My Subconscious Drinks Riunite and Watches Daytime TV

During that writers' conference I attended in April, there was one session advertised in the brochure as an opportunity to mine one's subconscious mind for writing material using relaxation techniques and guided imagery.

That's code for "hypnosis" if I ever saw it, so naturally I signed myself right up. If there's anything I love more than looking up an old boyfriend on Facebook to see if he's bald yet, its New Age religion.

Now, in the past I've had no success getting in touch with my spiritual self. I was the person at your high school retreat who kept one eye half open and peered surreptitiously at her peers during quiet prayer. I've tried meditation, and found it nearly impossible to shut off the running commentary in my head. But I am desperate to try, and darned if I was going to miss an opportunity to mine the old spiritual quadrant, and for writing material, to boot.

The presenter, Suzette Martinez Standring, began the session by speaking very eloquently for some time about the writing process, about the kind of writing that resonates most with readers, and the importance of evoking all five senses in one's work. I took copious notes, and before I knew it, it was time to go under.

The process was familiar, one I'd tried to follow countless times before when awake with insomnia or in the throes of an airborne panic attack.

The room was darkened, and we were encouraged to breathe slowly and deeply.

To still our minds.

To get centered.

To tune in to faraway sounds.

And to relax each part of our bodies in turn.

Next, we were to imagine a cord of light extending from the bottoms of our feet down to the center of the earth. We were invited to visualize ourselves at the top of a staircase. We would take three steps down. With each step, we would journey deeper and deeper into ourselves so that when we finally reached the bottom, we would be "in trance."

I was skeptical, but earnest. When I got to the bottom of my visual staircase, I was supposed to enter a place of great beauty and serenity. It could be anything I wanted it to be, as long as I felt at peace there, and comfortable.

I didn't see much. So, I pictured myself lying face down on a patch of lush green grass in a forest clearing. I have always enjoyed lying face down in grass because - and you didn't read it here - it is just like hugging the earth. Zero degrees of separation! To me that is very profound.

Anyway, I'm lying face down on the grass and trying to conjure up the feeling of sunlight on my back. It seems as though a babbling brook should be there, so I install one, and spotty sunlight beaming through the trees, as well.

The problem is, I know I'm not really in a forest. I know I'm still in the Torch Lounge at the University of Dayton. My hyper vigilant brain has failed me again, but I keep on visualizing the heck out of that forest clearing because I am going to get hypnotized if it's the last thing I do.

After a few more minutes of this, we are told to let a memory come to us, anything at all.

I get nothing.

After a little while, though, I see a red ball with a faux weave pattern, the multi-purpose kind every kid whose ever gone to school in America knows well. And that ball brings me back to Mr. Finneyfrock's gym class on President's Physical Fitness Test Day, like this:

I am ten years old. It’s President's Physical Fitness test day at school and I am hanging from the playground chin-up bar in a test of endurance. My size 2 feet, encased in white Keds with rainbow stripe friendship pins beaded through the laces, dangle several feet above the loamy ground. The mustachioed Mr. Finneyfrock, in soccer cleats, shorts, and yellow jersey, is standing next to me with his timer. It is warm out, and a soft breeze is blowing. I’ve been up on the bar for almost four minutes now and am barely showing signs of fatigue. My classmates stand in a semi-circle around me, cheering for me and my freakish strength.

I continue to hang there, wondering how much longer I should stay. My arms are not very tired. In fact, I like the slight burn, the sense that by the strength of my thin, tanned, arms alone, peppered with the golden threads of hair I detest, I am being held aloft. When I finally lower myself down, I am an elementary school hero. "IT'S A GODDAMNED RECORD!" Mr. Finneyfrock bellows.

Granted, this was not an unfamiliar, buried memory, but it was unbidden and true. Thing was, I couldn't for the life of me figure out what it was supposed to mean. I thought about it in the context of my current situation and the soul searching I've been doing to find my calling in life, about how I hoped that calling would include writing in some form of another. (Ironically, being at a writer's conference was unearthing all the self-doubts that have always plagued me in this regard.) I decided it meant that I was strong, stronger than my outward appearance belies. And then I didn't think about it again.

But last weekend I was sitting on my couch, staring at the wall and picking my cuticles. The kids were asleep upstairs, and my husband was down in the wine cellar, updating his inventory. I was considering making myself a cup of bedtime tea and taking a stab at some prophetic dreams, when suddenly it hit me.

Hang in there.

I'm supposed to just hang in there, it's as plain as the nose on my face, as obvious as the chin-up bar in my waking dream.

And . . . as cliché as a Hallmark card. Apparently, my subconscious mind has been drinking Riunite and watching Lifetime TV.

(But something is going to happen.)

I know it.

Sweet/Tart

I have two lucid memories from my First Communion day.

The first is the lemon meringue bars, a favorite dessert my mother had made especially for the occasion. I had ferreted away five or six of them while my parents were busy with their hosting responsibilities, and, basking in First Communion Day glory, ate piece after piece of sweet and tangy goodness by myself down in our cool, damp basement.

The second is getting stone cold busted by my mom for planting myself on the goldenrod yellow carpet in our living room, and, with the crisp white skirt of my dress billowing around me, loudly tallying up my communion cash in front of all the assembled guests. (ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS.)

But here is what I don't remember, because I hadn't noticed it until I came across this old photo:



The look on my mother's face earlier, as I made my first careful, deliberate way down the aisle.

And that's the thing about mothers - one minute they're reading you the Riot Act in front of all your cousins, and the next, they're gazing upon you with a look of infinite love.

The Bad Egg

I must have been six, with pig tails, saddle shoes, knee socks and a hunter green plaid uniform jumper. I had two friends - Mary Catherine and Sarah. They were nice girls, like me, though they did not always save me a seat at the lunch table.

We ate in the auditorium, with its penitentiary-like windows and lingering Lenten fish fry smell. On rare occasions, narrow beams of palest light invaded to expose the dust mites swirling overhead. The auditorium roared with restraint at lunchtime, a buzzing cacophony of indoor voices and folding chairs scraping endlessly over wide planked wooden floors.

I had not managed to secure a safe seat among my friends that day. To my right sat Dominic DiNunzo and on my left was Kristie Fini. Between the two of them they had a smorgasbord of delectable middle class American lunch fare: bologna sandwiches on white, chocolate milk, chips, Ho-Hos.

I opened my metal Hollie Hobby lunchbox and rooted around. There was no sandwich, but a piece of European rye, an orange, and a hard-boiled egg. On the egg was a message from my mother, written carefully in number two pencil: "I love you very much." It was adorned with hearts and my mother's trademark signature, a swoopy capital "M."

Though I would have preferred an All-American spread (and an easily pronounceable, non-ethnic name) I liked hard-boiled eggs, and this one in particular heralded a sudden rush of love for Mama, at home in our kitchen doing motherly things.

Kristie Fini was first to notice it.

"What. is. THAT?"

All heads within earshot turned towards me and my hard-boiled egg, which I now clutched tightly in a sweaty little hand.

Dominic Di Nunzio chanted, "Rima has an egg! Rima has an egg!"

It was true; I could not hide it. I could only stare intently at the pock-marked table edge, trying to control a wildly quivering lip and a sudden desperate longing for my Mama, who was still the center of a world now shimmering unsteadily behind a salty fog of tears.

I wanted nothing more than to be ensconced safely with her at that moment, despite - and because of - that stupid hard-boiled egg.

This post was my contribution to this week's {W}rite of Passage Challenge, which was to describe an elementary school lunch. You can read posts from the other participants here:

Comfort and Joy

My favorite childhood Christmas decoration was a pair of mice - a mother and her baby - which my mom always displayed on the top of the toilet commode for the few weeks leading up to Christmas.

I'm not sure why I loved those little rodents so, or why they were perpetually relegated to the bathroom. I seem to recall that they reminded me of characters in my favorite Lithuanian childrens' book series, and I must have admired the minuscule candy canes and holly berries that adorned their necks. Every year the setting of the mice atop the commode was, for me, the highlight of the family's Christmas decorating tradition.

I revisited the mice statuettes recently when sorting through ornaments at my parents' house. They were much less interesting than I'd remembered them - The velvet tufts of fur were threadbare in places, one mouse's ear was missing, and the paint on the holly berries around the other one's neck was chipped to reveal a plain old Styrofoam craft ball underneath. It was hard to believe those two tattered little mice had once represented for me the very pinnacle of comfort and joy.

Last night I hauled out all our Christmas decorations (except the tree and banister garland - those go up next weekend), put on some holiday music, and while the P-Dawg made us a dinner of steak with roasted asparagus and mashed potatoes and the children played quietly afoot, I busted my decorating moves.

I put the time honored garland up on the fireplace, spending a healthy chunk of time positioning fake holly berries equidistantly from one another:



I fashioned a string of wire lights and two bendable berry garlands into a nest, and placed it at the foot of my fireplace:



I hung the festive, but migraine inducing jingle bells on the front doorknob:



Then I painstakingly set up the nativity scene, triangulating the three kings and the shepherd with his flock around the holy family in a tasteful and aesthetically pleasing manner:



Fifteen minutes and one visit from the little J-dog later, the statues looked like this:



Which is only right.

Finally, I reluctantly draped my old frenemy, the button-eyed reindeer quilt, over the back of the family room couch.



The quilt, which begs that a crystal candy dish full of Werther's Originals be placed next to it, was a wedding gift from a distant relative, who had lovingly sewn it herself. It's cute, but not my style, and this year as I sorted through the boxes in our basement, I had decided to leave the quilt behind.

Except that after I had turned my back on the quilt in favor of a box of funky Crate and Barrel ornaments, I could feel those insipid little button eyes boring into me.


"Don't do it, bish."

And so I didn't. I brought the quilt upstairs and while the kids played with Legos in the corner, I draped it over the back of the couch.

After dinner, we retired to the family room to relax and admire my handiwork. J-dog and V-meister were miraculously well-behaved and no quarreling or couch diving occurred. If there had been a fire in the grate and snow falling softly outside the windows, we would have been a scene straight out of a Thomas Kincaid painting.

It took only a few moments for the kids to notice that the reindeer quilt was up.

"REINDEER BUTTON QUILT, YAY!!!!!", they squealed while holding hands and jumping up and down.

The joy was palpable.

There was couch diving.

An angel choir began singing Handel's Messiah, and the spirit of Christmas alighted on my shoulder in the shape of a small red bird.

I'll never be able to diss the beady-eyed reindeer quilt - it might as well be a threadbare pair of Christmas mice.

A Mid-Semester Afternoon's Nightmare

During my sophomore year in college, I started pining away for a scruffy little poet who had pursued me during the previous semester’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. While we were in the play together, I'd been flattered by his attention, but it was kind of freaking me out, so I let him know in no uncertain terms that Snug the Carpenter and Mote the Fairy were not meant to be.

But a year after the production, I was boyfriendless, spending Saturday nights holed up in my dorm room playing Tetris and eating powdered Tang. The poet and I had an English class together, and he was growing more and more attractive. How could I have failed to notice his smashing good looks, humor, sensitivity, and wit?

I decided that he was The One.

My love was all consuming - I could think of nothing other than the day when we would finally be together. To this end, I positioned myself in all the right places at all the right times, the better for him to notice me on his way to class.

Nothing happened.

I made made sure to eat my cafeteria dinner at the same time my soul mate would be there with his friends.

Nada, except the occasional friendly nod in my direction.

I attended his poetry reading at the local coffee shop, but still my love did not approach me.

I did not wish to postpone our union any longer. Fate was fate, but I would have to give it a little nudge.

My best friend and I were sitting in our French for Business class, waiting for the perpetually late Madame Le Fevre to make her appearance when I decided that the time was ripe to make my move.

I donned my thrift store army coat, applied some lipstick, gathered my books and, with my best friend’s words of encouragement still ringing in my ears (“Are you sure you want to do this, Rim?”), vacated my desk and made for my beloved's dorm, carpe diem style. In this state of mind, could anyone be expected to compose, en francais, a letter inquiring as to the availability of the rental property in Cannes?

His window faced the quad and movement could be seen within. Without a moment’s hesitation, I launched a barrage of ill-constructed snowballs towards it and shouted my beloved's name until he popped his head outside.

“Oh, hey Rima. What’s up?”

“Can I come up for a second? I need to talk to you.”

My love threw down his keys and five minutes later, I arrived panting and sweating at his door with no use for small talk.

”So, I’ve been thinking a lot about last year, Midsummer Night’s Dream, all that stuff? And I think it was really stupid of me not to go out with you then, you know what I mean? So I was actually wondering, you know, if there's, like, any way you would give me a second chance?”

No sooner had the words escaped my lips than I realized the enormity of my mistake. My beloved stood before me wearing a look that was at once uncomfortable and unmistakably amused.

"Wow, that's, um . . . really sweet, Rima, but I . . . uh . . . have a girlfriend now."

"Oh! Shit. . . . .So, it's a "no," then?"

"Sorry things never worked out between us."

"Me too. Shit."

"I guess I'll see you around" he said to my quickly retreating back.

In retrospect, I'm not sure just what kind of response it was that I expected. It seems obvious that even if he wasn't already taken, no self-respecting guy would have played out the script I had written in my head. ("So glad you stopped by! I was just thinking about how I've never stopped loving you.")

But whether it's a testament to my healthy ego and spectacular naïveté or a cautionary tale about the futility of impromptu declarations of undying love, it ranks pretty high on the list of my most embarrassing moments.


"Mote, the Stalker Fairy"

This post was my contribution to Mrs. Flinger's Write-Of-Passage challenge. Today's assignment was to write about your most embarassing moment. You can read the other entries here:

Hands Free

Next week, after the J-dog completes his neverending Montessori orientation period, both my children will be in school together all morning.  In other words: the moment I've been anticipating for the past six years of my life has arrived.  This post isn't about me not knowing what to do with my time now that I finally have some to myself, or about how much I want a third child now that two are flitting about the periphery of my nest.

I am happy.

But it's increasingly difficult to remember now how their baby bodies felt: the V-meister spare and birdlike; the J-dog pillowsoft and round with a steady, humming core. I lay in bed this morning post dream, chasing the essence of their infantness as quickly as it receded in smoky wisps from my morningscape. There was an ache, as there always is, and then a quick surrender to the reality that I am best as mother of two.

I'm still occasionally startled by this fleeting, vicelike grip on my gut, a selfish longing for their baby selves. It's not another child that I want - just the J-dog and V-meister for a moment fresh and new, unsullied by the desperate, anxious imprint of a new mother and her constant longing to have two hands free.

I want, of course, to correct my naive babymothering mistakes. But also, just once again, to lift their soft, malleable, diaper-clad bodies into the air, little toes and feet ensconced in the pods of footed pajamas, to walk with them feeling warmth nuzzled in the crook of my neck, and to hold them there with full knowledge of the moment's brevity in time.

Nine

9-9-00


"And you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.

But let there be spaces in your togetherness,

And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

Love one another but make not a bond of love:

Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls."


-Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

I Am a Card Carrying Curmudgeon

I always thought a trip to the zoo meant shuffling obediently from one wildlife habitat to the next, whining about having to go to the bathroom, and begging for a Sno-Cone. But now they've made it all fun and stuff, with rides and jungle gyms and a Ben & Jerry's stand every twenty feet. I don't know where they put the elephants.

We went last week and instead of feigning interest in some impossibly far off and partially obscured animals, J-dog and V-meister spent the afternoon frolicking and running away from me in the labyrinth-like play area. There was a jungle gym, a five-hundred foot long tunnel slide, and a swamp with a mechanical alligator that would periodically lunge out of the water to give me a heart attack.

But I had driven across town, parked three time zones away, and spent a bazillion dollars for an EDUMACATIONAL FIELD TRIP. We were going to see some animals if it was the last thing we ever did.

We located the "African Savannah" habitat and while I made a great show of ooo-ing and ah-ing over some baby giraffes, the V-meister fiddled with the brakes on J-dog's stroller and asked if it was time for ice cream yet. We got Sno-Cones and ate them near the "Savannah". While my daughter was busy trying to jerry-rig a coin operated view-finder, a flesh and blood giraffe walked by right under her unsuspecting nose.

Before I knew it, it was time to go home.

But I remember when the zoo was a place where you went just to see some animals and maybe climb on the big boulder over by the primate house. The gift shop was nothing but a tiki hut where they sold T-shirts, bumper stickers, and the occasional troll pencil. I also remember a time when the childrens' section at my local library had more books than toys, and when my backyard entertainment consisted of a ball, some dirt, and my own spit. And I think there's something to be said for that.

I'll bet my local art museum is the only holdout without an interactive "kid zone," a place where you might actually get Tasered for climbing into a display. And I rather like that. Because I don't think we're doing our children any favors by manufacturing all of their fun.

I'll Take That as a Complement

I always wore glasses as a kid. And I'm fairly certain that my gargantuan, chablis-tinted plastic frames, coupled with a short, cross-gender haircut - which I liked to wear feathered and parted straight down the middle (not pictured) - were my main obstacles to social superstardom.

Ninth grade saw salvation and gradual peer acceptance in the form of contact lenses, the kind that would routinely pop out as I went about my daily business. Still, rooting around the bathroom floor searching for your contacts beat the hell out of getting stuffed into your locker by Frank Snodgrass.

Alas, my glasses reprieve was short lived. They served me well through high school and college, then all of a sudden*, I just couldn't wear them comfortably anymore. I haven't worn them regularly for over ten years now, and it really chaps my hide. Because even though I have a decent pair of virtually weightless Swiss specs that are the least obvious pair of glasses I've ever owned, they still give me a bit of a complex. Whatever! Things could be worse.

Every once in awhile, I'll put in my daily wear disposable contacts on the off chance that my dessicated, renegade eyeballs decide to cooperate, but it's usually only a matter of hours before I peel them off and flush them down the toilet in disgust. I had them in today, and as I was going through the supermarket checkout line, the cashier says to me:

"You have such a pretty face!"

Me (blushing): "Oh! Thanks!"

Cashier (recognizing me as a regular customer): "You usually wear glasses, don't you?"

Me: "Um, yeah. I have my contacts in today."

Cashier: "It makes a huge difference in your appearance."

Me: "Uh, thanks."

Cashier: "Just lovely."

Me: "Yeah, I'd wear them more often if they weren't so uncomfortable, you know what I mean?"

Cashier: "Such a pretty face . . . Hey, Carl! (to bagger) Take a look at this young lady, don't you think the contacts really make a difference?"

Carl: "Oh, yes! Very nice!"

Cashier: "She usually wears glasses."

Carl (contorting face in disapproval): "I see."

Cashier (shaking head): "You should wear your contacts more often. It's a shame."

Me: "Thank you."

Cashier: "No, really, I mean it."

Me: "Okay, thanks."

Cashier: "Have a nice day."

Then me and my beautiful visage hightailed it outta there before the stroke of noon, when I was scheduled to morph back into a bespectacled hag.


* Following a recurring, untreated case of conjunctivitis that may or may not have been triggered by poor contact lens hygiene habits.


"Beauty"


"Beast"

Memory Lane: Busier Than It Used to Be

With a little time to kill on our way to a christening, we took the kids for a drive along the lake shore yesterday and passed the spot where P-Dawg proposed to me almost ten years ago. With a captive audience buckled up in the backseat, I started waxing nostalgic about the glory days.

"Hey, V-meister, see that field over there by the water? A long time ago before you and J-dog were born, Daddy and I went for a walk here, and he got down on his knee, gave me this ring, and asked me if I would marry him!"

"Mama, J-dog is looking at me. Tell him to stop."

"There's no law against looking, V-meister. On the day Daddy asked me to marry him-"

"And he keeps talking! The J-dog is talking when I'm talking!"

"Just ignore him. Anyway, when your father proposed-"

"Aaaaaaaaaaaa! He KICKED me!"

"No! V-meister kick ME, Mama! She kick me!"

(commence stereophonic wailing)

P-Dawg: "Don't make me stop this car, kids. And quit kicking my seat back, J-dog, I mean it."

"Daddy, I can't stop crying."

"Why don't you take a deep breath and count to ten?"

"One, two, three, Aaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!! I just can't stop!!!"

"Hey, kids, look at the lake. Isn't it nice? We used to hang out here all the time and-"

J-dog: "We go swimming, Daddy?"

V-meister: "Daddy, J-dog wants to go swimming in the ocean."

Daddy: "It's not an ocean, it's a lake. And no swimming! Church. We're going to church."

V-meister: "Daddy said no swimming in the ocean, J-dog. Maybe tomorrow."

Daddy: "J-DOG! I told you to stop kicking the seat back. You do that one more time, and I'm pressing the EJECT button. You got that? The EJECT BUTTON!!!"

J-dog: "I see funpark. We go funpark, Daddy?"

V-meister: "Daddy, J-dog wants to go to the funpark."

Daddy: "What are you talking about, "funpark?" There is no funpark. Church! WE. GO. CHURCH."

J-dog: We go church, Daddy? Is funchurch, Daddy? Is funchurch?"

Daddy: "YES! FUNCHURCH! WE GO FUNCHURCH AND WE LIKE IT!!!"


And so we did. Ah, how times have changed . . .

Play It Again

I have only a few minor regrets about the way my wedding day went down, and one of them is our choice of DJ. Because after showing up at our reception late and stoned as a wall, P@cky didn't play a single song from my Playlist of Dreams.

Creating the perfect wedding playlist was an obsessive pasttime in the weeks leading up to the P-Dawg's and my nuptuals. I spent hours selecting representative samples of the songs that P-Dawg and I wanted to hear, and I may or may not have penned a short tome describing my tastes and vision for how music could fit into our special day as an organic whole.

In between bouts of crippling anxiety over which color ink to choose for the invitations, I'd painstakingly write out song selections on the (useless) form the DJ had given us to complete.

Rimarama: "Hey P-Dawg, which do you prefer: Forever Young by Alphaville, or New Order, Bizzare Love Triangle?

P-Dawg: "Weird Al Yankovic, Like a Surgeon."

On the big day, I got a bad feeling in my stomach when the DJ finally pulled up behind our reception hall in a rusted out van with faded reggae stickers plastered all over it and ambled quite unapologetically into the room where a musicless cocktail hour was already in progress. This feeling was validated by the selections - which did not much resemble the Playlist of Dreams - that he played throughout the evening, and the fact that he hadn't even remembered what we'd requested for our first dance (Louis Armstrong's What a Wonderful World, which he eventually did play).

Yesterday morning I was driving down the very same stretch of road where my car was ambushed by that construction barrel last week, and who should I notice bumping along in a beater van with faded reggae stickers, but Wacky Tabacky P@cky himself. I always thought that if I ever saw him again, I'd at least give him the stink eye, but it seems that time softens even the most hardened of bridezillas.

I edged him off a cliff kept right on driving.

Seconds after our paths diverged, as I was fondly recalling what ended up being one of the best days of my life despite its less than perfect soundtrack, What a Wonderful World came on the radio.

Coinkydink? I think not.

Now, I know you have a more interesting wedding disaster story than mine, so spill it!!!

Frisky

I had to get a CT scan* today and even though I was very cooperative, it made me think fondly of the time when, six weeks into my first pregnancy, I refused to go through the airport metal detector.

It doesn't make much sense in retrospect, but I wasn't 100% clear on how those things worked. I was convinced that passing under the metal detector would somehow result in trauma to the unborn V-meister, and, like wine, caffeine, pain killers, hot baths, lunch meat, hair dye, lying on my stomach, and riding roller coasters, was to be avoided at all costs.

"Excuse me, but I'm pregnant?" I said to the security officer. "And I really don't think I should walk under that thing. It might not be safe at this critical stage of gestation, you know what I mean?"

He gave me a weary once over while I tried to pooch out my first trimester belly.

"Lady, I guarantee the metal detector won't hurt your baby, but if you want, you can have a manual search over there," he said, indicating a female security officer standing a few feet away.

I shuffled over.

"Hi! I'm six weeks pregnant and would like a manual weapons search, please."

The female security officer gave me a look that had, "Bitch, please" written all over it. As it happened, she was pregnant, too, and she passed under the metal detector like twenty times a day.

I gave her a look that plainly said, "Good luck with your three-headed baby." I wanted that manual weapons search, and I wanted it bad.

The two of us engaged in a little staredown, and then I had the distinct pleasure of getting frisked by a hugely pregnant, hormonal, and very pissed off airport security officer.

So, I saved the V-meister from being born with an extra toe, but later on I accidentally ate a hot dog and negated the whole damn thing.


*No cause for alarm. Even though I'm feeling much better now that the Q-Tip debris has been removed, my ENT wanted to get a look at my sinuses, which are still kind of wonky.

Mission

It was on the day the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated that I took the pregnancy test.

We had decided just a few weeks before that the time was as ripe as it ever would be for babymaking and I, with a green light from my psyche, the P-Dawg, and the ob/gyn, made it my personal mission to beat the estimated odds of conceiving in “six months to one year.”

P-Dawg’s input and DNA would be required, naturally, for implementation, but I took greedy ownership of the planning and strategy phases with the same singularity of purpose I had once dedicated to making the Dean’s List, getting the scholarship, scoring the interview, landing the job.

To this end, babymaking books were purchased and studied religiously. Google searches employing phrases like, “How to get pregnant super fast” were performed, and morning temperatures were charted. I was tuned into my body’s every twitch and secretion in the way that only a woman meticulously planning conception can be.

One afternoon just days after our first scheduled attempt, I was driving home from work when I noticed how uncomfortable the tug of the seat belt across my chest had become. My ta-tas, as it happened, were sore in a whole new way, and they heralded a light bulb moment the likes of which I hadn't experienced to date.

I began groping myself right there in the driver's seat of my blue Saturn sedan, cautiously at first, then with no holds barred. Does it hurt when I press here? Yes! What about here? Yes! If I mash them together? By, God, it does! And if I press myself full tilt into the steering wheel? I just might be pregnant.

It was too early to take a test, yet impossible, from that point on, to ignore the goings on: continued soreness, strange, cramplike twitches in the nether regions, and a sharp, stabbing pain that woke me up in the middle of one night to be followed by unmistakably rosier than usual cheeks the very next morning.

I endured the requisite number of days before an early pregnancy test could be taken. On the morning of that day, with the P-Dawg still on his overnight call shift at the hospital, I planned a deliberate trip to the drugstore. As I prepared to leave, the cable channels were playing and replaying the same few clips of space shuttle Columbia breaking up in blue skies over Texas.

And in the car on the way to the pharmacy, listening to a DJ announce news of the tragedy with thinly veiled excitement, before the pregnancy test had even been purchased or peed on, I knew with certainty that a catastrophic space mission would always be entwined in my memory with the day I learned that my first baby would come to be.

The test, of course, was positive: my dear little V-meister in her earliest iteration, as evidenced by a blurry pink line. Yet I was surprised at how closely my initial joy was followed by a pang of fear and the very first inkling of the buzzing, baseline anxiety that comes part and parcel with the act of bringing a child into this world.

And I've been living with the uneasy knowledge that ecstasy and despair are never more than a heartbeat away, one from the other, ever since that day when my fervent hope was confirmed as inky smoke trails, obvious evidence of human frailty and ultimate demise, arched across a Texas sky.

You Gotta Love Nuns

We took the kids to the natural history museum over the weekend, where they saw their first planetarium show.

The beginning of the presentation depicted a daytime sky. As soon as the sun appeared, the little J-dog dutifully shielded his eyes, even though we told him it was OK on account of it being a planetarium and all. He watched the rest of the show through a crack between his fingers.

It's a proud testament to my hyper-vigilant parenting style (DON'T LOOK AT THE SUN, KIDS! ARE YOU LOOKING? STOP LOOKING! YOU'LL BURN OUT YOUR EYEBALLS!), and it reminded me of the fifth grade, when a once-in-a-lifetime total solar eclipse occurred in our hemisphere.

It just so happened that this very special eclipse was even more spectacular if you happened to live, as I did at the time, in the deep south. In my little Catholic grade school, we spent many a science period preparing for the auspicious day by making shoe box solar eclipse viewers. I don't recall the exact details, but the shoe box solar eclipse viewer is a low-tech sciencey-type of contraption whereby you can indirectly view an eclipse without blinding yourself.

On the morning of the eclipse, the brothers Rama and I traipsed off to school brimming with excitement about the phenomenon we were to witness that day. The buzz in my classroom was reaching a fever pitch as we fifth graders tinkered with our viewfinders and prepared to file outside to witness the scientific marvel that was mere minutes away.

But it was short lived. Only moments later, our diminutive and roundly feared principal - Sister Patricia Ann - walked in. She pulled down all the blinds, confiscated our eclipse viewers and had us put our heads down on our desks for the duration.

We couldn't be trusted not to look straight at the sun. Someone was bound to burn their eyeballs out.

My mom experienced the eclipse standing in our backyard. She said it was the coolest thing: twilight at ten o'clock in the morning, even the birds were still.

And I guess I can see where Sister Patricia Ann was coming from, but I've never really forgiven her. I associate "eclipse" with the gluey smell of my fifth grade desktop, and I always wonder: has anyone actually burned their eyeballs out?

And it Doubles as a Bottle Opener

Before getting engaged, the P-Dawg and I didn't shop around for rings. In fact, I didn't see the proposal coming until he got down on one knee and offered up the diamond that had been burning a hole in his pocket all evening long.

Instead, on the day after he completed Part One of his medical boards, the P-Dawg simply went down to the "old neighborhood," where a family friend who owned a jewelry store/pawn shop sandwiched between a state license bureau and an ALDI supermarket set him up with some kwality gems.

After narrowing the selection down to a few engagement ring/wedding band combo sets, my husband-to-be took them to the license bureau next door, where various employees of the state of Ohio ooooeh, aaahhed, and graciously modeled each one in turn until a decision was finally reached.

To this day, the image of my beloved P-Dawg, weighing the pros and cons of each potential ring choice surrounded by the clucking ladies of the DMV warms the very cockles of my stony heart.

But . . . it's not quite enough to make up for the fact that, though I admire my engagement ring daily, I've never been able to warm up to its companion wedding band. In true ungrateful wench fashion, I feel that I was somehow gypped out of the Hallmark memory in which the P-Dawg and I shop for wedding bands together, skipping, hand-in-hand.

Also, when worn alone, it kind of resembles the tab top on a can of soda:

I know I could have bigger problems.

When the P-Dawg finally learned of my discontent, he offered to buy me a new wedding band at some point in the distant future, when financial circumstances allowed. Our fifth wedding anniversary (which has come and gone) was bandied about as a potential occasion for the big band switcheroo. But eight years later, I'm still wearing the original.

Yesterday morning I was enjoying my second cup of joe when the doorbell rang and I found myself the lucky, albeit accidental recipient of a Thanksgiving bouquet and $250 (TWO-FITTY!) gift card from a local jewelry store.

It wasn't a surprise gift from the P-Dawg. I think it was intended for the previous owners of our home, who moved out of state with no forwarding address. Apparently, they were valued patrons of a fine, non pawn shop type of jewelry establishment - we get a mailboxload full of high end catalogs for them every day.

After briefly debating the ethical issues inherent in keeping the "gift," I showed it to the P-Dawg, who only half jokingly asked me what I wanted to buy with it.

And you know what? After all this time, it may not be a new wedding band, after all.

It turns out I've kind of warmed up to the old tab top ring. This modest little band was infused with a mighty lot of hopes and dreams on that long ago day at the DMV, and I'm not sure I want to trade those in.

Would you?

I'm Just a Kid

Today is my birthday and I have writer's block.  I feel that I should have something marginally important to say, but I don't.

There's only this: thirty-five is not nearly as old as I once thought it would be. But you knew that already.

When the P-Dawg got into medical school, I remember counting forward through all the years that would be "wasted" with school and residency before, as I then saw it, our lives could begin.

By my calculations, we would both be thirty-three when all was said and done - there would be no choice but to go straight from our apartment into the old folks' home.  Yet here I am, squarely in my thirties and you wouldn't even know it, save for the trick knee.

Okay, and the metabolism.  Plus that frumpy mom aura that keeps following me around, compelling me to put squares of toilet paper down before sitting on a public commode and say things like "Do you think I put those barrettes in your hair for my health???"

(Which I did say, just the other day, in fact, and I'll tell you something: it felt right.  Although it appeared to have zero impact on the V-meister, who simply continued dragging her recently washed mane back and forth through a plate full of spaghetti.)  

For most of my life to date, I've been waiting.  But now that I'm at that place that was always just a speck on the horizon, I can't help but notice that I've covered some pretty quality ground. Every event or accomplishment upon which I place real value - my marriage, the birth of my children, my decision to write in this space regularly, regardless of how clumsy my words feel - has transpired during a period of time that I once dismissed as limbo.

Every year on my birthday, my mom calls in the morning.  Usually she and my dad will get on the horn and sing "Happy Birthday" as soon as I pick up.  No matter how many times they do it, I can't help but stand there holding my coffee mug and grinning like a fool at the image of the two of them huddled around the rotary phone, singing at the top of their lungs.  It makes me feel as though I'm ten and just woke up to a Strawberry Shortcake bike with a glitter infused banana seat and sparkly handlebar streamers.

And here I am, thirty-five.

Le Divan de La Tristesse

My high school French teacher had a special couch in the sunny back corner of her classroom where you were allowed to lie down if you were having a bad day.

It was burnt orange and upholstered in a nubby synthetic fabric. There was a big, leafy indoor tree next to it, and a magazine bin full of French glossies which were rumored to contain ads with half naked women in them.

All you had to do was start crying in the middle of class, run a temperature, or complain of cramps, and you'd earn yourself a free ticket to the orange couch with its forty-five minute reprieve from having to answer any questions - en francais! - about the weather, your hobbies, or where the train station was located.

Oh, ma petite Rima! Vous-vous sentez mal aujourd'hui? Ma pauvre petite! Allez! Asseyez-vous sur le divan de la tristesse!

The old divan de la tristesse was never at a loss for occupants. In high school, someone was always having their period or breaking down in the middle of class.

Back in the heyday, I'd say I cried at least three, maybe four days out of any given week? I could cry at the drop of a hat, and I was an equal opportunity crier, too: blubbering it up in a bathroom stall during lunch break, sniffling quietly in front of my opened locker, or flat out weeping evenings at home in the privacy of my bedroom, face down into my lemon yellow chiffon bedspread while listening to the Cure.

There were so many things to be melancholy about: unrequited love, a failed Trigonometry test, the senseless slaughter of baby seals. Emotions were my bitch, always at the ready and bubbling effortlessly to the surface at every angsty turn.

I hardly ever cry anymore. It's probably for the best. It gives me a migraine, for one thing, and my eyeballs get bone dry.

What's more, a good cry hardly ever seems warranted, or even justifiable these days. Where once I might have had a full blown snotfest over a misunderstanding with a friend or family member, I'm now much more likely to be angry and irritated instead. Which sort of makes me wonder whether I've reached a new level of emotional maturity, or if I'm just dead inside.

I could have used a time out on the nubby orange couch and a copy of French Vogue today. I'm OK, really. But I miss Madame Rothe, sick days, and my old capacity for tears.