Meet Me at Emotional Baggage Claim (19 page)

I’m cranky, for a mythical beast. After all, I’m a menopausal mythical beast.

But to stick to the story, I ignored my bunion for as long as I could, which means until all my fancy shoes couldn’t fit anymore. I’m lucky enough to have quite a few pairs of nice shoes, which I save for signings and dates.

Okay, mostly for signings.

But a bunion renders all those great shoes unwearable. In other words, a peep toe is sexy. A peep bunion is not.

Plus it’s straight-up unfair of your body to be growing something new, at this point in life. Middle age is already undignified enough, with waistlines widening willy-nilly and chins sprouting hair, like bamboo for the face. Now, my bones are stretching my skin.

Which is my fat’s job.

Honestly, if I get stretch marks, I want it to be from chocolate cake.

So I went to the doctor’s for my annual exam, and he took one look at my right foot, frowning. “You can’t keep ignoring this bunion,” he said, gently.

“I can’t?” I asked, then I corrected myself. “I agree, I can’t. But why?” I didn’t explain that I ignore everything bad, in the hope that it will go away.

This works, but only with husbands.

The doctor continued, “If you deal with it now, you can avoid general anesthesia. You can get a local block.”

“You mean I need surgery?”

“Yes.” The doctor pointed to my second toe. “See how your big toe is shifting over and taking up the room where your second toe should be? If you don’t fix this, in time, your second toe will be on top of your big toe. That’s called hammertoe.”

I tried not to vomit in my mouth.

“This may run in your family,” said the doctor.

Then I remembered that all of my aunts wore bedroom slippers everywhere, even to weddings. One aunt even had dress flip-flops, for funerals.

The Flying Scottolines keep it classy.

So by the time you read this, I should have gone under the knife and will have to stay off my feet for seven weeks.

But I’m looking on the bright side. I have a new book to write and I like sitting.

God willing, I’m going to earn some stretch marks.

Blizzard of Oz

By Lisa

I’ve been nesting like crazy lately, which is funny considering that I have no eggs left.

I can’t explain this, but I’m betting that I’m not the only Mama Bird who looked around her empty nest and realized that it needed curtains.

At first I dismissed the idea. I thought it made no sense, timing-wise. I’ve had no curtains, on any of the windows, for the past twenty years. Why fix up the house now that it was empty? The horse had not only left the barn, she had moved to New York.

Then I realized that I still lived here, and I still count, even though no one is peeping inside my windows to see me, except a bird or two, and a really desperate squirrel.

But I have bats in the shutters outside my bedroom window, and that’s reason enough to get curtains. The bats aren’t looking at me, but I’m looking at them, and it’s spooky. I see them when they fly, squeaking, at night, like the winged monkeys in the
Wizard of Oz.

I’m the wicked witch, of course. She used to terrify me when I was little, but now I relate. It’s hard to say when in life we stop identifying with Dorothy and start identifying with the witch, but my guess is:

Now.

Sometimes I stand at the window and call to the bats, “Now, fly! Fly!”

Also the witch was a shoe fan, like me. She even says to the monkey, “Take special care of those ruby slippers! I want those most of all!”

The
Wizard of Oz
was a movie about two women fighting over a pair of pumps.

This happens every day at a Nordstrom’s shoe sale, but goes unremarked.

You may remember that my curtain renaissance began after the decorating debacle of the family room, where the yellow curtains came dotted with black spots that looked like pre-toxic mold. In the end, the company agreed the fabric was defective, and I learned to love again. In fact, I found a new curtain maker who came over, measured my windows, and is already on the case. But when I imagined the nice, new curtains against the scuffy walls, I realized that the walls needed painting. And then I looked again and realized that nobody could paint anything with the room so messy, so I started cleaning.

This is why you should never actually look around your house.

You see things.

And I realized that if I wanted new curtains, I had to clean my entire house, and I couldn’t clean after my bunion surgery, so I got busy.

Also, if I died in surgery, at least my house would be clean. Everybody would say “she kept a nice house,” when they came over after the funeral. My tombstone could read, SHE REALLY WASN’T THAT MUCH OF A PIG.

So I started by cleaning my family room, then moved on to my office, my bedroom, and my laundry room. Yes, even the laundry room, where gravity is the hamper.

I picked up all the dirty clothes and even went through all the sheets falling out of the shelves. The sheets don’t fit on the shelves because there are way too many, leftover from beds of bygone days, and even past marriages. You know you don’t clean enough when you find ex-sheets on the shelves.

I wanted to burn them, but settled for throwing them away.

The laundry-room shelves are a mess because nobody can fold a fitted sheet, not even Tom Cruise. Folding a fitted sheet is Mission Impossible, so I always roll them up into a ball and stuff them onto the shelf. This time I tried to make smaller balls, in case my mourners came upstairs.

Then I cleaned my bedroom closet.

It took me eight hours of sorting through old shirts and sweaters, and even skirts. I can’t remember the last time I wore a skirt. Soon, skirts will become extinct, like slips and sanitary belts.

Moment of silence for the sanitary belt.

Even though it wasn’t sanitary.

Finally, I sorted the filthy mound of shoes at the bottom of my closet, setting aside muddy clogs and ancient Frye boots until I found a pair of black pumps I’d been looking for for ten years.

Not exactly the ruby slippers, but close enough.

And wearable when I get my new feet.

Fly!

Mother Mary and the MRI

By Lisa

Mother Mary tells me on the phone that they’re building giant red condominiums across the street from her house.

“Really?” I ask her, confused. Her street is a small, quiet backstreet, the last of its kind in South Beach.

“Yes,” she answers. “I can see it outside the window. New red condos. They’re ugly.”

“But there are houses there. What about the houses? Did they tear them down?”

“I don’t see them.”

This makes no sense. “And the condos are red?”

“Bright red.”

I don’t like the sound of this, and suddenly I lose my sense of humor. “Put Frank on the phone, okay?”

So she does, and my brother picks up. “I know, right?” he says, and it’s all he has to say, because he sounds worried, too.

“There aren’t really condos, are there?” I ask.

“No, and she thinks everything’s red.”

“You mean she’s seeing red? Literally?”

“Yes.”

It would be funny, if my sense of humor came back. Mother Mary has been seeing red her whole life.

So we’re both worried she had some kind of ministroke, though I have no idea what kind of stroke causes you to see red condos. If I had a stroke, I’d see Bradley Cooper. And he can be whatever color he likes, because he’s the new George Clooney.

So Frank takes Mother Mary to the doctor, who finds nothing wrong but schedules her for an MRI, and we know right away that this is a problem.

Mother Mary hates MRIs.

First, she hates small spaces. Second, she hates hospitals. Third, she hates most things.

She hasn’t had an MRI for years, when she was getting radiation for throat cancer. She beat the cancer, though it left her with some throat issues, but she still hated the trips to the hospital, and I don’t really blame her, but I get her on the phone.

“Mom, you have to get an MRI. We have to see if something’s wrong with you.”

“No.”

“You have to go. It’s doctor’s orders.” Never mind that it was doctor’s orders to use her oxygen, which she also ignored, and I’m wondering if this is why she’s seeing red. “Please go, for me.”

“No.”

“What about for Frank?”

“Maybe,” she answers, then laughs.

Long story short, my brother convinces her to get the MRI, and I call to see how it went.

Mother Mary answers, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“What do you mean?” I ask, alarmed. “What happened?”

“I
said,
I don’t want to talk about it.”

I have no idea if this means something is really wrong, because nothing is drama-free with Mother Mary, especially not drama. “Put Frank on, okay?”

So she does, and he tells me that she didn’t have the MRI at all, because of what happened.

Drama. To wit:

He accompanies her into the MRI room while they slide her into the MRI machine. She lies down, and they give her a rubber ball to squeeze if she gets panicky. Frank hears her clear her throat a few times, then all of a sudden he sees the rubber ball fly across the room. The MRI technician doesn’t see this. Frank starts yelling, and they slide her out of the machine, where she was choking from fluid that blocked her throat.

“What fluid?” I ask him, horrified.

“Since the radiation, when she lies down too long, fluid builds up in her throat.”

“What about when she sleeps?”

“She moves around then, I guess.”

“Why didn’t she squeeze the ball, like they told her?”

“She did, but her grip wasn’t strong enough for it to register. That’s why she threw it.”

I picture the scene, shaken. “So did she really almost choke?”

“Honestly, yes.”

I feel awful for her. “She must have been terrified.”

“To be real, she was pissed.” Frank chuckles. “I think she was trying to throw the ball at the technician.”

That sounds like her. “So now what?”

“They said she needs an upright MRI.”

“Think she’ll go?”

“We’ll make her.”

“How?”

“We’ll do what we always do,” Frank answers. “You nag her, and I’ll use my feminine wiles.”

I smile.

I love my brother, because he never loses his sense of humor, and for many other reasons.

God bless the caregivers, especially Mother Mary’s.

Grandmother Whisperer

By Francesca

They call me The Grandmother Whisperer.

Grandmothers are complicated, sensitive creatures. You can’t “break” a grandmother’s spirit, nor should you try to. That spirit has been around two, three, maybe four times as long as yours has.

And Mother Mary is no exception.

Every whisperer has a stunt to show the true extent of his or her influence. Cesar Milan will bring an unleashed pit bull to calm an aggressive Chihuahua; Buck Brannaman will get a wild mustang to lie down on its side. And I will tell you how I entered the ring, or “kitchen,” with my untamed grandmother, and, using the following gentle guidelines, took over the cooking of Eggplant Parmesan.

Mother Mary was recently staying with us while she had work done to her house in Miami, and my mom had been begging her to make us her famous Eggplant Parmesan.

“C’mon Ma, if you’re here, we’re gonna put you to work!” Mom joked.

My grandmother flung an arm out to swat her.

It’s attitudes like this that get people hurt.

Rule Number 1 of grandmother husbandry: Appeal to their innate sense of hierarchy.

“I’d love to learn how to make eggplant parm,” I said. “Can you teach me?”

Minutes later, we were heating up oil.

My grandmother explained the first steps, but she’s such a pro, her teaching style tends to be doing it all herself with narration. And although my mother was the one who wanted the eggplant parm in the first place, she had a lot of … suggestions. Things like:

“Not too much salt!” and “Don’t overcook them, Ma, you like them cooked to death.”

I could tell the only thing getting overheated was Mother Mary.

Which leads me to Rule Number 2: Be calm-assertive, but let her think she’s in charge.

“Here,” I said, gently slipping the utensils from my grandmother’s hands. “Let me try it myself or I’ll never learn. You relax, then judge when I’m finished, okay?”

“Okay, kitten,” she said, and shuffled over to preside at the kitchen island.

And so commenced a fairly peaceful cooking session with all three generations in the same kitchen.

I had just lifted the last slice of golden brown breaded eggplant from the fryer, when I asked for Mother Mary’s approval. “How do they look?”

But my grandmother didn’t look up.

“Ma,” my mom said loudly, catching her attention. “Please, put in your hearing aids.”

“Why.” My grandmother is the only person who can say this word without a question mark.

“Because I want you to hear what we’re saying.”

“Maybe I don’t want to listen.”

“I’m serious. I’m tired of yelling.”

“You yell anyway!”

Rule Number 3: Do not attempt to outwit the grandmother. This is impossible.

“They make no difference,” added Mother Mary.

“They make a difference to us, to your family. Put them in right now, please.”

Rule Number 4: Don’t bark orders; listen and respond.

“Mom, wait,” I said. “What if she means ‘they make no difference’ as in, they don’t work? Maybe there’s something wrong with them.” I turned to my grandmother, and asked, “Can I try them?”

My grandmother looked surprised.

My mom looked disgusted. “You’re going to put them in your ears?” my mom asked. “That’s so gross.”

This coming from the woman who “accidentally” uses my toothbrush every time she comes to visit.