unguessed miseries (reprise)

Tonight, in my kitchen, we reminisced with friends about our camping experiences and remembered, many of us incorrectly, a night that featured a bloody t-shirt.  My daughter observed that I'm always sick while traveling, and I defended myself.  This is better.

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...Who would spaniels fear,
Or strays trespassing from a neighbor's yard,
But that the dread of our unheeded cries
And scratches at a barricaded door
No claw can open up, dispels our nerve
And makes us rather bear our humans' faults
Than run away to unguessed miseries?
Thus caution doth make house cats of us all....
~Henry Beard (uncertain), "Hamlet's Cat's Soliloquy"

Summer is no time for a worrier and mom.  Knees are skinned, eyes are blackened, skin is rashed and burned, sweet ears are filled with trapped pool water.  In summer, mothers lose their boys—mostly boys, daredevils—to riptides and high cliffs at forbidden swimming holes, their girls to cars racing down the quiet street; lose their children to strangers who pluck them off a corner, lose them to their fathers.

Forget the pair of great egrets fishing in the river, the snapping turtles mating under the bridge, bobbing in the hydraulic.  Never mind the whole world come alive with chirps and clicks and calls, whoosh of sprinkler, bounce of diving board, roar of mower—sounds so comforting they could lull grown insomniacs to sleep with the promise of their parents’ protection from everything evil in the world.

Summer is my season of unguessed miseries.  

I used to be a competent traveler.  By no means was I the kind of girl who wanted to veer off the beaten path, head out on a dirt road in Mexico in a rickety ride with a Spanish map, meander the Escalante wilderness for a week with only what I could carry on my back. Still, I am a good hiker, and I like to mingle with the locals, get a more authentic travel experience than the typical tour-bus tourist.  But I need the stability offered by a nearby pre-pitched tent, a toilet with walls and a ceiling to help keep the flies out, a base camp with a four-wheeled, gas-fed sentry beside a wood post with a number.  "Please send help to number 28," I could say into the cell phone I use for emergencies.

A few years ago, while camping in just such a place with friends at Cunningham Falls State Park, we heard loud voices in the night—a big fight at a site not too far from ours.  It came and went quickly, ending with a loud pop and squealing tires.  In the morning, we found a bloody t-shirt draped over the sign. Please send police to number 28.

I don’t travel well now.  When my daughter was born, I began sleeping less and worrying more.  My first couple of vacations without her found me panicked about dying on a flight to my camping vacation in Utah, dying in a fall from a high cliff in Zion, dying from an axe murderer in the woods at Dixie National Forest.  I worried a little about my daughter, too—being away from me, getting inferior care from my parents—who knew nothing about raising a girl, after all.  Mostly I concentrated my fears on my own early death, worried that I’d never see my daughter again.

But my husband wants to show her the world, with or without me.  He prefers without.  He and my daughter first flew out to Utah two summers ago, rented a PT Cruiser, and bounced from park to park for two weeks while I worried, of course, that she’d fall from great heights; that a bad driver would crash into them; that she’d be sitting in the front seat of a vehicle with an airbag (or without one; it hardly matters); that my husband would go to the bathroom, and a stranger would snatch her from a seat in Springdale’s Bit and Spur restaurant.

These are only the guessed miseries, and they are horrid.

Last year, I decided it would be worse to sit at home and wonder than it would to join them, sleep or no sleep.  And so my daughter and I flew to Vegas and then took a bus to St. George, not too far from Zion, Utah.  The first thing I told my husband, who had driven an hour or two to pick us up, was that he smelled bad, and that set the tone for the rest of the trip.  Traveling with my family, which I have done in past years (we have taken camping trips to New Hampshire’s White Mountains and New York's Finger Lakes, with success), was not such fun this time.  My daughter didn’t want to hike and complained a lot about the heat.  My husband was already disappointed with me.  I took sleeping pills every night, got a wicked sunburn at Lake Powell, then lost my mind at the grocery store, when my daughter disappeared from my side; I ran up and down the length of the store, screaming her name, then yelled to anyone who would listen that my daughter had been stolen.  When I found her, I felt mortified and said an awful thing that I have blocked from my memory.

This summer, my husband and daughter have been planning another trip without me—filled, I’m certain, with all kinds of unguessed miseries—to California, by Ford truck.  It’s a long drive, over 3,000 miles, and so they’d need to be gone at least a month to make it worth their trouble and keep them from spending half of the time in the truck.  I have dreaded it for every moment since just before the summer began (though their departure date seems to change with each passing hour).

It’s all my daughter has talked about for months—going to California to see the redwoods (and having her own spending money—a bill in each denomination from one to one hundred).  My husband has told her the redwoods are something special, so big you can fit a restaurant in one.  He has talked it up, made it this thing between them that I cannot penetrate, try though I may with a weeklong trip to the ocean to do her favorite things like ride the Wild Mouse, play mini-golf, collect seashells.  The other trip, the great trip, still looms in the background, with it’s big, left-coast promises, my daughter’s personal Gold Rush.  And when I get home, I am going to California to see the giant redwoods, and I will have $188 to spend, so I can buy you a shirt.

It’s possible they won’t go to California; heaven knows I have wished for it, as if a trip North, instead of West, were safer.  Certainly it is less threatening than a whitewater gorge, echoic red rock canyons, and peaks that can only comfortably hold only one of those angels perched atop the head of a pin.  And maybe I will have a shot at being the hero of my daughter’s summer with a trip to the mundane shore, which included a  hot fudge sundae crepe for breakfast, a box of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavored Beans*, and a box of three of Tim Burton Tragic Toys for Girls and Boys.

My great wish is to be normal, myself again, less afraid of airplanes and highways, cliffs and snakes, to worry less about where and how I will sleep and for how long, to travel with my soul mate and my heart and even my own soul like I did when my husband first took me out west in 1985, when I could still view the world with wonder, when driving cross country for a month—just the two of us in a Ford Escort wagon with no AC—was luxurious, and when his company was all the company I needed.

I have spent most of this summer tapping my foot and nervously waiting to hear their travel plans.  My stomach sinks when I see the road atlas spread like a blanket over the kitchen table.  The camping gear taunts me with its slightly ajar top.  When they go, I will bite my nails and pray for summer to rush out like the undertow and the start of school to rush the Atlantic shore. Because when summer is over, when my daughter once again spends her days in the school where her father works, my biggest worries will be how she does on the spelling test and whether she is eating, from someone else’s lunch, a snack item that contains high-fructose corn syrup.  I will wonder, too, who might kiss her in the coat room or call her names at recess or give her strep throat.

But all the unguessed miseries of fall, winter, and spring combined are no match for even the guessed miseries of summer.


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*Yes, the disgusting flavors do, really, taste like their namesakes; I tried both Dirt and Sardine, much to my shock and horror.

the diet that will not be named

On Monday, I went on a diet different from my usual one, which many people know as the Far Too Many Calories In and Hardly Any Calories Out Diet.  You may follow it, too. I’m now on  the I Have a Big Fat Ass and Now It’s Summer Diet.  The actual name of the diet is a little longer, but I shortened it by removing some cuss words.

To be sure I follow this diet properly, I am tracking my calories on FitDay.com.  To wit: I have entered the exact nutrition information of Dead Guy Ale.  I do not use the term “nutrition information” ironically here.  One beer a day is associated with lower risk of cardiovascular disease, which runs in my family.  It’s said to reduce stress and strengthen mental faculties, reduce clotting, and lower LDL cholesterol. Some people even think beer drinkers live longer.  We already know they are better lovers than teetotalers and wine drinkers.  (None can compare to the imbibers of Scotch, however.  Trust me.)

So my diet includes a beer, which is about the only way I will follow it without killing the people around me.

But I need to call bullshit on those who say diets don’t work.

My daughter feasts on a steady diet of burritos and The X- Files.  My diet is composed mainly of beer and Hershey’s kisses.  My husband’s includes celery, carrots, and lots of lemonade to prevent kidney stones.

The results? My daughter goes to bed late because she’s worried about aliens in her belly.  I have a fat ass.  My husband is the picture of health.

So the “diets don’t work” people are liars.

A diet is, simply, what you eat and drink regularly.  If donuts and cheeseburgers are your habit, they will work together to give you heart disease and excess fat.  Success!  Some diets are prescribed. If you have type 2 diabetes, for instance, lay off the sugar and starch to keep your blood sugar and insulin in check.  Success!  Gluten intolerant? Stay away from gluten.  Success!  Weight loss? Eat fewer calories than you expend.

If you have a fat ass or belly or “goodbye-goodbyes” (the upper arm flap that continues to wobble even after you’ve finished waving), just about every weight-loss diet (or some weight lifting) will do the trick.  No matter what brand or fad or style, if it’s different from your current habit and keeps your calories in lower than your calories out, you’ll lose weight. Success! 

When people say diets don’t work, they mean that weight-loss programs are designed to help you lose weight but not to help you keep it off; they mean diets are a temporary solution to an ongoing problem.

Even if that were true (it's not because most diets, even those that begin with calorie restriction—like Weight Watchers, Nutri-System, and Medifast—have maintenance plans), it’s not the diet’s fault if you return to cheeseburgers and donuts.  Most diets can’t help but teach you something about eating—like: don’t eat too much of anything except veggies; burritos at every meal can put aliens in your belly; beer and Hershey's kisses contribute to ass fat.  

As for the belief that yo-yo dieting will permanently destroy you and make you even fatter?  Bullshit.  I mean it: Bullshit.

So if you’re stuffing a cookie in your mouth right now because some Talking Head, RD told you that diets don’t work, let me disabuse you of that notion.

And so what if your new diet—fad or otherwise—will only work in the short run.  It's better to be skinny for a few months than for never.  As for me, I'd like to put less strain on my back and move from tentini to tankini.

you move me.

I loved a tree.  Correction: I love the tree, though it's been dead a long time.  And despite the fact that it was chopped down today, its logs hauled away, I will continue to love it.

I met the swamp white oak, which I called "my tree," "favorite tree," and "swamp thing"—at Herring Run Park in the early nineties, when Marty and I started walking our  dog, Beowulf, there. Cleopatra soon came along, and their baby, Buddha, joined the tribe.  Jett and Chance have sniffed around that tree, too.  It's a tradition with the park dogs.

 I took my baby there. Just before Serena's third birthday, after 9/11, we were playing at the tree—running around it, talking, sitting.  My daughter was imitating Diane Rehm, whose show was nearly always on in our car, especially during the crisis of fear. She picked up a stick and spoke into it: "Mr. Terrorist," she said in a gravelly voice, "Do you use a credit card or take your lunch?"

For a few springs in a row, an oriole built her nest in the old swamp oak; you could see it hanging precariously, seeming to dangle from a limb like a softball on a string.  We kept looking for that nest long long after the oriole song had abandoned the park for good.

The tree was the cover of my homemade chapbook—croetry, which contained all my poems about birds.  I watched the tree fill with crows.  I watched owls and vultures and hawks land there.

I used to run at the park, and I took my camera there regularly, shooting that tree almost every time.  I have thousands of pictures of it on my storage drives.  In my Flickr set, my favorite tree: RIP, I have just 38 photos.  All these years I thought I was posting too many pictures of that tree, and I didn't post nearly enough.  

After my back surgery, I didn't visit it as much as I used to.  And a few years ago, some stupid, bored, hateful human, set a porta-potty on fire underneath it and killed my tree.  When I saw the damage too much later, I broke down and cried.  Red and white warning signs cropped up around it, and threats were made regarding its removal, but after a few years, I figured it wouldn't happen.  The City only cares for a park when caring is in the budget.

The email came today, though, announcing the deed.  And it is done.  Marty visited the spot today, but I don't know if I am prepared to face its absence.

This tree has been my only god.  I have told it my secrets.  I have asked for its guidance.  I have loved it as much as any person could have loved a tree.

RIP, Swamp Thing.  You made my heart sing.  You made so many things groovy.

and jesus was his name-o

When my daughter, Serena, graduated from our neighborhood Christian preschool, I was less relieved that she was kindergarten material than I was that the number of holiday recitals would dwindle.  I had attended three years of performances by the adorable singing children.  Thirty-six-inch-tall people cannot help but look cute dressed as American flags or ears of corn, making charming hand movements and touching themselves unabashedly when they have an itch.  But I was gritting my teeth behind my smiling lips. 

On the makeshift preschool stage for three of her formative years, my daughter sang cheerful songs of Christian tragedy, many having to do with the crucifixion. To the tune of “Bingo”: “There was a man from Galilee / and Jesus was his name-o / J-e-s-u-s....” To the tune of “Sugar”: “Jesus in the morning / Jesus in the evening / Jesus at suppertime.”  To the tune of “Deck the Halls”: “Jesus hanging on the cross / fa la la—.” OK, I exaggerate, but only a little.

        

Truth is: I’m one of those people for whom Jesus is just all right. And I knew Easter was around the corner, which meant "Jesus had a little lamb" for weeks to come.  On our way to Passover Seder, Serena would sit in the back of the car and rock herself to other goofy Jesus songs, and I would feel guilty for not teaching her any of the goofy Jewish songs—and then I'd feel guiltier because I don't know any of the goofy Jewish songs—except the one about the dreidel, and I never understood why you’d make one out of clay.

        

So when Serena graduated and moved to the Catholic school, where her father was the social studies teacher, I thought we’d be spared the altered tunes.        

The week before spring break, after the first grade had been bombarded with Easter lessons, Serena sang, “Jesus loves me / yes I know,” in the car on the way home from school. Every day. I began thinking about Purim services almost as a threat rather than a spiritual remedy.

        

Then, the day before Purim, my daughter said, “Mommy?  Do you know who I miss?”

        

“No, sweetie,” said innocent Mommy. “Whom do you miss?” (I said whom.)

        

“I miss J-e-s-u-s,” she said.

        

“That's it! We're going to Purim!”  I said it as if she were punished, as if I were punished right along with her, as if this were not-so-gladly the cross-eyed bear.

        

When we got home from school, I logged on to www.judaism101, my religious cheat sheet.  I was relieved to have remembered the gist of it: Queen Esther is the hero who married King Ahasuerus without revealing that she was Jewish.  Haman, the King’s advisor (the Karl Rove of the Old Testament), was angry with Esther’s cousin, Mordecai, for not bowing down to him, so he devised a plan to exterminate the Jews.  In a plot twist that ought to have been made into a movie (but not a musical!), Esther saves her race, and Haman is hanged on the gallows meant for Mordecai.

        

The story in no way excited Serena, who’d been alive for seven years and had never even seen the outside of a synagogue. She didn’t want to go, of course, because who does? Not I, but then again, I never threatened my mother with a personal relationship with Jesus.

        

So the next night, I drove us to a strange shul out in the county—where Jewish people live. Serena perked up when she saw the swarm of children dressed for Purim: lots of tiny Queen Esthers (Cinderellas pushing the envelope), lots of pee-wee King Ahasueruses with faux facial hair, and a couple of miniature Hamans. “Next year, can I dress up?” she asked. We were off to a good start.

        

The ceremony was short and sweet and mostly in Hebrew. Once everything in the room, the world, and the universe—including fruit, wine, bosses, and armadillos—was blessed, we each grabbed a grager (noisemaker) for the story of Purim. Every time Haman's name is mentioned, the congregation spins the gragers and heckles him. This was the best part.

        

When the Purim service ended, instead of the assembled dispersing for the usual sweet treat of Hamantashen (the triangular, poppy-seed-filled cookies also known as Haman’s hats), dozens of costumed adults and teens rushed the stage behind the Rabbi.  In moments, piano music played, and those assembled on the stage began, to the tune of “All That Jazz”:  “All That Spiel.”  I looked at my program in stunned silence.  Sure enough, every song—every song!—from the musical “All That Jazz” had been rewritten to fit the story of Purim.

        

For fifteen minutes, I squirmed and wriggled, tortured by doggerel and ready to crane toward the sky and howl like a dog at a siren.  “Do you have to pee, Mommy?” my daughter asked me.  Yes! And then we escaped.  Across the hall, I spied a huge platter of Hamantashen, did a cursory scan of the area, and ran in like a bandit to snag my daughter a cherry cookie. She had blessed. She had stood. She had sat. She had stood and sat and stood and sat.  As far as I was concerned, she had earned her right to do what Jews do best: eat.  Without having to suffer through a musical.

        

I realized then, much to my relief—for I am a good person, really—that it wasn't Jesus at all that gave me fits.  Sure, I prefer Judaism’s teachings and traditions—especially the fun ones, like this booing and hissing thing at Purim and the presents for eight nights at Chanukah and the food.  But I was relieved to know I wasn’t anti-Christ; I was simply against the lyrics and the score.  I hate musicals.

        

Friends who can’t bring themselves to believe this—as if I claim the ability to breathe under water—will quiz me to find the exceptions.  “What about—?” they’ll ask, with an “Aha!” prepared for when I am forced to admit that I do enjoy The Wizard of Oz and have even sung the Scarecrow’s song when I am whiling away the hours in search of my brain.

        

The genre is creepy.  On stage are raggedy souls, victims of plague, prostitutes.  And they are singing!  Instead of a last cigarette, dying characters get a finale.

        

Purim is the gateway drug to Passover.  It’s a sacred time, but, like many other religious observances around the world, it’s kind of like a musical! We have the script—The Hagaddah—with lines to be read by the leader, the participant, and the assembled; we have the choreography:  “all rise,” “be seated,” “raise cups”; and we have the songs:  “Dayanu.”  My family sings only the chorus, and we sing it as if our ship were sinking: “Day-day-anu, day-day-anu, day-day-anu, dayanu dayanu, HEY!”

        

But that year—the year that I’d sworn off songs about Jesus and Esther, my uncle brought us a song he’d written to finish off the service:

Cleaning and cooking and so many dishes

Out with the hametz, no pasta, no knishes

Fish that's gefillted, horseradish that stings

These are a few of our Passover things.

Matzoh and karpas and chopped up haroset

Shankbones and kiddish and yiddish neuroses

Tante who kvetches and uncle who sings

These are a few of our Passover things.

         

What’s next?  To the tune of “Maria”: “Elijah / I just saw the prophet Elijah”?   What about “Take me out to the Seder / Take me out with the crowd / Feed me on matzoh and chicken legs / I don’t care for the hard-boiled eggs.”

        

It’s been a long time since that Passover. My daughter has become a bat mitzvah and graduated from Catholic school (today’s Jewish dilemma is not free ham; it’s free Catholic school).  She’s now in a public high school for the arts where she plays classical, jazz, and big band saxophone.  My cousins have moved away, and both my uncle and my father have died.  The last straw? I’m fifty.  Fifty!  I turn my back for a second, and family members are dispersed and deceased, my only child practically an adult.  Oh, what a tragedy! I feel wretched.

        

Cue the music.

3. enjoy beer.

Were I a writer of odes, I’d dedicate a book of them to my beverage of choice.  O, the bitter bite of hops, the sting of bubbles on my tongue, the heady scent of yeast that fills the head with a nostalgia for a life not even lived—full of knights and castles and beer goddesses with trays (and corsets) overflowing with nectar and big tables of heavy wooden planks, a visual and aromatic palimpsest of rings of ales sweated down the stein and spilt from the tankard!  And laughter.  (“Does anybody remember laughter?”)

Ahem.  It’s been 18 days since I’ve drunk a beer. I embarked on this endeavor to eliminate mother’s hoppy helper because I wanted to deflate my beer belly, and I was certain this, along with a sugar ban, would work. 

My company’s diet plan recommends you make goals that are SMART—that is  Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-based.  Specific: I gave up beer and sugar—mostly for weight loss.  Measureable: My clothes should fit better; I can count the beers I don’t drink.  Achievable: I can go a month without beer and sugar.  Realistic: People don’t have to drink beer or eat sugar.  Time-based: What the hell—it’s a month.

But does this make my goal smart? 

In the eighteen nights, the more than 400 beerless hours, I have lost at least 216 ounces—13.5 pounds.  Of beer.  My body, on the other hand, empty of sugar and wheat, deprived of beer, has lost not a sip of weight.

And I am sad—perhaps sadder than I’ve ever been.  And it’s not the alcohol.  I’ve had a couple shots of frozen cake vodka.  Not beer.  I’ve had some gin and diet tonic.  Also not beer. Could I go a month without it?  Yes.  I could go a month without playing my guitar or taking a picture.  But why would I? Why should I?

My husband would argue that I should because it's good discipline.  He once stopped drinking beer for a year.  The following year, he gave up ice cream.  To what end?  Some people climb mountains because mountains are there.  Others climb them to get to the top and experience the breathtaking view.  That's me.  I want the cherry on top.  (Not only because I enjoy tying the stem in a knot with my tongue and teeth.)

Every day, just like most other people I know—happy or unhappy—I go to work.  I have a long commute and a nine-hour day.  It’s dark when I wake up, and it’s dark when I get home.  And life, as the death of my 75-year-old father proved, is just too short.  In half of the time I’ve already lived, I’ll be his age.  Twenty-five years.  That’s 9,125 beers.  Of course, I don’t have to drink one every day.  But unless my physical and emotional health and those of my family and friends are impinged by my 12-ounce golden-brown liquid in my special snifter, the goal to go even another day without a can of joy, a bottle of pleasure, is stupid.

Why live without the things that bring delight to your life and cause others no displeasure?  Put a beer in my hand, and a smile will light up my face.  And you will be happier, too. 

So tonight, all ale (well, one) will break loose.  In the words of a band whose very name is something I’d banned this month:  “Stick around for joy.”