Meet Me at Emotional Baggage Claim (22 page)

Because then we divide the middle third into thirds, and she wants to sit in the back third and I want to sit at the front third. We could further compromise by sitting in the middle third, but the seats there are full of mothers and daughters who compromise more quickly than we do.

Also I like to sit near the end of the row, as I have to get up at least once to go to the bathroom, not only because I’m middle-aged, but because I wouldn’t share my Diet Coke. She likes to sit in the middle, because she is twenty-five years old and pees once a day, like most camels.

We don’t compromise on this, and usually take what seats we can get. I cope by not feeling embarrassed about having to go to the bathroom when nobody else does. The old bat climbing over your shoes on the way out of the row is me, poster child for urinary incontinence.

But these are mere quibbles. Our biggest disagreement is over spoilers.

I love spoilers.

I love to know the ending of a movie before I go. I read every review I can and every spoiler alert. A spoiler alert doesn’t spoil anything for me.

In fact, I don’t go to a movie unless I know the ending. I’m a suspense writer who doesn’t like to be in suspense.

This issue came up recently, with Steven Spielberg’s
War Horse.
As soon as the movie came out, Francesca knew it was right up our alley, and I did, too. But the previews made clear that it was a story about a boy who lets his beloved horse go to war, and I wasn’t going to the movie unless I knew he got the horse back.

And not a different horse.

And not the horse’s baby, like they do in every animal movie ever.

Guaranteed in the movies that if they kill off the animal you love, there will be a new litter of whatever by the final credits.

That doesn’t wash with me.

I love what I love, and I want it back.

Things die in real life. If they don’t, that’s entertainment.

And if I’m holding popcorn, I want entertainment.

I’m divorced twice, remember? I require a happy ending.

So I wasn’t going to see
War Horse
unless I knew the horse got home, but Francesca absolutely didn’t want to know the ending. She never wants to know the ending. She covers spoiler alerts with her hand.

Who raised this child?

I asked everyone I knew if the horse got back, but no one knew, because the movie had just opened and it was Christmas. Francesca wanted to go, but I refused, and I said we had to wait until I could find out the ending.

“Don’t find out the ending,” she said, unhappily.

“Why not? I won’t tell you.”

“I’ll know. Because if you find out the ending and still want to go, I’ll know that the horse comes back.”

Hmm. She had me there.

For a moment.

Then I did what any good mother would do. I lied to my daughter.

I found out the ending, but told her I didn’t.

And now I can’t tell you if we went to the movie or not, because then you’ll know the ending.

The End.

To Everything, There Is a Season

By Lisa

At this point, I’m a brain in a jar.

Here’s what I mean. We know I had the bunion surgery, and I can’t put any weight on my right foot. I’m supposed to stay off my feet for the next seven weeks, and luckily, I’m one of the few people in the world whose job requires them to stay off their feet.

And apply my butt to a chair, my fingers to a laptop, and write.

So I thought the whole surgery thing would be easy, and I was wrong.

It’s paradise.

At least now, because I’ve surrendered. I get it now, though I was skeptical at first. I didn’t really believe that you had to stay off your feet all that time, because I never follow directions, in general. Usually I don’t even read them. I used to think this was fun and rebellious of me, but now I think I was just stupid.

Because by the end of the first week after surgery, I had fallen twice.

The first time I fell was when I was trying to lift my golden Penny onto the bed, and the second was the next day, when I woke up in the middle of the night because Peach had jumped off the bed, and I forgot I’d had foot surgery and took a step without my walker.

Dogs, beds, and a bunionectomy are the disaster trifecta.

And the pain from both falls was considerable, which is a stoic way of saying OOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!

So now I see the light.

I got religion.

After the fall(s).

And I remembered that my wonderful doctor had said that the only time he had to reoperate on someone was on a woman who had fallen. Of course, when he told me that, I thought, What a klutz she must have been!

And now I’m the klutz.

Lesson learned.

Shut up and heal.

So I sit upstairs in my bedroom, waiting for a bone that has been sawed apart to grow back together, like the anatomical equivalent of watching paint dry.

Being still isn’t something that comes naturally to me, because I keep feeling the urge to
do
things to heal. Doing things makes sense, and not doing things feels odd.

And lazy.

Plus, I feel so guilty that people have to tote food to me and take it away, walk the dogs for me, let in the UPS guy, and do all the normal things for me, that people do for themselves.

Turns out there’s nothing you can do to heal except, be still.

Sit still.

Lie still.

Healing is doing nothing.

So I sit still and write, which is the brain-in-a-jar part.

I do little things, though I don’t know if they help. For example, I started taking calcium citrate twice a day, because I heard that it grows bone, and I wanted to heal faster.

Grow, bone, grow!

Come to think of it, healing faster may be more wrong thinking. Our greeting cards say Get Well Soon and Speedy Recovery, but my guess is that no proper recovery is speedy.

Sports cars should be speedy. Recoveries, slow as tar.

Even the Bible says that there should be a time to heal, just as surely as there is a time to go to the dry cleaners, a time to do the laundry, and a time to empty the dishwasher.

I’m quoting the newest translation.

All the purposes under heaven have their time, and the way we usually multitask, those times are all at once.

But no longer.

Not for me.

I just saw an article in today’s paper saying that stillness and solitude lead to greater creativity.

Good news for single gals with a bum foot.

I’m already working on my next book.

A Time to Heel.

Hang-Ups

By Francesca

Last night I hung up the phone on my mother.

That sounds harsh, but you should know I employed our modified hang-up, the one we use when we’re angry but have the presence of mind to keep some perspective. It goes something like this:

“Ugh! I’m hanging up, but I love you,” I say in the span of one second, so it sounds like, “ImhangingupbutIloveyou.”

Click.

My mom trained me to do this at a young age. If we were arguing and I tried to storm out, she’d remind me that one of us COULD DIE AT ANY MOMENT, so the last words we say to each other should be, “I love you.”

In Italian, the word for love is
guilt.

I’m not proud of hanging up on my mother, I apologized later, but it happens. Every mother-daughter relationship has logged some hang-ups on phone record. It’s not the most enlightened behavior, but when an argument gets out of control, it’s better to end the conversation before it gets uglier. But you still want to get the last word.

Who am I, Mother Teresa?

Even she was Daughter Teresa at some point.

When you’re a teenager, you can slam the door. Well, I couldn’t, because we had dogs. And if you close a door to a dog, whatever’s on the other side of it becomes the most interesting thing in the world. So two minutes after my dramatic you-may-never-see-me-again door slam, I’d have to open it to let our golden, Lucy, in.

Golden retrievers are the family therapists of the canine world.

But after you grow up and move out, you mature past slamming doors.

And hang up the phone instead.

My mom and I have elevated it to an art form. Our technique is so advanced, we have categories of hang-ups.

There’s the enigmatic Fake Hang-Up. The Fake Hang-Up comes from one of our favorite movies, the Bill Murray comedy
What About Bob?
In the film, Murray’s character, Bob, is so incapable of believing that his therapist would set a limit on him and end a call, he blithely asks, “Is this a fake hang-up? It’s a fake hang-up!”

That movie came out twenty-one years ago, but that line is still so funny to us that if one of us stays quiet on the phone for more than two seconds, the other will say, “Is this a fake hang-up?”

Normally this is good for a laugh, but the mere existence of the Fake Hang-Up takes the wind out of all future I’m-actually-really-angry hang-ups.

Maybe that’s a good thing.

But not all of our hang-ups are angry. The Commercial Break Hang-Up is the gentlest of all because it’s mutual; my mom and I both hang up on each other at the same time.

This hang-up has a history. When I was growing up, every night I would climb into my mom’s bed with her and the dogs and watch the late-night talk shows. Now I’m old enough to have the TV in my bedroom, but too old to live with my mom. Luckily, we’ve found a way to restore the tradition.

Whenever the guest is a particular favorite of ours, we call each other and watch together over the phone. That way, when Sarah Jessica Parker walks out, we can gush over her outfit in real time. Or if Hugh Jackman is on, we can discuss how the real reason we like him is because he’s a family man, and not because he’s gorgeous, tall, has washboard abs,
that accent,
or the adorable way his face crinkles when he smiles.

Sigh.

But our simulcast never works for long, because for some inexplicable reason our televisions never sync up. Both of us watch NBC in HD on the East Coast, and yet I can hear a half-second delay on my mom’s television, creating an annoying echo for both of us. Why is her identical channel slower than mine?

Maybe everything sounds slower and wrong-er when it’s coming from your mother.

So now we yap away during the commercials, then hang up on each other the instant the show returns, with not much more than an, “Ooh, show’s back on—”

Click.

Granted, it’s always a little insensitive to hang up on your family members, but this act comes from a place of love.

For quality television.

Sometimes my mom and I are blameless, as with the Dogfight Hang-Up. My mom and I will be enjoying a peaceful conversation, when all of a sudden I hear Tasmanian devils growling on the other end, my mom yells out, and the call drops. It’s dramatic until you’ve heard it the hundredth time. I usually give Mom a few minutes to get the whip and the chair, then I’ll call her back to make sure everything is okay.

Considering my mother’s history with dogfights, I can’t be sure she’ll have a finger left to dial with.

Why all the hang-ups? I’m supposed to be more mature than this, I’m twenty-five years old and my mom is, well, also mature.

Maybe because most of the time we can’t stop talking to each other. She’ll call me “just to say good night,” and we’ll end up chatting for half an hour. Our calls never end with a simple goodbye. It’s usually a stutter-step of “Bye—oh, but I was meaning to tell you…” or “I have to get back to work, but before I forget…” There’s always one more funny story I want to tell her or one last worry only she can soothe.

It’s hard to say goodbye.

Sometimes it’s easier to just hang up.

Nobody’s Passenger

By Lisa

I have often said that there are many pleasures to being single, and among them is that you get to be in the driver’s seat.

I mean this literally. In other words, I’m not talking about the road of life. I’m talking about I-95.

Not all of these columns are metaphorical. Sometimes a train is just a train.

But a cigar is always a phallic symbol.

I’ve been single for a long time now, and I’m used to driving myself everywhere. And I love every minute of myself as a driver. I’m a good and careful driver. I go slow and pay attention. I look around all the time. I watch out for the other guy. I scan his hands for a wedding band.

Just kidding.

I never got to drive myself when I was married, and I hated that. Why?

Frankly, because I never really liked the way that men drive.

Or maybe it was just my men, but it started with my late father.

Let me say for the record that I adored my father. He was a great guy, calm and easygoing, except when he was behind the wheel. Then he didn’t become angry, but he liked to go fast. Not crazy fast, but well over the speed limit.

And this in the olden days, when the speed limit was 65.

You may be too young to remember those days. Back then, the retirement age was also 65, but times have changed. Nowadays the speed limit is 55, and the retirement age is 235.

Which means that there are plenty of eighty-five-year-olds driving themselves to the office at 82 mph.

Not a good combo.

Anyway, even when my father drove at the speed limit, he sped to the traffic light, then stopped short, over and over and over, so the ride would be herky-jerky and ultimately nauseating. You could get carsick with my dad, even in the front seat. It drove my mother nuts, and after they divorced, it drove my stepmother nuts.

Divorce doesn’t solve everything.

Just in my case.

We all nagged my father about his driving, and he tried to comply, but it didn’t last. He wasn’t passive-aggressive, but he was forgetful. He’d try to toe the line, but sooner or later, he’d go back to his old habits.

Like me and chocolate cake, when I’m on a diet.

It’s only a matter of time before we’re reunited.