The Personality of Spoons

Posted on August 21, 2013 by cloverhays

Recently I have discovered that I have a recognized condition. While I am sad to discover myself in the psychiatric handbook, I guess it’s good to know I’m not alone.

All my life, I’ve given personalities to things. Not just animals, but things. I remember vividly having a crying meltdown when my dad traded our old finned Oldsmobile for his trendy new Pinto. (This came along with sideburns and boots that zipped up the inside, but none of them lasted very long). I felt so guilty as our old car, grey and squat sat amongst the shiny new compacts, looking grim and afraid. I refused to oooh and ahhh over the new car as it was brought around to the front, while Rhinestone Cowboy played over the loudspeaker, for us to take home lest our beloved old ride overhear and feel betrayed.

This came to my mind today when I was putting the silverware away out of the dishwasher and discovered a sterling spoon hiding under the other spoons. The spoon carried such an aura of distain and long suffering superiority that I had to laugh. I swear, when I put “him” back in his felt lined box where he belonged, I heard him exclaiming to all the other upper crust about his harrowing experience with the hoi polloi.

In literature, this is called “personification”. I read a book not long ago where the heroine believed objects picked up parts of the people who used them most. They became familiar to them. In psychiatry, this little quirk is called “anthropomorphic fallacy”. Fallacy doesn’t sound very nice. It makes it seem as if this isn’t true and I might be a little…crazy?

We all do this, to a point. Lots of people name their cars and give them personalities. Stuffed animals are a prime example. To this day, when I see my childhood lovey, I feel the urge to tell him I’m sorry I grew up and that I still love him just as much, deep in my heart, but that a grown woman is whispered about when she drags a dog with no ears and a hole in his neck that bleeds stuffing to a cocktail party.

This problem has caused me to go back and buy ugly things for whom I felt sorry, imagine screams when I’ve divided hosta, keep pilled old blankets because I didn’t want them to feel their times were over. It’s ridiculous, really. The inner voices I give animals are even worse. When I shoo a bee from the car I imagine how scary it is to be dropped off, miles from home, with no hope of ever seeing his family again. When I throw away single socks, I have to screw my lips shut so I won’t apologize to them.

My children were late gettng teeth and loosing them. Cricket was 7 and a half before she lost her first tooth. She is such a drama queen over blood that I had been preparing her for months. When the tooth finally dislodged, in a restaurant, she was all smiles. Then I made the fatal mistake of making up a little song, which I cleverly entitled “Little Tooth”, from the tooth’s perspective. I should have never intimated that the tooth might be sad to leave because it caused such a sobbing fit that she has never fully gotten over it. Sadly, I have passed on my mania to her. There was a big debate when she decided to move up from her pretty single sleigh bed to my teenage antique iron one. What would the old bed think? She had been happy in that bed! Is it any wonder that she so identified with Belle in Beauty and the Beast when she was little? All those talking cups and saucers.

That was when she was little. Cricket has food issues that are beside the point, but recently, at 19, she got a bowl of pasta somewhere and a noodle was awry. Awry meaning it was clinging to the edge of the bowl, still IN the bowl, but could have possibly touched something germy. This made her want to discard it and I saw her debating. When I asked her what the problem was she replied “well, it is this noodle’s sole purpose in life to be eaten and now, I’m just tossing it away”. Dear Lord, I did that to her.

HOWEVER, I alone cannot take the blame here. Last week, I was shopping with my groovy new birth mother and she bought a pepper shaker. She claims to collect individual salt OR pepper shakers, not in sets, just sitting there alone, because she feels sorry for them. And, right there in the middle of Isle C of the antique market, I began to see that insanity might indeed be inherited, and in this way, I might just pass the buck.

The Giant Umbilical Cord

Posted on August 18, 2013 by cloverhays

Just a few weeks ago my son, The Boy, went away on a mission trip. On this trip, they could not take their phones nor communicate back home in any way. They left on a Sunday morning and by Thursday, I was willing to fly, drive, swim or make smoke signals just to hear from him. I picked up my phone to text him a hundred times and then sighed and put it back down.

Let me digress by saying that The Boy and I are not in the best of places. He’s been my sweet and snuggly child since birth. Never any trouble, affable, effortless popular with his peers and a certified chick magnet. My house has always been the place where his friends gather and I am close to them as well. About the time he was fifteen and a half, he left for school and a demon came home wearing his body. “Hi! How was school? I missed you!” I chirped when he came in the door, my arms flung wide for a hug, and something reptilian moved behind his eyes and he snarled and slunk to his room. A sullen, entitled changeling snuggled beneath the sheets on which I had used extra lavender scented fabric softener. A demon sighed every time I asked it where it was going when it headed to its car (that I gave it). In its eyes, I ceased to be cool, which I know is not the case in reality, so I can only assume that The Boy had been possessed.

From that day forward, I’ve seen glimpses of my darling boy, sometimes weeks of sweetness, and then the monster gets control again.

I should have expected this. Cricket went through the same thing, only her great rebellion was black eyeliner, screaming music and an attitude that caused her to be nicknamed “Black Heart”. She popped right out of that at about 17 and has been the sweet dream she was most of her life since then.

I never thought it would happen to The Boy, though, the happiest child on Earth. No matter how much his monster is in control, we still do a fair amount of texting during the day and even that manages to convey a devilish snippiness. A sampling of a recent conversation:

Me: Hey! Where are you?

Boy: In my room?

Me: Is that in question or are you confused about punctuation?

Boy: …

Me: Could you call me please?

Boy: I can’t, my phone is broken

Brilliant response, oh bright one.

Being out of contact made me realize just how much I communicate with my family. Those experts who say that family communication is dead are just wrong.

Cricket and I send approximately 2,000,000 text daily. She texts me about what everyone is wearing in her class, whether it rained when she was walking to her building and what cute boys were at the gym. Then, we discuss people we know. I tell her I just used Soft Scrub on the sink and removed a troubling stain. I tell her I’m at the carwash. I tell her when I am mad at The Goose and why. She backs me up. Next, I tell her all is well and she agrees that he’s the best dad ever. I tell her what her brother wore to school, what I think about the girl he’s dating, the fact that I had to stop for gas and my current calorie count for the day. She texts me that her hair is frizzy and she’s not happy with her shoes.

The Goose texts me his demands for the day. Have I taken the trash to the street? Are his shirts back from the cleaners? Did I call the gas company about a problem? He tells me who he saw at Matthew’s Cafeteria at lunch. He texts me links to news stories in which he knows I have no interest. He texts me to come upstairs to his office. On the way up, I get a text that he needs a Mountain Dew and while going back downstairs to get it, another that he needs his glasses. When he goes to the lake without me, he usually imbibes, out of loneliness from missing me I guess, and drunk texts me silly teenage type declarations of love that cause me to blush and giggle.

The Goose talked with his mother daily. I called it the “Giant Umbilical Cord”. I kinda regret this now that my kids are almost grown because I can’t imagine how often I’ll contact them during the day once I don’t actually see them every day.

My point is, we communicate A LOT.

The Boy got a phone in the 5th grade. Those of you without sin, just get over it. He then proceeded to send 6 consecutive phones through the washing machine, in the pockets of his pants. He would take his allowance and go right back out to Target and plunk down another $12.99 for a new one. I kept waiting for the lesson to sink in. Since then, he has continued to destroy phones, one after another, and our family’s DRAWER OF TECHNOLOGY SHAME is overflowing. I confess that we have all contributed to this. All just to stay connected.

(I know, it’s embarrassing, our drawer of shame)

Here’s the thing. Several days into the week, I had forgotten all the things about The Boy that have gotten on my nerves. I remembered that he really is sweet most of the time, is a great kid, stays out of trouble, mostly, and chooses to bring his friends home instead of roaming the streets with hookers and drugs. He actually does hug me often, even if it is the bone crunching, rib breaking kind. He pokes me, punches my arm and stands next to me, commenting on my height, a teenage boy’s way of showing love. He was on a mission trip, not lying on a beach in PC wondering where his pants got to last night. He is a moral, funny, loyal young man who would be there for any of us in a minute. Some of his friends stayed at my house, having chosen not to go home but to just wait out the week here, and I overheard them, lounging in their pajamas every morning, talking about how much they missed him and counting the days until he came home. There is a FB page where they posted daily pictures of the trip and we scoured each one until we found him, looking cute in a straw hat. At no point did I fume about the state of his closet or glower over the glasses and chip bags left in the basement.

Maybe there is something to “absence makes the heart grow fonder” because I arrived to pick him up an hour early, straining my ears for the sound of his bus and the sight of his tan, sleep deprived self almost brought me to tears. If a week can do this for a teenage boy, maybe we’re all TOO connected? Possibly this is why kids come home from college, husbands come home from business trips, even soldiers come home from oversees and seem all new and shiny, seemingly without their demons in tow. It is conceivable that we just communicate too much and should go back to a time when communication was just face to face? Nah, LOL. TTYL. 🙂

The Last One Standing Collects the Life Insurance (or, Secrets to a Happy Marriage)

Posted on August 13, 2013 by cloverhays

I just got my annual anniversary letter from the pastor that married The Goose and me, so I’ve been thinking about marriage today.

This morning, my good friend called for our usual chat. I could tell by her voice that she was not happy. When I asked what was wrong, she replied, “My husband is a dick”. This made laugh because she has one of the happiest marriages on earth and because she chose to call him that. Her husband worships the ground she walks on and she adores him. But, like any other human beings, they’re going to have moments where they look at each other and say, “what the heck was I thinking?”.

I’ve heard a lot of TV talk show hosts, psychologists, preachers, therapists and professionals dispense a big bunch of nonsense about marriage. If you want a good marriage, ask someone who has done time in one. Most of the time I feel like I have a great one. If I were to give a piece of my mind to a newlywed, here’s what I’d say:

No one tells you you’re going to look at love’s young dream one day and say “ugh”. It happens. The good thing is it doesn’t last. Sometimes, it lasts a day, sometimes a month. It comes back around. Just do something else (not someone else) until you like your significant other again. Read a book, organize something, build storage shelves. One day soon, you’ll look up and they’ll be ALL THAT again plus your closets will look nice.
Don’t marry for passion. Oh, good sex never goes away. It continues to be fun and great, but there will come a time when you won’t feel the need to pull your partner into a public bathroom for a quickie quite as often, you’ll almost never do it in the car anymore and, I know it’s hard to believe, you’ll occasionally think you’d really rather prefer that extra hour of sleep, even though it’s not nice to say so. You’ll begin to think of your back pain. One day, your husband will walk into the bathroom after the deed and you’ll notice he is still wearing black socks. Eventually, he’ll throw a leg over yours and there will be a noise like the chirping of a cricket because your legs aren’t shaved. This is the reality of marriage. It’s not a bad thing, you’ll still do it, but you’d better have some other common interests. (Also, never, ever, ever google “naked man in black socks” when looking for a picture to post!)
You can’t always get your way and some arguments aren’t even worth winning. When I was young, I felt like it was my duty to make sure The Goose understood my point on everything and came around to my way of thinking. Now I think, eh, who cares? If we thought the same way about everything, one of us would be superfluous. How dull. While I do believe The Goose is wrong about plenty of things, I let him believe he’s okay. I know the truth.
Don’t tell them everything. Sometimes, it’s good to have secrets. I once got a speeding ticket and never told The Goose. In this way he was spared yelling at me and I was spared his wrath. I paid it, it went away. Problem solved. The Goose would have secrets about all the junk he buys on Ebay if he were smart enough to know that the emails come to me. Still, I let him believe.
Shiny things don’t mean love. The Goose fully believes that if a man is constantly bringing jewelry and flowers home, he’s up to no good. This is partially because he is not good at presents himself, but also because it’s the reality. True love is handling my car tag and insurance for years so that I just became aware that there is such a thing as a car tag tax after almost 30 years. It’s him filling up a warm bath for me when I don’t feel good, it’s me buying key lime pie ice cream for him and grinning in the store because I know it’ll blow his mind. This is not to say special presents aren’t good and I’m still waiting for the greenhouse that he promised me for my birthday, but it’s the day to day stuff in the trenches that counts.
NEVER discuss what goes on in the bathroom with your spouse unless you are in need of medical help. Keep some mysteries.

7. Never become a “mommy” or “daddy”. When you have kids, for crying out loud, remember you are still a person. Don’t put little stickers on your car yacking about your kids and don’t start wearing mommy clothes and then wonder why your husband found that his secretary in a garter belt understood him. One day, surely, these kids will move out and your spouse will still be there. It’s a lot harder to fall back in love with a fat, balding, 50 year old man or a woman in sensible shoes and sweatpants than it is just to stay involved with them. Remember, you’re on the same side and those kids, no matter how darling you think they are, are on the other. One day, when you least expect it, they will turn on you and snarl. You’re going to need backup. If it takes lingerie and sit ups to keep the team together, just buck up and do it.

8. Learn your partner’s fighting technique. I’m a talker and shouter, The Goose is a pouter. I wish we’d figured this out earlier. Now, he’ll just say “why are you raising your voice?” and I’ll yell “because I’m a girl and it feels good to be loud”. When he pouts, I tell him to pull up his panties and get over it. Our disagreements are cut short in this way. After all this time, there isn’t that much to fight about anyway, but still, he is still wrong sometimes and it’s my job to point that out. I have learned to use my inside voice and now things go much more smoothly.

9. Sometimes, just take one for the team. Occasionally, just admit things are your fault. While I believe it’s always better to weasel out of a problem if possible, sometimes you can surprise your partner with a frontal assault. Once, I just walked in and said “I backed the car into a pole at Mellow Mushroom. I’m sorry. I’m a big ol’ dummy.” The Goose had nothing to say. In the past, I have blamed scratches on the car on kids, shopping carts and objects from space. Every now and then I say to him “I’m sorry for being so snappy. I’m just grouchy. I am sad or worried.” This immediately makes him feel sorry for me and, voila, I’m off the hook for acting like an ass. It always works.

10. The grass is almost never greener on the other side. I never see men I think are cuter than The Goose, except possibly Johnny Depp, and only when he’s a pirate. But, I know lots of people look around when they’re grouchy with their mate. Listen, that hot guy you see in the bar? He’s still a man at home, leaving hair in the drain and clothes on the floor. That smokin’ girl with the ridiculous boob job who’s happy all the time? At home she bitches just as much as your wife and you’re going to have to pay to replace those whoppers every 12 years. You never know what psychosis lurks beneath a person. Once you have determined your spouse is not a psycho, best to stick with them. At least their problems are known. Just learn to overlook their foibles and focus on what’s great. In time, you may not even notice the fact that your husband is incapable of cleaning up after himself or that your wife may be a pet hoarder.

My advice all the way around is, make a decision to be happy, keep your eye on the finish line and realize your spouse isn’t you, you have differences and that’s what makes it fun. The one that lives the longest collects the life insurance, so relax and keep your blood pressure down. Sometimes arguing is fun but never say something you can’t take back. Only once was I so mad that I said “well, maybe you just need to move away from me”. The Goose said “absolutely not” and I almost wept with relief. If he ever tried to leave, he’d do it with my arms wrapped around his leg, with my teeth clamped on his pants and the dogs holding on to me.

A Peek at the Other Side

Posted on August 11, 2013 by cloverhays

I’m a reader. Always have been. I will read almost anything except fluffy romance or cold war stories. Even the hyper-active wild child that I was when I was small would sneak away and hide under the coffee table in the living room and read for hours. I had a notebook like Harriet the Spy and solved mysteries like Trixie Belden.

I like to read in waves. I love to find a subject and explore it thoroughly. Early this summer, I went, again, through Pearl S. Buck. This put me on a China track and I read book after book about pre-war China, the poverty, foot binding, the lifestyle. China crept into my life and I found myself ordering vegetable moo shu almost daily from the restaurant up the street.

After that, though, I got on a kick about NDEs. Honestly, this has been life changing.

When I was 27, one of my best friends died. She had been my cohort throughout high school. She knew where the bodies were buried. After school, our paths went completely different ways and while she traveled with bands, dated celebrities and partied, I got married. When she was 24, in the late 80s, she came home sick. Really sick. We picked up our friendship and I watched as, over the next three years, she wasted away.

One of the sharpest people I’ve ever known, The Goose and I adored her. She ate with us, lived part time in her room at our house, went to work with me. We sat at the same booth at Houston’s in Buckhead so often that the hostess knew it was “our booth”. We laughed continually and she was an everyday part of our household. The Goose and I went to Paris that spring and when I came home, she was gone, having slipped away while we weren’t watching.

My grief was all encompassing. I am a person who, when confronted with something scary or overwhelming, does not rent her clothing or wail. I get very quiet and shut down. Sometimes I escape in a book.

That was the year Embraced by the Light came out. I picked it up out of desperation and I did find it comforting. I have never had a crisis of faith. God makes sense to me, even if some of the churchy details don’t. I’m a prayer. I bother God about lots of things. I honestly yack his ears off all day long. I don’t question why bad things happen. I understand completely about having free will and what mankind has done to ourselves. I do question why animals suffer, being such pure spirits. But even with my faith, I certainly did mourn the loss of my friend.

Embraced by the Light, whether or not one believes her account, was fascinating, although certainly not my favorite. I saw where recently, doctors have come out with new studies about NDEs, or near death experiences, and this sparked my interest in, again, reading the accounts of those who have been down this road .

Instead of shoving personal brands of religion down non-believer’s throats, I wonder why no one thinks to approach belief in God in this way? Yes, God is faith, but some folks just aren’t accepting of anything that smacks of Earnest Angley (say baby) brands of God. Surely it is the hypocrisy of “religion” that makes everyone so crazy. What a shame church has snuffed out so much that’s good and comforting about God. Maybe this would be great reading for someone searching for a little proof.

So, I’ve been swimming through these accounts. I just Googled NDEs and jumped in. I read everything in my local library, received daily deliveries from Amazon and Half, and waded through websites until my reading glasses made dents on my nose. I’ve consumed book after book of documented stories folks tell upon being resuscitated. Giant towering stacks of books about children who have died and come back. Kids just tell it like it is and their stories are great, comforting and funny. There are blurbs from Hindus, Muslims, atheists, and old accounts from history, some centuries old. The really awesome thing is that they all tell basically the same story.

Call it what you will, almost all end up calling it “God”. Many call it “The One”. I like that! This is not gender specific. It’s not contained to a certain faith, although a huge percentage, including those of other faiths, do see Jesus. I will definitely see Jesus. Not the Jaysus of the TV evangelist, but the loving and accepting personification of God. There is always a light. There are always loved ones who have gone before and, to my eternal delight, there are animals in some accounts as well. There will most definitely be animals waiting for me and my mother will be there, shooing them away from her lest their celestial animal fur get on her skirt. There is total acceptance. There are usually life reviews wherein what’s important is not what one has done wrong, but the love one has shown to others. Many accounts say that we have been together in spirit form before we’re born and make the decision to come to Earth, much like a life university, and learn from the hardships in the life we choose. I don’t know why this angers some. God says he knows us even before we’re formed.

Even in the stories, which are few, that are bad, or seem to be of Hell, there is a desire to go to the light, to be with the light, to make-up or get things right with the light. Each and every person, without exception, whose story I read, came back with one desire. To love more. To love God, to love others, to lift each other up and show kindness. Possessions didn’t matter anymore, politics, hatred, the crap of the world all fell away. They came back to help others and wait for the time that they’re called “home” again. The thought that came through again and again is how we are all connected.

The story that blew me away was about a blind woman. Blind from birth, she had never experienced color. She had heard about it, but had no context for it. When she died, she saw colors. She exclaimed over and over that though she couldn’t put a name to each one, she had seen colors. She had seen. She had descriptions of things she had never touched that she could only have learned through sight. When she came back, of course, she was blind again, with the memory of sight, but looked forward to a time when she was, again, “home”.

I am digging all this. It has given me a decidedly hopeful feeling in my heart. Although I never doubt where I will go when I die, and am in no hurry to get there, it’s always good to see the vacation slides of others who have been before. In the midst of the storm and fury that goes on in the news, I feel a strange calm and perspective that probably won’t last, but is certainly enjoyable now because I am looking at things through this long range lens. It has caused me to feel a lot less disturbed about the things I can’t control and a desire to do some lasting good while I’m here.

This is reading thread I highly recommend to anyone who is down about the state of things, feeling alone or just sick of daily crap.

My son’s friend told me he didn’t believe I could become any more of a tree hugging hippie until he heard me spout off about this new interest of mine, and I do get how loony it sounds. I can’t help but share it though, as I’ve been talking, ad nauseam, to my family about it since I started reading. If I’ve picked up anything through all these books and articles, it is how we are all so deeply interconnected and so I hope others will find this fascinating as well.

To Quote Jim Morrison, Summers Almost Gone

Posted on August 8, 2013 by cloverhays

Never should such a pretty man say such ugly words, but in the words of the beautiful Jim Morrison, Summers Almost Gone. The bugs might still be here, but the fun is certainly over.

During the summer I am AWOL. By this I mean, Always Winesoaked Outside Lineforming. In terms everyone can understand, I move to our house at the lake, in a tiny little town, outside the technology sphere, drink alarming amounts of white wine and lie in the sun until I grow yet one more set of fine lines and wrinkles.

Here, in this tiny house, I fail miserably to achieve any of the sun drenched fantasies I concoct all winter. While I do run for about the first week I am there, I find that my running schedule interferes with either my desire to sleep past sunrise or cocktail hour, which starts approximately after 11:00 am. The green juices and raw foods I consume during the year fall by the wayside as I become intimate with the chips and cookies which the kids that surround me demand. I never ride into town to the farmer’s market, on an antique bike with a handmade basket on the front, to collect fresh vegetables still dewy with organic goodness. The wind has yet to whip through my long gauzy skirt, my hair doesn’t flow in the breeze. I do manage to swing by Bojangles for butter soaked biscuits occasionally, though, and can now distinguish between generic and Nestle’s raw cookie dough with a 70% scientific accuracy while wearing a blindfold.

I wear my swimsuit coverups as high fashion. I think drawstring pants are the bomb-diggity. By the end of the summer, I find I closely resemble Orson Wells, in the later years.

My brain atrophies. I read smut and fluff. While I began, in June, to read back through all books by Pearl S. Buck, by this time, the end of summer, I have just finished up the literary high of the adventures of Sookie Stackhouse. I begin a blog in my head and then wander off in another direction because it is incomprehensible to me to remember how to power up my computer. (Hey, look! A squirrel!) My only accomplishment this entire summer has been to completely fold all the towels and swim suits on top of the dryer – one day. Just one day I managed to complete that and it didn’t give me the mountain top high I expected.

My diminutive little cottage has a sweet master bedroom, with a giant, fluffy bed for The Goose and me, that stays somewhat out of the maelstrom. The rest of the house is chaos. Downstairs, there are enormous “kids” piled three to a bed, in the three beds, other mattresses dragged out from closets, four more kids on the sofa, one in a chair and some, in enos, strung from trees. I say kids, though they range from 16 to 21. They each possess two feet that are constantly muddy, 25 outfits thrown haplessly on the floor, and all manufacture crumbs wherever they sit. They each drink only 1/4 of each soft drink can they open and leave the rest to stick on wooden surfaces. They roam like weasels in the night, sneaking beers and baking whatever they can get their hands on while I’m sleeping. They cook everything on broil.

Friends and family come and go daily. We never know who will be there from night to night. Many mornings I awaken to find a whole new cast. Family comes and we float until we’re prunes, going through Dora band-aids and margaritas like Imelda through shoes. I issue the “be on good behavior” decree to all kids, they disregard it, and all goes on as usual and we find that we like it that way. Sometimes there is dancing that causes my daughter to ask me the next morning to never dance again. Some ladies, who are old enough to know better, participate in headstand contests after dinner and some slink away in shame. Friends bring their pontoon over and we idle away hours sunning like seals. We draw endless sharpie tattoos on each other and everyone writes graffiti on the wooden outdoor shower walls. We document the sayings that were funny at the time, like “I’m not above malt liquor” (courtesy of my new sister, the MILK), “twerk on Kirk”, which has something to do with my not dancing anymore and the lyrics to “Grey Goose”, the filthy worded theme song of the summer. Elementary aged children should never be allowed to enter the outdoor shower.

There we have no internet. No television. To make or receive a call, one has to go out the front door, stand by the street and position one’s self just right. Then, we yell and hope someone hears us. If there were a convenient pole, like on Green Acres, we could possibly try climbing that. For entertainment, we buy DVDs at the flea market, of current movies, complete with people coughing and walking in front of the camera. Sometimes we get lucky and there are Japanese subtitles. In this way, we feel we are expanding our linguistic education. Cricket can write the dialogue from the first half of Hangover 3 in Japanese, from memory.

All in all, despite the mess, the chaos, all my hollering and complaining, it’s a simpler, happier way of life. The big news in our little town this summer is that the fire men have TWICE run the firetruck into the firehouse. No murders, no political theatrics. None of the bad feeling that comes along with being plugged into CNN. I am delighted to have missed most of the Zimmerman business. My heart resounds with joy to be in the dark about Weiner. (Now, see? I just snickered to myself over that because I’ve been with teenagers all summer. I’m going to need some time with educated adults to be able to act my age again.) I’ve enjoyed being out of the loop. I live in constant hope of a worldwide EMP that will let us all live small again. (Except for the hair color problem. This does worry me. Being gray in a post apocalyptic world seems somehow less glamorous.)

In the end, I yell and scream, everyone cleans up. There is vacuuming, dusting, endless loads of washing, we clear off the dock, put covers on things, pull out the carpet cleaner and turn off the lights. The little house gives a big sigh and it looks as if we were never there.

Coming home, everything feels big. I’m amazed that we need this much room in which to live. I can’t remember where things are. My animals have shunned me, having fallen in love with their caretakers. My old cat looks older and skinnier and glares at me from her place atop the microwave as if to say “Really? Almost three months? Just pour me some milk, you naked, upright animal with thumbs.” I’m starting to feel that old pull inside me again to clean out some closets, find a calendar and organize us all. I am going to put gas in my car for only the second time this summer. It seems my hair has taken on a very “sun in” tinge and, jumpin’ jesophat, my dermatologist is going to need DMV tools to restore my face. This morning, I caught myself yelling, for the first time all summer, to HURRY UP! I watched the traffic report. I regarded the giant pile of mail. I got a text from the library that I was late. And just like that, we are all forced back into the real world of school, schedules and shoes.

The real world sucks.

Leave Bambi Alone!

Posted on May 20, 2013 by cloverhays

When I started my blog, I was just writing about animal things. Once I started typing, though, I blurted out everything that went through my head. Insert your comments here, I’ll wait.

Now that this time of year has come around, I feel I need to be sure to get the word out about baby animals. Just a quick, factual blurb.

Fawns are born at the end of May. It used to be after Memorial Day, but it seems to be earlier and earlier every year. Today I had my 5th well meaning call on fawns. Fawns, my most beloved animal on earth. They cause me so much anguish that I’m walking around snapping at everyone because I’m worried about the last two calls I received.

Here is how an average call goes:

Caller: Hi….is this…..

Me: This is Elexis Hays. Are you calling about an animal?

Caller: Yes…silence…I got your number from…let’s see….

Me: Arrrgghhhh!!!!! What do you have?

Caller: I have an abandoned fawn.

Me: (Silently swearing) Where did you find it?

Caller: The mom abandoned it in my yard, (woods, near a playground, school, church, wherever).

Then I have to go through the entire conversation that tells them that they have, essentially, kidnapped the fawn and the mother is in turmoil and the baby will never be just right, even though I am a fantastic fawn mom if I do say so myself.

Here are the facts. Mother deer usually have two babies. Sometimes they have three, first time moms have one. They separate the babies and hide them somewhere where they believe they’ll be safe. They are thinking like a deer, not understanding where your property lines lay. They don’t care that you live on a golf course or that you live in a trailer. No, they don’t know that they are causing your poodle to bark inside the house. They aren’t interested in how much you paid for your pansies. They are not aware of the Atlanta city limits. (Last year, someone called from inside Atlanta and DEMANDED that I come remove a deer from her yard because she lived INSIDE THE CITY LIMITS.) Sometimes, it doesn’t make sense to anyone except the mom.

Babies are left to themselves ALL DAY. Moms hide them at dawn and come back at dusk. Sometimes, she’ll pick the same spot several days in a row. Your coiled up hose may look like Moses’ basket to her. Under your trampoline might look shady and inviting. Fawns have very little odor. If the mother were to be pursued by a predator, she can most likely out run it, but not with babies tagging along. Hidden, the babies lie very quietly all day and in this way, they are kept safe from evildoers. Their camouflage is so perfect that I have searched for one, lying just where I left him, and not even seen him. I can yell and scream for him and when my eyes finally focus on him he’ll be blinking his long eyelashes and looking at me as if to say, “Yes? And you are hollering because…?”.

394312_3505324830791_427456038_n (Because I almost never include pictures of “The Boy”, and because I am having end of the school year fury with him, I’d like to remind myself of all the years he’s helped me out by feeding babies because he has a sweet animal loving soul. This is about a 7 year age difference, and I can still depend on him to give someone a bottle, if not to pass Latin.)

Imagine if you put your baby to bed and came back to find her gone? It makes me so sad when I’m feeding a newbie and imagining the mother searching for days.

It’s basically the same with rabbits. Just because you don’t see the mother come back, don’t worry. Rabbits are shifty. They’re sneaky. If you disturb a nest, build it back as best you can, replace the babies and check on them daily to make sure they’re not dying of dehydration. If they their skin snaps back when you do the “pinch” test, no worries. The mom is sneaking back, just like nature intended.

I get lots of calls for birds, about which I know almost nothing. Mostly, though, they are fledglings. Several times I’ve written about fledglings. Baby birds don’t fly from the nest. They live on the ground for several weeks while they get their big bird feathers and their parents teach them the ropes. Leave them alone and keep your cats inside if you can.

If you see a mother deer that has been hit, look around for the baby. This is the situation I’m in today. It makes me sick, knowing that one or two little ones are out there and will starve to death. The caller, a caring individual, has assembled a team to search. Even though I’ve taken myself off the DNR list this summer due to travel, I have agreed to take this baby. I adore deer. They are smart, just like dogs. They play, they have personalities, they live in family groups and mothers and daughters can stay together for life. They harm no one. Deer hunting is wrong, no matter what anyone was raised to believe. It is a good wholesome tradition in the same way shooting someone’s dog is great family fun.

(No, it is not right that they are in my kitchen. As usual, someone left a door open and when they came in, The Goose snapped a picture. Most likely because my shirt was too low.)

Pass this along. I would say 90% of the babies I’ve raised have come from a kidnapping situation. Well meaning, but wrong, nonetheless. If people just knew babies are meant to be alone all day, they could enjoy the privilege of having a sweet little fawn in their yard for a day or two, maybe snap a couple of pictures and allow the little one to grow up wild, just like she’s supposed to.

Although these pictures show cute little babies, deer are not pets. Of course, while they’re being fed and cleaned by me (and many times by my long suffering kids), they see me as mom. As they get a little older, they come off the bottle are are made to forage for themselves. By the time I release them, around Labor Day, they are independent little thinkers. I’m sure they wonder, now and then, when they’re out on their own, where their hairless ugly mother is, but my goal is always for them to live in the wild. Deer that are raised in captivity until adulthood usually have to be destroyed because they become a danger to themselves and others. So please, just enjoy out your window!

And that’s my friendly animal rant of the day.

(Deer wear collars only as babies, so I can tell who has been fed and keep a good record of their health. Also, so I can spot them in the 5 acres in which they’re left to roam. Of course, they don’t leave home with a collar! Believe me, if it were right to release deer with collars, there would be a vast herd in the wild, all wearing Lilly Pulitzer collars with bells.)

What is Normal? (or Yes, my Baby is Periwinkle, Thank You)

Posted on May 14, 2013 by cloverhays

My great friend, The Trophy Wife, called me today to see what’s up. Even though we are just two doors away, sometimes we go weeks without actually setting eyes on each other due to the fact that our families make unfair demands upon our time. We talk every day, though, and our kids are as intertwined as a nest of snakes.

I’m sad to say that she might have been a more normal person if she’d moved somewhere else. I feel sure that our “otherness” has been the tool that shaped her kids into absolute freaks.

(Note: I am including this picture of an elephant with a prosthetic leg because there was no other picture that could go with this story that includes that words”prosthetic leg” that wouldn’t have been just tacky, and also because this picture restores my faith in humanity. When someone will make an elephant a new leg AND give her a pink princess collar, all is not lost)

Once, a while back, the TW and I were lounging around on her sofa, discussing economics or string theory probably, and her stepson (who, incidentally dates my daughter, how inbred is that?) came walking in saying “hey, there’s an ambulance pulling a dead guy out of one of your rental houses”. Within 4 seconds, her kids had strapped themselves into their car seats and were displaying a decidedly Jack Nicholson gleam in their eyes.

Upon driving the two miles away to this ramshackle house we own, complete with chicken coops in the back and dogs tied to trees, we discovered that truly, one of our tenants had passed away. We sat for a moment in reverence and then a paramedic came out carrying the deceased man’s prosthetic leg.

I know, we’re wrong. We should have left it alone but my friend has a great haunted house in her basement every Halloween and I could see her mind turning about what was going to happen to the leg now that it was no longer needed. I’m just going to leave the conversations that followed to your imagination as those who were involved in it, besides the TW and me, seemed shocked by it. TuTu, her stepson, was so disgusted by us that he shook his head all the way home. Suffice it to say, after some rational pleadings on our part against the deaf wall of understanding that often comes with people in authority, we left without the leg.

Now, some might say this is not normal. But who, really, can say what’s normal?

Take religion, for example. I’m surely not going to get up on a religious high horse here as I find my whole grasp of organized religion changes daily. Although I grew up with what I though was a pretty good understanding of the whole thing, as I’ve gotten older, I find I am pretty darn tolerant of most things. As long as I’m happy where I am, I really don’t care what you believe unless you try to argue with me. My dad got the greatest pleasure in life from Jehovah’s Witnesses who came to the door. He would usher them inside with gusto and they would leave, an hour later, dazed and stumbling while my dad would be in the kitchen making a celebratory sandwich to chalk up another win.

I do find it sad when people say they have no belief at all. I turn things over in my head all the time, disregarding what doesn’t make sense, including what does. I talk to God a lot, a hundred times a day, describing how happy the new plants shooting up make me feel and telling him of my disgust at WalMart for buying animals that have been raised in horrifying circumstances. (Truly, if you’re buying meat at WalMart, shame on you for being both cruel for supporting this way of farming and tacky for buying meat, or almost anything else at WalMart.) God might get a little tired of all my chatter, frankly. I feel that if there is a god, and I fully believe there is, he (or she, if it makes you happier) is pretty pissed about the whole state of things. Let’s think about it, I’m confident he’s not hung up on marijuana, which he made, and who marries whom, but I’ll bet he’s really scratching his head about the fact that we cage up his wonderful creatures and then eat them.

God: “How’s that sweet little Marybelle doing, Gabriel?”

Gabriel: “Um, she’s standing right behind you already, God. Some idiot grilled her.”

I’ll bet he might be confused about grass mowing as well. Every time I cut the grass I picture God saying “well, hmmm, I never considered they’d do THAT with it. Seems a little redundant, but…”

Cricket and I have the same thoughts about Native American Indians. What if an Indian from 200 years ago could time travel and spend a day with us.

Indian: “Let’s see, you are wearing shoes that don’t allow you to run fast, don’t allow you to climb trees and make you feel like you’re running downhill at all times. It just doesn’t seem, well, normal.”

I do think both God and Indians would appreciate the joyous ingenuity behind roller coasters and water skiing though.

(I tried desperately here to find a picture of either God or an Indian on either a roller coster OR water skis. Couldn’t find one. Go figure.)

Normal isn’t all that important as I see it. Except for the time someone in my neighborhood painted their 20,000 square foot house pink, I really can’t think of a time when a little deviance bothered me. I even got used to that. In fact, wacky honestly delights me. This morning, on Facebook, for example, one of my online friends was looking for non-toxic baby paint. I have spent all day deeply regretting that I never thought of it. Pastel babies at Easter, neon babies in the summer. Glow in the dark for when they catch fireflies in the yard, orange at Halloween. The possibilities are endless.

Once people can start choosing their color for the day, racism might be out the window and wackiness will skyrocket. I’m thinking that this would greatly please the God in whom I believe. From what I’ve read and believe, probably God is just wishing we were a little nicer and a whole lot more tolerant. I think being periwinkle would just be a bonus.

In a quick aside, I would like to say that my new brother-in-law, despite being a brilliant mind and a fantastic father and husband, will henceforth be referred to, both in my blog and in real life, only as “Handsome”. Make a note.

How’m I doin?

Posted on May 11, 2013 by cloverhays

The Golden Goose and I just spent a week in beautiful Exuma, in the Bahamas. I know, poor me. All that spare time caused me to do three things, drink too much, get too much sun and think. While I should have been enjoying brain dead time gazing at the florescent blue water, my mind whirled.

One night, I awoke at 3:00 am, the time when everything in the world is wrong. Suddenly, I needed to know that my kids, who were free wheeling at home alone, were okay. For years Cricket has been in charge of The Boy. My friends who travel with me joke that I’ve been leaving The Boy home alone since the 7th grade. This isn’t strictly true. Cricket has always been in charge and has been fully able to run a small country since the age of 6. I never worry that things will run smoothly when she’s in charge. The Boy, however, tends to go AWOL, ignore texts, failing to email or check in. Thus, I suddenly panicked at 3:00 that I was a terrible mother.

I prodded The Goose and asked him if he was awake. I told him I couldn’t stop thinking. This produced a sarcastic laugh and he told me he thought he smelled smoke.

“Am I a terrible mother?” I wailed. “Have I gone wrong by being so trusting? I mean, what could a 16 year old boy get into while home alone?”.

So The Goose and I got to talking about mothers. The Goose was left to walk himself to school in Kindergarten. He got himself ready and took himself to school. I, on the other hand, was driven door to door in an armored car. That’s the difference in a 4th child and an only child. We have long exhausted the subject of my happiness with my own perfect mother as well as my delight at finding such a groovy wonderful birth mother. This subject has been inspected, turned around, talked about and diagrammed. I just have happy mother issues and am covered up with great mother feelings from all sides.

Things moms say make a big dent in who we become. My mom never went to the grocery store without full make up and lipstick. Because of her, I know what’s tacky, what’s acceptable and what’s “done right”. I know children shouldn’t say “yeah” or “huh”, that legs really should be crossed at the ankles and that if an artificial nail comes off in the cotton candy at a school festival, one should look the other way and pretend it was someone else. I know from her that the we are in a constant war with germs and should be ever vigilant with the Lysol, that there are peeping toms waiting around every corner and that women who color their hair bright red usually can’t be trusted. Cricket recently had shoes that hurt and when she started to complain about it she held up a hand at me and sighed, “I know, one has to suffer for beauty. You’ve been telling me since I was a toddler”. I had no idea she even listened and my heart swelled because I’d passed that one right on from my mom.

The Goose’s mother was decidedly different. Although she had many great qualities, she wasn’t a lovey-dovey mother or grandmother. “Did you feel properly mothered?” I asked him. The Goose answered that he was perfectly happy with his mom. Although she was not a very loving person, he always felt as if she would be there if he needed her. Maybe this is what counts, having kids secure enough to know that there is someone there to be their safety net. The Goose’s mom had several important pieces of wisdom to impart. Frequently, when he was a teenager, she would say to him “a penis has no conscience”. When asked how she felt, she would often answer with “well, I feel like I do now better than I did when I first got here…but don’t tell anyone” or some convoluted version thereof. She called having a bath a “Clara Barton” and named her end table “Abnot”. These oddball sayings have become dear to us since she’s been gone and I find myself thinking about the quirks she had and how they helped to form the great Golden Goose that I have now. Surely she was the perfect mother for him.

The other day I wrapped my arms around The Boy and asked him if he felt happy with me as a mother. Did he feel he could always depend on me? This caused him to laugh and say, “Well, Mom, you ARE a total pushover but you are a great mom.”

“What about all those Bible songs we listened to in the car when you were little? That was pretty darn respectable. Remember how much we read and how we played in the creek?”.

“I remember you read “Are You My Mother” over and over to me because you thought it was funny that it made me cry.”

“Okay, but I was strict enough with the rules that you are a good kid now”.

“I remember when you whacked the daylights out of my head with a giant sucker” he replied.

How long I’ll pay for that particular miscalculation, I don’t know. They never forget.

“Well, what about when I was your room mom?”

“Sure, that’s back when you were allowed in the school.” This referring to the fact that I am, mysteriously, not asked to sub anymore.

“Uh, huh, well, I gave you my great car.”

Finally, then I received a hug and some reassurance that he was, indeed, happy with me as a mom.

Both moms and dads shape who our kids will become. Cricket never walks into the house without The Goose yelling “you da bomb, baby!”. She, in turn, rolls her eyes. Every single game of The Boy’s life, whether he does well or fails, I have told him, “you were definitely the cutest one out there.” While there have been groundings and spankings, plenty of yelling, mainly over math, and several slammed doors and temper tantrums, my kids never have to guess how much they are loved.

And so, I sought out The Boy, who had so recently called me “a pushover” (which I very well may be), looked him in the eye and told him that after much introspection, I feel that if all he has to complain about is being hit on the head with an all-week sucker, then I must have been an okay mother.

But really, I have to thank my great kids. No matter how “mommy” I might not have been, I still walk around in the world, connected to these strange two people about whom I know their quirks and fears. Whose fat, wrinkled necks and Johnson’s baby shampooed bald heads I can still recall, who wrote on the back of my baby blue linen chair with a green marker, who brought a garden hose, turned on full blast, through my house while coming in to get a popsicle. Those toddlers with deep husky voices who would climb out of their beds, come down the stairs, get as close to my face as possible and yell “MOM” to see if I was awake. Two loonies, one of which recently put on a pair of size one jeans and called herself fat. I know what they will eat, what they won’t, who threw up in a baseball hat and cried because I threw it away, who can sing and who shouldn’t. I know both of them love school supplies, thrift stores and sour gummy candy. These are the kids who changed all my passwords to Penis. The idiots who have caused such disruptions in churches that we have a list to which we shouldn’t return. Almost grown children who hold true to their Christian, animal loving, chaotic hippie homed, vegetarian values. Two individuals who can catch my eye and burst into wild laughter at inappropriate moments. These two humans whom The Goose and I whipped up, from scratch, who understand us, share our scary humor, love us and one who might take care of us when we’re old. These two oddballs, without whom I wouldn’t have the great and inexplicable joy of calling myself mother on Mother’s Day and everyday. Happy Mother’s Day to every mom who finds her children to be the very best, no matter what weirdos they actually are.

What’s That in the Corner?

Posted on April 29, 2013 by cloverhays

Last night I had a fright. That, in itself, is nothing unusual. I am a child of the late 70s. I grew up on scary stuff. I had an intimate knowledge of Freddy, Jason and Michael. I saw every Friday the 13th, every Nightmare on Elm Street and all the Halloweens. I watched The Shining and Pet Semetary (yes, I know it’s spelled incorrectly, take it up with Mr. King). I went to haunted houses, told scary stories and devoured every book with a black cover I could get my hands on.

What I’m thinking now is it’s a lot like the saying, “a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips” except with me it’s “a teen life filled with fright means a life of scary nights”.

About the time I had Cricket I put down the scary books. I was 28. That’s a whole lot of severed crawling hands, floating demonic heads and zombies from hell that had time to roost in my brain. Once I had a baby, I just stopped enjoying dismemberment, don’t ask me why. All those scary images, though, haunt me nightly.

My kids love scary movies. They love to be scared. Their father has spent their entire childhoods springing from a crouched position when they turn a corner. Even I have recently hidden behind The Boy’s car when he got out and caused him great distress. The poor Boy that couldn’t sit on the toilet for two months as a toddler after his dad scared him senseless during “Scooby Doo on Zombie Island”. Why the toilet was involved we never really understood. They know never to depend on me to come to their rescue if frightened. Once, there was a noise coming from the little troll door in Cricket’s room so vile, so horrifying, that she and The Boy stood up on her bed and screamed and screamed for me. They were terrified to even put their feet on the floor. When I got up the stairs and down the hall, almost to her room, I heard it as well and yelled that I was unable to come and save them, they would have to jump to the door. There was a lot of back and forth with them begging me to come get them and me yelling “No, something sounds scary!”. It was the worst noise I’ve ever heard. It turned out to be a neighbor’s cat, but my kids have never let me forget that I was too scared to come in and save their lives and they harbor a loathing of tabby cats to this day.

There is one movie, so vile, so horrifying that just seeing the last five minutes of it by accident caused me to lose an entire night’s sleep. The whole premise bothers me so greatly that I have forbidden the kids to mention the name. They delight in whipping out the words, “Human Centipede” just to piss me off. I am sure that in the history books of the future, this movie will coincide with the beginning of the end of good and kind society. Images from this scar my very soul.

Last night I heard an irritating beep repeating itself about once every minute. So, I arose and went to investigate. (It was most likely a smoke detector. Last time we could not find the origin of the noise, The Goose got so angry he ripped “the smoke detector” from the wall. Lo and behold, it did not fix the problem as it turned out to be the DOORBELL. Now we still have beeping but our pizza man waits at the door for 20 minutes.)

I was not thinking about anything except the root of the noise when I made the turn to go upstairs. Although I KNOW I didn’t see a small girl in a white dress, bloody eye sockets and drooling mouth, floating down the stairs, I had a hard time convincing myself of it and I high tailed it back to bed. The distance between the stairs and the bed seemed endless and fraught with my greatest fear, things standing in corners. Once in the bed, I turned to tell the Goose, but I have absolutely no faith in him during these situations whatsoever.

For years the Goose has delighted in scaring the pants off me. So many nights, when I’m almost asleep, he’ll whisper, in the deadliest whisper, “Lu, what the hell is that sitting in the chair in the corner”. Then it’s on. The lights have to be turned back up, I’ll have to get a glass of water, and get my heartbeat regulated, all to the stoic, self-congratulatory pleasure of The Goose. When he knows I’m frightened and I say “Buddy” to see if he’s awake, he’ll open his eyes, wide and staring in the moonlight, and say, “I’m not Buddy…”.

He hides behind doors. Not the novice, he never jumps out and yells “boo”, he just stands there, staring. Occasionally, he’ll whisper “hiiiiiiii” in a dead man’s voice.

Once, I got up from bed to go to the bathroom and when I got back in, he waited a few minutes and said, “Shit” in a very slight voice. “What?”, I answered, knowing doom had come. “The light in the attic just went on”. When I looked, sure enough, I could see the light coming from the crack. This caused me to try to prod him out of the bed to go accost the intruder, or ghost, or thing lurking in our attic, but The Goose pretended to be terrified, which only fueled me further. He then ducked quickly under the covers, which caused me to duck under with him and he whispered “Oh nooooo” he moaned, “I just saw a little girl just standing in the corner!”. He then gets really crazy eyed and I realize that I am trapped in a dark room with a staring child, a possessed man and something, something that can turn on the lights in the attic. He still revels in the panic he caused in me that night and strives hard to duplicate it. Although he hasn’t come close, he is always thinking, always plotting. I know he’s always planning in his devious mind and thus, I might be forgiven for being a little on edge.

I don’t know why I stay with a man who will plan to scare me to death while I’m in the bathroom, but I do know my vengeance will be slow and painful. And I know that vacationing on a man’s life insurance money, with 42 pairs of great new shoes and a 26 year old waiter who doesn’t watch scary movies is the best revenge.

My Long and Intense Blog in Which I Reveal My Fascinating Beginnings

Posted on April 25, 2013 by cloverhays

Okay, so I’ve been AWOL for about a month. What makes me happy is that I’ve gotten A LOT of messages, emails and calls about why I’m AWOL. I know it’s not natural for me to be quiet. I’ve even been quiet inside my head, and I tell you, when my inside voice isn’t talking, it’s damn scary in there. It’s good to know someone reads my stuff and everyone isn’t sitting around hoping I’ll just shut up already.

I answered each person who asked with “I’ve just had something going on” and then I got questions about what, exactly, I was talking about. Was I sick? Was I up on charges for something? Was I on a bender? My answer was no, but my “issue” has been of such a personal nature to me that I’ve been extremely quiet, for me.

This is going to be a long one, so get comfortable.

Anyone who reads my blogs knows about my great love for my mom, The True Southern Lady. I’ve written of her manias, her rules and her ever abiding love for me. I hear her voice in my head daily telling me my shirt needs another button buttoned, my earrings are a touch too much or just that she loves me. Both of my parents gave me such great love and confidence and were so close to me that anyone who knew us probably never guessed that I was adopted.

It was no big deal. I was a baby, I always knew about it, and frankly, there were lots more interesting stories in my life. My mother, in her typical way, told me about being adopted by telling me that yes, there were plenty of people who made dresses at home, bless their poor hearts, but she preferred to go to Lord and Taylor and choose the finest one they had. She varied on this theme now and then and substituted homemade coconut cakes versus the ones made by the bakery at Rich’s, which everyone knew were the best. For some reason I got the picture in my child’s mind that they picked me out from the low lying, horizontal freezer section in the A&P on the corner of Clairmont Rd. and Briarcliff Rd. in Atlanta, though I’m fairly certain she never mentioned that.

So my folks were my folks. My mom, I swear, had a psychic link with me always. She found me in more bad situations than I care to remember. Many times I would be cruising as a teenager and look over and there would be her big blue eyes, glaring a hole in me. She was my friend, my confidant and my mother. My dad, too, was everything a dad should be. Loving all of the time, but with a constant brewing disappointment at my inability to throw a ball.

So, I never looked for my birth mother. My only thoughts about her were vague, hippy filled fantasies wherein she morphed into Joni Mitchell. My mother, being who she was, baked a pound cake for her friend, a judge, and had my records opened. Of course it was illegal, but no one stood a chance when Frances asked for anything. She told me as a teenager that she had more information for me, but I was too busy doing everything I could get away with and some things I couldn’t and just wasn’t that interested. If it wasn’t a boy in a sports car, I really couldn’t have cared less. We spoke of it occasionally over the years, but truly, I just had all the family I needed.

When Mother died, she left a big file of stuff for me. Suddenly I had my birth mother’s name and long letter, written to me from my mom, with other details. Still numb with missing her, though, I just let it go.

So, the years passed and meanwhile I signed up to be a bone marrow donor. In early March I was notified that I was in a narrowed down group and was asked to provide more information. Of course, I had none. This is something I really feel led to do and it killed me that this would hold me back. While it wouldn’t actually keep me from donating, it would keep me from matching the most lists.

So, quietly, without telling anyone, I wrote to my birth mother, drove to the post office and mailed the letter.

You know how, when you take Dayquil and drink a cup of coffee you feel like you’re not real? That’s exactly what it was like. I put more thought into mopping my floors than I did in that letter. I know there’s a thing called automatic writing that happens during seances, and it was kind of like that. Some part of me wrote it and the rest of me looked the other way in abject horror. Looking back, I feel someone, God maybe, who knows, just did this for me.

Once done, I came home, had wine, went on with life.

During the night, I awoke in a sweat filled panic, went to the downstairs bathroom and was desperately sick. I thought about terroristic threats to the post office. I plotted whether I could intercept the letter. I prayed the mail man would be drunk.

For two more days I walked around hoping I’d have a stroke. I cried when I couldn’t find socks that matched. I shouted at The Goose because he snored. I called The Boy horrible names. It just so happened that Cricket was home all week for spring break and I’m sure she worried (more than usual) about my sanity. I went to see a movie with her and had to leave the theater frequently to have panic attacks.

On Cricket’s birthday, three days later, after two rockin’ margaritas, I sat in my living room watching her open her presents. I casually opened my computer to check FB and email and opened one I didn’t recognize. The first line was one of the sweetest lines I’ve ever read in my life and, sadly, caused me to run to the bathroom, once again, and be ill. Without disclosing something that’s very private, it started out “I never knew I wasn’t breathing for 48 years…” and suddenly, it was very real and I realized that I was dealing with an actual human being, not the Joni Mitchell from my imagination.

Cricket saw me run to my room and came after me to find me curled up on the floor, keening like a harpooned seal. Looking back, it was another humorous moment in my family but, at the time, felt like unanesthetized dental surgery. She ran and got The Goose, who began flapping around me asking what was wrong. None of them knew I’d sent the letter and fully believed I’d gone around the bend, once and for all. “Issomethingbrokenareyoudyingdoyouhaverabiesissomethingonfire”, the questions came at me, strung together and meaningless. I just pointed to my computer and The Goose began to read. Then he had to sit down. He had to read with his lips moving because it was just too much. He’s been begging me to contact her for years (because he believes he is always right about everything).

“What is wrong with you?” he kept yelling. “I don’t know what to do with you like this! I’ve never seen you act like this!”. There was a TON of confused shouting and I was crying, which is practically unheard of. I believe at one point I tried to slither under my bed.

What killed me is that, in my heart, I felt like a traitor to my parents. No matter how many times The Goose told me how happy they would be for me, I ached for them and knew that I could never allow anything to diminish how much I loved them.

Then a very wise (and stylish) friend said something to me that changed everything. What she said was “you didn’t stop loving Cricket when you had The Boy. Your love grew. When you light a candle from another, the first doesn’t go out, silly, you just get more light.” From that moment on, I put the guilt away and tried to find a place to put all this new.

I don’t remember what happened after that. I know her letter was amazing. My main fear in this whole thing was that her family would find out about me and she would be embarrassed. I sent her the letter disguised in a card in hopes no one else would see it.

Turns out, they all already knew.

I made it to a first meeting, before which I discovered half a lint covered pain pill in a drawer and swallowed it with vodka to make sure I didn’t bolt from the car along the way.

When she met me for the first time on the steps of her glorious antebellum home, I thought to myself, “Well, damn it, who is this woman? Are there other people here?” because she looked to be about my age. A truly beautiful woman with a sleek blond bob, tiny and wearing a green sweater that could have been plucked from my closet. I could hardly bear to look at her, it was just that intense. And so, I turned to her husband, a clone of The Goose. Both 6’4”, wearing blue shirts, they looked to be the ones related. Her lovely husband wrapped his arms around me and said something like “I was one of the first ones to hold you” because he was her friend at the time of my birth and I felt truly at ease.

Just like that, my fuzzy head started to clear up and I realized that these people were not afraid I’d intrude into their family and ruin things. They really did want to meet me and, over the next few hours, I discovered just what incredible, loving people they really are. Also, looking at her beautiful self, I am thanking the gene fairy. Darn, she is one really cute woman.

Throughout this month, I’ve met her daughters. They are super intelligent, beautiful women, but that’s not the half of it. What they are is cool chicks. Girls I’d pick for friends. Girls that wouldn’t hesitate to misbehave with me. Girls I wish lived next door. I’ve met their pretty children. My kids have met them all. In fact, my kids have been so supportive of me that I absolutely do not care if The Boy fails Latin. He has hugged me and told me he loves me more since this started than any other 16 year old around, and those of you with 16 year old boys know that’s saying something. Cricket has been right there, talking me through everything. The Goose, always a know it all, really has known it all during this. While my brain has been on DEFCON 1, with sirens and flashing lights, he has talked me down off the ceiling, calmed my fears and debunked my guilt and lunacy. Although I cannot allow him to know he’s been right, he really has been my rock, just like always, and gotten me through this great but scary time.

I only told one or two friends, The Trophy Wife and Peaches, my running partner. They kept a daily vigil with me, monitoring my feelings and allowing me to be alternately happy and crazy. God bless those two girls because I almost talked off their pretty ears.

On the way to take my kids to meet the entire family, my two swore repeatedly that they would hate their 16 year old cousin on sight. Within 10 minutes, they’d all fallen hopelessly in love. They cannot wait to see him again. We had wine, played cards and there was lots of trash talk and laughter. Kids ran amuck, men watched golf and naps were taken. Cricket’s kid pheromone kicked in and she was, within an hour, being sat upon and stroked by a myriad of little girls, braiding her hair and playing with her earrings. Some played a tipsy game of badminton, but I don’t think I was one of them. I can’t picture a more perfect day.

This has been a lot to wrap our heads around for all of us. My family has no frame of reference for family. I was an only child, I never knew brothers or sisters or even aunts, uncles or cousins. My kids adored my parents, who were omnipresent in our lives, living only three miles away, but grandparents can only fill in so much. My kids did have extended family on The Goose’s side, but, sadly, they were not the kind of family anyone would want. They, except for one sweet, long distance aunt, were the stuff of nightmares. The Goose is truly the Golden Goose to be so wonderful and come from that nest of vipers. So my kids didn’t understand the beauty of a real family, complete with cousins, aunts, uncles and filled with familial buffoonery. On the way home from our incredible day, The Boy said, “Holy smoke, is that what a real family is like? I love it!”.

So, this is our new reality. Every time I see her, my birth mother and I laugh and say, “Can you believe this?” I look forward, every day, to seeing an email from her. She is nothing short of a delight. The awkwardness is almost gone and, as Cricket says, I am hardly on good behavior with them anymore. I love it that her girls have embraced me, not minding sharing a little bit of their mom with me. I revel in the fact that one’s 16 year old son friended me on FB. It makes me feel cool.

I know most reunion stories don’t go like this. I’ve heard that most of them don’t. I guess that’s one reason I never planned for one. In my wildest imaginings, I never thought we would meet, much less that I would meet her family. It all still feels a bit unreal, like Christmas morning. What we have here is like an arranged marriage. It is now up to us to make our relationship. But we have so much in common, likes and dislikes, love of antiques, hatred of the cold, that I can’t see that it will be difficult.

There should be a better name than birth mother. It sounds cold and clinical and doesn’t translate what I owe to her and what I feel. What she did for me was to protect me, at great cost to herself, and provide a wonderful home for me. She gave me a life and then allowed me to have a fabulous life. It is the most selfless, generous thing I can imagine. All the while, I felt she was loving me from a distance, just as, on special days like my birthday or Mother’s Day, I would pray that her life was just as happy. It seems as though it has been. Maybe this is why we can come together now as something more than friends.

I know that my parents can see me and, as usual, they are happy with anything that makes me happy. Honestly, viewing us from Heaven, my mom is probably more worried about the fact that I am still wearing a bikini at the age of 48, shameless hussy that I am, and my Dad is most likely more focused on The Goose’s golf game. They are bragging on their grandchildren, playing celestial bridge and Mom is disgusted that my cat sometimes gets on my counter. Their love is, as ever, unwavering and abundant. There is never a day that I am not thankful for all the love and confidence they gave me and so happy that things went the way they did.

And so it seems that love is the easiest thing to multiply, even for a math idiot like me. As the Goose and I lay in bed the other night he turned to me and said, “How is it, that with all the horrible mothers out there, you ended up with two this great?” I’d like to come back with a flippant answer like “well, I always recycle” or “because I don’t step on spiders” but I realize that I am beyond blessed with this and I feel almost guilty for the sheer happiness. I know I don’t deserve all this but I’ll certainly take it.

And now, that I’ve gotten all this off my chest, I can get back to writing about serious subjects like squirrels and pigs. Thank you all, who wrote to me and cared when you thought I must dying, otherwise, how could I have been so quiet. I might point out, though, at no time did ANYONE offer to bring me a casserole or bake me a cake.