What I did in the Summer of 2007

             The ocean is a hundred yards away, just as it said on the campsite’s website.  I glance over at the crashing waves, wishing we were done with the tent nonsense and already burying our toes in wet sand.  Our two sons sit on a log staring at Daddy who attempts to connect two poles over his head.  He’s been at this an hour and tent parts still litter the ground. 

“That’s one long one and one short one,” I say to him.  “I think the poles that connect have to be the same length.”

“This is the door, Brett.  So it’s a longer pole than the others,” says Pat in a voice full of suppressed rage. “The directions say to insert this pole first.  Then the others will pop into place.”

“I think that’s the middle pole.  The one that holds up the roof.”

Pat lets out a groan that’s louder than the ocean, “If you would take a minute to look at the directions, you’d see that the roof pole is the one that the boys were playing with earlier.”

We both throw a glance to the boys who look back at us blankly.

“Where’s that pole?” Pat asks them.

Spence, the seven-year-old shrugs.  Murphy, the three-year-old says, “What pole?”

Pat drops the poles he’s been wrestling with and walks over the gravely road.  He looks down the road and mumbles something. 

“What’s Daddy saying?” asks Murphy.

“I don’t think he wants us to hear what he’s saying,” I say.  “Let’s find that bendy pole and Daddy will feel better.” 

The boys and I look around a couple of trees and find the pole pretty quickly.

“Found it,” I yell to Pat, who doesn’t turn immediately.  He continues looking down the road like it’s viable option.  After a moment of nothing but the sound of waves, his back straightens and he walks back toward us purposefully, “You guys go to the beach.  I’ll put up the tent.”

“Are you sure?” I say, hoping he is.

“Very.”

The boys and I grab our buckets and shovels and head out to the beach.  Three hours later, Pat joins us looking beleaguered but triumphant, “It’s up.  We just can’t unzip the window or the tent will expand and fall over.”

             A month later, the bones of the tent are laid out in our backyard. I’ve decided I need a tutorial since I’m taking it on a “women and children only” camping weekend. 

“Lay out poles to insert in sleeves,” Pat says, reading the directions.  I’ve glanced at the same directions and they are indecipherable to me, like encrypted directions to an undiscovered Anglo-Saxon Burial Mound.

            “What poles, Pat?” I say.  “There are long ones, short ones, and the two bendy ones.” 

            Murph lets out a scream of frustration.  Apparently, Spence took one of the tent pegs he was using as a rocket ship.

“Spence give it back,” I say.

Spence pitches it at Murph’s feet.  Normally I’d take him to task. But I can’t afford the digression.  All my attention must be on the tent.

            “Now I’m going to write this on the directions,” says Pat, taking out a pencil and writing on the worn paper.  “Short poles first.”

             Pat’s penciled clarification is useless to me and he knows it. But he persists, as all spouses do, with the hope that one day his mate will wake up and decide to change her most annoying trait.  In my case, the trait has no name -- I shut down when I look at a set of instructions.  I start to hyperventilate when a cashier at the drug store hands me a rewards card application to fill-out.  I’ve been known to giggle and cry when faced with a long form at the doctor’s office.  I perceive instructions to be a test I have failed long before I put pen to paper or fingers to the keypad.  The result of this phobia is that I cannot assemble anything, cook anything, or apply for anything by looking at instructions.  I need to be told and shown how to do it two, maybe three, times. 

               It takes an hour for Pat to take me through all the steps.  It takes another fifteen minutes for him to repeat the steps a couple more times.  After I am confident that I understand the tent, we all high five each other and stand back to look at it. 

               “Then there’s the rain cover,” Pat says, waving a piece of fabric that clips over the net roof, to keep out rain, dew, and wind.  “That’s the easy part.  We don’t have to do that now. Just strap it on like the picture on the front of the tent bag.” 

                 At the Big Sur Campgrounds, the moms and the kids are impressed when I’m the first to erect my tent, pretty much single handedly.  Spence and Murph half-heartedly attempted to fulfill their peg job, but gave up when the ground proved too hard for their lackadaisical pounding.  Never mind. I’m feeling positively macho about having assembled the tent.  I don’t even care that it lists to one side and the door is blocked by a boulder that we’ll have to scootch around when getting in and out.  The point is that I assembled something.  From an intimidated non-assembler, this is a seminal moment.  It is also notable because the boys have seen me do a job that would typically be Daddy’s.  I look into their eyes for recognition of this fact. 

                “Nice job, Mommy,” says Spence, in a more casual tone than I had hoped for.  “Can we get in now?”

                “Just let me get this rain cover on,” I say confidently.  I look at the picture on the tent bag.  The rain cover is diaper shaped with stretchy straps on each corner.

                 I slide the rain-cover over the top and stretch one strap down to a key at the bottom of the tent. When I move to anchor the other side, the strap won’t stretch that far and I find that the position of the rain-cover leaves half the tent uncovered.  All right, it’s on backwards, I think.  I turn it around, and make another attempt.  It’s a tiny bit better, but when I stretch the second strap is zings loose, stinging me in the elbow.  I stifle an invective. 

                   After forty minutes of more zinging straps and increasingly audible invectives, I’m no further along.  How could Pat have thought that this part was so simple?  By this time, the other mothers have moved luggage into their tents and poured wine into jars, brought to serve as glasses. 

                Cathy brings me over a jar of wine, “Let’s take a look.”  She glances at the front of the tent bag and shifts the rain cover.  No luck. 

                “Let’s look at the directions,” she says.

                 I hand them to her. 

                 “These are indecipherable,” she announces.

                  YOU SEE, I think, feeling vindicated, even though I’ve barely glanced at them.  The sisterhood gathers around with their jars to collaborate as the kids zip through the other tents.  Twenty minutes of a collective attempt bears fruit when I notice that the logo of the tentmaker is shown on the front of the tent in the picture.  Cathy finds fabric loops half way down the sides of the tent, Paula moves a tent pole in making the roof area smaller, and Mo stands back to direct the whole enterprise.  

                   That evening, as the campfire casts shadows on our tents, we tell stories and roast marshmallows.  I glance over at my tent and congratulate myself for resisting my initial impulse to throw up my hands and walk away from it.  I have given these jobs over to Pat through the years because of our differing skill sets and also out of laziness.  But in doing so, I realize that I have robbed myself of the sweet satisfaction of succeeding against my own odds.  

                   I look back at the other mothers’ faces glowing in the firelight, reminding myself that it also doesn’t hurt to know when to accept a little help from your friends.

Murphy and Spencer asleep that summer in the tent that Mommy and her friends built.

Spencer's Birthday at Santa Anita Racetrack (Part Two)

At the end of the last post, I was savoring a moment of clarity about how very little we truly need...

Unfortunately, the boys have not pondered this basic truth as I have. And after repeating that mad dash to the fence a few more times, they are restless. Just as I start rifling through my mind for some organized game I can pull together, Pat appears with tickets for the booths. Five per kid. Earlier, we had decided that the tickets would serve as party favors.

“Plus,” he tells the kids as he rips up the tickets, “there’s a real treat here. We’re going to get to meet the actual real live horse who played Seabiscuit in the movie.”

Spence and Murphy clap their hands, eyes wide with anticipation. The other boys’ reactions are more subdued. What? Were they were expecting the real Seabiscuit? Maybe they haven’t seen the movie. Or perhaps they have become jaded Hollywood kids already. Last year, the dog who played Marmaduke visited their school and they all got their pictures taken with him. Meeting animal actors, and even human ones, who portrayed heroes, was routine for them. Who knows? Perhaps they had grown wary, suspicious. When they visited the doctor, they worried. Would he turn to them in front of his framed headshot on the wall, and say “It looks like a hairline fracture to me. But, hey, I’m not a real doctor. I just play one on TV.” Poor guys. They were growing up in a fake world. I get it.

Spencer, however, is still eager. To say that he has a rich imagination is to understate it. He has lived out many lives and roamed as many fictional lands in his mind. So meeting the horse that portrayed his all time favorite steed in the movie is good enough for him. Small events like these are seeds. Out of them grow hours of play. Next week I might look out our window to see him racing around the courtyard, hearing the thunder of hooves behind him as he storms across the finish line. 

Pat closes up the cooler and leads the boys across the field as I trail, counting heads.

We find the smallish horse, pawing the ground in a small paddock. A painted sign on cardboard identifies him as “The horse who played Seasbuscuit”. There is no mention of the equine actor’s real name. That has to sting. And we are the only fans there.

Pat pulls an apple out of his pocket and starts cutting it with his jackknife, “Who wants to feed him?” He asks.

Small hands jut forward and he doles out slices of the apple. Spencer presses his forehead to a slat of the gate to get a closer look. And it is comforting to know that he is seeing his hero – the tiny horse who wouldn’t quit – and not the actor who had outlived his usefulness. I check myself. Maybe that’s not it at all. This horse is not you. Possibly this is enough. Hell, maybe he hated the movie set and dreamed of a day when he could lazily nibble apple from children’s palms.

I take a picture of them hanging onto the gate with the horse’s face sticking through the slats. I will send it to them as a memento of the party. They can place it next to the one of them with the canine actor who played Marmaduke.

Pat tosses the apple core into the paddock and rallies the troops. We are on the move again. My eyes slid over the tops of the boys’ heads. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.  Good. It’s a short distance to the booths and the kids quickly scatter.

“Pat. I have Murphy, Spencer, and Kevin Wu,” I shout, keeping my eyes trained on them.

Pat shouts back that he has the rest. Although it’s possible that he doesn’t. Just as much as he expects to be loved, he expects the universe to be benign. To support rather than squash. To lift up, rather than cast aside. To deliver the lost child, rather than swallow him altogether.  As charming as this worldview is, it requires me to be that much more vigilant. I must be the sentry, always anticipating danger so that it does not overtake us.

One. Two. Three. Four. Four. Four. Where’s? Five. And six.  I can’t wait to get back to the cooler. Away from the crowds where I can count over and over in peace.

Kevin Wu runs up to me, Spencer and Murphy behind him. “I won a glider,” he crows, thrusting the flimsy balsa model forward. Spencer and Murphy inspect it.

I am happy for Kevin Wu. Maybe it will keep his mind off of fake nausea on the way home.

Young-Jae materializes. “Where did you get that?”

“Over there,” says Kevin Wu, pointing to a ring toss booth. Really? Kevin Wu actually won at ring toss?

“I want one of those,” Young-Jae says. “But I don’t have any tickets left.”

He looks up at me, his look of entitlement so plain that I can see the hotshot floor trader in his future, hopped up from coke the night before.

Giovanni strolls up and spies the glider, “Hey, where did you get that?” Kevin Wu points to the booth again. Giovanni goes through his pockets. But I already know that he won’t find any tickets there. I throw a look to Pat walking toward us, with Max in tow.

Young-Jae turns to Pat, “Do you have any more tickets?”

Pat stops. At a buck a pop, we have already exhausted our ticket budget of thirty dollars.  For Christ sake, these kids might not possess Kevin Wu’s ring toss talent. It could cost us another fifty just to get five more gliders. I consider slipping the sweaty vendor a ten and buying the piece-of-shit toys outright.

Pat runs his hands through his hair, “Guys, we said five tickets each. You’ve had your fun. Now let’s get back to the cooler and play a game.”

All but Spencer let out an audible groan. It’s not that Spencer wants the glider any less. Or that he’s fundamentally less acquisitive than the others. He simply knows that Pat won’t budge. And, unfortunately, he also knows that we cannot afford it.

The boys stand their ground, not knowing what Spencer knows. Pat is not going to buy more tickets.

Giovanni’s hand shoots up from the small throng, a wad of cash in his grasp. “I’ll buy them,” he says, like a cowboy walking into a saloon from a month long cattle drive. The boys jump up and down. Even Spencer.

Before Pat and I can say a thing, they turn, tripping over themselves, and follow Giovanni striding toward the ticket booth.

“What just happened,” I say to Pat. “Should we stop them?

“Why?” He says, putting his arm around my shoulder.

And for the life of me I can’t think of a good reason. I lean into Pat. The benign universe has delivered up Giovanni and his wad of cash. I have known Giovannis all my life. They love the big moment. The grand gesture. And today, he gets to be the hero. I watch Giovanni hand strings of tickets to each boy and they move in a clump toward the ring toss.

I don’t how how much money it takes for each boy to walk away with a glider. But when they return to the cooler, they toss them into the air until Kevin Wu breaks his and it’s time to go home.

The Jocky

The boys meet the horse who played Seabuscuit

Spencer's Birthday at Santa Anita Racetrack (Part One)

A couple of years ago, Pat and I held Spencer’s Birthday Party at the Santa Anita Racetrack. This I that story:

It is Spencer’s birthday and we’re between checks again. It’s foolish to spend our scant resources on a big party.  We cannot afford laser tag or Medieval Times. But what we can afford, Pat announces one evening from his station at the computer, is, “The Santa Anita Racetrack. Children get in free.”

“That’s because they are in the business of creating lifelong gambling addicts,” I say, folding laundry on the dining room table.

“No. The kids won’t gamble. We’ll take them to the infield and set up a picnic. They get to see the horses race around them. It’ll be thrilling. And it says here that there even have booths set up for kids. Ring toss. That kind of thing.”

“Ring toss?”

“Kids love ring toss,” he says.

            “I hated ring toss.”

            “That’s because you never won.”

            “Ring toss is a set up for failure,” I say, dumping loose socks onto the table. “The odds are with the house.”

            “Of course the odds are with the house. Otherwise the house would never make any money.”

            I snatch all dark socks, put them aside, and allow myself to think about the possibility of the racetrack. Spencer loves watching horse racing on TV which is what inspired Pat to look it up. But what will the kids’ parents say? I’m still living down Murphy’s birthday two years ago. On the morning of the party, I realized that we hadn’t gotten party favors for the kids. So I ran across the street to a cooking store, thinking that I might find cute cookie cutters. Instead, I found darling little snow globes in individual boxes for four bucks a pop. At the end of the party, in the crush of handing out the snow globes to eager sticky hands, a parent said to me, “Brett, did you know that the globes are wine stoppers?”

            I start with the white socks.

            “So we would make it clear on the invitation that there won’t be any gambling?” I say.

            “Of course,” says Pat, turning around in his chair to look at me. “All we are gambling on is the weather. The only shelter is inside near the betting windows.”

            We borrow a friend’s minivan to transport all of the children to the track. Within minutes of our departure, Kevin Wu says that he’s going to throw up. He isn’t getting enough air in the back, he says, and Pat rolls down the window. I’m not too worried, because Kevin Wu is a first class complainer. He knows that if he really throws up, it will be the talk of the fourth grade. It takes an hour to get to Santa Anita with six boys swatting each other and Kevin Wu periodically dry heaving for effect.

            Spencer makes quips from the center seat next to me. He’s in fine form and doesn’t seem fazed by Kevin Wu’s theatrics since they are routine.  He is excited to be the center of attention. Unlike me, he expects to be loved. He also expects everyone to be as excited as he is about seeing a horse race up close. I’m not so sure they will be and I muttered my fears to Pat two days ago.

            “Kids expect so much these days,” I said. “All the other parents drop five hundred to a grand on some pre-packaged party that provides non-stop entertainment, all the crappy food they can cram into their faces, and a party favor that’s a neat-o light-up, whirly, plastic weapon of some kind that they can take apart and reassemble into something else.”

            “We aren’t ‘other parents’,” Pat said.

Like Spencer, Pat expects to be loved. He doesn’t know that you have to work at it. You have to study what other people do and at least attempt to fit in. Otherwise…Otherwise, what? I ask myself.

I don’t want to find out.

          When we get to the track and tumble out of the van, I am struck by how accurately the movies depict racetracks. There is a constant swirling of activity. People pouring in and out of the gates. Noonday sun sharpening the color so it looks like a Doris Day picture. From the parking lot we can hear the announcer calling out the places of the horses in quick succession as they round a bend. Their names are like titles of noir novels: Last Hope, Fancy Girl, Ruby Ruby. Spencer bounces up and down with excitement. I do a quick head count of the boys and as we wind our way through the crowds, past vendors, I quickly realize what my greatest challenge will be. Keeping track of everyone.

            Giovanni wanders off to a cotton candy concession to buy one with his own money. While Max zips ahead of us, disappearing into the crowd.

            “You stay with Giovanni,” I yell to Pat, hightailing it to the entrance.

            I catch up to Max who has dragged Murphy along to the turnstiles, “Guys, wait with me here. Where’s Kevin Wu?”

            I spin around and spot him heaving into a garbage can with Young-Jae standing next to him, eyes rolled heavenward, like he’s praying for aliens to beam him out of there. To be fair, this is what Young-Jae always looks like. Childhood is something he’s barely enduring until he can make a ton of money at a high-powered job he hates and blow it all on coke and prostitutes. Spencer has known Young-Jae since first grade and invited him out of a vague sense of waning loyalty.

            I watch Pat, Spencer, and Giovanni catch up to Kevin Wu. Pat parks the cooler, squats down, and puts his hand on his shoulder. Kevin Wu nods at Pat. Hee looks down and kicks the ground. Then Pat turns to the group and says something that appears to pull them all together, since they all bunch up behind him as he picks up the handle of the cooler.

            Max and Murphy run up a tiny hill next to the turnstiles. I watch them out of the corner of my eye while Pat pulls the cooler with the boys, looking subdued, stumbling in step behind him. I suspect that he has spoken to them sternly. Pat is a loving parent. But he has absolutely no difficulty taking command and laying out his expectations to children. I abdicate this duty all the time in favor of being liked.

            Pat waves to me as he approaches, “All accounted for.”

            “Great,” I say. I look down at the boys and say in my best, most warm, mommy voice. “This is going to be fun!”

            Pat pays for the two of us at the window and we shuffle the kids through the turnstiles. On the other side, he amasses the children and says, “Keep your eyes on me. We’re going to go through the main building to the infield. Follow me and don’t stop to look at stuff right now. I can take you back in later, if you want.”

            The boys start to follow Pat and I bring up the rear, obsessively counting them over and over again. In shocking contrast to the whirl of color and noise outside, the inside is muffled, moody, and gray. It’s like we took an elevator down to purgatory. I look around hoping that the kids aren’t seeing what I see.  A sticky cement floor. Men sitting at Formica tables, hunched over betting forms, with foggy plastic cups of flat beer in front of them. Fast food containers littering the floor and tables. Grimy TVs circling the cavernous hall, showing stats and the track.

            Giovanni turns back to me, cotton candy residue lining his lips like mishandled lip liner on an old lady, and says, “What can we buy here?”

            “What?” I say, before I can stop myself. “We’re not buying anything.”

            Curse his parents for giving him money. I had expected the other kids to clamor for cotton candy after Giovanni bought his, but I think they were too dazed to figure out what was happening. Perhaps they assumed they’d get theirs later. I square my shoulders in anticipation of the begging to come. Maybe we should have written on the invitation, “To keep things even, please don’t send money with your child. He will be provided with juice, sandwiches, and cookies from our cooler. Each kid will get five tickets for the booths and no more. If your child requires anything further, tell him to place a bet.”

            We make our way to the exit where light pours in like the opening of a tomb. I touch Giovanni on his shoulder and say, “If you want to spend your money later, I’ll bring you back here.”

            I don’t know how I will negotiate this, but I don’t want to get a phone call from his mother this evening. I quite like Giovanni. He told me earlier that he had been to the track with his uncle a few times and this doesn’t surprise me. He has the wheeler-dealer air of a man who wears a vest over his shirtsleeves and runs a craps game.

            We emerge like emigrees from a dank land into a new world. The Santa Anita infield. Where colors are their true selves – the green of the grass, pure blue sky, the reds, yellows, and purples, of peoples’ clothing as they mill around buying souvenirs, programs, and snacks. Pat strides ahead, pulling the cooler over the grass like he knows where he is going. The passel of boys dutifully follows him. They glance around furtively, but appear determined to keep in step. What on earth did Pat say to them?

            We walk further into the field and away from all the action. Did Pat look at a map before we came? Where are we going? We keep walking over the soft grass until Pat stops in the middle of the field and declares, “This is it.”

            This is it, I think? Where are the horses? Why are we so far away from the rest of the people?

But the boys are relieved to stop walking. Kevin Wu complains that his shins hurt and he sinks into the grass. Spencer, Murphy, and Max chase each other around. Pat offers the kids juice boxes from the cooler and Giovanni and Young-Jae take one.

            I hear a bugle call and the announcement for the mounts to post. From watching horse racing with Spencer on TV, I know this means that the horses are moving into their stalls and getting ready for the race. But we can’t see the race? Isn’t that what we came here for? The race is the main activity. Without it, we’re just in a field with cranky kids who would rather be playing video games.

            Now that the cooler has been opened, the boys gather around it, pulling out sandwiches and bags of chips. Dear God, I think, they are going to wolf down all the food within the first ten minutes and then ask what’s next. The thing about a successful kids’ birthday party is to pace activities.  If you speed through the food, games, cake, and gifts within the first hour (and I have done this) you end up with pandemonium. The outsiders – and there are always one or two (I glance at Kevin Wu) -- beg you to call their mothers to come and pick them up early. They know what’s coming. And the rangy pack of other boys become so hyped on the food and freedom that they start running in circles throwing spiky objects at each other, until one of them is wrestled to the ground and starts wailing.

            “Boys are born warriors,” a new-agey friend of mine once told me when my kids were little. She shrugged, dipping her chamomile teabag in a mug like, what can you do?

            And at the time, I said, “No. That can’t be. Boys aren’t born warriors. Warfare is taught. And I will teach my sons the way of the Tao.”

            My new agey friend whose son was a holy terror, simply smiled and said, “It’s what they do. They must fight.”

            Then she lit up a joint.

            I look at the boys circling the cooler and I can feel the thrum of anarchy in the air. They are gearing up, like the horses we can’t see at the starting gate. Except for Kevin Wu, who is picking at the grass. He was not born a warrior. He was born a systems analyst.

            “Pat,” I say. “Do you want to take the boys over to the track so they can see the actual horses?” I had promised myself that I wouldn’t interfere when I handed Pat the task of planning the whole party. I’ve planned most of them in the past and, seriously, the stress of each one has shaved a respective year off of my life.

            Pat smiles, “Oh we’re going to see them any minute.” He points to a fence half a field away. Then I hear the announcer call for the race to begin and there is a shot.

The crowd roars in the distance and I glare at Pat. We’re nowhere close.

          He points to the fence and yells to us all, “Run!”

          He starts running and we all take off after him. The noise of the crowd intensifies. I hear rhythmic pounding. Is it the crowd stomping their feet? I bound across the field behind them, Kevin Wu at my heels. Every breath hurts my throat. But I don’t care. I can barely stand it. I want to yell. Maybe I do yell. What am I running toward? I don’t know. Who the fuck cares? This is the most thrilling thing I’ve done in years. I feel like picking up a rock and hurling it into the air. But I can’t stop. The noise of the crowd drives me on.  I have to make it to the fence.

            Pat gets there first and climbs up. The boys do the same. And just as Kevin Wu and I clamber up next to them, we see massive thoroughbreds baring down on us. Jockeys’ colors glinting in the sunlight. They race by in a flash. So close that I can feel the steam from the horses’ nostrils on the hairs of my arm.

We keep our eyes on the horses until they turn the bend. The crowd gets even louder. The announcer amps up his patter.

Atta Boy. Dora’s Prize, One Fine Morning.

We hang on the fence waiting. Listening. Gasping.

The announcer intones so fast that I can’t make out the horses’ names.  It’s a chant, building, building to a crescendo as we hang onto the fence. And finally a cacophony.

Announcer. Pounding hooves. Crowd.

And it’s over.

Pat, the boys, and I look at each other’s red faces. We jump down from the fence, raise our fists in the air, and whoop. The boys race around with no particular purpose and I run over to Pat and throw my arms around him like I haven’t seen him in years.

You cannot buy moments like this. Or, yes, you can buy them for little more than the price of two adult admissions.

I would like to have more money. I long for a time when I don’t feel the mounting tension of waiting for the next check to arrive. But there are times like these when I think that our inability to pay for distraction has brought us here. To this bare moment of crazy joy. I do not aggrandize financial hardship. But it has shown me how very little I really need.

The Dance-off

“I’m going to make up score sheets for Daddy and me,” Spencer says. “We’ll judge you in different categories.”

I look at him and wonder if the preteen in him is enjoying the thought of judging his mother just a little too much. Should I be concerned about bias in his brother’s favor?

We are discussing the dance-off to be held this evening between eight-year-old, Murphy, and me. Murphy has finally challenged me after weeks of dinner conversations following his refusal to dance with me at his school’s Valentine’s Day Party. This was a serious blow because I love to shake my thing like nothing and nobody. Dance floors in several countries have cleared for me and my moves. I have heard my name chanted countless times as I shimmied, fake limboed, and swung my hips to the beat. I vary it up. Do a little swim thing, just for levity. But then I really bring it home with some homage-to-punk jumping in place and a few spins that were damned impressive thirty years ago –  but now they are mind-blowing feats of daring. I’m telling you, I am electric on that floor and there isn’t a soul in the universe who can deny it.

Except Murphy.

He claims that it’s embarrassing to look at me. He says that it’s not just because I’m his mom and, who dances with their mom anyway? It is because my moves are all over the place. He maintains that I need to calm down. Be smoother. At dinner last week, he played some funky ‘Earth Wind and Fire’ and showed me his dancing – swaying from foot to foot, tossing his long curls, and repeating a move I’ve seen a million times: a wave that travels from one hand to the other through his shoulders.

There’s a word for that.

Predictable.

Murphy finishes off his hotdog and brushes the crumbs from his hands all over the place. I try not to react. “I’m going to pick three different songs,” He says. “Score us on each one then add them up together at the end.” He gets up from his chair and walks over to the computer to fire up ITunes.

I don’t point out that by choosing all three songs by himself, he is tipping the dance-off in his favor. Because I’m feeling confident. Spencer’s possible bias aside, the sheer variety of my moves is undeniable.

I clear the table while my husband, Pat, and Spencer get to work on creating the score sheets. The sky outside the kitchen window is still light but I can see the moon already. A half-moon.

I think of Janis Joplin rocking, “Half Moon”, her body pumping out the lyrics, scratchy and real. Her whole self becoming the music. I’m not Pearl, but I know what made her move like that.

I close the door to the dishwasher and when I get back into the living room the judges, Pat and Spencer, are sitting on the couch with pages ripped from a spiral notebook in front of them. I lean over to grab one and see how they’ve broken down the categories.

“No peeking,” Spencer says, snatching the paper out of my hand.

Behind me, Murphy pushes chairs around to clear our stage.

“I just wanted to make sure that you included ‘originality’,” I say.

“Don’t worry,” says Pat. “The judging will be fair. We’ve covered all the bases.”

“Then why can’t I see the categories? The contestants should know how you are breaking everything down.”

“You just worry about the dancing,” says Pat.

I love him for this. This smile behind his business-like manner. He’s always been able to strike this dual chord of assuring the kids that he takes them seriously while simultaneously sharing the joke with me. How does he manage that?

“OK. First song,” says Murphy, standing in the middle of the cleared floor. “It’s ‘Midnight Cruiser’ by Steely Dan.”

He walks over to the ITunes.

“Wait,” I say. “Who starts? Do we each do half of a song? Or do we dance at the same time? Did anyone think this through?”

“Mom,” Murphy says, like ‘isn’t it obvious’, “I dance for a bit and then I throw it to you. Then you dance some and throw it back to me. We go back and forth like that until the end of the song.”

“OK,” I say, shrugging. “Sounds like someone is going to get more time. But if that’s the way you want to play it.”

“Decided.” Pat interjects. “Start the music.”

Murphy hits the tunes and gestures to me to lead off.

Felonious, my old friend

Step on in and let me shake your hand.

I slide into the middle of the floor, making sinewy arcs with my hands. Ballet-like and, I hope, a little surprising. The boys can sing to this song over and over again and I’m baffled by their singular attachment to it over others.

So glad that you’re here again for one more time

Let your madness run with mine

I isolate one shoulder and lift it up and down while looking out the window like I don’t even know my shoulder’s doing that. The lyrics are somewhat enigmatic, but as far as I can make out it’s about two middle-aged criminals who get together and cruise their old neighborhood. What is it about that scenario that resonates with the kids so much?

I do a quick spin and throw it to Murphy, who leaps into the middle of the floor and lands in a pose like an archer taking aim right at the judges. It’s the chorus.

Tell me where are you driving Midnight Cruiser

Where is your bounty of fortune and fame?

Spencer leans forward and I watch them both mouth the words as Murphy struts around, pointing at various parts of the room. That’s it. They’re both imagining themselves zooming around town in a car that they call the Midnight Cruiser. It’s a buddy song. And they’re the buddies.

Murphy does the wave thing with his arms and shoulders through the next verse and throws it back to me. I shimmy to the center in a move that everyone has seen before too. But I’m not thinking now. The music takes over and I let my pelvis swing to the beat as I raise my hands above my head and punch the air. We’re back to the chorus and we’re all singing.

Tell me where are you driving Midnight Cruiser

Where is your bounty of fortune and fame?

Murphy turns up the volume and I throw it back to him. He races into the middle, acts like he’s getting into an imaginary car, and starts driving toward the judges. We keep singing the chorus that repeats over and over, probably because Steely Dan ran out of narrative.

Tell me where are you driving Midnight Cruiser

Where is your bounty of fortune and fame?

I am another gentleman loser

Drive me to Harlem or somewhere the same

Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Murphy and I toss the floor back and forth to each other. Strutting and swinging and jumping and twirling all the way to the end, when we collapse into chairs.

I am spent. My wet hair sticks to my neck and I am covered in a glistening layer of sweat. Looking, I imagine, like an old otter. I can’t believe we have two more songs to go. The judges mark up their papers. Spencer leans over, tries to look at Pat’s, and he covers it up.

“No looking at each other’s scores,” Pat says, while Murphy and I pant.

I sag into our high-backed chair. Flaps of leather and loose stuffing scratches the back of my knees. The seat split over a year ago. We seriously have to get this battered old thing to an upholsterer.

“All right,” announces Pat. “We’re done with that round. Moving on.”

I admonish myself for thinking about the chair. I can’t think like a mom right now. I’m in the middle of a competition here.

Murphy stands on a chair and announces that the next to selections are ‘Earth Wind and Fire’s’ “Gratitude” and “Thriller”.

“‘Thriller’?” I say to Murphy and he smiles.That song never ends. Is this a calculation on his part to make me forfeit from sheer exhaustion?

Contemplating this possibility gives me the fire I need to get back in the game and stay in. Although I do find out that I can no longer do high kicks at the end of ‘Gratitude’.

In the middle of ‘Thriller’ I pull a glut.

We end with a lightning round of moonwalking and fling ourselves into our respective chairs like boxers. Only no one plies us with water. Pat and Spencer grab their score sheets and leave us to eye each other with new respect. I really didn’t think that Murphy would change it up that much. And I bet that Murphy greatly underestimated my stamina.

“Nice work,” I say between gasps.

“You really shouldn’t try to kick, Mom,” he says.

“I didn’t know that until I tried,” I say.

“The rest was pretty good though,” he says.

“Thanks.”

I’m still breathing heavily when the judges return. They take their places on the couch and arrange themselves while Murphy and I wait.

“It was very close,” says Pat.

“Very,” says Spencer. “In fact…” He pauses for effect. “Mom only won by two points.”

I shoot a look over to Murphy. The thought occurring, maybe this win matters to him. He is smiling. Face a little soft.

It does matter. It does, I can tell.  And I want to give my victory back. It doesn’t matter to me, I want to say. I don’t care about winning. I only agreed to this silly dance-off because I wanted you to see me as me and not just your mother. I wanted you to tell me that I’m a dancing queen, not an embarrassment you had to dodge at your school’s Valentine’s Day party.

This, of course, is the truth of it. One that I haven’t admitted to myself. Until now, I thought that we were simply playing a dopey family game.

Murphy gets up from his chair and stands in front of me. “Congratulations, Mom,” he says, his voice catching. “Let’s do a rematch next week. I know I can win.”

I draw him to my chest.  

“I bet you can win, too,” I say. “I bet you can.”

I’ll take out the kicks and the fake limbo, I think, as I bury my face in his hair. I can give up some of it. That little bit.   

But I also know that there isn’t a person in this world that can stop my hips from doing what they do when that music rocks my soul.

I pull him onto my lap.

He may never love my moves. But I hope that he learns to love the woman who trusts the inner thrum of who she is.

A dancing queen and so much more.

Murphy's Teeth and the Insurance (Part Two)

By nine in the morning, Pat is back in bed having whisked Spencer to his bus stop and Murphy is sleeping on the couch. He glows with fever, his curls sticking to his reddened face, looking like a Victorian porcelain doll. I consider forcing him awake and walking him around in circles like people do in movies when they have to sober up a drunk.

I’ve laid a my cool hand on his forehead a couple of times in the last few minutes and said, “Remember we have to wake up soon to go to the dentist.” But the only response has been a flutter of eyelashes.

It’s hopeless.

I can’t do this to Murphy. If the whole point of cramming all of these appointments in at the last minute was to take care of my children in the best way I could under the circumstances, then forcing Murphy to go to the dentist in this condition is the opposite of that. I have to think of him first and not the money. I’ll have to pay for the cavities out of pocket. That’s all there is to it.  We can save up for a few months. Or we can sell the coronet. We can even turn it into a family joke, “Remember, now. Those are the fillings your grandfather’s coronet paid for.”

Lately, it all comes down to the coronet. When we don’t have the rent, Pat looks at me sideways and says, “Maybe it’s time to sell the old girl.” Meaning the instrument, not me. Although, given the strains in our marriage lately, the ambiguity is downright poetic.

Pat’s half-brother gave the coronet to him after their dad died, extracting a promise that Pat would never sell it. We’re the kind of people who traditionally honor promises like that. But that fraternal contract was made when Pat and I were making four times what we make now – when we had health insurance and every reason to believe that our fiscal future was bright. Pat was an at-home dad, acting in a couple of national commercials a year. And I was writing for television.

I pick up the phone and call the dentist.

“Oh, yes. We completely understand,” says the receptionist. “And we wouldn’t want to make the Dr. Olsen sick.”

There is that too, I think. Dr. Olsen is a sweet man who is so cheerful you can almost believe that filling and extracting teeth is his life’s singular passion.

“I don’t suppose we can reschedule the Murphy’s appointment for the end of the week?” I say, trying not to sound desperate.

“Oh, no,” she says brightly. “There won’t be anything open until next month.”

I pause, listening to the clicking of her computer keys while she searches for an opening next month. I feel shaky and about to cry. But I take the chance, “You see. We run out of health insurance at the end of the month and I’m not sure when we will be able to afford to bring Murphy in again.”

The keys stop clicking. Tears spill down my cheeks and I adjust the phone so she won’t hear any sounds that I might make.

“Oh,” she says, not giving anything away. I sniff as lightly as possible to stop the snot from pouring out of my nose. “Well, what we could do is make the appointment for next month, but I will change the date on the insurance forms. That way it will be covered. We don’t do that often. But we can do it for you. Will that help?”

Will that help? Relief suffuses my body like a fast-acting drug. Snot flows out of my nose and I sputter, “Yes. Yes. That would help us very much.”

I wipe my nose with my sleeve. The computer keys click again and I say, “You know we will pay you everything we owe you. I promise.”

“I know,” she says. “Times are hard. And you can pay us a little bit each  month like you have been. We know you will.”

“Thank you. Thank you,” I say, like I’m kissing the hem of her skirt.

I put down the phone and walk into the bathroom to grab tissues and honk into them. Looking up, I catch my reflection.

I look like Mickey Rourke.

But I’m so spent, so drained of feeling, that I don’t care. In fact, it crosses my mind that this is exactly what I should look like – a has-been fighter who is desperate for a comeback.

In the bedroom, I lie down next to Pat who flops a semi-conscious arm over my belly. I think about the receptionist’s kindness and how she rescued me from complete despair within seconds. The last two years have been the hardest of my life. But there have been glorious moments throughout. Little rescues like this one. Flashes of clarity about what really matters. Even times of uncontrollable laughter that completely gutted me over some adjustment we had to make because we were broke. I have been more angry at Pat than I have ever been. And I don’t know when I will be able to let go of it. But I have loved him too. Fiercely, protectively, resentfully.

And I have discovered a seemingly endless well of compassion inside me for anyone who is broken or helpless or lost.

Which is all of us at some point or another.

            I roll over and look at Pat. His chest rises and falls. The cat jumps onto the foot of the bed. My thoughts settle. “You are here, right now,” I tell myself. “You are here right now with your husband and your cat and a boy in the living room who you have just taken care of. “

            Naming what is around me is one of the ways that I have saved myself from feeling completely helpless. And in the last few months I have learned that we have to save our own lives over and over and over again. By staying conscious. By naming. By actively choosing, rather than waiting for life or an intemperate god to put up a roadblock or toss us a bone. The dental receptionist was kind but I had to choose to ask her for help. I did it with snot spurting out of my nose. I shook with the effort of it. I looked like hell. But I had fixed the problem.

            If this cosmically tiny domestic challenge had stood in front of me two years ago, I would not have been able to scale it.

            I put my hand on Pat’s stubbled cheek.

            This is my husband.

The cat is at my feet.

It is sunny outside.

Spencer is at school and Murphy is on the couch.

There is food in cupboard.

There is work to be done.

Murphy's Teeth and the Insurance (Part One)

              I wake as I do all school days, two minutes before the five-thirty alarm. I am wound tight, like a night watchman who accidentally dozed off.  My hand slaps the alarm that never gets a chance to buzz and my feet hit the carpet as I prioritize. No day is the same and there is little room for error. If I forget to pack a lunch, write an excuse note, or buy toilet paper on the way home from the bus stop, everything will be thrown off. The boys are on two different school schedules and keeping track requires a mind capable of last minute recalibrations. Pat for example, who sleeps on the other side of the bed, has probably neglected to tell me about an appointment that can scatter the best-laid plans like an ill wind on a neatly raked pile of leaves.

Which isn’t to say I don’t love him. But I don’t have time for that now.

I pad out to the dark living room and turn on the lamp. This is routine. I flip on the light switch in the kitchen, feed the cat, and walk back into the living room to turn on the computer and check the weather. I look out our bay window, seven stories above a street in West Hollywood. The odd car drives by. A woman walks her dog.

I breathe in.

The top priority today is getting Murphy to the dentist. We lose our health insurance at the end of the month because our union only gives insurance based on income. We didn’t make enough last year to get more coverage. Three months ago, I assigned Pat the task of booking our physicals and dental appointments so we could get everything done before we move to a plan that only kicks in after we have paid an $8500.00 deductible per person.

A gate across the road swings open and a man in a business suit shuts it behind him.

$8500.00 out of pocket per person. I feel my lips curl. I told a friend that all I would be getting for $450.00 a month was assurance that if one of us got cancer it wouldn’t cost us more than twenty percent after we’d paid off $8500.00.

She said, “Forget cancer. What if one of you breaks a leg in three places? That adds up fast.”

Now I have to worry about our legs being broken in three places.

I breathe in again to soften my belly, which is tightening.

The lady with the dog across the street unlocks the gate that the businessman just passed through.

Of course, Pat didn’t schedule the physicals and dental appointments. It’s not his usual job. He does the bills and the car. I do the appointments and dusting. I allowed six weeks to tick by, waiting and reminding him to make the appointments until I couldn’t stand it anymore and I picked up the phone to do it myself. It took me all of fifteen minutes to nail everything down in a tight, almost triumphant voice that must have confused the office assistants. Then I wrote the appointments on a clean sheet of paper, in jagged handwriting, and smacked the list down in front of Pat at the computer. Proof, you see. Proof that I have to do everything around here.

Except the bills and the car.

And the bathrooms.

I haven’t done a bathroom in twenty-one years. My girlfriends want to know if Pat has a brother.

A truck drives by.

In the last month, all four of us have had our physicals and teeth cleanings. Spencer and Murphy are scheduled to see an orthodontist later this week. I just had a pap smear and my mammogram. And Pat and I both had colonoscopies. It’s like we are on a reality show that involves a wacky family health challenge. We would have an excellent chance of winning it too. Except that Murphy ended up having seven cavities.

“Can you squeeze his appointments in before the end of the month?” I implored the receptionist, who has known our family for several years. “I’m leaving town in April.” I wasn’t about to tell her that our insurance was running out for fear that she would drop us entirely. “Or what about doing all seven cavities in one sitting? Has anyone ever done that?”

The receptionist smiled vaguely and consulted the schedule, “I don’t think an eight-year-old can sit in the chair that long.”

I had to stop myself from yelling, “Don’t you have a fucking drug that can knock him out?” Instead, I waited anxiously while she squeezed three appointments into my inexplicably rigid time frame, all of which involved pulling Murphy out of school.

I turn away from the window, breathe again, and walk to the door of the kids’ bedroom. I twist the knob as noiselessly as possible so as not to wake Murphy who can sleep until it’s time to go to the dentist. I reach up to the top bunk and grope around for Spencer’s shoulder.

“Spence,” I whisper, “time for school.”

“OK,” he croaks. “Is Murphy all right?”

“What do you mean?”

“He threw up last night.”

“What?”

“Yeah,” I hear Murphy say from the dark on his side of the room.

I wheel around, “You threw up? When?”

“It wasn’t a big deal,” says Murphy. I can just make out his blonde curls glowing faintly in the streetlight sliding in through the window. Spencer inches down the ladder behind me.

“Spence, why don’t you go into the living room and start getting ready,” I say, without turning to him.

“Ummmmph”, he says, which is a preteen affirmative.

I lean down and touch Murphy’s forehead. It is hot. Very hot. Unmistakably hot. He coughs. It is a phlegmy, chesty alarm that trumpets in my brain, “NO DENTIST TODAY!!! Now you are going to have to pay thousands of dollars for dental work because you wanted to test Pat to see if he really was going to be more responsible after the last time he disappointed you!!!”

“Honey, can you move to the couch?” I ask Murphy as gently as I can. “You will need to have some medicine.”

What am I doing? Why don’t I let him fall back asleep? Because I am still hoping that I can bring down his fever and mask his cough in time for him to see the damn dentist so that I can prove to myself that I am not the most selfish bitch-mother on the planet for making my kids’ health a wedge issue in my marriage.

Murphy sits up, pulls his blanket around him, and swings his legs off the bed. I trail him out the door, his blanket dragging like the cloak of a boy king. A sick boy king.

Spencer has already gotten himself some cereal. My throat tightens. I usually do that for him. I quickly remind myself that I need to start letting him do things for himself anyway. He’s a remarkably responsible kid who could probably run a country more efficiently than I manage my writing career.

Murphy crawls onto the couch, adjusting his blanket as I grab medicine from the bathroom cabinet and sit on the coffee table. He watches me pour the gelatinous, cherry flavored elixir up to the right line on the measuring cup.

“Hold on, I’ll get you some juice,” I say. He always needs a juice chaser to erase the taste of the medicine as fast as possible.

I jump up and head to the kitchen, hoping that my dark purpose is isn’t showing itself in the quickness of my gait or the sharpness of my speech. My sole mission is to get Murphy well enough to see the dentist today.
Part 2 will be posted next week.

Murphy, when he isn't sick