednesday afternoon was spent working off an abundance of champagne. Last night was the Cake Walk and all went well despite the fact that the play list I had so carefully developed was on the lap top that was not working for lack of a power cord. So it’s a big sigh of relief and on to the next slough of spring time commitments. One step at a time.
Happy Mother’s Day to everyone who can claim the title. I’ll be back when I’ve got the lap top up and running.
Trauma of the athletic variety
Posted on May 5, 2008
Filed Under suburban joys, snark, bat-ass crazy, bitching and moaning, challenges, tennis, parties, bourbon | 11 Comments
It was an odd weekend…I’m glad to be back to Monday and all the familiar rhythyms of the work-a-day. Saturday and Sunday had a cold drizzle punctuated by periods of hard driving rain, the back drop to Friday night’s Chernoybl-like meltdown with My Better Half and Saturday morning’s damp and chill soccer game where in my team showed up to play the prissy, private school in the Mercedes E class sedans and the kind of outerwear suitable for Everest quests.
The opposing team was twenty deep and they made up for their lack of talent by having the most over-wrought parents in the history of six year old soccer squads. There is supposed to be one coach per team on the field orchestrating play, acting as casual referees. There are no whistles. There are multiple water breaks. We are supposed to stop and wait for shoes to be tied and shin guards adjusted and every once in awhile someone cries and we stop for that too. But this squad (I’ll call them the Collies in interest of anonymity), took the field with a shockingly aggressive attitude. They had three parents on the field at all times yelling, I mean yelling at their players, not cheering or making hopeful suggestions but physically moving the girls around, harping on them when their attention wandered, herding them up and back, barking orders. The Collies didn’t stop for our four girls when we needed a cleat tied or a water break or when little Samantha got hit in the nose and needed to have a good sob.
They were fixated on the win (the Collie parents), driving their progeny towards the goal. the children responded with the energy and purpose of kids accustomed to an afternoon of parental reprisal should they lose the game. As soon as I heard one parent say, “Just throw it in, it doesn’t matter if the other team’s ready,” I knew it was time to dig in ’cause that’s what we Greyhounds do. We take the challenge and chase the bait and run our little fannies off just to deny the families of privilege their expected victory. And the Greyhounds, all four of them, took on the twenty-deep Collie squad and kicked their well groomed asses. I’ve been cruising on that sweet victory for three days now.
After the soccer game, there was a baseball game attended by normal and well balanced parents wearing layers of fleece under rain gear all of which have developed the indisputable signs of ensuing head colds, the Derby party, (which was fun and festive save for the dead horse at the finish line which cast the momentary shadow of gloom (death is good like that) and made the party guest claiming second place in the betting pool feel somehow dishonest. We polled the group as to how important it was that your horse actually trot off the race track and came to unanimous decision that Eight Belles won second place fair and square despite the fact that her life ended minutes later and therefore second place prize money should be paid out. Then we all indulged in another round of mint juleps, desperate to shake off the grim reality of that scene with the equine ambulances on the racetrack). By the time Sunday rolled around, a tennis-related conflict was merely the cherry on the cake of a strange and surreal 48 hours.
It’s a big week in tennis for me and my team mates. We have cruised through the semi-finals after winning our division and now play for the banner and cheesy little plastic trophies on Wednesday. A few of us thought it’d be a good idea to get together Sunday morning and bat the ball around. When we made these tennis plans earlier in the week, 8 a.m. didn’t sound as early as it felt the morning after a bourbon-centric dinner party. Needless to say, my goals for the morning were simple: stay upright; don’t throw up on the service line. To quote W’s hackneyed phrase - mission accomplished.
While we weren’t out there breaking records with serve speed or the velocity of our over heads, we all played decently and got some important touch on the ball before the big match. Since I was concentrating on the basics, like breathing and holding down breakfast, I wasn’t really focused on the score of the games we were playing nor was I really paying a whole lot of attention to the play strategy on the other side of the court. But after receiving a Sunday afternoon e-mail comprised of a bulleted dissection of my play that morning complete with tight analysis of my partner and I’s failure to talk on the court and the observation that we forgot to bring our power serves that morning, I was left feeling that I had missed the memo on the purpose of Sunday morning play which, I had always thought was for extra practice, but had apparently, somewhere along the way, turned into an opportunity for team mates to play professional coach and develop laundry lists of observed errors and oversights to deliver to each other’s in-boxes later in the day.
It may have been a well intentioned attempt to help us be successful in Wednesday’s match but it came off as a pedantic, scolding and obviously flawed analysis of our tennis game by someone who usually plays a lower court than we do and has no claim to professional prospective. Timing, delivery and personal claim to authority on the topic at hand are important factors to consider when playing critic.
I probably should have let it slide, let it simmer in my in-box for awhile. But then I wouldn’t be me. So I promptly fired off a passive aggressive retort designed to signify my displeasure while pointing out that until this team mate develops her own version of a pace serve instead of that marshmallow she’s currently putting in the service box, she will never understand the difficulty of firing off a ninety mile an hour missive while swallowing your own stomach bile.
I also couldn’t pass up the opportunity to point out that her greatest strength on the court is her partner, who is a lefty and therefore causes all manner of trouble for those of us who have been trained to target backhands down the middle. I congratulated her on the success they’ve enjoyed as team this year and pointed out that she should be very thankful for her alliance with someone who makes her opponents have to stop, think and completely alter all instinctual play.
Here’s how some of my reply e-mail went:
Truth be told, I took the court this morning after a long night of mint juleps and about three hours sleep - so the point for me was to have fun and get some touch on the ball before Wednesday. I was in no way expecting a dissertation on our play nor am I prepared to give a dissertation on your game…I was really just trying to stay upright and didn’t have the mental equilibrium to be taking notes.
What I will say is that I think we all have strengths and weaknesses as tennis players. One of the great advantages that you and your partner have is her left-handedness. She’ll always be an asset on the court b/c all the text book rules on where to put the ball are reversed for your opponents. A lot of thinking often leads to errors on the part of the team who has to change their instinctual play. It will always take your opponents some time to adjust to the awkwardness of the set up. That’s a huge boon for you guys.
As for my partner and I not using our big serves until late in the game - Anyone with a power serve will tell you that doubles is a difficult forum in which to rush the hard, fast serve. It takes awhile to warm up and since, in doubles, a player only serves every four games rather than every other, the pace serve is usually the weapon that doesn’t turn fully fire up until the second set. It’s just a matter of needing to be loose, relaxed and warm when going for the big serve.
The spin serve is the safety serve that players often need to use at the beginning of play, when they are feeling pressure or when they haven’t yet found their groove. Even tournament tennis players have to fight out of early match jitters and find the muscle fluidity to begin putting in ace serves (This obviously takes the ranked professional player less time than it takes those of us who play recreationally. There have been whole matches that I haven’t found my big serve. But a spin serve is better than a double fault. I suspect that as you develop the pace on your serve, you will see what I’m talking about.)
Wednesday’s a big day, but I think our entire team can be satisfied that we’ve all played a great season, no matter what happens. I won’t be presumptuous and tell you that you should change things in the last week of a thirty week season right before a final. Obviously, whatever you’ve been doing has been working for you thus far.
As with everything, some days on the tennis court are better than others. We can all hope for a good day on Wednesday but most importantly we can congratulate ourselves on a season well played, regardless of the outcome of Wednesday’s match.
It’s uber-important that we all trust ourselves, trust our partners and just go out there and play tennis this week without getting caught up in the import of the playoff moment, without trying to change our game or the dynamics we’ve established on the court already with our partners, at the last minute, in the nervous rush of pre-match jitters.
I plan to do what I do. I hope to do it well and with confidence. I plan to take it one point at a time. My partner and and I have a little mantra now…watch the seams of the ball, concentrate on breathing between points, be in the moment.
All I can hope for is that she and I leave the court feeling like we played well - win, lose or draw. I wish that for you too. Keep it light, keep it fun, don’t think too hard.
Okay, so it wasn’t quite the bitch slap I really wanted to deliver. I do have some self restraint, knowing when to avoid being un-salvageably vituperative. Even I could see that it was not a good idea to start my reply with,
Dear Team Mate And Average Tennis Player Who I Used to Call Friend But Now, After Today’s E-mail and Last Week’s Odd Decision to Begin Serving While Your Opponent Was Standing At the Sideline Having A Drink of Water, May Be More of an Acquaintance,
Who died and made you coach?
Like sands through the hour glass, those are the days of our lives and so the world turns here on Wisteria Lane where shiny happy people take their psycho-pharmaceuticals and play tennis while ignoring ethnic cleansing in Africa, the slow ravages of cancer, the high price of gasoline, the war in Iraq and the debacle which is the Democratic Primary.
To quote the Talking Heads, again, “You may ask yourself - well, how did I get here?
M.I.A.
Posted on May 2, 2008
Filed Under suburban joys, snark, cheer, parties, bourbon | 13 Comments
It’s Friday and the reason I’m not here writing sensual poems with unhappy endings is because I’ve gone to the gym to dash off a quick three miles and hurl myself through the Nautilus circuit so I can be in G’s classroom by 10:30 where I will volunteer to be her teacher’s punching bag for an hour, helping Her-Divine-Fussiness make sure the children arrange all their worksheets in their homework folders with nary a dog-eared corner. (Seriously, last week, she made me go around the room and check that all papers were properly aligned in the binders to avoid unnecessary creasing.)
And then it’s home again to begin preparing for Saturday’s Derby gathering. It’s a simple menu of bourbon, lard and coconut but there is some do-ahead required not to mention the requisite house cleaning, rose purchasing and mashing of the mint leaves for Julep consumption.
Go Z Humor and Monba and Pyro and Smooth Air and Big Brown. Run your tails off while I drink my face off and please don’t stumble, I hate to see a horse fall. Leave the blundering and banging into things to me and my intoxicated guests.
Happy Friday everyone, Happy Weekend too.
Artifacts and Love Letters
Posted on May 1, 2008
Filed Under boyfriends, poetry, college | 18 Comments
I’m a week off. Somehow everything I’ve scheduled for the first week in May seems like it should be happening NEXT week. I need a pinch, a swift kick in the ass. How did the calendar roll over a whole seven days before I was ready for Mayness?
Coincidentally and perfectly timed for the first day in May, I went to the mailbox this morning and found a package from my college roommate. Apparently she’d been visiting her parent’s home and agreed to clean out the attic where she stumbled upon my old English 201: Medieval and Renaissance Literature notebook. Since I have been known to actually throw out notebooks before course work is complete, before exams are even scheduled, leaving the coffee table free of intolerable clutter but myself noteless for the review of Paradise Lost, the sole reason this artifact of my sophomore spring even exists is that my roommate was, and is, somewhat of a hoarder. Back in our sophomore crash pad, at the end of the semester when we were all packing up our belongings and scattering to summer, she must have thought that someday, just someday she might be able to use my short essay on the difference between Petrarchan and English sonnets and tossed the red marbled notebook with gold-leafed university inscription in a box.
Apparently, just last week, she decided she could finally part with my brilliant dissection of Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus and saw fit to send me the collective meanderings of my 20 year-old brain. And normally I would just chuck the thing. But I paused and became intrigued with the former self that made those immature scribblings and doodling in a handwriting I hardly recognize as my own.
So, as any self absorbed writer would, I’ve now spent hours pouring over my exam booklet on Milton’s Paradise Lost (only a B- earned) and I’ve read my paper on The Second Shepherd’s Play and the juxtaposition of the shepherd’s disrespect for their wives and their simple adoration for the Virgin Mary (A) and I have even re-familiarized myself with the chronology of love as presented in Sir Phillip Sydney’s poem Astrophil and Stella (A-). And I’ve now come to realize that I was one great bull shit artist, quick with some big words and abstract thoughts and wicked with a closing paragraph. This skill with the written word helped me coast through college pretty much unchallenged allowing me to deal with more consuming topics like boys and keg beer and bong hits.
And just when I began to leaf through my notes on rhyme schemes because, well, one never knows when she might need to trot out some brilliance about octets and sextets and quatrains like, say, at Saturday’s dinner party, a hand written letter fell out of the stack of academic drivel and fell onto my lap. A letter I wrote in 1993, probably one of the last I ever penned to my long time boyfriend who I had been dating since 1989. Evidently it was a letter I planned to send to Nepal where he was off on an expedition to find himself, leaving me behind to date several other male contenders and eventually meet My Better Half.
It’s a slice in time, a sweet memento, a slightly yellowed notebook page filled with last words, hinting at the very end of the long-term love affair. It is the only letter that remains out of the sixty or seventy he and I must have exchanged in the five years we were together. For some reason, when I got married, I thought it best to destroy all evidence that I had ever loved another. Now I kind of wish that my college roommate would look again, unearth my freshman anthropology course work, who knows what poignant tidbit might fall from the pages.
Today in Poetry, II
Posted on April 29, 2008
Filed Under fiction, writing, poetry, Today in Poetry | 10 Comments
Silence
Breasts bared in a cool dark room,
Nipples stand and swell in the glow of iniquity,
This is how he’ll remember it-
Just an outline, a vague light creeping
From beneath silken drapes, closed for privacy.
Tilted hips on a soft white bed.
The fragile trill of her laughter beneath the palm of his hand
Resting in her stomach’s soft hollow.
Where he traces the words
That threaten to escape him. The timid silence of need
Rendering him speechless.
Longing and holding in the late afternoon
Laced with impending heartbreak.
White Cake and Cavities
Posted on April 28, 2008
Filed Under kids, parenting, suburban joys, snark, education, dental disasters, bitching and moaning, My Better Half, Anxiety, volunteerism, parties | 12 Comments
I know, I know, three days without a post. But it’s all over now…all that up my ass-ocity. I’m busy reclaiming my own slice of routine and normalcy save for the entire right side of my face which is still numb after enduring an excavation and a filling. This morning, when searching the calendar for scheduled events, I cursed myself a little for having booked a dentist appointment just thirty minutes after the kids climbed on to the bus and were whisked away to be edjimicated for seven full hours.
It was the first time I’d been free of them in a week and I celebrated by lying prone under the sharp lights of dentistry, wearing the funky cotton candy wrap around glasses that prevent saliva from spraying up into the eyes and asking the doc to shoot me up twice, give me some more of that bad ass Novocaine, because I could feel that needle nose hydraulic drill he was using, every whine and probe, waging amplified war on my tooth decayed nerve. He fixed it all up, gave me the Novocaine floater, and finished his high-priced spackle and putty job. He said that my cavity went deep. That I’m apt to be sensitive in that area of the mouth for up to two weeks and he added that I will be chewing on the inside of my lip and drooling until next Friday.
And now that school is back in session and I managed to not kill myself or my children or any of the small furry animals that reside here, it is time for me to fully panic about the damn Cake Walk which I volunteered to organize and run, again, for the third time. I’m not complaining (yet). I’m sure the PTO president in her infinite wisdom saw no issue with scheduling the school’s 50th Anniversary Party and Fundraising Bash for the week following Spring Break because apparently she’s never been away on vacation and can’t imagine why all the usual volunteers and involved mothers - just back from Florida - would be more consumed by the need to pick up the dog from the kennel and complete fifteen loads of beach towel laundry and catch up on 72 hours of e-mails than bake, frost and decorate a cake in the likeness of a pair of sandals or a dragon or a Barbie castle to donate to this year’s Cake Walk. So far I have ten responses to my Cake Walk flier. Last year we had 70 cakes donated and still ran out of cakey prizes a full half-hour before the close of the event.
Perhaps I should have chosen a color other than acid yellow for my flier paper. But Staples was having a sale. I thought the vibrant, ghastly hue of stomach bile would at the very least garner some attention and would save me four whole dollars over the calmer melon sherbet option. “A penny wise, a pound foolish,” as Ben Franklin might say when faced with making copy paper decisions for the local elementary school fundraiser.
So we’ll have ten cakes and three hours of event time which means we can allow approximately three winners per hour. That’s a winner every twenty minutes which amounts to a lot of walking around in circles to the up-tempo strains of Billboard Top Forty while waiting for me to draw the winning number from a hat. I have searched the MP3 archives for a worthy play list and was feeling good about my selections: Sexy Back by Justin, Touch My Body by Mariah, I Wanna Have Your Babies by Natasha Bedingfield and, of course, Beautiful by Snoop Dogg that is until MBH pointed out that I wasn’t MC-ing White Party on South Beach but rather a grade school version of musical chairs with cake. He thought some of the lyrics a bit inappropriate for the intended audience, taking special issue with the following chorus from Beautiful:
When I see my baby boo, shit, I get foolish
Smack a nigga that tries to pursue it (Oh-hooo!)
Homeboy, she taken, just move it
I asked you nicely, don’t make the Dogg lose it
We just blow ‘dro and keep the flow movin’
In a ‘64, me and baby boo cruisin’ (Oh-hooo!)
Body rag interior blue, and
Have them hydralics squeakin’ when we screwin’
Now she’s yellin’, hollerin’ out Snoop, and
Hootin’, hollerin’; hollerin’, hootin’ (Oh-hooo!)
Black and beautiful, you the one I’m choosin’
Hair long and black and curly like you’re Cuban
Keep groovin’, that’s what we doin’
And we gon’ be together until your moms move in… (Oh-hooo!)
I stand by my original selections and continue to insist that we can’t coddle our children forever.