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. 

Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer - on Purpose!

Holiday Season 2015 is upon us. Yes, Thanksgiving is finished cramming its accidentally-left-in-the-bird-giblets down our throats, the menorahs are back on their shelves and St. Lucia has blown out the candles on her head-wreath. But we’re still looking at Christmas, Kwanzaa and New Year’s – and that’s assuming I haven’t forgotten any. Oh, and Boxing Day, but that's Britain and Canada, so it doesn't really count.

Me, right after getting drummed out of the
elf corps for insisting on wearing black.

Have I forgotten any? Maybe, and this time last year, I’d have been too frazzled to know the difference. This year I’m too tranquil to give a fig.

But whether I stay calm or not, I’ve decided the holidays have been responsible for way too much upset in my life and this year I’m done with that nonsense. This year, I don’t care if Santa falls off the roof and dies; it’s not going to get to me. Even if he lives and sues, I’m staying zen about it all.   

We let the holidays stomp all over us with their big, black, rubber snow boots, and come to think of it, it’s not the holidays' fault; it’s ours. By ours I mean the mothers, the fathers, the grandparents, the retailers, all of us. We either make the holidays hell (retailers and Black Friday shoppers) or we allow our holidays to become hell (normal people and Black Friday shoppers).

Blame it on my baby boomer mentality if you will, but I don't remember Christmas pressure starting so early when I was a kid - I don't think it did, anyway. Or maybe my parents just didn't buy into it so I wasn't aware of it. These days we allow shopping chains to start ho’ing us around in their greedy grips before our jack-o-lanterns are moldy. We start worrying that our homes don’t look like the hotel in White Christmas. If we’re Christian we start resenting our Jewish friends for getting off so easy and if we’re Jewish, we think it would be cool to get more presents for once.

This doesn’t even factor in for Kwanzaa or St. Lucia’s Day. In fact, the real holiday miracle is that the faithful haven't burned the world down at least once by now.  

Boxing Day is the only winter holiday I can think of that doesn’t involve a lot of candle-burning, but still, every year, people beat each other senseless thinking they’re supposed to be boxing like boxers. Or they smack each other stupid with empty, leftover gift boxes. It’s TRUE. (No it's not.) But who really understands British and Canadian holidays besides the British and the Canadians?

Here’s the reality for far too many of us this time of year: Helpless and hopeless, we throw ourselves under the next one-horse open sleigh that comes along. And most people don’t know this, but the song, Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer is based on a true incident which happened in 1947 when a stressed-out grandmother named Iva Haddit threw herself in front of a rogue reindeer at a petting zoo in Minot, North Dakota; all this in an effort to land herself in the hospital until the holidays blew over. That’s true too! (No it's not.)

This year I’m getting on Etsy, buying myself a handmade kerchief and settling my brains for a long winter’s nap. I’ll go down before Christmas and get up in time for Groundhog Day. And if Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow, I’m goin’ back down.

You can call me in time for the summer solstice.    

Someday My Prince Will Come To - Or Not

When my daughter, Syd's beloved guinea pig died, we allowed for a proper time of mourning (three days). Then we brought home a baby Netherland dwarf rabbit. Syd named him Prince Charming. He was the umpty-umpth rabbit to hop into our hearts.

"Rabbit Sings the Blues" by Teece Aronin, on 

products in the phylliswalter store at

Redbubble.com. 

Why we were so optimistic about this rabbit's prospects, considering our luck with previous ones is unclear. The closest I can come to why we felt this way is that we didn't feel that way. I think what we really felt was a glimmer of hope and a lot of enthusiasm about sustaining a tiny life with the bonus that neither of us would have to get pregnant. 

The other rabbits had died. With the exception of one, that was snatched from Syd by a dog and killed, we never knew exactly what went wrong; some "syndrome" or another would strike and next thing we knew, our rabbit was gone, hopping up God's bunny trail.

So, now, here we stood, Syd and I, with Prince Charming.

We bought him from a breeder who kept him and a pile of other rabbits from a mishmash of litters all stashed together in a stuffy outbuilding. 

Gently, Syd picked him up. He didn't thrash around; he just gazed placidly back at her as if peering into Heaven, or something just short of Heaven since Syd didn't have carrots sticking from her ears.  

We stopped at the pet store on our way home to buy Prince Charming some supplies. Syd was holding him in her hands when a clerk revved up a noisy floor buffer and Prince Charming promptly fainted.

The clerk immediately switched off the floor buffer. Prince Charming's eyes were closed and his head had lolled to the side, but with the noise stopped, all it took were a few gentle strokes down his back to bring him around. Syd and I breathed again, bought the supplies and took him home.

We'd had Prince Charming for maybe a couple of months, when Syd woke up one morning to find him dead. After the crying subsided (for both of us), I told Syd she could stay home from school. I used a towel to lift Prince Charming from his cage, wrapped him up and placed him in a shoebox. We decided I would bury him in the woods off a nearby bike trail.

I found my garden spade, picked up the shoebox and went outside. Not until I'd walked a few yards up the path did it occur to me how obvious it was that I was the mother of a kid whose rabbit just died, who was single with no one else to pawn the task off on, and was looking for a place to bury the beast. It was still morning but brutally hot.

A few feet into the woods was a little bush that looked perfect for bunny-burying so I slinked off the trail, knelt in the dirt and started digging. Then I thought: What if someone comes by? This was public land and bunny-burying was probably frowned on. If someone did come along, I would pretend to be talking on my cell phone. It seemed to me that would minimize the risk of anyone questioning me.

Digging a hole, even one that short and shallow was hard work in that heat. My hair had fallen into a page boy droop that made me look like Prince Valiant's sweaty father. Then I heard some women coming up the path. When they were close enough to see me, I started talking into the phone with a no-nonsense clip I hoped would deter them from speaking to me. Then I fumbled the phone and accidentally hit the speaker button. Loudly and clearly came the words: "I'm sorry, but your call cannot be completed at this time. Please try again later."

The look I gave the women was intended as a warning that I'd just escaped from prison. They walked on, eyeing me cautiously as they passed. I didn't care; I had a bunny to bury. 

Prince Charming was the last of our rabbits. Maybe someday we'll try again. But right now, two things are sure: 

Fainting bunnies are adorable.

And when they never wake again, it hurts.



  

Let Us Be Batesful

Thanksgiving is this Thursday and I was just thinking - before the death of Norma Bates, she and her son, Norman must have spent some lonely holidays together. I think when Alfred Hitchcock directed Psycho, he should have included some flashbacks to show us what those holidays were like. But since it's too late for that, I'm stuck using my imagination. 

A Batesful Thanksgiving by

Teece Aronin. Available at the

phylliswalter store on Redbubble.com

I came up with one scenario for how Mrs. Bates could have met her end if her end had fallen on Thanksgiving. Actually, in this scenario, Thanksgiving is instrumental in bringing about her end. I offer it here in hopes that it will make your relatives look better to you this year. You can thank me later. 

Now, picture with me if you will . . .

. . . a Thanksgiving morning, and, as usual, the neon vacancy light burns with hope beside the Bates Motel. Switching that light on is a task Norman Bates has performed in a perfunctory way ever since the new highway went in, routing traffic away from the motel that he and his mother run. 

Behind the motel, high up on a hill is the house Norman shares with his mother. It is a dark, tumbledown Gothic monstrosity - or is it Victorian? Anyway, right now, the only light burning in the entire house is a dingy bulb attached to a cord that dangles from the ceiling. Norman and his mother are preparing their holiday dinner. Let's listen, shall we?

Norman (at the sink, smiling and rinsing blood from the turkey): Mother, do you think we might get any Thanksgiving travelers on their ways home tonight?

Mrs. Bates (standing at the counter next to Norman): No. And pass me those potatoes I had you bring up from the cellar. By the way, something smells off down there. What have you got stashed away?

Norman: Nothing, Mother. Really.

Mrs. Bates: Nothing mother really my foot! I asked you a question, young man, and I expect an answer!

Norman: Mother, it's just a few things I need for my new hobby. Really, the smell won't bother you at all once you get used to it. One day you won't even know I've been doing anything down there at all. 

Mrs. Bates: I highly doubt that. And just what is that smell anyway?

Norman: Pickling agents, Mother. 

Mrs. Bates: Pickling agents! Norman Bates, have you been sniffing my canning supplies again?

Norman: No, Mother. But soon you won't be needing your canning supplies, so please, let's just try to forget about it.

Mrs. Bates: What do you mean, I won't be needing my supplies?"

Norman: I simply meant, Mother, that canning seems to be to physically demanding for you lately. I think it's time you gave it up. We can afford to buy the kinds of things you used to can. 

Mrs. Bates: What do you mean "used to can?" Norman, just what kind of a ditwad are you? That canning saves us hundreds of dollars a year. With the motel not getting any business, that money comes in handy. Now, where are the onions I asked for?

Norman: Mother, you didn't ask me for any onions. 

Mrs. Bates: Well, suppose you just march your caboose down to the cellar and get some?

Norman: Yes, mother. 

Thinking what a pain in the caboose his mother's always been, Norman trudges down the cellar stairs, selects two onions, then trudges back up. Trudging is as close as Norman's ever gotten to showing his mother he's angry. He hands her the onions.

Mrs. Bates: And suppose you tell me what other of your hobby supplies I'm smelling down there? And where's the celery?

Norman: Mother, you didn't ask me for celery either.

Mrs. Bates: Oh, don't be ridiculous, Norman; of course I asked you for celery. Get down to that cellar and find some.

Now, instead of being a pain in his caboose, Norman's mother morphs in his head into being a caboose; a caboose attached to a long line of boxcars carrying highly explosive materials, jumping the tracks and plunging over a cliff to a fiery end. This time Norman stomps down to the cellar, snatches up five stalks of celery, punches them repeatedly, then stomps back upstairs. 

Mrs. Bates: You were just about to tell me; what else am I smelling down there?

Norman: Tanning chemicals, preservatives, relaxers. Oh, and some re-hydration products.

Mrs. Bates: What are you running down there, some kind of spa?

Norman (hoisting the turkey into a roasting pan): Well, let's just say, that I find it relaxing. 

Mrs. Bates: Norman, why didn't you bring up any rutabagas? 

Norman: Mother, you never said you wanted rutabagas.

Mrs. Bates: Norman, what do you take me for, a cook or a kook? I most certainly did tell you I wanted rutabagas. Now march! 

Going down for the third time, Norman storms off, accidentally striking his head on the dangling light bulb. It swings back and forth, back and forth. His mother's face is glaringly illuminated then darkly shadowed; back and forth and over and over. Seeing his mother like this makes Norman nervous. Once Norman has returned to the kitchen: 

Mrs. Bates: This hobby of yours - is it something I might enjoy?

Norman (slyly): Well, I'd be happy to expose you to it. 

Mrs. Bates: What about those preservatives? What are those for?

Norman (smiling at his mother): Mother, those preservatives could help keep you looking fresh and alive for a long, long time. 

Mrs. Bates: Hmm . . . After dinner I'd like you to show me what you've got going on down there. Maybe for once you've got yourself a hobby we can share.

Norman: Trust me, Mother. There's one thing I'd like to try with my hobby that I wouldn't want to do with anyone but you.

Mrs. Bates: Norman, I must say, that was rather sweet. 

Norman crosses the kitchen to return with a pan of steaming hot dressing. He begins spooning it into the bird's cavity.

Mrs. Bates (looking furious): Norman Bates! That is no way to stuff a turkey!

Norman (smiling again): Mother, there are all kinds of ways to stuff a turkey, and all kinds of turkeys to stuff. I'll show you what I mean after dinner . . . in the cellar.    

Gloria Steinem is 81 and Still Cool

Gloria Steinem is 81!

Fish Without a Bicycle
Illustration, copyright Teece Aronin

And she doesn't look all that different from how she looked back in the day, back when we could expect something just a little cutting but still elegant, to fly from her lips to the media's ear on an almost daily basis.

But I'm throwing water on one of the fiercest arguments Steinem ever made, that a woman's looks don't define her, and, of course, she's right. 

I mention Steinem's looks only in the context of her being 81, and how it seems the cosmic force that launched her into 1960s psyches now stirs something into Steinem's coffee with a magic spoon, making her close to ageless so she can continue to challenge and guide in the form with which the world became so enamored years ago.

If I don't embrace every Steinem message, I have a sense that she's closer to right than I am and that I often miss her point. Remember when she quipped, "A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle?" I take some exception to that, particularly since fish and bicycles would make pretty weird-looking offspring. But I probably should aspire to a more full-on embrace of Steinem's point of view.

Then again, perhaps I have. After all, I have reached the point where I don't see myself as needing a man, simply preferring to share life with one. And where Steinem artfully articulated contempt for the notion that women need men, sometimes I really do need a man because I've never ridden a bicycle that . . . well, once maybe.

And if a woman wants to get someplace on a bike while enjoying a man's company and not having to pedal, she needs a man. Just ask Katherine Ross. After Paul Newman rode her all around the barnyard in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Ross' beautiful bum no doubt ached for days, but at least her legs didn't get tired.  And since that's always the trade-off in that situation, I prefer to see the bike tire as half full.

I wonder if I'm now guilty of objectifying men. Ugh, liberation, equity and equality can be tricky. Let's just say that I have a great liking for men, for many of their perspectives, and for their hard work and companionship. And yes, I do see the genders as equals. 

But what really gets me, I say as I miss Steinem's point yet again, is that I'll never look that good when I'm 81. There are recent photos of her all over the internet promoting her memoir, still lean, still clad in tight-fitting jeans and body-hugging tops and with a belt loosely draped around her slender hips.

Arriving home at the end of a long book tour, does Steinem groan as she eases onto the edge of the bed? Does she whine as she pulls off her boots? Does she grimace while removing her jeans? Does she then step gingerly into her walk-in tub, "perfect for the senior with mobility issues?" And does she have this walk-in tub because she can't get out of an ordinary tub unassisted? I think not. Something tells me Steinem has a regular bathtub and that she gets in and out of it as easily as ever because Gloria Steinem is just that cool.

And because Steinem probably needs a walk-in tub like a fish needs a bicycle.

Dumb Door-a

Doors can be dangerous. On their surface, they come off as silent stewards of privacy and sentries against intruders. At their most innocent, they make lovely additions to your home.

Image by Teece Aronin

But the reality of doors can be ominous. The other day, as I reached to push open the door of my doctor's office, someone tentatively opened then closed it from the other side. This tipped me off to open the door cautiously. Standing on the other side was a bespectacled lady in her eighties. We exchanged pleasantries as I swung the door wider and almost nailed another lady who looked a bit like the first and was at least as old.

"Whoops," I said. "Nearly got two for one!"  

One of the ladies commented that their placement, combined with my entrance, had indeed presented a rare opportunity for me, assuming I was in to little old lady tipping.

I once nearly got myself killed by my garage door, and I can think of at least one slasher movie where a teen was done in when the killer used one to crush her head against the door frame. For the life of me, I can't remember the exact circumstances around how my garage door almost did me in. All I remember was that the door was up and I needed to be both out of the house and leave the door closed. Who knows what had happened to the garage door opener. 

So I stood by the door that led to the kitchen, pushed the garage door button, and ran. The door began a rattly descent and a few feet from it I bent over and thrust myself beneath. Then I lost my balance. By the time I hit the ground I had picked up quite a bit of momentum and couldn't stop rolling until the tree in the front yard stepped up to help. 

Flash-forward twenty years and I'm at another door inside another garage leading into another kitchen. My son's in this house having just spent the night here with his friend, Giles and the home belongs to Giles' grandparents. The house is huge and so is the garage. There is a two-car garage door with a one-car garage door next to it. The two-car door is up and the one-car is down. 

I press what I think is the doorbell but the smaller garage door opens. I'm embarrassed and don't want Giles' grandparents to think I'm messing with their garage doors. I fumble for the button and press again. This time the big door goes down. I press the button yet again hoping both doors reopen but only the small one goes up. When I press one last time, the bigger door goes up, the smaller one lowers. 

I knock. 

"Those doors can be confusing," says Giles' grandfather, letting me in.

I like Giles' grandfather. 

Waiting For the Bus

It was at a party for her daughter's eighth birthday, in the midst of a whole lot of hoopla, that we had this conversation, the other mommy and I. As parents tend to do when en masse, we talked about our children - their quirks, their cleverness, the lengths to which our love for them had driven us. We each had a boy and a girl, but in my case, the girl was older, and in her case, the boy was, by just a few years.

Image: Teece Aronin

Our daughters were classmates at school, and that was how the other mommy and I first met. She was flamboyant and loud, but in good ways - extroverted, I should have said. She was tall and sexy and could make smoking look almost as glamorous as people thought it was back in the fifties. She could also drink like a fish but didn't seem to lose control from it. I could never imagine her sick on booze, cooling her face on the bathroom tiles like a lot of people do when they've drunk too much. She seemed to take everything in stride, made everything she did look easy. And she was a loving mother, a hands-on mother, the kind of mother who makes mud pies with her kids.

Since children's parties and parent-teacher conferences were our usual conversation venues, we didn't talk often, but I enjoyed her when we did. One time she listed for me all the reasons she'd preferred to work outside the home even when her kids were babies. She said the same thing as a lot of women who work, when financially they can afford to stay home; that the adult interaction made her a better parent. Then she jokingly confessed the "real reason" and laid it smack on her daughter's playhouse doorstep: "That kid always talked way - too - damned - much."

But that was a different time and not the conversation I'd started to tell you about. This other conversation, as I said, took place on the occasion of her daughter's eighth birthday. But we weren't talking about her daughter; we were talking about her son. We were at her home, a comfortable townhouse she shared with her family. Being at her place always cheered me up because it was cluttered and chaotic even when she entertained, and she made no apologies for it. It cheered me up because when I entertained, I either compulsively bulldozed the clutter out or compulsively apologized for it to my guests. How could I get as comfortable in my skin as she was in hers, I wondered.

Anyway, there we were, the other mommy and I, grazing from the veggie plate, when she told me that when she was a girl, she used to make fun of the "short bus," the smaller buses used to transport kids with special needs to and from school.

So this is how the kids who teased, the kids who bullied might turn out, I mused. I had never met an adult with the guts to admit to that kind of behavior, but this one had, and she'd grown up to be . . . well . . . good, in a lot of ways. I don't know if she made fun of the kids themselves, the kids with special needs, I mean, or if she just joked about the bus itself, telling her friends they belonged on one and that kind of thing. I suppose it doesn't matter now.

For the life of me, I can't remember how we got onto the topic of her son's first day of kindergarten or what possessed her to tell me something so personal, but she did. She said that she stood at the curb with him, waiting for the bus, and the picture of them was so clear in my head, her standing there with him, her son, born with Down syndrome.

And she said that what looped through her mind over and over were the words: "Please God, don't let it be a short bus. Please God, don't let it be a short bus. Please God, don't let it be a short bus."

I don't remember if it turned out to be a short bus or not, but maybe that doesn't matter now either.