Okay, so remember how I compared myself to a cat trapped in a closed skylight because I had to have surgery and there was no escape? Well, I managed to wiggle my fingers through an opening and hit the remote control to open the skylight just a tiny bit. I've re-scheduled the surgery for January instead of October, so I'm getting a little bit of a reprieve.
While the surgery is necessary and important, if I'm careful, I'll be okay to wait until the first of the year. The doctor agreed that I've had a rough go of it the past couple of years with two scheduled surgeries and one emergency surgery and said I could give myself a little break.
Before I had my first surgery, I always watched shows like Grey's Anatomy and wondered how anyone voluntarily showed up at the hospital to let themselves be cut open. (By the way, although Grey's is one of my favorite shows, I can't watch it for a month or so before a scheduled surgery and right after a surgery, my family doesn't enjoy watching it with me because I tend to yell, "Yeah, right, like it really happens that way," frequently. As the scar and my memories fade, my enjoyment of the show increases to my pre-surgery levels and my family allows me to watch with them again.) I thought if I ever had to have life-saving surgery, my goose was cooked because I wouldn't be able to force myself to show up at the hospital and say, "Cut away." I figured I would be likely to just disappear a few days before the operation, using fake IDs and a stolen license plate so my family couldn't track me down and guilt me into having my life saved.
But for me, once I got the call from the doctor telling me I had to have surgery, instead of going on the run, I went to a spiritual place that can only be achieved by either taking large quantities of drugs, or in my case, being paralyzed with fear. It was as though my brain heard the doctor and sent a message through my body like, "Red Alert! Red Alert! We have a situation that is too intense for subject to handle! Shut down all thought processes immediately and go into default semi-dazed mode!" Some of the thoughts took longer to shut down, as evidenced by my nervous narration to my poor, poor nephew who had the misfortune to catch me in my driveway in those early days after finding out and was treated to a detailed description of why his aunt needed her lady parts cut out. I still cringe for him every time I think about it.
But after that unfortunate encounter, my brain closed the loopholes and I floated from day to day, buying supplies I would need post-surgery, writing letters to my loved ones just in case, doing the chores I would be unable to perform once home from the hospital, and researching every scrap of information about the surgery on the internet. The night beforehand, I was actually able to sleep, even though one of my daughters sat up all night by my side in case company was needed.
The morning of, things moved in a dreamlike state. I dressed without using lotion or deodorant per the rules, brushed my teeth without swallowing any forbidden water, and talked normally on the drive to the hospital with my family. I registered and was led to a private room to change. I re-joined my family and had only moments with them before I was ushered away to the pre-surgery area. I thought there would be heartfelt goodbyes and pledges of undying love before I left (and maybe some prying of my fingers off the doorframe) but it was calm and unremarkable. The worst part was probably lying on the gurney next to other surgical patients waiting for my turn. They took my glasses, which is the same as blinding me, and they didn't give me any good drugs to make my dreamlike state complete. I used the breathing techniques that got me through four labors and deliveries to keep my panic at bay. Funny how the same techniques got me through both the most productive times for my lady parts and now their retirement.
Finally, the doctor with the drugs showed up and although the Valium was just supposed to relax me, I'm a lightweight (not literally, but in the holding-my-drugs sense) and I don't remember anything else until I woke up in Recovery. My parts were out, the verdict was in---ovarian cancer, but a form that is less aggressive than most. It had spread to my lymph nodes, but they thought they got it all and that I would be okay. They cut me from belly button to groin and recovery would take almost a year, but it was over and I hadn't jumped off the gurney on the way to the operating room, used my shoulder to cross-check a few male nurses, and hid behind the dumpster of medical waste with my butt hanging out of my hospital gown for the rats to nibble. I was relieved.
That is until a checkup with my surgeon a year later when he said, "Ut-oh!" You never, ever want to hear a surgeon say ut-oh. Chances are he or she is not going to say, "Ut-oh, I charged you too much for my services and I owe you money," or "Ut-oh, I made a mistake reading the scans and you don't have to have your spleen removed after all." No, mine was ut-oh, your organs are pushing through the muscle we cut open for your surgery and you now have an incisional hernia that needs to be repaired with another surgery. Ut-oh, indeed.
That's exactly the way it would have happened on Grey's, except they would have discovered the hernia after I was hit by a train while running from an abusive boyfriend who they discover has a rare deformity that only they can fix with surgery. Oh, and my surgeon and the boyfriend's surgeon would be involved in an intense on-again off-again affair which they discuss openly across my unconscious body.
Great TV. I'll have to stop watching again until March.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Dropbox, Air Conditioners, Modern Family, And Herbie
One of my favorite TV shows right now is Modern Family. They had an episode in a previous season that really struck a cord with me. It was the one where married couple Claire and Phil have a fight (as regular viewers know, that doesn't narrow it down because they fight in every episode). This particular fight was because she had been recommending wedge salads to him for years and he ignored the suggestion. Then he came home one evening and told Claire that an acquaintance had suggested he try this new thing called a wedge salad, which he loved, and she should really try one sometime, as though he had never heard of it before despite the one hundred and seventeen times she'd mentioned it to him.
Herbie and I have been there, done that. Many times.
Why is it that a suggestion from a co-worker or friend carries so much weight with men while suggestions from their girlfriends, fiancees, or wives are just so much white noise? I don't normally relate to Claire on the show. I usually find her annoying (I hope that isn't because she is too much like me and I just don't recognize it kinda like the way Herbie laughs at Raymond's relationship with Marie without seeing how similar it is to the one he has with his own mother--yikes!) But in that episode, I not only related to Claire's frustration, I wanted her to hit Phil with the vegetables instead of just banging them on the counter for emphasis. They ended up with a broken microwave and their bodies covered in fire extinguisher foam, but I still thought Phil got off too easy.
I can spend days or weeks on the computer researching a product we need for our home (like, let's just say, hmm, an air conditioner, not because that brings up any strong memories or emotions or makes blood shoot from my eyes, but just random like). I can go to Consumer Reports and read their ratings of every air conditioner on the market, then read posts from people who actually own the units listing the pros and cons, then check thirty different stores' websites for the best price on the highly recommended units, and compile it all into a spreadsheet with colored graphs and a sliding scale for Herbie. I can then go over it page by page with him, pointing out why this particular unit is superior to all other units for our needs. He'll nod and ask questions, flip through the pages, and agree that we should schedule time to go pick one out. We'll get to the store and find the unit we've agreed on, call the salesperson over to discuss delivery options and payment plans, and then as I'm pulling out my credit card, Herbie will invariably say, "I'm not quite ready to buy yet. This guy at work was telling me about this unit that is so cold it will freeze a rump roast left in front of it." And we will return home to sit in front of our old unit that wheezes like it has emphysema and blows air that could warm up a can of soup.
I'll do research on the unit that the "friend from work" suggested and find out that it isn't a window unit, would necessitate cutting a hole in the 200 year old stone wall of our house, and that it is a black market product since it is illegal to own in the US of A. And we'll start the dance again, only this time as we stand in the store contemplating the unit I'm suggesting, the holdup will be another friend who knows a guy who knew a guy whose sister's boyfriend owned one and thought he might have heard a strange hum coming from it. Or maybe it'll be a guy Herbie had lunch with who has never owned this air conditioner or anything made by this company, but has a bad feeling about them in general and has been right in the past when he's had bad feelings.
And if this air conditioner story was in fact true and not just a theoretical example of what could serve as evidence in divorce court, it might be three years of sweat and the occasional puff of smoke from the old unit before Herbie says, "Maybe we should buy Model # 39489. Some guy at work just bought one and he loves it," with Model # 39489 being the exact unit I recommended three years ago when it was on sale, which it no longer is. And if this was a real story, I might have said, "Sounds great! Let's go get one right now," waiting until the new unit was safely purchased, installed, and cooling my temper before pointing out that we just suffered through three years of stifling summers because he doesn't listen to me.
But, of course, this is just a made-up example.
The same thing happens with news, politics, and funny stories. Heck, Herbie might come home tonight and say, "Remind me to tell you about this funny blog I read at work today where this wife is complaining about her husband not listening to her as they search for an air conditioner to buy. You're gonna love it!" He often tells me that "a guy at work" told him about this breaking news story or that economic trend or some political folly, not recognizing the twitch over my eye that signals that I was the one who told him just the day before. Is it really so hard to remember the difference between the person who gave birth to his four children and the guy who rotated his tires? Hint--I'm the one who smells like vanilla instead of axle grease. Usually. I have been known to get my hands dirty a time or two, but in general, it should be easy to tell us apart.
The same thing happened recently with Dropbox. I told Herbie all about the service, how it would make it easier to view each others' pictures and videos without trying to fit them into a size suitable for an email, how we could share more as a family if we all had accounts, and offered to set it up on his laptop for him. He nodded in all the right places and then went to bed without granting me access to his computer. Six months later, he was working on that same computer and asked me to help him with something. He handed me a sheet of paper with an email address and password and told me he needed to sign onto something called Dropbox because the techies at his business wanted to use it to share data that was too large to fit in an email. He now has an account with shared access for "the guys at work" but still hasn't set one up to share with his wife and daughters.
I know Herbie thinks that some of what I say is important. I know this because he has come home from work and spent hours discussing an upcoming meeting about a problem and then has gone to the meeting and suggested the very solutions that I offered in our conversation. Of course, he didn't tell them that they were my solutions, since the very important businessmen would bristle at the thought of implementing a strategy devised by a writer/housewife/mother, but still, he heard what I had to say in those situations.
It's kind of strange that he doesn't hold what I say in higher regard considering that for the past thirty years, I have been his main source of information and conversation. The first time I met his family, which was at a family wedding, the number one question they asked me was, "Does Herbie actually talk to you? He barely says a word around us." In fact, they had a family joke about how "it is rumored that there is a son named Herbie, but apart from some of his stuff lying around, no one is really sure he exists." In family newsletters and such, he was described as "a man of few words" which struck me as funny because I could barely get him to stop talking to me. He says it's because once his older brothers left home, anything he had to say had to compete with four chattering younger sisters and he eventually gave up. I guess he stored up all his observations, jokes, and stories until he met me and then they just spewed forth unabated.
Herbie talks with his co-workers and he talks with his friends, but most of his conversations are with me. 98% of what he knows about our daughters' lives is info I pass on to him in the evenings. I keep him up to date on their grades, friendships, disappointments, successes, love-lifes (well, as much as I think his blood pressure can handle), and their careers. When he would ask the girls about their teachers, he would always call them all "Mrs. Snagglepuss" because he couldn't keep track of their real names. I field phone calls from his family and relay pertinent news and gossip. I catch him up on all the news of the world and what's happening in our own little world, like upcoming social events, what the pets have soiled or destroyed, and what absolutely has to be fixed in our home to prevent the township from putting up "Condemned" signs. I stand close to him at family gatherings and tell him what his cousins' names are.
I am his own personal Dropbox where he can access all the stored data he needs to get by.
Ahhhh. That's why he doesn't feel an urgency to sign up on his laptop. He has me. Well, Herbie, my "hard drive" is getting corrupted by age and there are definite signs that data is being fragmented in a way that even the Geek Squad can't recover, so until they find a way to download my entire brain onto something that is Bluetooth compatible with your earpiece, your best bet is to access my Dropbox. (As I typed that last line, I could hear Joey Tribbiani or Howard Wolowitz saying it, and it definitely had a whole other meaning.)
Herbie and I have been there, done that. Many times.
Why is it that a suggestion from a co-worker or friend carries so much weight with men while suggestions from their girlfriends, fiancees, or wives are just so much white noise? I don't normally relate to Claire on the show. I usually find her annoying (I hope that isn't because she is too much like me and I just don't recognize it kinda like the way Herbie laughs at Raymond's relationship with Marie without seeing how similar it is to the one he has with his own mother--yikes!) But in that episode, I not only related to Claire's frustration, I wanted her to hit Phil with the vegetables instead of just banging them on the counter for emphasis. They ended up with a broken microwave and their bodies covered in fire extinguisher foam, but I still thought Phil got off too easy.
I can spend days or weeks on the computer researching a product we need for our home (like, let's just say, hmm, an air conditioner, not because that brings up any strong memories or emotions or makes blood shoot from my eyes, but just random like). I can go to Consumer Reports and read their ratings of every air conditioner on the market, then read posts from people who actually own the units listing the pros and cons, then check thirty different stores' websites for the best price on the highly recommended units, and compile it all into a spreadsheet with colored graphs and a sliding scale for Herbie. I can then go over it page by page with him, pointing out why this particular unit is superior to all other units for our needs. He'll nod and ask questions, flip through the pages, and agree that we should schedule time to go pick one out. We'll get to the store and find the unit we've agreed on, call the salesperson over to discuss delivery options and payment plans, and then as I'm pulling out my credit card, Herbie will invariably say, "I'm not quite ready to buy yet. This guy at work was telling me about this unit that is so cold it will freeze a rump roast left in front of it." And we will return home to sit in front of our old unit that wheezes like it has emphysema and blows air that could warm up a can of soup.
I'll do research on the unit that the "friend from work" suggested and find out that it isn't a window unit, would necessitate cutting a hole in the 200 year old stone wall of our house, and that it is a black market product since it is illegal to own in the US of A. And we'll start the dance again, only this time as we stand in the store contemplating the unit I'm suggesting, the holdup will be another friend who knows a guy who knew a guy whose sister's boyfriend owned one and thought he might have heard a strange hum coming from it. Or maybe it'll be a guy Herbie had lunch with who has never owned this air conditioner or anything made by this company, but has a bad feeling about them in general and has been right in the past when he's had bad feelings.
And if this air conditioner story was in fact true and not just a theoretical example of what could serve as evidence in divorce court, it might be three years of sweat and the occasional puff of smoke from the old unit before Herbie says, "Maybe we should buy Model # 39489. Some guy at work just bought one and he loves it," with Model # 39489 being the exact unit I recommended three years ago when it was on sale, which it no longer is. And if this was a real story, I might have said, "Sounds great! Let's go get one right now," waiting until the new unit was safely purchased, installed, and cooling my temper before pointing out that we just suffered through three years of stifling summers because he doesn't listen to me.
But, of course, this is just a made-up example.
The same thing happens with news, politics, and funny stories. Heck, Herbie might come home tonight and say, "Remind me to tell you about this funny blog I read at work today where this wife is complaining about her husband not listening to her as they search for an air conditioner to buy. You're gonna love it!" He often tells me that "a guy at work" told him about this breaking news story or that economic trend or some political folly, not recognizing the twitch over my eye that signals that I was the one who told him just the day before. Is it really so hard to remember the difference between the person who gave birth to his four children and the guy who rotated his tires? Hint--I'm the one who smells like vanilla instead of axle grease. Usually. I have been known to get my hands dirty a time or two, but in general, it should be easy to tell us apart.
The same thing happened recently with Dropbox. I told Herbie all about the service, how it would make it easier to view each others' pictures and videos without trying to fit them into a size suitable for an email, how we could share more as a family if we all had accounts, and offered to set it up on his laptop for him. He nodded in all the right places and then went to bed without granting me access to his computer. Six months later, he was working on that same computer and asked me to help him with something. He handed me a sheet of paper with an email address and password and told me he needed to sign onto something called Dropbox because the techies at his business wanted to use it to share data that was too large to fit in an email. He now has an account with shared access for "the guys at work" but still hasn't set one up to share with his wife and daughters.
I know Herbie thinks that some of what I say is important. I know this because he has come home from work and spent hours discussing an upcoming meeting about a problem and then has gone to the meeting and suggested the very solutions that I offered in our conversation. Of course, he didn't tell them that they were my solutions, since the very important businessmen would bristle at the thought of implementing a strategy devised by a writer/housewife/mother, but still, he heard what I had to say in those situations.
It's kind of strange that he doesn't hold what I say in higher regard considering that for the past thirty years, I have been his main source of information and conversation. The first time I met his family, which was at a family wedding, the number one question they asked me was, "Does Herbie actually talk to you? He barely says a word around us." In fact, they had a family joke about how "it is rumored that there is a son named Herbie, but apart from some of his stuff lying around, no one is really sure he exists." In family newsletters and such, he was described as "a man of few words" which struck me as funny because I could barely get him to stop talking to me. He says it's because once his older brothers left home, anything he had to say had to compete with four chattering younger sisters and he eventually gave up. I guess he stored up all his observations, jokes, and stories until he met me and then they just spewed forth unabated.
Herbie talks with his co-workers and he talks with his friends, but most of his conversations are with me. 98% of what he knows about our daughters' lives is info I pass on to him in the evenings. I keep him up to date on their grades, friendships, disappointments, successes, love-lifes (well, as much as I think his blood pressure can handle), and their careers. When he would ask the girls about their teachers, he would always call them all "Mrs. Snagglepuss" because he couldn't keep track of their real names. I field phone calls from his family and relay pertinent news and gossip. I catch him up on all the news of the world and what's happening in our own little world, like upcoming social events, what the pets have soiled or destroyed, and what absolutely has to be fixed in our home to prevent the township from putting up "Condemned" signs. I stand close to him at family gatherings and tell him what his cousins' names are.
I am his own personal Dropbox where he can access all the stored data he needs to get by.
Ahhhh. That's why he doesn't feel an urgency to sign up on his laptop. He has me. Well, Herbie, my "hard drive" is getting corrupted by age and there are definite signs that data is being fragmented in a way that even the Geek Squad can't recover, so until they find a way to download my entire brain onto something that is Bluetooth compatible with your earpiece, your best bet is to access my Dropbox. (As I typed that last line, I could hear Joey Tribbiani or Howard Wolowitz saying it, and it definitely had a whole other meaning.)
Monday, October 10, 2011
Tambourines, Sausage, Mardi Gras, and Rugby
People have this idealized image of my family that is comical. Yes, my four daughters are good students and good people who have never broken the law (or at least haven't been caught yet) (or if they have been caught, they haven't called me for bail money), and I'm very proud of them, but we are also very, very human and we do stupid things all the time. We fight, we get on each other's nerves, we let each other down, we can be selfish, and we tease each other mercilessly.
But for some reason, there are people who look at us and think we are The Brady Bunch and that we spend Friday nights doing family sing-alongs with the biggest argument being who gets to shake the tambourine (if that were the case, I would definitely call dibs on the tambourine). I am exceptionally lucky that my daughters enjoy spending time with each other and with Herbie and me. We are a close family and I talk to each of them several times a week. We spend major holidays together and try to schedule a fun family vacation every year. But all of that takes a lot of work and compromise, some mild cursing and hair-pulling, and usually some hurt feelings thrown into the mix. It's like sausage-making---if you only see the end result, it looks tasty, but the process to get there is anything but pretty. And more often than not, I'm the one squishing the meat into the machine.
I called my sister-in-law N to tell her we would all be at my mother-in-law's party this weekend, including fiance E and longtime boyfriend T. She was thrilled to hear the news (No, really, she was.) She commented on what a fun, special couple C and E are and how excited she is about their wedding next year. I found myself wondering how she knew they were a fun, special couple since she has only met E once. N answered the question I hadn't asked.
"I follow C and E on Facebook and they are so cute together! I love reading the banter they have with their friends. So cute!"
I'm a firm believer that Facebook is a wonderful tool for high school and college kids to share info and keep in touch. I know that all four of my daughters love Facebook. I reluctantly signed up myself, but only because the oldest one was trying to win a grant and the rules allowed you to cast an extra vote if you did it from your Facebook account. Since I signed up, several people from high school and college have contacted me through the account and that's fun. Others have contacted me because they like my books and that is fun, too. But other than that, I don't participate in Facebook. Sorry to those who I am friends with on there, but you already know I seldom update my status and am much better at answering emails or texts.
If someone sends me a message, I answer it, and if every couple of months I have some news about the girls to share, I share it. That's all. I'm not friends with my daughters or their friends or my nieces and nephews. I don't want to read ramblings they have written after coming home from a party where "friend X" danced with "boy Y" and will forever after be known as "ex-friend who is the *&^%#$%^ skank of the dorm" or anything even close to that. I don't want to know that the sweet niece who helped me bake cookies when she was ten now swears like a trucker and has stacks of bead necklaces "earned" at Mardi Gras by flashing her boobs. The next time I hug my nephew at a family party, I don't want to remember that he "liked" a nude picture of some celebrity or bragged about chugging ten beers before vomiting in his mother's flower bed. Maybe my young family members are writing about joining the Peace Corps and ending world hunger, but I don't want to take any chances. By not reading their pages, I can continue to cling to the illusion (delusion?) that they are.
So when my sister-in-law said she was reading C and E's conversations with their friends on Facebook, my first thought was, "Creeper!" As if again reading my mind, she said, "My kids tell me not to be a creeper, but I tell them that I'm not, C and E accepted my invitation to be friends so they must want me to know what's happening in their lives." Here's a quandary for you: Your aunt or uncle or neighbor makes a request to be added as a friend on Facebook or MySpace or whatever. Do you ignore the request so they can ask you in person why you haven't added them yet, or do you deny the request and face the awkwardness, or do you accept the request and then censor your page? C & E didn't want to be rude, so they accepted her request. And now she's creeping on them. And by extension, she's creeping on the rest of us.
Because the next thing she said was, "I was looking through C's pictures and I saw that you guys went on a vacation to the Florida Keys this past June." Oh, yay. Now I'm wondering what pictures C put up of me in a bathing suit or scarfing seafood at some restaurant. Just as I'm wondering this, N says, "You guys are the perfect family. You and Herbie are such good parents and you all always look like you are having such fun together." I don't know about the "good parents" part, since I mostly think God took pity on Herbie and me when he saw how totally clueless we were and just gave us really, really easy kids, but the always having fun part is pretty true. We do manage to have fun wherever we go, even when things go majorly wrong, just because we are used to things going majorly wrong and we learned early on to find a way to laugh about it so we wouldn't go for each other's throats.
N told me that she noticed pictures of us on a "nature walk" and how happy we all looked. Nature walk, nature walk, hmmm . . . I guess she was talking about the trek through the Everglades we took. It was about 97 degrees, but according to The Weather Channel, with the humidity added in, it felt like 105. We were all dripping with sweat, the bugs were eating us alive, some of us (and by that I mean mostly me) were terrified of the alligators along the trail, but of course when we stopped for pictures, we all smiled. Doesn't everyone do that? That doesn't mean that when the camera wasn't aimed at us, we weren't pushing each other to fight for the minuscule sections of shade to be found or hogging the coldest water bottle for ourself, or hoping the endless bugs were more attracted to the scent of someone else's blood supply than our own. I didn't hear any one of us say, "Here, I'll spray my body with sugar water so all the bugs will feast on me and you guys won't have to suffer a single itch."
After seeing the pictures, N said, she woke her family up early on a Saturday morning and ordered them all into the car so they could take a "nature walk" in a nearby park and follow our example of being a happy family. Yikes. That's one sure way to make her family hate us. It didn't work out, though, she told me. Her family just wouldn't cooperate and complained the whole time--it was hot, they were tired, the bugs were biting them--and she finally gave up and let them escape back to the car where they apologized for being uncooperative. Really? That sounds exactly like our nature walk through the Everglades only no one apologized for complaining. Who would they apologize to since we were all complaining equally? I'm sure that if N had stopped her family on their walk to take some pictures, they would have all wiped the sweat and squished bugs from their faces and smiled broadly for the camera the same way we did. Viola! Happy family on nature walk.
When the camera is back in the case, we are just like any other family I know. We laugh, we fight, we annoy each other, we take care of each other, and we share memories that no one else has. Anyone who is planning to wiggle their way into our close-knit bunch needs to understand that while we never hesitate to insult each other's hair or breath or intelligence, it is done with love. When I tease one of my daughters about being a bad driver or burning the macaroni and cheese, I'm really saying, "You are the light of my life," and when they make fun of me for using the wrong word or calling them by the wrong name, they aren't actually accusing me of being senile, they are saying, "I know there is nothing I can say or do that will make you stop loving me." Really.
So for those foolish few who ignore all the warning signs and become one of us in the eyes of God and the legal system, you'll know that you've made it to the inner circle when we ask you to put your shoes back on because we'd rather smell the wet dogs. If we let you go first in the dinner line or smile politely when you lick your fingers and then reach back into the Doritos bag for more, you are still part of the viewing audience who only sees the 22 minutes-with-commercials, happy-endings-for-all, sitcom version of our family (yes, I'm talking about you, T. You are part of the family now, so I can tell you if that behavior continues, your snacking supplies and fingers are in danger of being cut off).
You'll see the version where Marcia gets hit in the face with a football but ends up learning a lesson about vanity and inner beauty and the whole family shares a group hug before jumping in the station wagon for a trip to the green stamps store and maybe you prefer that, the way I prefer the blissful ignorance of reality that I enjoy by not friending nieces and nephews on Facebook. But if you want to see the behind-the-scenes version where Marcia tackles Jan to the floor over the last Oreo, Peter plays home videos of Greg on a potty chair for Greg's new girlfriend, and paper towels serve as markers for the cat vomit everyone claims to have not seen, you have work to do. Deliver a couple of clever insults that leave us with our mouths hanging open, then turn our tentative shots at you back on us without hesitation and you'll get your foot in the door. But once your foot's in, avoid the paper towels strewn about. Just pretend you don't see them like everyone else.
P.S. Mike Brady is trapped in a collapsed building on Christmas Eve. Carol Brady stands outside the police barricade and worries. Suddenly, she lifts her voice (and the building, apparently) with a stirring Christmas carol and Mike stumbles out to freedom. Christmas and Mike are saved by the power of her voice. She'd be a handy chick to have around for say, mine collapses, earthquakes, and rugby scrums.
But for some reason, there are people who look at us and think we are The Brady Bunch and that we spend Friday nights doing family sing-alongs with the biggest argument being who gets to shake the tambourine (if that were the case, I would definitely call dibs on the tambourine). I am exceptionally lucky that my daughters enjoy spending time with each other and with Herbie and me. We are a close family and I talk to each of them several times a week. We spend major holidays together and try to schedule a fun family vacation every year. But all of that takes a lot of work and compromise, some mild cursing and hair-pulling, and usually some hurt feelings thrown into the mix. It's like sausage-making---if you only see the end result, it looks tasty, but the process to get there is anything but pretty. And more often than not, I'm the one squishing the meat into the machine.
I called my sister-in-law N to tell her we would all be at my mother-in-law's party this weekend, including fiance E and longtime boyfriend T. She was thrilled to hear the news (No, really, she was.) She commented on what a fun, special couple C and E are and how excited she is about their wedding next year. I found myself wondering how she knew they were a fun, special couple since she has only met E once. N answered the question I hadn't asked.
"I follow C and E on Facebook and they are so cute together! I love reading the banter they have with their friends. So cute!"
I'm a firm believer that Facebook is a wonderful tool for high school and college kids to share info and keep in touch. I know that all four of my daughters love Facebook. I reluctantly signed up myself, but only because the oldest one was trying to win a grant and the rules allowed you to cast an extra vote if you did it from your Facebook account. Since I signed up, several people from high school and college have contacted me through the account and that's fun. Others have contacted me because they like my books and that is fun, too. But other than that, I don't participate in Facebook. Sorry to those who I am friends with on there, but you already know I seldom update my status and am much better at answering emails or texts.
If someone sends me a message, I answer it, and if every couple of months I have some news about the girls to share, I share it. That's all. I'm not friends with my daughters or their friends or my nieces and nephews. I don't want to read ramblings they have written after coming home from a party where "friend X" danced with "boy Y" and will forever after be known as "ex-friend who is the *&^%#$%^ skank of the dorm" or anything even close to that. I don't want to know that the sweet niece who helped me bake cookies when she was ten now swears like a trucker and has stacks of bead necklaces "earned" at Mardi Gras by flashing her boobs. The next time I hug my nephew at a family party, I don't want to remember that he "liked" a nude picture of some celebrity or bragged about chugging ten beers before vomiting in his mother's flower bed. Maybe my young family members are writing about joining the Peace Corps and ending world hunger, but I don't want to take any chances. By not reading their pages, I can continue to cling to the illusion (delusion?) that they are.
So when my sister-in-law said she was reading C and E's conversations with their friends on Facebook, my first thought was, "Creeper!" As if again reading my mind, she said, "My kids tell me not to be a creeper, but I tell them that I'm not, C and E accepted my invitation to be friends so they must want me to know what's happening in their lives." Here's a quandary for you: Your aunt or uncle or neighbor makes a request to be added as a friend on Facebook or MySpace or whatever. Do you ignore the request so they can ask you in person why you haven't added them yet, or do you deny the request and face the awkwardness, or do you accept the request and then censor your page? C & E didn't want to be rude, so they accepted her request. And now she's creeping on them. And by extension, she's creeping on the rest of us.
Because the next thing she said was, "I was looking through C's pictures and I saw that you guys went on a vacation to the Florida Keys this past June." Oh, yay. Now I'm wondering what pictures C put up of me in a bathing suit or scarfing seafood at some restaurant. Just as I'm wondering this, N says, "You guys are the perfect family. You and Herbie are such good parents and you all always look like you are having such fun together." I don't know about the "good parents" part, since I mostly think God took pity on Herbie and me when he saw how totally clueless we were and just gave us really, really easy kids, but the always having fun part is pretty true. We do manage to have fun wherever we go, even when things go majorly wrong, just because we are used to things going majorly wrong and we learned early on to find a way to laugh about it so we wouldn't go for each other's throats.
N told me that she noticed pictures of us on a "nature walk" and how happy we all looked. Nature walk, nature walk, hmmm . . . I guess she was talking about the trek through the Everglades we took. It was about 97 degrees, but according to The Weather Channel, with the humidity added in, it felt like 105. We were all dripping with sweat, the bugs were eating us alive, some of us (and by that I mean mostly me) were terrified of the alligators along the trail, but of course when we stopped for pictures, we all smiled. Doesn't everyone do that? That doesn't mean that when the camera wasn't aimed at us, we weren't pushing each other to fight for the minuscule sections of shade to be found or hogging the coldest water bottle for ourself, or hoping the endless bugs were more attracted to the scent of someone else's blood supply than our own. I didn't hear any one of us say, "Here, I'll spray my body with sugar water so all the bugs will feast on me and you guys won't have to suffer a single itch."
After seeing the pictures, N said, she woke her family up early on a Saturday morning and ordered them all into the car so they could take a "nature walk" in a nearby park and follow our example of being a happy family. Yikes. That's one sure way to make her family hate us. It didn't work out, though, she told me. Her family just wouldn't cooperate and complained the whole time--it was hot, they were tired, the bugs were biting them--and she finally gave up and let them escape back to the car where they apologized for being uncooperative. Really? That sounds exactly like our nature walk through the Everglades only no one apologized for complaining. Who would they apologize to since we were all complaining equally? I'm sure that if N had stopped her family on their walk to take some pictures, they would have all wiped the sweat and squished bugs from their faces and smiled broadly for the camera the same way we did. Viola! Happy family on nature walk.
When the camera is back in the case, we are just like any other family I know. We laugh, we fight, we annoy each other, we take care of each other, and we share memories that no one else has. Anyone who is planning to wiggle their way into our close-knit bunch needs to understand that while we never hesitate to insult each other's hair or breath or intelligence, it is done with love. When I tease one of my daughters about being a bad driver or burning the macaroni and cheese, I'm really saying, "You are the light of my life," and when they make fun of me for using the wrong word or calling them by the wrong name, they aren't actually accusing me of being senile, they are saying, "I know there is nothing I can say or do that will make you stop loving me." Really.
So for those foolish few who ignore all the warning signs and become one of us in the eyes of God and the legal system, you'll know that you've made it to the inner circle when we ask you to put your shoes back on because we'd rather smell the wet dogs. If we let you go first in the dinner line or smile politely when you lick your fingers and then reach back into the Doritos bag for more, you are still part of the viewing audience who only sees the 22 minutes-with-commercials, happy-endings-for-all, sitcom version of our family (yes, I'm talking about you, T. You are part of the family now, so I can tell you if that behavior continues, your snacking supplies and fingers are in danger of being cut off).
You'll see the version where Marcia gets hit in the face with a football but ends up learning a lesson about vanity and inner beauty and the whole family shares a group hug before jumping in the station wagon for a trip to the green stamps store and maybe you prefer that, the way I prefer the blissful ignorance of reality that I enjoy by not friending nieces and nephews on Facebook. But if you want to see the behind-the-scenes version where Marcia tackles Jan to the floor over the last Oreo, Peter plays home videos of Greg on a potty chair for Greg's new girlfriend, and paper towels serve as markers for the cat vomit everyone claims to have not seen, you have work to do. Deliver a couple of clever insults that leave us with our mouths hanging open, then turn our tentative shots at you back on us without hesitation and you'll get your foot in the door. But once your foot's in, avoid the paper towels strewn about. Just pretend you don't see them like everyone else.
P.S. Mike Brady is trapped in a collapsed building on Christmas Eve. Carol Brady stands outside the police barricade and worries. Suddenly, she lifts her voice (and the building, apparently) with a stirring Christmas carol and Mike stumbles out to freedom. Christmas and Mike are saved by the power of her voice. She'd be a handy chick to have around for say, mine collapses, earthquakes, and rugby scrums.
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