Sundays with Stretchy Pants

I can’t describe the strong reaction that I had upon reading this headline: Belgian Brewer InBev to Buy Anheuser-Busch for$52B

No! I just heard on NPR that AB was all, “You’re mean! We don’t need your money! And, hello? Cuba? Please,” and that was very comforting to somebody who grew up on Busch Light (after graduating from wine coolers and Boone’s Farm, of course). When I moved on from the watery taste of Busch Light, it was the watery taste of Bud Light that I loved. I felt more sophisticated. Bud Light was a grown-up beer. On special occasions, such as 8th grade graduation, I bought it in bottles instead of cans. In college I experimented a little bit with Bud Ice Light and Zima, but everybody experiments in college and nobody should be judged for that. When I moved to Arizona at 19 and my brother sneered over my shoulder every time I ordered my tried-and-true favorite, I branched out a little bit and started enjoying Bass Ale, which is an import, but it’s distributed by Anheuser-Busch, so it was ok.

Even though nowadays I don’t really stick with the AB brand all that much, it’s still a piece of my childhood. I don’t buy Fun Dip anymore, either, but it still holds a special place in my heart and I would prefer that it was still called Lik-m-ade like it was when I was young. And you know how at the end of the Bud commercials, the deep-voiced announcer says, “Anheuser-Busch, St. Louis, Missouri”? That just feels like home to me. If he starts saying, “Anheuser-Busch InBev, St. Louis, Missouri, Belgium, Cuba,” that just won’t feel right.

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We switched the bedrooms around so all 3 girls have their very own room for the first time ever. Lena and Liberty have always shared a room and when Maya started beginning the night in a bed other than mine, it was Liberty’s bed she wanted to be in. Recently, though, their accumulation of stuff and clothes has made me very annoyed with the closet/bookshelf/toybox situation so I broached the subject of splitting them all up into their own rooms with their very own closets. Everybody was on board, so we went for it.

Yesterday was the first full day of lone bedroomdom and Lena used most of the day to lounge on her bed listening to her mp3 player with headphones on, singing right out loud to all manner of tween songs, both local and foreign. It was just as adorable as you’d think, but it also brought back one of my most awful childhood memories: When my brother was a teenager, he would put on his headphones and sing RATT and W.A.S.P. and Black Sabbath very badly and very loudly. Constantly. He wasn’t adorable. And he wouldn’t shut up. I at least had to good sense to turn my portable tape player up really loud in order to try to drown out my own voice when I was singing in my room. Not my brother. And, though he can sing very well now, back then, with his headphones on, singing his devil music, it was just painful to hear. Also, my portable tape player didn’t have a very high volume, so sometimes his voice drowned out my Cyndi Lauper. Not cool. Even if I didn’t know what She Bop was talking about, I still thought it was a kick-ass song and I wanted to hear it without some dumb boy singing “Round and round, what comes around goes around, I’ll tell you whyyy!”

It makes me shudder and it occurs to me that I’ve never addressed this deeply repressed childhood memory in therapy. Excuse me while I make a phone call.

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I’ll be doing this today:

It’s true.

I’ll be gone for a week with very slow internets that make me feel like I might experience a brain bleed from the trauma of watching the hourglass spin while I try to force lots of thick and juicy information through the narrow inter-tubes. I’ll miss you. If you know where I live, don’t break into my house while I’m gone. I don’t have anything to steal because we’re taking all of our expensive stuff (like Lena and Liberty’s DS games) with us. Also, you’ll never find where we hide our p@rn, so don’t even try it. Ha, I’m kidding! It’s right where you’d expect it to be. Kidding! God, take a joke.

That reminds me, when I was around 8 or so, I broke into my neighbor’s house to steal blueberry p*p-tarts because we never, ever had those in our own house and I really, really wanted some. They were soooo yummy, but then the guilt made them taste bad. My brother and sister love to make fun of me for doing that, but they used to break into the other neighbor’s garage to steal pop on a regular basis. And they wouldn’t share with me. I don’t know why I never told on them. I’m going to have to remedy that when I get to Michigan tonight.

Anyway, we’re taking our junk food with us, too, so just don’t even bother.

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And we’re going to Chesaning this weekend to celebrate him and his high school graduation. He was born a day before my 15th birthday and he was every bit the adorable pudgy little doll baby. I loved driving him around in my sweet muffler-less Chevette and feeding him Happy Meals while he yelled out, “Putt-putt!” every time he saw a tractor in a field or “Who dat?” every time I waved at a passing car. He called me Aunt Babby and liked to play with my big, permed hair. And I don’t mean he liked to twirl a piece around his fingers while drifting off to sleep. He would say, “Can I hode your hair Aunt Babby?” and I would sit on the floor while he stood behind me and played with my hair. With his face. And his drool. He was endearingly odd in that way, but I let him do it because he was my sweet little first-born nephew.  He also used to use his eight thousand toy tractors (which he still has) to make elaborate farms and if you happened to need to walk through his play space, he would screech, “DON’T STEP ON MY FIEEEELD!” Very serious business, carpet farming. Sometimes we would have to pole vault over his precious farmland in order to get through to the bathroom.

And now he’s all grown up and only calls me Babby if he’s trying to get me to do something for him, which works every time. He doesn’t drool in my hair anymore while piling it on top of his face. And maybe he doesn’t play with his toy tractors anymore (that’s a big maybe), but that would only be because he gets to drive the real ones with real crops, which is no different than playing. But he’s still my nephew and I still adore him and I’m so looking forward to seeing who he becomes in this next phase of life. And I reserve the right to make him call me Aunt Babby for the rest of my life.

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My mom gets uncomfortable when I do things differently than she did. This is unfortunate because most of the things that I have ever done differently are all related to parenting, and this parenting thing is going to last the rest of my life. That’s a long time for her to be uncomfortable with me. To be fair, I probably made her uncomfortable right at birth, coming out looking exactly like my dad while her older daughter had the good sense to look exactly like her. I also made her uncomfortable when I didn’t become homecoming queen. She was queen 40 years ago and, let me tell you, when you meet her for the first time it will come up in conversation. I’m a huge disappointment in so many ways, not just as a parent to her granddaughters.

My mom doesn’t come right out and say that she has a problem with my breastfeeding, co-sleeping, homebirthing, and homeschooling. She does other things like write in the Grandmother’s Book of Memories that I gave her:

“Dear Lena and Liberty, It sucks that I didn’t get to bond with you more because I didn’t get to feed you. Your mom is so hateful for hogging up the feeding. Love, Grandma. P.S. I didn’t nurse her and she turned out fine. Except for the hateful part.”

That’s a paraphrase, but I definitely captured the spirit of the sentiment. I know that these choices I’ve made have left her feeling insecure and I know better than to bring up homeschooling, breastfeeding, and co-sleeping, but those are on-going things so I can understand some on-going touchiness. Maya’s homebirth was just a one-time thing so I didn’t know it carried the emotional triggers for her until I was chatting on the phone with her the other day.

I called her just to chat and after a little bit our chit chat turned to the subject of movies. I told her we took the kids to see Horton Hears a Who, and she said, “I wanna see Baby Mama so bad!” and I told her how funny I think Tina Fey and Amy Poehler are. She especially agreed about Amy and said she just loved her in that tv series, what was it?

Me: Saturday Night Live?

Mom: No, she’s not in that. It’s the one about the pregnant people. Something about Underbelly.

Me: Oh, I know who you’re talking about; that’s Rachael Harris. I love her! She is not in enough stuff.

Mom: That’s right, I get them confused. I just saw Rachael Harris in a Lifetime movie with Ricki Lake.

(Screw you guys, I am not googling that shit to find a link for you because, not only do I not care what Lifetime movie that would be, I would also be embarrassed for google to see me googling that. And that’s saying something because I google a lot of weird shit.)

Then she went on about how much she likes that Ricki Lake and she saw her on The View and she’s just so sweet and lovely and whatnot. And I’m rollin’ with the conversation and my brain’s trying to focus on keeping the happy vibe going and the closest thing to my brain’s surface about Ricki Lake is that documentary she just made, so I said, “Yeah, she has a documentary out that I want to see called The Business of Being Born.”

“Oh, I know! You know, she had her baby in a bathtub,” she said with what I interpreted as a good-for-her type tone.

I replied, “Not only in a bathtub, but in a bathtub at home!” In my own good-for-her tone, with an underlying tone that said, “You love Ricki Lake and she had a homebirth. You can love me in spite of my homebirth. Right Mommy? Right?”

Silence.

Silence.

“Yeah, well, now she’s a single mother.”

Aaaaand we’re back. There’s that flat, curt tone I’m used to! Let me just snuggle up to it…Mmm…that’s one sharp blankie. Feels like home.

*sigh*

It’s just so rare that we have an actual conversation that feels like 2 grown-ups talking to each other, so I was seduced by the normalcy and I forgot to never, ever, ever bring up anything that is in any way related to the myriad ways in which I slap her in the face with my different choices. Having a normal conversation with her just makes me feel like we’re grown-ups, you know? With different ideas and just different differences that don’t have anything to do with how we feel about each other or what we think about each other. Because we’re mother and daughter. And normal conversation makes me feel like we know that we’re mother and daughter and that’s pretty important, and no differences of opinion or action or dreams can ever change all that. And then when it turns ugly out of the blue, I’m lost again. And I stay lost for a bit because I like to beat myself up over it and wonder when I will learn.

She has told me before that I never remember anything good, but the truth is, I remember the good. I remember because there is nothing like the joy of connecting with this all-important person and then having that awful panic set in when you know that the connection is lost because of some unforseen change in her mood. I remember the good being constantly besieged by the bad. I remember the eggshells and I remember exactly how it felt when they cracked under my feet.

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Too Tight Ponytail Girl tagged me with the 7 weird things meme. This lead to a conversation with Bryan that went something like this:

Me: I’m supposed to blog about 7 weird things about me. Any ideas?

Him: Yeah, you always blah, blah, blah

Me: I don’t do that!

Him: Yes, you do. How about blah, blah, blah

Me: That’s not weird!

Him: Yes, it is. How about this one: Blah, blah, blah

Me: I do not always do that. And if I did, it wouldn’t be considered weird. You don’t know what weird is! Go to bed and leave me to my blog.

So, here’s what I came up with on my own:
1. I eat Reese’s peanut butter eggs by eating the chocolate off the sides and top first, then eating the egg-shaped peanut butter. I have no such compulsion with the regular peanut butter cups.

2. I used to see ghosts when I was little. One time, one of them threw a Hungry, Hungry Hippos marble at me when I was singing and dancing to a John Lennon song in my room. They came in through my brother’s demon rock posters in his room, I’m sure of it. And as a teenager I would hear breathing like somebody was right next to me in my bed. I would hold my breath and still hear it. It was super freaky.

3. Every night, I fall asleep lying on my back reading a book. I wake up when my grip relaxes on the book and it tips forward and hits me in the face. Then, I quick turn the light off and go back to sleep in order to avoid things like I mentioned in #2. If I don’t fall asleep fast enough, I read some more. And sometimes I still wake up to my bed shaking just the tiniest bit.

4. I’m afraid of the dark. (surprise)

5. I talk in my sleep. Bryan used to try to wake me up to tell me I’m asleep, but I would get really mad and wake myself up shouting, “I. AM. NOT. SLEEPING!” and then I would go, “nevermind,” like Gilda Radner’s Emily Litella.

6. I do not like animals.

7. On a normal day, I get up early, run, and get my day going, but when I have an appointment or something out of the ordinary that I really have to do, I procrastinate. I get up later, run later, sit in front of the computer longer, and just generally dilly-dally. I don’t know why.

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I haven’t been this sick in a very long time. I can’t remember the last time I had a fever, but it must have been in the 80s because, darn it, this fever has set off such a hankering for peach Hi-C. A hankering that is destined to go unsatisfied. Unless somebody out there has a bomb shelter set up with all kinds of Hi-C and Spam and whatnot. That would be awesome.

My mom didn’t usually buy Hi-C or anything fun like that when I was growing up, but when I was sick, she would buy me a giant can of my favorite peach drink. That, and a can of Planters cheese balls. Or cheese curls, depending on which texture I was after. I can still remember the smell of those cheese balls when I peeled the foil back. Yum.

I’ve been dreaming about peach Hi-C in a can, opened on 2 sides (to avoid the glugging when it’s poured) with that little thing that used to put triangular holes in the many varied tin cans that held our liquids in the 70s and 80s, and popsicles for my sore, sore throat. I called Bryan at work this morning at about 7:00 and tried to communicate to him with my nearly non-existent voice that I would need him to bring me some popsicles on his way home or else he shouldn’t bother coming home. Only I couldn’t really talk that much, so I didn’t get to threaten him and be all dramatic. So I just used my scary voice to say, “Redrum” over and over and he got the hint. Then I staggered back to bed and dreamed that he couldn’t find any popsicles anywhere because they stopped making them when they stopped making peach Hi-C. After waking up from that nightmare about 23 times, he finally came home with my precious yum yums.

So sad that I’ll be missing the Chair is Art show at Gallery 202 tonight. Bryan will be there with the girls because Liberty worked on a couple of chairs with her art class. Some of our friends also have chairs in the show. It will be fun and I hate to miss the fun. Boo.

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I love April for many reasons. I got married in April. I became a mother in April. My birthday is in early May, which means April is practically my birth month, which means I can start saying, “Guess how many more days until my birthday!” over and over until even the kids try to stab me. So I’ve been trying to write an anniversary post and I’ve been trying to write a happy birthday Lena and Liberty post, but I keep being distracted by April ghosts.

My paternal grandmother, Lena, died when my dad was 14, and I’ve always pined for her. The only time I ever played with a Ouija board, it was her I was after. When I wondered if there was a heaven, it was her I was after. All of my first big questions revolved around her. I knew that, had she not died, my dad never would have moved to Chesaning and met my mom, making my existence impossible. I would ask myself, Is it better that she died so I could live or would it be better if she lived and then had different grandchildren? Of course I always said it would be better if she had lived because, after all, Santa could’ve been listening to my thoughts and I didn’t want him to know I was so selfish. But those imaginary “other” grandchildren she would’ve had? In my mind, they totally ended up sucking and then it was Grandma Lena who was pining for ME!

Anyway, my maternal grandmother is a very special kind of crazy. You know, the kind that translates into, “Wow, you’re really an evil bitch.” So I spent a lot of time as a girl imagining what it would be like if Grandma Lena were alive. I put her up on this pedestal of perfect grandmotherliness and I was always greedy for her. I can remember being relentless with my questioning about her from a very young age. How did she laugh? Did she wear an apron? Would she give us candy? Would she like us? My fascination with her didn’t end with my intense need for a grandmother who would love me. I was drawn to her by the tragedies she endured. First, she didn’t get married until she was 36 and when I was a little KISS-loving princess, to me that was tragic. I didn’t know until I was an adult that she turned down proposals and owned her own car and traveled all over and things like that. One of her sisters told me with a wink, “We weren’t even sure she was the marrying kind!” So she suprised everyone and married Carl Clement on April 23, 1947. Ten years later, on April 22, 1957 when my dad was 8 and his brother was 6, Carl died of a heart attack at work. April, you give and you take away.

Lena might have been used to April’s pissiness by 1957 because on April 12, 1948 she gave birth to a stillborn baby girl named Jane Marie. On the same date, exactly one year later, she gave birth to my dad. Many of my childhood imaginings of her had to do with the fact that every April 12th she had to contend with the warring emotions of grief for her stillborn daughter, and the bliss that was her healthy son. Even as a kid, I knew that there was probably no pain like losing a child and I couldn’t imagine what it would’ve been like to go through another pregnancy that was due to end around the exact same time as that tragedy, not 2 or 5 or 7 years before, but only 1 year before. And then to give birth on the actual anniversary of the firstborn’s death? How? Seriously, how? I can tell you for a fact that the fear alone would have driven me to a mental institution. And then to be widowed with 2 small boys on the day before her 10th wedding anniversary? That’s just, I don’t know. I wish I had a better vocabulary but as I am, in my heart of hearts, trailer trash, all I can come up with is “bullshit.” It’s total bullshit.

So April? I’m glad you’re making with the sunny because you have a lot of esplainin’ to do and I demand that you atone for my grandmother’s roller-coaster of emotions by drying up the ground at the park and making pretty flowers bloom. Pretty ones! Not marigolds. She carried a lily in the center of her wedding bouquet. I don’t think it’s too much to ask for some early lilies.

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I took the girls rollerskating yesterday with the homeschool group and I was surprised to find that the roller rink did not play “Pac-Man Fever” or “Freeze Frame.” I know, right? Back in my day, those songs were the go-to skating songs. I must have been a little young because I remember being disgusted whenever “Open Arms” would start to play. Disgusting! All the teenagers holding hands or skating with their hands in each other’s back pockets (”Here, let me move my comb to my other back pocket so you can put your hand in that one.”) Disgusting!

The roller rink I went to back then was about 30 minutes away from where I grew up and it seems like every weekend I went skating with my friend Melinda and her family. It couldn’t have been every weekend, though, because that would’ve made for an awesome childhood and it would have totally compensated for all of the benign neglect and outright abandonment that has contributed to my issues that some people say I have today. It was probably only a few times, but those are some of the best memories I have. Sometimes Melinda’s brother Jeremy even chose his best friend Bryan to go with him, but not often. (Not good with the wheely sports, that one.) That’s ok, though, because I had yet to realize what a catch Bryan would be and I was there to skate with MELINDA! (Ok, I might have had a little crush on Jeremy back then, but that had more to do with proximity than anything else. I see that now.)

I might be projecting a little bit, but I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who had fun yesterday. Lena, Liberty and Maya got right out there and kept at it, fall after fall, big ol’ grins on their faces. At one point, Lena said to me, “Do you feel young, Mama?” Nothing gets past that girl. I answered her with, “Who you callin’ ‘Mama’?” And then I skated away and pretended I didn’t know her. Next time I’m bringing a comb for my back pocket. And maybe some pom pons for my skates.

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And if she knew how to read, she would’ve totally signed up for the KISS Army. Yes, yes she would have.

Are we still talking about this?

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