Love Tackles

I don’t know the first thing about football, but in getting to know—and love—Mark’s college friends, I’ve learned a thing or two about tackling.

The night before our wedding, there was a lobster bake in a tent in my dad’s backyard. It was where Mark and I got that first intense wedding-weekend hit of love from so many fine folk coming from far afield to see us get marinated. It was also, it so happens, the same day my father kidnapped our friend Gary. But that’s another story.

So there I was reveling in the love and the people and the chardonnay and the Rhode Island summer heat, chatting with someone or other, when I was suddenly, quite literally, swept off my feet. It was one of those “it happened so fast” kinda moments. I wasn’t sure where it came from or what it was, but I found myself lifted up and then pinned down onto my father’s desk. The perpetrator—whose head was tucked down somewhere in my midsection—was human. But that was all I could tell.

It took longer than my barely-there patience could handle to determine what was happening. But then the perp looked up, and with her huge grin and mop of strawberry blond hair yelled in high-def close range, “We are HERE, girlfriend! Let the games begin!”

It was Becca. Mark’s glorious fabulous college friend, Becca. Whose house I have the great pleasure of being at this very weekend. In what has most-excellently become an annual pilgrimage to Minnesota for lakeside hi-jinx. Because, six years and six children between us later, we are still giddy-tackle happy to see each other. Though blessedly, in recent reunions she has not knocked the wind out of me.

I mean, I really shouldn’t be pointing fingers here. Since another of Mark’s divine college cohorts, the aforementioned kidnapped Gary—or Uncle Gary as he’s now known to the kidlings—is here with us too. And years before Becca ever tackled me on my wedding weekend, I had the social misfortune of tackling him.

I blame it all on the event’s bartender, who clearly over-served me. Or maybe it was the humid Midwestern lakefront air that clouded my judgment. At any rate, we were at another of Mark’s college friend’s matrimonial celebrations. And I’d had a few.

I was walking from some lake-facing veranda back into the room with the band. And there was Gary. Standing on or near the dance floor. Looking so, well, tackle-able. Some so-bad-it’s-good 80s song was playing, and like some figure skater who visualizes a move before taking to the ice, I saw in my mind’s eye what I would do. That I would run up to Gary, jump with my legs outstretched to straddle his waist, and we would swing jauntily about the dance floor. Like some Travolta-Thurman dance scene from Pulp Fiction.

Compelled by alcohol-borne bad judgment and feeling exceedingly exuberant I ran with the chin-down determination of an Olympic pole-vaulter, and threw myself upon the utterly unawares (and might I add slight-of-build) Gary.

And let’s just say what happened looked nothing like what I’d envisioned.

I flattened him to the ground like a fly. He was stunned, dismayed, and likely injured. I imagine the dress of my skirt landed in a position that revealed parts of me best left to the bride’s grandmother’s imagination.

It was mortifying, and yet, Gary’s good nature managed to rise above. In my vodka-soaked haze I seem to remember him lending me a shoulder as we both limped off the dance floor, me slurring loud apologies in his ear.

Good times.

Ever the mini-me, Kate kept the flame alive when Gary met up with us earlier today. Since his arrival she’s been climbing onto his back and hanging off his neck like one of those long-armed monkey dolls. Despite our once-yearly time together, she’s instantly drawn to him. And though she may nearly choke the dear man with affection at times, she hasn’t (thus far) leveled him to the ground.

With Kate on Gary like her own personal climbing wall, in the other room toddlers Paige and Leo are squaring off. Squatting down and looking each other straight in the eyes, they lunge forward like two Sumo wrestlers going in for the kill. Paige has six months on Leo, so their playing ground is fairly even now. But by next year’s trip he’ll clearly dominate their happy head-butting encounters.

And so the tackling continues. Passed on to the next generation.

As for us big kids, in an hour or so when we arrive at the lake house, I expect the most tackling we’ll be doing will involve the cases of beer that Becca’s husband and Gary both brew by profession. But don’t for a minute think that means we love each other any less.

Boy Parts

On her last day of preschool, Kate brought home a portfolio of all her artwork. It was made of colored poster board that the teachers stapled together and each kid got to decorate.

Kate had written her name on hers. She also covered the thing with drawings of flowers, rainbows, and penises.

Dismayed, I reached inside the portfolio. The top five papers I yanked out featured more of the same. KATE KATE KATE scrawled on each page. Rainbows, flowers, stick figures with pigtails, and penises. Lots and lots of free-floating larger-than-life penises.

Picasso had a Blue Period and a Rose Period. Could Kate be going through some kind of Penis Period? And if so, for the love of God, why hadn’t the teachers informed us of this? For all I know, these hippie California preschools, they probably just encouraged her to draw an equal number of vaginas.

Now, due to nothing that Mark or I have done knowingly, Kate appears to have a healthy self-esteem. (For now, at least.) At summer camp in Rhode Island, she didn’t fret for a minute about not knowing any of the other kids. She’s game for adventures. Loves new people. Never shies away from reporting that her “story,” “painting,” or “dance performance” was the best in her class.

But her Achilles heel—the thing she often beats herself up over—is her inability to draw hearts. This came up when we were at my dad’s this summer. Out of the blue, a sudden outburst of dramatic blubbering about, “I can NOT draw hearts! Kaylee can do hearts! I will never ever NEVER know how to draw a heart.” Waaaah! Waaaah! WAAAAAAH!

Then she threw herself across the couch, clutching a pencil tragically to her breast.

My lazy mother instinct kicked in. I looked up from my People magazine and turned to my father—who is actually quite a handy artist—and foisted this nagging issue his way.

“Grandpa is great at drawing!” I said brightly. “I bet he’d LOVE to teach you how to draw a heart.”

I’m not sure exactly what happened next, as the article about former-Heff-girlfriend Kendra Wilcox’s new baby was thoroughly engrossing. But I think I remember there being a directive about making a kinda curvy “m” for the top part. Then closing off the bottom with a “v.”

Voila! A heart!

There seemed to be all kind of high-fiving and “that’s the most beautiful heart I’ve ever seen” grandparently reinforcement. I believe Kate ran over to proudly thrust her drawing on top of of my article on the recent Jonas Brothers marriage. “Oooh great,” I said automatically, casually sliding my magazine free.

I realize now that I should have taken more care that day to focus in on the “hearts” Kate was so delightedly producing. The hearts that Teacher Grandpa was administering praise-filled wallops to her little back for. Because—and I don’t want to say that any form of art is “wrong” or “bad”—but the fact is, after scrutinizing Kate’s preschool drawings the other day, I suddenly realized that the things that I thought were boy parts, were blessedly not those at all. They were, at least in the eyes of the artist, hearts.

Alas, when we go back to Grandpa’s in October, I think it’s time for he and Kate to go back to the drawing board.

Hotline to Dada

I have a sister named Marie. I’ll wait a minute while you go ahead and make your Italian-American pot shots about her name. 

Done?

Okay then. Well, on Monday she and her family came over to hang out before going out to dinner for my dad’s birthday. 

Marie is 12 years older than me. And she started younger on the baby-making. So, my two- and four-year-olds have cousins who are 19 and 21.

Since we live a country’s-length apart, we rarely get to see them. They are “big boys,” and handsome to boot. So Kate and Paige were in hardcore show-off flirty-girl modes. We were all convened in the living room, where the girls had a captive audience.

There was some dancing, some serving of wooden toy cupcakes, and some modeling of pigtails. And at one point Paige grabbed a cordless phone off the coffee table, dialed what seemed to be a number in Tokyo, and commenced a long smiley please-watch-me-being-so-cute conversation. Everyone seemed to enjoy this part of the show, so I didn’t immediately grab the phone away from her. 

As she coyly babbled, someone asked who she was talking to. 

“Dadda!” she announced. “Hi Dadda! Hi Dadda!”

Eventually, I took the phone from her and hung it up. We had a reservation to make.

The nine of us started in on various coat-fetching and bathroom-visiting activities. During that wave of pre-departure mayhem, Mark called from Whistler. “I’ll call him from the car!” I bellowed to my dad, while yanking boots onto Kate. 

When we finally connected en route to the restaurant, Mark tells me, “So I called your Dad’s house about ten minutes ago. Before the phone even rang I hear Paige saying, ‘Hi Dadda!’ and giggling.”

Mark spent the next few minutes having a one-sided chat with Paigey Wigs, who looked around the living room at us wide-eyed, triumphantly announcing, “Dadda! Dadda!”

When Mark urged her, “Okay, Paige, give the phone to Mama now,” she began on a round of “Mama Dada! Mama Dada!” And of course, kept clutching the phone.

Cracking up, Mark finally gave up and hung up. Attempts to call back resulted in a long stream of busy signals.

And now? Paige is convinced that all the phones at my dad’s house are direct lines to Mark.

And really, why shouldn’t she be?

Over the past couple days if she’s out of my sight for a minute, I’ll likely hear her chanting, “Dada! Dada! Dada!” It’s a sure-fire tip-off that she’s found a phone.

Poor dear. As it is, she’s been climbing into bed with me in the morning and asking ”Oooh Dada?” which I’ve interpreted to mean “Where’s my father who’s usually here with you, and why the hell has he been gone for so long?” Turns out she doesn’t understand about the whole Olympics thing—that they’re far away and they go on for a while. And then, after spending so much play-time “calling” Mark on toy phones, she finally found one that really makes contact. But whenever she gets ahold of it, I wrestle it away from her.

The reality is, if it weren’t for my fear that she’ll dial her way to Denmark, I’d love for her to think she can summon Mark at will. She’s got plenty of time to understand the true logistics of telephonics. In the meantime, I’m doing my best not to dash the illusions of a Daddy’s girl.

The Thrill of Snarkery

Am I the only one who wonders if the figure skating couples are doing it?

I mean, I think in the supers along the bottom of the screen they should indicate their country of origin, their standing in the games, and their relationship status. Like “Married” or “Skating Partners with Bennies” or maybe “Hooked Up One Night in the Rink Locker Room But Otherwise Not Together.”

As a viewer, wouldn’t knowing that—instead of spending the whole time wondering—help you to focus more on their skating? I know it would for me. 

At any rate, my hubby is at the Olympics right now. As a reporter, not an athlete. And while he covers the Winter Games in a professional capacity, I’m embracing a full-bore amateur peanut-gallery approach to tuning in from home.

And by home I mean home, as in Rhode Island, where we’re watching on an arcane Tivo-less TV. It’s crazy old school, but oddly quite liberating knowing we can’t pause to go tinkle, or rewind to get a second look at a failed triple salchow. If we miss something, it’s just gone. So we let what we see just wash over us, easy breezy. 

My father, a self-professed die-hard sports retard (there’s a reason I can’t follow a football game), has been a surprisingly fine viewing partner. 

The thing is, we’re dangerous with a little information. You see, Mark traveled to Chicago a couple months ago for a press thing with some Olympic athletes. One thing he learned there was that the cross-country skiers take around 40 to 45 pairs of skis with them to every race. Their equipment is that fine-tuned to the various snow conditions. 

Like me, Dad really dug this factoid. And in typical fashion, was soon relaying it to someone else with an air of authority—except he said each athlete has 80 to 85 pairs of skis on hand.

Okay, so I think he really said 60-something. But the point is, the guy likes to exaggerate. And I have to confess to a sight propensity for exaggeration myself.

We watched the opening ceremony, which is always just a heckle-fest fashion show. But this year, as the screen flashed the populations of each country, and the number of athletes attending from each, we took it up a level. You know, we had some behind-the-scenes insights that not every Dick and Jane watching fom home was hip to. 

Me: “China population: 1.3 billion. Number of athletes attending: 90. Number of cross country skis?” I look over to the other couch.

Dad: “Two thousand!” 

So we had some fun with that.

The other thing I can’t help but do, is the age-old asking of, “You have that shirt, don’t you, Dad?” when the male figure skaters take to the ice in tri-colored shreds of polyester, with large flesh-tone Vs that give the illusion (to Nancy Kerrigan’s mother, at least) of a bare chest.

But each costume is worse than the last, and eventually even I tired of that one.

This time next week I’ll be rink-side myself, having returned to Cali to drop the kids at home with my mother-in-law (God bless her). My dear collegiate frienda Brenda and I just couldn’t let Mark’s work-sponsored condo go to waste. We have tickets to two events, hopes of getting into more, and plans to drink like we’re 19 again. 

In the meantime, my sweet spouse is knee-deep in work. A crowd-averse guy, he’s told me about densely-packed crowds at Whistler, and jockeying for space in the immense press center. But despite the hordes of humanity, it turns out he knows nearly no one else there.

When we talk I ask if he’s had a chance to get out to a bar, to mix it up a bit in the international crowd—get swept up in the revelry. But thus far, he’s just been dropping into bed at day’s end, as spent as if he’d run the giant slalom several times himself. 

If you’re lucky enough to be in the Whistler/Vancouver area these days, and you see a cute guy with a lap-top back pack and reporter’s notebook—skinny, on the taller side, brown hair, Oakleys—that well may be my Valentine.

Tell him I miss him madly and can’t wait to see him next week. Then please, take him out for a drink for me.

The Bristol Two-Step

We were in the library, so I decided to let out a blood-curdling scream.

I’d been chatting with the librarian. There are two gray-haired ones who still serve there—at my hometown bibliotheque—since back when I was a kid. I’d mentioned that to one of them once, thinking we might have a nice moment. Instead she looked at me like she’d sucked a lemon.

But yesterday I took a chance and mentioned to Kate as we were checking out books, “The woman who is helping us was the librarian when I was a girl.” And, thankfully, she looked up and smiled.

And then we did the Who Are You? Bristol Two-Step. Which is to say she asked me what my name was and who my parents are. And when I told her she said, “Oh sure” then listed off the names of all the streets we ever lived on in town. “Now your mom was on Hope for a long time, then she moved to Beach, right?”

“Your mother,” she said, hunched over the desk leaning towards me. “Her and my friend Dottie DeRosa, those two were out in their gardens at the very first signs of spring. We’d say the ground is still frozen, but there’s Vicki out there gardening.”

I admit my awareness of the girls’ whereabouts had faltered a bit. I was drawn in by the kindly gray-haired librarian. I wanted to hear more funny little stories about my mom. But before I could coax more out of her, I looked up to see Paige step into the empty elevator, and the door start to close.

“PAAAAAAAAAAAIGE!” I bellowed, as I did a sideways-flying Superman-type lunge for the door. I wedged my hand in without a second to spare. Blessedly the door lurched back open. Paige was standing inside smiling, as I skidded into her like home base.

After that wake-the-dead Mama shriek, those librarians should have no trouble remembering me the next time I drop in.

At dinner last night, at my favorite chicken parm place, a couple walked in and sat at the table next to us. Some sort of comment on Paigey’s ability to pack away the pasta ensued. Then my father held out his hand towards the man, but squinted by way of saying he didn’t remember his name. Cue the Bristol Two-Step.

“Oh yes,” my father said, hearing the guy owns the photo shop in town. “You live on Court Street! My cousin Jimmy Rennetti used to own that house.”

There have to be a million annoying things about the lack of anonymity living in a small town. But this absurd form of interconnectedness is so extreme, is such a weird form of sport, it’s brilliantly entertaining. At least for someone who only lives it for a week or two every year. Despite the fact that I’ve been away for so long, I love that I still have enough hometown equity to play a fair game myself.

At the end of our meal a little girl wandered over to say hi to Kate, her mom trailing behind her. Kate, demonically excited to be in possession of a piece of take-out chocolate cake, was disinterested in the girl’s attention. So I tried to jump-start their conversation.

“Are you in kindergarten, honey? Where do you go to school?”

When she responded “Rockwell,” my own K through third-grade alma mater, I nearly squealed with glee. I forget sometimes when I’m in Rhode Island, and get excited to see someone wearing a RISD sweatshirt. Or I’ll be driving along, then perk up at the sight of an Ocean State license plate.

Proof of my spaciness perhaps. But also that I’m more used to home being a place where I’m not. My default setting is that any Rhode Islandisms I come across must be far-flung artifacts that’ve managed to make their way West. Like me.

At any rate, Kate’s would-be friend didn’t find my enthusiasm about Rockwell far-fetched. “Did you have Miss Sousa too?” she asked, wide-eyed.

Aw, honey. The thing is, I probably did have a Miss Sousa, but a very different one than yours.

There’s a strong tug of temptation to run around and see a ton of people while I’m here, to schedule non-stop things to do. Instead I’m trying to melt into the scenery. I’ve already handed over highlighting my hair to a chap in Newport who did a bang-up job for—get this—$50! And aside from a grandparent-sponsored jaunt to the toy store for Valentine’s Day, and dinner out for Dad’s birthday, the only plans we have are to go to story time at the library.

We’re meeting Kate’s new friend there. Which is great since I never got a chance to ask her what street she lives on, or who her teachers were at preschool.

The Waiting is Over

My mother hated when my sisters referred to me as their “little” sister.

It was one of a number of random terms she dramatically voiced her opposition to. Like how she hated the word ‘condo.’ I always suspected her condo issue had to do with the word’s affinity to the word ‘condom’—that it was terrifyingly close to sounding like something that had to do with penises.

But I never really knew for sure.

Anyway, she’d mutter “She’s not little, she’s an adult for God’s sake. She’s your ‘younger sister.’”

But growing up in a small town, the youngest (by far) of four girls—”the Bruno girls” as we were known—my mother was fighting a battle she was bound to lose. If my siblings weren’t calling me their little—or kid—sister, everyone else in town had me pegged as “the baby.”

“Frrrrrrred!” old women would screech, lunging toward my father and I in the aisle of Almacs grocery store. “How aaaarrrrre you?” Then turning to me. “And this? NO! This isn’t your BABY is it?!”

As a teen, being in public with my dad caused me no end of aggravation. A big personality still living in the small town he was born in, he knew absolutely everyone. And they all seemed to want a piece of him.

We’d walk ten steps, then stop to hear about someone’s gall bladder operation. Another 15 paces and Dad’d be doling out legal advice about a property lien. We were never anonymous, never just able to run in somewhere quickly.

And brutal as it may sound, the people who rotated in Dad’s orbit registered no social value to me. Many were older and smelled of talcum. They unloaded their legal woes, or talked about recently-operated-upon people I didn’t know. Worst of all, they never had cute teen-aged boys with them.

In my self-centered adolescent universe, waiting through my dad’s conversations with these people was some form of heinous torture that seemed custom-made to heighten my teen-aged malaise.

But Dad was—is—a world-class extrovert. He’ll talk to anyone. And he’s always proud to show us girls off. Decades later, nothing has changed. “Yes, that’s her,” he’ll still say, putting his hands on my shoulders. “The baby.”

I have to admit. At age 42, there’s something nice about there being a place where I’m still considered a baby.

MY baby, the delectable Miss Paigey Waigey Wiggle Pop (that’s her champion dog name), turned two a week ago. TWO fingers old! What a big big girl.

The night before her birthday I got all nostalgic with Mark. “It was two years ago tonight that I sat on the couch sobbing that I thought the baby may never be born.”

Paige was—how should I say it?—resistant to emerging from the womb. She got the process underway 12 endless days after she was supposed to. Then, after more than four hours of eye-popping pushing, she still refused to budge. Finally a group of medical professionals went in after her.

The expression on her face when she finally emerged was one of abject dismay. It’d make me really sad if it wasn’t so damn funny and cute. (”My God, I’ve given birth to Ed Asner!”)

Anyway, it’s too bad some sort of Ghost of Christmas Yet to Be didn’t visit me during those agonizing post-due-date days, to whisper in my ear that Paige would so totally be worth the wait.

And it turns out our waiting didn’t end then. After waiting for her to be born, we waited for her baby acne and scaly eczema to subside. We waited for her to sit up on her own. Some time after that, we waited for her to walk. And waited. And waited. And eventually, blessedly, all the things we’d been waiting for finally happened.

Her birthday party last weekend was like a kind of a coming out party. At least to this proud Mama. She walks! She talks! She does everything every other two-year-old does, damn it! And she does it dazzlingly.

You’ve come a long way, Paigey. And I know you’ve only just gotten started.

I am so madly in love with that girl. I’m already fretting about how quickly she (and her sister) will grow up and will no longer be little barnacles attached to my legs.

At what point will it be creepy for me to still be chomping on Paigey’s thighs and doing raspberries on her tummy? And is it so wrong to want to bunk with her in her dorm room when she goes away to college? The really pathetic thing is, I’ve spent so much time mercilessly mocking people who wait forever to cut their kids’ hair because they can’t bear to lop off the baby curls. But now, now I understand their plight. I too am weak, like them. May Paigey’s hair never be cut! (There. I’ve said it.)

Next week I’m heading home to Rhode Island for a visit. My dad is turning a youthful 81, and he has a new dog we’re overdue to meet. Us Californians are hoping to score some snowy weather to frolic in. And I plan to spend a lot of time parading the girls around Stop & Shop, and hoping I bump into some people I know.

Festival of Four-ness

I’m not going to lie. I spent a lot of time crying by the clothesline at the birthday parties of my youth.

Well, not A LOT of time, and not at other people’s parties. Just some intermittent spells at my own parties, when things were happening like other kids were winning the games, or someone else got the big pink frosting rose (even though I’d already been given the bigger pinker one).

I mean, I was THE BIRTHDAY GIRL. Did that not count for anything? In my childhood concept of that term all would bow down before me, I’d miraculously (blindly) reunite the donkey with it’s tail, and Lynn Froncillo wouldn’t show up in a dress that was prettier than mine.

I remember my mother or dad coming over to pry me away from my clothesline-clinging Zone of Despair, but in that way that you have a memory that’s a photo, not a video. I can picture them with me, but hell if I remember what they said to get me to pull it together enough to re-enter the party mix.

So Friday night, the eve of Kate’s big birthday throw-down, I went into her room as Mark was about to read her bedtime stories. Channeling my best inner June Cleaver, I smoothed my skirt, propped myself at the edge of her bed, and serenely said, “I’d like to talk to you a bit about your party tomorrow, Kate.”

I went on to say that sometimes parties can be disappointing. Sometimes your friends don’t do what you wanted them to, or don’t come when they said they would, or don’t sit at the place with the pink paper plate even though they’re a girl and shouldn’t be sitting at the place with the green paper plate. I said that sometimes you get presents you don’t like, or want, or already have, but you still have to be polite and say thank you.

And just when I felt I was getting warmed up and was awash in my own brilliant sage mothering I see Mark dragging his finger across his neck, eyes popping.

Turns out I’d beaten away at my points somewhat excessively, leaving them in tatters like some ravaged, child-attacked pinata.

Well, either all my blather worked, or I never even needed to go there. The party was a blast. No tantrums, no tears, no jumpy house injuries, and no four-year-olds in the liquor cabinet. Kate and the guests appeared to actually–gasp!–have fun! What’s weirder is, Mark and I did too.

The worst behavior the birthday girl displayed was a repeated refusal to open the present her cousin so sweetly followed her around with, holding out to her. Well, that and her lack of interest in digging into gift bags after skimming off the first item. (Note to self: Develop bedtime tutorial on deep-diving into gift bags, with follow-up lecture on expressing appreciation for even the bottom-most layer of presentry.)

The gaybors brought Kate a gift they’d been billing for days as “the gayest gift EVER.” When she opened the stuffed Yorkie in it’s pink-and-purple leopardskin and gold patent leather carrying tote (replete with collar, leash, and hair accessories) she squealed and ran into the house to stow it safely away from potentially-thieving guests.

Speaking of gay men, the best gift we got this weekend is that Paigey started cruising! No, no, not trolling around public parks for action… She’s walking by holding onto the couch and the coffee table! She’s making her way across the house by leaning against the toy shopping cart!

Our little lax-muscled toddler is finally gaining the fortitude of body and spirit she needs to get ambulatory. If she continues to progress at this pace, I’m hopeful we’ll be hosting another party quite soon, the promised She’s Finally Frickin’ Walking! champagne-drenched Paigey-fest.

Anyway, back to Kate’s festival of four-ness. Once all the kids were dragged home for naps and low-blood-sugar transfusions, some of the neighbs stuck around under the pink mesh tea party tent. It was lovely. We indulged in more daytime beer drinking, cupcake eating, and general catching up. There was even an engagement story to savor.

I’m so grateful the party was a hit, and that unlike her dramatic mother, Kate didn’t let the less-than-perfect moments prevent her from enjoying the day. But I can’t help but wonder if it all went off like it did because we don’t even have a clothesline.

Putting the Braces Back On

I used to be the Patron Saint of Interns. It was, of course, a self-appointed role. But one I took quite seriously.

The thing is, at one point in my career, or rather, the making of my career, I held quite a number of internships. Positions in TV newsrooms, hippie liberal radio stations, and various magazines where I’d earn a meager stipend, or sometimes just an appreciative thump on the back.

The hope being that the inverse ratio of earnings to hard labor would have some karmic redemptive upside.

I’ve lost count now of how many of those posts I’ve held. But suffice it to say, years into real grown-up paying work, my friend Mike and I were catching up on the phone and he asked how my internship was going. Sadly, I fear he wasn’t kidding. But that did become an evergreen joke for us when, over the following years, I’d worked my way through positions of mounting managerial responsibility and in our long coast-to-coast calls he’d ask the same question.

Good times, those.

Alas, aside from dignity-robbing name tags, epic Xeroxing tasks, and occasional demeaning-to-my-education lunch runs (I won’t even get into the pervy remarks from crusty old newsmen)—aside from all that, the biggest challenge with my Intern Era life was my short supply of cash.

Well, actually, I don’t know how much it really bothered me then. I mean, I think I attached a certain nobleness (not to be confused with the richy-sounding term “nobility”) to bushwhacking my way through a poorly-paying, romantic, writerly career path. But looking back, I can’t imagine how I did it.

I mean, I always managed to eat (and drink), God knows. And much as I worked towards self-sustainability, this Daddy’s Girl has thankfully never lacked anything of true importance. That is, even when my father’s definition of importance and mine differed. For some reason, he was maniacal about never allowing a child of his to sleep on a futon, of all things. Guess it seemed all Gypsy-like and what’d-the-neighbors-say to him.

Anyway, back then apartment-establishing jaunts to Target required first off, that I borrow a car. And once there, accumulating crap was a practice in restraint. Necessities like mops and cleaners and such went head to head against fripperies like ceramic Italian-esque pasta bowls and bright striped shower curtains. Sometimes home decor, to the extent it could be humbly called that, won out over specialty toilet bowl bleaches.

Thankfully, I never contracted any illnesses from my less-than-sterile but kinda cute living conditions.

These days Target is still the soup kitchen to my soul. But I shop with heedless abandon. Bolstered by their don’t-need-the-receipt-just-your-credit-card return policy, I toss whatever shiny thing I see into the cart.

Clothing? Well, I prefer not to buy it there (for reasons of snobbery alone), but sometimes a little cotton short catches my eye. And who knows if it’s the Small or the Medium that’ll work best. Buy both. Return one later. Candles, brooms, weird flower-shaped sprinkler attachments for kids to run through on hot summer days. A hectare of Size 4 diapers. I never leave the place without mindlessly spending, well, a lot.

The thing is, somewhere between the Intern Era came, well, the hoped-for karmic career redemption patch. Widely known as the American Dream. Or more precisely, the Internet Boom. Right here in Northern California, USA. And instead of having to desperately take an ‘Intro to the Internets’ class at The Learning Annex, I’d somehow managed to retool my media career into an internet business-type kinda job before all the hoopla kicked in.

Looked up from my laptop one day to discover I’d become a cherished ladder-climbing leader at a company where 27-year-olds made Vice President, bought homes based on the momentary health of their unvested stock, and earned bonuses their hard-working parents no doubt found obscene. I traveled non-stop, managed teams in multiple cities, and spent my days telling people twice my age how to run their companies. All that, plus shrimp cocktail and top-shelf booze at Friday afternoon office Happy Hours.

Like many folks at that time, I felt pretty damn invincible.

Unsurprisingly, my spending habits changed. I could buy one of those loft condos with Corian counter tops if I wanted! Buy last-minute tickets home to RI. Go to swank dinners with friends, order beyond the dinner salad, and not dread someone’s inevitable suggestion to “split the bill evenly between us.”

But more than the stuff I could get, what struck me most—initially, at least—was the lack of worry that my new financial sitch afforded me. More than the thrill of ownership any of the crap I bought, knowing I had what I needed to comfortably take care of myself gave me a supreme sense of contentment. A deep, proud-of-myself-for-making-it-so self-sufficiency and security.

And I realized yesterday that my memory of those days, that feeling in particular, is starting to fade in my mind, alongside the Intern Era. With the Global Economic Recession lurking in the pit of everyone’s gut, and me intentionally unemployed and Living La Vida Housewife, it’s hard to remember spending freely on a credit card that someone else (someone I’m not married to, that is) pays.

Prudence seems to dictate a throttling back on spending. It’s not that a crap run to Target will have us living on the street—blessedly. It’s just that, well, used to be we had two jobs and no kids. Now we’ve got one for the four of us. I’m no math expert, but that nets out to less all around.

So I get it right? I’m able to intellectually understand all this. It’s just I’m not certain how to get there. Regroup with that little voice in my head that used to say, “You can’t afford this.”

I mean, it seems obvious, right? Just spend less. But I’m deadline driven, motivated by fear, and perform best under pressure. I know that I should ratchet back, but I’m not feeling a sting to do so.

And Mark, poor dear. His concerns in this arena should be all I need to react. But I’m not getting spurned on. I’m not kicking into thrift mode with any of the novel glee or romantic challenge of it all.

And I can’t help but think that the monumental passage of the Intern Era’s to blame.

It’s like people who wore braces as teenagers, or however old you are when you do that. Elastic bands with colors or cutesie names, nightmares about corn on the cob, fears that getting inextricably locked with a co-braces-wearer during a make-out sesh might not just be urban legend.

I, thankfully, never had them. But I have to believe that once you get your braces taken off, you put all that gnarly, miserable, clingy-food-bits trauma behind you. Close that door and MOVE ON. You just get out there and enjoy your new straight teeth life, and revel in the knowledge that you’ll never be able to fry an ant with the glare off your teeth again.

That is, until as an adult you discover that your teeth have somehow moved. Shifted when you weren’t paying them any attention. And now you need to get braces AGAIN.

Which, is kinda where I feel like I am today. Perfectly straight teeth, thankyouverymuch. But having, despite myself, to go back to that uncomfortable place of restrained spending, at Tar-jay and beyond.

Well, that, or get a job. A job, or maybe a high-class internship.

Advanced Planning

I’m trying to get over feeling like it’s a bit absurd that I’m in Rhode Island for two weeks, and for 99% of that time my Dad’s not been here. Well, he’s here as in in-state, but he’s not in the hizouse, as it were. He’s on the DL at a rehab center after getting a hip job. 

And after spending a week here, Mark returned to Cali yesterday, and to the 9-to-5 today. With him gone, Dad on hiatus, and my womb-to-tomb amiga Amelia bound back to DC today, I’m nurturing a small abandonment complex.  

Thankfully, today was The. Perfect. Beach. Day.

And I am lucky enough to have a handful of most excellent friends who live here. So my friend Story, who I’ve known and loved since high school when she had a cigarette butt from the lead singer of Echo and the Bunnymen taped to her bedroom wall, she and her sons met the girls and I in Newport at the beach.

Oh, and did I mentioned Story’s an amazing chef? I’d been joking when I asked her to pack a gourmet box lunch for me, but didn’t object when she handed me a divine BBQ chicken sandwich.

All that, plus the bliss of seeing her boys and my girls running in and out of the waves, squealing with summertime glee. And Story and I getting our annual what-feels-like seven cumulative minutes of kid-interrupted in-person catch-up time. 

At home post-beach Paigey took an epic nap. Kate and I ate excessive pizza, read Angelina books, and I marveled over the fact that I have real estate envy for a literary mouse family’s charming Costwalds cottage.

Lots more things happened that were mostly fun and all exhausting. I was staggering towards the finish line to get the girls bathed after a dinner in which I sprang from the table no less than six times to cook peas, get more corn, grab a sippy, get a spoon. I grabbed Paige and my untouched wine thinking I’d make it my end-of-the-day treat. Then Paige plunged her grubby fist deep into it. 

Oy. 

So, well past her bedtime and getting only one book (not two), I crawled into bed with Miss Kate for a day’s end snuggle. Sometimes I do this, blurring the lines between who’s really tucking who into bed. 

Kate: [cradling her stuffed dog] “Dottie is my baby. He’s a newborn.”

Me: “Oh, really?”

Kate: “Why do newborns make mommies sleepy?”

Me: [Lunging into a 50-minute diatribe including, "And then there's the burping, and more diapers to change, and some little babies just cry and cry and cry for no reason---in the middle of the night!"] “When you were a little baby Grandma Peggy came to visit and she helped us take care of you.”

Kate: [excited] “Did she take care of me in the middle of the night?”

Me: “Well, I don’t think so, no, but sometimes in the morning she’d take you and let Daddy and I sleep if we’d been awake a lot during the night.”

Kate: “I want to have two babies.”

Me: “Well, if you want, I can come to your house and help you take care of your new baby so you’re not so sleepy. Because I’d be the grandma.”

Kate: “That’d be good.”

Me: “I think so too. I would actually love to do that.”

Kate: [perks up] “So then Daddy could be the Grandpa!”

Me: “That’s exactly right. If you want, I bet he’d like to come help out too.”

Kate: “Okay, Mama, good. Night-night.”

Nurse? A Manhattan Straight Up, STAT!

The last thing I expected was that Dad’s hip replacement surgery would be so hilarious. But all’s (thankfully) gone terribly well, and his attitude is so absurdly good, it’s frankly been slaying my sisters, Mark, and me.

It should be known that Dad is the Master of Hyperbole. And his commentary on life since adopting a titanium hip has underscored that. So I couldn’t help but make note of some of his more dramatic remarks.

On our first post-op call with him, I’d have bet the kids’ college funds that he’d say, “I feel like a million bucks!” Sure enough, my sis Marie covered the phone receiver with her hand, leaned towards me, and mouthed those very words.

But that was just the beginning. To hear Dad describe it, the doctor tripped into his room the day after the surgery, giddy over how well it went, and impressed by the robust state of Dad’s 80-year-old musculature. The guy also noted he’d “never seen a hip in worse shape” than Dad’s.

Well, that was the God-given hip. Despite having a nasty case of hiccups, life with the new joint seems to be ducky. To the amazement of the hospital staff, Dad’s sworn off all painkillers, claiming he “feels no pain whatsoever.”

And after some incident of bed-bound camaraderie, he proclaimed, “My roommate is like a brother to me.” Apparently—and unsurprisingly—he got all the guy’s contact info before they parted ways. Maybe what they felt was akin to the love reality show contestants seem to blather on about after even the briefest interludes of cohabitation.

To counterbalance all those hospital-haters out there, I give you Fred Bruno. He described his room as “magnificent,” marveled at the vast dinner selections (having kept a menu as proof for any disbelievers), and, for some reason that’s not altogether clear, expressed delight over the TV remote control.

But hands down the winner of his can’t-keep-me-down Perfect Patient attitude is the comment he made to Marie. “This,” he said, “has been the best two days of my life.”

I’m sure he meant to say, second only to the day Kristen was born.

Dad’s now at a local rehab facility for a fews days, until he can shimmy into his Cole Haan loafers and get up and down stairs on his own. Mark, the girls, and I went to see him yesterday, and aside from the fact that it’s packed with old people—who seem light years older than Pops—the place doesn’t seem half bad.

The facility had the good humor to put a trail of red, white, and blue stripes down the hall carpet, mimicking how the town paints the yellow street lines patriotic colors for The Fourth. The rooms are modern and clean, and there’s even a strange little barn housing llamas, donkeys, and ducks. Brilliant fodder for getting grandkids fired up for a visit to the nursing home.

When we got there, Dad was sitting up in bed, looking like his old self, save for the hospital gown. “Did you know that this place has a cocktail hour on Tuesday and Friday nights?” he said with glee. “If your doctor allows it, they’ll make you a drink!”

I don’t know if my dad did some research to find this place, or if it was just dumb luck. Whatever the case, the true test of his recovery will be his ability to balance a Manhattan against his walker, without spilling a drop.

I have every reason to believe he’ll do just fine.