Circle of Friends

I was a very reluctant Facebook member.

I love technology and all the ways it has made my life easier.
Cell phones for me and my kids. No hollering down the street that it is dinner time.
Something on TV for everyone, at any time of day or night. Without having to adjust the antennae or horizontal hold.
Movie tickets purchased in advance on line – so you don’t have to show up and wait in a line 2 hours before the Justin Bieber Director’s Cut starts and endure the shrill overexcitement of the other viewers.
Programmable coffee makers. Enough said.

But for all things social, I am more a traditionalist. I prefer real face to face interaction. Or at a minimum, telephone time.

I’ve mentioned that I am in Human Resources. I hire for a living. An online dating service or something similar is, to me, an inferior way to make some pretty important judgments…and therefore some pretty important distinctions. As in “You get my attention” vs. “You will go in the trash bin.”

It is the equivalent of someone looking good on paper and then walking into your office wearing a live animal on his head. There is no way to tell anything about a person’s chemistry, philosophy, ethics, values, sense of humor, and lets not forget hygiene (thank you Casey, for making that part of my list of hurdles to clear) from a profile on a social website.

But when I got my invitation to my college reunion and called my roommate Jane to ask if she intended to go, she offered me a deal. She’ll go with me, if I open a Facebook account. So, to seal the deal, I opened one while we were on the phone together. As a sign of good faith, even though I never intended to use it at all.

But then Jane began to suggest friends to me. And suggest me to other friends of hers. And suddenly I was somewhat well connected and in touch with people I’d never expected to correspond with again.

And I came to view FB as a big widespread stay at home cocktail party – that no one has to get dressed up for or show up on time to enjoy. You talk to people you want to talk with, and ignore conversations you have no interest in. And have sidebar conversations occasionally so no one overhears your comments, snarky ones especially.

And it is a great place to showcase you clever musings on life, or brag about your kids, or flaunt your exotic vacation (and sometimes inadvertently announce to the entire FB reading world that you are in Barbados and no one is home to stop an intruder if one were inclined to just go help themselves to your jewelry and fine arts collection.)

But it has its drawbacks. My mother’s entire extended family has Friend Requested me…and for a while I accepted. Until I realized that would be like walking into a Fun House with lots of booby traps and trap doors and stopped accepting them. I am sure I have offended lots of Estelle’s kin. I am also sure she has, too, so I am not terribly concerned.

And then there was J. A card carrying Facebook foe for years. Didn’t like the openness of it. The exposure. The accessibility to other adults, evidently.

So when I opened an account, he did moments later and friended me. At the time, no big deal. My brother-in-law and nephews friended him too.

And then I read his profile. All about me.

Weeks later, I had to unfriend him.

Then he put his status as engaged to me. I’d already broken up with him. Not pretty. I nearly choked when our friends at Facebook sent me an email to confirm the engagement. I am sure they thought it odd that we weren’t even friends.

They had no idea how odd.

A Year of Living Dangerously

Today is a landmark day. It is exactly one year ago that I began writing this blog. Five days a week without fail. I leave the weekends to live more life and collect more stories. And continue to be amazed at how the ordinary can seem extraordinary, and how the painful becomes less so when you can share it as though you would over cocktails. It has been a wonderful experience to see my ever eventful life from a position of humor and to spin it at entertainment. Even if I am only confident that Charlotte and I are entertained. It has helped me to see the humor in the harangue. And to let it roll off my back like water off a duck. And it has in many ways spared my friends from having to listen to me rant endlessly about the high drama in my life. Lars’s constant competition to win the Lousiest Parent of the Year trophy. The plethora of nitty gritty annoyances heaped upon me by J.’s consistently moronic family. And his full on inability and unwillingness to deal with them. And the cesspool of trouble I eventually found myself paddling around in when I came to my senses about J. himself. OK – to be truthful, Charlotte still got an earful on a regular basis. And a few screeching emails in a bitchy howler monkey font. In fact, it was a weeklong series of pathetically amusing e-mail diatribes that prompted her to ask me “Why aren’t you blogging?” And when I responded that I am too lazy, she sent me a link to the very blogger website I write on. A superhero always. And one night, when the Big P had cursed me, and when I took the caffeine-loaded version of Pamprin instead of the sedating variety, I was wide awake with a chardonnay and a few thoughts in my head that simply would not go away. And since it was 1 am and too late to call anyone to share my darkly humorous take on the events of the week, I committed to writing my theories and thoughts. And kept doing so. Even I am amazed at how much material one life can produce. And I am living it. And now I wonder, as my life takes a turn down a calm and blissfully happy road, what on Earth will I write about. I recently asked as much of Charlotte. She paused to compose her return email and hit the send button within just a few minutes. She reminded me that I am perimenopausal, divorced from a lunatic, falling in love with a darling man, just escaped from a good-relationship-gone-totally-haywire-with-a-Jekyl-and-Hyde-with-a-completely-disturbed-family-with-no-boundaries, have my mother for my mother and my brother for my brother, work with people for a living, and have hilarious friends with very vivid lives and great story-telling abilities. Bring on Year 2. Thank you for your patronage. It pleases me beyond description to know anyone has read what my heart seeks to write.

Oh for Christ's Teeth

And there is another thing Mom is missing, though not nearly so exciting. At least not for her. It is for me. She’d probably have a cow, so just as well. I began Invisalign treatment last week. I never had braces as a child. Never had anything a typical teenager would have. Whatever everyone else got, I must have gotten in the wrong line. The downside: No boobs until college. Flat as a pancake. No growth spurt until junior year. Short, or as my mother would say, “petite.” No driver’s license until senior year, and my friends would not let me forget that I never did my share of the driving. No job until senior year. Lived on whatever allowance I could get without actually breaking a sweat to help anyone about the house. And then took a humiliating job at a bakery, complete with pink plaid jumper. The upside: Charlotte had a retainer. Joe had full braces, top and bottom. I had nothing but wisdom teeth removed. A walk in the park from a vanity standpoint. Charlotte hated her skin problems. Joe’s skin should have been in CDC archives for World’s Worst Pizza Face. I had no issues. Nary a zit. Charlotte dieted. Joe was a chubbins. I was a toothpick and ate everything at said bakery by the pound. But now, the paybacks have begun. My metabolism came to a grinding halt when I was 31. I can’t exactly polish off the whole cheesecake and still expect to fit in my jeans the next day anymore. Being a brunette, I get to wax where my friends the blondes do not even have to imagine waxing. And it is a fallacy that waxing makes the hair grow back thinner and weaker. No, it does not. And my teeth are shifting. Like my mothers did. And no offense to Mom, I don’t want her teeth. No matter where they go. Not that they were ever perfect, (she was a Depression Era middle child in a family of 11 children so orthodontia was not a possibility much less a priority) but they did go on the move in her 50s. To the point where she just caved and got dentures. I have only her experience to go on and assume my teeth will do similarly. I have no idea what my Dad’s teeth would have done. He had dentures by this age. In fact, he had dentures my entire life…only I didn’t know it. I thought he had beautiful teeth. Truth is he had all of his teeth pulled (for reasons that have never been adequately explained to me) when he was a young man in the Navy. God only knows the story behind that. And better yet, he never told us. It wasn’t until he had surgery when I was in my 30s and Charlotte and I went to visit him post-operatively. The nurse told us to wait a minute. He wasn’t ready for visitors. He wanted to put in his teeth. Say what? We looked at her like she was nuts. “Oh no. There must be some mistake. We are here to see our father.” We said his name and she checked the chart. Yep, right guy. Right room. Right bed. So we visit and make him comfy, check on his pain management, etc. and say goodbye – and I am immediately on the phone to our mother. And that’s when she spilled it. He had dentures when she met him. Good thing we never had to identify his carcass in the morgue. “Nope. Can’t be. Looks like him. Looks like his shorty pajamas. But our Dad has all his own teeth, and they are gorgeous.” Oh, the secrets families keep.

And Then There's Mom

Despite that inauspicious introduction, Mom came to really like Scott.

He was exceptionally handsome.
He had impeccable manners.
He had a great smile.
The dog liked him.
Her friends thought he was the cat’s pajamas.
He may have been the only classmate of mine, male, female, high school or college, that didn’t at some point get chewed up and spit out in little wet crumbs after somehow offending Mom’s hard-to-grasp sensibilities.

Somehow he was the one who charmed the little bellbottomed embroidered pants off of Estelle. Without even trying. He’d have been dead meat if he’d been discovered to have been trying. Only one other person since has warmed her little thorny heart. He’s a dear friend still. We attended each other’s weddings and maintain a lively Facebook friendship.

So the fact that Scott found me on Facebook after 30 years and is as handsome and charming and wonderful as her failing memory would recall for her, despite her general mistrust and disdain for all things internet, she’d be thrilled, in spite of her frostiness toward me of late.

But because she can not bring herself to see our shared culpability in the current feud, and will not extend or accept an olive branch (according to Charlotte, unless the olive branch takes the form of me running on my considerable sword), she is missing the joy of it all.

The companionship I am enjoying with Scott.
The laughter to the point of tears. The fun.
The smiles on the kids faces; their acceptance of him, the friendships between the kids.
The easiness. The respect. The partnership.

In short, Mom is missing out on the wonder it is to watch your child fall in love.

Among other things.

And maybe that is by design.

Mom has told Charlotte that she believes my life is like a bed of roses. Her litmus test for that statement being that I do not call her for help.

I am sorry, this is not algebra homework.

My life, though rich with rewards and full of wonders, is hardly a walk in the park. I have a whack job ex-husband, two kids with genuine troubles to contend with, a taxing job with many demands that test my mettle, and lots of responsibilities.

She has no idea that the tearful calls I do make are to Charlotte. Joy. Kate. And now Scott.

And on some level, Mom knows me well enough to know this. It just may be that she can not sufficiently minimize the challenges I face, and finds it easier to simply pretend they do not exist.

From 5 states away you can do that. Let someone else, or a whole crowd of someone elses make my bed of nails feel like a bed of roses. So that when and if you choose to show up, you can say, “I told you so,” and pretend it’s been rosey all along.

And somehow take some credit for having made it that way.

Whatev.

You and I Travel to the Beat of a Different Drum

I am on the field in formation while my life stands on the precipice of Hell.

Mr. Skitch is yelling at the Drill Team Captain while our Band Front Director, who I swear was the person after whom Courtney Love modeled her persona, barks about flag angles and rifle heights between drags on her Marlboro.

Estelle inches ever closer in the rumbling, vibrating Pontiac.

I am standing on the 40 yard line, left hand in a fist on my hip, right hand above my head at a 45 degree angle with my flag blowing in the breeze.

I am praying to be struck by lightening.

Mom is trying to get my attention.

I have to ignore her. If I let her distract me now, I will be the equipment girl instead of a drill team member in a matter of minutes. I stay focused.

Still Estelle is making a valiant effort at scrambling my brain.

She inches the bomb a little closer to the crowd of band members. I can tell from the way her pink robe is moving that she is rolling down her window (manually, natch.) I cringe. She is going to actually speak.

Without moving my head, but moving only my frantic eyeballs so that I can see her and perhaps place a crippling hex on her with my Carrie White telekinetic powers, I see that she is placing her hand, turquoise butterfly ring and all, up to her face to project a little better.

Oh.
My.
God.

She is going to yell for me! I am certain I could die on the spot.

But no. Estelle can probably surmise that I am ignoring her, insolent little brat that I am, showing absolutely no gratitude for the fact that she trekked all the way back over to our remotely situated little suburban high school with 2,000 students.

She is doing me one better.

And then I hear it.

Shrill and unmistakably my mother.

“Yooooo Hooooooo!” Now she’s sticking the practice flag out the window and waving it a little. Completely exposing an arm of her bathrobe.

“Yooo Hooo! Can you give this to Elizabeth?”

And just whose attention do you think she got? Of course the heads of all the band members snapped around in disbelief, but try to guess who actually responded and approached the car?

It was Scott, of course. Who, amused beyond description, immediately turned around and waved the flag emphatically and repeated “Yooo Hooo Elizabeth!” with a big shit-eating grin on his face and a falsetto voice that would put Barry Gibb to shame.

Mom smiled and waved and 3-point-turned the bomb around to head for home. Mission accomplished. Total humiliation.

It was a banner day. I had my first ever murderous thought.

My Mother the Car

We step outside to get in Mom’s car. A bomb of a car that smells like cigarettes and rusting everywhere. Needs a paint job. Needs an upholsterer. Needs a muffler. Needs to go to the scrap yard. I am pulling the brim of my cowboy hat over my eyes so as not to be recognized in it. My Dad would have a stroke if he knew it was parked at the curb along side his beautifully manicured lawn all weekend. Between the car and the caricature that is my mother, I feel like I am on a movie set and something heinous is about to happen in the plot.

A turn of the key, and the engine literally roars to life with a puff of smoke. And we are bombing to the high school at neck breaking speeds and in total disregard for driving conventions. My fingernails are dug deep into the dashboard.

I manage to convince Mom that she doesn’t have to come all the way around back to the band room parking area. I have to go adjust my uniform anyway and can whip in the side door right into the lavatory if you just swing in over here where you can make a quick lap around the library and be gone before anyone notices!

She sticks the cigarette back into her mouth, now Penelope Pitstop Pink because she applied at the light. She screeches to a stop and I climb out of the wildly vibrating vehicle to dash to the side entrance, head down, collar up, brim still encroaching the bridge of my nose. A clean getaway.

Inspection goes fine. I am uniform perfection and will be marching that day…right behind the adorable Scott in his grand poobah hat and spats with his jazzy silver trumpet. The football field is lined and the team is warming up. So must we. We take to the Junior High field to practice one last time or two.

Always a perfectionist, Mr. Skitch is stopping us every few bars to correct a formation, or a rhythm or some darn thing. We are out on that dewy field for ages before we are dismissed in sections. The woodwinds. The brass. The drum line. All step off the field to hear the rest of our last minute instructions.

When out of the corner of my eye, I see her car. THE car. The burned-out Pontiac I had exited an hour before reeking like a teachers’ lounge. And then I hear it. Incredulously, it is inching its way through the Junior High teachers’ lot toward the crowd of band members.

I am pitting out my ill-fitting uniform.

What I know now, but I did not know then, was that my mother had gone home to find my practice flag, the one you wave around at practice and drag across the field 100 times a week that gets all muddy and grass stained, sitting in the dining room. Thinking I might need it but not knowing for sure, she’d have to bring it to me just in case.

Now remember, this is way before the invention of the cordless phone, much less the widespread prevalence of the cell phone. She’d have no way to take the low road and just ask me.

She’d have one decision to make – forget that she saw it and let me sink or swim in my inspection OR light up another Kent 100 and bomb her way back to the school to give it to me.

And now here she was. God only knows what I was in store for.

Mother May I?

It was early in the school year when Scott and I began our series of 7 or 8 dates in a row. The week following the ass-chewing introduction to my Dad, we had plans again, but this time, it was on my mother’s watch.

My Dad took very little time for himself after he and Mom split. Dated very little, upheld very few after work obligations. I don’t remember thinking it was strange at the time, just a little curious that a good looking fun loving guy like Dad would spend all his time watching TV with my idiot brother. Who knows, maybe it was a matter of money. Such things would never have been openly discussed in our house.

Anyway, the one thing he did put his foot down and insist upon every year was the golf weekend with his buddies from work – a job he loved for 30 years at the newspaper that was delivered to our doorsteps every evening. The tradition continued for many years after the paper closed, and eventually came to include my idiot brother. Glad to see they occasionally got off the couch.

It was the weekend after Labor Day, Pageant weekend at the shore town about an hour and a half from home. Golf, beer, more golf and the pageant festivities unfolding all around them in one of the tackiest, most overblown resort towns known to man.

On this particular weekend, because my brother and I were technically minors, and my mother’s living arrangements at the time were a little unfit for children, my father let his guard down and allowed my mother to come stay in their “former marital residence,” which must have been an act of pure desperation. Given the same option myself in my relationship with Lars, I’d sooner burn the house down than give him a key.

It was like spending the weekend with Lucy and Ethel. Or maybe on the set of Bewitched. Nothing normal. Nothing going as planned. Sleep with your shoes on, the house could go up in flames at any minute.

My mother arrives somewhere hours past the appointed hour leaving my Dad to wonder if she’ll arrive at all. Of course she will, just when she’s done all the things she wants to do. She’s loud. She breaks all our new routines. She asks a lot of questions. She doesn’t wait for answers. She’s exhausting.

On Saturday morning, I am marching in the football game at half time, so I am up early to shower, braid my hair to comply with band front uniformity and to squeeze myself into the made-to-fit uniform that was clearly made to fit someone else. White cowboy boots? Check. White cowboy hat? Check. Bleached white gloves? Check. Game flag, streamers and pompoms? Check. Mom? No check.

Mom is still snoozing away without a care in the world while I panic that I will be tardy and will not be allowed to march. One of the (far inferior) subs will march on my marks and do it all wrong and my whole squad will be pissed. (This is what you worry about in 10th grade, dontcha know)

I manage to nudge her from unconsciousness and get her in an upright seated position while I explain that she needs to drive like a bat out of Hell to the high school so I can stand in line and be inspected with the squad.

She looks at me sarcastically. Inspected?

She claims I am panicking for nothing. We can leave right now.

With her in her nightgown and Oomphies slippers and her hair taking on the appearance of a nest.