Kathleen Buckstaff

It was the last day of summer and I was trying to get done everything I had meant to do all summer long with the children.  I would sort through clothes they had outgrown, clean out the clutter from the previous school year, make photo albums from the last two decades and get the tub drain fixed.

Of course, the children had needs too.  The boys had haircut appointments, school supplies to purchase and a need for new clothes.  We were going to go on an outing, just as soon as the plumber arrived, fixed the tub and left.  He was scheduled to be at our house by nine.  At 9:30 the dispatcher called to say the plumber had been detained at his first appointment.  At 10:30 I called to ask if I should reschedule.  The boys had a hair appointment and I had to work to find eyes behind all the hair.  The dispatcher said the plumber was on his way.

I don’t know why it still came as a surprise to me, but the tub did not fix itself.  The standing water had stayed there.  No amount of vinegar, drain-o or boiling water had solved the problem.  I had poured enough chemicals into the water that I wondered if the tub would blow up.  But nothing had happened. In fact, the water had been there so long a spider had drowned in it and I wondered if mosquitoes would be hatching soon.

My daughter had begged me on her way out the door to get her haircut, “Can you please get the tub fixed before school starts?”  She was getting her hair cut with my hairdresser.  She was driving there on her own.  She had long, lovely teenage hair.

I ran my hand through my own hair.  I hadn’t showered yet.  I had been up– ready and waiting for the plumber.  I was overdo for a hair cut but had had children around and wanted the long appointment.  The one that took away the gray, the tired and the meek.  In fact it had been so long since I’d gotten my own hair done, that I was almost out of shampoo.  It didn’t bother me that the children were using my shower—because their tub was clogged.  I think what got me to call the plumber was that they were using my shampoo.

In the meantime, the barber called to say he had double booked a few clients and could we come early.

At eleven, I was about to call and cancel the plumber.  The boys had sorted through their old clothes and William was in the middle of cleaning out his backpack.  He found a penguin eraser.

“Throw away?” I asked and held open the garbage bag.

“I can’t,” he said, “Ms. Heilmann gave it me.”

“Ms. Heilmann was your teacher two years ago,” I said and examined the papers in the backpack more carefully.  He and I were cleaning out his backpack from the previous school year.

The door bell rang.  I stepped over piles of clothes and paper and books and went to get the door.  I yelled at the boys to clean up the hall and for William to get his football gear together, fill up his water bottles and find his cleats.  We would have to take him to practice after we got school supplies.  There wouldn’t be time to come home.

I opened the front door and tried to compose myself.  “How fast can you fix a tub?” I wanted to say.

“Come on in,” I said forcing a smile, as if I were some calm woman on any normal day.  Instantly, I noticed his teeth.  Several of his front teeth were chipped off.  He was hunched over and made eye-contact reluctantly.

“Name’s Sam,” he said.  His handshake was surprisingly firm and warm.

Sam moved carefully into the house, stepped in, walked behind me, many paces behind me, and followed me up the stairs to the children’s tub.

“The water’s been there for a while,” I said.

“Drain looks clogged,” Sam said.

“Yes, it looks that way,” I said thinking I should have removed the floating, dead spider.

“We have a barber’s appointment in an hour,” I said.  “Tomorrow’s the first day of school.”  This was supposed to excuse me from being patient or kind.  I was doing my best not to say, “Can you fix the tub quickly and leave?”

“Doesn’t look like you put any chemicals in here recently,” he said.

“It was a while ago,” I said.  I didn’t want to tell him how long the tub had been clogged.  Don’t ask, I thought.  Please don’t ask me how long it’s been clogged.

“I’ll need you to sign this form saying it’s been over 48 hours since you put anything into it.”

“Oh, it’s definitely been more than 48 hours,” I said.

Carefully, Sam took out a form from his clip-board and handed me a pen.

I watched him jiggle the knob that regulates the up-down of the drain stopper.

“It’s made of plastic,” he said.  “I don’t want to break it.  Usually we run a snake through here, and it’s easy.  This one, I may have to try the drain.  It’s trickier.” Then Sam proceeded to tell me how the drain is shaped, how the snake has to travel and how the snake is made to make it up and around and over successfully.

I worked on taking a deep breath.

“One time,” and this is when I should have been quiet, but I was thinking maybe I could hurry the process a long, “One time, when this drain was clogged the plumber cleared it from the roof.”

Sam nodded.  “Not allowed to do that, not without another plumber.  Insurance reasons.” Then he sited the code number for the insurance ordinance.  “It requires two plumbers.  One to hold the ladder.”

I took another breath and thought of the old joke, how many plumbers does it take to unclog a tub?

Be nice, I told myself, he’s here to help you.

“Well,” Sam sighed.  “I think I’ll go down to my truck and get the snake.  Just need you to fill out some paper work.”

Sam wrote up the estimate while I yelled to the boys to put their gear in the car.  He handed me the clip-bored.

Please just do the work I thought, scribbling my name.

Sam was squatted down on the floor of the bathroom by the tub waiting for me to hand him back his clip-board.

“That’s a Miltoniopsis,” he said.

“What is?” I asked.

“That’s a Miltoniopsis,” Sam said again.  “It’s a Miltoniopsis Robert Jackson, also known as “Wild Thing.””

On the back of the toilet sat a clay pot which held a drooping, flowerless orchid plant.

“I like orchids,” Sam said.

“It looks terrible,” I said.  Its leaves cried out for water.  I grabbed the plant and ran water into it from the sink.  It had been calling out to me for days to water it.  Maybe it had been weeks.  I had a slowly dying creature in the house, “Water, water,” it begged.  And I hadn’t listened.  This was the trouble with owning plants.  You fall in love with them at the store, you bring them home and then they make you feel guilty.

“This one does better outside,” Sam said.  “It needs more light than it’s getting here.  It would do better on the east side of the house.  Afternoon sun would be too hot.”

“I can’t get it to bloom again,” I said.  “I know, more water would help.”

“I like to mix plant food with the water, 10, 10, 10 or 20, 20, 20.”  It helps them flower again.

“Ok,” I said looking at the tub, thinking about the boys’ hair appointment.

“Took Mom to an orchid class last night,” Sam said.  “Mom likes orchids too.  Gets her out, something to do.”  Sam picked up the plant from the sink.

“It’s good you got it in this pot with the holes in it, they like the ventilation.”  He turned the plant.  “Needs more sun.”

Sam put the plant back in the sink to drain and started down the stairs to get his equipment.

“Sometimes I can’t walk by an orchid without buying it,” I confessed to him.

“I know what you mean,” Sam said.  “I’ve got several hundred.”

“You have several hundred orchids?”  I said stopping on the stairs.

I followed Sam out to his truck.

“I bought one once at a nursery on the way back up the coast just north of San Diego.”  Sam said the Latin name but it was long and I couldn’t make it out.

“When it stopped flowering, I bought another one,” Sam smiled like a boy in love, chipped teeth and all.  He looked me straight in the eye, confessing his love.  I think he may have even blushed.  “Then I decided I wanted to always have an orchid in bloom.”

“Do you?” I asked.

“I do,” he said like a man proud to be married to something he loves.

Sam carried the electric snake into the house.   While he was upstairs working, my daughter came home from having her hair done.  She was fluffy and light on her foot and lovely.

“Someone came into the hairdresser while I was having my hair done and asked if I was a model,” she said and twirled her lovely, long curls in the kitchen.

“I had to park half way done the street,” she said.  “Someone parked in my spot.”

“That someone is fixing your tub,” I said.

“Thank you,” she said meekly.

When Sam came downstairs for me to pay, he and I sat at the kitchen table.

“Drain’s fixed,” Sam said.

“Mom, we really need to go,” the boys said.

While Sam was working, I had gathered up my neglected orchids and lined the plants in their pots on the kitchen table.  I felt like I was confessing my sins.

“Mom,” the boys called to me in unison.

“You can wait,” I told them.

Sam sat there and told me the name of each orchid, when it bloomed and what it needed.  With one orchid, I had tucked it outside by a flower sprinkler hoping it would get water– that way I wouldn’t have to listen to it anymore.  I had considered throwing it away, but I couldn’t throw it away alive, just because it wasn’t blooming anymore.  What if someone did that to me?  She’s definitely not blooming, we’ll toss her out —gray hairs, roots showing, months since she’s had any water or fertilizer.

“Little bit of fertilizer and she’ll pop right back.  She’ll bloom again,” Sam said as if he had read my thoughts.  He smiled at me that tooth-chipped smile and I blushed.

“Looks like a snails been nibbling this one,” Sam said touching a leaf full of holes.  He told me to use clean scissors to trim orchids and not to use them on other plants because diseases can be spread that way.  He showed me where to cut.

One orchid he couldn’t identify so he went to his truck and returned with a worn book on orchids.  He found the plant immediately, told me the name and then turned the page to show me a picture of a butterfly orchid he had that he loved.

Then he told me about his mother.  She had an orchid that she seemed to keep blooming.  It was four feet high, he said.

“Does she talk to her plants?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Sam said.  “But last night at the class, a student came up to Mom to tell her his troubles with an orchid he had and you know what she said?  She said, “Well, are you talking to it?”  So I suppose she is.”

Sam thumped on his orchid book. “It helps with the stress,” Sam said.

Maybe it does, I thought as I watched Sam drive away and loaded the boys in the car.

A month later, I found myself standing in my bathtub, not with a plumbing problem, but with an orchid problem.  I was trying to figure out how to feed them.  I had purchased the orchid food like Sam had recommended 20-20-20 and mixed it with water in an old plastic bucket.  I had filled my tub with flowerless orchid plants.  I was barefoot and rolled up my jeans and stepped in.  I had never taken a bath with orchids before.  Carefully, I wiped dust off the leaves—like one might approach a lover one has neglected.  I pulled off dead leaves and noticed where snails had nibbled another.  I took an accounting of where we were.   As I poured the nutrient rich water into their soil, I talked to them– at first quietly, then with more affection.

“You will bloom again, just you wait, you will.” I watched the water drain through their soil, through their roots and into the tub. I felt like I had become a wild thing– barefoot in a bathtub talking to plants, but it felt like a good way to start a new year—a bit crazy, apologetic and returning to love.

“I love you now when you are mostly leaves,” I cooed,  “and I will love you when you’re flowering and I will love you when you no longer bloom.”

Sunlight poured through my bathroom window and I could hear the orchids sigh.

(I published this letter in our weekly paper.)

To the Editor:

I want to propose that we listen carefully to our disbelief and our grief as our community processes the murder of Joan Rosenthal.  I did not know her or any one in her family, but I live here and I had to talk about this murder last night with my children.

It is scary.  It is incomprehensible.  It is shocking.

This morning, I read the quotations in the Marin IJ about people’s disbelief and about how they loved her and her family.  The details of how they loved become specific.  The loss is personal.

I read the police statistic that this is the fourth homicide in our community in 40 years.  I want the magnitude of the atrocity to sound out, to sound out loudly.  This should not happen.  This hurts when it does.

But the horror and the shock of how she was killed remain.  People feel stunned.  This does not happen here.  The outrage we feel when a murder happens to someone who is loved right here, where our children go to school, where we live and sleep and eat is appropriate.

There are two ways to go on this issue.  One is to say, welcome to the real world.

The other, which I prefer, is to apply this current level of shock everywhere, to be willing to be outraged at all senseless killing, to feel profoundly the specificity of loss that each one ignites.  Getting used to random acts of murder diminishes the loss and the love.  It takes away from our humanity to say, well, it happens there, but it does not happen here.  We become more human when we say, it is wrong that it happens at all.

I always like the “what if?” game.  You ask, “What if?” and then let yourself go with wild, crazy,  thoughts.  This past weekend I was at a college football game.  I’ve never been able to follow football well.  I usually get which color is which team and I know the direction they’re trying to go to score.  But to me, most of the time, it looks like a bunch of really big men wearing helmets and pads who smash into each other, again and again.  I love the long passes best, when someone runs forever for the touchdown, because it gives me time to hear the crowd cheering, to pay attention and to see one man’s all-out stride to outmaneuver and outrun all foes to reach the end zone.  Of course, I cheer wildly with the crowd– go, go, go!  And I like dancing with the band to the victory song.  Every single time there’s a long and glorious run, my heart lifts with a sense of inspiration of having witnessed someone overcoming obstacles, and in the case of football, large obstacles to achieve a goal.

This past weekend, I happened to be sitting near a passionate and loyal fan.  At every third down for our team, he would stand and yell, “Third Down, Third Down!”  and rather than facing the football field, he would face the stands.  This is where I had to admire him.  Initially, I felt uncomfortable by his passion, but usually that’s a sign someone’s doing something that’s worth noting.  This fan, like the most emotional symphony conductors, would direct all of those sitting behind him to stand and cheer.  I was sitting behind him, right behind him.

“It’s third down.  Stand! Stand!”  He would command.  Begrudgingly, at least initially, we obeyed and we would all stand.  If our team did not succeed on third down, he would yell to the crowd, “Fourth down, fourth down.  Stand!  Stand!”  We would stay standing and cheer.

No matter what happened, he cheered.  ”Nice try! Way to go! We’ll get ‘em next time! Brilliant, absolutely brilliant!”  He had a long string of words he yelled to keep supporting the team.

For the entire game, this one, loyal fan got our whole section to stand,cheer, clap and make noise.  He was in the game to the end, through the ups and downs, completed passes and interceptions.  He was 110 percent involved and rallied everyone around him.

By the end of the game, it seemed his enthusiasm had caught on.  Our entire section was standing and cheering– on our own.  I noticed the loyal fan turned around and checked over his shoulder just to make certain we were up and clapping, but by that point, it seemed the entire stadium was.  I think this one fan made a difference, a big difference.

My daughter has a math teacher who teaches BC Calculus, the hardest, highest level of math offered at her high school.  On this woman’s classroom wall are two sayings and she says them to her students often.  The first which she says is “Do you believe in you as much as I do?”  Her stare is confident, strong, knowing.  Much like the loyal fan who said, “I’m in this to the end.”  The other saying, which this teacher claims she got from someone else is, “You can do hard things.”

I love these two sayings.  I think of them often.  That night as I was watching an entire stadium chanting for a team during critical times— “L E T S G O– Let’s go, Let’s go!  L E T S G O, let’s go!”  I wondered, “What if?”

I wondered what if we could summon all the love and support that is truly out there for us, if we could hear it loud and clear, feet banging on metal stands, hands clapping, cheers recited in unison, again and again.  What if when the going got tough, if we could feel and hear God supporting us THAT much?

I bet if we could hear that level of love and loyalty, that we’d be willing to do hard things, to not give up on third downs, or fourth downs, to keep having faith even during the really hard times, no matter what.

During the fourth quarter for one play, I did not stand with the crowd. Instead, I sat and listened.  I let myself be surrounded by cheering, stomping and noise.  I let myself feel the stands shake and the passion released.  I let myself know the intensity of loyal fans and I let myself believe, even if it was a “what if” and only for a moment, that all of that noise and support is exactly how God loves us.

All year my boys talk about breakfast at The Little Corporal—boys meaning my husband and two sons.  The Little Corporal bills itself as a family restaurant in Green Lake, Wisconsin.  It’s on the corner of Hill and Mill across from the gas station. 

When we go to visit Mimi and Grandpa in Wisconsin, there’s a list of must-dos that has to happen.  The children go out on the motorboat and tube during the day.  Mimi, my daughter and I go to the art fair and I usually buy a ceramic vase made by a local artist.  In the afternoon, Mimi boils brats in beer.  In the early evening, Grandpa and my husband barbecue the brats.  Grandpa is an expert on barbecuing and he discusses with my husband when the exact right moment is to turn the brats.  It takes two men, but the brats are always cooked to perfection.  At dinner, we smother brats in ketchup and a bun, dunk fresh corn in butter and eat watermelon and pasta salad.  After dinner, we walk to the Bayview Ice Cream Parlor where Wally and Michele serve us cones with flavors like Key Lime Pie and Root Beer Swirl and we talk about rain– if there’s been too much or too little.

All of this sounds perfect, but no trip to Green Lake is complete without breakfast at the Little Corporal.  When my son Scott was a little boy, he always woke early so he and I would sneak out and walk to breakfast there—just the two of us.

He’d load up with hot chocolate with whipped cream and chocolate chip pancakes—except at the Little Corporal they call pancakes hotcakes.  After breakfast, Scott would return to Mimi and Grandpa’s house not only full from breakfast but filled with smugness and delight.  Four-year-olds are particularly good at this—he would smile, rub his belly, and talk about how delicious breakfast was.  He had gotten a plate of treats while his siblings slept.  Now there’s a satisfying meal.

This year, we all walked the 3 blocks together.  Scott who is 14 now commented on how short the walk had gotten, how long it used to be.  As we crossed South Street, the children reminisced about The Fourth of July parade and running for candy thrown by the firemen from the big, red fire engine.  We remembered the time the children caught tiny fish from the dock, put them in a bucket to be tossed back and the fish had all died.

At the Little Corporal, there was a short wait for tables—only on a Sunday morning in August was my guess.  But our table emptied soon enough, was cleared and we were seated.  I love the menu at The Little Corporal.  It makes me feel rich and that all is well in the world.  For $1.85, you can get one country fresh egg and toast.  Order the Number 12 and for $ 4.75 you get 2 buttermilk hot cakes and 2 eggs. 

The same waitress as the summer before took our order.  I liked the sense of continuity.  Some things never change—or at least change slowly. 

My husband ordered the corn beef hash skillet with a cheese sauce and a side of sausage.  I could see the Wisconsin boy in him relax when the waitress asked, “links or patties?’  Living in California, when it comes to sausage, the choice is often between turkey and veggie.

“Links,” Dan said.

Scott ordered the 3-egg omelet with bacon, sausage and ham with a side of toast and jam and a hot chocolate.  William ordered a side of bacon and not the Short Stack with 2 hotcakes at $2.85, not the Jumbo Stack with 5 hotcakes for $6.15 but the Regular Stack of 3 hotcakes at $3.40. 

When the food arrived, a feeding frenzy began. 

“Now these are sausage,” Dan said.

I want to think that all of the anticipation, the year of talking, dreaming about The Little Corporal– the mounds of chocolate chips, the piles of whipped cream, me saying yes to any item on the menu because almost every item was under five dollars and I was in vacation mode—something about The Little Corporal inspired in us a sense of pure, lavish abundance.

We ate as if we’d never seen food before.  William poured mountains of syrup on his hotcakes.  Dan moaned about the sausage.  I begged for a bite.  Let’s just say it, pork sausage tastes better.  Scott laughed about his omelet burgeoning off of his plate.  “It’s huge!” 

We were unapologetic as we inhaled food.

If my boys thought they could have gotten food to their stomachs by shoving it in their eye sockets, ears, and noses, they would have tried. 

At first I didn’t notice the boys, because I was having an internal conversation with myself about bacon.  It was crispy, but not too crispy.  “When in Rome,” I told myself and ate another slice.  I had ordered eggs and hotcakes with a side of bacon.  “Yes,” I told myself, “But I am not spending the winter in Rome.”  And then an equally compelling voice told me, “Bacon is good.  It’s very good.”  But then the hotcakes wanted more syrup– they had dried up so quickly and needed a healthy pool to bathe in, to make the picture on the plate complete.  One never sees hotcakes with a dab of syrup. 

“Enough,” my stomach begged, “Enough.  Stuffed.  I’m stuffed.”

“Ok,” I thought, “I’ll stop, just one more nibble of bacon. Hmm, that’s tasty.  Maybe just a bit more of bacon.”  I broke off another nibble and I realized I had eaten another piece.  This is how I ate seven pieces of bacon.  Bit by bit.

When I turned my thoughts to the children, I saw William knife in one hand, fork gripped in the other hand and he was shoving chocolate chip pancakes into his mouth.  He’d just finished 2 weeks of preseason football—and had lost 5 pounds.  It looked like he was trying to make it all up in one meal. 

I was horrified watching him eat.  This was my child.  I was his mother.  He was a direct reflection of me.  Hadn’t I taught him anything—.

“William,” I said breaking his reverie.  “Please eat as if you’re out of the zoo.” 

“Scott, you too.”  Scott having finished his entire egg meat omelet had reached over to William’s plate and stabbed a ½ pancake with a fork and was biting off mouthfuls of pancake as if he were eating an apple on a stick.  His face was covered in chocolate and his cheeks were stuffed.

“I’m chewing with my mouth closed,” he muffled to me– as if that was supposed to offer some consolation.

I had to wonder.  Had I failed as a mother?

“Just you wait until you’re on a date with a girl you really like, then you’ll be trying to recall what I’ve taught you,” I said.

My husband chimed in, “It’s even worse when you’re at a meal with her parents,” he said.

I continued, “You’ll be trying to remember what was it that dear old mom said—not oh, here she goes again, nagging, nagging, nagging about putting a napkin on the lap, chewing with your mouth closed.  You’ll be grasping for tidbits—where was it that I was supposed to put the knife and fork when I finished? Together, that’s right.  The knife and fork go together on the plate at 7:00—let’s see that doesn’t look right, what was it that mom always said?—four o’clock, that right, it was four o’clock, fork and knife parallel…”

I was on a roll, “This tells a lot about a young man like whether he hangs up his wet towels or puts the toilet seat down.” 

My boys were looking at me like I had lost it and I didn’t care.  I told them it was important to stand up straight when they met someone, to look them in the eye, to give a firm handshake.  That their belt needed to match their shoes and they should always be clean-shaven, not that either boy was close to needing to shave yet, but I told them anyways.  I had become my own version of the Little Corporal giving commands. 

Maybe that’s what happens when they keep refilling your coffee cup and you eat two eggs, three hotcakes, and seven pieces of bacon.  It makes you determined to instill a sense of discipline in someone.

I was in need of prayer and God, so I drove to the Mission in San Rafael.  When I entered, I thought the church was empty.  The lighting was golden.  Something about the old glass and the thick walls creates an illumination that is exquisite.  It’s the kind of light that makes you believe God travels on threads of gold.

I knelt in the front pew and started to cry, really cry.  I thought I was alone.  Several feet in front of me, a man appeared at the altar.  Instantly, I felt self-conscious.  He had been cleaning behind the podium and I hadn’t seen him.  He was hunched over, maybe in his late 60s.  I noticed his black tennis shoes had wide, Velcro straps.  He looked mildly disabled as he shuffled his feet and worked to use a broom to sweep bits of paper into a dustpan.  When he finished sweeping, he stepped down from the altar, took a rag from his pocket and sprayed it with a plastic bottle. He began to wipe down the wooden pews.  He worked his way down the right side of the church and then he worked his way up the left side.  I could hear him wiping down the seats behind me, moving row by row.  I wondered how many prayers he touched on the wooden benches– cleaning, cleaning as he moved. 

At first, I tried to stop crying, embarrassed by his knowing, his witnessing my sorrow, my pain.  And then I let myself cry again– mostly because the tears had started and I couldn’t stop them.  I felt like God was around me wiping up the hardship of life. 

“All is well,” I heard a voice say to me again and again.  “All is well.”  And the man wiped down another wooden bench. 

I felt comforted by this man’s presence and by the other prayers I could feel around me.  I could see inscriptions on a prayer book that lay open on a wooden stand in front of the altar.  I felt comforted by others’ suffering—not that I wanted them to suffer, but that I was glad to not be alone.  I felt comforted by others turning to God.

When I stood to go, I knew I would have to pass the man who had seen me cry.  He stopped in the aisle and looked at me, right in the eyes.  We were only a few feet apart.  I looked at him, acknowledging that I knew he knew I was crying.  He seemed to stand taller. 

“Thank you,” I said, meaning thank you for cleaning the church where I come to pray and to cry.

“I… pray… for… you,” he said to me.

My eyes filled with tears.  What?  I thought.  Did he really say what I thought he said? How could I allow him to pray for me?  As if you can allow or disallow someone to pray for you.  There’s a presumption, I thought, and my prejudice gave me pause.  My prejudice against him.  My prejudice against myself.   He didn’t look like he had showered in weeks.  It was possible he didn’t have a home.  Who was I to have him pray for me? Wasn’t I the one who was supposed to help him?  And yet I was in pain, asking for God’s help and this man gave me a prayer– something profound in its simplicity and its kindness.  Something free.  Something I needed.  Yes, I told myself– I accept his prayer. 

I looked him in the eyes, allowing him to see me.  My tears began to flow again. 

“Thank you,” I said.  He nodded and smiled. 

I walked down the aisle, through the gold light and I felt bathed in God’s love.

 

© 2009 Kathleen Mallery All Rights Reserved

 

It was the middle of summer and I had a bored 11-year-old boy at home.  His older brother was off with a friend.  His sister was working on college applications.  William went with me to the bank, the dry cleaner, the grocery store and the library.  He read for an hour, practiced his guitar and straightened his room.  He even tried on his football equipment—pads, helmet, and practice jersey in anticipation for Pop Warner football pre-season that would begin August 3^rd.  But it wasn’t August 3^rd yet.

Michael Jackson had died recently and William spent days watching Michael doing the Moon Walk on Youtube videos.  There was Michael singing “Billie Jeane” and doing the Moon Walk.  There was Michael singing “Billie Jeane” again and doing the Moon Walk again.  William would turn the computer screen so it faced outward into our family room and copy Michael’s dance moves.  William would replay and practice, replay and practice. 

Our cockatiel bird, Angel, even got so she was dancing in her cage back and forth on her bar along with William and Michael.  A few days earlier, William and I went to San Rafael to purchase football equipment.  William paused beside a shop window when he caught sight of his own reflection.  He was in front of an art store and there was a framed photograph of Michael Phelps on display.

William began his attempts at the Moon Walk.  “When you get it right,” William told me, “it looks like you’re going forward but you’re really going backwards.” And then after several weeks of trying, of modifying his steps, of replaying Michael, William watched himself attempting the Moon Walk in the art store window and he did it.

“I got it!  I got it!” William called out to me.  “I got the Moon Walk!  Watch Mom.  Watch.” 

I had walked ahead of William.  I was focused on the list of purchases we needed to make to ensure he had the right gear for football season.  I stopped and turned around to watch.  Sure enough William was doing the Moon Walk on Fourth Street in downtown San Rafael.  Other pedestrians stopped and watched.  Michael Phelps even seemed to smile. 

In the Sporting Goods store, William did the Moon Walk in front of the dressing room mirror wearing only a white football girdle.  He did it again in the shoe department for the salesman and the other two families who were there for football gear.  William tried doing the Moon Walk in his new cleats but the cleats gripped the carpet and didn’t slide as well as his socks.   

“I can do it,” he said.  “I can do it.”

But this triumph happened several days earlier and the excitement of the Moon Walk diminished and the ennui of summer set in.  William flopped from the couch, to the chair, to the dog getting heavier with each rise and fall. 

“I’m bored,” he said, “bored, bored, bored.” 

My husband thinks it’s good for the children to get bored.  He thinks children can be over-scheduled and that boredom teaches them to be creative and have initiative, to have to think of what to do.  He also is not at home with bored children in the summer.

I encouraged William to call his friends.  He did and none were home.  I asked him if he wanted to make cookies.  “No thanks,” he said.  I tried to get him to watch John Travolta disco dancing and William only raised one eyebrow at me, “Mom,” he said.

Finally, I looked at him and decided I would try to be kind and not match his exasperation, “You have a lot of great energy, how can we use it well?”

He looked at me, pained from boredom, but with a glint of hope in his eyes.  Perhaps he would be saved from the torture of being a boy with a lot of unused energy.

“Would you like to play tennis?” I offered.

“With you?” he said. 

“Yes, with me,” I said.

“You play tennis?”  William asked.  My husband had always been the one who played with William.

“I used to,” I said.  It had been 20 years since I’d played tennis but I did play.  I had even gone to a few tennis summer camps.  True, I was far more interested in the cute instructors than I was in developing my game, but I had played.

William and I packed up racquets and balls and rode our bikes to the local courts.  We rode by a blackberry bush.  The blackberries were turning from bright red to black.  I stopped.

“Delicious,” I said.  “Try one.”  William is not my fruit eater.

“No,” he said.  “I don’t eat fruit.” 

“And I don’t play tennis,” I said.

I picked a blackberry out for him.  William nibbled at it and then spit it out.

“I still don’t like berries.”

“At least you tried,” I said and we rode on.

At the tennis court, we began to hit the ball back and forth.  After the first few hits, I promised myself that I could take whatever pain reliever I found necessary that evening.

“You’re OK Mom,” William called to me.

“Thanks,” I said.

He decided I was OK enough to raise the standards.

“One bounce, Mom,” William said.  I had been enjoying a leisurely approach to tennis.  I hit the ball to William.  He hit it back to me and then I let the ball bounce and bounce and bounce, until it was as close to me as possible before I hit it back.  I considered this an intelligent approach to tennis—I ran less and conserved energy.

I listened to his critique and modified my game.

“That’s two bounces, Mom,” William said after my next stroke.

“It wasn’t three,” I yelled back.

“See if you can get this in one bounce, Mom,” William hit me a lob. I ran and hit it back to him. 

“Of course, I can,” I said silently reaffirming my promise of pain relieving medicine.

Soon I was running back and forth on the baseline returning his shots allowing for only one bounce.  I quickly developed a survival strategy. William had accidentally worn his older brother’s shorts, which were too loose in the waist.  If I hit the ball far enough away from him, he’d run, run, run and stop halfway to pull up his shorts.  This meant he sometimes missed the shot.

“Nice try,” I called out.  “See if you can get this one,” I said.  William ran, ran, ran, stopped, yanked up his shorts and then ran again to get the ball.  I think he felt an added sense of victory when he returned a shot and didn’t lose his pants.

I started to enjoy his playful spirit and his athleticism. 

He laughed after one particularly long run, “Almost lost ‘em that time,” he said smiling at the thought of playing tennis in his underwear.  Instead, he retuned a solid volley to my backhand.

“You have a lot of talent in tennis,” I said to him as the volley went flying past me with top spin or side spin—I don’t know which, only that it looked like it was going to bounce high and scooted low instead.  I missed.

“Undeveloped talent,” I said when he hit the next shot out. 

“Thanks, Mom,” he said and lobbed one over my head that landed just inside the baseline.

It should have come as no surprise that when we were engaged in a good rally and I hit the ball into the net that William celebrated.  It was the form of his spontaneous celebration that irked me.

There I was tired, huffing, jogging up to the net to retrieve the ball and William was on the baseline doing the Moon Walk. 

Hadn’t I been the patient, encouraging mother who for two weeks had watched replay after replay of Michael Jackson doing the Moon Walk?  And then I had watched William trying to do the Moon Walk.

“Watch, Mom.”

“Watch again, Mom.”

I had stopped what I was doing to watch.

There he was in his full glory celebrating that I had hit a ball into the net and he was doing the Moon Walk. 

The Twerp.

He only laughed harder when I called him a twerp and did a spin on the baseline to express his delight in having succeeded at annoying me.

When he hit a ball completely out of the tennis court and over the fence I taunted, “Look who’s dancing now?” and did my own version of the Moon Walk.

“Nice try, Mom,” he said.

But he and I both knew that after all my careful observing that my version of the Moon Walk wasn’t that far off. 

When we were both tired, we got a drink from the water fountain outside the courts.  A cool breeze blew through a cottonwood tree and we could smell the pine trees in the distance. 

Two men played on a court near us and we listened to their use of every single swear word in the book—and a few more.  William raised his eyebrows as if to quietly say, “Wow, listen to their bad language, Mom.”  Secretly, I suspected he was delighted to have his mother helplessly listening to a long string of swear words with him looking innocent, even incredulous.  What more could an 11-year-old boy want? 

“I’ll race you home,” I said.  We both hopped on our bikes and rode fast on the pavement. 

I carried the backpack with our racquets and balls and we sped past the blackberries flying towards home.  We passed a man replanting his garden and two moms walking strollers with newborns.  William stretched out his lead.  My thighs hurt.  My lungs hurt.  Still I pumped as hard as I could yelling that I was gaining on him, which I wasn’t.

Arriving home, William pumped his fist in the air.  “I won Mom.  I beat you!”  He was breathless, exhausted and exhilarated. 

To myself, I thought– I wouldn’t be so sure of that– and I did my own version of the Moon Walk to celebrate.

 

© 2009 Kathleen Mallery  All Rights Reserved

A week before our 20th wedding anniversary, my husband took a business trip to Florida.  Dan had dinner one night with a group of men at a restaurant called City Fish overlooking Tampa Bay.  He later told me that the subject of our anniversary came up.  Dan said the men were impressed he had been married so long– most had been divorced, a few had remarried and one had never married.

“What’s your secret?” one had asked. 

Dan told me that when he leaned in and whispered his secret, every man at the table gasped.

“They stopped eating,” he said, “They even stopped drinking.”

“What did you say?” I asked wanting to know the secret, his secret, our secret.

“I can’t tell you,” he said. 

“Why?”  I asked.

“You might get mad.” 

I looked at him.

“Now I really need to know what you said.”

Dan was quiet.

“What did the men think of what you said?” I asked trying a sideways approach to getting him to tell me.

“They thought I was brilliant,” he smiled.

“You have to tell me.”

I could see Dan regretting he had even started the story and then I could see him considering what would be worse– to tell me or not to tell me.

He took a deep breath, “I told them they needed to learn how to say, “I was wrong.  I’m sorry.” 

I smiled.  “That’s sweet,” I said thinking what a great guy I had married, how wise he was.  I batted my eyes at him.  Dan seemed relieved at my reaction and began telling how he had run a coaching session at the table that night. 

“A coaching session?” I asked. 

Dan explained.  Proud of his new mentoring role, Dan asked each man to role-play with a partner.  In groups of two they practiced, “I was wrong.  I’m sorry,” while Dan came around, listened to tone of voice and assessed posture and facial expression.  With each pairing, Dan evaluated the sincerely of their statements, encouraged them to try again and then told them what they needed to do to show more regret, more self-loathing or just raw shame.

By the time Dan finished boasting about the acting lesson he had given, I was mad.  In my mind, I was replaying times Dan had said he was sorry, times he looked apologetic, contrite, in need of my mercy and my forgiveness and I had given it.

The good thing about being married so long is that time keeps passing and so did my anger.  By the time our anniversary arrived, I was nostalgic and overly sentimental.  I took out our wedding album and showed it to the kids.  They liked seeing their father with hair and all three children told me I looked just the same.  Their sincerity and tone of voice made me wonder if they’d been coached by their father.  Still, I liked the kind words.

That evening I went to my writing group before Dan was home.  I left the kids with dinner made and instructions on everything they had to do while I was gone.  At my writing group, I told everyone that it was my anniversary the following day.  They all offered their congratulations and best wishes.  I almost felt like a new bride as I drove home.

When I arrived home, the dog greeted me.  He only greets me at night if he hasn’t been fed, otherwise it’s not worth his effort to get up.  Before I had the front door closed, I could hear that all three children were still awake.  When I got to the kitchen, I saw the stack of dirty dishes in the sink.  It’s tough to fire the babysitter when it’s your husband.

“Where’s Dad?” I asked. 

“He’s asleep,” they said.

“What?” I could feel my sexy, it’s-the-night-before-our-anniversary, hi-honey-I’m-home swagger disappearing.  “Really?” 

“Yeah,” they said.

“OK, OK,” I thought, maybe he was waiting for me, had a surprise planned, had been working all night on it and that’s why nothing else had gotten done.

“You two do the dishes, you feed the dog and then all of you off to bed.”  They looked at me.  “Please,” I begged.  “It’s my anniversary.” 

I went into our bedroom.  The lights were out.  I could hear Dan breathing. 

“Hi, I’m home,” I said still hearing hints of hope in my voice.

Nothing.

“Dan, are you all right?  Dan?”

“Huh?” he moaned.

“What’s the matter? It’s 9:30. Why are you asleep? 

Dan tried to lift his head and then it seemed too heavy and he dropped it back down on his pillow.

“I drank Benadryl,” he said. 

“Why?” I asked. 

“I have spots,” he said.

“What?”  I turned on the light.  Dan screamed and begged me to, “turn it off, turn it off.’

”You don’t really have spots, do you?” We had been married on April Fool’s Day and I wondered if this was an April Fool’s joke.

I tore back the covers and lifted up his t-shirt.  Dan’s torso was covered in spots– big, red itchy, blotchy spots—and there were hundreds of them. 

“You have spots,” I screamed.  “Lots and lots of spots.  What happened?” 

“Turn off the light,” he moaned.

That night, the night before our 20^th wedding anniversary, I slept on a mattress in my office certain my husband was highly contagious.  In fact, I slept there for several nights. It would take us a couple of days and several phone calls to determine that he had gotten spots from sitting in a hot tub that wasn’t chlorinated properly. 

I had shown that for better or worse had its exceptions.

Later, Dan told me that I had hurt his feelings. 

“For days, you looked at me like I was diseased or contaminated,” he said.

It was true.  That was exactly how I had behaved.  I took a deep breath, cast my gaze downward, and made my expression as serious and solemn as I knew how.  My eyes filled with tears and I said, “I was wrong.  I’m sorry.”

 

 

© Kathleen Mallery 2009

 

There’s something about having a new driver in the family that puts me on edge. 

“Call when you arrive at school,” I yell to my 16-year-old daughter as she heads out the door in the morning.

“Mom,” she says.  But she still calls when she gets there.  She’s probably concerned I’ll take away her cell phone if she doesn’t call.  Despite all the obvious uses for a cell phone, I consider it a line to me, to reassure me that she’s fine or if she isn’t that I will pick her up anywhere, anytime. I love cell phones for teenagers.  I consider it an extension of the umbilical chord. 

I’ve always considered prayer important, but my prayers per minute increased the day she drove out of the drive way in my mini-van on her own.  She was running a short errand to the grocery store, a place she’d been hundreds of times.  “Bless her, bless her, bless her,” I said to God.  “Keep her safe.”

My prayers of gratitude have increased as well.  I hear the car pull in the driveway and I say, “Thank you God, thank you God, thank you God.” 

Following much drama and prayer on my part, it felt embarrassing that after decades of never having had an accident myself, I was the one at dinner who had to share the story of how I smashed the car. 

The worst part is, I wanted to begin, “It wasn’t really my fault.”

I beg the children not to give excuses when they tell me something they’ve done that didn’t turn out well.  “Tell it straight,” I say.  “Stand up for what you did.” 

But in my defense, I haven’t been driving a stick-shift regularly since college.  It’s been me and the mini-van.  But my 16-year-old doesn’t know how to drive a stick-shift and so she’s off to school in the mini-van, delighted to have wheels and more than willing to put up with being teased for becoming a soccer-mom early. 

Recently, I’ve been driving our six speed mini cooper.  When I park on a hill, I say to myself, “Car in first, crank emergency brake.  Car in first, crank emergency brake.”  This is because I always put the car in neutral.  Given that we’ve recently moved to a hilly area, this habit seems worth braking.  No pun intended.

There I was stopping in for a quick visit with a friend.  My friend lives on a steep hill.  I was running in to ask her a favor.  I parked, put the emergency brake on, hopped out and locked the car.  There’s a satisfying sound when one clicks the locker and the car responds.  It’s a small feeling of power, but I enjoy it anyways.  I like driving the mini cooper.  I feel young, free, 16 again.  I’ve shed the minivan.  I start to run up my friend’s steps when out of the corner of my eye, I see something.  My car is moving.  Is it really?  It is moving.  It is moving backwards and the pace at which it is moving is accelerating. 

“Put the car in first,” I hear myself say.  Oh dear.  I did not put the car in first.  The car is in neutral and I didn’t crank hard on the emergency brake.  Oh my.  The mini cooper is going backwards down the hill.  Is it really?  It really is.  I start to run after it clicking the clicker, “Click, click.  Click, click.”  I hear the car unlock.  Perhaps if I run fast enough, I can get in the car and stop it from careening over the hillside.

“What were you thinking?” My husband asks me later.  “Why were you chasing after the car?  You could have been really hurt. Did you seriously think you could stop it?” 

The only answer I had was, “Yes.”  I grew up watching the Bionic Woman.  Of course I could stop a speeding car.  It was just a mini cooper. Besides, I do have superhero attributes– I’ve been getting three children out the door to school every morning for over a decade. 

“I am so glad you didn’t get to the car,” my husband says.  Secretly, I still feel disappointed I didn’t.

The tree got the car first.  Lately, I’ve been thinking about trees– how beautiful they are, how much I love them.  In fact, I moved from a hillside home that looked down on trees because I felt like I needed to be under branches, not looking down on them.  My children have told me I’m a bit nuts when it comes to trees.  But all I have to do is ask if they know where nuts come from.

A tree saved my car.  A pine tree.  I’ve admired it many times.  The mini cooper went over the street curb and started down a steep hillside.  It looked as if it might keep going over an edge.  If it did, it would land in my other friend’s kitchen.  But the pine tree– this is where my children all raised an eyebrow when I insisted it was true– the pine tree stuck out a big, strong branch and caught the mini cooper. 

Two rear windows broke.  That’s it.  It was as if a homerun was being attempted and a baseball mitt reached up just above the fence line, caught the fly ball and the outfielder said, “Nice try, but not this time.” 

My friend made me hot tea while we waited for the tow truck and discussed how really, really lucky I had been.  And the tow truck man told me I was really, really lucky as he hooked the chain on the car to pull it out of the pine tree’s embrace.  He looked down on the house below. 

“That would have taken a crane,” he said looking over the hillside, at the trouble that was averted. 

“Can you imagine what Martin and Mary would have said?”  My tea-drinking friend and I pondered the neighbors’ possible reactions.  The tow had taken the right amount of time so our herbal peach tea had cooled—we decided I didn’t need any caffeine.  Together we sipped tea feeling thankful Martin and Mary didn’t have to arrive home to find a car in their kitchen. 

The surprising turn was when I did see Martin and Mary that afternoon and told them about the incident.

“What?” they said in unison. 

“The tree limb looks like it will be alright,” I said.  “It’s stretched, but I think it will mend.”

“You mean your car almost landed in our kitchen?” they asked.

“Yes,” I said.  “I’m so glad it didn’t.” 

“Your car almost landed in our kitchen?” Mary asked.

“The pine tree saved it,” I said.

Martin stomped his foot on the ground, “We’ve been wanting a new kitchen for years!” he said.

“Years!” Mary said. 

That night, I retold the entire story at dinner.  I did my best to tell it straight.  No excuses.  I would set a good example.  I left the car in neutral on a hillside. I didn’t crank on the emergency brake.  The car slid backwards down a hillside.  And then a pine tree saved it.

The next morning my daughter made her lunch, ate her breakfast standing up, grabbed the keys to the minivan and said, “Do I really need to call you when I arrive at school today?”

You’ve got to admire children for knowing when they have leverage.

The afternoon before, I had to interrupt her studying to beg a ride to the rental car agency to pick up a loner car. 

I watched her there, jangling the car keys, taller than I am, a better driving record than I have and I knew it wouldn’t be long until she was in the position of considering taking keys from me.  I would be gracious, kind and trusting.  Perhaps someday she would offer the same to me.

“You’d don’t have to call,” I said.  As I listened to her drive away, I prayed, “Dear God, bless us, bless us, bless us.”

© Kathleen Mallery 2009

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