Strangers Like to Dine with Me

Try to have a little sump’m & cain’t.

That’s a hangdog expression (culled from my in-laws and their parents) that my husband and I jokingly use on occasions when some modest attempt at enjoyment goes wrong.

Well, this past Sunday, my husband, son and I decided to have lunch at Taco Bell—and I think you’ll agree that enjoyment doesn’t get a whole lot more modest than that. There were maybe three other families eating at the same time and we were all on one side of the restaurant, so that means the whole other half was completely empty. Brian and Brandon were seated in chairs, but on my side of the table was a long bench, serving several tables which were separated by no more than a foot of so of empty space.

So there we were, minding our own business, when a lone Pentecostal woman decided to ignore the entire empty side of the restaurant… and plop herself down beside me on the shared bench-seat. Sure, she had her own table-top, but the point is, she was mere inches away from me. She was invading my personal space! Also, since she was by herself, there was nothing for her to do but listen to our conversation. Brian was talking, but we both widened our eyes at each other, telegraphing, “WTF?” Then we fell silent, and shook our heads in disgust. Try to have a little sump’m & cain’t.

This stranger-in-my-space thing happens to me often. Brian and I once nearly spewed our lunch from trying not to laugh out loud at the sudden invasion of an uninvited table-sharer at Mamie’s Kitchen. And just last week, I was trying to write at Dunkin Donuts—a place I had especially selected for its lunchtime emptiness. With my notebook and papers spread in front of me and earbuds plugging both ears, I was doing everything short of posting a sign that said Leave Me Alone when another Pentecostal woman once again ignored the entire empty restaurant and chose the table right next to mine, which makes me nervous when I’m trying to write.

I originally feared that both of these women were working up their nerve to proselytize me, but that was not the case. The lady at Taco Bell did alarm me momentarily by slumping into a sudden seizure-like prayer over her burritos. She was probably just blessing the food, but I for one hoped that she was whispering, “Dear Lord, please get all those stray cats out of my house so my clothes can quit smelling like old urine.”

Goats

My new friend Amanda lives in New York City, and though I haven’t seen her in her home environment (we met elsewhere), I’ve started to think of her whenever something especially Southern crops up in my life. Of course, you have to be careful about talking to New Yorkers as though they’ve never seen a blade of grass—I imagine such assumptions are as insulting to them as are assumptions that Southerners have never seen a big city.

(Once at my former job, a bigwig from the corporate office in NY came to join us for a holiday meal. His idea of a way to get acquainted with us bumpkins was to gaze glumly around the table and ask, “So. What’s the farthest from here you guys have ever been?”)

Still, I keep finding myself thinking, “I wonder what Amanda would think of this.” Or, “I bet this would seem weird to Amanda.” Congratulations, Amanda, you are my official representative of the city of New York.

So I could not help but think of her when, one day last week, a coworker of mine received a telephone call from a neighbor, alerting my coworker that her goats were on the loose. It was raining heavily that day, and the mental picture of my short, round coworker stampeding around the yard trying to rustle wayward farm animals was hilarious to me. (Though she told me later that they actually began turning circles of joy as soon as they spotted her car.) It must be hard, I suppose, for one to maintain a professional demeanor at the office, knowing that one might be called away at a moment’s notice to corral one’s goats. I bet that never happens in Manhattan.

Props to the Hubs

Yesterday my husband said the perfect thing, and I am so proud of him that I want to tell it to you.

Since I was a teenager I've struggled with depression of various kinds, but most particularly seasonal depression. Fall is doom to me--everything is dying, the world outdoors seems dangerous and unfriendly, and there's nothing to look forward to but increasing cold and the expensive hassle and stress of Christmas. (BAH, humbug!)

So yesterday, partly due to legitimate life circumstances but also probably because the weather felt chilly, I really sank into a low mood. So many things have been running around in my mind for the last couple of weeks that I felt the need for somebody to talk seriously to, but I couldn't figure out who the perfect person would be. My mother is in the nursing home...my favorite coworker is many years younger than me...my best friend has five kids and enough problems of her own. I have no siblings and I ruled out my cousins for various reasons. I imagined myself talking to a counselor, but that's only a fantasy because I actually tried it once and found it totally icky.

It occurred to me that Brian was the person I wanted to talk to, but at first this made me feel worse because I thought he wouldn't want to listen. I thought if I approached him and said I needed to talk(because we all know men dread those words), he would say (or think) "Oh God, what now? What is it this time?" I thought he'd be defensive and think I was blaming him for things that were bothering me, or that he would argue back that some circumstances can't be helped or tell me that his life wasn't a bed of roses either, so I should just deal with it. Without him saying a word, and without even giving him a chance, I had cast him in the role of my adversary.

But then he asked, simply: "Why are you acting so down?" And something about that phrasing allowed me to answer him and tell him all the things on my mind. See, there are some things that are not good to say to a depressed person. "What's wrong with you? Who pissed in your cornflakes? What's your problem? Why are you acting like such a bitch?" For me, "What's wrong?" will always be answered by, "Nothing," because the question (when I'm feeling low) is just too big. And "Why are you acting like a bitch?" or anything along those lines only makes me feel kicked-while-down. The most perfect question was exactly what Brian asked me yesterday... to paraphrase him: I notice that you seem depressed and I wonder what has you feeling that way?

So good job, Brian. You made me feel better without even having to get all squishy about it and risk losing your man card. You saved the day.

Surely Nothing...

I knew a lady one time who'd had, before I met her, a set of twin girls. When these twins were toddlers, one of them was killed in a household accident. Their mother's grief was such that she wound up with an ulcer, which ruptured one day. She called an ambulance, and the ambulance--I swear--wrecked on the way to the hospital and left her more injured than she was before she called it. Plus, by the time I met her she'd had a mastectomy, and now after battling some other kind of cancer (I believe it was), she's dead.

I always think of her when I'm tempted to say, "Surely nothing else can happen."

This past June my family spent a week in Myrtle Beach, courtesy of George Bush and the US taxpayers, and there was not one thing in the world for us to complain about. We went to a lovely place with plenty of things to do; the weather cooperated; we got along nicely and didn't have car trouble or lose our wallets or anything. It was so lovely, in fact, that I tossed aside superstitious caution and finally (in a hesitant whisper) voiced the thought that I'd been having for months: that we ought to stop and take notice of the fact that all was going well. We had jobs, a house, cars. We were all healthy and the children were not having any trouble. Our parents were alive and living independently.

By mid-July, of course, things had changed as both of our mothers were diagnosed with serious illnesses which have altered (primarily) their lives, but also (no comparison to what they're going through, but still--) ours. So break out the violins and let me tell you that due to various circumstances, last week was really hard. From white-knuckle drives back and forth to the hospital and late-night stays with my severely compromised mother, to a fight with my husband, to work pouring in on me so heavily that I couldn't even return all my calls, much less accomplish the other hundred things my scary boss expects of me--it was a just an exceptionally hard week. By Friday I was so exhausted I felt as though I were underwater, slowly going through the motions of tasks but lacking the energy or concentration to do any of them very well. All I could think of was how much I wanted to get to bed early.

So. Around 10:30 PM I had my jammies on, we'd vacated the living room and brushed our teeth and were just getting ready to crawl into bed when Brandon, my six-year-old, casually and cheerfully mentioned that he had stuck something ("a little piece of foam") into his ear and couldn't get it out. Initial annoyance soon gave way to dull shock as a flashlight revealed an object the approximate color of his Grover hand puppet, waaaaaay down deep in his ear canal. You might be interested to know that tweezers, when held up to a child's ear, suddenly look enormous and deadly. There was no way we could get the little blue thing out.

So my husband started yelling and stomping about the stupidity of it all, and Brandon got hysterical when he realized we couldn't fix him, and I, nearly bursting into tears of self-pity, got to put my clothes back on and drive him (sans husband, you'll notice) across town to the emergency room...where--remember how exhausted I had been even before this happened?--after a stay in the freezing waiting room and after the usual discussion of allergies and copayments and social security numbers, we saw a doctor who eventually used a high-powered suction thingy to pull the piece of foam out of the ear while Brandon cried and I helped hold him still and tried not to faint.

This experience has gotten me thinking. If having a very sick mother and a hellish work week does not mean that my kid won't poke foam down his earhole, then I should consider myself reminded that one crisis does not preclude another. Just because you're riding in an ambulance doesn't mean it can't wreck. I should never take false comfort in the idea that "surely nothing else can happen." Tired as I am, I still have to stop and take a moment to notice all the things that aren't disastrous--the really hard job that hands me a regular paycheck, the kids who do ridiculous (yet typically kid-like) things, the mothers we can still hold in our arms. I'm glad to have them all. I'm just not going to say it out loud anymore for a while.