The Bates MoTELLA

The Very Real New and Improved Me, Part 3

I had the half-altered picture from 1992 on the screen.

I also had displayed a paragraph from Part 2 of The Very Real New and Improved Me -- the monologue in response to Hemingway, who at the moment was occupying my celadon chenille-draped computer chair with the ruffled and fringed Norfolk Garden cushion on it.  I breathed deeply in preparation for battle.  You know what he did?  He read aloud one phrase, with just the faintest tinge of sarcasm:

" ...here I lift smooth translucent silver-rimmed China teacup to tongue and lips, tip my chin to one side and muse... "

Ignoring completely the 1992 photo with the alterations that had irritated him earlier, crunching, then brushing neon orange-dusted fingers against his shirt, he said, "Do that and your tea will spill out."

The first thing I noticed was that each word he uttered, as always, was one clipped syllable.  Then I realized that, in the most absurdly linear, concrete, adherence-to-dead-fact way he has of thinking, he was right. 

I hate when he does that.

Perhaps I'd have allowed him to engage me in debate, but this particular discourse would have been dreary and far from impromptu -- not even extemporaneous.  It was, in fact, already well scripted.  And it would end, finis, where he reminded me that I failed Intro to Logic, Phil 101.  In my first year of college, well before the first Apple was on the tree, much less on a desk in the living room and plugged into the wall.  It did no good to remind him that I failed Phil 101 due to no error in logic of mine: This "class" met at 7:05 a.m., scarcely hours from the typical bedtime of any Journalism, Drama, or Art major I knew.  The fact that the Registrar and Scheduler deemed it possible to awaken, much less think, at that hour pointed to a sad lack of logic on somebody's part, albeit not my own.

Discretion being the better part of shutting up, I did that.  Eventually my husband left to chainsaw something.

The Very Real New and Improved Me, Part I

I work at Artella, on The Artella Daily Muse.  Artella is more than a job to me: It's a support network.  It's like-minded spiritual seekers.  It's friends.  It's family.  It's home.

My husband will never understand this.  He keeps saying, "But you've never met these people."

In the most insignificant factual sense, that is true.  We PM, my Artella people and me.  We email. We Instant Message. We meet at online Webinars, teleconferences. We telephone.  Never met them?  Why, only in the most superficial way could it be construed as Truth that we've never "met".

The only real glitch, a mere misplaced pebble in the cobblestone of virtual reality, occurred when Zura asked me to provide a photo for the staff directory.  A small thing, really.

But...

See, these Artella people really know me.  Photos, as you know, lie.

After wading through boxes, bins, baskets, and bedroom overhead shelves and underbed drawers for my neatly organized Creative Memories-destined photos, unfortunately wedged amongst wedding and birth certificates, tax returns, Christmas cards I'm going to do something with some day, a now classic TV guide or two, a needlepoint kit with parts missing, some crocheted daisies in a color I've never taken to, an empty nut can with stale salt and settled grease still in it, and a couple of bills I'd have sworn I mailed three years ago, I settled on the most eye-pleasing photo I had.

The truth is, given my choices, this School Year Teacher photo best represents Me.  But my husband, the little bad-mouthing demon that sits on my left shoulder arguing typically against the supportive, sweet angel-husband, all reason and light, on my right, kept agreeing with one another: "It's a great photo. Send it. So it's from 1992.  These people don't even know you."  The fact that both Hims were for it gave me great pause.

He will never understand Truth, my husband, what with his childlike fascination with Facts.  Like "virtual office".  He doesn't get that.  Or "barter pay", which he obstinately insists isn't "pay" at all, but "stuff".  (Query: What does one do with "pay" if not convert it to "stuff"?)  East Coast Going Live vs. West Coast Going to Bed -- he sees no need to meet a deadline that doesn't include a bell ringing and co-workers taking off their hardhats or storing their guns and gear.

I know our problem precisely: It's Ernest Hemingway and Sylvia Plath lunching at The Artist's Studio.  "Whale. Real. 'I am Vertical'. Who isn't? Ooh. Bearmeat Good."

Here's me: Who among us, along our nonoseconds' sojourn on Terra Firma, has not recognized that one's feet are made not of clay, nay, but of basest concrete, the petrified dung of the asphalt streets of William Butler Yeats' Lake Isle of Innisfree -- (here I lift smooth translucent silver-rimmed China teacup to tongue and lips, tip my chin to one side and muse) -- and whilst longing to be soul-kin to the good sweet earth -- real and true Self one with the grass and waters of the cosmos' gem, The Earth -- am helplessly and uncomfortably vertically aligned with foreign-minded two-legged creatures overreaching for goals as unattainable as the skies?  My husband will never, ever understand this, lounging there with a beer lodged securely between the arm of the recliner and his thigh, a remote in one hand and fried leg of bear in the other.

Sighing, realizing my choices were limited, I reluctantly elected to scan the photo and send it -- virtual courier, if you will. 

But a funny thing happened: When that 5 x 7 rose across my high-resolution screen to a larger-than-life pixelated representation of the Me that used to be, I thought, "Why, this isn't me, not me at all!"  True, there was no other acceptable option.

I pondered: How to make Me out of the Me That Once Was...

The Very Real New and Improved Me, Part 2

How...? How indeed.

Did I mention my hair used to be black?  Black as an Indian's, or a Latina's, in my youth.  I spent many a moment barefoot in little corner stores, jumping in surprise at politely but loudly proffered aid: "CAN... I... HELP... YOU... LITTLE... GIRL?" Registered their surprised looks when I answered in the English and economics of the day, "Yeah, a nickle Big Hunk, please."

Years passed.  Over time, marriage, not to mention inflation, and life, effected a hair-raising change.

At each pregnancy, I noticed stray white hairs in my raven crown of glory.  They would nag at me, and I would determine to... resolve the issue of those unruly and unwelcome white, white hairs.

The first pregnancy, I pulled out perhaps a half-dozen.  The second pregnancy, maybe twenty.   I stopped tugging at them by the third pregnancy, realizing my scalp would soon resemble the post-Moses, pre-chariot Red Sea.  I left them.

By the time I began to teach first grade, smack in the middle of what was once obsidian-black bangs, I had a grandiflora bouquet of white. But having never done more than wash my hair, VO-5 hot-oil it, or Dippity-Do and stretch it tautly over torturous brush rollers, I sighed and did nothing.

The final week of that virgin school year, I noticed at recess a few boys ominously holding court.  Being the teacher of the most irritable one, I ambled in his direction.  "I have Miz Jones," one was saying.  "She's mean."  Grumbled agreement between the waist-high.  A second student said, "I have Missuz Smith.  She's tall."  And then I heard the third youngster -- that would be mine -- say, "I have Missuz Bates."  A pause, then these two words wafted through the air, down the corridors, and across the commons: "The old one."

Before the first kid from that class woke up and said, "Hey! First day of summer!", I'd tracked down a box of black stuff to erase that splotch of white.  I'd probably have continued eternally, despite the rapidity of shade change with my affordable over-the-counter color. But I got cocky about this new me: One morning I rubbed in the magic ointment, stepped languidly into my shower, let the warm gentle rain fall luxuriously over my temples, and without warning, that black magic stole into my eyes, an event the coloring industry highly discourages.

Not quickly enough, my eyelids slammed closed.  Only my mouth was open, howling Oh NOOOOOOOO, belatedly recalling the cautionary note about ingesting said vanity poison.  You know how people in fight-or-flight moments maintain that their life flashed in front of their eyes?  At no point was my life flashing in front of any orifice or orb.  Want to know what I saw?  For real?  Headlines.

"Old First Grade Teacher Blinds Herself" 

I saw the subtitle, too:

"95th Percentile in National Teacher Exam; Can't Follow Directions"

So, this brings us to the photograph.  Almost.

Having escaped self-induced blindness, and to avoid future trauma, I sought out a professional.  Despite her ministrations, superior in quality and safety measures, every day, as with my own OTC concoction, my tresses lightened: I'd exit the salon the brunette of my youth, only to return a blonde.  One day my new friend the professional colorist, running her fingers through my hair and tsking, asked, "So why don't we just go with that?"  I shrugged my shoulders, and I was no longer Pocahontas, Chita Rivera, or Snow White: I was Heidi. Sleeping Beauty. Cinderella.  This magnificent quick-change artist taught me to hold a blow-dryer in one hand and a rounded short-bristle brush in the other to make a genuine Hair Style, too.

And along about 1992, a grown-up teacher on a good hair day, I was the proud owner of the only satisfactory school picture in the civilized world.

Then, change. A little trauma, a life issue or two, a tad of infirmity, and an unwelcome respite from teaching.  I remained blonde, but turned blowsy.  The dark waves of my youth and cleverly cropped blonde coiffure of my professional days morphed to longish crimped straw.  I came to resemble one of those massive dogs with the spate of bungie cord curls.  Still I didn't cut that hair; just grabbed, twisted, and thrust a pencil or chopstick through it.  It suited me.

We moved to a beautiful but lonesome high desert property, just east of a place on the map noted starkly as "The Big Windy".  Here I wear cut-offs and a t-shirt with the sleeves and collar ripped away.  I don't bask in the sun, which would renew that youthful tan and coincidentally soothe a person with rheumatoid arthritis, because of a dire sun-caused side effect of a medication I take for rheumatoid arthritis.  I seldom wear make-up, what with winds so strong they can rip the lipstick from your face.  I don't wear shoes for days at a time; I only go outside to hang clothes on the line, string a rope to find my way back to the house, and return through the windstorm five or ten minutes later to bring in the dry board-like clothing.  I type 90+ words a minute, so write, journal, and edit a local business's newsletter at the keyboard. Read at the computer, work at the computer for Artella, attend online staff meetings, converse by email, AIM, msn IM, site private message, a blog or two, and that marvelous invention, the telephone, with these wonderful people I've grown to love who have never seen me.

And then they ask for that darned picture.

Irritation is Relative

I'm visiting my son's family tonight.  Before my just-turned-five-yesterday grand-daughter was put to bed, I kissed her and said, "I hope my abhorrent, annoying snoring doesn't keep you awake."  She's a brilliant and loving child.  She hugged me and answered in a heartbeat, "Your abhorrent, annoying snoring doesn't bodder me."

It bothers me.  I hate it.  I mean, I really hate it. It's unbecoming, for one thing.  And it's humiliating to awaken to a blast of discordant ferry horns and smack your husband just one nanosecond before realizing the horns that awakened you were, alas, your own.

A doctor asked me if snoring was a problem.  Like...?  Well, he asked, does it result in a sleep problem?  I mused. "Yes... first, my husband keeps me awake snoring, and I wake him to complain, then when I go to sleep, I snore and he wakes me to complain, then when he goes to sleep..."

So I had what they call "a sleep study".  Ha.

Imagine, if you will, lying upon a foreign bed, in a foreign room, in a foreign building, in a foreign town.  Wait -- Imagine first that you spent 40 minutes prepping to lie down in that foreign bed.

I've never spent 40 minutes on bedtime prep in my life -- not when I worked and wore make-up and had to take it off, and not when I slept on 56 bobby-pinned-together brush rollers and had to floss around an Edsel grill's worth of metal in my mouth.

But this woman, this Sleep Study woman, prepped me for 40 minutes.

"Oh."  She said that first.  "You're wearing pajamas."   Uh... Don't most people?  "Nah. Lotsa people sleep in their underwear."  Now I said, "Oh."

"See," she continued, looking uncomfortable, "now I have to have you pull your pajama bottoms away from your body --"  Excuse me?  "-- so I can drop these wired tabs down your legs."

I learned some interesting facts that night:

1. There is a skin defoliant that, for skin cell and hair removal, rivals Agent Orange.

2. They can drop a wire down each pant leg, tape wires to your arms, tab your neck with wires on both sides, tab your face half-way into the eyebrow (handy thing to have, that defoliant), place half-a-dozen little gold cups, sharp metal side down, all around the back of your skull right about ear level (defoliant again), tighten a three-inch-wide belt around your waist, cinch a second belt under your arms and above your bosom, and tack a blood pressure monitor onto your finger with a blister-red beacon on the end bright enough to lead those ferry boats with the foghorns through the densest pea-soup on the planet, and people can still fall asleep and snore.  I know this, because I heard the other patient through the walls.

Me?  The Sleep Lady came in and allowed me to take drugs when the sound monitor (did I mention I was wired to a sound monitor?) revealed that I was alone in a bed four inches from what looked like a car battery, bawling and howling.

The sleep study was a success, sort of.  It did reveal that I have trouble sleeping.  It also apparently confirmed that, once heavily sedated, I snore.  Unfortunately, there was not time to try the treatment (Oh, please tell me it has metal suction cups, takes defolient and gel, and has a four-inch lead to a giant electric device!), what with her having to wake me up in the middle of REM sleep to shove me out of the clinic and put me in my car.

But there is a device that might help me; it's called something like a C-PAP. (My daughter-in-law said, "Ohhhhhh, yeah: a nose-hose...")  I'm told it could significantly reduce the abhorrent, annoying snoring.  However, we may never get to find out. 

See, turns out they can only try the device upon immediate evaluation of electronic data determined through defoliant, gel, metal cups, straps, wires, and blood pressure beacon to medically confirm that, yes, that shaking of walls and/or shattering of windows is me, snoring.  Bottom line: I need to schedule a whole 'nuther night with the Sleep Lady.

It may be a while.  Meanwhile, my husband and I bought artillery ear plugs.

 

Real Families

This family at church had befriended us. We couldn't believe it! They must have searched hard to find a reason to like us, since there was such a huge cultural gap.

See, they weren't just a family -- they were a real family.

In our world, a real family had a man married to a woman and they both went to church. The same church -- none of this I'm Southern Baptist but he's American Baptist, much less I'm Hindu and she's Church of the Rented K-Mart. A real family tithed, a sure clue that somebody had a job. A real family owned a vacuum cleaner and a lawn mower, and relatives trusted them enough to loan them a weed whacker. Or, say, a Tupperware with its original lid.

In a real family, everybody's vision and dental and vaccinations and haircuts were up-to-date, including the dogs. And even the husband. A real family paid somebody else to do their taxes, or if they did it themselves, they didn't get a corrected copy with "1 income 0 itemized -- you trying not to get it?" scribbled rudely on the form.

Most important of all, a real family had a big car. Before The Plague Of Vans, a real family had a roomy station wagon. There were a couple of children to stick in carseats, way before carseats were a law, and when the carseat stage ended, they graduated to seatbelts.

And real families had Grandmas and Grampas who fought over who got to watch the grandkids.

We were hosting. That's what it was called when you had to buy the food and sweep the floor and wear shoes and put on support garments. Had we been a real family, we might have splurged and purchased new table linens and a nice floral arrangement. College students who were real families might have gone out on a limb and bought a five-and-dime tablecloth and marked-down flowers in a plastic vase. Not us. We went money mad and got meat. And not the 78% lean, either: this was high grade stuff, nearly 87% lean. We also got frozen vegetables -- the fancy ones in their own little cooking bag, not sea-weed-textured canned green beans.

Boy, were we excited. We pulled out all the stops, which is to say we sprayed off two chairs from the side yard and dragged them inside. We watched for our visitors like kids watch for Santa. Finally! They were here! Then, as if Santa started tossing white socks and mouthwash down the chimney, these people threw open their sleigh-sized station wagon and unloaded a mega-sack of diapers, a thick cylinder of shiny plastic, two high chairs, two strollers, a playpen and a porta-crib, two baby swings, and something indescribable that needed to attach to something that, it turns out, we didn't have. I failed Philosophy I: Logic in college, but even I figured out early on that they were going to unload Something that needed that stuff.

We looked at each another, my husband and I, dumbfounded. Kids? Did one of us accidentally invite kids? Kids would be in here? Where was Child Protective Services? Where were those old liars begging to babysit their grandkids? And with less leg room in our apartment than in the back seat of their 'wagon, we wondered if they were up for leaving that stuff in the yard.

Suddenly I had a near crisis of faith. "Oh God, let her be breastfeeding," I prayed fervently, and apparently out loud. My husband backed up from me and stared. "The food," I said. "If those kids eat food, we're done for." I jumped into the kitchen (Really. One jump.) and tried to count the beautiful veggie pieces in the boiling, bouncing bag. I gave up only when I got to long division.

You live and learn, they say.

Breathing normally, finally, and watching the station wagon burn rubber down our little street, we shook our heads in amazement: Apparently a real family automatically brings their kids when they're asked over for dinner.

My husband and I remember this day still. We remember that when I said, "Wow! You brought a tarp to protect our floor from your babies!" they looked at me funny. I'm still ashamed that when she asked if I had more of those cute little vegetables the kids liked so well, I was furious and stood at the stovetop trying to calculate how many bites that cheated the grownups. We also remember that when I brought them a stingy little serving of boiling bag veggies, my husband casually remarked, "Hey, why'ncha set it on the floor and save the kids the effort of throwing it there?" We remember that I laughed, and I was the only one.

And just one more thing: We remember our surprise to realize that a ton of baby stuff goes into a station wagon twice as fast as it came out, once somebody figures out the difference between a real family and wannabes.

Being Special

I've always felt that the opinions, emotional stability, and happiness of other people are pretty much my responsibility.

Psychologists say it's typical of an only child, an understandable characteristic developed when you're raised as an extension of over-invested adults. Other more insightful people believe it's a trait of godly saints and self-sacrificing servants, shared by folks like Joan of Arc and Mother Theresa, or Mahatma Ghandi and Democrats.

Now I'm not my parents' pet poodle or resident sword swallower, I know that. And I don't consider myself more godly than most plain old regular people - oops! Ha ha! I guess that was a slip! I confess, I've always just believed I'm a little special. It comes as a shock when others don't agree, or when they indicate I'm special in a whole ‘nother kind of way.

I've heard it said to others, "Gosh, I've never seen you this dressed up!" and "You clean up good!" and "Girl, I knew deep down you were hot!" But my teeth still grind when I recall the first woman (not the only woman) who said to me, "You looked so pretty I didn't recognize you!"

I don't mean that kind of special.

I was visiting these relatives for the first time in decades. There were five or six of us, but I was the only one from the west coast. Not having anything new to talk about, they were soberly considering the cost of grain and what's showing at the movie house. I felt a spiritual obligation to entertain them. The cousin closest to my age looked agitated, true. But my great-aunt and her household hung on my every word and laughed out loud when I threw in hand motions.

When it was time for me to leave, they hugged me tight. And my great-aunt was beaming when she said, "Honey, it's been a long time since we listened to you all night." It sounded sweet. But it didn't feel sweet. It certainly didn't applaud me for the responsibility I'd felt to entertain them.

Say, remember Janet Reno? At the time, people seemed excited about her appointment as Attorney General. When some friends said I reminded them of her, I thought proudly that these ladies must clearly know the responsibility I bore for their welfare. How could I not feel special?

I still felt special, although not in the same way, when I heard why. Seems like some other officials were in trouble for hiring "illegals" to clean their homes, in return for low wages and a promise not to inform INS. One of Janet Reno's friends went on record saying, "That's not something you'd ever accuse Janet of doing. Anybody who knows her would tell you her place hasn't been cleaned in years."

Special people, special skills, special spin on household tasks.

Have you ever thought about how special people tend to have special kids? Everybody knows this, but people don't always agree on which kind of special.

We were visiting a new church, and Lee, our littlest, was about 14 months old. He wasn't a big kid, but he was what people like to call "busy". Someone in the foyer said, "What is he, about a year old?" Yes, that's about right. "Closer to two he'd go to this room right here. Closer to one, those babies are around the corner."

You can imagine how pleased we were when we picked up Lee after church and a rosy-cheeked grandma swept forward to talk with us.

"We want you to think about placing Lee in the room with the older preschoolers," she said, smiling brightly. "In fact, we encourage it."

My husband and I glanced at one another. We knew how exceptional our little guy was; now finally, someone else was confirming it. We were prepared to be outright proud.

"Yes," she continued, her smile never dimming. "We think your son would be happier in a room where the other children are better able to defend themselves."

Special. Well, you can't say my son isn't as special as I am.