A Speckled Trout

About this time last year we got a save-the-date card for a wedding the following May.  I had no idea who these people were.  There was no return address and only the first names of the couple were on the postcard.  I showed it to Mark and together we studied it for a good long while.  “I got nothing on this one,” he said.  It took some digging and with the help of one of Mark’s coworkers (who got the same card and was equally perplexed) we found it was the grandson of someone Mark has worked with for years.

The grandson?  Have we ever met this kid?

This spring the wedding invite came and I balked.  To be present to celebrate the nuptials of two people we didn’t know seemed crazy to me.  Mark disagreed.  “This is important to Allen and his family and we should be there.” I balked some more.  “You do know we have to get a gift, right?  We have to buy a wedding gift.” Mark dug his heels in and since he rarely does that I mailed back the response card saying we would be more than happy to attend.

There we found ourselves with a table full of strangers in one of the loveliest event spaces in Kansas City.  We mingled and said our hellos to Allen and his wife.  Mark’s previous boss and his wife, now retired, were there and when he saw his former roofer turned assistant professor hire from 24 years ago he said to me  “Shouldn’t your old man be out fixing somebody’s roof this summer?”

The food was fabulous, the bride and groom young, gorgeous, happy, and clearly crazy in love.  “What’s your connection to the bride and groom?” was the round robin question around our table.  “Actually we don’t know either of them but Mark works with his grandfather,” I said, and then added, “but they sure seem adorable.” If nothing else you can plop Mark and I in with a table of strangers and we can yak our way through the awkwardness.  We got up and danced when Stevie Wonder started playing, ate too many M & Ms off the candy table and had a great time.  Allen thanked us twice for coming and his kind eyes have always conveyed far more than he says.  Before he left, Mark’s old boss stopped by our table and asked where Mark had gone off to.  “The bathroom I think.”

“And he left you here alone?  That shithead.”

These two are but a host of many key players in the early years of Mark’s career and our first resources in navigating a new life in Kansas City.  They are brilliant, funny (oh so funny), still crazy about their spouses and their kids, proud of a career that has spanned decades, and proud of their contributions to science.

A few weeks later Allen retired and there was a party in his honor.  We have been to a few of these and often they have a funeral feel to them.  Mark put an end to that when he did a power point presentation that was hilarious and the highlight of the night.  I got a glimpse of the energy he brings to his workplace on a daily basis.

We were one of the last ones to leave the party which gave us a chance to talk to the grandson whose wedding we had just been to a few weeks earlier.  It was apparent how much he admires his grandfather and how much he resembles him in mannerisms and quiet strength.

With Allen retiring the old guard that has shepherded my husband through the trials, tribulations, and politics of a career in academia are mostly gone now.  Though it hardly seems possible Mark is now the old guard and I see in him some of the same traits as his mentors – brilliant, funny, crazy about his spouse and kids, proud of a career that has spanned decades and proud of his own contributions to science.

It has taken me this long to recognize that Mark believes that showing up on a Saturday night is part of his job, and that being present for the personal celebrations of the people who put their faith in him is dotted with fondness, gratitude and respect.  I will pick out a party dress, buy a gift for the young and darling who are madly in love, splash on some perfume, and stop complaining.

And I will remember to glance over my shoulder now and then to take note that his career has been paved with the gold of friendship.

                                               ** Motor boat motor boat go so slow**
                                               ** Motor boat motor boat go so fast**
                                               ** Motor boat motor boat step on the gas**

In the summer when the kids were little I took them to the public pool every afternoon.  If the day’s forecast was hot and sunny (but hot and overcast was never a deal breaker) I’d plow through the housework and laundry at a breakneck speed.  My wee ones would would scurry around picking up their toys under the threat of “We’re not going to the pool unless you do your chores.”

Who was I kidding?  The pool was as much for me as it was for them.  One time I ran into another mom who said her kids would just as soon not go to the pool and I thought “Not go to the pool?  Then what in the world are you supposed to do with them every day?”

It seemed that just when one Fisher kid graduated from the toddler pool to the main pool another pregnancy would send me and the newest bambino back a grade.  I learned from another mom that freedom for the older kid would come only after finding and buying the brightest colored swimsuit so that you could easily spot them from the confines of the baby pool.  When I was pregnant with Mallory, I befriended another pregnant mom that summer – her with baby #4 on the way to my #3.  Every afternoon we’d talk while entertaining our toddlers while simultaneously telling our older kids “No you absolutely can not have anything from the snack bar and didn’t we talk about this before we left.”  I wondered if she’d had her baby when a few days had gone by without seeing her.  A week later she was back with her newborn in a stroller parked in the shade.  By the end of July I’d follow her to labor and delivery and by early August my baby was parked next to hers. After that summer I never saw her again until twenty years later when I ran into her at a restaurant. “You probably don’t remember me,” she said.  “We were friends one summer at the pool.”  Who forgets who they shared the foxhole of a summer pregnancy with?

Through those summers I bounced my babies in their floppy hats up and down in the water, held onto chubby toddler fingers saying “kick kick kick” while they proudly wiggled their legs back and forth, caught kids jumping off the side into my arms, heard “Mom watch this” a thousand times, tossed quarters from the side so they could dive for them, was Marco to their Polo, grabbed them when they came up choking on water, and played Motor Boat – twirling them round and round, faster and faster, until they motor boated right out of my hands.

“Again,” they’d say over and over.

When it was time to leave we’d pack up our wet towels, sunscreen, and empty baggies of goldfish and drive home in a stifling hot car – bloodshot eyes and a trail of chlorine wafting behind us.  Exhausted from the sun and swimming, the three of them would flop on the floor and watch cartoons – too tired to argue over whose turn it was to pick.

Sometimes we’d go twice in one day – our standing afternoon date and then again after dinner when their dad could come along. He would play monster or dinosaur, chasing them, grabbing a hold of them and flinging them in the air. “Not so high,” I would say. “Higher,” they’d say and he could motor boat those slippery, little, squealing kids right into the deep end.  Swimming their way back to him they’d tap him and say, “Do it again, Dad.”

One by one they peeled away from me and our trips to the pool  What kid in middle school wants to be seen anywhere with their mom and siblings?  My daily appointment with three kids got reduced to two and then one until eventually we stopped going all together.  You would think such a momentous occasion as the last trip to our favorite summertime place would be something I remembered but I don’t.  The end came like many ends do – quietly and without a proper farewell.

I went back once more – by myself this time to the adult pool where the grass wasn’t nearly as green as I had been led to believe. From where I sat I could see a new group of moms bouncing babies in floppy hats, pulling a toddler by their chubby fingers reminding them to “kick kick kick”, all while keeping a watchful eye on the older ones who were step by step inching their brave toes into the deep end.

Take a snapshot, Mama, of these ordinary summer days I was tempted to say.  You don’t know it yet but time is the fastest motor boat of all.

“We have to be aware that there are people out there that would kill him for who he is.”

“I know that but I am his mother.  If I dwell on that I’d never be able to get out of bed every day.”

When our son told us he was gay I held on to that information for quite awhile.  I had to kick it around in my head and come to terms with what that meant for my plans for him.  Eventually, I realized that my plans had nothing to do with any of my kids and that their lives and futures were for them to dream.  Sure I could participate but being Head Planner was never my job. A few years ago I wrote something about that time in my life that got a bit of attention.  His coming out seems like eons ago so I tend to forget about it until I am jolted out of the ordinariness of having a gay kid.

I occasionally get calls from mothers asking for advice on coming to terms with the news they’re processing that they have a gay son or daughter.  My first reaction is to cry for them because I know how hard those days are.  I might take it for granted for myself that this is not that big of a deal any more, but that day only came after a bucket of my own tears.  I listen to these moms with their worry and their fear and I get it.  Oh my God do I get it.  But after they’ve purged all that I tell them something else. 

I tell them that having a gay kid will be the best thing that ever happened to them. 

That this kid that’s causing all this anguish at the moment will be the one that will open their eyes to a world that they could never have seen before.  I tell them that this son or daughter will point a very bright light on their preconceived notions about love, about faith, about commitment.  This child, I say, will show you in a thousand different ways how closed-minded you have been about a lot of people.  How quickly you judge, the faint smile of dismissal we are prone to give to someone we just don’t care to know, the eye rolls and the heavy sighs because we don’t approve.  You will be shocked, I tell them, at the regularity in which you do that, but when it’s your own kid that could easily be the subject of that kind of behavior you start to pay attention to how you interact with everyone.  It will shove you so far out of your comfort zone you will think you’re on another planet.  And then you will begin to change in ways that will one day make you proud of how far you have come.

Through a comment I made once on a blog, a teenage girl found me and what I had written about my son and started emailing me.  “I saw what you wrote.  Do you really think I can like girls and not go to hell?  My mother asked me once if I liked girls and when I didn’t answer no fast enough she slapped me across the face.”

“Oh dearie, I promise you that you will not go to hell.  I don’t believe that’s how this all works.”

“I locked myself in my room to read what you wrote about your son and I cried so much.  I wish you were my mom.”

We emailed a lot for awhile and then it stopped.  I will never stop wondering what happened to her.  Did her mom find out?  Did she get kicked out of the house?  Is she okay?

I will never know the answers to any of those questions.  I only know how I have chosen to live my life.  I understand the prayers of mothers in the beginning to not have anyone know their kid is gay.  I also know that this sends missed signals because I was guilty of that myself.  “I love you but for the love of God don’t tell anyone.”

There are some things I would do differently now with my own kid if only I could rewind. With the screw ups, though, comes the learning.  Recently a mom asked me, “How did you handle it with your friends and family? How did you tell them and not succumb to their disapproval?”

“Here’s the thing about me:  I think I give off this vibe that I will not put up with that shit with my kid.  It has never been intentional but it’s there.  I know it and so nobody has ever given me a hard time or tried to convince me that my kid made a choice that he can get bible-thumped out of.  I do not go there with anyone.  Ever.  My advice would be to do the same.  Don’t ever entertain a conversation that isn’t completely supportive of your kid.  You betray him when you do and that seems to me to be an especially ugly thing to live with.”

The body count in Orlando stands now at 49.  That means forty-nine mothers got the worse news of their life.  Maybe they accepted their kid without hesitation, maybe they slapped them in the face when they didn’t renounce their attraction to the same sex fast enough, maybe they didn’t even know their kid would go to a gay bar.

The world for mothers in this club just got a lot more dangerous and that is a terrorizing thought to live with. When my son is going out with friends I always say “Please be careful.” I say this to my girls, too, but when I say it to him it is code for “Please, please be aware of where you are and who is around you.  Don’t get yourself into a place you can’t get out of easily.”  In other words, be very careful about how gay you are when you are in public.  Chalk that up to another mixed message and a dose of reality.

Will living his life, freely and safely, will always be a worry for his dad and me.  I have learned to live with that fear most of the time.  In Orlando there will be decisions for forty-nine mothers to make.  Funeral homes, pall bearers, the clothes to pick out for their kid to be laid to rest in.

It’s not difficult for me to imagine being in their shoes.

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.