Soul Flier

How could you have grown up so fast, when the day you were born, you, grown up, seemed a million years away? 

Syd and me when she was about 13.
Photo credit: Jon Aronin

How did you get so capable, because when you were two, you needed me for everything? 

How could you have needed me for everything, then barged ahead anyway, my pigheaded angel-face, convinced that you needed me for nothing? 

And how did you get so strong, my fairy warrior princess, when there was a time that you worried about everything?

Remember that day on the bed? You said you were so afraid to die. I tried to think what could have made you that anxious. Then, you spoke of stresses from school, your parents' divorce, and unreliable friends. You cried about missing your grandma, leaving your childhood, losing your home, and growing old. 

No wonder you were frightened; you'd worried yourself full circle to confront your own mortality. And we went around and around and around, I trying to comfort you and you still not comforted.

Then I, a discontented agnostic, struggling to believe, said the last thing I could think of that might help, that after I died, I would watch over you, and that when you died, I would watch then, too, and fly down from Heaven just in time to catch your soul, that I would hold it tight against me and pilot it to Heaven. 

So far, my help hadn't helped, so I braced for your scoff. 

But you said, "You promise?"

And I said, "I promise."

Losing Our Faith

Faith, my ex-husband's mother, died a few weeks ago - she of the indomitable will and the bottomless spirit, the woman who, despite our differences on so many things, I cared a lot about. Even on those post-divorce days when I'd walk into the laundry room, grateful that she would never again be privy to the messes I squirrel away in there, I still cared.  


Turns out that at the end of her life, when we hadn't seen each other for years, she still cared about me too. 

Whenever the topic of my mother-in-law comes up, I tell people to imagine Joan Rivers. Faith was tiny, even before cancer, and she was viciously made even tinier because of  cancer. 

She was blond, Long Island born and raised, Jewish, whip smart and opinionated - and she could be runway ready with a half-hour's notice. We were so different that the gods of New York must have conspired with the titans of Michigan, laughing themselves sick as they pulled the switches and pushed the buttons that would result in us meeting.  

Sometimes we drove each other crazy, like when she would insist we were running out of gas when we still had half a tank, and I would absentmindedly lock us out of the car - with it running and worse, with just half a tank of gas. 

A few weeks before she died, my ex-husband, Michael asked me to bring the kids to Maryland where Faith lived in a care facility near him. I wasn't sure how she felt about me anymore and wondered how seeing her would go. But when she introduced me to her caregiver, she said, "This is my former daughter-in-law, Teece, who for some reason I'm still very fond of. What can I say; shit happens."  

Hearing that she still cared, I tentatively called her Mom again, and she didn't seem to mind.
She was in a lot of pain and very tired, but when Michael teased her, she'd close her eyes and make the blah-blah sign with her hand, having the last word without speaking. One day when we visited, we brought her a candle in an off-white bisque holder. She couldn't light the candle because she had oxygen tanks in the room, but I knew her well enough to know she'd like it for the bisque holder and for the fragrance. She had us place it on the television stand where she could see it from the chair which was where she now spent nearly every waking hour. 

Since Faith's passing, memories of our 13-plus years together float through my mind. Once, when the kids were small, Faith was with us at a friend's party. For some reason, Michael had driven separately, so on the way home he was in his car, and I was driving Faith and the kids. Suddenly the car took a lurch and thumped down on one side. 

"Oh my God! Did we just have a blowout? We just had a blowout!" Faith yelled. 

"We did not just have a blowout," I said, knowing full-well that we had just had a blowout. But the dread of Faith suspecting we were neglecting our tire maintenance when we had kids to keep safe made me determined to will that tire back into one piece.

"Teece, don't you think you should pull over?" she gasped.

"Nope," I said, "We're fine." 

The car rode like a wheelbarrow without the wheel, and the fact that I kept relentlessly pushing it on was a tribute to the pigheaded attitude I sometimes fell victim to when Faith was involved. 

"Teece, really, don't you think we should stop?" she pleaded, and after a few more seconds, the fact that driving that way was idiotic and a danger to my kids finally sank in and just as my hubcap went winging into parts unknown, I pulled over. Michael pulled over too. 

There was pretty much nothing left on the rim but a few shreds of clinging rubber, so Michael called AAA.

"What about your hubcap?" asked Faith.

"Well, I guess it's lost," I said. To me that was the least of our problems.

"Don't you think we should go look for it?"

I glanced in the direction the hubcap had flown and saw nothing but a guardrail, a treacherous drop and a thick ground-cover of brambles. I looked back at Faith.

"No, I don't think we should go look for it."

"But wait! Down there! Isn't that it?"

Down there, as she put it, was way down there where a faint glimmer of something metallic was barely visible.

"Even if it is, it might as well be on Mars," I answered. 

"I don't mind! I'll see if I can get it!"

"Don't you dare!" I yelled, even as she was scampering off. "You'll kill yourself!" One leg swung over the guardrail and then the other. "It's just a hubcap!" 

Before you could say, "Sir Edmund Hilary, Faith was beginning a sharp descent down the treacherous slope. I couldn't bring myself to watch, I was so sure she'd fall.

I took a peek when I heard a whooping victory cry and saw her at the bottom of the hill, waving the hubcap over her head like a first kill. 

"For crying out loud," I sighed, laughing at the same time, "she's nuts."

Faith clamored up and hopped back over the guardrail, grinning and thrilled that she'd saved us from replacing the hubcap. 

Never once did she lecture me about neglecting my tire maintenance. My fear that she would was just me being part of our problem. 

Now the real problem is that she isn't here anymore.  

Bricks and Mortar

I almost never go inside a store anymore - not a physical store anyway. I am one of those people helping to toll the death knell for big box stores and shopping malls. Some people still love to shop in a store. To them I say more power to you, but my first choice is shopping online. 

Graphic by Teece Aronin

Even though I'm a baby boomer, I just cannot imagine walking all over hell's half-acre trying to find one oddly-sized light bulb, just as I can no longer imagine having to answer the phone if I want to know who's calling.

A couple of weeks ago my son, Jon and I had time to kill before an appointment so I said, "Let's run into Target and get toothpaste. Besides, I really have to use the bathroom."

Inside, Jon strolled around while I dashed into the ladies room. There was a female store manager in there looking flustered. 

"I'm afraid you can't use the bathroom right now," she said. "There's been a water main break and the township is shutting off all the water."

"Now or in a few minutes?" I asked. "Because I really do have to use the bathroom."

A woman stepped out from a stall next to us, and the manager leaned to the side and peered in.

"Well, from the looks of things, you can't flush now," she said.

For no amount of money would I have traded places with that woman in the stall with her toilet bowl contents open for inspection.

"Oh, that's not necessarily true," said the woman in the stall. "I was just waiting for instructions before I flush. Should I try it, do you think?"

"Yes, go ahead, " instructed the manager. Both women were talking as if they worked for NASA, and the toilet was a rocket ship in trouble. The woman disappeared back into the stall and we heard a mournful, yowling growl from the toilet, as if a dragon was in there giving birth.

"That's just what I thought," said the manager. "You can't flush."

See now, that's a perfect example. If I was shopping online, I'd just put the laptop down and scamper off to the bathroom, then flush once the water was back on. I would not have to show my toilet contents to anyone else even if they did work for NASA. That's partly because, unlike some people, I know that a toilet is just a toilet and not a rocket ship, no matter how high someone is when they use it. When I shop online, the biggest irritant is the occasional error message because of outdated credit card numbers or passwords - unless I have to call customer service.

"Yes ma'am, it is certainly upsetting when you click to make a purchase and the item fails to appear in your cart. I know I would find that most frustrating." This was no doubt read to me from a script with a blank space for inserting my problem. 

"Well, can you fix the issue?" I ask.

"Ma'am, that depends. Did you click on the word buy or on the picture of the item you wanted to buy?"

"I clicked on the word buy."

"Ma'am, you were supposed to click on the picture."

"That doesn't make any sense. Who clicks on the picture? Besides, the word buy is bold and in italics."

"That's just an idiosyncrasy of the system, ma'am."

"An idiosyncrasy?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Wouldn't bolding the word buy and putting it in italics be a choice made by a human? How can you say it's an idiosyncrasy in the system?"

"Well, ma'am, because it really just is," said customer service. 

And those last italics were a choice made by this human.