Meet Me at Emotional Baggage Claim (13 page)

And what happens if you’re the kind of person who sleeps with four dogs, all of whom walk around the bed all night, scratching, snorting, and farting?

I mean, who are these people who sleep with four dogs? And sometimes a cat?

Okay, that would be me, too.

That would create havoc with the app, if it was to measure the movement in my bed, which turned out to be Peach and Little Tony.

But enough about the movement in my bed.

In fact, there’s not enough movement in my bed, of late.

Think there’s an app for that?

Hairy and Crazy

By Lisa

It’s that time of year, when spiders beat a path to my door.

I know.

Still got it.

As soon as I open my front door, big wolf spiders come from God-knows-where to run inside my house.

Of course I can’t bring myself to kill them. Spiders are good bugs, even if they’re scary and creepy, so I turn a glass upside down over them, slide a paper underneath, then flip the entire assembly right side up and throw the spider back outside.

But lately, I’m finding problems with my method.

First, it means that I always answer the door with a glass in my hand, like a drunk. The neighbors and the UPS guys are starting to look at me funny. I tell them it’s because of the spiders, but the spiders hide when other people come over.

My UPS guy winks. “Right, the spiders. Gotcha.”

It doesn’t help that I usually come off slightly potted around this time of year, writing all day in sweatpants and frowzy hair, with my glasses cockeyed. It’s not a good look for a single woman, and about the only thing it attracts is spiders.

Second, the spiders are onto me, and they think it’s a game. This morning when I opened the door to get the newspaper, I had to throw out a huge wolf spider, and just now, when I went to take the dogs for a walk, the same spider tried to get back in.

And he was smiling.

He was so big that between the spider going in and the dogs and I going out, it was a traffic jam of furry legs.

Mine included.

The furriest.

Hey, it’s fall, and that’s how you know. My leg hair grows in, long and fluffy.

That’s what women really mean when we say that we love the seasons. Half the year, we’re not shaving our legs.

Men would never know, if I weren’t busting us. They’re too busy looking at our busts.

Which are unhairy, generally.

Or maybe that’s another column.

To write when I’m drunk.

Or you are.

Anyway, the third problem with my method is that spiders network better than teenagers. They used to run in one at a time, but now each one is coming back with five hundred friends, and I bet they’re all on Facebook and Twitter, calling for a flash mob at my doorstep.

They’re LOL. And I’m WTF?

When four or five run at me, there aren’t enough glasses to catch them all, and at the end of the day, I have a dishwasher full of glasses used only by spiders.

Half the time, there are no glasses left for my margarita.

Er, I mean, Diet Coke.

Plus, I don’t have time to clean up after insects. Who needs it? I live alone. I’m an empty spider-nester.

I decided to use only the tallest glasses for spiders, but Daughter Francesca didn’t know that, and the last time she visited, I caught her drinking out of one. I yelped, “Eeek, a spider glass!”

And she dropped it.

It must be a buggy time of year, because I just read in the newspaper that parts of the southeastern United States are being invaded by hairy crazy ants. I’m not making this up, and that’s what they’re called.

They don’t shave in fall or winter, either.

They’re called hairy because their abdomens are furry, unlike normal ants, and they’re called crazy because they run superfast, in random directions. They swarm into homes and factories, trying to find warm places to live.

Eew.

And if a hairy crazy ant gets killed, it releases a chemical that cues the rest of the hairy crazy colony to attack. According to one entomology professor, “The other ants rush in. Before long, you have a ball of ants.”

So I’m feeling lucky. My spiders run in a straight line, and I’m hairier and crazier than they are.

But I swear, the day I open my front door and a ball of spiders rolls toward me, I’m going out drinking.

With my UPS guy.

Very Personal Shopper

By Lisa

It’s the time of year when a girl’s thoughts turn to fleece, and I buy a new pair of sweatpants.

Turned on yet?

You will be, at least if you’re like me, a sweatpants fetishist.

Because these are great sweatpants.

I’m picky about sweatpants because I work at home, and so I live in them, especially when it gets cold outside. And after much trial and error, I’ve found the perfect pair, and I get new ones every few years, from the same website.

I went online just now to order a pair, but the website had changed, and I couldn’t find my go-to sweatpants.

I didn’t know where to go to.

The website takes literally the sports part of sportswear, categorizing its women’s clothes by sport, such as Alpine Climbing, Skiing, Snowboarding, Biking, Rock Climbing, and Casual.

Of course I clicked Casual. It defines me to a T, and I already have all the Alpine Climbing and Snowboarding clothes I need.

Which is none.

So I was lost in the website, until Patrick found me.

Who’s Patrick? I don’t know, but all of a sudden, while I was clicking around, onto my laptop screen popped a little window, with a message:

Hi, this is Patrick. How can I help you?

I didn’t understand. I never had this happen. I knew generally that you could chat online with a salesperson, but I didn’t know they could appear out of nowhere, unbidden.

And I wasn’t sure I liked the idea.

I thought what I was doing online was private.

But it isn’t.

By the way, just to clarify, I’m never doing anything embarrassing online, except buying clothes with an elastic waistband.

But that’s embarrassing enough.

Actually, I’ve been known to search Google for Elastic Waistband, and if you’re doing that, you know you’re single forever.

I don’t understand how Patrick knew I was on the site. I’ve heard of a personal shopper, but this would be an example of a too-personal shopper.

Still I figured I’d answer Patrick, since I didn’t want to waste more time, so I typed in the little window:
I’m looking for black sweatpants.

Then I hit
SEND
, and a nanosecond later, Patrick wrote:

Hey there! Let me get you some ideas!

I didn’t need any ideas, I needed my go-to sweatpants. Still I liked his can-do attitude and his exclamation points, so I waited.

Patrick wrote:
Click here for our tights for women!

I groaned. I wasn’t looking for tights. Guaranteed that someone whose sport is Casual doesn’t need tights.

Plus, tights are not sweatpants. They’re tight, which is why they call them tights, and that disqualifies them altogether, as far as I’m concerned. I never want to wear something Tight. The only thing worse would be something On Fire.

Yet I refrained from telling this to Patrick, and instead I wrote:
I don’t really want tights. I want stretch sweatpants with an elastic waistband.

He didn’t write back for a moment, and I imagined that he stepped away to vomit, or to tell the gang that Scottoline was online.

Then he wrote back:
You are probably looking for the Serenity Tights! Click here!

I clicked away, and of course they weren’t what I wanted. They were stretch tights for a yoga-thin twenty-five-year old, and I’m a middle-aged woman with high cholesterol.

In other words, I’m not serene.

I’m casual, but that’s not the same thing.

I typed:
Thx, but what I’m looking for aren’t tights. They’re pants but not for outdoors.

Patrick wrote back:
Yep, if you check the link, you will see that many of our tights are not formfitting and look like pants.

So there I was, having a fight with a man I don’t know and have never met. This would be a first. Usually men have to marry me before the fighting starts, or at least meet me.

But maybe I’m improving.

Then I remembered something, so I wrote:
I think they’re called R5 sweatpants.

And Patrick wrote back:
Thanks for that! Click here for the R1 pants!

Aha!

I clicked, and they were the right ones, so our story has a happy ending.

Except that I’d remembered it wrong. R5 is my train, not my sweatpants.

But Patrick knew all that, I’m sure.

9/11, Ten Years Later

By Francesca

I find myself standing within a tower of light. I am in the center of a square of forty-four giant searchlights, each one wide as a timpani drum, beaming heavenward. Across from me is a second, identical tower. A soft rain sparkles in the upper heights of the light shaft, but as the raindrops near the enormous lamps, the water evaporates, and clouds of steam billow back up into the sky like ghosts.

It’s the tenth anniversary of September Eleventh, and this is the Tribute in Light.

Three years ago, when I first moved to New York City, I’d never have gotten this close to a 9/11 memorial. I wouldn’t have felt right. I lived around the corner from a makeshift shrine called “Tiles for America,” which covers a chain-link fence with commemorative tiles painted by children from around the world. Tourists come by and take pictures of it. I have never taken a picture of it. I sneak glances when I’m walking by with my dog, but it’s not on our usual route.

Sometimes tourists asked me for directions to Ground Zero, I could tell them only that it’s downtown. I had never been myself.

Although avoiding the site wasn’t a deliberate decision, I can’t say it was entirely an accident. I love this city, but I never feel like a “New Yorker” until I’m outside of it. In Philly, I’m a New Yorker, but in New York, I’m a Philadelphian. My experience of 9/11 is a part of that barrier. I watched the attacks from afar, safe in my suburban cocoon, where such horror seemed so unreal we first thought it was a hoax. Real New Yorkers witnessed the terror and the tragedy firsthand; their loss was personal and profound. I didn’t feel entitled to their grief.

And so I didn’t feel entitled to go to that hallowed ground as an outsider. I was afraid of seeming like an emotional tourist, marveling at a tragedy the same way one would marvel at any landmark. I didn’t know how to express my grief without cheapening theirs.

On the tenth anniversary, however, things felt different. This year, I wanted to pay my respects. I just wasn’t sure how.

A college friend of mine moved here from San Francisco, and now she’s a member of a city choir. Her group was singing in a 9/11 memorial concert in a church uptown the day before the anniversary. I’d been meaning to see her perform for a while, and this seemed like a good time to start. I felt a little anxious when I couldn’t get someone to go with me, but I had made up my mind.

I hailed a cab and gave the address of the church. The driver responded with the typical wordless nod and I climbed in. But once we were driving, he asked me why I was going to church on a Saturday afternoon. I told him.

“Very sad weekend,” he said, making eye contact in the rearview mirror.

“It is,” I said, shifting my gaze to the window. Then I started talking about choirs instead.

I arrived at the church early, but I like to be early when I’m nervous. The few people who were there were couples and families, and I felt conspicuously alone. I chose a spot halfway back at the far edge of the pew, which would be good in case I had to leave early. Not that I had plans afterwards.

Another person entered alone, an older woman dressed all in black, black sweater, black skirt, even black gloves.

She must have lost someone in the attacks, I thought. I wondered if it was her son or daughter, or maybe her husband. This is probably her regular church. She belonged here.

I questioned if I had the same right to this grief as she does. Is grief a right? A burden? A privilege? What do I owe this woman and these victims, if I can do anything at all?

The concert began. They sang a beautiful program of many different types of songs. One of the most moving pieces based its lyrics on a real soldier’s last letter home before he was killed in Iraq. Listening to the music, I relaxed and felt my eyes wet.

I looked back at the woman in black. I saw she held a white tissue in her hand.

I stopped crying.

By the end, I was glad I had gone to the concert. But I went straight home afterwards.

The next day was Sunday, September 11. Like many, I watched the official World Trade Center site memorial service, where members of the victims’ families read each name. I sat glued to the television. If I so much as stepped away to get a glass of water, I rewound the coverage to see those I had missed. Toward the end, I started to cry.

In the privacy of my apartment, I let myself feel that sorrow. I didn’t know anyone who died in the attacks, but I know people like them. I have a friend who is twenty-five and working his first big job in finance, I have a father who goes to a tall, shiny office building every morning, and I have a mother who means the world to me.

I know the pain these victims’ families feel, because I know the love they have for those who passed. And although I cannot claim to know their personal loss, I can share in their grief.