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 5

Flying to San Francisco from LA, the security guard takes a little too much extra time examining the X-ray picture of my bag and asks to see my liquids. As the man prods my bag I can feel my butt cheeks clench together, my muscles tighten and I hold my breath as if that extra oomph might help the bag pass inspection. Please don’t unzip my tightly packed bag and dig, I whisper. I have begun to feel a little like a shoplifter trying to get past the sensor machines in a department store. “Inspection!” the bored guard shouts. “Whose bag is this? I am standing right in front of him with the doleful eyes. Wearily I raise my hand. The airport security guard who lumbers over is young. As he unzips my bag he begins to examine each tube of lipstick like something out of CSI, I see his hands troll into the corner of my bag. Involuntarily I reach to grab it, to spare him. “Don’t touch the bag…” he says in broken English. “I know, but… I just…” “Don’t touch..,” He authoritatively picks up the single blue tinted sanitary napkin encased in its own weird plastic sheath that had been stuck in a magazine as a promotion. His female counterpart was moving toward him now, in slow motion, maybe even enjoying this. Clearly this was the new guy. “Feminine hygiene,” Lisa called out loudly with no inflection. Lisa was bored. This was the 110th sanitary napkin she had seen that day and she was amused. Fareed, as his badge said, was still holding the pad as she sidled up. Something in me snapped. I was sick of these airport shakedowns. We all had places to go. My promotional insert light days pad was not a security breach. “It’s a light days PAD,” I screamed. His mouth sprung open and I continued. “It’s for when women are MENSTRUATING, you know?” He dropped the pad as if it were in flames. In Seattle, I am stricken with every public speaker’s nightmare. Up to this point I’ve remained fairly relaxed talking to all sizes of crowds. But suddenly, out of nowhere, Dreaded Dry Mouth. At the podium for a book store reading I can still taste the highly spiced Indian food I have enjoyed an hour earlier with a friend. All of a sudden, as I am reading a passage, a mini curry burp erupts and a sense of impending doom grows as I realize there is nothing with which to wash it down. I have broken my second cardinal rule of book tours (after go to the bathroom frequently). I have nothing to drink, not one sip of water at the podium. This panic creates an almost immediate mini-desert effect in my mouth. All moisture evaporates. I can hear little clicks in the microphone that my tongue makes as it searches desperately for hydration. The painful sound of lips sticking around teeth is magnified by the microphone. The audience leans in sympathetically and I lose my train of thought. Desperately, I resort to an old trick and picture the entire front row before me completely nude, mentally throwing some banana hammock bathing suits on some of the older, paunchier men. I being to relax and miraculously, my mouth begins to produce its own saliva again. The curry incident has passed like a hot flash. By the end of week three I am almost finished. It’s the very last flight and I steel myself against delays or bad weather. Everywhere I go, violent spring storms seem to be swirling. I can no longer stand the sight of an airport. I’m perversely hoping that the security folks say “whose bag is this” one last time because I’ve decided that I will just walk away. I mentally calculate a hair brush I care about, a pair of earrings, the rest is all dirty navy-themed clothes and some toiletries. All replaceable.

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The Ask

“Mom?” says my nine year old. “Why is it that only boys can ask out girls? Why can’t girls ever ask boys?” I stopped in my tracks. She is nine. But here in 2010, I had absolutely no good rationale for her. Part of me is amazed that, in fourth grade, we are already dealing with liking boys. And the other part, the feminist part, the girl-coming-of-age as Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem were throwing off shackles and burning bras and asking just these sorts of questions, well, that part of me was thrilled. “There is no reason,” I said. “No reason you can’t ask.” Inside I was glowing a bit, feeling a moment of pride and hoping against hope my daughter would always see things this equally, the way little kids are born colorblind until they absorb prejudice through osmosis. Somewhere in there she had listened and observed, I thought to myself. Somewhere in there my daughter had gotten the message that girls were just as valuable as boys—that they could be rocket scientists and cure cancer and be president (almost) and do anything a guy could do. And so I only hesitated for a second before answering. The hesitation part- that was probably the tradition and decorum side of me; the part that had worn white gloves and learned how to foxtrot at dancing school and had waited all year for the once chance—at Sadie Hawkins dance -- to legally ask a boy out in Albany, NY. This boy thing, it had been creeping up. I’ve long been shut out of most of the doings of my oldest son and daughter. They worry that I talk too much or write too much or share too much with my sisters (their aunts) and the mothers of their friends. We’ve never had one of those “soul-bearing-tell-Mom-everything-in-the-car” relationships, my older kids and I. But then again, I didn’t with my own mother either as a teenager. But my daughter? At nine she is too young to fully grasp that there are other places to go to for advice. I’m still sort of cool to her. She thinks I know lots of things. And so she has told me – and I’ve been careful with this knowledge -- that she likes a boy. And her friends have told her he likes her back. Now my daughter is pretty fearless. She has guts and balls and knows how to stick her chin out. But inside she is mush. Nick names can hurt her and she loves to be snuggled and tickled and she has just the softest, softest skin, like those tissues with built in moisturizer. How can we have gone from baby soft skin to asking boys out? My babies are all gone now. “Ahhhhhhh” says the voice in my head, the one who got two teenagers to where they are now. “You know how this happens—it happens like greased lighting, like a bungee jump off a cliff.” And it happens especially if you aren’t looking. “I like Jimmy,” she tells me. “Yeah? What do you like about him?” I’m playing it cool. “He’s nice.” She smiles. Nice is on the right track. And so the next day, when she comes home from school, breathless and bursting with excitement and shutting the door abruptly on her twin sister so she can tell me the news alone, she has asked him out. “What did he say?” I ask, but I can already tell from her smug smile and the high color on her cheeks, that it has gone her way. “He said yes,” she looks down, beaming, as if all that happiness in one nine-year-old body is just too much to bear. Fast forward a few weeks and by now, the initial excitement has died down. For a while there Jimmy seemed slipped into every conversation. But not much happens when you go out in fourth grade. You don’t really even acknowledge or talk to one another. That would be too embarrassing. But its hard not to be proud—proud of what it took for her to ask the questions, of me, to ask him, to take control of the situation. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big believer in tradition. I like ritual and ceremony. I am more drawn to old things; things that contain the secrets of generations, things well-worn and wise, over the shiny and new. But I’m proud of my daughter for questioning the status quo and for not settling. There will be enough of that in life and relationships – mixed in with the great parts she will uncover a little settling , a lot of compromise, some tempering of dreams and a dash of cold reality when she charts her own course. That’s simply how most of us move through the world as human beings. Its not a cop out. It’s life—with all its peaks and valleys. But for now? I love that I get to watch her burn bright and strong, like the tail of a comet. “Mom?” says my nine year old. “Why is it that only boys can ask out girls? Why can’t girls ever ask boys?” I stopped in my tracks. She is nine. But here in 2010, I had absolutely no good rationale for her. Part of me is amazed that, in fourth grade, we are already dealing with liking boys. And the other part, the feminist part, the girl-coming-of-age as Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem were throwing off shackles and burning bras and asking just these sorts of questions, well, that part of me was thrilled. “There is no reason,” I said. “No reason you can’t ask.” Inside I was glowing a bit, feeling a moment of pride and hoping against hope my daughter would always see things this equally, the way little kids are born colorblind until they absorb prejudice through osmosis. Somewhere in there she had listened and observed, I thought to myself. Somewhere in there my daughter had gotten the message that girls were just as valuable as boys—that they could be rocket scientists and cure cancer and be president (almost) and do anything a guy could do. And so I only hesitated for a second before answering. The hesitation part- that was probably the tradition and decorum side of me; the part that had worn white gloves and learned how to foxtrot at dancing school and had waited all year for the once chance—at Sadie Hawkins dance -- to legally ask a boy out in Albany, NY. This boy thing, it had been creeping up. I’ve long been shut out of most of the doings of my oldest son and daughter. They worry that I talk too much or write too much or share too much with my sisters (their aunts) and the mothers of their friends. We’ve never had one of those “soul-bearing-tell-Mom-everything-in-the-car” relationships, my older kids and I. But then again, I didn’t with my own mother either as a teenager. But my daughter? At nine she is too young to fully grasp that there are other places to go to for advice. I’m still sort of cool to her. She thinks I know lots of things. And so she has told me – and I’ve been careful with this knowledge -- that she likes a boy. And her friends have told her he likes her back. Now my daughter is pretty fearless. She has guts and balls and knows how to stick her chin out. But inside she is mush. Nick names can hurt her and she loves to be snuggled and tickled and she has just the softest, softest skin, like those tissues with built in moisturizer. How can we have gone from baby soft skin to asking boys out? My babies are all gone now. “Ahhhhhhh” says the voice in my head, the one who got two teenagers to where they are now. “You know how this happens—it happens like greased lighting, like a bungee jump off a cliff.” And it happens especially if you aren’t looking. “I like Jimmy,” she tells me. “Yeah? What do you like about him?” I’m playing it cool. “He’s nice.” She smiles. Nice is on the right track. And so the next day, when she comes home from school, breathless and bursting with excitement and shutting the door abruptly on her twin sister so she can tell me the news alone, she has asked him out. “What did he say?” I ask, but I can already tell from her smug smile and the high color on her cheeks, that it has gone her way. “He said yes,” she looks down, beaming, as if all that happiness in one nine-year-old body is just too much to bear. Fast forward a few weeks and by now, the initial excitement has died down. For a while there Jimmy seemed slipped into every conversation. But not much happens when you go out in fourth grade. You don’t really even acknowledge or talk to one another. That would be too embarrassing. But its hard not to be proud—proud of what it took for her to ask the questions, of me, to ask him, to take control of the situation. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big believer in tradition. I like ritual and ceremony. I am more drawn to old things; things that contain the secrets of generations, things well-worn and wise, over the shiny and new. But I’m proud of my daughter for questioning the status quo and for not settling. There will be enough of that in life and relationships – mixed in with the great parts she will uncover a little settling , a lot of compromise, some tempering of dreams and a dash of cold reality when she charts her own course. That’s simply how most of us move through the world as human beings. Its not a cop out. It’s life—with all its peaks and valleys. But for now? I love that I get to watch her burn bright and strong, like the tail of a comet.

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