The Economy of Love

I tend to worry about finances and used to go overboard with the budgeting. My frugality was at its height when I was a single mother of two teens. For instance, we had no toaster. Why buy a toaster when you can broil the bread and save on counter space? When my daughter suggested we buy a printer, I told her that holding tracing paper up to the computer monitor and drawing what she would have printed was good for her hand/eye coordination and added that in my day, we chiseled our own copies onto slabs of rock. 

© Teece Aronin - All rights reserved. For prints or image licensing inquiries, email chippeddemitasse@gmail.com.

Whenever money was tight, I would buy one stick of deodorant, one tube of toothpaste, one hairbrush, and so on to share between the kids' bathroom and mine. Mornings looked as though we'd all tumbled from train berths to the aisle below. The "aisle" was the hall outside the bathrooms. We'd dash in and out of the bathrooms and up and down the hall, passing, tossing, and flipping toiletries to one another. This, I told the kids, reinforced time management, sharing, and skills they could use if they ever ran away from home to join the circus.

Back then I was in love with a man I'll call "Luke" whose dog I'll call "Jackson." Jackson was a Great Pyrenees weighing about 150 pounds. At Luke's house one day, I became convinced that even something as sensitive as couples counseling can be achieved on the cheap with a smart and empathetic dog. 

 

Luke and I had been having an intense conversation. It wasn't a fight, but the issue was serious, and we were at odds. Luke was sitting in a dining room chair, and I sat, criss-cross applesauce, on the floor nearby. Luke suggested I leave so we could gain some perspective. Jackson, who'd been monitoring the situation, rose immediately, strolled over, and sat on my lap. He then laid his head on Luke's lap. It was as if he were saying, “Luke, I love you - Teece, SIT."

"I'll leave when you call Jackson off," I challenged. 

Luke said nothing, which was good because I didn't relish going home to two kids juggling toiletries and acting surly because we didn’t have a toaster or a printer. Then I asked, "Why do I get the rear end?"

Luke replied that I deserved the rear end, but he was smiling, and we were able to talk things through.

Jackson let me up and shot me a look, its message crystal clear: "Today I'm waving my fee. Next time bring plenty of kibble. And you did deserve the rear end.”

Paying a dog Jackson's size in kibble could get pricey. Then again, a dachshund could never have bridged that span on its own. Maybe it would have stacked up some pillows first. Then it could sit on my lap and still place its head on my lover’s.

That would have worked well, too.

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Christmas Trees Aren't as Innocent as They Look

Getting a Christmas tree up gets many of us down. It’s enough to make even the most placid souls ditch cutting down a tree in favor of cutting up an elf.

Image copyright, Teece Aronin

My father suffered the agonies of the damned every time we put up a tree. It was as if the tree had it in for him and had taken it upon itself to avenge every Christmas tree everywhere, along with a couple of poorly maintained topiaries. My father tried to show the tree who was boss, swearing at it in curse words more colorful than a birthday bash for Katy Perry. Then my mother would say things like, “Honestly, Kenneth, the kids." And my father would say things like, “Well, by God, it’s time they grew up!”

One year, after I'd grown up, I became not only a single parent, but a single parent who was the only obstacle between my kids and their dreams of the perfect Christmas tree. Even before my divorce, I was more or less on my own Christmas tree-wise because my ex-husband is Jewish and has cerebral palsy, so he might as well have been permanently exempted from Christmas tree duty twice. He would giggle, salute, and say, “It’s your holiday, not mine.” Then he'd be off to wherever it is Jewish husbands go when they don't want to help shikza wives put up Christmas trees. 

Another complication with which many of us cope when putting up, and keeping up, a Christmas tree, is pets. Pets have been known to make or break a Christmas tree. They make them by lying peacefully beneath the trees, like contented lambs or break them by - well - breaking them. I'm in a few cat-lover groups on Facebook and am amazed by the number of photos I've seen of cats nestled among the boughs of their humans' Christmas trees. 

When I was about 13, the tree my father put up taunted him by leaning, no matter how many times he re-screwed it into its base. As a last resort, he secured the tree with twine tied to a picture hook in the wall. In the middle of the night, our dog took off after our cat and both dashed behind the tree. The tree-trunk, weakened by all the screwing and re-screwing, snapped, along with the twine, and the tree landed in the middle of the sofa bed where my brother was sleeping with his wife.

One year, my kids and I had a tree that started falling apart as soon as I got it up. Within days, our carpet was so buried under dried out henna-hued needles that it looked like the floor of Donald Trump's barber. It took weeks after we got rid of the tree to truly get rid of the tree. 

By the following year, the kids were old enough, yet naive enough, that I could stick them with most of the work. Now that they're in their late teens, I pretty much sit back and supervise. But I'm noticing something interesting, that every year as they put up the tree, they curse just a little bit more. 

But in a way, I don't mind; it makes me feel closer to my dad, rest his soul.