Tag Archives: Wife

Co-What?

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I once worked with a woman who firmly held to the notion of co-parenting. She and her husband rotated 24 hour caregiving shifts, each transitioning every other day into active duty. Every ride to school, every packed lunch, every nocturnal disturbance was handled by the parent on call while the other went about their activities as planned. It seemed to me like eating at a restaurant at your own table beside a couple that you know. You may nod and acknowledge each other, but you keep your appetizers and tabs separate and try not to listen too closely to their conversation. Their schedule was so regimented that I found myself often fantasizing about the mayhem that would ensue should a crisis occur during the changing of the guard. Would they just pass the baton in the middle of the X-ray series at the hospital? She was equally baffled at the way my household was managed. So I forced myself to take note of the duties that my husband and I share with total equality. I was shocked by how many things we do together!

Co-respirate

Co-steal chargers

Co-wear shirts

Co-order Pad Thai

Co-fight over television

Co-sit in chairs

Co-have legs

Co-pump gas

Co-disturb sleep

Co-misplace keys

Co-create laundry

Co-lose kids’ shoes

Co-overdraw checking account

Co-sneeze weird

Co-hate running

Co-eat Nachos

Co-clog sinks

Co-need stamps

And we co the shit out of not hearing each other.

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This Truck Will Go On And On. Like Celine Dion’s Heart.

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Each week a neighbor raps my door to tell me that the interior light of my husband’s truck is on. I follow this conscientious resident to the driveway where I wait for him to turn heel before I dash back into my house. See, I can’t fix the light. I have strained to turn it off countless times, but it runs on some kind of paranormal power supply existing apart from the battery. This light is a tribute to the truck’s dogged persistence to stay alive, to keep rolling back miles on the odometer so long as we remain willing to fill its tires with air and to find mechanic shops lax on emission regulations.

Right after we got married, G decided he wanted to indulge in the utmost of New York City extravagances: a car. Owning a vehicle in Manhattan is a fruitless proposition. Contending with street sweeping schedules and parking regulations  even the police don’t fully understand is a menace few have the constitution for. G, however, decided it would make him feel less marooned on the isle of Manhattan if we could flee over the bridges in a car of our own. The problem was that G didn’t buy a car. He bought a very large and old truck. Not old enough to be vintage and interesting, but just old enough to have an unfortunate number of miles and red upholstered seats. I’ll never forget the sight of G pulling into the parking garage attached to our apartment building. The doorman, who had extended us plenty of allowances in the way of oversized deliveries and loud gatherings, took one glance at that truck and said, “Oh, hell no.”

We finally found domicile for that truck in a neighborhood far flung from ours, making the process to fetch it more arduous than any journey aboard the trains and buses our fellow urban plebeians were relegated to. Circling our block while waiting for the other to emerge with weekend bags was like being on a Boeing 747 put into a holding pattern by Air Traffic Control. When the runway would finally clear, the one waiting at the curb would heave the belongings into the back and attempt to project himself into the cab. Much like air travel today, all passengers understood this was a no-frills mode that came with no pillows or legroom and a checkered maintenance history.

Determined to see the fruits of his investment, G sought opportunities to drive that truck anywhere. When I opened the invitation to a wedding to be held in the neighboring state of New Jersey, sent by a woman who worked for me, G declared with conviction, “We’ll go in the truck.” Despite my strenuous objections to turning up to a country club in a truck even the landscapers wouldn’t drive, his mind was fixed. I reminded him of my recent appointment to Group Director of a division within the media company I worked for, germane because the attendants at this wedding would be largely comprised of the people who report to me. He stared at me blankly, and I grimly realized there was no shaming a man about his truck. Like I felt about my crimped hair in grade school, he felt nothing but pride despite the jeers from those walking by.

We pulled into the manicured drive of the country club, lavishly lined with tilting maple trees. G’s arm hung casually out the open window as he inhaled the breeze coming off the well-tended grass of the golf course, oblivious to the engine’s deafening grumble. I shrank into my seat, noting the ridiculous contrast of my dress against the threadbare seats and my heels against the dirt-laden floor mats. I mentally reviewed my affirmations: I can’t be fired for driving an F250. I can’t be demoted for leaking engine oil all over the parking lot. If anyone sees me leave in this truck, I’ll scream from the passenger seat as though I’m being abducted and then I’ll bring a fake police report to work.  I continued with my mantras as the valet opened my door and extended his hand. The blood pounded in my cheeks as he pulled me from my chariot, which was, in its idle state, filling the foyer with noxious fumes. I cringed as he grunted against the heft of my body free-falling from the height of the passenger seat.  I offered a foppish apology and muttered something about Cinderella being a malcontent hooker for worrying about the impression she would make arriving to the ball in something as sweet as a pumpkin. G strode to the front and tossed the valet the keys as though he had just exited a Lamborghini.

During the reception, while G was sidled up to the oyster station, turning his plate into the deck of a deep sea fishing vessel, I looked up to see a few members of my new staff walking toward me, led by the one I suspected may be organizing a violent coup d’etat. Our eyes locked and I could see the glint of knowledge in his pupils. He knows, I thought with dread. “Hey Erin,” he said. I smiled graciously, straining to loosen the grip of paranoia. He leaned in close as if he was about to share something intimate.

“Listen, we couldn’t find anywhere to throw our cigarettes in the parking lot so we tossed them in the back of your truck. We saw the empty beer cans and figured you wouldn’t mind.”

Thankfully the reception had an open bar.

 

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They’re Trying To Disown Me

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I once attended an auction while my husband, G, was out of town. I’d never been to an auction and had no idea what to expect. I knew they were the playgrounds of the upwardly mobile and that if I wanted to fit in, I had better look the part. By the time the event rolled around, I was in a full-on body sweat induced by the utter void of pastels and mother-of-pearl accessories in my closet. The closest thing I had to a WASP-y ensemble was a bottle of Lithium and that was all but emptied upon checking my online bank account before rushing out the door. I felt calmer once I was there and camouflaged against a line of people appraising the items on display for bidding. I drew comfort in chortling and saying things like, “Don’t you find chicken such a pedestrian choice?” After an hour of mingling with the other guests and jotting down an offer underneath an item with a determined casual air, I was ready to go home, feeling confident I had handled my first auction with poise.

Then it was announced that the auction was beginning.

Just as G had once learned at a ritzy wedding reception that he needn’t empty the whole of the raw bar into his mouth because a four-course meal was still to come, I discovered that a silent auction is merely the appetizer to the main event. And I couldn’t afford to eat.

I spent the next two hours stress-chewing my cuticles and tearing parsley into pieces while contemplating an escape route that involved setting fire to a section of the building. I called G once I was home to report my winnings from the silent part of the auction. A sailboat cruise for $40. He questioned how I could have procured a two-hour boat ride for only forty dollars. He wasn’t impressed when I told him that my winning strategy involved a placing an hors d’oeuvres plate on top of the entry paper.

He concluded a dogmatic speech about the objective of fundraisers and the importance of educational materials for young minds tersely, “You can’t represent our family at these sort of functions anymore.”

So I let him claim his rightful seat, stoically representing our clan when it came to writing donation checks and telling the Girl Scouts we’ve had enough of their trans-fats. I was permitted only to sully our reputation in a restricted capacity, mostly by tipping poorly and delaying the grocery line while I finish articles about botched liposuction.

Thus I couldn’t have been more shocked when G named me our family’s official representative to compete in a 5K race.  The last race I had attended was a fun run for children that our son wanted to partake in. When we arrived to the starting line of that event, a friend called out, “We’re running, not yachting!” I was wearing boat shoes and white jeans because it had failed to occur to me that one doesn’t just turn a three-year old loose on the trail and await their crossing at the finish line. I traversed the next mile in a hobble, being discourteously passed by toddlers in soggy diapers.

Still I was going to attend this 5K, and, by God, I was going to win it for my family. After all, I had been carbo-loading 32 years for this day.

As I pulled my car into the parking spot, I saw two men jogging toward me, breathless.

“Did I miss the race?” I called to them.

“No, no. We just ran the course to warm up for it,” one of the runners called back.

Fuck you, I muttered, which must have sounded like ‘good luck to you’ because they gestured with one of those waves that are meant to be uplifting between exercisers. It was becoming abundantly clear I wasn’t going to be winning any Sportsmanship trophies – or first place ones, for that matter – this day.

I sidled up to the registration table where a refined older gentleman was posted to gather race fees and information in exchange for an official number to pin to my Lycra. I noticed the other registrants entering into their preparatory modes, hopping and stretching hamstrings. I did a few cursory swivels of my trunk, straining to look athletic and imposing as if I had just climbed Annapurna with no oxygen and with a catheter bag to catch my urine tied to my leg. I was transferring into my visualization phase, in which I imagined myself crossing the finish line and leaping into a vat of cream cheese with a bagel as my inner tube, when the man at registration curtly informed me I was five dollars short in paying my race fee.

I began to explain that I had only brought twenty dollars because that’s what I had been told to bring and that walking back to my car would likely expend any energy I have stored because all I had eaten for breakfast was a spoonful of Gorgonzola and some chocolate sauce.  I was attracting an audience curious to see who was defrauding a charity. A gracious onlooker, moved by pity, paid my balance and escorted me to the starting line. I took my place toward the back of the crowd, acknowledging myself to be more of a slow gazelle that will only exert real energy once a tiger has ripped away part of my haunch. Plus, I’d forgotten to blood dope as I had meant to.

The whistle blew and the racers lurched forward as if there were piles of money and injured babies to be found along the trails. I stopped participating exactly 90 seconds later, opting instead to walk with a friend who had her toddlers with her. As we passed the halfway mark, the two men who had warmed up for the 5K by already running a 5K were on their return leg, each one’s chest heaving as he strained to overtake the other.  I caught the eye of one and shrugged my shoulders and gestured to the kids at my heels as if to say, “Kids! Just won’t let me win this race!”

As we descended the steep grade that would usher us toward the finish line, far behind the others who had dashed up an unforgiving hill, I realized that I was going to have a very unimpressive race story to relay to G and the kids. When my foot hovered over the ending line, where the last volunteer had been abandoned to stand in the cold to wait out my safe return, he said dryly, “Anyone behind you?” I turned and looked up the road by which I had just come. It mocked me by its barrenness.

While I warmed up with a hot chocolate, the caloric content far in excess of what I had burned, I contemplated how to convince G that I had finished the race in an earnest show of competition. A friend tugged my arm, “You just won the best prize in the auction! They called your name!”

Armed with my free paddleboating session and t-shirt, it occurred to me that I could weave a believable yarn about finishing in the top of the heap. My family didn’t need to know that I had come by my loot by a random drawing of my name. Yes, I could tell them that I had won it, honorably and nobly, nobody the wiser. It’s their fault for decreeing me the envoy of cardiovascular activity when I only possess a dexterity at receiving paper cuts and eating off other peoples’ plates.

I entered the house, forcing a slight limp and making my breathing ragged to enhance the authenticity of the fraudulent tale about to escape my lips, and G came to meet me in the hallway.

“They posted the times online already. You really came in last?”

 

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To Top It All Off I Got Pre-Cancer

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I hate skin and everything about it. I dislike saying the word, which is absolutely impossible to avoid using, unlike other words I hate. One can substitute a more palatable word for nougat or panties, but you’ll sound like a German exchange student if you say, “It looks like my outer covering is burning.” Beyond saying the word, I generally dislike everything about skin. As if it isn’t already the most egregious offense against humanity to have pores, it goes on to chafe, peel, flake, tear, wrinkle, freckle, and age. When it truly has had enough of you, it does something utterly disgusting by sprouting a varicose vein, or maybe worse, a mole.

Once a year, I book my sack of skin an appointment at the Dermatologist so that I may endure the indignity of having my entire body placed under a high-magnitude lens. Most women are at least drunk when this occurs and the experience culminates with a Greek paddle and a non-biological sister named Britnee. This year’s scheduling was an especially anxiety-producing exercise since I discovered that dermatological appointments are scarcely available in my new home in the state of Maine, owing – I suspect – to the fact that skin doctors don’t come in droves to a state in which more unsheathed flesh could be glimpsed at a village of Quakers. I could not be deterred, however, because I had a spot of a dubious nature on my face that had been causing me worry.

After pleading my sob story to a friend she called in a favor to an old family friend who happened to be a board certified Dermatologist. When her nurse called to offer me an appointment within the week, I nabbed it enthusiastically irrespective of the 75 mile distance or whether my husband, G, would even be able to watch our three kids. In between scrawling my list of concerns for the doctor, things like ‘are stretch marks reversible?‘and haranguing G to arrange his work schedule around my epidermal needs, I orchestrated a masterful plan that involved driving the kids two hours south where I would deposit them to G who would fly into the airport the night before and would sleep at his sister’s apartment so that he could wake in the morning to the arrival of his three hungry and jittery children. When I received the text message the night before my appointment that he had safely landed and was en route by taxi to his sister’s place, I fell into a contented sleep, at peace that the stars were aligning to ensure I would be studied, scraped, and lasered just after sunrise.

As I neared the city limits, kids plotting their counter-assault from their carseats, I placed a call to G to herald our arrival. The call went unanswered. As we passed the closing miles, I dialed his phone no less than 400 times. I continued to phone in 20 second intervals from an illegal parking spot in front of his sister’s building. I even called his sister at work to inquire after her unit number, which was unlisted at the locked front door, but she couldn’t be reached either. I glanced at the time on my phone, fretting over how dangerously close I was to missing the appointment. I briefly contemplated setting fire to the building so that  G would come running out in a pair of bleach-stained boxer briefs. Paranoid thoughts began to tear at the edges of my crumbling composure, and I wondered if the two of them could have gone out the night before and encountered something more grim than the usual women in tube tops. The rational side of my brain and the sphere convinced they were both residing in large vats of formaldehyde battled against the other, resulting in a dozen voicemail messages of the I’m really starting to worry that you’re dead, which is making me feel scared and sad, but I’m also about to miss this appointment that was impossible to get so dead is really the only excuse I’m accepting variety.

Finally accepting the futility of the situation, I drove to the doctor’s office for my appointment that began 20 minutes prior. I frantically ushered the kids into the building, promising lollipops, llama rides, and Dora as their new nanny between gritted teeth, if they just remained quiet and still while the doctor ran through her repertoire. After a tearful explanation to the woman at the front desk, whose contempt for me and my kids was as evident as the sciatica pillow underneath her rump, she waved me into an exam room. Once inside, I placed Dom in one chair while Eve sat beside him, mischief emanating from their eyes which scanned the room wildly for fragile and costly medical apparatus. Liv remained in her carseat on the floor beside the examination table. I smiled reassuringly at everyone while silently praying that that doctor be an empathetic Mormon polygamist or an undocumented Octomom with way too many children of her own.

The look that passed over her face when she entered the room clearly conveyed otherwise.

While the kids danced tauntingly close to crossing the line of pandemonium, the doctor studied the spot I indicated concern over.  She determined it to be a pre-cancerous segment that would need to be removed. She gently inquired if I would like to reschedule the procedure to a more convenient time, blithely unaware that convenience sauntered out of my life years ago, arms linked with free time and personal hygiene. I insisted that the removal occur immediately and that the kids would cooperate beautifully. Just as she raised the bottle of liquid nitrogen into position under my left eye, Liv released a gut-wrenching cry from her location on the floor.

Reflexively I jerked my face out of the spray trajectory, hoping my orbital socket wasn’t now an empty cavity. I exhaled with relief, partially because I was glad to still have the power of sight but mostly because I’d been spared bringing all of my kids to the Optometrist for an emergency eyeball fitting. She faltered before sheepishly asking if I wanted to continue. Just as I began to nod emphatically, fully in favor of her completing my face melting in front of my impressionable onlookers, Liv began to cry in that way that only babies and Meryl Streep can muster: the red-faced and breathless sob.

To quiet the hysteria I did something that no amount of medical training or watching of Grey’s Anatomy could have prepared this Dermatologist for.  I did something I hope to never acquiesce to again while sitting bare-assed atop crinkly exam table paper.

I nursed a baby.

While that doctor performed cryosurgery on the soft tissue of my cheek, the icy spray of the liquid nitrogen mere inches above the scalp of my infant’s head, I breastfed a baby. Anyone who champions for the beauty and wonder of breastfeeding has never had to do it with her Dermatologist straining to keep her eyes off exposed areola. The shame washed over me much like the liquified gas from her canister. Unable to identify what bothered me more – the fact my husband might be dead, or that I had pre-cancer, or that this office would forever talk about that crazy breastfeeding lady, or that my hope to discreetly inquire about a little Botox had been dashed by the feeding demands of an infant – my thoughts were interrupted by the vibration of a text message sent to my cell phone.

So sorry. I overslept and my phone was on silent.

Considering I’d lost all credibility and dignity with my physician already I considered asking her to send the vial containing the floating mole I also had removed home with me.

It would make a nice anniversary gift.

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It Smells Like Crazy In Here

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When I was a teenager, my mom got a dog. She was a Brittany Spaniel with a compact and sturdy body covered with feathered wisps of white and amber hair. She was an elegant thing, reminiscent of the famous Disney Spaniel, Lady. Just like that cartoon wonder, she had eyelashes of an enviable length which she batted in a hypnotizing rhythm in the direction of the individual holding something edible. When she lay upon the ground, she crossed her front paws and held her snout in regal repose. If visitors turned up to the house, Emma would regard them at the door silently before turning heel to alert my mother to their arrival, like a four-legged butler. In fact, she even collected the newspaper deposited at the mouth of the driveway each morning, so she really was like a domestic servant albeit with a limited set of capabilities and some questionable personal grooming. And these days canines make for great household staff if you’re looking to have someone get a few things around the house without producing a child with half the same DNA as your own kids.

While contentedly refraining from most vulgar acts found on the canine behavioral spectrum of crotch sniffing to genital licking, Emma had one distasteful peccadillo.

She was a pillow humper.

My brother, infamous for agitating lesser species, discovered Emma’s penchant for square-shaped textiles after luring her into a rabid pillow fight one night. It started innocently enough, a swing of a throw pillow inspired chase and a playful snarl. Move the pillow to the right and Emma seized upon it. Jerk it to the left and she would double-back over herself to capture it again, this time with teeth and claws boring into fabric. The whole family – in retrospect clearly starved of more productive hobbies, like reality television  – gathered to take in the spectacle. In short order, Emma’s breathing became a pant and her eyes glazed in focused rapture. She mounted the pillow, gathered it between her paws, and frantically gyrated her hips against it.

Witnessing her fall from grace was like watching the Prom Queen after too many wine coolers make out with the guy who had cystic acne and a trench coat. We wanted to turn away, to make it end, but Emma wouldn’t be deterred. If one of us tried to nab the pillow, she snapped her teeth dangerously close to the approaching hand, all the while never stopping her pelvic thrusts. Guttural moans interspersed with sharp whines numbed our eardrums as we looked on in silence, questions floating into our collective consciousness about Emma’s sexual proclivities, the unpedigreed mutts of her dark fantasies, and her obvious lust for plaids.

By the time the pillow had become like Jodi Foster in The Accused and it was obvious it could never again be an emblem of décor, my brother – who years later would become a Navy Seal – seized the pillow through some sleight of hand and samurai smoke. He tossed the pillow into a closet, slammed the door, and commanded, “Emma! Calm. Calm. Calm. No more. Calm.” It was too late, though; There was sex in the air, and like Rihanna, Emma loved the smell of it.

As my brother sauntered out of the room, unfazed by the psychotic atmosphere of his own construction, Emma paced in front of the closet, snarling and swallowing her own drool, hoping to get one more chance to strike at that slow gazelle. Like any female suffering a doomed sexual experience, it took a lot of food, soothing words, and time spent staring out a window to move past the incident.

When Emma died, shortly after I had the first of my children, I thought so had the days of hardcore dog-on-pillow action. Little did I know, I would continue to behold this twisted interplay for years to come on account of my husband, G. He regards children and dogs in a similar light, both court jesters there to bemuse him. Command each to sit and do tricks that impress no one. Marvel at the way  neither eats with utensils or knowledge of napkins. Sneer at both species for their inability to poop in a toilet. Fling a Frisbee to one and Duplos to the other. Blindside each with pillows until they are twitching, growling, and wild-eyed with equal parts delight and fury. Escalate the energy in the room to a pitch that the Super Nanny would deem everyone a hopeless wanker before exiling herself back to the UK. He stokes the flames – while I bite on a leather strap in the other room – as the kids revert to early hominids stalking the last Wooly Mammoth. Once bored of their antics, he resumes reading his book or watching a game with a dismissive wave of his arm and the declaration of, “Calm!”  My efforts to call a ceasefire are futile since the kids have become like Celine Dion during an encore. The show’s over, but they can’t stop hitting themselves and saying things no one understands.

The tranquility usually begins hours later after the pain killers from the Emergency Room kick in.

At least my kids are still young. I hear the teenage years is when they start actually humping the shit out of pillows.

 

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The Anything But Royal Couple

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London dislikes me. I do mean London, the city in England, not some toddler with a bizarre New Age name. It harbors some kind of resentment that I can’t pinpoint. Perhaps I’m being paranoid, but I suspect London doesn’t care for me and would prefer some other visitor. A thinner, smarter visitor with whiter teeth, not that its own residents are renowned for their dental work. See, the first time I was there I came disastrously close to being struck by a taxi. I stepped off a sidewalk, looking down the street in the direction cars would be approaching in America, when I felt an onslaught of steamy air against my backside and heard the grinding of brakes in my ears. I snapped my head around just in time to put my hands, defensively, upon the hood of an oncoming taxi.

Then there were the occasions that food nearly killed me in London. When I went to visit my cousin, who was studying there, I had my first tango with Indian food. I was young and unadventurous when it came to worldly cuisine. The korma, the saag, the naan, the paratha. It lit up my palette and made tastebuds that had never before been activated spring to attention. And it was so cheap, a multi-course meal had for a Bollywood song.  Following the meal, during the first act of Les Miserables in the famed West End, my digestive system issued that first gastrointestinal warning shot. A slick of sweat covered my forehead moments later sending me fumbling frantically down a cramped aisle, praying my bowels wouldn’t release upon the knees of my fellow theatergoers. Between wondering if little Cosette could scrub her mop and bucket on over to the bathroom and hallucinations of the Beatles dancing through a rainbow of peace signs in my consciousness, I vowed to remain on the straight and narrow of ethnic cuisine for the balance of the trip.

This meant resorting to baguette sandwiches with no mayonnaise at every meal. But in the UK, there is little else more difficult than procuring something without mayonnaise. I could have more easily become the Prime Minister of England irrespective of being an American who can’t identify Simon Cowell in a lineup. After two weeks of ordering my sandwich sans mayonnaise, receiving it slathered with mayonnaise, sheepishly requesting a new sandwich again without mayonnaise but now in a British lilt with the vain hope of surmounting an accent barrier, finally scraping the mayonnaise off the bread of the new sandwich, I had exhausted my patience vis a vis condiments. I called the waiter over to bear witness to my second mayonnaise-coated sandwich. I expected him to seize the plate and offer a sincere and foppish apology, like Hugh Grant would have, but instead he groaned with irritation and said, “Is it really important to you, love?” I’ll spare you the transcript of the exchange that followed, suffice it to say that the word ‘wanker’ escaped my lips numerous times and mostly out of context until I was escorted off the premises.

After the unsubtle messages London has sent me over the years, I should not have been surprised when a terrorist attack was executed as G and I arrived across the pond. Homemade bombs packed into rucksacks detonated aboard public transit systems in staggering succession while we rode the Underground in blithe oblivion. I was utterly unaware of the tragedy that had befallen London because I was completely absorbed in the fallout of the other explosion rocking the city: Jude Law had been cheating on Sienna Miller with the nanny. Accustomed only to the invasiveness of American celebrity press, I reveled in the British no holds barred slander of their media darling. As G marveled at Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, I was clucking my tongue at OK Magazine’s reporting that the home wrecking nanny was at least 3 stone heavier than Sienna Miller. G snidely pointed out that I hadn’t any clue of the unit of weight that a stone referred to, but that didn’t faze me. Nothing did as I walked, nose buried deep in a glossy, over the cobblestone. The entire city could have slid into the River Thames, and I would have been clinging to a piece of driftwood, like Kate Winslet in Titanic, gasping, “Jude told the nanny he was in love with the way she cared for his kids. No shit, she’s a nanny!”

Despite my tepid reception by London, I was bitterly envious when G announced he would be traveling there for a weeklong business trip. Any woman straining to keep her head from bobbing under the water’s surface of potty training, upper respiratory infections, and toddler Gladiatorial disputes would be itching to escape to one of the world’s great cities. Alas, it was a pipe dream since no one, family included, returns phone calls from the woman who has three children under three years of age, no matter how many plastic Harrods bags you promise in a voicemail. So G went unattended, but he checked in often. The first time to say that he was staying in the chi chi hotel The Savoy. That revelation stung, but easily enough assuaged by his promise to loot all the bathroom toiletries. Then he called again to say he’d seen Pink Floyd in the lobby. My celebrity radar registered a spike but mostly because I was impressed anyone could identify the members of Pink Floyd. I’d even thought the band members were dead so that notion served to intensify my envy since his hotel was so posh that even dead rockers were checking in. A day later, he rang to tell me Victoria Beckham had checked into The Savoy. I gritted my teeth, falsely bemused by his good fortune to run into a high-profile female celebrity who is pregnant, the Holy Grail of paparazzi objects.

But when he called at the midpoint of his trip to report that a model convention – yes, a convention of the world’s models – was underway in one of the conference halls of the hotel, I hung up the phone violently but not before telling to choke on a meat pie.

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And My Middle Name Means Honeymoon

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In college I read an article in which a poll of newlywed women revealed that they did not have as much sex as they’d anticipated on their honeymoon. Instead late-night activities included sleeping, eating, and counting checks. I cast the magazine aside, cursing the post-modern woman and her unromantic notions of marriage. And this from a person who only gets romantic about imported cheese. When the first of my friends to get married took her honeymoon, I braced for the impact of high-velocity love.

“It was nice. Maybe a little long. We saw The Matrix one night.”

I suppressed the urge, like rising bile, to demand the return of my wedding gift since this union was clearly doomed. They saw a movie on their honeymoon? And not just any movie, but one starring Keanu Reeves? How was there time to see a movie when there were baths to be had in side-by-side clawfoot tubs facing the sunset? Was Barbados out of horses to ride in the crashing surf? Straining to lend support, I choked upon my words, “I bet everyone does that. I’m just going to go ahead and Fandango my honeymoon matinee now!” As I hung up the phone, I vowed to the gods of Sandals Resorts that I would do their catalogs proud on my own honeymoon.

Then I took my honeymoon.

The fissures in our union materialized as soon as we embarked on the trip from my parents house in Tucson, the site of our wedding, to Sedona, where we’d have a few days to rest and romp. We borrowed my parents car for the long drive. I opened the driver’s side door, key fob in hand, when G stealthily dove into the seat. He even raised a cup of steaming coffee in a threatening manner to defend his position. Because my mom had just told me of a women who had spilled scalding coffee in her lap, rendering her unable to wear underwear for weeks, I relinquished the seat but whined, “I want to drive. This is my parent’s car. And I know how to get there.” He closed the door and muttered,  ”I have to drive. I get car sick if I don’t.” Our bickering continued for several more minutes as my parents looked on through the window of the living room, mentally tallying the cost of the reception charges. We reversed from the driveway, G as the driver, and I grimly realized that having never owned or even ridden together in a car during our courtship in NYC meant that I had unwittingly married that most irritating of individuals who cites motion sickness as the reason they must get their way. On every matter.

By the time we’d arrived, I had learned another unfortunate truth about my husband. He likes Tom Petty a great deal. After the third revolution of the Greatest Hits album, I emerged from the car ready to send myself free fallin’ over a scenic lookout site, but was distracted by the ring of my phone. I glanced at the screen. It was my brother. I wasn’t sure of the protocol for accepting phone calls on a honeymoon. It wasn’t as if I could put a Do Not Disturb placard on my voicemail. I waffled over honeymoon-wireless decorum another moment before deciding it wouldn’t be uncouth to answer given that my brother really might have overdosed on tequila at our reception the night before.

“Get ready to see George Bush rain on your Democrat parade! He’s gonna bring the pain to you bleeding heart hippies tonight. This will be a honeymoon to remember, you John Kerry-loving asshole.”

I hung up swiftly, directing a tense smile to G. Swept up in the tumult of wedding preparation, I’d forgotten that the first day of our honeymoon was Election Day. My brother, a staunch Republican, was prepared to badger us for the next 4 years if Bush secured a second term.

The first item on the honeymoon itinerary was a twilight hike over the vistas and red rocks that Sedona is famous for. If we timed it right, we would gaze upon the sunset that streaks the endless sky with pink and yellow hues. When we arrived at the trailhead, G noticed a General Store. If you’ve grown up in the Southwest, you know that a General Store is a tourist trap, doling out useless carved figurines and turquoise bolos, all meant to be exotic since a man with black hair, claiming to be an Apache, is selling them. G could not resist the siren song of the General Store. Once inside, he spent a fortnight poring over cowboy boots while I ate yellow Chiclets purporting to be Fools Gold from a mining pan. As G modeled countless pairs of boots, I shared a riveting account of the Indian Longhouse I’d constructed from popsicle sticks in grade school with our Native American shopkeeper. About to discuss the politics of reservation land and casino gaming to pass a few more hours, my phone rang again. I held it to my ear.

“Will you tell me what it feels like to be a loser when Bush sweeps this election?”

I silenced my phone and gestured to the dipping sun out the window to G who had finally decided upon the pair of cowboy boots sure to impart the bravado of a man who brands cattle. Relieved to have left the store without a pistol and a belt buckle, I noticed the sun had dropped below the peaks of the mountains. I suggested we return to the car since we’d missed the climax, but G insisted on pushing forward, determined to summit something even in the dark. I tugged at his arm in disagreement when – out of nowhere – he shoved me hard, sending me to the ground. As I struggled to my feet, I followed his stare, straining to understand why I was just assaulted by my husband.

Directly in our path, basking in the warmth of the sun-baked dirt, was a large tarantula.

I breathed a sigh of relief that I hadn’t vowed life-long commitment to a Chris Brown in disguise while G shouted incoherently about ‘saving my life.’ I stared at him, bemused, as he backed away from the spider as though it was armed with an even bigger spider in a slingshot. Instead of undergoing that pause that allows one to see the comedy of their circumstances, G launched into a diatribe about desert wastelands and the varied reasons the East Coast is infinitely superior to my Southwest home. He hurled insults at every Saguaro cactus in sight. I felt under attack and had grown irritable from hunger, a confluence of personality shortcomings that led me to a regrettable and impulsive act.

I kicked that tarantula at my new husband.

As G stormed back to the car, cowboy boots meeting the earth with thunderous booms, I followed behind, wondering if square-offs over large arachnids constituted irreconcilable differences. I felt a vibration in my pocket. I glanced at the text message that had come in from my brother.

“Polls are in Bush’s favor, you pussy-footing, illegal alien-loving motherfuckers.”

After showering and dressing in silence at the hotel, we found ourselves in the dining quagmire New Yorkers experience when they travel elsewhere: Restaurants close by 9pm. After being turned away by every place on the hotel’s compound, we found ourselves eating at a round-the-clock diner specializing in an unfathomable number of omelets. There we sat, on our honeymoon, barely speaking to each other between bites of greasy eggs. The only thing befitting our setting was G’s God-forsaken cowboy boots. I excused myself to the bathroom where I discovered 14 more text messages loaded with political taunts from my brother. I gripped the side of the sink as I stared at myself in the water-stained mirror. This is not at all what I imagined. This honeymoon sucks; I’d kill everyone in this restaurant to see a movie right now.

I walked out of the bathroom as the patrons clad entirely in denim took stock of my dressy attire with expressions of suspicion and pity. I sauntered to the table, determined to begin anew, prepared to comply with any amorous request from my husband. This was our honeymoon, after all, the acme of love and and passion. So I took his hands in mine and told him I wanted to make amends and make this trip feel like a honeymoon. He deliberated pensively for a minute before he asked me to ride a mule down into the gorge of the Grand Canyon. I told him I’d sooner have sex with a mule than entrust my life to it on the narrow passes of the largest canyon in the world. We resumed eating our cold, slimy eggs when he said,

“Why is your brother asking me if we’ll be raising our kids Republican?”

—

Thanks again to The Empress for joining me here to write about honeymoons. Her story made me chuckle and cringe, which is always the best humor concoction.

Regale us with more honeymoon sucker stories. If you actually rode a horse in the sunset, take that shit elsewhere.

—

 

Easter: At Least Something Was Resurrected

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I once ate 13 sticky buns at an Easter brunch. I was young and possessed the kind of metabolism that didn’t flinch at a deluge of Karo syrup.  I can’t explain why I ate that many; I just recall that Mrs. Benson, who had hosted the brunch, kept pushing glaze-coated nuggets off a hot tray, sending them tumbling on to a platter that my tongue was resting upon. If I were to replicate the abandon with which I ate those sticky buns today, I’d have 13 new cellulite pockets cropping up on my ass faster than Chipotle rolls out franchises. But then, I ate without worry and vowed to become the sort of woman who confidently bakes fine holiday pastries.

Then I lost the recipe that Mrs. Benson had scrawled upon a piece of paper in the flowery cursive that young girls always admire. My will to spend any time in the kitchen followed.

When Dom, my first child, was born a couple of weeks before Easter, I actually lay awake one night, pondering just how bleak his childhood would be with a mom whose baking prowess self-actualized at Pop Tarts. I resolved, now that I was a mother, to change my reputation in the kitchen. It was my responsibility to love this child, protect this child, and make things that smell good for this child. I should own measuring cups. I should know what nutmeg is. I should use a glass pan for a purpose other than to hold icy water baths to minimize my pores. Starting then, I would trade phrases normally uttered in my kitchen, like “I can’t find the goddamn Thai menu”, for family-friendly ones, like “Just another pinch of cinnamon!”

And I would effect my transformation in time for the Easter brunch we were invited to over the weekend.

Since my mother was still in town for the birth of the baby, I was able to escape to the grocery store to buy the items – that bakers refer to as ingredients - essential for cupcakes. I shuffled down each aisle, haphazardly acquiring bottles of familiar fixings, and made countless calls to the house to ensure my two week old child had not withered into a dessicated mass since I’d dared to take my boobs out on an errand.  By the time I’d finished at the market, not only was Dom overdue for a feeding, I could have completed a bucket list. Unless, of course, baking 3 dozen cupcakes had been on the list.

As I set about assembling my ingredients, my mother, brother, and G looked on in disbelief, each sure that I should be placed before a postpartum tribunal with Tom Cruise serving as magistrate. I followed a cupcake recipe devised by the proprietor of the venerated Magnolia Bakery in New York City. I’d been given the book by a friend after she witnessed the sums of money, typical of the dowry of an Indian bride, that I routinely handed over to that bakery in exchange for a mound of saturated fat and buttercream. To an experienced cook, the task was a simple one using the most elemental items from a baker’s cabinet: flour, sugar, egg, and enough butter to sculpt a Kirstie Alley figure. For me, however, the process took hours.

I struggled to whip frothy crests of buttercream while watching the cake rise and brown inside the oven. My mom, holding an infant in one arm, lifted a knife with her free hand to frost a bare cake. “No!” I screeched, “They must cool for an hour!” She lowered the knife slowly as I explained through clenched teeth, “It’s only been 47 minutes since those came out of the oven.” I sighed heavily as if to say it’s hard enough to make festive cakes of a uniform appearance without being surrounded by court jesters, all trying to frost a not yet room temperature cake.

In the midst of spooning dollops of pink-hued cream to each cake, my brother, Shaun, and G traipsed through the kitchen to inform my mother and me that they were headed out to drink beer and shoot pool. The alchemy of hops and billiards had never resulted in any good around my house as far as my husband and my brother were concerned. My mind was flooded with memories of them stumbling into the apartment at 4am, finally spewed from a closing bar, turning lights on as they rummaged noisily for leftovers, all with no regard for the person who had been sleeping deeply until their arrival. Vexed, I stared hard at my cupcakes which represented hours of toil and – at that moment – all of my self worth. My concern for their preservation bubbled over as I heard the front door open. I rushed after them with a wooden mixing spoon in hand, hollering frenzied pleas to keep their hands off my cupcakes. They each shot me a dismissive glance and continued out the door.

“Hey!” I hissed as they turned to face me. “You idiots had better not stumble through these doors at three in the morning, famished and looking for something to eat. Get a slice or get a hotdog, but don’t even think about touching one of those cupcakes in there.”

They raised their hands the way guilty people do when they’re trying to plead innocence, and they set off, each grateful to have escaped the pastry shop from Hell and its demonic baker.

“And don’t wake up the baby, or I will kill you both, God dammit!” I called after them.

That was the last I heard from them until I awoke the following morning.

I padded down the hallway in bare feet to investigate the crime scene that was bound to be my living room. Each was exactly as I predicted, sprawled across a sofa, fully dressed in his clothing and cradling a Playstation controller while scenes from a video game long neglected slid and jerked across the television screen. I proceeded to the kitchen to start the coffee pot when I noticed something amiss in my periphery. I spun in the direction where my cupcakes had been left, packed tightly atop cooling racks on the counter.

All that remained were a couple of partially eaten cakes and a mess of crumbs resting on the Corian countertop

A scream so guttural and unbecoming erupted from my core. I rushed into the room and pounced upon G, like a lion driven wild by hunger does to a gazelle. I grabbed his shirt collar and stared into his now alert eyes.

“Where are they?” I bellowed. “You two didn’t eat 33 cupcakes, no matter how drunk you were! I know you’re playing a joke, but I don’t find it funny!”

Shaun, awakened by the outburst, attempted to sustain the gag by offering a sheepish apology and confessing a lapse in good judgment and all human decency as the explanation for the missing cupcakes. My mother rushed into the room, sure that someone had been scalded by hot coffee or beaten to death by a homicidal cereal spoon, and was straining to piece together the cause of the uproar. Gathering that the boys had perpetrated a prank, she calmly interjected with a maternal lilt,  “Guys, it’s not funny anymore. Erin spent hours making those cupcakes. Please go get them and bring them to the kitchen.”

She pried my hands from around G’s jugular and guided my body, tense with adrenaline and too many night-time nursing sessions, back to the kitchen. She eased me into a chair and patted my hair reassuringly as we waited for the boys to materialize my baked goods. Shaun returned first, his face ashen. He stammered inaudibly. We stared at him, struggling to decipher the babble, when G wobbled into the room with two sheet trays that were completely empty.

As the neurons fired in my brain, context clues jumping synapses, desperately trying to correlate the cause and effect of this scenario, the only words that could escape my lips were, “What the hell is that?”

G jumped to answer first, “We thought it’d be funny to hide your cupcakes to appear like we ate them, but…”

Shaun interrupted loudly, “I told him to hide them in the oven!”

My brain had still not ordered the sequence of events, which must have been evidenced by the confusion on my face and the methodical swiveling of my head. G looked down at the trays he’d placed in front of me and explained with a contrite voice, “We moved the cupcakes as a joke so you’d think they were eaten. But we moved them to the floor in the playroom.” I waited breathlessly for the final shoe to drop.

“The dog ate them.”

My recollection of the subsequent moments is foggy because my mother had to apply cardiac shock paddles to my chest, but hazy images of Mrs. Benson and her perfect sticky buns danced across my consciousness. I had failed her pastry-making legacy on the very holiday that she had inspired me many years before. On this holiest of days, the anniversary of the day Christians believe that Jesus was resurrected, one thing was certain…

My cupcakes would not rise again.

—-

 

For Love or Linguistics

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My husband, G, has completed 23 years of schooling. Once he finished an undergraduate degree, he went on to Law School.  Then a Masters in Law. Then a Masters in Business.  It’s all really quite irritating to a person who fell short of matriculating medical school and who considered her Montessori to be The Emerald City. And to the person who watches the joint account reduce each month after the loan checks go through. He’s the kind of person who can remember the qualities of a rhombus and why the hell altitude and pressure affect boiling points.

He has a weakness, however, and as in any marriage based on mutual reverence and support, I exploit that point of inferiority liberally: The man cannot write.

For me, writing comes without much strain. It feels like a natural outgrowth from a childhood spent wiled away with a book. It’s something that gives me calm as well as some money. Despite his inordinate amount of education, no part of composition comes naturally to G – the spelling of words, the usage of idioms, the rules of grammar. I once convinced him that the word ‘Free’ contained an I. For weeks a large sign with the word ‘FRIE’ scrawled across it sat atop some rubbish on our driveway. As stupid as we must have looked, I like to think that we provided a community service in the way of hearty laughs. For Frie.

Because I am quick to edit his speech, when I heard him use the phrase hunkered down, I immediately interjected:

“The phrase is ‘bunkered down,’ like you’re taking shelter from the cold within a safe place, like a bunker.”

He stared at me incredulously as I met his gaze with an imperious look and a slight head shake, like the one you would have directed at a three-legged dog or a younger sibling after you’ve returned home from one semester of college, now knowing everything about sex, life, and Asian emperors.

“It’s not bunkered, it’s hunkered,” G challenged authoritatively.

“Look it up,” I goaded. “Google that shit.”  I sashayed out of the room, muttering about the tragic state of over-educated men and their flagging command of language.

And Google, he did:

A term morons use, particularly when bad weather is afoot, to which they confuse the meaning of “hunker” with. Bunker is a noun, yet hunker is a verb, thus while the words sound similar, when thought of in their linguistic context, one is blatantly wrong.

Because I had to argue for the use of bunker down like I was lobbying for the preservation of Democracy, I will have my nose rubbed in this linguistic oversight for years to come.

“Erin, the Smiths are on the phone and want to know if you feel like coming over for dinner tonight…or if you’re going to hunker down.”

“Hey, Erin, it’s cold out. Are you going to send some soup down to the bunker?”

“Could you remind me exactly what type of person Google said uses the term ‘hunkered down’?”

All I know is that I need a bunker to hunker down in till I find a new language.

Or a new husband.

—

I’m also posting over at the site of the inimitable Scary Mommy. It’s a privilege to see my words on her page, like when a really great hostess actually serves the party the dessert you brought instead of hiding it away in the pantry. I’d love it if you visited me there. I’m just the dessert. Scary Mommy is the meal.

 

The Honeymooners

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A few friends have gotten married recently and have had very humorous tales from their honeymoon.  It’s had me thinking about honeymoons in general, particularly how unpredictably disappointing ours was. One day I’ll share that tale, but in the meantime, I’d like to focus on the predictably bad honeymoons of the couples below.

Barely 18 and Probably Pregnant – Judd and Ashlee. Their Justice of the Peace ceremony is concluded with a progressive dinner in which everyone in their trailer park hosts one phase of the meal, each welcoming the tipsy couple into their fenced synthetic turf. They enjoy a raucous evening feasting on squirrel roast and fried Twinkies and playing drunken Cornhole and Seven Minutes of Heaven because that’s a completely reasonable game to play till they can afford wedding rings. Judd spells ‘Ashlee 4 Eva’ in Coors Lite cans while the glassy eyed female onlookers sniffle, “I hope I find me one like him. He was always a gentleman, asking me first if I minded him telling the Shoney’s waitress that I qualified for the Senior Discount since he was saving up for that Ford Extended Cab.” The couple heads out the next morning, belongings stowed in the bed covered by tarp, to the lake where they’ll cook hot dogs over open flame and sleep in a tent that Judd won in a card game. When Judd awakes to Ashlee vomiting for the third straight morning, he’ll whisper that he’d like to stay at the lake forever. She gently reminds him that he has to be in court to appeal a DUI and she is scheduled to take the GED. Plus, she points out, they haven’t told her parents about the wedding yet.

Middle Aged Dog Owners – Leonard and Nancy. The honeymoon is delayed 2 days since Leonard’s dog Stew swallowed a wedding band during the ring exchange despite countless practice runs in which it remained perfectly perched on his snout. They also needed to ensure the flower girl that was nipped by Nancy’s dog, Miss Lippy, tests negative for rabies since Miss Lippy is on a modified vaccine schedule. Once the ring is retrieved and power washed and the toddler deemed non-rabid, they set off in their Air Stream for their tour of dog-friendly B&Bs through the Carolinas. Leonard and Nancy sit up front in matching Golden Retriever sweatshirts that read ‘Bred For Each Other.‘ Miss Lippy and Stew exchange growls as they gnaw on rawhides from the back. Leonard and Nancy elect for takeout since most restaurants forbid canines despite their insistence that Stew and Miss Lippy are both potty and salad fork trained. Back at their hotel, the canines claim the queen beds after intensive fur brushing, leaving Nancy and Stew to make do with the pull-out sofa. Stew and Miss Lippy watch, tongues wagging, as Leonard and Nancy do the nasty. You can guess in what style.

Comatose Senior With Buxom Buddy – Milton and Sassy. They had planned to jet off to the French Riveria but Milton’s doctor advised against flying due to his risk for deep vein thrombosis. Instead they go to Wine Country where Sassy sips Pinot Noir through a straw and makes eyes at the hunky sommelier while Milton inquires after the sodium content of the soup du jour. Milton must return to the hotel room each day by 3pm to receive his B12 injections from his traveling nurse. They eat dinner at 2pm, lunch at 10:30am, and breakfast the night before. Milton assures Sassy that he’s still a Bronco in the sack while throwing back a handful of Viagra, but he has appreciated her desire to wait until their wedding night to consummate their union, a surprising preference given her history as an escort. Sassy confirms once more that she has not been duped into signing a prenuptial agreement before applying a blindfold over her eyes and preparing to do a sensual massage with Bengay.

Upwardly Mobile Urban Professionals – Chas III and Meredith. They clink glasses of bubbly from their first class airline seats before adjusting their ergonomic neck pillows and lavender scented monogrammed eye masks. Meredith startles during her slumber, distraught that she didn’t leave her 4 carat diamond ring in the family vault.  Chas assures her that Europeans are really quite dignified and that the Ritz Carlton has lock boxes for important guests. Meredith smiles reassured, and goads Chas into setting aside those legal briefs because her mother’s travel agent has issued a crowded itinerary for their two week tour of Europes’ castles and rivers. Chas agrees contingent upon Mer’s commitment to ignoring urgent pleas from her personal assistant about client portfolio concerns and the renovation of their loft. They stroll through museums, buy antiques that must be shipped, eat foods that they pronounce more eloquently than the locals. By the third night, it occurs to them that they have not had sex yet so they remove each other’s custom tailored apparel and commence with relations. While each checks their stock gains on Blackberry.

Interracial Lovers – Lamar and Amy. They board their cruise through the Caribbean, he excited to gamble and try that onboard surfing simulator and she eager to swim with dolphins and stand on the mast like Kate Winslet. They start each day with a couples massage, their hands clasped between the tables. They consume Daiquiris and Jerk Chicken and notice that everywhere they go they can’t shake the feeling that their shipmates are staring at them.  It starts to bother Amy and Lamar, but they draw comfort in the realization that while these folks wear SPF 400 and look retarded with beaded hair, their progeny will look exactly like Halle Berry. So fuck off.

The Do Overs – Mark and Stacey. Each still bearing the flesh wounds of previous marriages ended badly, they decide this partnership will need some potent magic to last. They travel to the most magical place they can think of…and can afford to bring their collective 9 children. The Magic Kingdom.  They spend the days battling lines and doing head count. They eat peanut butter sandwiches that have been sneaked into the park while Mark and Stacey wonder if the eldest, a pre-teen, can handle babysitting the other 8 kids so that they may have a solo dinner at Epcot’s Chinese restaurant that promises to be exactly like dining in Hong Kong. They settle for their own boat through It’s A Small World, but just as their lips are about to meet for the first kiss they’ve shared since the reception, they hear screams from their kids who have capsized their boat and are already cannibalizing each other. Step-siblings square off over Mickey Mouse ears while Stacey must keep reminding her son that he is now the brother of the girl he’s spent the last year drawing nudie cartoons of. They decide to stop short the vacation one night early since stomach flu has gripped half the brood and they still have to figure out how to fit 5 more kids and a parrot into Mark’s 3 bedroom condo.

—

(Which are you?)

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