A Man, or a Building, Like That

Recently I lost someone I had come to love. Oh, it’s alright in the sense that he didn’t actually die, but he’s gone just the same.

Building Down 

Image byTeece Aronin

If I imagine my life as a skyline, the building that was this man is gone from it. There is an ugly gap such as one sees after a building is demolished, brought down in that clever way demolition experts use.

You’ve seen film footage of these detonations, I’m sure. There is a countdown, a roar, and the building collapses onto itself like an accordion dangled by one strap and then dropped. This method of demolition minimizes the risk that someone will get hurt. 

It was this same building, just weeks ago, that pounded the mattress with his fist as he laughed himself sick at my jokes, who found it endearing and not annoying when, because of my bad driving, I smashed the pristine snow in his yard. Now I grieve the gentle, funny, fallen building, and I dread the morning light where the gap in the skyline is so jarringly evident.

Nights are somehow better. Darkness blacks out the skyline, and I almost forget for a while, curled up inside the evening chatter of my children.

Writer C.S. Lewis lost his wife, Joy Davidman to bone cancer. His book, A Grief Observed, was based on notes he made as he mourned her. Said Lewis: “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.”

If grief feels like fear, it is because so much of grief is fear. This grief of mine fears that now, when it rains, instead of dashing into my warm, sound building, I'll stand outdoors instead, lost and abandoned, a weeping clod. My pain will stick to my body like a see-through second skin, and parts I'd shown only to him, will gleam in the wet, public light.

It is the fear that now I'll have to find someone else with a van and as much patience as my lost one had to help me haul home that sofa from the thrift store to replace the one the dog chewed up. And this replacement person must be someone I can sleep next to, blissful, as he drives, even though I know I look drunk or anesthetized or in some other slack-faced way, compromised when I sleep.

Where do I go to find a man or a building like that, and to whom will I offer up my love, with the exception of my children, because my love for them will be hardwired and unconditional forever? Was, is, and is forevermore. 

If there are angels, protectors who watch over us, wanting what is best for us, do times like these test them, too? Do they blame themselves, as if symbolic deaths and imploding buildings were a ball they should have caught, but dropped?

I will find my way through this grief, and since he is grieving too, I hope he also finds his way. Then I will offer my friendship. When we have stopped grieving, I will offer him that, and maybe we can try each other on for a different kind of fit.

I hold tight to the ability to grieve. I wear it like a badge earned many times over, and I see it as hope that hurting deeply means living deeply. 

The alternative of not living, someone told me, is deadly. And the alternative of not living deeply, I tell myself, is worse than death.

But again, if you know this answer, please tell me: Where do you go to find a man, or a building, like that?

Wet Bread - If the Great Flood Really Happened, It So Should've Happened Like This

According to something I just read online (although shockingly, it might be one of the few online pieces not to be completely accurate), one of the most ambitious plans ever masterminded by God, was nearly botched. If the snafu hadn't been caught in time, someone God intended to survive the Great Flood would have been killed, which, if we take the story literally, would have altered the future of mankind. I'm not sure if this is part of the Hebrew Scriptures or not. If it is, then this is old news. Still, I didn't know about it so maybe you didn't either.

Noah's Ark
Copyright, Teece Aronin

Now, I have no intention of getting all religious on you, but I will acknowledge that, of course, many people believe God is perfect and by extension so are His plans. So I'm not even going there. I'm simply sharing what I read which was that, for some reason - God only knows why - God told Noah to destroy the first person to announce the flood's onset. But when Noah's daughter-in-law, Aphra was baking bread, water suddenly poured from the oven. 

Understandably, Aphra exclaimed that the flood was commencing, and since she happened to be the first to do so, God had to quickly shift gears so Noah wouldn't kill her. In God's plan, Aphra had to survive to help repopulate the earth post-flood.

So, I got to thinking: How might all this have gone down, and what gears might God have shifted to save Aphra from a terrible fate? Consider this possible scenario:

It's a hot, humid day and the forecast is calling for rain. Aphra stands in the kitchen about to take a loaf of bread from the oven. She is cranky, not only because it's hot, but because she's pregnant, has a headache, and the oven hasn't worked right for days. 

But mostly, Aphra is cranky because her husband, Ham, and a bunch of kooks, specifically Ham's father and two brothers, are next door in the backyard - again - hammering away - still - and the father, the biggest kook in the bunch, is claiming he will save them all, plus a whole boatload of animals, from a flood. Now really, how asinine is that? 

Young Aphra and Ham live next door to Ham's parents, Noah and Emzara, and this has been a sticking point for much of their marriage because Aphra detests the region's swampy summers. Noah and Emzara moved to this area, popular with seniors, when they retired, and Aphra resents Ham for dragging her here too. Ham exhibits an almost sappy adoration for his parents, but Aphra finds them intrusive and preachy. Today, every noisy smack from a hammer is making her resentment stronger and her headache thumpier. Some linguists believe that this is where the term "pounding headache" comes from.

Anyway, since construction began on that thing next door, Ham's two brothers and their wives have been staying with him and Aphra. And lately, animals have been brazenly strolling in from outside, putting their feet up on the furniture and smelling up the house.

Now Aphra stands in the kitchen, blowing her bangs out of her eyes. A cloth is tied around her hair to keep it out of her way but a loose, raven-colored lock has escaped the cloth to stick against the back of her sweaty neck.

She remembers what the locals say, that it isn't the heat, it's the humidity, and that's certainly the case today. The air is suffocating, and Aphra muses that one could practically drown just from breathing. She dismisses the thought as crazy. No one would be drowning around here anytime soon. And there wasn't going to be any stupid flood either. God, Noah was such a nut-ball.

With impulsive fury, Aphra goes to the kitchen window and yells in the direction of her in-laws' backyard. Immediately, all hammering halts, and every man freezes dead in his tracks, straining to hear. Ever since the ark, they've all been living in similar doghouses so this could have been the shriek of any one of their wives. As each man prays it isn't his, there comes another shout:

"Ham! I said, get your @$$ in here!" 

With the exception of Ham, all the men sigh with relief, and construction resumes. Ham straightens and looks in the direction of his prize donkey grazing in their backyard. Why would Aphra want him to bring it in the house? Then the realization dawns: Ham is the @$$ his wife is yelling for.

A momentary sadness darkens Ham's gentle features. He is embarrassed by his wife's public use of coarse language. Would she kiss her mother with that mouth? And his own mother would never say such things. Still, Aphra is a sweet, good natured girl overall so he will overlook this one small flaw.

"Coming, honey!" he calls. "Be right back," Ham tells the others. Striving to be cheerful, Ham heads for home. But once in the house, he sees his wife's expression and all hope is dashed.

"What?" he asks.

"When are you going to realize that I matter more than that crackpot out there?" Aphra wants to know.

"Baby," Ham answers imploringly, "that's my dad. Please don't talk like that. He's been nothing but good to me all my life."

"Really? Then why did he name you Ham?" his wife shoots back. "You are named after the meat of an unclean beast. What kind of father names his son after something filthy and disgusting?"

Ham winces. He has wondered this himself. His parents are strict Jews. Why would his father have named him Ham? And even if the idea was his mother's, why would his father have allowed it?  

"Well, I'm sure there was a good reason," says Ham. The defense is as weak as his manhood.

"Yeah, right!" his wife barks. "And here's another thing: I want you to stop messing around with that dumb boat!"

"Uh, actually honey, it's an ark," Ham corrects with instant regret.

"Alright - ARK!" Aphra roars like a pregnant, hormone-riddled fire-breathing dragon. "Do you have any idea how many things need fixing around here? Take that oven for instance! You've been promising to fix it for days, but no! The ARK comes first! You fix that oven and you fix it now!"

With that, Aphra yanks on the oven door and a huge rushing gush of water erupts from the opening, smacks into the couple's faces and soaks them before spilling to the floor.

"Jesus, Mary and Joseph!" Aphra yells, then wonders dimly who those people might be and why she would be yelling their names. "It's the . . ."

Knowing his father will kill the first person to announce the flood, Ham clamps a hand over his wife's mouth then tells Aphra for once in her life to just shut the  #*?% up. And since he's on a roll, he tells her to lighten up on the G#??*&n swearing. 

Ham lifts Aphra into his arms and hustles her over to his parents' backyard where everyone jumps aboard the freshly completed ark. Aphra looks embarrassed, and some linguists believe that this is where the term sheepish comes from.

"I'm sorry, Ham," she says. "You were right. There really is going to be a fl . . ." 

Hams's hand shoots out like lightening to silence her again, accidentally bumping her head against a signpost pointing the way to Alligator Alley.   

For some reason not clear to Aphra, seeing her bump her head makes her husband smile.

And some linguists believe that this is where the term happy accident comes from. 

Comedians Aren't Funny When You're Pregnant

Sometimes even professional comedians aren't all that funny - like when you're living with one, or married to one, or find yourself impregnated by one. No, not funny at all.

My ex-husband, Michael at a run 

to end breast cancer - finally 

doing something helpful for women.

Photo courtesy of Michael Aronin. 

For instance, most husbands of women turning forty and overdue with their first child, know enough to keep their mouths shut - about pretty much everything. But when the husband is a stand-up comedian, he doesn't know enough to do this and says things men planning to live long enough to see their babies would never say.

Picture this: I'm standing there, so pregnant my nose has gained weight. The baby is inside me, hanging window treatments, rearranging the furniture, and ordering from Wayfair, showing no signs of coming out. My then-husband, Michael looks at me suspiciously and asks, "How do I know you're the real mother?"

Then imagine this: I'm somewhere into my 104th week of pregnancy. I have given up shaving my legs. Our shower stall is tiny and when I bend over and lather my legs, the soap immediately washes off and I'm cutting myself. Even if I shut the water off first, bending over to shave is miserable.

And forget shaving in the tub; just sitting down in the tub is like centering a house onto one square of a sidewalk. 

So I give up shaving for a while.

After a few weeks, as I roll into bed, Michael reaches over, pats my leg and mutters, "Dad?"

Anyway, I blubber and sulk my way through my fortieth birthday and two weeks later the baby is still a no-show. By the time I am finishing the nursery, I am enormous, and if I am sitting on the floor painting a baseboard and need a rag from the other side of the room, I roll there to fetch it.

One night, I am putting up a wallpaper boarder at chair rail height. When it starts peeling off faster than I can slap it back up, I scream for Michael to help. He does his best, but we end up watching helplessly as all my hard work comes crashing down like a home improvement project in a Laurel and Hardy short. 

I throw myself on the floor in a hormone-enhanced tantrum and begin to bawl. At first Michael takes the sympathetic approach and tries unsuccessfully to comfort me. Then he decides I will settle down if he leaves me alone for a few minutes. My hysterics, however, continue.

After a full thirty minutes of this, Michael grabs the bull by the horns and, using the same judgment he too often employs, takes the tough love route.

"Teece!" he bellows from the bottom of the stairs. "Pull yourself together and get down here - NOW!"

I yell back what he can do with his order.

And his stand-up buddies weren't all that different. When one of them got in trouble with his pregnant wife, he solemnly absorbed her words, looked at her with mopey eyes and a divorceably straight face, and said, "That's okay, honey; it's just the baby talking."

As another of them was coaching his wife through labor, the baby's head emerged, but his wife was exhausted and stopped pushing. The doctor told him to say something motivating, so he told his wife, "Sweetie, if you don't keep pushing, you're gonna have a helluva time buying pants."

Yes, comedians are a very glib bunch - which is just one of the reasons so many are divorced.   

                         

         

It's Got to Be a Sign!

If I were a standup comic I'd kick off this essay by asking, "And what is it with signs these days?" But really, what is it with signs these days?


Back in the day, we could count on signs to tell us important things like STOP and YIELD and FREE FOOD. But now, way too often, they either tell you to do things that don't make any sense when you think about them hard enough or they warn you not to do things that even Justin Bieber would have the sense not to do. Or that even Miley Cyrus would have the sense not to do. Or that even Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus at a party hosted by Robin Thicke would have the sense not to do.

I've been making notes for the last year or so every time I see one of these signs. One is in the picture right up there. Notice it says that the screen is intended to keep insects out and is not equipped to keep someone's drunk behind in if he or she were impaired enough to think that wedging their rump into the window would be really, really fun just to see if it will fit or how much it will hurt if it falls out and lands on the concrete five floors down. 

Then there's the sign at my local Kroger that invites me to say hi to the manager. It goes on to say that their goal is to greet every customer and that their success rate is 95%. 

I'm not saying Kroger doesn't mean well, but they are asking us to acknowledge them so that they can meet their goal of acknowledging us. That's like getting a pat on the back for saying hi when all you did was say hi back.

Late last summer that same Kroger set about a dozen half-dead plants outside the store with a sign reading HALF OFF. Maybe Kroger meant that the plants' leaves were half off or that the plants themselves were halfway off to whatever place it is that plants go when they die. A good customer would have used the leaves to spell out HI! thereby helping Kroger to meet its greeting goal even as it was selling off the plants.

One day when the kids and I were out for a drive, we passed a sign advertising free rocks. Why would I bother with those when all I have to do to get free rocks is have the kids bend over and shake their heads real hard? Granted, a construction project manager or a landscaper or even a gardener might have seen value in free rocks, but egoist that I am, I see things through my own narcissistic filter so a sign advertising free rocks looked ridiculous to me; especially since, as I said before, I had my own quarry buckled up in the backseat. 

I need to get over my critical negativity lest locusts descend upon me; or a plague; or locusts infected by a plague. 

Because no matter which of them I got stuck with, it would be a really bad sign. 

The Watched Pot of Winter

It’s been winter for weeks now and I’m still trying to catch up to the notion that winter is a good and natural thing, a thing needed by the earth, a time for nature in my part of the world to close its eyes and rest; a time for things to take stock and catch their breath before the bustle of spring returns.

Like his mother, Jon gets a  
little flaky in the winter. 

Winter never was my favorite thing, but years ago when I was about to drive from Michigan to Colorado, my view on winter took an uptick. It was January and someone remarked that it was a shame I wasn’t making the trip in a few months when the scenery would be prettier.

“But winter has its own colors,” a friend replied, “and they’re beautiful.”

On the trip I appreciated the landscape more than I would have had my friend not made that observation. Winter’s sepia and olive tones became nearly as appealing as the purples, greens, yellows and reds due to burst from the soil come April.  

Why then has winter become so unappealing to me again? Why can’t I think my way back to that long-ago road trip when winter was cold, bleak and barren, yet beautiful nonetheless; when it was something to love despite, or even because of its harsh embrace? Why can’t I get back there again?

It’s not as if I have no good memories of winter. My son was born in the winter, umbilical cord wrapped around his neck, his first cry the bleat of a newborn lamb, raspy, plaintive, yet raging, simultaneously helpless and furious. 

That little bleat told me my son had arrived and that he planned on staying, despite the scary start, and his grandmother’s first thought at the sight of him was that he should pick up a hammer and help the other elves. He was a minikin, but he was my minikin and he was healthy.

And one of the things I laughed at the hardest in this life would never have happened had it not been for winter.

One morning my mother landed on her fanny after slipping in the snow, her coat leaving a nubby-textured imprint next to a Nike-esque swoosh from where her boot had shot out from under her. If I’d seen her fall, I’d have been upset, but walking up on the plop and swoosh, and knowing she was fine, made me weep with laughter. Mean-sounding, I know, but she was laughing, too.

Maybe I'd feel better if I just stopped fighting winter and stopped staring at the calendar as though winter were the proverbial watched pot. Maybe I need to remember my son’s first wails, picture him as he was the other day, wind-whipped and thrilled, barreling down a hill on his sled. 

Maybe I should think about moments like those and stop fighting what is as inevitable and as necessary and as natural as death. At least winter is temporary and there will always be another spring. 

There will always be another spring, right?

Jenny and the Christmas Vomity Mess

In early December my house was a Christmas vomity mess, then it looked lovely, then it was a Christmas vomity mess again. I hate it when Christmas vomity messes go full-circle - and they always do. 

Kitt, our cat, staking her claim in the
Christmas vomity mess. Copyright,
Teece Aronin. 

The Christmas vomity mess is that stage of home Christmasness characterized by ornaments scattered across floors and ornament hooks that hide among carpet fibers and don't come loose until they hitch a ride out of there embedded in the sole of your foot. 

The Christmas vomity mess is scraps of gift-wrap strewn like confetti - your house looking like New Year's Day, six a.m. It is also whole hanks of gift-wrap curled up on the floor like victims of a war on gift-wrap because someone didn't measure once and therefore cut twice. 

The Christmas vomity mess is every construction paper decoration and tree ornament your children have made since pre-K, now flung across the dining table from which the table cloth hangs, all catty-wompus and drunkenly grazing the floor. 

The Christmas vomity mess is all your Thanksgiving paraphernalia co-mingling and canoodling with the decorated plates, candy dishes, hand soap dispensers and towels which must be trotted out or it just wouldn't be Christmas. 

I first heard the term Christmas vomity mess from my smart, sparkling, optimistic friend, Jenny. Even though it can't always be easy as a working, single mother, Jenny has a gift for seeing the good. 

Jenny is the kind of woman who can tell you that someone just graffitied her truck and manage to spin the tale so that it sounds like the sun just flooded her garden, every flower turning its little face toward the light - and that it was adorable when one of them sneezed. 

When Jenny sees a Christmas vomity mess she sees fun-loving elves playing peekaboo in the debris. When I see a Christmas vomity mess, I see elves dressed as Chucky dolls. I don't perk up until the Christmas vomity mess is downgraded to at worst, a Christmas hiccuppy mess.  

I first heard Jenny use the term on Facebook right after Thanksgiving when this post appeared next to her pretty, smiling face: My house is a Christmas vomity mess! 

'Oh, my God!' I realized, 'So is mine!' 

This year I did almost all of my holiday shopping online, causing my Christmas vomity messes to expand and include cardboard boxes, stacks of them; a small-scale homage to Citizen Cane and the crate maze remains of a life spent grabbing, grabbing, grabbing. And spilling from the boxes to tumble all over the room were tiny air-puffed packing cushions equally useful as floaties for little baby rabbits. 

And because ninety percent of this stuff was intended for my kids whose last scraps of holiday innocence I'd like to protect by keeping at least some gifts a surprise, the Chrismas vomity mess has spread into my bedroom in a big way. This gave me pause one night as I turned out the bedside lamp. Normally, I navigate my dark bedroom like a fish in black waters. I know every curled corner on every throw rug and gracefully sidestep the tiny three-legged stool near my closet door.

But this Xanadu microcosm could send me tush over teakettle if I connected with it in the dark. I could fall, break a hip and become a burden to society when I'd be perfectly happy just burdening my children someday. Then a Scroogey voice inside my head nagged, "And you'll keep Christmas by losing your independence!" So, even as I told Ebeneezer to shut his figgy pudding hole, I got up and shoved the boxes out of the way.

But almost enough about me; Since the Christmas vomity mess is a multi-stage phenomenon, I manage to clean it up in time for Christmas morning and holiday guests only to witness it reinventing itself during the gift opening phase like an antibiotic-resistant bacteria. 

This year I found these cycles exhausting and so did my Christmas tree which eventually refused to light whenever the place was a shambles. Like me, it can't seem to get turned on when the house is a mess. 

So that's it for this year's Christmas vomity mess. I might feel nostalgic for Christmas from time to time but never for the Christmas vomity mess. 

And Jenny - smart, fun, light-hearted Jenny - what planet are you from and may I spend next Christmas there with you?

Dial D for Dick

Years ago, I was a headhunter who recruited actuaries.

Proof positive of how much I
love being on the phone.

An actuary's work is a little like an accountant's, only snore-ier. They’re the ones who calculate probability of death and things like that and they often work for insurance companies.

I’ll preface this by saying that I was a bad recruiter; I was a very bad recruiter. I was such a bad recruiter that I spent less time at my desk than I did hiding in the ladies’ room. I lacked sales skills and I hated being on the phone, which I was, almost constantly, when I wasn’t in the bathroom – in other words: roughly half the day not counting my lunch and two coffee breaks.  

Worse was that the nature of my work, talking someone into quitting a job and hooking up with my client’s company, felt to me like stealing. Whenever I tracked down an actuary who qualified for a position I was looking to fill, got him on the phone and pitched the opportunity, I was nervous and awkward and couldn’t get the words out. I hated being a recruiter.

One day, I dragged my sorry carcass onto the phone for another day of telephonic misery. I was trying to reach a man by the name of Dick Smith (I’m making up the last names but the Dicks were real) and called into the company where the phone was answered by a receptionist.

“Hello,” I said as nonchalantly as possible, “May I speak with Dick Smith?”

"Just a moment," she said before transferring my call. Seconds later a man answered.   

           

“Dick here.”

           

I introduced myself, rising above the knots in my stomach then launched into the details of the job. I must’ve prattled on for three minutes straight with Dick listening politely, asking an occasional question, then allowing me to continue. When I finally shut up, he said, “That sounds like a terrific career move, but you're looking for Dick Smith and I'm Dick Jones. Hang on while I transfer you.”

           

Instantly my stomach resurrected my breakfast and I began catastrophizing the horrible end now awaiting Dick Smith and his family: rumors flying that he talks to headhunters, his boss firing him and his wife divorcing him. What felt like hours was just seconds before a husky, elegant female voice cut in: “Mr. Smith’s office; this is Phyllis.”

“Hello, Phyllis. I called in a few minutes ago and asked to speak with Dick Smith – you know him, he’s your boss." Of course she knew that Dick Smith was her boss. “Anyway, I called in and asked for him, but somehow I was transferred over to Dick Jones and must have talked to him for almost five minutes before he told me that he wasn’t Dick Smith at all, but was actually Dick Jones. So anyway, it was just a bit of a mix-up and I’m hoping you can help me, because you see, it turns out that after all that talking, I'd totally gotten hold of the wrong Dick.”

There was an exquisitely timed pause before Phyllis, cool as an April breeze, replied, “A mistake any woman could make.”

I’m happy to say that I’m no longer an actuarial recruiter but I have no idea what happened to either Dick after that.

They probably work for Phyllis now.