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Before I got married I worked in Chicago processing insurance claims for a utility company.  There were four of us out front and we were referred to as “the girls.”  We literally had stacks and stacks of bills rubber-banded by day on top of the filing cabinets.  If we could get through a couple of days a week we were doing okay but by the end of the year we were bombarded.  December, January and February were all six day work weeks.  On Monday, the boss would come in and say, “How’d you girls do Saturday?  Did you get a lot done?”  The girls pushed thousands and thousands of dollars in claims out the door every day.

When Mark was in graduate school I was the breadwinner and worked in a bank.  I’m sure I got the job because I waited two hours for the interview.  I was desperately seeking employment without much luck and had nowhere else to go that day.  I think they hired me out of guilt.  Whatever the reason I would stay there for four years until we moved to Maryland.

When I started I processed auto loans and would later move to mortgage loans.  Over on the mortgage side I would work for a real go-getter.  A young loan officer out to prove himself meant I was piled with an incredible amount of work to balance, type, copy and prepare for closing.  It was during that time that I got pregnant and my first trimester was a doozy.  Every day between 10-10:30 you could find me on the bathroom floor dry-heaving until I finally barfed into the toilet.  It was like clockwork every damn morning.  One time, Mr. Go-Getter knocked on the bathroom door, stuck his head in and said, “Are you almost done?  I need you.”  When I came back to my desk he said, “I hope you’re using that time for your break.”

For two years I was the treasurer/VP of finance for the PTA.  Thousands of dollars passed through my hands from fundraisers to carnivals to the annual auction.  It was at the auction when we were closing out and trying to get everybody settled on what they owed that one of the dads said to me, “Let me take over here, honey.  I think I know money a little better than you do.”

At my last job all money in and out came through my desk.  Thousands of dollars every day were my responsibility. I paid every contract and bill from the heating to the toilet paper for four buildings. I reconciled thirteen staff credit cards every month.  Every check for a donation, grant, membership renewal, or rebate from the electric company for switching to LED lights was my responsibility. When someone new joined the staff and my boss was taking her around to meet everyone, she said about me and my supervisor, “These are my girls.”  I was 57 years old.

I have been a one-person crusader in my home these last few months for Hillary Clinton.  I argued with every person in my family on her behalf.  They wouldn’t budge and neither would I.  You would think five against one would sway me (and maybe make me feel the bern) but it didn’t so last night when she sealed the deal and gave her speech I was a weepy mess.  When she said, “This is because of you,” I knew exactly what she meant. This was for the young woman on her first real job working six days a week shoving paper through a hopelessly clogged system.  For the puking mom-to-be trying to get through morning sickness and hold onto her paycheck nearly thirty years ago. For the volunteer treasurer being pushed out of the way by the man who knew money better than she did. For the woman who has worked for decades but was stunned into silence when introduced as “my girl.”

That are many uncertainties in this election going forward but I think one thing has been settled.

We’re nobody’s girl.

“If I die and wake up in the middle of a meeting in a room with florescent lights I will know that I am in hell.” ~Fr. Matt

“I highly doubt that’s going to happen but preach on, Padre.” ~A Speckled Trout

Every Tuesday morning I have to go to the weekly staff meeting.  Since I mostly push paper and am not a decision maker of anything more than when I should take my lunch break most everything doesn’t apply to me.  My presence, however, is required.  The beginning of each meeting starts with everybody sharing their highs and lows.  This was confusing to me during that first week of employment as I had nothing to report.  A comfy chair and an office Keurig could be a high, I suppose, and so I decided that would be my response when it was my turn.  Imagine my surprise when this was not business highs and lows but rather personal ones.

This exercise instantly got better because now I could learn a little something about my new coworkers and they about me and my exciting life.  Normally one to prefer to not speak up and have all eyes on me, I instead embraced this opportunity to tell everyone what was going on outside of my office life.  A daughter having a baby, another one about to graduate college, the Listen To Your Mother show in May….  I could go on and on with the highlight reel of my life, and being a team player I mostly kept it all high.

Driving to work every Tuesday I would mentally go over my weekend and think about what I was going to say to charm and entertain during my five minutes of highs and lows.  When I was two-timing and also doing my retail job over the holidays my coworkers loved my stories of crazy customers – especially the one who insisted to me that angels were not religious.  Sometimes it felt like I was doing stand-up for a new career path and maybe I was.  So imagine my surprise one Tuesday morning when instead of being asked to relate our highs and lows it was decided to switch things up and inquire….

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE PART OF THE DAY?

What?

Going first one of my coworkers said, “At night when I get to go to bed.  I am not joking.”  She totally took what I was going to say as the first thought of many mornings is calculating how many hours of adulting I have to fake before I can call it good and climb back into that tempur-pedic.  I was in a pickle.  The high and low I had practiced had to be trashed and I was under pressure to come up with something different and so I said, “It would have to be the morning.  First thing when I wake up and the birds are singing.  They have so much to say so early!  Secondly, would be the first slug of coffee and how it courses through my veins like a blood transfusion from the American Red Cross.   Lastly, my flower garden that is right outside the front door that I pass on the way to the car to get to work.  All of a sudden it has sprung to life.”

My coworkers smiled and nodded.  “Oh that’s good,” they said.  “Especially the coffee part.”

And I smiled back and thought, “That might have been the biggest line of bullshit I’ve ever said out loud.”  I hate the mornings.  If the birds wake me up I want to yell at them to PIPE DOWN.  If they don’t beat the alarm in waking me up I want to throw that beeping thing that practically gives me a heart attack every morning out the window – quite possibly at the chattering birds.  The coffee part was true.  The garden?  That was an unnecessary flourish to a mostly false answer.

I dreaded the next meeting and what was suddenly going to be asked in the getting-to-know-you-question-of-the-week.  Fortunately we u-turned back to our regular routine and I was in my comfort zone.  “My high was a relaxed weekend puttering around the house, getting caught up on laundry and grocery shopping.  I do have a low this time, though.  The Good Wife ended and that has been my Sunday night ritual for years.”

Cue the sad, pouty face.  I was back in the high/low business.

The next week we had our regular staff meeting – smaller in attendance and in a different conference room and I was ready.  “My high?  Going to my mother-in-law’s 85th birthday party where we saw people we hadn’t seen since we got married over thirty years ago.  My low?  You guys, the security line at Midway Airport in Chicago.  It snaked clear to the parking garage and it was at the crack of daylight on a Sunday morning.”  They might ask me a few questions about TSA and my mini-trauma and then we’d move on to my right and another employee with their own set of highs and lows.

Imagine my surprise when once again the script was thrown overboard.

WHAT ARE YOU MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO THIS SUMMER?

Who is reading the HR manual all of a sudden?

I s.c.r.a.m.b.l.e.d.  “I would have to say that I am most looking forward to the sun since it’s been so cloudy and rainy lately and the heat.  Definitely the sun and some good ‘ol summertime heat.”

It was an out-of-body experience this big, fat lie of mine.  It sounded like it was coming from the deepest recesses of a lying heart that resembles you-know-who-Trump.

I hate summer.  The sweat, the frizz, the relentless droning of the air conditioner, the stinky sandals. But mostly I hate summer because so many women seem to pull it off so well with their sundresses, casual ponytails, sun-kissed skin and perfectly minimal makeup.  Why do they taunt me and my beady sweat ‘stache with their coolness?

“Huh,” a coworker said,  “I wouldn’t have guessed you to be a summer person.”

This would be true because on every other day of the year I am neither a summer person nor a morning person – just a working girl whose only decision is when to eat the salad she brought from home and the big, fat lie she’s going to pull out of her pocket when the highs and lows are no longer a priority on Tuesday morning.

“If I die and wake up in the middle of a meeting in a room with fluorescent lights I will know that I am in hell.” ~Fr.  Matt

“I make shit up.” ~A Speckled Trout

For as long as I can remember my mom has been a frequent wake and funeral attendee.  As kids, we were going-to-church-clothes-regulars at the Fred C. Dames Funeral Home, where just above the casket hung a bunch of water-colored grapes on the wallpapered walls.   Back in those days a wake would be at least two full days and my parents believed that loading up the station wagon with all of us was an essential learning experience in life and death.  Since I was freaked out just by walking in the door of Fred’s place, I kept my eyes glued on the grapes for fear that whoever was in the casket that year would pop up and scare the sweet jeezus out of me.

Whenever Mom tells me about a recent wake or funeral that she has been to I will always ask, “And how was it?”  She predictably says the same thing every time, “So-and-so looked good and you’ll never believe who I ran into there.” One time she went to a wake and on the way out passed a room that was empty except for the person in the casket.  “I decided to go in there and sit for a bit,” she said, “because I couldn’t imagine how anybody could die and not have a single person there to pay their respects.”

“Well, Mom” I said, “maybe the family went out to get something to eat.”

“Somebody should have stayed behind,” she answered.  She would later add in almost a whisper “Kath, he was a professor.” I didn’t know if this was a simple fact she was passing along or a warning to share with my professor husband that he better start working on his people skills or he’d end up in a funeral parlor alone save for a stranger passing by.  “I stayed for a bit and said a few prayers,” she said.  “It seemed like the least I could do.”

*****

A few weeks ago I was driving around running errands and thinking about the father of my childhood friend.  Nancy and her dad had a falling out when her mother died that was never mended.  About that wake Mom said, “That might have been the worst one I’ve ever been to.  Nobody was talking or even looking at each other.  You could cut the tension with a knife.”

Many years would go by after that when Mom told me that she had heard from Ed who had called to tell her that he had reached out to his daughter.  He was in the throes of a deep depression and his therapist thought that writing a letter and trying to repair his relationship with his estranged youngest child would be helpful to his recovery.  Nancy called me after she read the letter and was livid.  I listened once again to her litany of accusations but for the first time I didn’t let her off the hook.  With my own dad gone even longer than her mom, I couldn’t imagine having a father still alive but acting as if he were dead.  Sharing those thoughts with her would end our friendship as my perceived allegiance to her dad was enough for her to cut ties with me as well.

Since he was like a second dad to me growing up I decided I’d respond to him with my own letter.  The specifics of it will stay on those written pages, but I wanted to thank him for many things including being so good to my mom and dad when my dad was so sick.  He called me when he got the letter, and on a trip home awhile later he and Mark and I met for breakfast.  He carried a Ziploc bag with him that included old photos of him and Nancy’s mom, the second wife he would be married to for a few short years before she would die of cancer, photos of grandkids, and the letter I wrote him.  “This is my important stuff,” he said.  “You see what’s in here, right?”

With Ed on my mind so much that day, I decided that since we were going to Chicago soon I’d call him and see if he wanted to meet again for breakfast.

That afternoon Mom called.  “I have some bad news,” she said.  “I just got a phone call.  Ed died this morning.”

Ed died this morning?

All morning I had been thinking of him on the very day he died?

A few days later Mom would call back to tell me about Ed’s wake.  She would say that my childhood friend was a no show but that she talked to Nancy’s older sister and her husband.  About Ed she said “He looked good” and then added, “he looked like he didn’t suffer.”

Those words stung because my mom had never said anything like that before, but at 88 she’s grieved for more than her fair share of people who have suffered on their way out.  I don’t know anyone who has lost more people in her life – her husband, friends from church, friends from the old neighborhood and the new neighborhood, friends from high school that would always go to reunions with her, two full-term stillborn babies, a niece and nephew, a brother-in-law, two sister-in-laws, cousins, the spouses of cousins.  The list goes on and on, and instead of being sad about Ed, my sympathy suddenly turned towards my mom and her circle – a bigger-than-life tribe throughout my life that has gotten smaller and smaller as the years go by and the deaths accumulate.  How she must miss them all.

When the last of my mother-in-law’s brothers died she said, “I can’t believe I’m the only one left.”. My grandmother, who lived to be 97, once said to me, “You don’t want to live this long, honey.  You don’t have any friends left.”

No friends left?  Whatever in the world must that be like?

If it’s true that when someone dies their energy dissipates into the world, the dearly departed, including Ed and a professor whose name she never knew, have been keeping Mom company for a very long time…..

……and while it certainly isn’t the same as having them here in this life it is how she has lived without complaint.

When asked if I would consider being part of the team to bring Listen To Your Mother back to the stage in the Kansas City area, I said “yes” when I had no idea what that “yes” would entail.  My own experience when I was in the cast, however, was so life changing that to not consider doing that for other storytellers seemed selfish. 

A hundred times in the months leading up to the show I said to myself, “Oh, honey, you are in so over your head.” Every Friday on my day off I cold-called businesses, pitched the show and practically begged them to consider sponsoring.  I heard “no” so much that after a couple of hours of that weekly rejection I would hold my head in my hands and think “how in the hell are we going to pull this off.” I made in person cold calls and follow-ups that didn’t go much better, but I asked them to at least consider going to the show to see for themselves how wonderful it is.  A couple of months later when the posters were done I called on them again saying, “Here you go.  Here’s everything you and your customers need to know about this show.”

When it was time to get those posters and then programs done I thought that there was no way I could deal with graphic designers and a printing company without looking like an idiot.  Sometimes that was exactly how I looked because even now I have no idea what a pixel is.  They didn’t hold it against me and instead walked me through what they needed so both of us were satisfied with the end result.

Through it all I had a partner in Greta – someone I barely knew when we started.  It was a blind date that quickly turned the corner into an engagement.  We bounced ideas off of each other.  She would prop me up through my weekly sponsor rejection.  When the graphic designer emailed with a question or problem, Greta would jump in and take care of things if I wasn’t able to respond right away.  Most importantly, it seemed when one of us was feeling the stress the other would instinctively know and help carry the load.

We also had a national team behind us that was phenomenal.  If you had a question there was an answer within minutes.  If you felt like things were going south there was a phone call.  If you wondered how teams in other cities did things you need only ask the Facebook group and you would have a dozen people weighing in with their thoughts and unending cheerleading.

We went into this without any idea of the kinds of stories that would show up when we put out the casting call.  Nobody told us how hard it would be to decide what pieces would be in the show. We heard so many good stories that we easily could have doubled the size of our show.  Ultimately, we put together a cast that would spend nearly two hours taking the audience through the hills and valleys of motherhood in the most spectacular way.

It would be impossible not to love this cast.  They are funny, gregarious, soulful, complicated, smart, wise.  They are kind…….the sort of kindness and gentleness that catches in my throat whenever I think of them.  They laughed at the funny stories and cried with the sad and tough ones every single time.  They are everything you could ever need or want in a girlfriend.  When they came back onto the stage at the end and the whole place erupted in cheers and a standing ovation, I was so proud of them.

After the show when we were having dinner, my son asked, “So what did you learn from all of this?”

I learned that I am capable of doing far more than I give myself credit for.
I learned that all of us feel connected by the stories we hear and share.
I learned that being part of being something bigger is an honor.
I learned that, like motherhood, providing the means for someone else to shine might be the most satisfying thing I have ever done.

I learned that I love to keep learning.

The Kansas City version of Listen To Your Mother is this Sunday.  It has been a labor of love – months and months in the making.  I have met a dozen new and amazing women – all the gypsy kind of souls I am drawn to.  

I have written many stories in my head but have had no time to get them written here between work, a beautiful new granddaughter and getting this show to the stage.  Please don’t give up on me.  After this week this little space won’t be so neglected and we will meet here again on a more regular basis.

xoxo
k.

A few weeks before I left my job last year, I had to go to Office Max to get 1099 forms to send out to the contracted providers we had hired the previous year.  As I had a legit excuse to play hooky for a bit, I wandered the aisles looking at pens (oh my GAH the pens!!), notepads and organizers.  It was a dreamy field trip for a Girl Friday who loves organizational tools but wants somebody else to pay for it.  Seeing as how I was sent on a mission by the The Man, however, I eventually stopped pining for what I couldn’t have and got my boring tax forms and made my way to the checkout line.

Ahead of me were three businessmen.  I don’t know what their business was.  Wait, I take that back.  Their business was to put on a suit and tie and look businessy while bathing in nicotine.  It overpowered the Please Wait Here For The Next Available Cashier line like a nuclear cloud and made me want to gag.  I breathed through my mouth while waiting – one snafu after another at the register that lengthened my time in line.

I didn’t know how much more I could take when somebody came and stood behind me in line.  It would get worse.  His body odor was so bad it made the nicotine seem like a dodge through the Perfume Lady Patrol at Macy’s in December.

I was the filling in an Oreo cookie of stink.

Maybe that was the final assault in an already fragile work situation because a couple of weeks later I’d be out of that place for good.  I took a lot of baggage out the door with me when I left, including a lasting memory of that stinky line that will not go away.  

One year later it is still tailgating me.

When I get home from work I walk in the front door and take a deep breath.  In the event that something funky has gone down in the village while I’ve been gone I start flushing it out. Garbage?  Dog pee?  Towels left in the washing machine?  Litter box?  A potato gone bad?  I hunt Smelly down like Elmer Fudd, and if toting a shotgun over my shoulder and ka-blamming the daylights out of it would take care of the problem I’d get one. 

“Don’t you smell that?” I always ask Mark.  He shakes his head, sinuses so packed he’d be a case study for any Ear, Nose and Throat doc.

“How can you not smell that??!!  It’s so gross,” I say, nose to the ground like a bassett hound.  Sniffing, sniffing, sniffing.  “It’s in this general vicinity,” I tell him waving my hand in a circle and sheesh, why hasn’t anybody thought of a radar and a Clorox drone for this kind of thing?  Cleaning supplies at the ready, I rejoice when I find the Culprit of Odor.  “Success, people!! I have saved us once again.”

One time Will told me that his friend said our house was the only one she’d ever been in that had cats and didn’t smell like it had cats.  “She really said that?  Oh geez, Will, I think that’s the nicest thing anybody has ever said about this house.  Really.  Tell her that I said that,” I say tearing up while simultaneously patting myself on the back.

The other day Mark and I were at Target looking for floss when it settled over Health & Beauty.  The dreaded Body Odor in the toothpaste aisle, taking me back to that memorable day in Office Max.  “Oh geez, I can’t do this” I whisper to Mark.  “It smells so bad.  Tell me you can smell that?” Packed to the gills with pollen he looks at me and says, “It’s April.  I got nothing getting through until the first hard freeze in November.”

I stand alone in my misery and cannot figure out how these shoppers in Target can go about their business like there isn’t the smell of locker room in the toothpaste aisle.  I pull my shirt up to my nose and take a deep whiff.  Is it me?  Negative.  I work in an office.  The only time I sweat during the day is when my boss walks by my desk and sees me on my phone for the thousandth time.

I notice two hipsters are at the other end of the aisle.  It has to be them.  Those hipsters might brush their teeth but they probably don’t do boring, conventional stuff like bathing or washing their clothes.  “I see you hipsters,” I say telepathically.  “Thinking you’re so cool and all feeling the Bern.  Well, here’s a bern for you.  You’re smelling up my Target.”

They don’t seem to connect telepathically.  Weirdos.  They mind their own business, get some toothpaste and move on.

I go after them.

What? 

Yes.  I follow them to housewares.

I had to find out if they smell so I stalk them until I find some cute, and I mean really cute dishes.  Our dishes are at least twenty years old.  Why don’t we ever think about replacing this crap?  Where did Mark go?  I start to go look for him and then remember why I’m there in the first place.

Oh yeah, confronting smelly hipsters.

I trail behind them once again and pretend to look at dishtowels and am surprised by what I discover.  The hipsters do not stink.

It’s 8:30.  The store announces that it’s closing in thirty minutes.  I go find my husband.  I feel like a failure. I have not rooted out this smell, and doesn’t Target know that all the cute housewares and Who What Wear in the world won’t save them if they smell bad?  I mull this over on the drive home and realize that in the next emergency (and there will be another because this is a trend) I must first place the oxygen mask securely over my own nose and mouth before worrying about that of another. 

My husband is a lucky man.  He can’t smell a thing.  I’m a proud woman.  My house doesn’t smell like cats. 

At the end of another smelly spin around the sun the only people we can save is ourselves. 

Since the beginning of the year I have purchased a couch off Craigslist and sold a dresser and a chaise lounge on it.

I think we can all agree that this makes me an expert and, as such, I can give advice.

For the buyer…….

Tip #1:  It would be best to leave your husband out of these dealings, but unfortunately he has upper body strength that you lack and so he must be a part of this. 

He will bitch about it every step of the way.  He will say, “Why can’t we just go buy a new couch?  Why can’t we go in a store, pick one out and HAVE THEM DELIVER IT?  This makes sense for a few minutes but then you will snap back to reality and say, “No no no.  I have spent months hunting couches from Craig and I cannot let you stop me from flushing this one out.” You will make him come along to look at it which adds to the excitement.  Will these people be open carry kind of sellers or pocket knife stabby sellers?  You say to tag-along spouse, “You have to admit you can’t buy this kind of adrenaline rush at Ikea.”  He will not answer for fear of exploding.

Tip #2:  When he says you probably should pass because the legs don’t screw off IGNORE HIM.  This is one of those man fixations.  He will keep talking about THE LEGS SCREWING OFF until you’re pretty sure the needle is stuck in his head and needs a good whap.  ‘”Enough with the legs,” you will say to him.  “Why do the ding dang legs need to come off anyways?”  Sheesh.

Tip #3:  Go to Home Depot to rent a truck by the hour because THE LEGS DON’T SCREW OFF and so the couch won’t fit in the back of your baby SUV like you had planned.

Tip #4:  Carry your insurance card like you’re told to do all the times or Home Depot won’t rent you the truck you need because THE LEGS DON’T SCREW OFF.  Go home to get it and say to peeved husband who needs to go to work even though it’s a Saturday and you think that’s just wrong, “But isn’t this great that we get to spend even more time together?” Ignore the veins popping out of his peeved head and offer him a granola bar.

Tip #5:  Use the full force of your ass to shove your new/used couch through the front door because THE LEGS DON’T SCREW OFF.

Tip #6:  If the color is slightly more purpley than gray once you get it in the house be sure to say to the husband, “I don’t know.  Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea.”  And after he gives you a seething look thank your lucky stars that THE LEGS DON’T SCREW OFF or you’d be sporting one up the full force of your ass.

Now for the fun part.  The selling…..

Tip #1:  Write a gushing post about the MANY qualities of this piece of furniture even though it’s like an albatross around your neck and if you don’t get rid of it soon you will haul it down to your neighbor’s grill and set it there after he’s gone in the house with the burgers and run away.

Tip #2: Always say it’s in perfect condition even if it isn’t.  This is called bait and bait.

Tip #3:  Check your email every five minutes for days.  When there are no takers completely give up on your life.

Tip #4:  When someone finally does show some interest tell them a good story about listed piece. Respond that it is BREAKING YOUR HEART to sell this but one of the kids moved back home and there’s no room for it.  None of this needs to be factually correct.  You are selling them something not marrying them.

Tip #5:  Agree on a time and date for the buyer to look at the furniture.  Decide then that maybe you should take a looky loo at this thing that you’re selling.  Find out that “perfect condition” may have been overstated.  Too late.  It’s already in cyberspace with all the naked pictures.

Tip #6:  Haul piece up the basement stairs – you pulling and husband pushing.  Bitch endlessly about your shoulder to elicit sympathy from husband.  Find out husband is so over you.

Tip #7:  Notice tiny white spots on piece.  Is that paint splatters?  WTF?  Pick every one off.  Use black sharpie to fill in scratches on brown wood because it’s close enough where you come from. Threaten to beat the cat who keeps jumping his hairy self onto your anally vacuumed winning lotto ticket.

Tip #8:  Decide to take it out on the driveway for buyer to see since it’s such a nice afternoon. Husband says, “Hey, let’s use that 2′ cart thingamajig in the basement.”  Fall back in love with husband because he’s finally on board with your life’s destiny.  Balance 7′ piece of teetering furniture on 2′ of cart and roll out the front door and down three steps.  What could go wrong?

Tip #9: Examine everything that went wrong.  Entire bottom scratched from cramming out the front door and a small tear in the upholstery.  Curse like a sailor in the driveway.  Chuckle when neighbor says, “Having trouble over there?”  Ask husband why neighbors can’t mind their own beeswax.  Husband says, “You never do.  Why should they?” Go in the house and get a bigger sharpie, needle and thread.

Tip #10:  Greet would-be buyers like long lost favorite cousin.  Get weepy talking about THE ALBATROSS and tell them how you sure liked to curl up on it and read a book with a hot cup of tea and some chocolate chip cookies. This is called romanticizing the object which is better than saying that it’s been in the basement for two years with an endless pile of crap and a cat on it.

Tip #11:  Give buyer husband the stinkeye when he goes right to the tear that you just mended.  Say nothing.  Keep your trap shut for once in your life.

Tip #12: Close the deal  Pocket the money, shove ALBATROSS in their pickup truck, tell ’em you hope they love it as much as you did, wave a friendly goodbye, go in the house.

Tip #13:  Lock the damn door.

After all, it is Craigslist.

You are not even here, Little One, and already everybody is so excited to meet you.  It will be a long time before you understand how special that is – to fall in love with someone you have yet to see or hold.

You have a lot of years of growing to do, but far into the future (when you are a teenager and God forbid not sooner) you will one day fall in love with a boy.  You should know, Mae, that this will  sicken your parents.  Every time they observe him looking at you with his lusty, hormonal, teenage boyness and a starter mustache, your Mom and Dad will throw up a little in their mouth and think about gouging this boy’s eyes out.  No kidding, Mae, your normally laid back parents will scare themselves with the thoughts that consume them about this new friend of yours.  One night before drifting off to sleep your mother will casually say to your father, “And that kid’s stupid, little mustache?  He looks like a porn star.” Then she will fall asleep dreaming of a boy in your life like Justin Timberlake – the kind of guy who brings his mother to the Grammys.  Meanwhile, your father will gingerly walk down the stairs, turn on the t.v (the volume barely a whisper) and binge-watch How To Get Away With Murder with a notepad and pen beside him.  When your grandfather, who roofed his way through graduate school with some characters who knew a thing or two about the Big House, meets this boy he will pull your father aside and say, “I still know people. You just say the word.”

You will enlist your grandma’s help in turning the family tide in your favor and, oh honey, she will try to be on your side.  After all, she still vividly remembers that dating stint of your mother’s with the Republican that nearly did her in.  But whenever this boy’s name comes up her chest pounds and her throat tightens like a vise and so she will do what she always does in these situations.  She will google her symptoms.  She can no longer help you, Mae.  Dr. Google has diagnosed your grandma with multiple illnesses – all leaning heavily on the terminally ill side.  Now she needs to quickly assemble a team of experts at MAYO Clinic while there’s still a prayer of being cured.  And if that’s not possible, (due to a perfectly legal scam called the deductible) she will need to go to Target one more time for ibuprofen, toilet paper, throw pillows, and the perfect red lipstick to wear to her final resting place – which according to the terms of her most recent will happens to be the clearance section of Target.

One day your Starter Mustache Boy will make a grave mistake.  He will walk into your parent’s house, cock his ball-capped head, look at your Dad and say, “Dude, what’s happening?” “Dude” will hang as heavy in the air as humidity in July. You will look at your dad with his clenched jaw and pulsing neck veins and, Mae, even you will know that you have been in love with a moron, and, sweet girl, that’s okay.  We’ve all been there.  Your grandma once went out with a nice boy from church that she had been crazy about since the 6th grade.  “You do know his father is a lawyer,” said her mother, who daily prayed for the souls of the dearly departed and her daughter’s wretched dating life.  It turns out that the son-of-a-lawyer thought that taking your grandma along to buy drugs was the perfect getting-to-know-you ice breaker.  There’s all kinds out there, honey, but you come from a long line of sensible women.  We might go in head-over-heels but we know when to cut and run and you will too.

Your dating life from high school, college and beyond will be up, down, and around before you recognize the right one for you.  He will not be perfect but he will feel like home to you and you will not want this man who makes you laugh, cheers you up and on, and whose eyes twinkle with love for you and the life you are making together, to slip away.  Maybe the two of you will decide that the home you’ve built needs a baby in it as well. 

And when that happens, when you stand in the bathroom holding that pregnancy test in your shaking hands staring at the plus sign, you will finally know what it was like for your own mom – to be so in love with someone she has yet to see or hold.  That, dear Mae, is called hope and from that moment on it will be tangled up in everything you know for the rest of your life.

This week is Mallie Bee’s senior recital.  After four years of college dancing to other people’s choreography, this time it will be her turn.  I am a mess of emotions.  I can’t believe that the last of our kids is nearly done with college.  I can’t believe that fifteen years of watching her dance is coming to a close, and while I would never want my wants to collide with her needs, it is clear that her choices will not be likely keep her close by.

An introvert by nature, her heart explodes in dance and we have been lucky enough to witness it from the beginning.  There is so much excitement with all of us for this night and I spent part of my Sunday doing a Facebook invite to every person I know who I think might be remotely interested in my kid’s recital.  They have responded in spades.  Who are we that so many people will go out on a Wednesday night to share our joy?

I work at the college that Mal attends and our paths never cross. Today, however, I overheard a student in our office talking about the show she’s going to be in on Wednesday.  “You have to come,” she said to another student.  “We’ve all been working on it for a long time and it’s going to be fantastic.”

I wondered if it was the same show that Mal was going to be in but it is a big school and there are likely many things going on that night.  But the guy she was talking to said her name and I recognized it and came out of my cube to introduce myself.

“Mallory’s mom?  You’re Mallory’s mom?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have any idea what kind of human being you raised?  I don’t know anyone else like her.  She’s the kindest person I know.  Really.  She is kind to everybody.”

Which was funny because just the night before Mal was talking about people who are nice when it’s convenient and easy for them and makes them look good instead of as a trait that they aspire and work toward on a regular basis.

Every year after the recital we take a picture.  Maggie (the documenter of our family) insists on it.  I am grateful that she does and that we have these memories.  I am also grateful that, as hard and expensive as it was for us to pay for it, that we have had the chance to educate our kids in order for them to pursue what they love.

But mostly I am grateful that when they go about pursuing those passions they remember that being kind is a daily sort of thing.

It might be a little early to trash talk 2016, but so far it has been out to give us a run for the money.  And by “run for the money” I mean we need to RUN for some money.

To date….

*We have had a repairman out three times for the furnace

*Had fraudulent charges on our credit card

*Broke a crown eating a granola bar

*Temporary on said crown fell off after a week.  Returned to dentist to get sealed on again.  Resealed temporary lasted two days

*Downstairs toilet tank decided to stopped filling with water

*Husband gets put on committee at work to discuss pay cuts for entire department

*Looming tax bill

It’s been a little hard to keep a perky attitude when every time we turn around there are fistfuls of money flying out the door.

When talking complaining to the very pregnant Maggie carrying the newest addition to the family, she said, “Mom, we’re all here and we’re all fine, right?  Isn’t that what you always say?  That as long as that’s true everything else will be okay.”

From the mouths of babies carrying babies comes a precious little pearl.