The Old Pink Bathrobe

A man died not long ago in our town.  He jumped off a bridge and he left a wife and three sons behind; shocked, gutted and trying to square this act with the man they knew. This event stunned and silenced us all.  The very finality of it, the public nature, the shame and the many questions that must still float unanswered in the minds of the loved ones.  And always the hardest… what if?  could I have?  I imagine that one will take a long time to work through. This news caused us all to pause in our tracks and, as sudden loss does, to feel around the edges of our own mortality. The day after the funeral I was driving my daughter to school in my trademark pajamas and bathrobe.  She had known the sons peripherally, not well.  They were good kids by all accounts.  Sitting next to her in the car it suddenly, viscerally, flooded through me that these boys’ Dad would not be present to watch them graduate, choose a mate, give them career advice, and bounce grandchildren on his knee.  It was suddenly, overwhelmingly sad, as we drove down the road by the high school, the early morning sun dappling the windshield. “Did a lot of kids go to the funeral?”  I asked. “Yeah.  There were tons of boys with ties on in school yesterday.” “Oh.”  That was a sobering image, all of these “little men” in high school going to support their friends at a very terrible and grown up passage in their lives. “It’s so sad,” I whispered and I felt my eyes fill with tears and my voice get thick and ropey. My daughter looked at me intently.  My kids have seen me cry—but not much.  I’m not opposed to it.  It’s just that I pick my moments. I cried for this family, this mother, whom I knew only peripherally.  I cried for us, for what our family would have looked like had my husband not recovered from his critical injury.  I cried for us now -- lucky-- unerringly lucky and without any explanation for why some skate through and others don’t.  I cried because mostly I couldn’t stop. “Mom?” my daughter said now, looking fully at me.  It makes my kids nervous when I cry. “Honey?”  My voice was still breaking.  “I want you to always be able to take care of yourself.  I want you to study hard and get a good education and get a great job and be able to support yourself and your kids.  No matter what happens.”  My words flooded out of me, tripping on themselves. “You can’t count on anyone in this life.  Things happen that are out of your control and I always want you to be able to take care of your own.  Promise?” She was looking at me like I was crazy now.  The pajamas, the uncombed hair, the tears.  She was uncomfortable, unsure how to react.  Was I losing it? “I’m OK,” I said with a quick smile to show her that the real me was still in there.  “I just want you to be able to count on yourself.” It was a harsh message for 7:30 am.  And from what place did that spring?  From fear or experience or all of the above?  My parents were still married, my husband and I had a firm bond that she could witness every day.  My Dad had made enough to keep them comfortable in old age.  My husband was back at work after his devastating injury, bringing home the bacon.  Sure, there were examples of people we knew where life hadn’t worked out so well, but we were intact.  Our family had bounced back. I pulled up to the curb where all the other parents were letting their kids out.  I waved to Jimmy the crossing guard and made my signature funny face and thumbs up at him. “I love you honey,” I said squeezing her leg.”  I knew better than to lean in or go above the belt.  This was “no touch” territory.  You didn’t go getting public kisses and hugs at this age around here. I felt foolish and spent. I wasn’t sure where all of that emotional sincerity had just sprung from. “I love you too Mom,” she said.  And right there on the curb, she leaned in for a public hug on the worn shoulder of my pink polka dotted bathrobe.

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Rubber Chicken

I’m just on my way back from a luncheon where I’ve been the featured speaker and have hopefully said something vaguely inspiring or coherent. I’m beginning to think I no longer sound very coherent. Or maybe I’m just sick of hearing myself talk. As someone who talks to various groups around the country --- I have become an unexpected connoisseur of rubber chicken luncheons and dinners. You name a chicken dish – I’ll bet I’ve eaten it--- at least the American version. Who knew there were so many ways to prepare, disguise or gussy up poultry? As I walked in the ballroom, the flower arrangements were bright and spring-like. People invest a lot of time and energy on these centerpieces and they learn to be pretty darned clever when there is a tight budget involved. A couple of carnations can go a long way. During the VIP cocktail portion, there were the coterie of well-dressed women in dresses and suits. We shook hands and traded pleasantries and I thought to myself………. Chicken. They’re definitely going to serve chicken. $100 bucks says I’m right. But of course I couldn’t bet with the organizers—that would seem ungrateful. And I wasn’t ungrateful. But I was correct. There it was in all its’ baked and crumb-sprinkled glory, swimming in its own pool of hardening sauce. Here’s the thing. I never really liked chicken to begin with. It was always my mother’s fall back position meal growing up. And somehow my mother, who is no Julia child but has many other talents, always seemed to overcook it. My image of chicken isn’t a succulent, falling-off-the- bone, flavorful bird; it’s the chicken of my childhood, with the bejesus baked out of it and without the dignity of even a dipping sauce. My image of chicken is dry, stringy white breasts. Come to think of it, not unlike my own image of myself at this age and stage of life. When I go out to eat in a restaurant, I’d rather order ANYTHING than chicken. OK—pizza, even the stylish Wolfgang-Puckish kind is actually very last on that list. This is amateur food, stuff I have served to my kids for years. Chicken nuggets, pizza, mac and cheese are staples in my home kitchen and I’m not paying real money to have someone present me with the same old same old. When I go out to eat, I want to order something I cant and don’t make, something that seems to involve labor and ingredients I don’t have in my pantry. So, how is it I have found myself in the ballrooms or meeting rooms of hotels and corporations and universities around the country for the past few years and it seems we always eat… chicken. Occasionally there has been a salmon or rarely some beef. Once or twice even pork—a religious risk, I’m sure, in some towns. I have begun to dread the dramatic moment when the banquet trays come out stacked with the silver plate covers. Chicken, I think to myself. How will they dress it up today? I’ve stuck a fork in baked chicken, chicken tetrazzini, chicken cordon bleu, chicken teriyaki, chicken stuffed with spinach, chicken Hawaiian, and chicken Caesar salad. No one has tried to do chicken fingers at a group event yet but that’s probably because no one has had the guts. Chicken is easy and cheap. Forget about the loaves and the fishes. Jesus would have gotten more bang for the buck with poultry. He could have fed more folks and franchised a whole heck of a lot easier. Recently I was sitting next to the mayor of a city where I was speaking. “Let’s see what they do to the chicken today,” he said, and I perked up. A fellow traveler on the rubber chicken circuit, I thought. Of course—a politician. Who else would understand instinctively, the dismay and trepidation when the server lifts the metal lid off with a flourish? “So have you thought about how much chicken you eat in a given month at these things? I asked. “You must have to eat a heck of a lot chicken.” He laughed out loud. I liked this mayor. “Most of the time I don’t even eat it, “ he confessed. He explained that as mayor he often had to go between three lunches at a time. That much chicken would make even a politician lose his grin. Or grow feathers. “You ought to keep a rubber chicken diary,” I said, and he laughed. “I ought to take picture of each of the plates of chicken with my iPhone,” the mayor chuckled. “You could post them on your iCal,” I ventured. “Kind of a memento of your time in office.” I liked that the mayor was a Mac person. It gave him edge. The glasses clinked and it was time for the speaker to take to the dais and so we quieted. I pushed my chicken around in its gooey Elmer’s Glue-esque sauce. I noticed the mayor didn’t touch his. He made some vague motions with his knife, cleverly cutting, pushing and doing a fork-fake. He moved a few bits under the rice for emphasis and took a swig of his iced tea. At the airport later that afternoon I grabbed a bag of chips and some Twizzlers. They would be my bad girl stand in for lunch today. Kind of a punishment and a reward for the rigors of travel. God forbid the airlines dispense anything edible these days. Times were tough. As I hustled to the gate and ducked in the ladies room to change out of my heels and into my jeans on the way to Denver—I breezed past a Chik-Fil-A, with people lined up for chicken-related snacks. An image of the mayor popped unbidden into my head. By now he’d be home flipping through the TV channels in some sort of high-end barka lounger, a drink in hand. I pictured him asking his wife what was for dinner, calling into the kitchen absentmindedly from his den. “Barbequed chicken!” she might answer. And he would wince, ever so quietly in the calm of his study. And then he would slowly let out his breath.

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BOOK TOUR BABY - Part 6

(cont) This last flight leg is a small prop plane. We are delayed an hour and by the time almost everyone has boarded, a family straggles on. They are Pakistani from what I can tell. They are exhausted, two kids in tow, one an infant and the other about three. I silently close my eyes and recite the airplane mantra. “Please don’t let them sit near me, please don’t let them…..” Lo and behold they are seated somewhere else. I relax. But no. A skirmish ensues. Two people have the same seat and now the flight attendant bustles by me with a withering glare. They go back and forth in high anxious voices. The family claims they bought four seats, one for the car seat and infant. The flight attendant says no, you didn’t. You can feel the tension on the airplane rise. It’s humid outside and the air conditioning isn’t working while the plane is grounded. “No one is moving”, the flight attendant announces, “until somebody comes clean!” She glares over at the Pakistani family and at the slight man with the gelled hair and wire rims who has been claiming the seat is his. Someone who was on the waiting list has gotten on board, which is completely possible given the chaos of boarding all these regional flights from the same gate just minutes apart. Finally, a student-type with a pony tail and back pack slinks off the plane, and the Pakistani family settles in. The father is way up front separated from the other three, who are now, naturally, seated in the row directly behind me. The three year old immediately begins kicking. The mother has the baby on her lap and the car seat, gets its own entire seat. Separated from his father by a half a plane and from his mother by an aisle, the three year old begins crying, and then screaming. The mother, inexplicably begins to reason with her three year old. “You must stay in your seat,” she says in stilted English and then switches to her native tongue. “Stay there. We are taking off….. this is the law--- you must obey….big boys obey the law.” These are some of the phrases I hear and I cringe, knowing they wouldn’t work on my teenagers, let alone a sobbing three year old. The father, about ten rows ahead, seemingly oblivious to the rest of us on the plane, begins yelling at the top of his lungs back at the child with what appears to be his name…….”Dooda, Doo Da”, he screams. And then he barks something unintelligible in his native language. The rest of us are stunned into silence, blinking, as we flinch at the sound of the yelling and stare straight ahead during the runway taxi. All of a sudden the man begins to rise and head back toward his son. “Sit down” screams the flight attendant. She has the simmering “pleasure in pain” look of the Ukranian lady at my nail place, just before she rips off the hot wax. That kind. The father is now torn, follow the law or get up to console the screaming Dooda across the aisle from his wife and ten rows back. His wife continues to numbly repeat airline regulations to her son, who is now kicking the back of my chair as he screams so that the back of my head comes off the seat and flops back down Where are the happy meals, the teething rings, the bag of Skittles? This doesn’t look like a Skittle kind of family but when you are packing for a flight with multiple young children you bring freaking syringes filled with morphine if that will help. I don’t care if you are vegan, you bring a giant box of Pop Tarts and chewy bars and a Costco sized bag of goldfish or lollypops. When you are on a plane with a child you bring any forbidden food that will shut them the hell up. You break every rule because this is a COURTESY thing.  This is an issue of YOUR sanity and the people around you in a confined space. Now the little boy is crying so hard he is choking on his own snot, making disturbing, gulping sounds as the mother keeps trying to reason with him. She still doesn’t seem to have produced one toy, one book, or one distraction. She is sticking with the airline regulations bit, hoping logic might still work. All I had wanted was a 15 minute nap and as my head continues to rocket forward with each kick of the kid’s sneakers I can feel my blood pressure rise. I try to channel my own days, my own mortifying moments when an entire plane looked at me with the “why can’t you control your own child” glare. Now the mother is yelling at the father to come back, the father is yelling back to her, as if none of the rest of us exist. It’s time for an intervention. I can’t believe I am about to do this but all of the other passengers on the plane seem to have been turned into zombies. There is an undercurrent of ill will for this family amongst the other travelers that borders on insurgency. If this was a reality show, this family would be voted off the island first. “Let me have him,” I blurt out as I swivel around and face the miserable mother. She hands me the infant on her lap so that she can console the boy behind me, across her in the aisle. “He misses his father,” she says simply. I fight the urge to take out my own keys to find an old piece of gum, anything to show her the technique of distraction with a small child. I have nothing. The seatbelt sign comes off and the father now bolts for the back. He has the sudden erratic movements that in a post- Sept 11th world remind all air travelers of a hi-jacker. You can see the other passengers startle in their seats as he races past them all and dives for his son’s seat. The son quiets. The baby on my lap, whose diaper is so wet my fingers leave indentations under his clothes, begins to realize that I am not his mother. He scrunches up his face preparing to cry and emits a blast of gas that sounds somewhat like a muffled gun shot. After I hand the child back, I silently thank Jesus that I made it out of that part of my mothering life alive. As the plane begins to prepare for its descent, I can see the many twinkling lights of the New York metropolitan where I live. I’ve made it. Made it on the plane ride, on the book tour, made it almost home. And when the taxi finally pulls into the driveway, there is that moment after I get out, before my nostrils fill with the familiar scent of my house, before the kids and the dogs and my husband see me and come running to greet me, that I will fight the urge to fall upon my knees, like along-ago arrival to Ellis Island, and kiss the asphalt. END

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