What Fantasy Women Think

I've been sick again, so that's probably it.

Despite everything fabulous about me, sometimes I just have a downer kind of a mood.  Yesterday was like that.  It takes energy to keep being fabulous.  I was feeling a little picked on, picked at, picked over, and peculiar.

Even my baby saying, "We belong here," as he happily folded himself up on my lap after several days of quarantine did not completely dispel my mood, although it went a long way toward it.

Then, I had a dream.

In my dream, my daughter had been invited to a wedding of someone obviously older than her that I didn't know.  I went to drive the wedding gift my daughter had picked out to the bride's parents' home, which took me straight east, up a steep hill into a very rich area of town.  The hill was so steep, in fact, that my used car started to slow down and flounder.  If I could only make it to the next intersection at the top of the hill!  I decided to turn off the road and look at the wedding invitation again for the address, or a map.  

This family was obviously way richer than our family.

I don't remember if I got the present delivered before the dream switched on me.

I was back at home, only it was really my parents' home--the one I had grown up in.  The mother of the bride and the bride had come to my home instead of the other way around.  

I wasn't prepared for this to happen.  I looked around me, and the house was a mess and I wasn't dressed. Given the state of things, I tried not to receive these women.  I even went so far as to hurry into my mother's bedroom and hold the door shut.  

The other women went so far as to knock and push on the door, demanding to be allowed to expose me in all my "glory."

They won.

They were in my old bedroom then that I had as a girl, watching me flounder to try to get dressed in front of them.  I looked in my closet and my chest of drawers, but things were not in the order that I keep them.  I couldn't find anything to wear.  I found myself making excuse after excuse. "I've been sick.  I usually plan my wardrobe ahead of time and have things all lined up.  I don't know how I got so behind.  I am usually tidier than this--I don't know what happened.  These clothes fit better before Christmas."  Et cetera.

The other, glamorous (of course), women were patient, but still there, looking in on my disaster.  I felt like, given the evidence around them, they couldn't possibly believe my statements that I usually do better than that.  

In the closet, I found a yellow dress (that I don't own) and tried clumsily to pair it with a black skirt.  I asked their opinion.  I kept talking, hoping to convince them that I am not such a personal catastrophe in real life.

I suppose one could call this a nightmare.

I woke from it feeling like my spirit had holes.

I wondered if I would be able to go back to sleep.

No, of course my true circumstances are not as bad as they were in the dream, but being sick does always put me behind in my personal goals.  Things fall apart a little bit, which I hate but cannot avoid.  I don't like feeling like I'm living in the fairy tale where every time the suitor axes one chip out of a tree that he's trying to cut down, two more grow in its place.  I try to be patient and forgiving of myself during weeks like this.  I try to listen to the voice of the kind me over the one that drives me.

Turning over, I crumpled into a ball, wrapping my arms around that hole in my spirit, so it wouldn't ache.

A "tender mercy" came.  I remembered something I had done last night, right before going to sleep.  I had extended a kindness to my husband by offering to take on one of his jobs to mitigate the extra load he has taken on at work.  I had assured him that I would be able to handle it just fine.  He had seemed so tired that I just couldn't stand the thought of him staying up late to work on something between two extra-long days at work.

The kind voice in my head asserted itself.  "That's the real me," it said.

I smiled and told myself to go ahead and believe that.  Never mind what the rich, glamorous fantasy women I'd made up thought of me.  If I could extend kindness to my husband so he could sleep, I could do the same for myself.

So, I did.

A Small Lump of Massachusetts

So, I'm sitting in church, minding my own business.

Well, I'm mostly minding my own business and trying to listen to the speaker.

Suddenly, a red-and-yellow object is thrust in front of my face.  "Afghanistan!" is whispered loudly at me.

I pull my baby's etch-a-sketch down to where I can see it.  On a tiny, two-inch by three-inch screen, he has drawn the outline of Afghanistan.  I nod.

Strangely enough, this is not exactly strange.  He's been drawing states for months.  He can get through all fifty in the time it takes four speakers and a musical number to wind down in the front of the chapel.  And I have come upon the volume A encyclopedia lying open on the floor--in front of the living room bookcase, or on his bed, or on the floor in his bedroom--several times.

But.  I do realize that not everyone's kindergartener is drawing Afghanistan in church, so I turn to my husband and whisper, "He drew Afghanistan."  I do this for the shared smile we give each other whenever one of our kids does something amusing.  

I turn my attention back (mostly) to the current speaker.  The speakers today are all high school kids who read their talks too fast for the concepts to seep in very deeply.  They are doing their best, but I am restless today.  And annoyed by something that happened right before church.  

I stare ahead blankly until I am nudged again.

"This is one quadrant of the earth," my brainy baby says, "from the prime meridian west and north of the equator."  He's missing his two top teeth now, so he's cuter than ever.

Again, I look down at the tiny screen.  North America is plainly drawn there, along with other partial continents and islands.  He points out this and that on the map. I want to squeeze his head, where all this smartness is, in a burst of affection, but I don't.  Like I said, I'm a little feisty today.  

 "Where are you?" I ask.  

He looks at me in surprise.

"Where's the church?"  

The North America he has drawn is about a one-and-a-quarter-inches squared area. I take his wand and calculate about where our city would be on the map and make a dot.

"That's on the border of Nevada and California!" he hisses at me.

I make another dot slightly up and over from that.

"The exact same spot," he says, his voice dripping with disgust.  

I laugh and hand the toy back to him. "Draw the southeast quadrant," I suggest.

A few minutes later, I am nudged again.  I look at the screen, expecting to see Australia looming large on it. But I don't.  "Where's Australia?" I ask him.  He points to a small object, accurate in shape, floating up in the middle of the screen.

A few minutes later, he shows me another picture.  Antarctica is sprawled all across the bottom of the screen, like it is on the placemat map he carries all over the house, and South America is clearly coming down toward it, joining it for a quarter of an inch. "That's good, but they don't touch," I remind him.

He looks stunned.  Wounded!  "What do you mean?"

"They don't touch," I repeat.

He recoils again.  "Touch what?"

"Each other."  

He erases his board.  

I am not prepared for what happens next.  He holds up a picture of a blob with mini rectangles and squares attached all around the outside of it.  "That's Atlanta!" he says.  

A city!

Okay, to me, it's one thing to have a picture in your head of how the earth looks or a country or a state.  But I couldn't draw a semi-accurate outline of my own city for a million dollars.  I nudge my husband again. "Now he's drawing cities," I tell him.  We share a look of wonderment.

But, wait!  There's more.

In the children's group, the song leader puts a sign with three Chinese characters up on the board.  "Can anyone read that?" she asks, kind of smart-alecky.

"Happy New Year!" my baby calls out.  "In Chinese."  

I whip around to look.  She confirms that he is right, and everyone laughs.

This kid can state all of the United States in alphabetical order and their capitals in alphabetical order.  He can list them by size and by date of entrance into the Union.  The.  Whole.  Lists.  I could guess the three biggest and the three smallest, the two oldest and the two newest, but that's about it.  And I've read the encyclopedia, too.

It's not just memorization.  He understands this stuff.  

I had tested his understanding of a new concept the day before.  "Suppose we compare the list of order and the list of size to find out which state would come out on top as far as newest and smallest," I suggested.  

My husband threw me a look like, "What are you trying to do?  Explode his head?"

But I thought he could do it.

"Hawaii!" he called out.  

"Very good," I said.  Then we discussed which state would be the oldest and biggest.  We discussed Alaska, Pennsylvania, New York, and Georgia as possible candidates.  I pointed out to him that, yes, Alaska is first in size, but 49th in age, so it would end up in the middle of the combined list.  We finally decided Georgia, 24th in size but fourth in entry to the union, would be the winner, then discussed that Virginia was much larger when it was made a state than it is now.  I thought maybe California, third in size, would be a candidate, but my baby knew that it is thirty-first in entry, so it would fall behind Georgia. 

And I haven't even mentioned that the week before, after I'd frosted a cake, my brainy baby had pointed out that the spatula had (accidentally) left a pretty good facsimile of the United States on one side of the cake. Nor that he said last night at dinner, "My meatloaf looks like a small lump of Massachusetts."

I just hope this kid keeps pouring what's in his head out for all of us to see and hear for the rest of my hilarious life.

Where's the Dummy?

My son and my daughter both tried out to be in the school play.  They got small parts.  I was happy for them.  My daughter told me she was one of the dancers.

"What part did you get?" I asked my son.

"The ventriloquist."

"Ventriloquist!" I said in surprise.  "I don't remember one of those in this play."

"They added it," he told me.

So, I shuffled them home from play practice over and over, quite happily, because, hey, one of the funnest things in life is watching your own children perform on a stage.  I was very proud of my oldest son at his graduation when he got his master's degree, but, to be honest, the time when I really thought my heart was going to burst wide open with pride and drench everyone in the audience around me was when he pulled off, with no hesitation or bashfulness at all, a song and dance in a coconut bra.  Why?  Because he did such a good job, and everyone was laughing to the point of rolling in the aisles.  That was MY SON up there!  

After one of these play practices, my younger son told me I was supposed to come up with the dummy for his act.

"Ho no!" I breathed.  "I don't think so."  It's not like we have a dummy in the closet.

I thought about it.  If I had a dummy, of course I would hand it right over.  But I don't even know where one would go to purchase something like that.  I couldn't recall ever seeing one in any kind of store.  And it's not like we can make one, or send little sister's doll.  Dummies have a very specific look about them, and their jaws have to move.

After all, I hadn't had to buy the coconut bra.  It was a prop.  And, as far as I know, I haven't volunteered to be the props mistress for this play.  I am happy to supply two of the actors and the treat every now and then--and I absolutely intend to come and watch it--but that pretty much maxes out my ability to support this school play.

"You'll have to tell your director that we aren't going to be able to come up with the dummy," I told my son one evening.  He didn't argue.

But, the next thing I heard, the expectation for the dummy was still on us.

"Didn't you tell her?" I asked.

"She said, 'Try harder.'"

My heart sank and fizzed.  Try harder to what?  To say that we can't take on that responsibility?  Why did she add a ventriloquist to the play if she didn't know how to get a dummy? 

"What did you say exactly?"

"I said, 'We can't come up with the dummy.'"

"Can't is pretty clear," I agreed.

I didn't know what to do.  Is it really my responsibility to provide a dummy?  And how would I do that?  It's one thing to say, "Wear black flats" or "Wear a white shirt."  Coming up with a prop that unusual and specific just seems too much to expect.

"Your uncle used to have a dummy," I told him my son.  I didn't hold out much hope that he would still have it.  A pack rat he is not, and he has risen to higher and higher levels of responsibility since he was twelve.  But I gave my son his phone number and helped him figure out what to say to him.

He took the phone into the other room and came back about a minute later.  "He said if he still had it, he would be glad to give it to me," my son said.  I smiled.  My brother always was a good diplomat.  But, no, he probably gave up the dummy decades ago.

Try harder.

Am I a dummy if I don't bust my buttons finding a dummy for my son's play?  Or am I a dummy if I do bust my buttons just because someone with no authority over me said I should?

I posted a request to borrow a dummy on Facebook.  Apparently, I am not alone in my dummylessness.  At least, none of my friends will admit to having one, or is willing to let us borrow it if he does.

The play isn't being performed until next month.  Perhaps a dummy will find us somehow.  In the meantime, I may have to craft a well-worded email. 

How are these, for starters?

I am no dummy, and I have no dummy.

or

I've tried saying dum-dum-dum-DUM! without success.

or

Will the real dummy please stand up?

or

Sorry.  We C-A-N-'-T come up with the dummy.

Balance that Hairdo!

Some time ago, I walked into a public restroom to find two old women talking as if they were young women.

"I can't wear red at all.  It just completely washes all the color out of me."

Surprised, I ducked into a stall, listening to them talk and compare what they look "best" and "awful" in.

Not to be rude, but these women were very old.  The color was already completely washed out of them.  I honestly doubted anyone would have noticed whether they looked different in red or blue.

But they cared.

It forced me to reexamine my assumptions.  Reexamining assumptions is excellent exercise.  I recommend it for everyone.  It can clear the brain better than a robust jog in the misty dawn.

First, it made me realize what, in the first place, my assumption was.  I realized that I must have assumed, sometime back, that old women didn't care what they looked like anymore.  That concern about this curl or that blemish or some pair of jeans making one look fat ended somewhere along the way.  That, as long as they were clean and appropriately dressed, old women were probably content to look however they looked.

I know this assumption fueled my reckless behavior when I was a very young woman, sunbathing.  Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew that this was a dangerous choice that could give me trouble in decades to come.  But I'll be old then, I rationalized.  I won't care how I look.

But I'm half old, and I still care.  At least, halfway.

I no longer spend inordinate amounts of time gazing into the mirror or stress too much over this or that.  For one thing, I've gotten more efficient at taking care of myself.  On the other hand, I've had to accept that some things just are and move on.

But I have to admit that just being clean and appropriately dressed does not cover it for me.  I still smile to see a glimmer of beauty emerge.  I still take care that my pantyhose are perfect and cannot conceive of succumbing to a muumuu.  I still like compliments.  I now have to assume that we all do.

As far as self-care is concerned, I guess I'd characterize myself as a blessed conservative moderate.  Moderate, because I do think grooming is important, that appearances do influence, and that people ought to do the best they can with what they have, reasonably. And, by reasonably, I mean with some effort but not an inordinate amount of effort, and with some expense involved, but not a lot of money spent.  Conservative, because I really do not spend much time or money, by most people's standards, on my appearance. And blessed, because I've never really felt I had to spent a lot of time or money to be presentable.

I guess I think that, unless one is unusually blessed, one should spend some effort on appearance.  And even the most naturally fortunate need to at least be clean and appropriately attired.  I also think that it's a waste of money and time, and, really, kind of sad, to chase an illusion of beauty by pouring an unbalanced amount of resources into the project.

We all know women--and men, for that matter--who go to one extreme or another on this issue.  We know people who rely a bit too heavily on natural appearance and never do anything with their hair or other aspects of their appearance.  We know people who change their hairstyle and color so much that we cannot easily recognize them from day to day.

And then there are those who spend a great deal of effort in remaining the same.  (I'll never run for president, because I wouldn't want to have to get a haircut every single day.)  I once worked with a woman, for example, who still sported a beehive from the sixties.  This was not a resurgence of an old style--she had done this to herself daily since then--confirmed when she told me, "I use the same hairdresser I had in high school."  I'd just nodded, trying to keep my face blank while I made a mental note.

I know another woman who has not only kept the same hairstyle since she was perhaps twelve, but has worn the exact same barrette in it.

I want to fall somewhere between the two extremes.  Of course, there's a very big middle there.

A couple of months ago, people started noticing that I was close to my ideal weight.  Instead of commenting on that, though, they started saying to me, "I love your new hairstyle!"  This was happening so often that I had to take note of and analyze it for its origin.  But when I heard myself saying to friends, "I haven't changed my hair in twelve years," I realized I was falling out of the middle to one end of the extreme.

So, the last time I got my hair cut, I requested something new.  And I brought up this subject with the woman cutting my hair.  She clearly deals with this issue with women of all ages.

Yes, she confirmed, women of all ages want to look their best.  (Now, I'm wondering if that is natural, or a product of our overly superficial society.)

And all women seem to make up rules they follow about how to best achieve that.  As in many other things, balance is where I think it's at.

Teaching a Life Skill

My baby seemed fine about doing his Saturday chores, then he hit his wall.

One minute, he was cheerfully wiping down the kitchen wastebasket with a Lysol wipe, chirping, "It looks better already!"  The next, I heard his bedroom door slam over the words, "I hate work."

Clearly, there were a number of responses I could have made.

I nudged the door open with my toe.  "You seemed fine a minute ago," I said, making sure I had a kind, understanding tone.  "Did you run into a job that seemed like too much?"

"Yes," he said.  It was working.  "Fifty things in my room."

"Well, let's break it down then," I suggested.  "Can you do five things?"

"Yes."  He told me what each one of the things was as he picked it up.  He wanted to be witnessed for all of his hard work.

I've been known to trick younger children with methods like this--get them to do what I want them to do without them realizing they are doing it, but this kid is beyond that, and, besides, my goal this time was beyond having his bedroom tidy. It was to teach him a life skill: what can I do to cope/keep functioning when I get overwhelmed?

"That means you have forty-five left," I observed.  "Do you think you can do forty-five, or does that still sound like too much?"

"Too much."  He was totally cooperating.  No fits, no whining.

"Just do five more, then," I suggested.

"Okay."

"That will bring it down to forty."

He again reported on each one as he picked it up.

We negotiated for five more, and he observed on his own, "That will make it fifteen that I've done."

"Yes, and you'll have thirty-five left.  Isn't that neat that the number you've done keeps going up, and the number you have left keeps going down?"

Then I asked him if thirty-five sounded like a number he could manage.

"The most I can do," he said, quite seriously, "is twenty-seven."

But he took it from there.  I heard from him again when he had twenty-four left, then fourteen, then his brother's age, then his own age.

"That is so exciting!" I enthused with him.

Soon, he was back.  "I'm all done!"  He gave me six high-fives.

The tidy bedroom is a temporary thing.  But the feeling of being overwhelmed will hit him again and again and again.  Even long after I'm no longer here for him to turn to.

I hope that's the work done today that will stick.

The Big Reveal

My new assignment at work gives me a lot of downtime.  Which has allowed me a chance to investigate new horrors encroaching on the human race that I never would have dreamed of.

Like, ultrasound reveal parties!

(Because baby showers aren't enough.)

Get this.  You invite all your friends over so you can bare your pregnant belly in the sloppy horizontal position (very unhostesslike, I always think) in the middle of them so that a technician can show them all--since they can already see your skin--what else lies beneath your skin.  The baby, and whatever else.

Now, everyone present may not be trained to read a sonogram, but it still seems to me like a bad idea.

Not only is it a loss of privacy for you, but just imagine what it must be like for your fetus!  There s/he is, minding her own business, when, suddenly, dozens of eyes are trained right on her.  In the privacy of her own room.  And she won't be wearing anything at all!

This could go on the list of Things Kids Can Sue Their Parents for Later.

Besides that, lots of things could go wrong.  I mean, think about it.  This should be what's otherwise known as a private medical moment.  Everything is not always hunkey-dorey-dorey.

In other words, your party could fall flat.

You could embarrass not only yourself, but your spouse/partner, and every single guest, including the ultrasound tech.

I know I'm getting old, but this tendency to try to focus everyone in our world on me, me, me! has gotten a little out of hand.

Weddings are now affairs so elaborate that they take a year or two to plan and finance.  There can't just be a wedding, a reception, a rehearsal dinner, a bridal shower, a bachelor party, and a honeymoon.  Now there are also what seem to be less and less "optional" events to include a staged engagement, a bachelorette party in another state, and on and on and on and on.

I recently heard of a party at which you tell your guests that they are NOT going to be invited to the wedding although you really do love them dearly, and so they are to sign up to help you pick out your dress or some other wedding-related activity for an event they are not allowed to come to.

Fun.

Another growing trend is to skip formalities for weddings, showers, graduations, and even deaths in the family, and just tell people where they can send their checks.

People in our lives are happy to participate in our major life events, to a point, people, but let's not overdo it.

Let's take care what, exactly, we choose to reveal about ourselves.  It might not be what we think.

Temporary Victory to the Other Me

I was fine when I last went to the gym.  Completely fine.

Except for my ankle, of course.

Five days earlier, my ankle had started being stiff.  It hadn't been twisted.  There was no event that hurt it.  I got into a hot tub and let it soak, then massaged it while still in the water.  I took Ibuprofen.  I wrapped it.  I did those things more than once.  I babied it.  Well, some.  

It's hard to completely baby your ankle at this time of year when you have so much sugar-repenting to do.

Finally, by Saturday, though, I was humbled.  My ankle had become much worse.  I could barely walk on Friday.  I'd asked all the pregnant women I'd had to lead up the stairs, "Would you prefer the elevator?"

All of them said, "No, I'm fine."

All of them.

Dang!

So, even though I'd joked with my boss that I'd baby my ankle around the ten miles I planned to run on it, I became humbler and humbler until I really did baby it.

I took a novel with me.

I hardly ever read or even watch TV when I'm at the gym.  I'm working too hard.  And I'm concentrating.

But, last time, I took with me a new novel that had shown up in my bedroom (thank you, mother-in-law, I think), and I set the treadmill on my slowest usual walking pace, and I just walked and read.  If you saw what I usually do, you would understand that that is babying.

After a few minutes, I turned the speed down.  Then, again, and again.  I turned it down five times, and, in the end, had not walked very far at all.

I ran out of time, but, also, I told myself to stop worrying--I really did need to baby my ankle, and that was enough exercise for the day.  At times like this, there are two mes, and they argue.  One me says, "You have to take care of yourself and get some rest."  The other me says, "Exercising is taking care of myself."  And they fight a lot and I have to be the referee.

"You're a big baby stepping off the treadmill already," one me says to the other me.  "And you're a big baby, too, for not wanting to be careful with us!" shouts back the other me.

I wasn't even sweating.  I had to keep self-talking all the way out the door, because, aside from my ankle, I was just fine.  FINE.  And I knew the 128 calories I'd burned while walking and reading would not put a dent in the sugar I'd eaten over the holidays.

Right after I'd gotten home, though, and moved clothes out of and into the dryer and had a glass of water and my shower, I felt a little tickle in my throat.  I typically go into denial at that point for as long as I can, but I grabbed an Airborne just in case.

A half hour later, I was lying in bed on my heating pad, trying to warm up my freezing cold feet, hands, arms, and even legs.  My husband offered to gas my car if I met him at the store, and I declined.  "Actually, I feel like I'm getting sick," I said.

And my other self stuck out her tongue at me in my head and said, "Baby!"

An hour after that, I had a full-blown sinus infection.

"We're in trouble," I told both mes, and they stopped fighting and went to see if I had any antibiotics left from last time.

I've had doctors simply not believe I could develop a sinus infection as fast as I can.  But that's only because they are not one of the two mes.  "You'd have to have had a cold for at least ten days," one doctor once told me.  And, another, when I described all the copious green disgusting symptoms that I won't go into here, said, "Sounds like a virus."  I wanted to slap him.  Everything I'd described had been the opposite of a virus.

Another doctor tried to tell me that my symptoms were the result of blood.  She may have green blood, but I do not.  

I'm not dumb.  I know what a virus is.  A cold is from a virus, and I know that an antibiotic won't touch it.  But a cold has certain symptoms that last a certain amount of time and then go away.  Unless they develop into a secondary infection.

I guess I'm just special, but I have that secondary infection just waiting there, like a bad dream, ready to come out at any time.  I'm the champion sinus-infection developer of all time!  If it were an Olympic event, I'd have the gold medal.  Usually, though, it takes getting chilled, extreme stress, a cold, or a night without sleep for it to happen to me.

Sinus infections have put my life in danger before (long story), and I'm fierce about staying here to raise my children.  

"I'm sorry," I apologized to my husband for being sick.  "But I didn't do anything to cause this."

I called my doctor's nurse first thing this morning. Well, not first thing, but as soon as they were open.  My doctor is famous for operating on a chimpanzee at the zoo.  I try not to think about that.  His nurse has told me that I'm to call her as soon as I come down with something and doesn't say any of the stupid things other doctors have said.  "I haven't heard from you in a long while," she said.  "I thought you didn't love me."

"Oh, believe me, I love you," I assured her.

We talked varieties and symptoms and over-the-counter measures and time-frames and all kinds of things only interesting to people who live in the sinus infection culture.

So, no gym today, either, and I'm making that me just shut up.  My white flag is out.  Victory to the ankle, the sugar, the sickness, and the lazy me.

("Temporary victory," whispers the other me.)