It’s swimsuit season! If your backside puckers like it just ate a lemon, Make Lemonade!
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“Really? You want to see my office?”
My friend Erin was puzzled.
“Uh-huh,” I said. “Your office, plus the conference room and reception. The kitchenette, too, if you’ve got one.”
“Okay,” Erin replied. With my two kids in tow, I’d driven eighteen hours from Central Virginia to Madison, Wisconsin to visit her. She wasn’t about to deny me a corporate tour.
That wasn’t all I had planned for our five-day stay. I also wanted to see her grocery store. Her son’s school. Definitely her favorite restaurants and parks. Maybe even the recycling center where she deposits old phone books. Since Erin moved back to her hometown seven years ago, we’ve maintained our friendship by phone. This visit was my chance to animate the green screen behind our conversations, to drop a set behind the chats we’ve stolen during errands and lunch hours. In future calls, if she were to say “Let me grab my sandwich from the office fridge,” I could picture the correct black Amana, instead of my mind’s generic, beige Frigidaire. If she were at a playground with her son, I’d know to ask, “Circle Park or Winnequah?” Should it be the latter, I could imagine her directing him away from the slide with “WEED!” emblazoned on the side.
Erin and I were nearly inseparable during our first two years of parenthood. For 100+ weeks, she, our friend Mary, and I threw life rings to each other at the deep end of the day: the hours between 3 and 5 pm. By that point in the afternoon, each of us had gone seven hours without seeing another adult. Each of us had filled a workday with failed attempts at productivity that eroded our Type-A morale: unanswered emails, unfinished articles, unsketched plans, and unsuccessful naps. We were operating on minimal sleep. At 3:00 on the dot, (the time the baby sleep books say to punt on the afternoon nap), our Stone-Age cell phones would light up. The three of us would meet up, that was certain; it was just a matter of where. We’d listen to each other’s delusional agendas and hold each other’s babies. Erin, Mary, and I still wrung our hands, but we wrung them less-chapped together.
Our daily visits ended when our babies turned two-and a half. That was when my husband and I welcomed our second child. A week later, Erin and her family moved back to Madison. Then Mary’s son started preschool. Just before Erin left town, she visited me in the hospital, and then one last time at home. I sat as still as a statue in the glider chair and held my newborn son. A powder-blue ice belt rested on my c-section incision. “May I refresh that drink before I go?,” she asked, pointing to the belt. “Yeah, I’ll have another round,” I said. Riffing on medical paraphernalia-as-booze was our weird way of coping. Here was someone who knew the exact nature of what I was going through, and she was about to melt away. An hour later, Erin backed out of our driveway, her car packed with a husband, a son, and 10,000 Legos. She blew me a kiss through the windshield and waved. I steadied my cankles and waved back. I was happy for her. And I was totally screwed.
Since 2006, Erin has come back East several times. During each trip, she’s made time to reconnect with me. On two occasions, I met her in Washington DC for a day. From dawn until dusk, we did only what we wanted to do. An 11 AM dal and Kingfisher ? Done and done! A shop with fragile things on low shelves? Undoubtedly! A store with grown-up books and records? Champagne pedicures? A doughnut? Yes, yes, and yes. This was our 3-5 PM dream of years past, and we were determined to live it for eight whole hours.
Last summer it was time to reciprocate Erin’s cross-country treks by racking up some miles of my own. The trip to see her in Wisconsin was a turning point in my life as a parent. To make such a long drive with now-old-enough children was a liberating coup. The days in the car were tiring, but pleasantly memorable. In Illinois, we witnessed a “corn storm.” Enormous bolts of lightening zigzagged like flights of stairs connecting black skies to green fields. We saw wind farms, and a sign for Tonica—the tiny town where my Japanese host sister lived as an exchange student in 1986.
True to form, Erin spoiled my kids and me during our stay in Madison. She brewed homemade chai, and plied us with udon at Umami. She proved that a lake-front bait shop with a grouchy proprietor can serve world-class ice cream. Erin’s wonderful husband and son kept my kids busy playing Ladder Toss so she and I could yammer on about poems and Fritos. She even let me use her library card. Erin welcomed us with cool breezes and Venetian light. Which is another reason why, when she calls, I’m so very glad to see her.
My, how you've grown!
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In addition to being a kick-ass friend, Erin Hanusa is a brilliant poet. Her book, The House of Marriage, is available here.
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A submission is a hopeful torture. You wait for a stranger to decide, yes or no. A test, a number, an application or a Valentine—every kind of pick-me, pick-me missive sent out like a boomerang. You wait for word to bend back home. You, your heart, and the tick-tock clock.
The Carnival comes but once a year, but I nominate it Year-Round Waiting Room. Spin up where the bolts are tightened enough, and where the lights are brightened at dusk.
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Even for Superman, bending steel can be hard sometimes. So how are we mortals to be strong in the face of insurmountable odds?
I mean, what were the odds that I would catch the early-morning dog walker whose little darlin’ was dumping in our yard every day? After all that work I did last Fall to increase our curb appeal for the bank appraiser: the new lamp post, the ilex compactus hedgerow, the crushed limestone tableau where our giant weedpatch once thrived… In her report, the appraiser noted our property’s “extensive landscaping,” and “parking court.” If she stopped by in April, she might have edited to “Litter Box” and “Crap Magnet.”
The turds first appeared two weeks ago in the gravel where we park. We’d find them by the back bumper one morning, then under the driver’s door the next. They were like Kryptonite, these piles. No matter how cheery my day began, or how eager I was to check on the garden, I’d catch sight of the poo by our cars and grow weak with defeat. A flurry of question ensued: Who is this mo^&erf&#@$%?
Dear Dog Walker,
Don’t you see my frigging peace pole? You’re not supposed to crap in a yard with a peace pole. It has four languages. What? This is Central Virginia? I thought of that already. Refer to deer rack on my shed. C’mon!
Signed,
Curb Your Dog
In the twilight, my kids would stand on the back porch in their PJs and call to me, “Are you gonna put us to bed?” I’d come through the gate and smile at them reassuringly. “Of course. Just watering the last flower box.” Once they stepped inside, I was back to weighing stake-out options. Which was better, behind the rain barrel (convenient), or the back of the station wagon (dramatic)?
“We just need to put up a sign,” my husband Joe said one night.
“And get it laminated,” I added. He looked at me, annoyed, in that you-know-we’ll-never-make-it-to-Kinko’s kind of way.
“I’ll just print extras in case it rains,” he offered.
“But then we’ll have to replace the signs. That’s as bad as scooping poop.”
We met in the middle, opting for clear packaging tape and a chopstick.
Throughout the next day as I scrambled eggs and clicked my mouse, I told myself not to cling to false hope. Anyone who saw our parking court as his dog’s canvas would not be deterred by a sign.
Then the steel started to bend. I thought about my anger. About how it was disproportionate and irrational, like road rage. Why did I lack the will to fight it, or to think of another approach? Because it’s tedious, painful work to change an attitude.
I pushed myself.
What if the dog owner is elderly?
With that, the poop emerged from a spiritual phone booth in a much more interesting outfit.
What if the owner can’t bend over to pick up the waste? What if his wife died recently, and some loving but misguided relatives gave him a dog to ‘cheer him up’? Now he has the dog, and doesn’t particularly want it, but he hasn’t figured out what to do. In the meantime, the creature has to be walked…
If the piles belonged to that dog, to that owner, well, I could work with that. He could steer the dog’s rear to the curb, and I could package the product and toss it in the trash.
The next day I was late getting everyone out the door for school. Joe was out of town, and I had a presentation to give at nine. From space, the kids and I looked like a slow-moving cyclone of elbows, backpacks, shorts, and black socks. As I turned, I waved to a woman walking down the street. We used to see each other regularly at a local museum. Her grandchildren often collaborated with my kids to dismantle exhibits. As she passed our parking area, I saw that her arm was outstretched. She was being pulled by a dog the size of a Pain Campagne. She continued down the sidewalk, and I remembered that she’s a refugee who doesn’t speak English. During all our encounters when the children were little, we’d used gestures to communicate. A pointed finger meant “your kid ran that way.” A smile said, “hello,” “thank you,” and “see you next time.” Two raised eyebrows meant “sorry the diaper stinks.”
After the kids were loaded into the car, I checked the gravel. Nothing.
Since that morning, the dark piles in our parking court have proved to be just Fall leaves unmoored by Spring winds. Was it wrong for my museum buddy to let her dog loose on our yard? Yes. Was it the huge deal I made it out to be? No. Curbing dogs is the law here, but it may not be a priority on Krypton, or in the remote mountain country she fled. Though it’s been years since the woman and I talked, I thought I recognized an “I’m sorry,” in the bend of her wrist. With any luck, she read “forgiven” in the sway of my fingertips.
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