Our Great Lives

Every morning, it's the same thing around here.

Me (suspicious, surly): You have to be at school in 10 minutes. Ready?
Kid (beaming, positive): Yep. I just have to do one small thing. Where's that book? I'm supposed to have read up to chapter 4.

He is/we are about to break the school "times late" record, set back in 1972 by a kid who didn't know he was enrolled at that school.

It's not all that surprising, I suppose, along the lines of "the nut does not fall THREE HOURS LATE too far from the tree."

DH has his own time zone, which is 15 minutes later than whatever time it is wherever he's supposed to be. It gets complicated on some of those international dateline trips we're always taking, and it has so far kept us from visiting Newfoundland, which, as you certainly know, operates 30 minutes ahead of Atlantic time. On Newfoundland Standard Time--observed only on Newfoundland, the little islands offshore, and in Labrador south of Black Tickle. (As an aside, "South of Black Tickle" sounds like a salty maritime romance novel, doesn't it?)-- we would never know whether it was The Reckly or Bumbuy. Which cannot be a good thing. There is probably some way I could work it all to our social advantage, but it would involve moving to Newfoundland and lying to DH about what time it was for the rest of my life. I have no moral qualms about this, I simply worry that I'm not smart enough to remember what time it really was. Is. Will be. See?

I myself am an accomplished waster of time, no matter what time it is. Today, for example: today I had a day off and resolved to write fiction for a few hours, to get back into the swing of things. Except that I had to look up the etymology of "procrastinate" in our giant OED, which meant finding the magnifying glass. I researched Banff hotels and made reservations for this weekend's inaugural ski trip. I looked at maybe 3000 pairs of shoes on Zappos. Even though they no longer ship to Canada. I contemplated the purchase of clocks made in the shape of biohazard signs. I researched Newfie slang (obviously), consulted a hip-hop dictionary, and shared bad jokes on Facebook with people only too happy to play along. Most of them are writers, naturally, probably with their own deadlines to avoid. And so here it is, 11:24pm MST (2:54am NST) and I've managed maybe 150 words of "real" writing, despite having been writing all day.When this book is finally done, it will have a molecular weight of 53 words for every word visible on the page. (That's how "Science" works.)


I can't fault Kid for having observed and internalized a relationship with time that is not strictly sidereal. From now on, I'll be making it clear to everyone we know--teachers, friends, dentists, music instructors, tennis coaches, babysitters, etc.--that we move in Great Years here in the voodoo bungalow: stuff gets done but according to no calendar that any person currently alive could possibly hope to see through its cycle. 25,800 years seems about right for most of the things we aim to do, from spelunking in the laundry room to finishing The Breadwinner to nailing the step back onto the front porch. We've obviously been setting the bar waaay too high by attempting to live our Great Lives according to a cramped and insufficient schedule. Already I feel the stress simmering down. 

The Suburban "Great Year" Excuse: brought to you--slowly, peripatetically, with no discernible sense of schedule--by your friends in the voodoo bungalow.

Pregnancy Diet

I was the most content pregnant woman in Germany, maybe even in all of Europe. I'd just left a stressful and all-consuming job in LA that involved a lot of silly but somehow sharp office drama (it devolved to the point that at least once an hour I held scissors to my own throat and pretended to cut my jugular just because and only because it upset one of my co-workers). I was a bitch and a drudge and a scourge and my name was well on its way to becoming a byword among the nations. My unpleasantness and disaffection were Biblical.

And then a miracle happened and I was whisked off through no virtue of my own to this shiny new life in Europe: no work, no reponsibilities, no deadlines. Plus: a free car! It was that magical. And the most magical thing of all: at an advanced age and with no expectations at all, suddenly a suspected case of food poisoning turned into a baby on the way.

I had just finished a lovely 6-week vacation/language intensive on the Baltic Sea, in which I swam. I walked about 5 miles a day through hilly German vineyards, ate well and often and according to the finest of nutritional guidelines, slept when I was tired, read books, saw old friends and made new ones. I tried different things--not just odd German things like their late-night talk shows that inevitably end with someone on rollerskates wearing feathers talking about the Euro Zone, but different clothes and different music, books, speed limits, opportunities, boundaries and horizons. I did all this in the name of being a memorable parent, a deserving mother, a woman prepared and excited to help this child make his way through a strange world.

I glowed.

This is no longer the case, this glowing. And it's not because all those bouncy hormones have pulled up stakes. It's not just that I'm watching 50 creeping up on me in 15 short months, bringing with it crepe-y skin, kooky knees and adult acne. It's that I've lost my lustre. It's not depression, that black velvet comforter that keeps a girl in bed with the blinds down; this is more like a set of scratchy flannel pyjamas in an unpleasant shade of ecru. There are no raisins in my oatmeal. One of my sparkplugs has crud in it. My dog won't hunt. My tiara don't sparklie.  Bleah. Just. . . bleah, is all.

Getting knocked up isn't an option this time, but I'm going to put myself on a pregnancy diet again just the same. I'm not talking just blueberries and brazil nuts (tho also blueberries and brazil nuts). I'm going to try to live this day-to-day adventure as though I were uniquely responsible for nurturing a small life inside. But this time it's mine.

There's nothing funny about stage 3 lymphoma

Actually, there is.

To have her intensive biopsy, mom had to remove her dentures, as they were putting her under a general. This is a proud and elegant woman, a stunning beauty, really, even inher 80s. Just the victim of Depression-era dentistry and childhood poverty. Moving on: she didn't like the whole no-teeth thing--it meant she couldn't engage in witty repartee, she couldn't put on a brave smile. Seriously, YOU try to smile bravely while you're in a hospital gown, those ass-ugly slippers AND NO TEETH. She didn't want me looking at her, she didn't want anyone looking at her. Scared and tiny and now no sarcasm to get her through. So I did the only respectful and reassuring thing I could have done, given the circumstances.

I challenged her to a "She sells seashells by the seashore" duel.

And that's the memory I will keep of that hospital corridor: not the fear or that plashy self-pity that comes when you find yourself mothering your own mother, but of the two of us laffing our heads off over what a strange bond we've forged over the past 50 years, one that no stupid cancer could ever chew through.

Kate Moss: For JP

A couple of weeks ago, I went to the Surrey International Writers Conference, which is not the same as the Surrey Internal Writers Conference, which is what I keep typing and which sounds like something from a Catherynne Valente story and hence something that I would very much like to be part of and which also reminds me of some sort of shadowy grad-school memory of hearts autopsied to reveal gems embedded in them or little poems about Jesus. (Sometimes I sharply pine for those deeply odd Californian days, during which I would spend hours not surfing but wrestling with medieval oddities involving wombs and maps and saints and terror. Motherhood in the suburbs has, of course, only the terror to recommend it. I digress. BUT ONLY SORT OF. Read on.)

Back to Surrey.

In front of me at the Master Class led by Donald Maass was a woman who nearly made me lose control of my bladder. (Those of you under 40 or childless might not understand. The rest of you? Yeah, you know what I'm talking about.)

This woman, built like a cathedral, struck terror into my heart. Instantly. It was like love at first sight except for the part about it being a cold visceral chill. Hmmm. Maybe a lot like love at first sight. I'm actually fascinated by these "at first sight" moments, mostly because I'm pretty much always wrong. If I hate someone at first sight, I wind up marrying them (or promising to do so, another story for another time--or three) or realizing that they're the best friend a teenaged girl being threatened with boarding school could ever have. Love at first sight? That equals RUN RUN BRAVE HEART, RUN LIKE THE WIND.

Crap, I'm digressing again. It's little wonder I cannot write my way out of this novel in progress.

SO: buttress lady, terror. Why? you might ask.

It wasn't the way her chair kind of moaned "help me," not the pencils jabbed into her unkempt half-updo, not even the purple terrytowel sweatshirt that reminded me of the very late 1970s. Who doesn't have one of those?

It was because she reminded me of my homicidal grad-school stalker.

Here's the poop: UC Davis, California, 1989. I'm walking with my pal along one of the jasmine-scented pathways that make Davis its perfect hippie self when in a heartbeat I go from being a regular old just walking along minding her own business kind of person to a sprawled upon the pavement, all limbs akimbo plus also her neck, books strewn everywhere, and being looked down upon by common geese kind of person. That's quite the transition. The perp? A solidly built female, clad in a camoflage jacket, on an old-fashioned Garry bicycle. She didn't stop to see if I was okay. Val and I laughed it off and then went about our day of being very serious graduate students, scoffing at people's delusions about Foucault and grading very harshly those among our students who split their infinitives. Such were the preoccupations of the philosophically anxious.

I was to become more anxious still. Over the next five weeks, Lumpy McCycleston wiped me out four more times, all over campus. Rising groggily from the pavement, all I registered in each instance was a purposeful set of shoulders and air-fluffed hair that could have done with a foil treatment and maybe three inches off the ends.There was something about her determinedly pumping legs as seen from behind and from the ground that reminded me of animated dinosaurs--not the plant eaters, the big awful snarling rippers of bronto flesh kind. The fear I felt was cold and true--and the hilarity of the situation only intensified the sickness in my stomach; if she killed me, finally, or paralyzed me, or ruined my peaches and cream complexion with a road rash, it would be only a story sniggered in bars by beery undergrads. So much for intellectual ambition--I was marked as a campus footnote, a stain on a bike path where plastic flowers lay discarded for only a semester. I should go home now. I should buy a plane ticket home.

We never did discover who my stalker was. The beautiful blonde police girl couldn't stop laughing as I described my plight but dutifully went through the roster of my former students with me, trying to discern who among them might have gained 50 or 60 pounds and been dissatisfied with their grades. And then I got married and moved to Los Angeles, where the threats were more serious, if considerably more slender. Ever after I've wondered who she was, why she wanted me dead, and why she didn't look into some deep conditioner. 

And when I sat down at that Master Class, my eyes bright with purpose but slightly unfocused as middle-aged eyes tend to be, the first thing I registered once composed was: three inches of unkept hair, square shoulders, thighs built for terror. In an instant I was back on the pavement, contemplating winkie beetle pheremone trails and asking myself and the heavens again "Why me?" Suddenly I was feeling small and forgotten--this time, by a publishing industry who had never heard of me and never would. I should go home now.

I learned a big lesson that night about story-telling. Some of it was from Mr Maass, an insightful person; most of it, though, was from re-experiencing terror, 20 years and 1500 miles later, thanks to the split ends and solid calves of a complete stranger. You might as well write for your own pleasure, because you have absolutely no way of knowing how anyone else is going to respond to what you put out there. To whom else do split ends and generous thighs spell soul-killing defeat, grazed elbows and the end of all ambition? 

Apart from Kate Moss, maybe.

Curiosity Cleaned the Kid

Bank lineups have never been Kid's finest milieu. He's a squirmer, a dasher, a smart-mouthed noter of other people's footwear flaws. He has made it clear that Russian accents drive him crazy; that the old lady with the long hair didn't brush her teeth that morning; that "Rufus" is a weird name; that the guy in the track suit is even fatter than Fat Albert; that what did they think he was, a midget bankrobber what with the teller's counter so high above his head? I shudder when we have to go in there together; if my bank wasn't in a kinda sketchy strip mall habituated by Timmy's devotees in pickups, I'd just lock him in the car and go in on my own. I would. I would do that.  Because it has been so bad that people might be given cause to think that we haven't beent trying even a little bit--even though we have been trying very very hard, and have the livers and wrinkles to prove it. But yesterday the slate was wiped clean (literally). Suffice it to say that Kid now knows not to stick his face into the business of how automatic hand sanitizers work, and 11 people in line at the Royal Bank on a Saturday morning got a good long belly laugh. Twelve.

New Pet

Haven't been around here much the last little while. We're renovating the kitchen, about which I'll never speak again because who cares, AND, AND we have a new pet. It takes a lot of hard work, and a lot of my time and energy to banish it from my thoughts. Is it because it is so very that much cute? Winsome in it ways? It is not. It is because it is this:

Meet "Slick," our mealworm.

CBE cuts must have been pretty drastic this year, because instead of a classroom hamster or duckling or even fish, each Grade 3 child at Kid's school was given a mealworm to keep in a plastic cup.

The first question I had was the most obvious one: What are they teaching kids these days? One look at Slick, and I knew she was Grace Slick...honestly-- honestly, now: have you ever seen a more feminine looking mealworm in your whle life? Me neither. It's not easy to find darling pet accessories for mealworms--not even a measly hair ribbon or a bedazzled collar. I worry about Grace Slick now, a lot. What if she wakes up one day and is gender confused? Not that it would bother me one way or another, I just want her to be in a loving relationship, but still: there might be a way to make life easier for her and I think it might be marabou. Yet, I don't think the teachers have even broached the subject of gender, which: HELLO? Is that not the first thing anyone of any age would wonder upon first laying eyes on a mealworm?

One day, sadly, Grace Slick will be turning into a beetle of some sort--or such is the nonsense with which they're filling Kid's head. I see her more as a Ramone or perhaps a Dandy Warhol. Although she would look smashing in this:

That there is a Victorian dress decorated in more than 1,000 beetle wings. It was once worn by Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth.

If you had been asked five minutes ago how to draw a logical line between Calgary Board of Education cutbacks, mealworms, Grace Slick and Lady Macbeth, you wouldn't have been able to do it, would you have?

My work here is done.

The Truth Hurts

Me: Why in the name of all that is good and decent, WHY WILL YOU NOT TO GO BED?
Kid: I don't want to miss all the fun!
Me: What do you think goes on around here once you're in bed?
Kid: Well, you check your chin for whiskers--but dad watches TV til midnight!