Sleepy Hollow

Arrived Sunday at 4:30.  Unpacked car, ate subs and pizza, and headed for the beach by 6 p.m.

Waves so big, thought we were in Ocean City, NJ.  Heard rumors of riptides; kept eagle eye on M. Peevie who apparently has no fear of waves or being carried out to sea.  Kept calling her to come closer to shore.  Agreed with SIL that both of us were strong enough swimmers to rescue her.  Agreed with BIL that neither of us felt like going for a swim at the moment.

A. Peevie's anxiety kicked into gear, and he hollered at M. Peevie over the breaking waves and stiff breeze to come in closer.  "You're going to drown!" he screamed helpfully, and looked over at me with a worried expression on his face.  I walked down to the wet sand and waved her in. 

"M. Peevie," I instructed, "You must stay near the boys.  Don't go out any farther than they go out."  The boys were fairly safety-conscious, having learned a new word (riptide) in the last hour.

"But mom," M. Peevie said, "It's not even deep!  It's barely up to my waist!"

"M. Peevie," I said sternly, "Either come in out of the water, or stay near the boys.  Your choice."  Fine, she harrumphed, and waded back out into the crashing surf.

Now it's Wednesday, and I fully admit:  I could get used to this: hanging out at the pool, hanging out at the beach, playing tennis, taking naps, drinking adult beverages, and reading.  Oh, and I got to watch several epis from a L&O:CI marathon featuring my boyfriend.  Now that he's on cable, I don't get to see him as often as I used to.

Suffrage

An unexpected Facebook friend request showed up in my inbox today--from my Dad.

"Peevie Daddy wants to be friends on Facebook," the subject line read.  My jaw dropped, but I immediately hit "Confirm Friend."  Then I logged into my FB account and posted as my status, "I wonder how many nonagenarians have Facebook accounts?"  Just curious.

I wanted to know what prompted dad to join FB, so I called him.  My dad answered, but quickly handed the phone over to mom before I could get to the crux of the matter.  (He was busy watching the Phillies lose to the Cubs for the second time in a row.)

"Mom," I said.  "Guess what?  Dad just friended me on Facebook!"

"That was me," she said.

"But it said 'Peevie Daddy wants to be friends,' not 'Peevie Momma,'" I said.

"It wouldn't let me put two names down," she said.

"Riiiiight," I said, "But why did you put dad's name and not your name?"

"Oh," she said, "I thought I should put dad's name down."

"Hmm," I said, "and why did you think that?"

"Because he's the daddy," she said with a simple, anachronistic non-sequitur.

Foray Into Fiction

Desperation

She left on a Tuesday morning.

The kids were fine--they loved the sitter; they knew their routine: lunch at noon, naps for the younger ones at one, videos for the older kids; mom back by three so the sitter could get to her other job in the coffee shop by four.  But today she'd be late.  Ronnie would be too responsible to leave the kids alone.  She'd call the cell phone and leave a perplexed message:  "Um, Janie, this is Ronnie.  I'm just wondering if you'll be home soon.  I was supposed to leave at 3 today.  Um, OK.  Bye."

But the cell phone was turned off.  She'd dropped it into the laundry basket, where someone would find it eventually.  Paul, maybe, or maybe even a cop, when he eventually called the police.

Ronnie would try Paul at the office, but she'd probably get voice mail there, too.  He'd pick it up and call her right back.  "She's not there?  Did she say where she was going?"  They'd go over a few unlikely scenarios, but in the end, he'd pack up his work and leave early.

He'd swear under his breath as he powered off his computer and arranged the papers on his desk into orderly piles.  He'd get mad first, and worry later.  He would load files into his briefcase like he did every night--files with names like STAT PROG and CHECK CODE--but tonight he wouldn't get to them until well after 9:30, after the last pajamaed child padded out for the last hug and the last glass of water, wondering my Mommy didn't come in to kiss him goodnight.

Checking the calendar on the refrigerator, Paul wondered if he had forgotten girls' night out.  It had happened before: Paul was supposed to be home by five to give her a chance to change clothes and put on makeup.  He knew that some days she didn't even make it into the shower before 11 a.m.; some days, not at all.  He couldn't really imagine what it was like, taking care of four young children all day, all alone--but he tried, and he tried to make sure that he helped out when she asked, and came home early when she needed him to.  He didn't even mind the expense of the sitter two days a week, to give her a chance to run errands, have some down time.

"Shit," he said, falling back into the butt-shaped divot on the leather couch.  "Where the hell is she?"

Janie was driving across Oklahoma in a beige Toyota--she'd sold her own car in Missouri, and bought this one with cash--carefully observing the speed limit and listening to Josh Turner asking why don't they just dance.

"I'm not a big fan of country music," she said out loud, looking over at the empty seat as though he were there.  "But if I listened to you for very long, I think I might just change my mind."  I'm going to be changing a lot of things, she thought, starting with my name.

Amanda.  Jenny.  Kate.  Janie ran through the names in her mind, seeing how they matched up with the new life she was envisioning for herself.  It wasn't a glamorous life--she didn't need Roberto Cavalli sunglasses or a Hermes handbag.  She needed to be a real person, to feel true, to experience a life that made her eyes open wide and her breath catch in her throat.

She'd felt that way once, when Mattie was born.  She couldn't get enough of his smell, his softness, his tiny perfection.  But the sweetness of those moments had faded with sleep deprivation and the intensity of day-in and day-out parenting.  Soon the other three kids joined him.  The fourth, Boo-Boo, was an accident--Janie already knew that three kids was tipping her over the edge--and the last traces of her identity circled the drain and disappeared like that blue Polly Pocket shoe last week.

Her friends all laughed over margaritas, and commiserated with one another--"I just can't wait until I can pee without someone watching me!"--but Janie knew that only drastic action would save her.  Hence, Oklahoma, the Toyota, the soon-to-be-chopped-off-hair, the new name.

"Kate," Janie decided.  "I'm going to be Kate.  I'm going to work at a bookstore during the day, and play guitar on weekends."  Under the vast night sky, she drove toward Texas; and she wondered if Paul remembered to give Boo-Boo his antibiotic.

Meeting Forrest

I introduced M. Peevie to Forrest Claypool at a party this weekend.  "Forrest," I said, "This is one of your youngest campaign volunteers, my daughter, M. Peevie."  He smiled and reached out to shake her hand.  She looked confused.
 

"You remember waving signs from the overpass a couple of years ago when Forrest ran in a different election, M. Peevie?" I reminded her.  She tipped her head to the side and looked him up and down.

"But I thought we didn't know him," she said.

"You don't," I said, "but I do."

"But I thought he was famous or something!" she said, and he laughed.  "Only in certain circles," he said.

Later, at home, M. Peevie picked up one of Forrest's flyers for his independent candidacy for Cook County Assessor.  She pointed to his photo.  "Oh," she said, "That really was Forrest Claypool."  Because without independent verification, she might not be able to trust that we were telling her the truth.  That her mother was telling her the truth.

What is up with that?

Three LittleThings That Bug Me

I don't want to sound like a giant crankopotamus here, but certain things bug me.  I'm going to get them off my ample chest here and now, and then I'm going to Choose to be Cheerful again.  K?

1.  I hate getting emails with a subject line that reads "Re:".  Just "Re:".  Re: what?  People:  are you really SO BUSY that you can't take the time to write even ONE WORD to identify the content of the email?  ONE STINKING WORD?

An email without a subject line is like a canned good without a label--open at your own risk. It's also a missed marketing and communications opportunity.  Q:  Are you listening?

2. "Lol" tacked onto the end of texts, FB comments, and emails to show that you have just made a joke.  If we can't tell it's a joke without you including a virtual laugh-track, then it's certainly not laugh-out-loud funny.  So knock it off.

3. OK, I can only think of two things that bug me at the moment.  That's a good thing, right?

Pool of Ambivalence, Pool of Doom

The pool is great.  The pool is awful.  The pool provides hours of active fun in the sun.  The pool sits idle, like a brackish, mosquito-nurturing swamp.  I love our pool.  I hate our pool.

We set up the pool in mid-May, during one of Chicago's brief interludes of sunny weather. Since then we have had enough rain to support a rice paddy, which I think I might prefer to this stupid pool.  We--and by "we" I mean M. Peevie and two of her little girlfriends, plus A. Peevie--found the pool parts in the garage and took it upon themselves to put it up.  They stuck all the tab As into the slot Bs, putting the metal frame together without too much trouble.  It kept them busy for a couple of hours, so everybody was happy.

We filled it up, and the water was sparkling and clear--for about a week.  The kids played and screamed and made whirlpools and generally enjoyed the kind of simple childhood fun that you could imagine showing up on a Norman Rockwell canvas.

Then the rains returned, and my amateur chemical maintenance program failed miserably.  My amateur chemical maintenance program involves dumping a random, unmeasured amount of chlorine bleach into the water every day or every other day, and stirring it around with the handle of the broken leaf skimmer.  (The filter pump only worked for one year, so pool maintenance has been less-than-ideal for three years.) Last year this program worked just fine; but this year?  Not so much.  So the rains came, and the pool turned green.  Yuk.

We emptied it out, adding even more water to the rain-saturated ground--but the drain plug on the stupid pool isn't exactly at ground level, and about two or three inches of water stagnated in the bottom, turning greener by the day.  Finally I Tom Sawyered the neighborhood kids into helping me scoop the water out so we could clean it up and fill it again.  Two Peevies and five neighborhood kids kicked off their shoes and socks, grabbed primary-colored beach buckets, and hopped into the murky mess. 

"Are there leeches in here?" one kid asked.

"What are leeches?" said another.

"Jahaylia is throwing water on me!" somebody complained.

"This is my section! Move over!" a territorial water-flinger ordered.

They scooped and flung buckets of icky water until the vinyl bottom appeared; and then they kept going until only tiny puddles remained.  Then C. Peevie and I tipped the pool up on its side, snapping off one rusted support pole in the process.  We hosed it down, scrubbed a bit with rags to loosen the more stubborn algae stains, hosed some more, and set it back down on the bare mud-circle (like a crop circle, only without the crops, and without the mysterious origins).


In about six hours the pool sparkled and tempted, and everyone ran and got their bathing suits and goggles and started whirlpooling and bouncing on bright tubes.  Happy screams and the vocabulary of newly-invented water games wafted through my kitchen windows, and once again, I loved our pool.  In a little while, I grilled hotdogs and sliced a watermelon, and everyone took a break to scarf down a perfect summer lunch before leaping back into 1250 gallons of fun.


Two hours later, they were still at it.  I could hear their raucous hilarity through the windows--my poor neighbors--and occasionally I'd go deckside to make sure everyone had a turn with a tube and no one was bleeding.  Finally, when it was almost time to close the pool down and send the neighbors home, I went outside to give a 10-minute warning.


The pool was dark brown and murky.  It looked like someone had dumped a bucket or ten of mud into the water.


"Wha...wha...?" I stuttered, uncomprehendingly.  "What in the hayride happened to the pool?"


"M. Peevie dumped MUD into it!" the boys screamed in unison, quick to tattle.  M. Peevie just stood there, not denying it.


"We were playing in the pool, and she just dumped a bucket of mud in!" they reiterated.  "And then she did it again!  We told her to stop, but she kept doing it!"  M. Peevie's stood in stoic silence, but a tiny crease of worry appeared between her eyebrows.


Oh, she better worry, all right.  Smoke started coming out of my ears, and I felt my natural goodwill evaporate.   I sent everyone home, and took M. Peevie down to the dungeon. I closed the chains around her wrists, a la Phoenix and Crowe in Gladiator; and I began to interrogate her.


"What were you thinking, M?" I asked.  "Why would you dump mud into the clean pool?"


"I don't know what I was thinking!" she said.  "I wasn't thinking about what would happen!"  The tears started to fall, but I remained unmoved, and continued to interrogate her, but without success.


Later that evening, I tried once again to understand what would motivate an otherwise smart girl to ruin her best summer fun activity.  This time I tried gentleness instead of harsh torture techniques.  Not surprisingly, I got better results.


"M. Peevie," I said, putting my arms around her sturdy shoulders and kissing the top of her head, "M., tell me about when you put mud in the pool."


She looked up at me, still worried, but better able to think clearly.  "Well," she said slowly, "We were playing, and then most of us got out, except New Neighbor M.  NNM started swimming around and pretending he was a squid."  A light went on in my mind, and suddenly it all made sense to me.


"And the mud?" I asked, wanting her to tell the rest.


"He was being a squid," she continued, looking at the ground, "and squids squirt ink, and I thought it would be fun to give him some ink."  She looked up at me to gauge my reaction.  "I put the mud in because I wanted the squid to have some ink."  She started to sniffle again.  "But I didn't realize that the mud would make it so brown.  I'm sorry, Mommy, I'm sorry!"


I sighed and held her close.  The pool was still brown and murky, but I felt relief, and a strange sense of pride.  M. Peevie wasn't motivated by meanness, like Sid in Toy Story II; she wasn't being intentionally thoughtless or randomly inconsiderate.  Actually, she was being sort of creative, and her choice to dump mud in the pool was prompted by her big imagination.  How could I stay mad at her?

The pool stayed muddy for a few days, and the kids swam around in it anyway.  Gradually, with the getting in and the getting out and the stepping into the muddy puddles around the outside of the pool, the muditity levels became too much for me to bear, and I ordered the pool to be emptied once again.  It leans like a smelly vinyl wall up against the deck, waiting for its next tour of pool duty.


I don't know whether to fill the pool again, or to toss it into the alley for the metal scavenger trucks to pick up--and instead, plant flowers or vegetable in the circular brown scar that remains as a reminder of happier pool days.

What would you do?

I will NOT be there for you, nor do I want you to be there for me.

I swear.  There is one trite, annoying, meaningless, banal, cliche, hackneyed phrase that English speakers and writers rely upon to express the concept of emotional support that I believe has lost all meaning, if it ever had any to begin with.  It is "is there for [personal pronoun]," as in "he is always there for me," or "my mother was never there for me," or "What the hell do you want from me? I just want you to be there for me."

Maybe the long-lasting sit-com Friends started it 16 years ago, giving U.S. popularity to the catchy but lyrically lame song by The Rembrandts, "I'll Be There for You."

I'll be there for you
When the rain starts to pour
I'll be there for you
Like I've been there before
I'll be there for you
'Cuz you're there for me too...

But it's not just a sitcom theme song.  It's all over pop music:

Wyclef Jean, in Class Reunion:  

Baby girl, the world is yours, just look through
That open door, I'll be there for you
If you ever feeling blue (oh), it's a beautiful world

And Prince, in Adore:

Until the end of time
I'll be there for you.
You own my heart and mind
I truly adore you.

Bon Jovi succumbed to the allure of the cliche, with "I'll Be There for You"

I'll be there for you
These five words I swear to you
When you breathe I want to be the air for you
I'll be there for you
I'd live and I'd die for you
Steal the sun from the sky for you
Words can't say what a love can do
I'll be there for you

It's all over TV and movie dialogue, all over eavesdropped conversations on the El. It has become the catchphrase of a generation, and it makes me want to puke.  (Although I do kind of like the Bon Jovi song, in spite of the hated phrase.)

When I was teaching freshman composition, I gave my students the assignment of writing an essay on a person they admired.  The phrase "she was always there for me," or some variation, showed up more times than the word maverick in a Sarah Palin speech.  I made my students rewrite their essays without using that phrase even once--and they complained like I asked them to make their own ink out of mangos and Elmer's Glue.  But when those essays came back, the students instead discovered creative and thoughtful language, images and illustrations to convey the love and support they received from their admired one.

"She stayed up listening to me until 2 a.m. the night my boyfriend broke up with me," one girl wrote about her mother.  Another wrote about her best friend, "She's a great listener, and she lets me borrow her clothes, even after I got a stain on her sweater."  See what I mean?  Specific, meaningful illustrations that put a clear picture in your head of what the speakers/writers appreciate in their friends.

Here's my challenge to you, my readers, who are clearly smarter and more talented than all the rest:  Count how many times you hear or read this phrase in a week--on TV, in music, from your friends and colleagues.  I heard it six times the other day on TV and in the grocery store.  In one day! 

Each time you hear it, ask yourself if the phrase gives you a clear sense of what the person means when he uses it, or if he could use more specific and descriptive language to communicate more effectively.  And then take the pledge to rid the English-speaking world of this phrase which is the zucchini of language--it's all over the place, and virtually tasteless.