Not by the Hair

What must it have been like for that first little pig? Imagine quaking behind those sheaves of straw, seeking purchase as the wolf draws breath. “I guess mama was right.” Outside, the wind gathers speed. “I am an impulsive fool. A fat lot of good it does me now.”

Last week, I had to make yet another decision without Tee to help me. It was time for Bug to upgrade to a bunk bed.  My mother did a little online searching. She wanted hardwood, finished, built-in bookcases. "Nice," she told me. "He should have nice beds."

I was thinking beds for a five-year-old. Safe. Cheap. Disposable. I looked. I dithered. Days went by, then weeks.  A person can roam the forest for an eternity, seeking the perfect slice of real estate, circling back around to nowhere. Was I expecting  a woodworker to fall from the sky? You are on your own. The wind hissed around my ears. No one is going to help you. I finally hopped onto the computer, found a relatively well-reviewed company and ordered an inexpensive set of beds. 

They arrived three days later, packed in boxes on a pallet in the garage. I wanted cheap, and I got cheap. Flimsy pine, narrow boards, lumpy foam mattresses. Punishing myself for my folly, I refused help from my folks. I began hauling boxes up to the second floor. Nasty noises danced along beside me, blowing loathsome old refrains. No one is going to help you. I tore open boxes, cursing under my breath. If you don’t do it, it ain’t getting done.  Digging around on the cluttered tool bench for screwdrivers and drill bits, I banged and clattered until I had everything in hand. Then I turned on the music, laid out the instructions, took a deep breath, and got cracking.

A few hours later, I called my folks upstairs. We wedged ourselves into the corner and worked together to lift the top frame up onto the bottom.  We stood back and surveyed the damage.

“At least they aren’t too heavy,” my dad offered.

As is typical for most bunk beds that arrive in cardboard, a roll of thin slats was intended to suffice for mattress support. I’ll be damned if I’m going to let a set of matchsticks hold my little boy in his sleep.

“Picking up plywood sounds like a great job for your dad,” my mom suggested.

“I can do it,” I growled. “It’s my problem.”

I have shingled roofs, built docks, and hung drywall. Buying a couple pieces of plywood is a snap. I headed to Home Depot on Saturday morning and strode in with a tank full of confidence. It sprung a lead as I skidded into the lumber aisle. The Sphinx commanded the corridor, her riddle encoded in incomprehensible markings upon towers of wood. The wind picked up. You have to figure this out alone.

For years, Tee and I have done these things together. It did not occur to me in all those trips to the hardware store with my husband that we were re-writing my biography. The independent gal I remember from earlier decades has journeyed through an era of interdependence. Without knowing it, I have learned to count on someone else.  Certainly, the self-reliance I carried from those earlier chapters has been a rock during the tumult of the past 16 months. Down under the fortitude, however, runs a vein of sorrow. When I tap it, I can feel the poison riches there.

No one is going to help you.

I withdraw to the surface and fix my gaze on the horizon.

“Larry, can you give me a hand with some plywood?”

Larry, in his orange apron, grinned and happily obliged. Larry roped in Clay, and the two of them hauled giant sheets over to the mechanical saw. A few cuts, a swipe of the credit card, and I was home with an extra layer of support for my kid.

After dropping the wood in the frame, I finished assembling the ladder and the last of the boards. I lay the mattress on the bottom bunk and flopped down on it, wrecked. My mother came in and sat next to me. “These turned out nice,” she said. She ran her hand over the smooth frame. The bed held our weight. 

Inside the flimsy structure of the life I am trying to build from the detritus of my marriage, I am a bundle of nerves and wicked whispers. The wind I hear blowing around outside could be just a summer breeze or it could be something more sinister. Perhaps it is just my ears playing tricks on me.  I lay there in a state of grim pride, listening. Look what I built all by myself. I may be all alone, but I’m badass. I don’t need anyone.

What wicked fiction.

My mother paid for the beds. Tee let me use his car for the wood. Larry and Clay cut and loaded the sheets. My dad helped me lift and haul frame and mattresses. The online company called ahead, my boss let me make arrangements for deliveries, and my mother came to meet the delivery truck. The very room in which Bug will sleep in his new beds is in my parents’ house.

The whispers may indulge, but they lie.

When the two little pigs saw their homes collapse around them, they did not end up wolf kibble. They sought shelter from their well-fortified kin.

I am not alone. Interdependence is not a recent development. It is the true nature of human relationships. People rely on each other in all sorts of configurations, of which marriage is only one. I may feel like the structure is caving in and it is my muscle alone keeping my son and me from being eaten alive. That myth feeds pride and self-pity in equal measure.

Bug and I have solid support under us. We use the materials at hand. We build what we can. In the absence of brick, we team up with our neighbors and jury-rig a system of support. This life may be made of sticks and straw, but luck and good hands have woven it strong. It will hold up against the darkest wind, be it from without or within.

Hot

My dad comes dragging in from tennis about the time I fall through the door. I have just forfeited Round Two with Tee. The mercury is pushing past 100 degrees. Humidity tightens its straightjacket around our tempers. We each down a tall glass of ice water then wobble into the shallow end of the pool.

“I started to get worried out on the court,” my dad says, wiping the sweat off his flushed face. “I might have pushed it a little too hard.”

“Yeah?”

I ease down in the deep and let him regale me with his tale of near heat-stroke on the scorching clay.

Two days of attempted diplomacy with Tee about our parenting agreement have pushed my interest in speech to its limit. It has also sent my self-control to the outer reaches. Tee and I made admirable progress during Round One, which took up most of Saturday. We gained momentum by tackling the less contentious issues first. We scored a deuce and called it a day. Sunday, we found out we were on an entirely different court. This one was made of tinder and flint.

In the pool, my dad goes on. “I just kept at it against the backboard, but I was starting to wonder if maybe it was too much.”

“That’s the problem with heat stroke, you know,” I say. “Your ability to judge the degree of damage is impaired by the damage you are doing.”

“That’s true. But!” My father is kicking around the deep end of the pool now, smiling big, pleased with his toughness. “But I have a way to know. Never fails. One thing tells me if I’ve pushed it past the limit out there.”

This man loves the buildup. He won’t tell me if I don’t ask. “Okay, Williams. What’s the one thing?”

He grabs the edge of the pool and stands up tall for effect. “It’s the stumble.”

---

Tee and I tried to move with care. We left the hardest issue for last – not the wisest choice, perhaps. At hour three on day two, we shined our torches on the question of college funding. Our emergency buckets were already dry. Emotion’s slow burn caught a bright wind. In an instant, we were popping and sparking. Righteous indignation, replaying old narratives, blaming, self-doubting. Higher and higher.  I was impulsive. Then I was confused. Tee was quiet. Then he was bitter.

In the ensuing conflagration I could not quiet my foolish tongue.  I cursed it even as it skewered Tee. We were still dancing around the topic at hand, but the words were losing their reference points, were turning to smoke and ash. The heat scorched the fertile earth we had tilled with care the day before.

Then I heard a sentence come out of my mouth I never imagined myself saying to someone I care about. It was hurtful and pointless, and I saw Tee lean away from the sting of it.

---

In the pool, I turn a lazy circle. “The stumble, huh?”

“Yep, the stumble. That’s when I know.”

---

Seeing the blow to Tee, my overheated brain licked at the door, threatening to spew words even more combustible than the ones before. On the other side, a tiny trickle of cool calm remained. It made itself known. It urged me to my feet. Even though Tee and I had driven in the same car to this public meeting place, even though we had intended to work through the weekend, that cool trickle called me to follow it. I collected my computer, packed away my half-eaten lunch, and stuffed my papers into my satchel. All of this I did while I continued to say things Tee does not need to hear from me, things about our marriage that have nothing to do with now. A fixation with ancient history compelled me to climb further in even as floor was giving way under me.

“I have to go,” I said, ungluing myself. Tears began to mix with the spill of blazing words. “I’m sorry to walk away from this, and I do want to keep at it, but right now, I am saying things you don’t deserve to hear.” I was still talking over my shoulder as I moved towards the exit, unable to stop my voice. “I have to cool down before I make it any worse.” Without a ride, I walked out into the 100 degree heat. I wandered for 30 minutes under the unrelenting sun until my mother found me and whisked me home.

---

My father has gotten hold of a frosty Sam Adams. As he bobs in the shallow end, he takes a swig. “It’s that stumble,” he goes on. “When I start tripping over my own feet going after the ball, I know something isn’t working right, and it’s time to get myself off that court.”

“Do you?”

“Hell yeah,” he says. “Every time.”

I doubt that. I smirk and shake my head. The blue ripples roll on past.

Aren’t the emotional embers hot enough on their own? Slipping and giving voice to the uglier side of the story only fuels the flames. Anyone foolish enough to believe firing anger at an ex will relieve the pressure learns soon enough. The blowback may be worse than the blaze.

The challenge lies in knowing when your judgment is impaired.  Gauges break under intense heat. The flood of responses burns out the circuitry. Until you stumble, until you actually see the hot earth speeding toward your face, you may not realize the danger you are in.

That’s when you calmly, firmly, set down the racket and walk off the court. Find yourself a tall glass of ice water, immerse yourself in the aquamarine. Cool your way back to your better self.

Walk On

In the dreams, I am wandering through a strange city. Somewhere, someone who cares about me is waiting for me. A sense of urgency about reaching the destination keeps my feet moving. Always, it is my own momentum propelling me forward.

Around me surges a throng of people. It is alternately summer steam and winter slush. I turn a corner, and my way is suddenly even more obscure. The street grid gives way to a maze of town homes lining looping, inescapable cul-de-sacs. The people disappear. The homes have no numbers, the street signs are blank. I walk on, aiming for vaguely familiar buildings whose facades morph into something foreign once I near them.

In the dreams, I have no map. Someone is still waiting, yet I also know no one is trying to find me. I have to get there on my own.

I keep walking.

- - -

Tomorrow, Tee and  I will sit down to carve out a parenting plan. So far, this document contains 26 points and runs to a dozen single-spaced pages. In it, we outline our plans for sharing custody of our son. How will we organize time and finances? How will we resolve conflicts? What will be our means of communication, and what values will guide our decisions?

When parents split up, they have a choice to make about how to proceed. So far, Tee and I have agreed to keep our differences out of court. Our tight finances should probably take more of the credit than our cool tempers. We continue to talk with relative calm. Somehow, we are managing to hammer out the details of our future while we breathe through the pull to re-visit the past.

As hard as this task is in the short term, allowing our son to have two homes and two equally responsible parents seems to be the best we can offer in these sad circumstances. We aim to proceed without a battle and to show the state (and each other and our little boy) that we really do intend to co-parent. This means we have to draft the blueprint of our new life. Our parenting agreement is the place for us to develop plans of action for every educational and medical decision, every holiday, every move, every new partner, and every catastrophe.

This is only one of many miles to cover in the slog across the convoluted landscape of Divorce City. Once we have written out our parenting agreement, we have to tackle the 70 pages of legal paperwork the Commonwealth of Virginia requires us to file.

Tomorrow, I will proceed with care down another unfamiliar street. I have no map, but I believe a table is set and a door is open across town. Someone and something await my arrival. I may not know the most direct route, but I keep walking. My trusty feet will guide me.

102

I started to write
some very important things
but it's too damned hot.

Lapping

The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas

-Alfred Noyes, "The Highwayman"

Bug unfolds the telescoping poles and gasps in delight as they pop into place. The shock cord is missing from one, but we shove the pieces together and manage to jam them into the corner grommets before they collapse. Bug is better at helping with this than I expected. His development surges ahead under the powers of a mysterious momentum.  When we attempted this task a few months back, I had to guide his hands and grit my teeth through the whole exercise. Now, my son takes my multi-step directions in stride, snapping everything into its proper order. Within a few minutes, a dome tent is occupying the majority of the real estate in our back yard.

I had hoped to take Bug to the beach this summer. Alas, the stars did not align. For now, a suburban campout will have to stand in for the ocean. Bug does not seem to mind, even though he tells me far too often these days, “I hate your house, Mommy. I want to sleep at Daddy’s house forever.” It should sting, I suppose. Instead, his statement rolls off. I know he wants more of me, not less. At his dad’s, Bug shares quarters with Tee. At our house, he has to suffer the torture of having his very own room.

For all his cognitive headway, Bug is still just a little guy. He likes nothing more than to position himself squarely in the center of his parents’ gaze. Of course, he is also growing like swamp grass. I’m not so foolish as to believe a shared bed with Mom will be my son’s greatest delight in summers to come. This is a chapter quickly drawing to a close. It is becoming harder to call Bug’s attention back from its outward pull. For this brief moment, though, he still presses himself into my embrace. My son seems to want to disappear into me, even if only to have a safe harbor from which to launch his next voyage.

On this one unseasonably mild weekend, the least I could do in the absence of a sea is to give my boy a night with me.

We pile the nylon floor with two dozen blankets. In come the flashlights, books, pillows, water bottles, and stuffed animals.  I issue a firm edict against all electronic toys. The blackberry and portable games are all relegated to the house.

As night falls, we crawl in and zip up the screens. Then down. Then up. Bug climbs around on me, giggling. He splays his body out across mine, sighing, rocking ever so slightly from side to side. He twists into my limbs, pressing his chin into my shoulder.

Once he has drunk his fill of me, I help Bug strap a light to his forehead. We attempt to read about insect-eating plants. Bug turns in the direction of every new noise. “Listen to that!” A cricket. A critter. A flutter of wings. The lighthouse beam sweeps in arcs across the choppy surface of the night. Our story disappears and re-emerges between swells.  

Even after four books and the steady approach of the wee hours, Bug is still bouncing. I confiscate both torches, but his excitement is bright enough to light Times Square. Into the sleeping bag. Zipper up, too hot. Zipper half down. Shirt tag itching. Shirt off. Too cold. Zip the bag back up.

“Oh, baby, am I ever sleepy.”

Wiggle, press, hug, twist. “I’m not sleepy! Let’s stay up all night!”

“I wish I could. But my toes are too sleepy.”

“Your toes can’t be sleepy. Toes don’t go to sleep!”

“Mine sure are about to. You know what else is sleepy? My ankles.” I yawn big. “And my knees. Boy, are my knees ever so sleepy.”

I take a lazy stroll up my body. Bug giggles when I talk about how drowsy my bottom is. He thinks sleepy hair and sleepy earlobes are hilarious. A low tide is lapping at the edge of the tent. It begins to spill in. I let it roll on down my skin as I follow it back towards the outer reaches. “I have the sleepiest spine,” I drawl.

Bug is very insistent. “MY spine isn’t sleepy.” His voice is sinking under the weight of the deep.” My (ya-a-awn) legs aren’t sleepy at all.”

I bid goodnight to my toenails. Bug’s feet have beaten me to the punch. His breathing comes slow and deep. He snuffles, turns, throws a naked arm across my belly. Winged insects plead for mates through the dim moonlight. Their song calls up another wave. My feet give way, and I follow my son under.

Read This Book

This graphics-rich collaboration by three Gen X writers is like Jon Stewart’s America for the Y.A. set. But unlike Stewart’s readers — at least theoretically — the intended audience for “Americapedia” still needs to learn the basics of the American Revolution (“America Unfriends Great Britain”). So while the book holds no shortage of attitude and satire, it also imparts an impressive array of historical substance and even a degree of earnestness and patriotism, complete with an appendix on civic action for teenagers.      

 - Pamela Paul's review of Americapedia in The New York Times Sunday Book Review

The 6^th graders owned the back of the class. We were the spillover kids, one handful too many to squeeze into overcrowded rooms up the hall. To accommodate our odd numbers, the school shoved a bank of desks together in the 5th grade pod. The poor instructor had probably won Teacher of the Year the previous spring. Her prize for her excellence was a group of rowdy pre-adolescents gumming up the works in her class.

Because we were older and fewer, our teacher's main concern was keeping us out of trouble so she could teach her little ducklings. If she left us to our own devices for more than ten minutes, she would have a Lord of the Flies situation on her hands. Andy and I, seated across the island of desks from each other, did not help the situation. We irritated the spit out of each other. He razzed me until I was close to tears, probably because I was a hyper-sensitive dope and what's more fun than getting a rise out of a weepy pre-teen girl? I undoubtedly fumbled around for come-backs, and maybe even managed to bruise a remote corner of his ego with my screechy insults.

Our teacher tried to keep the lot of us out of trouble by throwing heaps of busy-work our way. Those wide-ruled, black-and-white composition books were one tool for classroom management. The assignments were the usual elementary school pablum – “What I Did on my Summer Vacation.” To kill time, we read our entries out loud to each other.

Bo-o-oring.

Until Andy got going. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who loved his stories most of all. Most days, I would have given anything to live on a different planet than that boy. But Andy's stories. . . well. They made me want to come back for a visit.

Memory fuzzes out after a couple of decades. The narratives might have involved the delicious comeuppance of the class bully. Maybe interplanetary hijinks between the cafeteria lady and the gym teacher. Who knows? All I remember were that his pieces were short, dangerous (the teacher was covering fractions with the toddlers up front, after all), and hysterically funny to an audience of 11-year-olds. Andy only needed a No. 2 pencil and half a blank page to make his peers titter and squirm in delight.

One brief moment in one otherwise indistinct day still blazes in my recollection. Snickering with my classmates as Andy read one of his naughty tales, a Mack truck plowed into me. I stopped laughing and reeled with a sudden realization. Andy had written it. This kid had taken a pencil and just written down a story from inside his own brain!

You would think this would not be such a revelation to a child raised by bibliophiles. My house had no television in it until I was ten years old. We owned records and art supplies and a big back yard, but what we collected in the greatest abundance was books. Mountains of books. Teetering, sagging shelves full of books.  From my earliest years, I had a voracious appetite for all those words. My father did not sit at the edge of my sister’s and my bunk bed and read Dr. Seuss. No, he read us Mark Twain. Charles Dickens. Victor Hugo. Seriously.  My childhood villain was Javert, not Boss Hogg.

Somehow, I had missed a key point in all that reading. A person, a real human person, had cut every one of my beloved characters from the cloth of imagination. Someone had written those stories.

Someone like Andy.

Why not someone like me?

The glare of this one single flashpoint from over 25 years ago still makes me blink. That day, I started writing. Really writing. Not just writing the dreary assignments doled out by an overworked and underpaid teacher, but building narratives. Playing with language. Practicing the craft.

I was eons behind Andy in both native talent and training hours logged. But I began then, at the unruly back end of a crowded classroom. I began to write.

As for Andy? He never stopped.

Next week, you can order Andisheh Nouraee's first book. Americapedia: Taking the Dumb out of Freedom, is launching on July 19th. That clever kid is one of three authors of this smart, satire-rich take on American politics and history. In the decades since he left those composition books behind, the fella’s wit has only grown sharper and his writing more polished.

And he still knows how to make every grinning idiot in the room squirm.

Read this book. Remember someone very real wrote it. Raise your glass – and your pencil – to that deserving guy.  Then go out and buy a few copies for your friends. Buy some for your enemies, too. You never know when you might learn something from them.

Here's to You, Mrs. Robertson

The music still bears pencil marks Mrs. Robertson made 25 years ago. The old woman, long dead now, is fixed forever in her dark Bethesda living room. She stands leaning her bent frame over the piano, telling me again, “Take a deep breath and let it out. Feel how everything drops into place?”

Like magic, my shoulders, wrists and fingers fall into their proper positions. Even with this release, I stomp through the notes as if on a treadmill. How she withstands the butchery of her beloved Schumann is beyond me.

“Like this,” she says, scooting me off the bench. She curls her gnarled fingers over the keys. Wrists hovering just beyond the reach of the ivory, she begins. Somehow, those stiff twigs call forth cool, creamed ribbons of sound. Eyes closed, her ancient body sways ever so slightly. The black dots on the page take wing.

Then, just as quickly as she is down, she is up. Even a crone can hop under the right spell. She gestures me back to the seat. “Lift!” she cries. “Lift your hand UP!” Geppetto she becomes, casting her arms through the air to pull mine skyward at the end of the phrase. Her body echoes the rise. The old bones shatter. A girl comprised of air and joy unfurls from the husk, bobbing and dancing on the threadbare Persian rug. “Yes!” She sings. “And. . . Lift!”

I am a gangly child. Grace is not yet in my vocabulary. Piano practice is homework, and my job is to get the notes right. When, finally, I do, I look anywhere, everywhere, for praise. My own parents are pleased enough with my 30 minutes per night. They nod their approval of the rote repetition until my fingers march in lockstep with the marks on the staff.

Mrs. Robertson requires far more of my adolescent hands. Being correct is only a fraction of the game. The rest is mystery. I try and try to translate my teacher’s strange language. The dim light from faux Tiffany lamps gleams against the Steinway’s deep polish. I command my wrists loose. I ease through the bars. Approaching the end, I will my fingers to rise from their safe, ivory purchase.

What a wonder! The sound becomes music. That simple motion closes the phrase and frees it to drift into the curtains and beams. The string has its moment to quiet. It makes way for the next chord to enter, bursting with its own full flavor.

Two years of Mrs. Robertson are all I can manage. Whatever whims and boys capture my fancy have no room for piano lessons. Somehow, those worn folders of Haydn, Bach, and Telemann with their graphite smudges make their through all the moves. They live now in the piano bench in my parents’ sitting room.

When the panicked chatter grows to a din, sometimes the only thing to do is deafen it with song.

I take my bench and draw breath. Mrs. Robertson was right. As the air leaves, all of me falls into perfect posture. In that one simple act, Grace. Right behind the surrender, Music.