Company's coming! (Now is the perfect time to panic!)

I'm expecting company next week so, true to form, I'm now seeing my house through panic-colored glasses. All those things that I meant to get to someday have now become a lot more urgent. Nothing in my house looks the same as it did before I knew I was going to be entertaining and my brain has been writing post-it notes to itself. (Remind boys to pull out those two rusty posts by the front steps. Lay new tile in the bathroom floor.)

I love company, really I do. Since we've moved we're a lot farther away from most of our friends and relatives so having people over is a rare treat. I especially like sitting with everybody at our dining room table, looking through boxes of photos, drinking a cup of coffee and eating something sweet. (Remember to pick up something sweet at the bakery section in the grocery store. Or maybe make raised cinnamon rolls. Do I even own yeast?)

Last time we had a visitor it was a teenager from France and she stayed with us for six weeks. I re-grouted my bathroom shower in her honor, not that she noticed. I mean, she was a teenager. (Re-paint both bathrooms? Or would it be faster to wallpaper?)

I work myself up into this housekeeping tizzy a whole week before everyone's due to show up, cleaning things that I'd never bother to clean otherwise, like under my refrigerator, and organizing things that nobody will ever see, like storage closets and filing cabinets. (Vacuum out all the window sills in the house. Where did all those dead bugs come from?)

Pretty soon I'm snapping at my children to clean their rooms and snarling at my husband to organize the tool shed. Don't they realize how essential it is that our house be perfect in every way before company comes? (Should I go buy a "Bed in a Bag" at K-mart or see if I can find a complete sheet/bedspread/dust ruffle set that's hole-free and actually fits the bed in the guest room?)

Besides the usual housekeeping chores I occasionally catch myself contemplating a whole house makeover or a new landscaping project. (Maybe I can get my neighbor to come pour a cement patio in the back tomorrow. That'll give me a week while it sets up to go buy a table and chairs and maybe find a swordfish on a plaque to jazz it up a little.)

Underneath my panicked outer self I realize how dumb I'm being. I know that the reason people visit is because they want to spend time with us and not because they want to critique my housekeeping and decorating skills. (Order cable for the week that they're here? Or stick with seven channels and adjusting the antenna every time you change stations?)

The outcome to all this frenzied preparation is always the same. I basically chase my own tail right up until the last 24 hours before my company arrives. That's when I abandon all hope of achieving the perfect Better Homes & Gardens House and settle for the Disinfected Domicile instead. At the last moment I race through the house, spritz all available surfaces with bleach and throw all the clutter into the nearest closet. In the end, it's a relief to run out of time for anything but the bare minimum. (Get more bleach. Build more closets.)

My daughter says if I entertained more I wouldn't be as prone to freaking out prior to a visit. I think she's right, but my pool of available dinner party guests is kind of thin right now. I need to be more like Elwood P. Dowd in the movie "Harvey" and start inviting more people over to my house. Elwood never worried about what his house looked like. He just enjoyed talking to people. Besides, he had his sister to keep things up for him. Now that I think of it I can completely understand why she seemed so on edge all the time. It was the thought of all that company coming. (Invite more friends and family to Florida.)

Welcome to Gator Country

Garage sale season has started. It's the weather. Once the heat breaks, the little white cardboard signs come out, and all you have to do is drive up the street to find a little something that you didn't know you needed until you saw it in someone's yard under a sign marked, "Everything on this blanket - half off!"

Last Saturday we found a neighborhood sale down a cul de sac on a small lake. One couple was selling the man's extensive collection of hand tools ("Can't see good enough to use 'em") and if you bought something his wife would throw in absolutely free your choice of allen wrenches from a box of about a hundred. My husband bought a grinder from the man for twenty dollars. He showed it to our neighbor who promptly told him he could have gotten a brand new one for half the price. It might have come to blows soon after but then our neighbor wisely decided it was a better model than what he'd first thought so they're still speaking to each other.

While we were out bargain hunting we met a woman who had pictures of her sons and husband standing next to an eight foot alligator (strung up under a tree and presumably dead) and also of her 18 month old grandson perched on the alligator's back (cut down from the tree and definitely dead). The one of her grandson reminded me of a picture of my brother as a child, posed on a pony, except that in his case the pony merely looked bored and not dead at all.

The woman was very proud of the pictures and was carrying them from house to house showing them to everyone she met. This is clearly something that people do down here, pose next to alligators. My neighbor has shown me a picture of him and his cousins and his uncle, standing next to not just one, but two dead alligators. I noticed that everyone that the woman showed the pictures to seemed admiring and matter of fact about it.

To me, alligators are an alien life form that's best viewed from a distance, say behind a 2 inch plate glass window at a zoo or aquarium. It makes me go all squirmy inside to think about putting a toddler on an alligator's back and taking a picture of the occasion, I don't care how dead it is. Or maybe it's because it's dead that it's so disturbing, except that if it had been alive I'm pretty sure that would have been worse.

I didn't ask the woman with the pictures where her husband and sons had shot the alligator. I didn't ask her whether her family would be eating any part of it or whether they would have it stuffed and mounted or whether they would take the skin and make shoes and purses from it. I realize now I missed an opportunity to learn something more about the culture where I live.

But at the time, I was speechless with shock. For one, in Michigan, when people show you pictures of their grandkids they're usually posed in front of fake autumn scenes with colorful silk leaves artfully scattered around the foreground and a backdrop of split rail fencing with maybe a cute woodland creature, like a squirrel or chipmunk, perched on top. There are no dead reptiles anywhere in the picture.

I've never been one for staged family photos myself. It could be this is just a new trend and I'm out of the loop. Maybe the next new thing in family photography is dead bears or wolves or badgers with all the kids dressed in their Sunday best and parked on the carcass. It's nothing I'd want framed and hanging in the living room, but you never know. Different people have different ideas about what's attractive in a family portrait.

For two, I'm just not used to thinking of alligators as something you hunt and then pose beside. Deer? Sure. Bear? Absolutely. Rabbits? Got a couple pictures of those.

I'll know next time how to react. I figure it's bound to happen again. According to the Florida Fish & Wildlife website there are a million alligators in Florida. Every week in the paper there's a story about some poor sod losing an arm or a leg to an alligator. Granted, the sod in question is usually high as a kite and swimming in gator infested swamp at four in the morning, so it seems as though if you take the minimum precautions, i.e., stay sober and don't go swimming in alligator bogs at night, chances are good you won't be eaten by an alligator or probably even nibbled on very much.

The signs warning you not to feed them are at boat landings at every state park we've visited so far. It definitely makes you cautious about letting your dog off the leash to get a drink. (Quick! How do you call an alligator? Here, Fido!) I took a picture last month of my husband holding our dog on a leash while she quenched her thirst at the Bulow River State Park. He's scanning the river and so are my two boys standing on the dock by the landing. The dog is the only one in the shot not worried about becoming alligator snack food. It's probably the closest I'll get to having a family portrait with an alligator in it, even if it's only the idea of an alligator that's in the picture and not the real, live dead one, like other people have. I think I'll have it framed.

Having a wonderful time. Wish I was there.

I vacationed in Ludington this past summer. It was great to walk to the lighthouse, visit favorite restaurants and just pretend for a week that I lived in a small town again. I found myself falling into old habits like talking to people I didn't know and consequently made a friend of the woman working at the laundromat. I know she's my friend because she asked me to hold the fort while she took off in her car to run some errands. People don't do that in Jacksonville, Florida, which is where I live now.

It's been a year since I moved to the south and I'm getting used to it here, but there are lots of things I miss about Ludington.

I miss walking in the woods and not worrying about what could possibly land on my head and bite me. Here there are banana spiders that grow all year round. A particularly impressive specimen used to be by the gate to the back yard. It was nerve wracking to walk past something the size of your hand with eight long legs on it, but it's funny how you miss things after they're gone. Something ate it last night and all that's left are the legs. The web is still intact. So I'm thinking it had to be another spider that did it, and it's gotta be bigger than my head. At least, now it is.

I miss swimming in fresh water. Admittedly, you can only do that five days of the year in Lake Michigan without getting hypothermia, but at least it doesn't make you sticky afterward and there's absolutely nothing in there that will eat you. Here the ocean is warm from April until December, but there are a few caveats. You have to stay away from river mouths during spawning season because those are favorite hunting grounds for sharks and if you see jellyfish on the shore, it's a clear indicator that they're in the water, too. Some kind person walking along the beach told me that if you peed on the part of your body where you got a jellyfish sting it would stop hurting. This is good to know since it will make it less embarrassing when I lose control of myself from the pain when I do get stung. I can just say I was applying first aid.

I miss four seasons. There are no seasons here. Well, okay, there are, but they name them differently. Instead of winter, fall, spring and summer, it's hot, damn hot, jungle hot, and Africa hot.

I miss Ludington-scaled things, like the distance to downtown. In Ludington, downtown was three blocks away. Here, it's a half hour drive, then another twenty minutes to find a place to park, then a brisk ten minute walk across a parking lot that's the temperature of the surface of the sun to get to your final destination.

I miss going to the store and having six or eight people I know stop and say hello to me. Here, I go to the same two grocery stores twice a week and the cashiers ask me for my ID every single time. Even I'm beginning to doubt I am who I say I am.

I miss throwing my children outdoors to play. In Ludington I did this three times a day. They didn't always go, but I made the attempt anyway. Here I don't have the heart to do it. For one, right now it's Africa hot out there and for two, there are snakes. My husband keeps finding these four foot long snake skins outside in the yard. If I stopped admiring them do you think he'd stop bringing them to show to me? Last weekend I added quarter round molding to the regular molding in the bedrooms, just as an added barrier. You never know. Maybe snakes like to get out of the heat, too.

Most of all I miss my friends. The best part of our trip was seeing everyone and catching up. Email is nice but it's no substitute for sitting in the Brewpub or Chef John's and cackling loudly enough that the people at the table next to you want in on the joke.

I'm planning to visit Ludington again next year, but this time for two weeks instead of just one. That'll give me time to squeeze in a few more conversations, another beautiful sunset or two and maybe even an extra shift at the laundromat.

Cat study

Let the cat out this morning.

She peers as me, trying to figure out what I am. I reach out and cup her small head in my hand, stroke her back, all the way to her tail, surprised at the softness, and guess that my daughter took a brush to her the night before. She begins to purr.

She's wobbly on her feet, back legs collapsing with every step. Still, she twitches her tail and wanders off around the corner of the house, looking for something interesting to play with. Which is funny, considering that she's probably completely blind.

She's a study for all old people on the verge of death. A while ago I started buying canned cat food on the advice of the veterinarian. He thought she'd appreciate having something soft to eat. Then I made the mistake of changing the brand of soft food on her and she up and quit eating all together. For a couple of days she dwindled, until I figured it out. She wasn't sick, she just didn't recognize the other stuff as food, or at least, it wasn't HER food. So I replaced the new stuff with the old stuff and she went right back to lapping it up, as though she was starving, which, of course, she was.

I felt bad afterwards, that it took me so long to notice.

We've had her with us for a long, long time. Now and again we amuse ourselves trying to decide how old she is. 20? 22? 25? Old, anyway. She was around before the kids, I know this, because I remember being very sensitive to the smell of the cat food I used to have to feed them. This was before she was an only cat and one of two. The other cat, Nancy, caught some infection from her cheap cat food and thereafter, they both had to go on an expensive cat food diet, which used to give me nausea when I was pregnant. I couldn't even have the cats in the same room with me because the smell of the cat food permeated their whole bodies. I remember chasing them out of the living room. Eventually they learned to avoid me.

After I had my daughter it wasn't so bad, but by then I had other responsibilities and so there was no time for playing with cats anyway.

Now I only have the one cat left and she's not long for this world. Of course, we've written her off a few times before this and she always comes back. Once, shortly after we'd moved here she disappeared out the back door and didn't come home for days. I thought she'd been killed for sure, by an owl maybe or hit by a car. I thought someone else had taken her into their home. That was what I told the kids.

The day that I decided to clean up the litterbox for the last time and dump it in the trash was the day that she wandered back home, none the worse for her adventure. Then I knew what had happened. She'd stayed with someone else, but they didn't know the trick of living with her and could only put up with her midnight howling for a few days before they turned the gift cat loose again. She came home and we went back to our routine of buying her wet food ("How many days do you think she'll live? 6 cans? 8 cans?") and scooping her box and locking her in the back room before retiring so that when she wakes up in the middle of the night, howling because she can't remember where she is, we don't hear her at all.

Snakes

Today I plan to look out the bathroom window at the concrete steps to nowhere and see if the snake the bug man told me about is napping there in the sun. He said it was about a yard long and showed me by spreading his hands apart and then he said, "It's just a regular garden snake." He said he saw another one poke its head up out of the hole in the steps when he came out of the crawl space underneath the house. "I saw a rodent nest down in the crawl space but it looked pretty old. Probably the snakes have cleaned them out," he said. I called my husband to tell him about the snakes. I knew he'd be tickled.

I thought my sons would like to know about them, too, except I predicted Sam would refuse to leave the house again for fear of getting bit. But he just said, "Black snakes? Those are the good kind," and let it go.

I took a picture of one of them from the bathroom window yesterday. Its head was up as though it was listening. I think if I'd tried to sneak up on it from the back door it probably would've been long gone by the time I got around the corner. When I looked at the picture in iPhoto it looked larger than I imagined and smaller, too.

Steve says that a woman at work, Linda, told him that if you try to corner a black snake it will sometimes shake the very tip of its tail in the leaves to simulate a rattlesnake's rattle to try to scare you off. Part of me wants to see and hear this and part of me is convinced that the snake will chase me.

I remember a story that my dad used to tell me about when he was a boy and he and some friends convinced a boy to take a whip like stick and snap it at a nest of dozing blue racer snakes. "They came right after him and he was running so fast to get away that he got clear across the creek without getting his feet wet!" said Dad, chuckling. I could see the sun coming through the bright green leaves and smell the warm dirt along the path when he'd tell that story. I could see the boys, barefoot at the creek and I could hear the way they talked and the casual setting up of a friend to go do something that probably wouldn't kill him but would definitely give him something to remember the day by.

Lunches with Sue

Every Tuesday morning for the past ten years I’d get a call from my friend, Sue.

“Hello?”
“Yeah, it’s me. Got time for lunch?”
“Sure. Where do you wanna go?”
“What’s open?”
“I dunno.”
“The Brew Pub’s always open. Let’s go there.”
"All right. Say about 11:45?”
“Sounds good. See you then.”

Meeting in the middle of the day in the middle of the week was a ritual for us, a habit we’d formed long ago and found hard to break. Going to lunch together was so much a part of our lives that if we missed a Tuesday it would throw off the rest of our week and inevitably one of us would call the other to try to arrange another day.

“How about Wednesday?”
“No, that’s when I have lunch with Joyce.”
“Well, Thursday is Rotary, so that’s out.”
“What are you doing Friday?”
“Friday works. Is The Grand open?”
“We'll find out.”

Once we opted for breakfast instead right after Sue had pulled a twelve hour shift at the hospital but it was no good. Twenty minutes after we sat down her eyes drooped shut and I made her go home before she fell asleep in her diet coke.

We ate in every restaurant in town, although after a few years we couldn’t always remember where we’d eaten last.

“We ate there last week.”
“Did we? I forgot.”
Pause.
“Well, we could eat there again.”
“Okay. This time I’ll sit facing the door.”

It wasn’t the place or the food that mattered, although what we ordered was ritualized, too, at least for Sue. Chicken salad croissant at Scotty’s and quiche with a muffin at Chef John’s and ice tea no lemon everywhere. Now and again she’d go crazy and order a hamburger and I’d tease her about how daring she was.

At lunch we talked about the people closest to us. We talked about our kids, our parents and our friends, laying out their lives like place settings on the table. She asked me about my Dad and I listened to her worries about her mother. We bragged about our children’s triumphs and commiserated over our friends' incomprehensible desires to do things we’d never do in a million years.

And we laughed. Sue had a great, deep throated laugh that came straight up from her diaphragm. I was addicted to the sound of it. I saved up things to tell her over lunch that might make her laugh. I fattened my phrases and practiced stories in my head. And she always rewarded my efforts with her laughter.

She never questioned my facts or doubted my accounts of how a thing occurred, either. If I exaggerated here or there in the interest of making a point she accepted it. Sue was a loyal listener.

She was forgiving, too. I was late for lunch nine times out of ten, yet she never scolded me for it. She’d bring a book instead. When I’d finally arrive I’d find her patiently reading. Once, when a friend planned to join us, Sue called her ahead of time and advised her to bring a book, too.

I took lunches with Sue for granted until a couple of years ago when one of her daughters thanked me for being such a good friend to her Mom.

“Me?” I thought. “But I just have lunch with her. Every week. Rain, shine, sleet or off season.”

When I knew I was moving away the tenor of our lunch conversations changed a little. Each meal became a bit like the Last Supper in its significance.

“What’ll I do when you’re gone?” Sue asked and I tried to put it in perspective for her, patting her hand and telling her it wasn’t like I was leaving the country for heaven's sake and I’d be back. I was not yet aware of how much our hour and a half a week meant to her or to me. I was still backing away from Sue's gift, her friendship, her love.

The week before I moved, after ten years of sharing everything about ourselves -- our hopes, fears, dreams -- I told her I loved her. You’d think it’d be easier to say.

I figured we’d stay in touch via email or snail mail or by phone. I planned to see Sue once or twice a year when I traveled north or she traveled south. I was already cataloging new places to take Sue to lunch when she finally got down to see me. I thought we’d have our lunches, and each other, for a long time to come.

In the end, it wasn’t me who left, but Sue. Sue who stopped writing when she became too frail to sit at her computer, too weak to move a pen across the paper. Then, last week, she couldn’t form the words she needed to say over the phone. I said them for her.

“I’m coming."
"I love you."
"Goodbye.”

Sue died three days later, after a long battle with breast cancer. I didn't make it in time to see her before she died. But I know she's waiting for me somewhere, a book in her hand.

It's not easy to die

I think about my mother, off and on during the day. It's easier than living with her.

When I lived with her I thought about her first thing in the morning and last thing at night. I laid in my bed and worried about her. I worried that she was awake. I worried that if she was awake she would trip going down the stairs. I worried that she was taking too many pills. I worried that she wasn't taking enough of them. I worried that her blood sugar was too high. I worried that it was too low. I worried that she was too cold or too hot. I worried that she didn't have any food she liked in the house and would ask me to make a special trip to the store for her. I worried that she was going to ask me to call her doctor for her or the pharmacist. I worried when she didn't want to go to church. I worried when she went outside for a walk. I worried that I wasn't giving her enough attention. I worried that I got too mad at her too easily. I worried that I made her feel guilty.

I pulled up some pictures from last Thanksgiving and some of them were of me and some of them were of Mom. In one, we were smiling at the camera, our heads tilted together. I was wearing a hat that she'd knitted for me. By Christmas, when the next pictures were taken, I looked ten years older, faded. There are no pictures of us together.

She took a handful of her blood pressure pills on a Friday night in January. When I went in to check on her the next morning she was laying on her back in bed, her hands folded on her chest, like she'd been laid out for her funeral. I thought she was dead, and then I saw her chest rise and fall. She opened her eyes, sat up abruptly and said, "Marie? I tried to kill myself last night." I looked at her, alive and alert and I thought, "How? There's no blood. Her wrists look fine. Did she imagine it? Dream it?" and aloud I said, "It didn't work." "No," she said and got out of bed.

I'm a Pepper, you're a Pepper

"Marie?"
"Hi, Mom."
"I'm calling to tell you something."
"Go ahead, Mom."
"Did you know I'm a lesbian?"
"Yep."
"I just wanted you to know."
"You've lived a good life."
"No, I haven't."
"Well, I forgive you."
"I was going to ask you to forgive me."
"I forgive you. I love you, Mom."
"Would you tell Mary?"
"Sure."
She hangs up.

Thanks

Talked with Mom late yesterday afternoon, after playing tennis with Steve and the boys, after listening to Oliver Twist on the headphones. Oliver had it rough.

She sounded pretty good. Told me that David had dropped by and had lunch with her. She said she'd gotten her hair shampooed and set the day before. "It's a little flat in the back where I slept on it," she said but I reassured her it didn't matter. She said her cousin Richard had stopped in earlier to say hello as well. "It was before my hair was done," she said.

She told me how she'd informed her mother that she was planning to marry her cousin Richard when she was a little girl. "My mother told me I couldn't because he was my cousin. She said we couldn't have had children then. I was mad at her."

"How old were you?"

"About ten."

"You were very opinionated back then, weren't you?"

"Always have been."

Later I told Steve that it was easier to bear conversations with my Mom when she's talking about hearing voices. Then I can say to myself that it's good she's in a nursing home where she's being cared for 24 hours a day. When she sounds so sane, like yesterday, it's harder to deal with. I feel like I should pack her up and move her out of there and in with me. I talk myself out of this, usually within minutes. I know that I can't watch her all the time. I know that she has more problems than I can handle. She told me that, once. "You couldn't handle me," she said. I felt bad and a little defiant, but I believe her now.

She said she was glad I'd called, that she loved me and then she said goodbye.

Onofrio speaks

I called her just now and she said she'd changed her mind about the flowers.

"You don't want me to cancel them?"

"No."

"It's nice to have something cheerful in the room," I said, and she agreed with me. After a few minutes listening to me tell her stories about my boys, she said she was waiting for the nurse to come back because she had to talk to her. The doctor was by the day before on his rounds and she said she'd been getting instructions from Dad's father again. He's been dead for fifty years, but Mom hears him talking to her.

"He says I'm only allowed to eat mashed potatoes and graham crackers and peanut butter and I can only drink tea."

"Why does he have so much say over you, Mom?"

"He says I'm being punished because I put your Dad in this place."

"Do you ever dream about Dad?"

"Oh, not lately. Last time I dreamed about him we were dancing. Your father loved to dance."

I tried to make the case that if Dad was dancing with Mom in her dreams then he was happy and had forgiven her, if she needed forgiving, but she wouldn't have any of it. "Heaven and Hell don't communicate with each other," she said, when I suggested that she ask Dad to intercede with his father on her behalf. And Onofrio, Dad's dad, is in Hell, so my mother says.

She said she'd cancelled her appointment to get a permanent today ("I'm afraid I'll have an allergic reaction to the chemicals,") but she thought maybe the stylist might have time to give her a shampoo and set. "It's nice to have someone play with your hair," I told her. Then she said she had to get ready for lunch, told me she loved me and said goodbye.

Mailing out

Sent a letter to my mother with some pictures in it of my daughter at college and one of my sons working on a school science project. I put the pictures in the envelope after writing on the backs of them, explaining what's going on in them, maybe too much. She's not stupid.

I try to send her four pictures a week. Sometimes I get my camera out and force myself to record something, anything, so that I have something to send to her. Today I found a picture on the internet of a snowman built out of Legos. I printed it in the corner of a sheet of paper and folded it up so that it made a greeting card. I was sending her Maxine cartoons but then I found them so annoying I decided she'd probably not like them either. Some crabby old woman making nasty remarks. Mom's already surrounded by those.

Still haven't responded to the letter from Mom's cousin. I feel as though anything that I say about Mom and her condition will just sound defensive. I don't want to be defensive. This cousin was Mom's favorite person in the whole world growing up and beyond. Her best friend. How can I tell her that Mom is in a nursing home? How can I admit to her that I couldn't take care of her best friend? Because that's what I'd have to tell her. I couldn't do it. I tried and I failed to provide a home for my mother.

Instead I keep sending these little peace offerings--letters, pictures, flowers--waiting for forgiveness. Which is dumb, because she can't forgive me and I shouldn't be waiting for it. She says she's being punished for having put my dad in a nursing home. I tell her it's not true, but she doesn't believe me. I encouraged her to put dad in a nursing home because I could see it was killing her to have to take care of him twenty four hours a day. It was the only way to save her. Now it's circled around again. Putting Mom in a nursing home seems like the only way to save me.

I'll try to call her today.

Motherland

I got a card yesterday from my mother's cousin. She'd had a phone call from Mom and it had upset her, this cousin, so she'd written to me, looking for explanations. She said in the card that she was worried that my Mom was thinking about ending her life. She was looking for reassurances.

I don't really know what to tell her. Mom seems okay on the phone sometimes. Other times she calls to tell me she never loved me and not to phone her anymore. "You kids were all conceived in lust, not love," she says. She tells me that she talks to Onofrio, my father's father, and that he's the devil and he tells her to do things, awful things, and sometimes she does them.

She used to live with me, right up until the day she took an overdose of her blood pressure medications. And then she was admitted to the psyche unit at the hospital and from there she went to a nursing home close to where she used to live. And now, she's still there, making phone calls to everyone on her Rolodex, telling them not to call her.

When I think about her, which is a lot less frequently than I did when she lived with me, I try to remind myself that she's among people who know her and that she's being cared for, fed and housed, at least, if not medicated. She won't take her pills anymore. Even though they might keep the voices away, keep Onofrio from tormenting her. She thinks they make her worse. How much worse can she get?

Guilt is pointless unless it moves you to do something. I keep feeling that I should do something for her, something more than calling her, sending her flowers, pictures, letters.

Sometimes I think that she would be better if she lived with me again. But I remember how it was and how I couldn't believe that she was seriously off her rocker until she took the overdose. And then I felt so much relief when the doctors recommended a nursing home. I felt like someone else was taking responsibility for her, finally. It was as though an elephant had been lifted off my back. And I didn't much care where the elephant ended up, just so it was somewhere else.

I'm a thousand miles away from her now. My brothers are in charge of her care. I keep hoping that she would be normal again. Sometimes she sounds that way on the phone. But if I keep her talking long enough she'll slip in something about her father-in-law or about her allergy to water or about how she can't eat anything.

Yesterday she called and left a message describing the last bunch of flowers that was delivered to her room. She sounded so happy, telling me the colors and what kinds there were. She called again later. "Don't send any more," she said. There were too many and there weren't enough vases. She still had some left over from the week before. I'll check again on Friday and see if she still means it.

Word game

My oldest son has a large vocabulary, which I love, except sometimes I don't know what he's talking about. "Don't worry. I won't do a meddycore job," he assures me, regarding his thank you notes to his aunts and uncles.

Funny how a little thing like the accent on the wrong syllable can completely throw off a person's understanding. When I figure out what my son is trying to say, I correct him. "It's mee-dee-O-ker," I tell him, showing my teeth on the E’s and stressing the third syllable. "Whatever," he says, shrugging.

I like that he's so comfortable trying out new words, especially since I'm such a coward about it. Sometimes in conversation I can see the opportunity coming up to use a new word but I'll be unsure about how to pronounce it. When the space to drop the word in actually happens, I'll substitute a more familiar word or phrase that conveys my meaning, but not exactly. It’s not the efficient, new word.

Once, when I was twelve and reading a Nancy Drew book, the word "antique" showed up in the story. I pronounced it "anti-cue" in my head. I remember being puzzled by it, but it didn't seem to have any bearing on whether or not Nancy recovered from being knocked unconscious and locked in a cellar by her villainous high school physics teacher, so I never looked it up. Fifteen years later I heard it used by someone in passing and finally, it clicked. "Oh, anTEEK!" I chirped, which brought me some weird looks but lots of personal satisfaction.

Thank goodness my son isn't hung up on whether or not he's got it right. "God is omni-SESS-ant," he says. "I think you mean, omNIscient," I say helpfully. "WhatEVER," he says, grinding his teeth.

"I think all the RESS-i-pants will like these, don't you, Mom?" he told me the next morning, showing me the progress he'd made on his thank you list. "ReCIPients, and yes, they will." "Aauughh! WHATEVER!"

I once corrected someone’s pronounciation of “harassment”. Annoyed, the speaker informed me that the polite thing to do when someone mispronounces a word is to mispronounce it yourself later in the conversation. But surely that would simply reinforce the wrong way to say the word and the next person they use it on may well doubt their intelligence.

Yesterday my son and I disagreed over the word "penalize." It's PEEnalize" I told him. "No, it's PENalize," he shot back. We looked it up and discovered we were both right. "But mine is listed first," I said smugly. "WHATEVER!" he snarled.

I worry that all my knee-jerk correcting will stifle his linguistic daring. What if, because of my need to have my kids be perfect, my darling child quits talking altogether? What if he stops trying out new words because he's afraid some lurker will spring out and smack down his fledgling attempts at elegant word usage?

Last week I bought him a dictionary and put it on his desk. But lately I've been wondering if maybe he's thinking he doesn't need to look things up when he's got an obsessive compulsive mother hanging on his every word.

Like today I heard him in the kitchen talking to his brother. "The next time I tell you to stop it will be quite a bit more veHEment," he warns. "VEEhement," I say from the next room. "STOP!" he yells. I look up and he's grinning. Who needs a dictionary when you’ve got Mom?

All Lit Up

Armed with twist ties, duct tape and a glut of mindless determination, I teeter at the top of a 24 foot aluminum ladder, a coil of blue rope lights on my left shoulder. I’ve got one glove clenched between my teeth, and I’m leaning over to my right, attempting to thread a twist tie behind the vine that clings to the house. The small limb snaps and I swear at it and then look around for another branch strong enough to support ten pounds of Christmas lights, or a portion of it, at least, without lousing up what the outline of a walrus looks like from 100 feet away. It’s about 30 degrees out, the sun is putting out enough heat to cause the icicles hanging from the gutter over my head to begin to melt. The rhythmic plop plop plop of water on the hood of my coat provides a background accompaniment to my thoughts, which go something like, “If I fall off this ladder and kill myself this will have been so not worth it.”

I shouldn’t be up here at all. This is my husband’s job, darn it. I’m supposed to be on the ground, safe, out of the wind, now gusting at what feels like 50 mph, gazing critically upward as the man of the house positions lights, calling helpful advice to him, like “Over, over, over,” and “Up, up, up.” I keep waiting for the guy next door to notice my efforts and offer to take over for me. It’s what I would do if I were a man, I think to myself. It’s what my husband would do if he were here.

Unfortunately, my husband is working in another state, a warm state, a state that doesn’t get snow in the winter, a state where they decorate palm trees for Christmas and Santa wears tropical colored jams and surfs between chimneys. My husband calls three or four times a week and gives me a weather report so I can be witness to his suffering.

“It was a little chilly, today. Only 72 degrees at lunchtime. I had frost on my windshield this morning, but can you believe it? I left my scraper in Michigan.” “Did you get out a credit card?” “Nah. I just turned on the wipers and it cleared it right off.” That hardly qualifies as frost, I think, and I vow to hit him really really hard when next I see him, probably in January.

With my husband gone for the holidays I’d been toying with the idea of not having Christmas lights at all this year. I came up with plenty of reasons, some of them even good ones, like, it’s just an added expense and we need to be watching our budget more carefully now that we’re two households instead of just one. Or, it’s not like we’ve ever really had Christmas lights on the house, anyway. More like weird lights that just coincidentally got put up around Christmas time. One year my husband drew a Chinese dragon on the house that covered two sides and I worried that the neighbors would think it was a snake and burn us in effigy in the front yard. It’s a fine line to straddle, harmlessly eccentric on one side and dangerously nutso on the other. Most of the time I think we walk it pretty handily, but it’s harder than you’d think to avoid being obviously offensive. Once the kids wanted a rat on the house in lights and I had to nix it.

There are a few ideas that we’ve had that ultimately didn’t make the cut. This year’s included, a “For Sale” sign in script and a family grouping of penguins. I thought the first was too tacky, even for us, and the second was more complicated than I was prepared to attempt.

I tried to avoid the light issue altogether by telling myself that I’d be perfectly happy with just a tree inside the house this year and maybe a small display on the porch. To that end, I painted plywood dinosaurs so that they looked like snow-a-sauruses and outlined them with blue lights. The effect was less than impressive. One friend remarked, “Those are cute whatchmacallits on your porch.” I pulled the plug on them that same night.

Other factors began to weigh on me. The kids had been asking since Thanksgiving what I was planning to put on the house this year. They were feeling pressure from their friends at school. And every time I read the list of lighted houses in the paper I felt guilty that we weren't on it. The final straw was when I got dropped off at my house by Dial A Ride and the driver said, “Oh, you live here? Are you going to put lights up soon? My favorite was the disappearing cat you did a couple years ago.”

So on a recent weekend I screwed up my determination, brought down three bins of lights from the attic and strewed them around the floor. How did my husband do this, anyway? Oh, I remember. First he plugs them all in to see if they work. Then he goes to the store and buys all new ones. This not only makes sense, it also allows me to postpone the actual moment when I have to be outside in the cold by at least an hour. No problem. How long can it possibly take to do three sides of the house? Two hours? Four? I can spare that much time in the name of holiday cheer.

It actually ends up taking three days and my fingers and toes don’t get feeling back in them for another two. Still, the display definitely is up there. I purchased timers, and it’s going on and off regularly. It’s not anything like I thought it would be when I first walked around the house, visualizing where I was going to start and stop the strings of lights and what was possible. The vine itself doesn’t look like anything except a giant black scribble over hundreds of square feet of red bricks, all of it impossibly high off the ground. The final result is three light displays that disturbingly resemble pulsing one celled creatures. Christmas amoebas.

There are other problems. The lights that refuse to light up on the east and north sides of the house are a disappointment, but after thinking about it for negative six seconds I decide I'm not going back up on the ladder because a few recalcitrant bulbs decided it wasn’t their night to shine. My daughter consoles me, “The man in the moon on the front is cute. He looks like he’s winking.” Right. As for the fish on the north side, I’ve decided it’s a classic illustration of the artistic principle of closure. When someone drives by, all they have to do is squint their eyes and shake their heads a little and the lines fill in just fine. Real artists do it all the time.

I send pictures of the lights to my husband via email. “They look great!” he tells me on the phone. “They don’t look anything at all like what I’d do,” a remark which I’ve decided was probably meant to be sincere and complimentary and not truthful and tactless. The important thing is they’re done. The kids are happy and I’m happy and I hope the Dial A Ride driver is happy, too. It’s given me a whole new perspective on husbands and traditions and whether or not having a handy vine on the house from which to hang Christmas lights is the godsend it’s cracked up to be. I don’t think I’ll ever take my husband’s efforts in the decorating department for granted again. And I’m seriously rethinking my plan to transplant the vine to the next house. For one thing, the snow-a-sauruses would definitely be easier to pack.

Spuddies — Unlimited Fun in the Sack

There are only two “Spuddies” left on the porch -- the one that looks like a six-legged hedgehog and the one with four twigs sticking out of its head.

Spuddies are my sons’ answer to the question, “What do you do with a ten pound sack of potatoes, an unlimited amount of sticks and a few hours to kill on a camping trip?” In this case, they made ten little men (and one hedgehog) using Idahos, sticks, and, for one scary Spuddy, bits of glass for teeth. They brought all eleven of them home to show me and so I did what any proud mother would do. I posed them on the porch for a picture (see attached).

I like the Spuddies. I like them because they’re something that my offspring made with their own hands and I’m a hopeless fan of every hand knit potholder, ceramic dish and woven basket that my children bring me. I believe that this is due to a chemical reaction that happens to women after they have their first child and so it’s nothing for which I have to apologize or for which I need therapy. I accept that I will always gush over my kids’ handcrafted items, the same way that I accept that I will always only wear things with elastic waistbands.

I also like the Spuddies because they’re proof that my kids’ brains haven’t completely turned to cooked cereal after too much time in front of the computer. There they were, out in the woods with nothing to do, and they scrounged raw materials and built something. If they can make Spuddies it means that the synapses are still firing, their imaginations are still in working order, video games have not turned them into mindless drooling zombies. It’s nice to know that if my kids were stranded on an island somewhere, with no digital comforts, they’d still manage to find ways to keep themselves amused. It also means that they’d starve to death for the sake of playing with their food, but that’s another worry.

Spuddies are also concrete evidence that my children aren’t grown up yet. When you’re an adult and you see a sack of potatoes you think about food, or work, depending on whether you’re the eater of the food or the preparer of the food. Only a child with nothing on his mind except how to have as much fun as possible in the next couple hours could look at a sack of spuds and see potential action figures. If my kids were as mature as they’re always telling me they are, they would have been too embarrassed to make toys out of vegetables, much less bring the collection home to show their mother.

There are one or two drawbacks to your kids making their own toys. For one thing, they don’t come with manufacturer’s warnings attached, like “This Spuddy has glass shards for teeth. It is not safe at any age. Do not leave on the floor where your mother will step on it. Throw it away immediately.” The boys felt bad about my foot and promised not to experiment anymore with sharp edged models. Still, it was great lesson in applying direct pressure to stop the bleeding and I’m sure I can use their residual guilt for extra chores next week. If they show signs of slacking I can just start limping again.

I think that the Spuddies would make a terrific family camping game, except that of course, there already is Mr. Spud Head or similar on the market. We bought one years ago. It’s plastic and the parts are mostly gone. Myself, I prefer this organic version to the one that comes in a box. With Spuddies, the number of toys you can make is only limited by the number of potatoes in the sack and what you’ve got available to stick into them. And the best part is, when the kids get bored with them, you can pull out all their arms and legs and facial features and cook and eat them. The Spuddies, I mean.

I don’t think we’ll be dining on this batch of Spuddies, however. I suspect that the nine that are missing are somewhere behind the hedges that surround my porch. Probably I could find them if I looked hard enough, but it’s better to save those under-the-yews-and-in-amongst-the-creepy-crawlies searches for the spring, when all the eight legged critters are still sluggish from the cold. Besides, if they’re buried deep enough in the mulch, by this time next year I may be harvesting at least one bag of potatoes. If I’m lucky, my boys will still be young enough at heart to make Spuddies out of them.

Quality time

Today was the usual grab the stack of newspapers from the porch, the wagon from the garage and a pair of drink boxes and cookies and run out to the elementary school to pick the boys up from the bus stop kind of day. It's a good break for me. I fold the papers and listen to Nick and Sam tell me about their respective days at school. A little island of quality time in a hectic sea of work-related stress.

Nick is first in the car and I ask him how it went.

"Terrible," he says.

I immediately suspect the worst but I try to see if I can put it in perspective for him. "Was it a terrible day the whole day long, or just in the morning? Or maybe just before you left?"

"The whole day."

"What happened?"

"Some kid knocked me over."

"On the playground?"

He nods.

I think about how some people’s kids shouldn’t be allowed out on a leash. "What did you do?"

"Told the aide."

Relieved he didn't haul off and punch somebody, I praise his levelheadedness.

"What else happened?"

"I had to stay in for study class."

Dreading the advent of another behavior report, I ask, "How come?"

"We were writing something in class and I didn't finish it."

My heart plummets. "Oh, no, Nick, you're kidding."

At this point, Nick, carefully noting my reaction to this recital of the day’s events, can’t contain himself any longer. He starts laughing uproariously, holding his belly and rocking in his seat, shouting "Pulled your leg! Pulled your leg! Hahahahahahaha! You fall for it every time! Hahahahahaha."

"I hate you, Nick," I say between gritted teeth.

Now Sam announces that he's got his finger stuck in the bolt hole for the trailer hitch which has been rolling around on the floor of my car since spring. It weighs about 10 pounds and he's starting to panic because he can't free his now swollen and hurting finger.

I sigh a long suffering sigh and tell him to come with me. We leave Nick in the car and walk into the school in search of a soap dispenser. Everyone we meet along the way smiles a greeting. Nobody notices that my son is attached to a trailer hitch even though Sam is doing his best to bring it everyone's attention by saying things like, "It''s not my fault," and "It was an accident."

I locate a classroom with a sink and dribble soap on Sam's finger. Then, a little twist, and voila! he's free. He smiles a relieved smile and I begin to see how I can use this to get even with Nick. "Put your finger back in the hole and follow me," I tell him.

We get back to the car, Sam looking convincingly morose and me more grim than usual.

Nick asks, "What's going on?" and I tell him we have to take Sam to the hardware store so we can buy a hacksaw to cut his hand off with. "What?" "Yeah, the soap didn't work." "You're kidding, right? Are you really going to cut his hand off?" He's a little apprehensive but more clearly fascinated by the idea, which is right where I want him.

"Hahahahahaha! Got you! Hahahahaha! You should've seen the look on your face! Hahahahahaha!"

"Aarrrgghh!"

I love quality time.

Homeward bound

Today, in honor of my daughter’s return home after nearly a year away, I’ll do some special things. I’ll take a shovel to the living room, dust off the piano, and put her computer back on her desk. I’ll string up a banner that says, “Welcome home” and I’ll bake a cake to celebrate. I may even brush her dog.

My daughter left last August for a year in France as an exchange student and I’ve missed her every day since she’s been gone. I’ve missed her fresh face in the mornings. I’ve missed how she hides behind her hands when she laughs. I’ve missed her sitting on the end of my bed at night, reading lists of things she’s going to do the next day or next week, while I try to keep my eyes open and look attentive.

Watching my child leave home for a year was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. I cried for the first two weeks that she was gone. My husband held my hand, patted my back and handed me tissues. “How can you be so calm?” I wailed. He shrugged. “I just know that anything that happens will have already been taken care of by the time we hear about it. There’s nothing I can do from here and there’s no sense worrying.” I told him, “You’re so unnatural.”

He was also absolutely right. Eventually, I quit crying and had an existence outside the one my daughter was leading far away, sort of. I set the clock in the living room six hours ahead and then I’d look at it during the day and think, “Now, she’s getting ready for school. Now, she’s in her favorite class. Now, she’s having dinner with her host family. Now, she’s crying her eyes out in her room.”

The phone calls back and forth were difficult and hilarious. My youngest son, by mid-October, was routinely telling her how he couldn’t even remember what she looked like anymore. My oldest son would tell her how much he missed her and it would take both of them a half hour to recover. Her father, who has a little French, would talk to her about the proper way to conjugate French verbs. I would ask her how to say important things, like “stuff,” and “stalker,” and “homework.” Then, I would listen to her recite what she’d done during the week and try to sound like I was paying attention (Amazing telephone reception — she could hear my eyes glaze over, an ocean away).

For the past three weeks we’ve hosted her fifteen year old French brother here at our house. He’ll stay another week after my daughter gets back and then he’ll return home. He’s looking forward to seeing his adopted sister again. She’d written before he came and told us to take good care of him and not make fun of his accent. We promised. Instead, we’ve been teaching him useful American phrases.

For instance, recently he came into the kitchen where my husband was making dinner and asked, “What means ‘Cut it out?’ Is it, ‘Shut up?’” “No, it means, ‘Stop it,’” my husband told him, whereupon he immediately walked into the living room where my oldest son was playing the piano in a particularly atonal way and yelled at him, “Cut it out!” It makes me wonder what kinds of useful French phrases my daughter picked up last year.

My daughter’s host parents have written me that she matured a lot this year while she was gone and I believe them. I can see it in her letters home and in the pictures she’s sent. I’m expecting an older child to walk through the door today but I also know that she will be different in other ways, too.

Her view of the world has grown bigger than what’s in her own back yard. It’s not just the difference between fifteen and sixteen, it’s also the difference between making plans for the next twenty four hours and making plans for the next five years. Her horizons have expanded this year to include a whole other half of the planet and so have her goals. I suspect her lists won’t be just about what’s happening in the next couple days anymore, they’ll be about what she has planned for the rest of her life. The next time she comes to sit on the end of my bed and tell her dreams to me they might take a little while to get through. I’d better get comfortable.

Endless summer, endless chores

School’s out, summer’s here and that means it’s time to get out The Endless Chore Game.

Chores are not popular at my house. Nobody looks forward to them. Nobody appreciates the trouble I take to make sure that everyone has chores to do that will build character (“Why do I have to clean the bathroom again? I did it last week!” “Because you did a terrible job and you need more practice.”). Nobody thanks me for assigning chores that are a good fit for them (“You told me I did a great job on the bathroom this week so why do I have to do it again?” “You’re so good at it I’ve decided to make it your regular chore.”).

Chores are not easy to think of. By the second or third week of summer I’ve lost all my zeal for assigning things that actually need doing, like washing windows and weeding the garden, and I’ve settled for assigning things that can be done without direct supervision, like answering the phone or checking the mailbox.

Chores are not contagious. My children see me doing chores all the time, so how come they’re not patterning themselves after me? If you’re a reader your child will most likely be a reader, too. If you’re athletically inclined it’s a cinch at least one of your children will embrace sports. You’d think that watching me work like a dog would induce my children to sweat buckets in order to be just like me, but it hasn’t worked out that way.

A few years ago, desperate at being faced with another long summer arguing about chores, I invented The Endless Chore Game.

The Endless Chore Game has no winners or losers, just players. It’s called “Endless” because it has no start and no finish. Your game piece just goes around and around the path, until summer’s over and it’s time to put the game away.

Here’s how it works. I make a board with a circular path on it, divided into about 40 squares and I write a different chore on each square. These can be simple and boring, like scouring the kitchen sink or more complex and interesting, like making dessert for six people for less than $5.

The finished board looks like a Candyland game, only the images are more sinister. Instead of kids climbing ice cream mountains and playing under gumdrop rainbows, I draw pictures of kids mowing the lawn and washing dishes and sweeping floors. In the corner on the upper right is a shadowy adult figure, arms crossed, tapping her foot. I think it sets the mood.

I put the board on the refrigerator door and the kids use magnets for game pieces. Every day in the summer, they take turns rolling dice and moving their pieces to find out what chores they have. It’s not completely grim. The board has a few free spaces with fun stuff, like cloud watching or pudding construction or singing Old MacDonald Had a Farm on the porch in three part harmony.

This will be the third year of playing the Endless Chore Game in our family. Every summer I modify the rules a little bit. For instance, you’re not allowed to reverse direction anymore. This keeps certain resourceful players from moving back and forth between free spaces for the duration of the game, thereby getting almost no chores at all compared to everyone else. And I’m toying with the idea of assigning points to certain chores, so that if you land on the “Paint the Garage” square you don’t have to roll again for a week.

Some members of the family enjoy games so much they leap downstairs every morning and play the Endless Chore Game first thing. I think it’s the thrill of knowing you might get lucky and get no chores at all for the day. It feels like a mini-vacation almost. Some family members are less enthusiastic, suspecting that the Endless Chore Game is not really a game at all, but just a way for a certain parent to get out of having to face unpleasant realities, namely, being unpopular in the name of character building.

I love The Endless Chore Game. I even play it, although, technically, I do chores whether or not I roll the dice first. I don’t play because I lack a list of things that need to be done. There will always be chores in my life. I will always feel obligated to do them and to insist that my kids know how to do them. Chores are required. The Endless Chore Game just makes them more interesting. Well, all right, and there’s something else. The truth is, I’m still shooting for the “Sing Old MacDonald on the Porch” square, and I have a feeling this might be my lucky summer.

Hello, my name is Marie and I'm a piler.

I suffer from piles. Piles of work, piles of papers, piles of clothing. My home is full of piles.
In my sons' room there are piles of toys, piles of dirty clothes and piles of books. I ask them to pick up the piles and they do, but within 48 hours they're back again, the contents rearranged, but in much the same spots as they were before, as if there were pile magnets in the corners and under the bed.
Some piles are when-I-get-around-to-it piles. The one on top of the desk is the to-be-filed pile. Some piles are piles-in-transition. The lump next to the front door is the things-to-be-brought-up-the-stairs pile, part of which will be added to the clothes-to-be-put-away pile on top of one son's dresser and another part of which will be put on the pile-to-be-brought-up-to-the-attic.
Some piles are promises. I put photos in piles with the idea that I promise to sort them into albums at some future date.
Some piles are guilt piles. There is a pile of magazines on my coffee table that I haven't had time to read but since I bought the subscription I feel I ought to at least riffle them once before I give up entirely and throw them away.
Some piles are object lesson piles, like the pile of videos and dvds, not in their cases, which I refuse to put away because I didn't get them out and if I continually pick up after certain people in this house they'll never learn to pick up after themselves and will turn out to be pigs and no one will ever marry them and I'll be stuck with them and their piles forever.
Some piles are permanent. On the shelf of the entertainment center is an "electronics pile" where I throw headphones, game boys, joysticks and memory cards, because it's pointless to leave them on the floor all day for when certain people get home from school in the afternoons. I mean, sometimes I need to walk on it.
There are change of plan piles, like the one in the corner of the living room with stuff that I planned to sell in my garage sale which I was going to have because I thought we'd be moving, but since we're not moving, at least not any time soon, it's still there in the corner along with the pile of cardboard boxes that I was planning to use to pack up the stuff I didn’t sell.
Some piles are indecisive. Like the pile of scarves and mittens still sitting by the back door because I haven’t convinced myself that just because it’s May it won’t still snow next week.
Sometimes piles are sentimental. In my basement, I have piles of sketchbooks and letters and drawings and sculptures, things that I made or that friends sent or that my children brought home from school. Piles of feelings and memories that I can’t bear to throw away.
Sometimes piles beget other piles, like the sock basket with paired socks in it, a direct spinoff of the original sock basket that contains socks with no matches yet but might someday when the dryer decides to spit them back out.
Sometimes piles are spontaneous, like the piles of shoes, jackets and backpacks that suddenly accumulate on the floor by the front door whenever the kids come home from school.
When I had cleaning help, my piles got transformed into stacks. Once a week, the piles would go from being mixed up messes to neat and orderly stacks of like things, all the papers and books over here, all the toys over there, all the dirty clothes down in the basement next to the washer. I’d look at the stacks and feel like I was making progress with my piles because they were organized.
I admit that I have guilt over the sheer numbers of piles in my house. I’ve checked out piles of books on the subject of clearing the piles away. It always results in my feeling energized about getting rid of the piles, until I realize that until and unless I can get all the rest of my household to feel the same way, the piles will keep coming back. I’m assuming here that when half of my household leaves to start their own lives somewhere else, the piles in my life will diminish in size and scope. I know some people who thought the piles in their house were because they had kids, but when the kids left they had to admit that it was themselves and not their children who had been the pilemakers all along. I suspect I’m heading toward the same revelation down the road.
I wonder, is the propensity to produce piles genetic? Are my children doomed to have piles, too? Or is it something I can train them to avoid? How would that be possible if I’m the one that’s teaching them to make piles in the first place? Is there a twelve step program for dealing with piles? Maybe I could start one. “Hello. My name is Marie Marfia and I’m a piler.”
I’m planning on moving my office from my basement to a new space this summer and for a while I contemplated having a pile free existence. What would it be like to work in a room with no piles in it? Bare floored and with corners that I could see into, table tops with nothing on them, except of course, the pile of computers and scanners and printers that I need to do my job. Hmm. Piles seem to follow me wherever I go. But it’s fine. I have a pile of ideas about what to do about it.

We're settling in.

It's gotten easier, a little, or maybe it's just that I'm expecting less.

Today Mom has a dentist appointment. She grumbles that it's just for x-rays, "A way for them to take more of my money," although how she expects to have her teeth fixed (she needs a filling replaced) without them knowing what's in her mouth, I have no idea. "They need to support 5 hygienists, 2 receptionists and a family of four, Mom," I tell her. I feel the same way when people question my hourly rate, like I made up the amount out of a clear blue sky or something.

She seems pretty cheerful this morning. Lately she's been going to church with the old gentleman that lives next door to me, Jim. She says she puts both feet on the floorboards and grabs hold of the car door and shuts her eyes. I tell her she'll be safer if she can just relax instead. I think she's angling to get me to go back to taking her to church in the mornings. I won't cave, though. It's supposed to be Steve's job, since he's not working right now. But she thinks his driving is worse than Jim's.

My house has shrunk two sizes in the last couple months. Once, when Mom came to live here, and again, when Steve came back from Virginia. I can only imagine what it will be like in the summer, when the boys are home from school for three months, and Alice comes home from France. Plus, we're expecting to host Alice's host brother, Corentin, for a few weeks. I'm planning on moving my studio to the back of a gallery downtown, which will free up my basement to use as an additional sleeping area. It'll all work out, I'm sure. It's just hard to know where all the confusion will go. It can't possibly be contained in this one, small and getting smaller all the time household, can it?

In a lot of ways, having my mother come and stay has been like adopting another child. This one has required more than the usual adjustments. She comes with baggage. Drug dependencies, which we're working through, and anxieties, which we're trying to distract her from, and physical problems, which we're mostly ignoring, since there's nothing we can do about those until they get worse.

She's demanding, like a child, but unlike the rest of my children, she's better at getting me to do things for her. For one, she's the one that trained me, thirty years ago. With the kids, I tend to negotiate requests for things. I say, "Okay, I'll take you to your friend's house, but first you have to clean the bathroom for me." With Mom, I jump up to do her bidding, almost before she's finished framing the request. I take it back. I used to jump up to do her bidding. Now I negotiate when it will be possible to do her bidding, "I wasn't planning on going to the store today. How badly do you need diabetic milk shakes?" It's gotten less frenetic, since Steve's back home. Now he gets to do her bidding, and she's more reluctant to ask him to do things.

One morning, she stood in front of me while I sat on the couch, typing into my laptop, and said, "I want you to take me to church today." "Why can't Steve?" "I don't like to ask him." "Tough. I have to work today and he'll be happy to drive you to church. Besides, if you don't ask him, he'll have his feelings hurt." She did ask him and he did take her, but after that she started to call the man next door.

Jim's a life long bachelor. She pays him with cookies. Today's will be raisin, the lucky dog.