A Maxwell House Moment

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A Maxwell House Moment (Brooklyn Style)

Coffee commercials always make me cry. I am a sucker for sappy sentimentality; I get teary eyed just thinking about the one where the son surprises everyone early Christmas morning. But sometimes, the most tender moments happen in real life -- sort of a corollary of you just can't make this shit up. And so it was, this morning, when my mother phoned and truly raised the bar for what ad agencies might tout as "the best part of waking up."

"I had an incident the other day," she began, "but I'm fine." Her way of reminding me I have been a wayward child, woefully out of touch. I would have tried to regain some points by telling her how relieved I was that she was fine, but she uses a special caption phone for the deaf and has yet to master the art of awaiting the print out of a response. I settled in with a sigh, knowing there would be a fairly lengthy back story before she ever got to "THE INCIDENT."

So I worked on my sudoku while she went on at some length about some young man who continues to show up drunk in the apartment building, reportedly the son of some people who live there. Blah, blah, blah... "so on Tuesday mawning...." Shit. Tuesday. It's Thursday. My mother had some horrifying INCIDENT more than forty-eight hours ago, and I knew nothing of it. She might be fine, but I was toast.

I put down my Sudoku book. "So on Tuesday mawning I opened the daw to the apawtment to get the newspapah." Oh no! Did she bend down the wrong way? Throw out her back again? I waited silently. It's not like I was part of the conversation. "And I look down and there's a BODY crumpled up on the flaw, right outside my daw." A body on the flaw by the daw? And she's telling me this as matter-of-factly as if she were complaining about a slight twinge on her spine. I gasped, which probably doesn't show up on her caption phone -- not that it matters.

"Crumpled up, in a puddle of urine." I didn't know whether to be horrified or grossed out. "So I tried to close the daw quickly but the newspapah got in the way." Tragic. "But I managed." Phew. At least the unconscious or possibly dead person outside her door didn't take the paper, and he'd have to regain consciousness and get through a heavy, dead bolted door before harming her.

"Well, I was hahrified. Just hahrified." That seemed reasonable. "But I decided that befaw I did anything, I was going to enjoy my cawfee!" I was speechless, which, again, she would have no way of knowing because she doesn't wait for responses to show up. "I had just made it, and I like to drink it when it's fresh." Of course. So she lingered over her coffee, which, I can tell you from years of experience, took at least twenty minutes, and then went back to the door to peer through the peephole and see if the body was still there. I was kind of guessing it was, although the suspense built up a little bit here because, as it turns out, you can't see the floor from the peephole and you have to actually open the door, which she did, just a crack. The body was indeed still there, but had made its way into a seated position. Like any good Samaritan, mom slammed the door.

Anyway, I think she called 911 before she had her second cup, but I'm not sure because I was feeling a bit weepy from the tender coffee commercial moment. At least I know where I get my sense of compassion and good will. But back to the back story, which now included the young Orthodox Jewish neighbor who happened to come into the hallway and see the "body" and rushed into his apartment to get some latex gloves (naturally, a doctor) and take the guy's pulse. And the other neighbor across the hall, who recognized the "body" as the perpetually drunk and stoned son of the people in 2-J. So off they went to 2-J -- my mom, the nosy lady, the Jewish doctor, and the body -- to 2-J. As it turns out, my mom knows the couple in 2-J ("a lovely couple; not Jewish, but very nice people").

As far as I know, somebody cleaned up the urine, and my mother was able to finish her coffee and read her newspaper. And she feels kind of bad for the lovely though not Jewish couple in 2-J because they are stuck with a drunk for a son. But at least he comes to visit. 

Not So Rapid Transit

Like everybody else, I give myself a lot of extra time when I am headed to the airport to catch a flight. I know that no matter how prepared I am in advance to put my laptop in its own bin and remove my baggie full of liquids from my carryon and take off my shoes and my belt and my oversized metal watch, there is bound to be confusion ahead of me in the security line.

And that’s all okay. I get a warm fuzzy feeling when the TSA agents watching the mysterious x-ray monitor make a catch – a pair of scissors, a bottle of water, a blow dryer that could easily be mistaken for a pistol. Or when agents watching the stuff come out the other side of the screening belt are astute enough to notice traces of a mysterious white powder on the handles of, say, a diaper bag. You can never be too careful these days, and things only promise to get worse. I have been dieting and exercising furiously in anticipation of the day when we must all shed everything and pass through security buck-naked.

But there are some things that just shouldn’t move slowly at the airport. Like the line at the Starbucks. Which is where I got stuck in a holding pattern for about a half hour the other day while the slowest person on the planet handled the drink orders. As if things were not moving at enough of a snail’s pace, the slowest person on the planet took a break from the rapidly building line of cups to fill the napkin holders on the cream and sugar table. The trip from behind the counter took several minutes; the loading – which appeared to be happening one napkin at a time – took an eternity. I could hear my flight being called in the distance, but there was no way in hell I was leaving without my already paid for latte and my friend’s half-caff with a hot soy topper, which, unfortunately, was missing the soy topper. Oh, if only there had been more time.

Frankly, I would still be fuming about the Starbucks fiasco had I not raced back to the gate to discover that my travel companion had, after presenting his drivers license to the curbside check-in guy, been granted a boarding pass with a woman’s  name (Jill Ocean!) on it. And – as we were already at the gate and he was still holding the same boarding pass – we quickly surmised that the highly trained TSA agent with the high tech flashlight who examines everybody’s ticket and identification before they even get the privilege of disrobing for the screeners had failed to notice that this man was clearly holding somebody else’s boarding pass. Let alone the same boarding pass he had just put all sorts of official looking circles on a moment earlier when the real Jill Ocean had passed through. So much for warm fuzzy feelings.

Oh well. At least we can be fairly certain that neither he nor anyone else was travelling with a hidden water bottle, or with explosives in his shoes. In his underwear, maybe, but definitely not in his shoes.

Out of Order

A friend emailed last night to ask whether my day had been as bad as hers. "Yes," was my response. Yes, I supposed, even though I have no idea what made her day so rotten. Yes, I supposed my day was at least as bad as hers had been, but I was pretty damn sure neither of us had as bad a day as the old friends of mine I saw yesterday, at their fifteen year old son's wake. Days don't get any worse than that.

When a child dies, everything else seems meaningless. Divorce, petty disagreements, even premenstrual bloating (and who says I lack perspective?). The funeral home was already packed by the time I arrived, but the ever increasing number of live bodies was insufficient to mask the telltale smell of tragic loss. It's a smell I associate with embalming, even though I have no real idea of what embalming smells like. Like the smell of old age that assaults you when you enter a nursing home. Or Old Country Buffet. There is no mistaking it, no question about where you are.

If the world is to be divided into his side and mine as we trudge into year three of our divorce proceedings, this wake was situated well inside my husband's camp. The grieving father is a long time work colleague, the mom a person I always enjoyed seeing but only really saw at work related events. That was the nature of our relationship -- the occasional  social engagements, long and often revealing conversations over multiple glasses of wine, well intentioned promises to get together some time, just on our own. As it turns out, yesterday was the first time I have seen these folks in several years; and it was the first time I have seen many of the other mourners, people I had grown accustomed to seeing in black tie, not funeral black.

Like everyone else in the room, I struggled to make sense of it all. To figure out why parents were burying a child, why things had happened in the wrong order. And, I struggled to figure out where I fit in, suddenly an outsider in this room filled with my husband's colleagues and their spouses. Greetings were awkward; an open bar would have been nice. (The child's mom confided that she had taken an occasional trip outside to grab a swig from a flask; I offered myself up as a companion for her next break.) As I stood in a surreal circle that included me, my husband, and his companion of the past two years, I thought for a moment that maybe a foray into the next room to view the body would be less uncomfortable. It wasn't. Not by a long shot.

I'd met Sam when he was little. What I recall as remarkable about him was that you would never know by looking at him that his heart wasn't in mint condition. Despite a lifetime of worries and surgeries and constant contact with a pediatric cardiologist, his parents struggled to give him as normal a life as possible. He lived doing what other kids do, and he died playing basketball -- doing what other kids do. This wake was a celebration of Sam, filled with his fifteen year old friends, some crying, some standing around feeling out of place, some writing messages to Sam with markers on large posters taped to the wall. It wasn't just me; nobody felt right being there. There is nothing right about the death of a child.

Like many of the adults in attendance, I went home to hug my children -- either in the flesh or over the phone. The mom and I promised each other we would get together, as soon as things calm down. Maybe on a not so bad day, some time down the road.

A Shaving Account

It's winter, so I shave my legs on an as needed basis, which is basically hardly ever. But I am stocking up on shaving cream, and, no, it's not in anticipation of my menopausal beard.

There are two important lessons I have learned recently. Well three, actually. First, you can get answers to most of the great mysteries of life from Google. Second, you can get out the nastiest red wine stains with shaving cream. And, last but certainly not least, somebody watches over me from time to time.

The Google revelation is certainly not new, but I still marvel at the availability of all sorts of information with the mere tap of a key. Oh, how I used to hate trips to the public library. Or, worse still, talking to people who might have all the answers. Libraries are musty, and people with all the answers tend to be smug; Google is modern, as fresh smelling as the room in which you happen to be sitting, and though it knows it all it's not an obnoxious know it all. It offers up zillions of answers, some wrong, some right, and leaves it to you to decide. Nothing heavy handed or smug about that.

And Google is always there when you need it. Lately, I've been in the habit of spilling red wine on people. Not on purpose of course. It just seems that any time a glass of red is in close proximity, most of it tends to end up on somebody's lap before it gets the chance to work its brand of magic on my psyche. It's landed on me, friends, and complete strangers across the table at a wedding reception. I can't seem to help myself -- which makes me wonder a little bit if I'm just incredibly spiteful and nasty, but really, I had nothing against the folks at the wedding. Whether intended or not, a red wine stain is daunting, and usually seems to find its way on to a favorite garment. Or at least an expensive one.

Anyway, we all know that shaving cream has its uses, and can even be fun (like when my daughter tested some out on me at Walgreens the other day to see if it would be foamy and I ended up looking like an ice cream sundae). But an antidote to red wine stains? That's almost as cool as knowing that you have to use cold water to tackle blood stains. (Google to the rescue, again.)

As to that third lesson -- that someone is watching over me -- it's closely related to that thing people say all the time, that everything happens for a reason. Like spilling the wine at the wedding the other night. One more sip and I would not have made it to the ladies room to puke, and since I didn't have my laptop with me it would have been tough to figure out how to get vomit out of that perfectly nice woman's dress. So yes, someone was watching over me (and her), the spill happened for a reason, and (now here's another corollary) things could always be worse.

Yes, things could definitely be worse.  Spring is approaching, and now I have no excuses. My legs will be smooth.

Going Dark for a Week or Two...

See you in March!

Wake Up Calls

When things seem to be going poorly, the last thing you want to see is that you've been assigned to row 13 on your flight.

I knew it couldn't be good news when I heard my phone vibrating at six yesterday morning and saw my brother's name flash across the screen. My guess was that he wasn't calling me to report on the weather in Florida, where he was spending a long anticipated and much deserved few days. We knew before he left New York that mom was struggling with back pain, but we relied on our combined expertise (he's a psychiatrist, I'm just an unsympathetic lazy bitch) to determine that her agony was more about mental agitation than physical agony and I insisted my brother stick with his plan and get the heck out of Dodge.  "I'll fly in if need be," I assured him, fairly certain that need would not be.

This isn't the first time I've miscalculated, and I'm sure it won't be the last. As it turned out, need was, and, within two hours of the surprise wake up call, I had booked flights, packed, gotten my daughter to school and Manny to the dog lady, changed my work schedule, cancelled all the day's appointments, and was on my way to the airport.  The rest of the morning is a bit of a blur; I fell asleep the minute the plane hit the runway and somehow found myself on a death defying taxi ride into Manhattan, where I was to meet mom at her doctor's office.

When I was young -- before my sophomore year encounter with organic chemistry destroyed my dreams of becoming a doctor -- I always envisioned myself in a white coat in a fancy little street level office in a posh apartment building on the upper east side. Yesterday, except for the white coat, I came pretty darn close. It took me three tries to get the heavy door open when they buzzed me in. ("Push the daw hawd!" someone shrieked from within, and I walked in feeling like an idiot. It was only after sitting for a while and hearing the same refrain repeated each time a new patient arrived that I realized what I had thought was impatience and nastiness was really just a fond New York welcome.)

Exhausted from the door pushing fiasco, I entered the waiting room feeling a bit self conscious about my casual attire, particularly when I located mom perched in a corner chair. There she was, her make up perfect, her outsized David Yurman earrings and matching necklace in place, her elegant St. John suit looking as fresh as the day it was purchased. She sat ramrod straight, showing no signs of spinal discomfort. Her smile was broad and genuine. What could be better? She was sitting in a fancy upper east side Jewish doctor's office. It don't get any better than that -- unless, of course, it's your son's name engraved on the plaque outside the door.

Well, the doctor was very nice and not a prima donna at all and he politely told my mother that an eighty-one year old with osteoporosis is bound to have an occasional problem with a bone or two, and this was neither life threatening nor curable. Mom nodded, even though she had no idea what he said (remember? she's deaf!), and proceeded to talk, nonstop, about lots of stuff that was totally irrelevant to why we were there. To pass the time, the nice Jewish doctor taught me some "old school" Yiddish with which I could impress all the goys in Chicago.

Finally, after we spent about an hour clarifying the instructions of the new medication he was prescribing (one pill, once a day), off we went. Which, finally, brings me to what this post is about, i.e. how much I enjoy any trip to New York, especially these days. Before we headed off to Brooklyn, I ran across the street to a food vendor, where I picked us up some hot dogs and jumbo pretzels. Ambrosia. I gazed out the window of the car ("caw") service, enjoying the colorful mosaic and listening to the cacophony of horns, profanity, whistles, and noises of unknown origin that shape the city of my youth. Sweet nostalgia. I met my son for dinner, wrote down several things he said as only he could say them, and walked arm in arm with him for several blocks, oblivious to the hustle bustle of Park Slope, thrilled to be in such close proximity to my middle child. Pure bliss.

Mom's okay, and I earned some points for getting up off my lazy, unsympathetic ass. Now I can get back to business, to wondering why New Jersey is flying its flags at half staff for a dead rock star and not for the soldiers who lose their lives every day. Yesterday, my flight in row 13 went off without a hitch, and I am hopeful that row 26, today, will be equally uneventful. And I'll look forward, as always, to my next trip to the Big Apple.