Defending Facebook: My "Charmed" Life

If Facebook gets you down, makes you feel your relationships, your family, your furniture, your holidays don't quite measure up, or if you think everyone on there is a shallow bunch of fakers, please understand: You aren't privy to everybody's backstory. 

On one of many road trips back to see my mother. 
Photo copyright, Teece Aronin

I post pictures of my kids baking cookies as the dog watches with flour on her face. I make sure you wake to photos of my cat, stretched in feline repose across my bed. I choose pictures that show most cheerfully or poignantly or humorously how well my kids and I get along.

What you don't see is everything that came before, like a tsunami crushing our lives. Life fell apart, and what you see on Facebook is the repair work, the reassembly, the cleanup - with me, the mother, who never knew a damned thing about how to do any of this - as team captain by default.

There was the end of a marriage to the man who fathered these children, who helped build a home only the most tangled of crossed stars could destroy and did. There was me scrambling to find a better job before our house sold out from under us. There was me networking in two different states, first the kids' home state and next mine, to find that job. 

There was the kids having to leave their father. There was the kids having to leave their grandmother. There was me having to leave my mother when I'd always planned to be there as she aged. There was the night before we left when she broke the "no open flame" rule at her assisted living facility, lit a votive, and joined hands with us around the flame. Then she spoke with a smile of how grateful she was that we had been near her all those years and how she would pray for our trip to be safe.

Then there was the 500-mile move away from every warm thing my kids had ever known.

There were the months on end where I swore I was piloting the kids through hell only to learn that they were guiding me. There were the endless kindnesses of family and friends who took us in, shored us up, and gave us hope.

There was Facebook, which became a way to document the restoration. The place I laid our trips to cider mills and pickle festivals and county fairs as though they were flowers and Facebook was an altar. 

It was a place where the Facebook friends who truly knew me tracked our progress and supported the effort, and where those whose newsfeed I clogged, viewed the work, neither knowing nor caring that there was any work in it.

It was the place I showed off my new sofa with framed Rothko prints hung perfectly level right above - and where at least five nail holes hid behind each print even though I measured. It was a place where few knew it took five years to save the money for that sofa because I was terrified of credit card debt. It was somewhere just a handful of people were aware that the sofa's predecessor had belonged to my aunt, was chewed up by our dog, and that the prints came from a thrift shop and cost $12 each.

I, who loved to write and aspired to be a blogger, developed my "voice" on Facebook, found rhythms for my words, and learned how good it felt when my posts made people laugh. It was a place where my friends nurtured the writer sapling until it was strong enough to launch that blog. 

Anyone who didn't know me well might have thought: 'What a great little family; I wonder what happened to the marriage.'

For the record, the marriage was lost in the tsunami.

But I had Facebook where I documented our trips to see my mother and my ex-husband, where friends could see how well he and I worked together for the sake of our children, and everyone could wonder just how much was exactly as it seemed. 

My "Issue" with Keys

I have a real issue with keys. In fact, the key to many of my issues is my keys. And “issue,” as we know, is the politically correct term with which we seem to have replaced the word “problem” these days. So I’ll just say it like it is: I have a real problem with keys. I can’t find my keys, I lock my keys in the car and I lock my keys in the car with the car running. 

About the only thing I don’t seem able to do with keys is find them on the first try or without panicky rampages through my home and purse. It also seems that I require far too many self-administered pat-downs and am troubled by the fear that one day I'll enjoy the pat-downs and will resort to losing my keys on purpose so that I can justify another.

Last week I was with my son, Jon at the store. As we were leaving, I reached into my coat pocket for my keys and there was nothing there except my store receipt, three Chap Sticks and a puff of lint that didn’t even match anything that would have come from my coat.

“Huh, that’s weird,” I said. “They should be right here.” I checked my other coat pocket, came up empty, then dumped out the contents of my purse. Still I couldn’t find the keys. I peeked into the car to make sure they weren’t hanging from the ignition, but no. 

We walked back into the store and sat at the now closed-for-the-evening sandwich shop located near the store entrance. I did what women have done dating back to when we'd misplace our pelt-scrapers and dumped the purse out again. The same keys not in the purse before were not in the purse again. 

“I’ll just call AAA,” I told my son. “At least this store is open all night, so we won’t have to wait out in the cold.”

No sooner had those words come out of my mouth than an announcement came over the public address. “Attention shoppers, the store will be closing in 15 minutes . . .” Of course it was. 

Sighing heavily, I called AAA where the customer service reps actually manage to sound sorry that you’re one step closer to exhausting all your service calls and will soon have to purchase additional coverage. The rep told me that a truck would be there to assist within 50 minutes. I explained to him that I had a child with me and that the store where we were waiting was about to close, so he expedited my call. Now the driver would be there in . . . 50 minutes.

About a half-hour later, a truck pulled up and the driver rammed and jammed his way into my car. Once inside, I sweated bullets until I found the spare keys I was praying were in my satchel in the back seat. I tipped the driver with my last three bucks and drove home with my son, profoundly grateful.

When we got home, Jon and I shook off our coats, laughing about the whole thing. AAA actually was wonderful and the driver very nice. When my coat came off, I did what I often do when I’m standing up and have pockets; I shoved my hands into them – and pulled out my lost keys. I had forgotten that under my coat I was wearing a velour zip-up jacket with tiny little pockets on each side. If I hadn’t forgotten I had those pockets, I like to think I would have checked them. Unfortunately, this kind of thing is, as they say, “just like me.”  

Losing my keys always makes me think of a friend's father whose stock comment any time someone misplaces keys is: "If they were up your nose, you'd know where they are." But, of course, he doesn't say "nose."

           

And speaking of "noses," last year my ex-husband was in town on business and suggested that the kids and I meet him for dinner. So I took the kids and there we all sat over a long, leisurely dinner, followed by dessert, talking, coffee and more talking. 

When the kids and I walked to the car after dinner and it was running, my first thought was that my invisible chauffeur had started the car and was waiting in there for us. Then I remembered that I don't have an invisible chauffeur because I can't afford one. Then it dawned on me that I had left the keys in the car and that the engine had been running - for nearly ninety minutes.

Because he knows my history with cars and keys, my ex-husband vibrated with suppressed laughter. But he managed to hold himself together long enough to say he'd stick around until AAA sent someone out.

We traipsed back into the restaurant and sat on a bench, the kids next to me and my ex on the other side of the kids. I got on the phone with AAA and as I talked to the rep, a beep alerted me to an incoming text.

“Just a moment,” I said, “do you mind holding? Someone just texted me.” I took the phone away from my ear and checked the text. It read: “Ma’am, before we send a truck out, do you mind confirming that you have the jackass coverage?” Puzzled, I looked up as my ex leaned out so that I could see him past the kids – him and his phone and his uncontained glee.

A couple of years ago, a boyfriend and I were on our way out for the evening, and once again, I couldn’t seem to get my hands on my keys. The kids were right there, too, so I made this familiar announcement: “Hey everybody, listen up! I can’t find my keys! Everybody help me find my keys!”

With that naiveté found only in men, my boyfriend asked, “Why don’t you just keep them in your purse?”

“What are you, crazy?” I said. “Then I’d never be able to find them!”

The next day, he emailed me a cartoon of a mother kangaroo frantically pawing through her pouch and yelling, “He’s got to be in here somewhere!"

Sadly I admit that I left the keys in the car with it running two other times last year, and not just that evening with my ex-husband. I like to think it’s because my mind is gifted and busy and that this causes absent-mindedness. But I'm afraid it's actually something closer to the opposite.

But that’s alright; I still like myself. I’m me and that’s okay. And I provide a lot of enjoyment and a justifiable sense of superiority to all those around me. 

You can’t ask more from life than that.