Bob
Makes Quite a Splash at his
Reunion
My
husband, Bob, accepted an invitation to his high school
reunion. He had no stereotypic concerns about weight,
financial status or hair loss.
Or so I
thought.
Until
Sears delivered the weight set.
“You look
terrific,” I said later, putting an ice pack on his aching
lower back. Then I cleaned the sink before the cat could lick
up the Gray-Away stuff he had slathered on his hair.
“You mean
for someone my age.”
“No,
honey. Well, yes.”
“I was a
nerd in high school.”
“I’m not
sure weight-training will change
that.”
“You mean
I’m still a nerd?”
“No,
honey. Well - ”
By the
day of his reunion, he lost 15 pounds and had grown a beard.
I’ve learned that all men, upon attending reunions (or getting
divorced) lift weights and grow
beards.
Now, I
know you won’t believe the following really happened, but I
promise you it did.
The
informal reunion was at a classmate’s house. Bob brought 3
cases of soda. When we pulled up, he asked me to pile all 3
cases into his arms. “It’s too heavy,” I said, but he thought
he’d look unmanly if he brought them in one at a time. I can
still see him, trudging up the front steps with the mega-tons
of soda. With each step he slowed down. He wobbled a little to
the left and then to the right, sort of looking like Lucille
Ball trying to balance a gigantic fruit bowl on her head in a
MGM slapstick musical extravaganza.
“I’ll
help,” I said, but that was an unfortunate gesture on my part.
Because as he approached the last step, he turned to me and
said, “No thanks,” which resulted in him losing his balance.
All 3 cases fell and exploded on the top cement step, after
which gallons of soda cascaded down the stairs in a massive
bubbling waterfall of fizz.
Somebody
went to buy soda as we all met for a backyard barbeque. Bob
lit a huge mound of charcoal. It burned brightly – very
brightly – too brightly. As a classmate ran to put the top on
the grill to squelch the inferno, Bob took this opportunity
for his pivotal manhood moment. Like Superman, he dashed to
find a hose then raced with it to the flames. But he hadn’t
taken the time to notice that the hose was curled around the
wrought-iron table that held hot dogs, hamburgers and
basically everything we were supposed to
eat.
All I
could think of to do was yell, “Bob! The hose!” but that
didn’t do any good. In a display of fearless youthful
masculinity, he called out to everyone, “I’ve got it!”
I
helplessly watched the hose tighten its grip around the base
of the table as Bob sprinted toward the fire, nozzle in hand.
And in ever-so-slow-motion, the table fell over, dumping food
for 45 people – most of which landed in the swimming
pool.
I learned
some important things that day.
1. When
everyone said to Bob, “You haven’t changed a bit,” they
weren’t talking about his
looks.
2. It
doesn’t matter if we’ve put on a few pounds over the years.
Who hasn’t? It doesn’t matter if we’ve become heads of
businesses or our hair is thinning. What matters is that we’re
happy.
3. Hot
dogs float.
Top
of Page
Does a Man Need to
Grow Things?
You know the really nice feeling that comes when you
walk in the yard and see a pansy that has wintered over? I
envy you. The only things that winter over at my place are
fruit flies in my kitchen. My little year ‘rounders are a sign
to my husband Bob that “it’s working”. And what is it that’s
working? A repulsive heap of decomposing food he keeps in an
charming cauldron and refers to as compost.
I figure that this big ugly clay jar on the counter,
filled with molded food which has changed color at least twice
since we declared it a leftover, partially satisfies his
male-oriented need to grow things.
He used to fulfill more of this need with his foot-long
ponytail. Last month, in a solemn ceremony (rivaled only by
the burial of my hamster when I was three) I cut it off. No,
this is not because of any pathological drive on my part to
sever male appendages, but I promise I will give that some
further thought.
He hasn’t liked the ponytail for years, but the reason
he kept it growing was because of my mother. You see, she
hated the thing. And what could be more motivating than that?
I only pray his pierced ear did not play a part in her demise,
although she repeatedly assured me that it would. Since his
haircut, he’s had two nightmares. In both, he’s heard her call
down from heaven, “It’s about time!” and he’d wake up shaking.
Bob couldn’t stand it when my mother was right, which she
always was and obviously still is.
The night we snipped, Bob went into a funk. Around 2
am, I found him in the kitchen. He was pouring himself a shot
of whiskey from a bottle we’ve had over ten years. He drank it
in one gulp. After he finished choking, I held his
hand.
“I know it’s hard,” I said.
“It took seven years to grow.” Then he went back to the
whiskey bottle, picked it up, changed his mind, and put it
down. He opened the freezer and found a bag of mini Milky Ways
and began stuffing five in his mouth at a
time.
“Honey. Don’t do this to yourself.” I wrenched the bag
from his hands. “Binge eating on candy is just a temporary
fix. You can’t hide your feelings in chocolate. It won’t
help.”
“But you always stuff yourself with peanut butter and
Ritz.”
“That’s different. That
helps.”
Bob has a garden. I’d like to say that he grows
vegetables from all his labor, but the fact is he doesn’t. The
few cucumbers he’s brought to the dinner table were already
shriveled and looked pickled. The only perennials he’s managed
to produce annually are woodchucks.
So why
does Bob continue, year after infertile year? Does it stem
from a man’s need to grow things? I’ve heard that the basis of
this is the male jealousy of the female’s ability to bear
children. Giving birth provides women with a sense of
continuation of life. But I bet that this pregnancy-envy and
it’s female counterpart would never stay in the psychology
books if, in fact, each gender was given the experience they
sub-consciously wished for.
One afternoon I found Bob at the dump asking strangers
for their bags of leaves, which he uses as fertilizer. He
lumbered over to my car, obviously in a crabby mood. I figured
since he was carrying a garbage bag and scowling, he was
probably upset about something way over the top of the stupid
scale.
“See him?” He pointed to a fellow in a red sedan.
“These are his leaves.” He lifted the
bag.
“Uh huh.” I looked up at him.
He shook his head. “There are pine needles in with
these leaves.” His mustache was
sweaty.
“Oh . . . well. I guess that’s a problem, wouldn’t you
say?”
He was incredulous. “Don’t you remember last
year?”
“Well, I . . . ”
“You don’t know what I’m talking about, do
you?”
“I do, Bob. Really important leaf problems . . . I
remember. Right?”
“Of course! The pine needles. Everybody knows how
acidic they are.”
“Yes, we all know.” I softly touched his hand and
dabbed his mustache with an old Burger King napkin. “But it’s
all over now, sweetheart.”
Bob spends lots of time watching me like a sentry, lest
I throw vegetables in the trash and not in the compost jar.
This drives me nuts. So instead of dealing with my anger
directly the way healthy people do, I get an enormous
passive-aggressive kick out of sneaking inappropriate things
into the jar.
Once I put a miniature helium balloon in there before
putting the lid back on. When Bob opened the jar, it flew up
to the ceiling casting stringy spinach spittle all over the
kitchen. Another time, I bought one of those talking greeting
cards that lets you tape your own message. So I put the
microchip in the jar after recording the cat doing her crazy
night yowls. I was in the bedroom when he opened the lid, but
I could still hear that night’s surplus of stewed tomatoes
plop onto the floor before hearing Bob say to our dog, “Your
mother’s a lunatic.” I know this is all very sick.
Not often enough, he empties the jar out back in a
stinky pile of decaying matter. This attracts all the cute
little mice in the universe. Don’t believe what you read about
the building boom causing a decline in the country’s skunk
population. They’re all having an antipasta blow-out bash in
my back yard.
I really hate the compost.
Once I tossed two carrots in the garbage. Bob was
behind me.
“Wait just one minute!” he
said.
“Pardon?” I did a slow turn, postponing the
inevitable.
“What did you just do?” he asked. I remember saying
that to my first puppy a lot. “That was,” he searched for the
right word, “wasteful!”
I felt shame.
“You took my garden’s vitamins and you threw them
away.”
I hung my head, feeling
terrible.
“It’s not funny.”
“I know it’s not funny, Bob.” Whenever he said that, I
had the uncontrollable urge to laugh. Please stop talking
about compost, I said to myself as I cough-laughed into a
towel.
“There’s something I’ve kept inside that I need to
discuss with you,” he said, while retrieving the carrots from
the trash.
Now he picks the time to respond to my chronic ‘don’t
harbor your feelings’ shtick.
“Yes?” A little hyena yelp came out from my
throat.
“You always say that I shouldn’t keep my feelings
inside.”
“Well, Bob, sometimes it is, actually, better to keep
them in. Like your compost. You let things build up and rot
and in the long run, you’re a better person for
it.”
He
ignored this. “I know about the pepper
relish.”
That did it. I clutched my stomach, pretending to
heave, buried my face in the towel and ran out of the
room.
So, do men need to grow things? Yes. I guess most,
though not all living things like to nurture. (I have seen my
angelfish eat their babies.) But nurturing can take so many
forms. It’s not just the raising of young, but the
participation in creation such as helping a seed find the sun,
building a storage shed you never thought you could, or making
a sandwich with ingredients you like, but you’ve never heard
of anyone combining. And ultimately, there’s the need - no the
joy - in taking care of something or someone.
But what about the man who can’t grow anything at all?
Is he forever caught in the frustration of
attempt?
“Why do you continue?” I finally asked one night, as we
shared Stop & Shop summer-fresh salad
bar.
“I like it.”
“But
you never get what you want.”
“Oh, but I do.”
I looked out the window behind him. There were four
baby woodchucks playing in the Pest-Repellent Motion-Detector
Water Sprayer blasting in the empty-podded snow pea area.
After dinner, I watched as Bob walked into the back
yard. First, he put the sprinkler on so the cucumber seeds
might sprout. Even from the kitchen table, I could see the
shimmer of a rainbow in the spray. Then, at the opposite end
of the garden, he took out some sort of wedge-type garden tool
and made furrows every few feet. When he was finished, the
large garden had fourteen rows. Then he knelt down and made
one hole in the first row. He reached in his shirt pocket and
took out a seed, probably a squash seed, and gently placed it
in the earth.
I watched him for over an hour. And when he was
through, I could tell he was tired. But I could also tell what
he meant about getting what he wants. He turned off the
sprinkler and unhooked it from the hose. Then he took a long
drawn out drink from the hose, washed the mud from his hands
and his boots, and came back in. Stiff and sore and
exquisitely satisfied.
Top
of Page
Who Wouldn’t Want to
be a Millionaire?
I bet I’m not
alone in this game show co-dependency crisis. I know it’s my
husband’s mental illness, but clearly I’m a part of the
problem.
The obsession
began way back, when Bob would watch Jeopardy once a week.
This rapidly escalated to every night. Then he went to harder
stuff. A portable computerized Trivial Pursuit
game.
At friends’
houses, he’d sneak out to play it. But it made electronic
noises. I’d make up excuses to cover up for his beeping. I’d
say, “He’s got stomach problems.” I was in denial - big
time.
Then Regis came
into our lives and I couldn’t kid myself any
longer.
“I can stop
anytime,” Bob whispered, as we were having dinner with
company.
“Then stop now.”
I took the remote and sat on it.
“Just one more
show.” He tried to get the remote. I squirmed to secure it.
With a stupid
smile I said, “I can explain this,” to our friends who looked
scared, while Bob knelt by my side burrowing after the remote
as I wriggled. They left before
dessert.
So Bob wasn’t
ready to quit. Every day, at 4 PM, he’d call the game show’s
800 number and try to qualify by answering 3 questions
correctly. Know what? He always did. That meant that he had to
be available by phone from noon till 3 the following day.
Then, with any luck, he’d get a call that he was picked from a
random drawing to compete again and hopefully go to New
York.
“I need the
phone,” I said one day, when it was time to find out the
results of my recent biopsy.
He looked at his
watch. “Can’t it wait?”
“No!”
“Look,” he said,
“if something’s wrong, it will still be wrong after three
o’clock.”
It was then that
I knew that the disease had taken over Bob’s mind and left a
big doo-doo-head in its place.
“Sweetheart,” I
put my hands around his face and pivoted it from the phone to
me, “you need to acknowledge your illness. And I’m going to
stop being an enabler. I’m not going to make excuses for you.
I’m not going to lie. And when you lose the remote control,
I’m not going to find it.”
His face
contorted, in what first looked like pain, then I saw the
tiniest tears form in his eyes. He put his head in his hands
and began to sob, realizing the depth of his dependency. Now,
he was ready to face his recovery bravely. He looked at me
with an expression of pure, almost religious agony and said,
“Is that your final answer?”
I flushed the
remote down the toilet. Then, with astute clinical finesse, I
took the pot which had the lukewarm remnants of this morning’s
coffee, and dumped it on his head.
“Why do you want
the money?” I asked later, when we were speaking
again.
“Wouldn’t you?”
“Well, it would
be amazing to have enough money to never have to worry.” We
sat on the couch sharing milk and frozen Christmas chocolate
chip cookies. “And when we couldn’t pay our bills, we were
very unhappy.” I wrangled the spare remote from him. “I know
that only people who have money say money isn’t everything.
But there’s something I’ve never told you.” I removed the
batteries. “The two most depressed people I’ve ever met were
both millionaires. Money made a huge difference, but it didn’t
make them happy.” I dropped the batteries in the milk. “What
you’ve always really wanted, Bob, you have today.” I looked at
him adoringly and he looked at me the
same.
“What!? Your
inheritance finally came through? HOLY GUACAMOLE!” And he took
the remote, flung it in the air and bounced out of the room to
call in a celebratory pizza.
I think Bob needs
a little work, don’t you?
Top of
Page
Home Depot: Home Away From
Home
Have you noticed when one thing breaks in your
house, it’s as if there’s an airborne virus that slinks into
everything breakable and infects them
too?
The latest was the kitchen sink. It wasn’t
draining. My husband Bob went to Home Depot. (Trip #1.) He
bought a plunger and unclogged it . . . he thought. After he
washed the 4 cats’ bowls, containing majorly icky “by-product”
of tuna (don’t think about it), the sink was once again
filled. He used his chainsaw, also broken – but just repaired,
and cut plywood to cover the sink so the swarming cats
wouldn’t drink the putrid tuna-ish
water.
Then he opened the cabinet underneath and
removed the pipe, expecting that the clog would simply drop
into his cute little bucket. He forgot the covered sink was
full. What came out was a deluge of repulsive fluids that made
a beeline to the living room. With no time to mop, we used
every towel we had.
“Sweetheart?” I said, while he was under the
sink putting the pipe back. “Let’s call a
plumber.”
Smashing his head on the counter, he came out
from under and snarled, “I can do it myself!” Drano was nixed
because of chemicals. He got the garden hose, snaked it
through a window, put it into the drain and turned it on. Not
only did the pipe underneath burst, a geyser blasted from the
sink.
“Sweetheart?” I said gently, “How about going
back to Home Depot and buying something that unclogs
drains?”
He did. (Trip #2.) He bought something called
Drain King. It’s a 5 inch long thick rubber balloon that’s
flat. You connect it to your garden hose; insert it into the
drain and turn on the water full force. Then the balloon
expands. “Powerful pulsating jets of water will loosen and
flush blockage down the drain.” It was such a “dirty” shame
that Bob didn’t read the instructions. Had he read them, he
would have known to insert it WAY down the drain – as in –
near the clog. Instead, he stuck it in an inch. What do you
think happened when he turned on the water full force? It
backed up with amazing velocity and we had another ferocious
geyser of water that rapidly proceeded on its already
established route to the living room. In attempting to remove
the now-damaged Drain King, he broke the pipe under the sink
(again).
“Sweetheart?” I said, even gentler than before.
“Why don’t you go back to Home Depot, get another pipe and for
$12 another Drain King?” He did. (Trip #3.)
Unfortunately, the night before, we had pork
chops. We had stored the dirty plates in the oven, which now
emitted quite an aroma. Trust me. It wasn’t like the
fragrantly rich autumn scent of smoke from wood-burning fires.
It was more like summer-hot dead
meat.
I felt sorry for him so I figured the least I
could do was wash dishes. Would you have remembered there’s
nothing to hold water, like a pipe, under the sink? I didn’t.
I was breathing through my mouth while rinsing the rancid
roast pan when I felt my slippers getting drenched.
Bob came home with the pipe, but he was bowled
over in hysterics. His laughter had such a maniacal tone; I
was scared he had gone nuts. Trying to get the words out while
gasping for breath, he said, “I left the Drain King on the
check-out counter!” Now we were both out of control attempting
to catch our breath in side-splitting manic
hilarity.
(Trip #4.) I drove, as Bob sat next to me
trying to stop some weird gag reflex while laughing like a
lunatic.
Here’s what I learned and therefore suggest,
when it comes to clogged
sinks:
1. With recent world events, we must appreciate
things we take for granted, like working
sinks.
2.
There are generally 100 more plumbers in the Yellow Pages than
there are Psychiatrists.
3.
Call one.
4.
If you're married to someone like Bob, call the
other.
Top of Page
"So What's The
Worst That Can
Happen?"
I’m tired of being a
tragedy-oriented person. So last month I decided I’m no longer going to always
expect the worst.
That said, a few weeks ago I
was cutting pears for dessert. I heard the buzz of my husband
Bob’s chainsaw. “He’s cutting down a tree,” I said to myself.
“He’s fine.” I kept slicing. “Fine, fine, fine, fine.” I heard
the tree fall. “I’m not checking on him.” I took a little
sliver out of my thumb. During this bloody episode, my
“normal” self had a minute to slip in, accompanied by the
sirens of the God of
Neurotica.
“A limb went through his
heart,” they called from my not-very-sub conscious.
I answered, “No. He’s
fine.”
“He sawed into a swarm of
killer bees and they’ve sucked out his
eyes.”
“No.” I continued with the
pears.
“He’s
DEAD!”
OK. That did it. I looked
out the front door but couldn’t see Bob. And that was because
he was lying on the ground . . . under the fallen
tree . . . with a broken leg.
I ran to him and cradled his
head in my arms as he tried to speak. He opened his
tear-filled eyes, looked up at me while in agonizing pain and
whispered, “Please don’t write about this.” I promised I
wouldn’t. When people are in shock, they forget everything so
you can promise anything you
want.
So now Bob’s in a cast and
can’t do much. But that’s OK, because I won’t let him do
anything that requires heavy equipment, such as spoons.
Judging from something he said last night, I think I’m getting
on his nerves.
He said, “You’re really
getting on my nerves,” and hobbled off to the kitchen. where
he got the can opener for the coffee. I grabbed it. “I’ll do
that.”
He took it back. “I’m nearly
helpless and you’re making it
worse.”
I pried it out of his hands.
“It’s good to share your feelings, Bob.” I opened the can.
“Getting rid of pent-up emotion is good for the colon, and
aches and pains in
general.”
“Well, I do have one big
pain . . . in the
neck.”
And so, we haven’t been able
to do things together like take long drives or go hiking. Last
week, we went to Friendly’s and shared a hot fudge sundae in
the front seat of our truck. We giggled while having the
delightfully forbidden ambrosia. Later, I emailed my pal Deb,
and told her that we didn’t do anything today - just had ice
cream. She replied, “I hope your ice cream was magic.”
I told Bob about her
message. He was on the couch, trying to scratch under the
cast, but he couldn’t. Then he was having a hard time, I could
tell, asking me to do yet another favor for him that day. He
wasn’t even able to get his own Kleenex or play tug-of-war
with our dog and her favorite stuffed hedgehog. And he was
obviously so sick of
this.
I sat by him and massaged
his foot. “Hiking in the woods would have been a lot more
magical than ice cream,” I said.
But then, as I often do, I
pretended to look down at this scene from above. I saw two
cranky people cloistered inside, not enjoying the gorgeous
autumn day. And then, a new scene slowly washed over. I saw a
tender moment in time with me scratching Bob’s leg as we sat
quietly in our home. I saw the vibrant fall colors of the
bittersweet, in full bud right outside our window. I saw a man
with a broken leg that would surely improve with time. And I
knew how lucky we were to be together, on this day that dreams
are made of, when we joyously shared an ice
cream.
If
that’s not magic, I don’t know what is.
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Page
Bob's Garden: An Exercise in
Fruitility
“October crop of
raspberries is ripe,” I called from the back garden. I heard a groan from
Bob, then the squeal from a broken spring on the living room
couch as he slowly plied himself up.
“Be careful what you wish
for, you might just get it,” I trilled, as we lumbered with
our buckets to the raspberry patch. The overabundance has
resulted in two wonderful things, which I’ll tell you about in
a minute.
What’s important to know
first is the following:
until the raspberries, nothing grew in Bob’s
garden. OK, I’m
being my pre-therapy black or white self. Rabbits grew. So did snakes and
moles. (If you
ever see a mole, you will ask yourself, “What was God thinking
when he made this?”)
Electric fences grew two
feet per year.
Once I had to distract Bob from looking out the window
at 2 AM, by lighting a match
