A Speckled Trout

When I was going to school at night I took an accounting class.

It. Was. So. Hard.

I remember spending hours on a Sunday afternoon doing a spread sheet for homework and could not find my mistake.  I felt like ripping it up and stomping on it, but just when I was about to give up I found my transposed number and VOILA……..we balanced Mission Control.  Now I have a job doing accounting and often daily it feels hard.  It was a failure of my imagination to think that the debit/credit/fixed assets/prepaid expenses mumbo jumbo that made me soooo crazy would rear its confusing head and park itself in my life years later. 

If I am keying something in at work and the numbers don’t jive, a big, red WARNING WILL ROBINSON will appear on the screen saying, “Girrrrrrrl, you can’t do that cuz that just doesn’t add up.  Now put your thinking cap on and try again.”  Then I have to find my mistake.  Often it’s an easy fix but if it isn’t I stare at the screen and whisper in desperation, “Come to Mama.”  

It is my secret accounting tactic from back in the day.

Prior to my accounting class I took Business 101.  Halfway through the semester the teacher missed our weekly class and it was cancelled.  For the night school student who has come from work to finish her degree this is like manna from heaven. 

When he came back he apologized for his absence and said, “I had a death in the family and that’s why I couldn’t be here last week.  It was my father,” he said stopping to control his emotions.  “He had been sick for awhile and his death was not unexpected, but now I am an orphan.  I am a 46 year old orphan and I’m not sure I know how to find my way now that both of my parents are gone.  I’m trying to figure that out so please bear with me for awhile.”

And we did just that while he taught on his wobbly feet.

My accounting background might have gotten me this job and on rare occasions I can recall some of those lessons, but it is the words my teacher spoke that Monday night in Business 101 that have forever been seared into my memory. 

It is the only thing I remember from that class.

My first retail job was at Petite Sophisticates nearly two decades ago.  I shopped there frequently and one day the manager came up to me and said, “I like your style and we are looking to add to our staff.  Would you be interested in working here?”

The rest is my service industry history.

The assistant manager was a woman named Dorothy.  She was a retired nurse and this was her 2nd career- a welcome departure from the stress of caring for sick people.

One day Dorothy told me about her life.  She had five kids and was married to an abusive man.  When the abuse kept escalating she went to her parish priest for advice and counsel and permission to leave this man.  The priest said to her, “If you leave him you will become a divorced woman and you will go to hell.”  She stayed until one day he kicked her down the stairs and held a shotgun to her head.  “That was the day,” she said, “when I decided that my chances in hell were better than my chances with him.”

Many years later I worked with a woman who was subjected to such verbal and psychological abuse at the hands of an ex-boyfriend that she would shake in fear when the store phone rang.

There are many other examples over the years of woman I have worked with that live on the edge.  Thankfully, the abuse stories are not the norm but the scraping by certainly is.  The ones who are consistently kept under forty hours week after week so the company doesn’t have to pay them health insurance.  The ones who juggle several jobs to make their rent.

They are the woman who know that a car accident, an illness, a root canal or a cut in hours will put them under a pile of bills that they might never recover from.  They rob Peter to pay Paul and come to work sick because that is all they know how to do.

I have loved these woman and it has been my honor to work along side them.

One time I told one of my friends about a situation with one of my coworkers and she said, “Well, why doesn’t she just take some money out of her savings account or get a loan from the bank?”

It doesn’t work that way.

I have worked most of my life.  Getting out of the suburbs with the cars and vacations, the home remodels and relentless faux problems and into the real world was the best thing that has ever happened to me.  As my mom said years ago when we left the comfort and security of our Catholic grade school for an integrated high school that closed every spring because of racial strife, “Kids, you need to see how other people live.”  For the time being, my retail career is over but I miss it and those women.  I miss their guts, their perseverance, their example of putting one foot in front of the other and praying your way through the latest crisis.

I miss their stories most of all because when you know the uninsured, the single mom and the underemployed – when you work next to them eight hours a day, week after week unpacking boxes, hauling trash, moving fixtures, steaming clothes, smiling and waiting on customers when their burdens are so heavy that they could sit and cry at any given moment……….

When you know all that you cannot hear one more time that somehow these are the people who have milked the system.

When Will was a toddler he was a holy terror or maybe he was just being a boy.  I’m not sure but he wore me out.

Then all of a sudden he stopped and that kid could entertain himself for hours.  He would go in the basement and you wouldn’t see him until dinnertime.  Down there with his Playmobil and Legos he’d be building and tearing apart and building again.

He’d make roads from construction paper and scotch tape them all over the floor.  I started to hide the tape from him and dole it out on request because I could never find it when I needed it.

Once when we were at a doctor’s appointment for his asthma we waited in the examining room for well over an hour.  I thought they forgot about us and was getting antsy but Will entertained himself the entire time with a paper clip.

When he was about twelve and in the basement he discovered that one of the local radio stations played jazz on Saturday night.

He became a jazz fan in the 6th grade.  Sometimes if I were picking him up from somewhere he’d say, “Let’s turn on the jazz, Mom.”

Today our jazz fan, interior designer, charming, funny Will turns 23 and it has gone by so much faster than I would have liked (except for when he would climb on the table and swing the light fixture back and forth).

Happy Birthday Will.

Watching you discover and march to the beat of your own drum has been my joy.

The Big Daddy started biking to work twelve years ago as a way to get in shape.  He would come home from the five mile ride and sit on the stairs hacking and clutching his chest.  I’d stand at the ready…..scooping up plates of Prison Food for dinner with one hand and the cordless phone in the other in case I needed to call 9-1-1.

After awhile he got into shape, started taking this biking thing more seriously and participated in more rides than just back and forth to work.  There were charity rides, weekend rides, the 75th St. brewery ride, the Blue Moose ride, the Brookside group, the PV ride, the Ride ride…………..

And I’d about had it with the rides.

One morning after the kids had gone to school and I was getting ready for work, he came downstairs in some of that ridiculous spandex he’d started wearing and said, “Yeah, some guys asked me to ride tonight so I won’t be home for dinner.”

What????  Again???  Who asked you?  What guys?  I want names.

“Oh, you know Cliff and a couple of other guys.”

They didn’t ask you.  You went trolling for riders.  That’s what you do.  You go all over town looking for rides to go on.

“That’s crazy.  I don’t do that, besides it’s just going to be a short ride.”

You’re never here.  We never sit down and have a decent dinner any more.  You. Are. Never. Here. And. What. Are. You. Going. To. Do. About. That?

He went to work.  I might have called him names after the door closed.  No, wait, now that I think about it I’m pretty sure he was still in the room when I called him names.

I stormed off to work and fumed most of the day about this ride he was going on.  At 5:30 he showed up at the store – very apologetic and willing to skip the ride and start dinner.  I was so happy to have a decent meal when I got home that I said, “You start dinner.  Everything is there for chili.  Get it going and then meet your friends for your ride.”

Winning!  Marriage saved, he gets a night ride with friends, we have chili for dinner, and the kids don’t have to worry about an evil stepmother – just their familiar, predictable evil mother.

For the next hour and a half at work I salivated just thinking about that chili simmering at home and when I walked in the door the smell did not disappoint. 

The kids told me that some guy had called numerous times and I was to call him back right away.  I looked at the number, didn’t recognize it and said, “Okay, as soon as I have a bowl of chili.”

I lifted the lid and the phone rang.

It was the police department.  Mark had flown off the front of his bike and was hurt.  Not bad the cop said, and he refused the ambulance but he should probably go to the emergency room.  He told me how to get to where he was and pick him up.

It took awhile because I got lost which happens as soon as I pull out of the driveway.

When I finally got to him, we put his banged up body in the front seat and his bike in the back.  “He passed out,” one of his friends told me.  “He says he’s fine but he needs to get looked at just in case.”

We went to the emergency room of the medical center he’s worked at for twenty years.  The shiny, new multi-million dollar new ER that had been opened for all of two days.  This would not be the ideal time to visit an ER with a non-life threatening injury.

Nobody seemed to know where anything was……essential ER things like an xray machine to look at the collarbone that was sticking up, and all I wanted was to hurry this thing along so we could go home and have some chili.

When multiple attempts to find an xray machine failed, it was decided that Mark would have to go to the old part of the hospital for the xray and a wheelchair was ordered.  “I’m fine,” he said,  “I can walk.”

“Yeah, he’s fine,” I said.  “He can walk cuz we need to get home and have some chili.”  Nobody said anything, not even a polite chuckle but I was serious.  If him walking meant getting out of there sooner and going home to a bowl of chili well, let’s do it.  Better yet I thought, his bike is in the back of my car.  Maybe he could ride it to this random xray department.  After all, he still had his spandex on.

After much deliberation and the curtain opening and closing around him a dozen times, a wheelchair arrived and we went to some abandoned, empty part of the hospital with one xray room.  “I’ll be back,” the kid pushing the chair said.

“No, no.  Just wait here with us.  He’ll be done in no time and then we can all go back down together and he can get a cast or a sling or a cane and then we can go home.  We can.  We can go home real soon if you’ll just stay here.

“Please.”

“Here.”

“Stay.”

He left.

Mark got the xray and it was confirmed that his collarbone was indeed broken.  We sat in the hallway for nearly an hour waiting for the kid who dumped us there to come back and get us.

Finally I said, “That’s it.  I’m pushing you back myself.  We’re not waiting here another minute.”

“Do you even know where you’re going?” Mark asked.

“No,” I said unlocking the brake.  “I have never known where I’m going.  That’s my mission statement in life.  No plan.  No direction.  No clue.”

The Wheelchair Pusher showed up just then.

We went back to our curtained ER room and waited for a doctor nurse resident med student anybody to advise us so we could be on our merry way.  When a doctor-like person finally arrived for the final curtain opening he said, “It’s a broken collarbone.  There’s not much we do for those these days.  We’ll give you some pain pills, a brace if you want one and that’s it.  It will heal on its own.”

And I started to seriously lose it. “What???  Are you kidding me?  We’ve been here all night for that???  I missed chili for something that will heal on its own!”

“There, there,” Mark said wincing as he got up.  “You’re going to be just fine in no time.”

We stopped at the hospital pharmacy (which was only slightly faster than the ER), got some pain pills and I drove us home nice and slow so as not to upset the cracked collarbone.  At midnight, with my coat still on I sat down and ate a bowl of crusty, overcooked chili that I scraped from the bottom of the pot.

Mr. Tour de Shoulder Smash sat at the table grinning in his slinged arm.  Missing were his glasses which had flown off his head as he was falling and were subsequently run over by the ambulance.  I gave him the stinkeye for ruining what was supposed to be the saving-the-marriage-dinner.

By then the Percocet had kicked in and he winked back.

Sheesh.

I went with Maggie and Will to the mall last Saturday.  It was a chilly, rainy day so that meant 10,000 other people had the same idea.

I’m not really much of a mall person these days.  A shopper?  Oh yes, with my insecurities I’ll take some of that retail therapy, but my comfort zone has diminished to a few miles and the mall is a few miles past my few miles.

The mall is too much for me……..a sensory overload of baked potatoes, pretzels, piped in happy music and Seacret Spa and electronic cigarette stalkers.

We went to the new H & M and the place was packed.  I found a sweater and it was exactly what I’ve been looking for.  V-neck, oversized, weekend wear but the kids thought $25.00 was too much.  You could get that at the thrift store for a whole lot less, they told me.   

FYI, kids, I buy plenty at the thrift store, but ever since you two started popping tags you’re acting like you’re my mother, who by the way wouldn’t be caught dead in a thrift store.

I ignored them, sang some Hard For The Money and made my purchase.

Will had some guy things to do had to get away from us so Maggie and I went to Sephora which is kind of like taking a gambler to Harrah’s.

Sweet Jeezus, I love that place. 

As soon as I walk in I see the potential for a whole new unwrinkled me with big eyelashes, perfect brows, pouty lips, striking cheekbones.  When somebody hands me a cute, little Sephora basket and I place it over my arm, I instantly feel like Audrey Hepburn.

I tend to lose track of what I’m there for if you know what I’m saying.

The buzzy highs I get when I walk in the door start to feel like ringing in my ears at the register.  I try to keep my voice from sounding shrill and shaky when the associate tells me the total.  “How much did you say that was?” my inquiring mind asks.  And when she repeats the same amount I say, “Ummmm, could you just tell me what each thing costs cuz I might have to put something back.”

Did I mention I am sweating? 

Profusely.

She repeats the same number for the third time and then says, “Did you know you’ve reached 100 points and qualify for a gift?”

B. I. N. G. O.

Oh girl…………

Home alone opening my teeny, little black and white bag with my microscopic free gift wrapped in red tissue paper, the harsh reality sets in.  I have done significant damage to my just deposited paycheck. 

I pout.

With an awesome new lip liner.

Last weekend I did a volunteer gig at the Plaza Art Fair in Kansas City.  It is an annual event in our shopping district made all the more appealing by the perfect fall weather.  I met a darling, young family and while the Dad was helping their boys craft some mustaches, I struck up a conversation with the very pregnant mom.  They are recent transplants from the Washington D.C. area and she had the shaky legs of a new resident trying to get her bearings in a place that looks and feels very different from home.   “Coincidence,” I said.  “That’s where we came from before we settled here.”

A bond was formed and I crammed her with information in hopes that she would feel welcome in my adopted city.

We were that family twenty years ago and busy raising kids when an admired and well-loved judge in the area passed away.  The funeral was to be held at the church across from the kids elementary school and a relatively unheard of group called The Westboro Baptist Church announced that they would be protesting his funeral.  Their reason?  His liberal court decisions had brought the wrath of God, and so they came with their GOD HATES FAGS signs across the street from three hundred 5-12 year olds who were doing flips all day in the learning pool.

With help from the parents, elaborate plans were made by the principal to shield the school population from seeing any of this at dismissal time, and alternate routes were devised away from what was happening across the street.  For the kids it was a departure from the usual routine and a grand adventure, for their parents it was a gut punch.

Fast forward to 2007 and the kids and I went to see the candidate, Barack Obama, when he came to speak in Kansas City a few weeks before the election.  We parked blocks away from the event and as we got closer we could see that the Westboro Baptist Church had taken up residence with their GOD HATES FAGS signs on the corner.

My gay son grabbed my arm and said, “Let’s just cross the street now you guys.”  I felt and heard his panic but his big sister, who has a habit of punching fear in the face, said, “No, we’re not going to do that.  You and me and Mom are going to walk right past them cuz they don’t get to win this one.  Not today.”  And so we did with thousands of others.

When the casualties of two wars came home, that same church decided to up the ante and bring their protest to military funerals.  The nation was outraged and appalled.  The residents of Kansas were not.  “Welcome to our world,” we said to those cable news anchors who blathered on about the 1st amendment.  “We’ve been putting up with this shit for years.”

Two years later, the Westboro Baptist Church protested at the kids high school where an openly gay student had been elected Homecoming King the year before.  Social media had put a match to this fire and every teenager in a twenty mile radius showed up for the fight.  A group of seven God-fearing church members (including a boy of about eight years old) stood on the corner with their GOD HATES FAGS signs while hundreds showed up across the street with their rainbow peace signs, and that church looked small and insignificant in the light of a new order.

Sadly, that is what goes on in Kansas more times than I would have ever thought possible, but I didn’t share any of that with my new acquaintances, for theirs is a family that seems full of plans and dreams for their future here.  I hope they live a happy, healthy life that never crosses paths with that group.  I hope their children will never tremble in fear because they are in the bull’s eye of hate.

My favorite writer, Anne Lamott, says, “Love bats last.”  That is my prayer every day for the trembly kids forging a trail on the road less-traveled.  The ones who stand on shaky legs with brave voices and say to their parents, “I need to talk to you about something.”

And before Love steps out of the batter’s box I wish she would take a swing at those signs.

Kingdom come seems like an appropriate place for them to land.

If you saw the room I write in you’d say, “Oh you poor thing, it’s a wonder you can get anything done in there.”  It used to be an unfinished room off of our bedroom and over the garage with built-in cabinets (circa 1950s) with linoleum countertops that sparkled gold.

I used to keep my clothes in those cabinets and in the winter I’d dash in and get what I needed for the day and bring them into our room to get to room temperature.  Especially the undies.

Then we ripped everything out, had drywall installed, an air duct and carpeting.  The computer is in that room and at times it can be a nice environment, but mostly I dump my clothes everywhere and pay the bills at the desk and try to decipher all the little notes laying around with writing ideas.

When my friend, Henry, was in better shape he’d come up every day and sleep in this room. 

If he and I were up here and I was having a good writing moment, I’d spin in my chair and belt out a little Alicia Keys to him.

“Henry, this girl is on fiiiiiiiiire…………”

If I was having a normal writing day, I’d spin in my chair and say, “Geez, Henry, what the hell am I trying to say?  Help me out, Bud.  I haven’t a clue where I’m going with this.”

He’d cock his head the way dogs do when you talk to them, look at me for a minute and then lay his head back down.

Henry’s hips haven’t allowed him to travel up the stairs in over a year and so I’m flying solo in my messy clothes/bill paying/writing room……….. 

Sometimes on fire but more often floundering, and wishing my partner’s weary bones could make the climb and keep me company.

Early this spring, The Big Daddy and I started doing a three mile walk after dinner.  Some dear friends of ours were coming to see us from Cleveland and we were determined to lose some weight and look awesome by the time they came.  Because the fitness plan in place for the daughter’s wedding the year before didn’t quite work out which was surely due to stress.

It didn’t happen that way and they have the same middle-age issues that we do.  What a relief.  We celebrated by eating and drinking all weekend long.

Then summer parked itself over Kansas City and though we often did our usual walk after dinner, the prolific sweating had everything to do with humidity and little to do with busting our fat, saggy butts.  Now the days are growing shorter and there are very few nights with enough daylight left to walk after dinner.

I put the squeeze on The BD to go with me on Sunday morning and we started like we always do…..patting ourselves for the effort and walking at a quick, # melting pace.  Before long we settled into our routine – Mark jumping from talking about mitochondria and protein folding to derivatives, big banks and 1%ers.

Four cars passed us at one point.  Mercedes, Mercedes, restored vintage car, Land Rover.  It’s like they have some sort of secret power that knows when they’re being talked about.

I talked about writing angst and job angst and then we trespassed in a home under construction and pretended it was ours.  The back yard?  Not going to work for us, people.  Gotta redo it.  A few doors down at the house “under contract” for a fat 1.5 mill we hoped to swipe some fruit off the pear tree we’d seen last week but somebody beat us to it.

An hour later we were home…….energized and proud of ourselves for doing something good for our health.

Two hours later we were stuffing our faces with chips and salsa, and contemplating the beer in the fridge while making a date for the next time we’d fake our way to fitness in the neighborhood over yonder, where there are clubs for burning fat and the cops patrol the streets for suspicious types just like us.
                                  

Most Sundays around here there is football playing throughout much of the day.  Mark will say that he hardly watches any football and this is true.

When he’s asleep.

I wander in and out of the room and in and out of the games.  I know enough about the sport to follow it, but there are some things I just can’t get past.

If somebody barreled into me with their big, sweaty body and knocked me to the ground I would cry.  If all eyes were on me and I dropped the ball I would cry.  If I got off the field, sat on the bench and hurled in front of t.v. cameras I would cry.

For the most part I keep these things to myself.  Or rather, Mark has heard all of these thoughts a thousand times and doesn’t want to hear them in the middle of a game.

Again.

Despite my efforts, when I see a hard hit (which is all the time) I will wince and say things like, “This is such a violent sport.  Why do you like to watch men getting their brains rattled around inside their skulls?”

Mark must think this is one of those philosophical questions that the universe has pondered since time began because he never answers.

This week my mom, sister and brother-in-law were in town and we all went to a soccer game.  Sporting KC.

There were hits and wipeouts and tumbles and plenty of injuries.  I sat next to Maggie (who is a season ticket holder with her hubs) and she explained to me that these players weren’t really hurt but rather milking it to stop the game and to give their players a chance to rest.

I didn’t think so.  There was grimacing and rocking back and forth in pain, knees that looked wonky and bloody noses.  There were lots of body parts getting sprayed with some sort of numbing painkiller because after a few shots of that the injured player would slowly rise to his feet, straighten up and play would resume.

If an injured player required a stretcher (which was about four times that night) the crowd would chant, “BRING OUT YOUR DEAD……….BRING OUT YOUR DEAD.”

Bring out your dead?  Really, people, is that necessary?  Especially when the team is from Nicaragua and probably doesn’t comprehend Kansas and its people who seemed to need a sympathy check.

After ninety minutes of play the game ended in a tie.  There was no winner.  There was no loser……..

………..but there was me and I discovered another sport that troubles me about the future of all mankind.

My Girl Card is intact, shiny and loaded with empathy for the weekend when the Chicago Bears vs. the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday night.  I’m already feeling some deep thoughts emerging that I feel compelled to share with a man.

A Bear Man with a beer can.