Everything You Need to Know about OCD, Scrabble, and Life

One evening, years ago, my friend Lucy's phone rang, and the name showing in the phone's little window was "Ma."     

Image: Teece Aronin

"Hello?" 

When Lucy answered the phone, she heard distant conversation and could tell that people were playing cards - gin, to be exact. Lucy knew the voices well; they belonged to her mother, Darlene, her Aunt Zelda, and her sister, Jo-Jo. Darlene and Zelda were sisters. 

Her mother's phone was likely at the bottom of her bag, and something in the bag had likely butt-dialed Lucy. Assuming that were true, the women were probably at Jo-Jo's or Aunt Zelda's. If they were at Jo-Jo's, they were gathered around Jo-Jo's glass-top wrought iron dining table, always splattered with wet rings because Jo-Jo didn't know what a coaster was. 

If they were at Aunt Zelda's, they were sitting at the 1940's-era enamel kitchen table that had been Lucy's grandmother's. The table had caused a huge fight between Darlene and Zelda when Darlene accused Zelda of practically snatching it out from under the bowl of oatmeal their mother had nosedived into when she stroked out during breakfast one day. Darlene had complained that the oatmeal, like the body, wasn't even cold yet.     

"Hello?"

More ghostly chatter.  

"Hel-lo!"

Lucy yelled at least five more times before the conversation sucked her into its weird spell. 

Darlene: Her therapist told her it was free-floating anx-XI-ety. Have you ever heard of such a thing? Imagine having your anxiety hovering around over your head all the time - like a big, black cloud.

Aunt Zelda: For God's sake, Darlene; that's not what it means. It just means that you're anxious for no real reason. Your adrenaline cells have stomped their foot down on the gas pedal and now the pedal's jammed. Don't you ever watch Dr. Phil?

Darlene: No, Zelda, I don't. I didn't have the good fortune of marrying a barber, and therefore I have to work during the day.

Aunt Zelda: Jackie is a much-in-demand hair stylist, and besides, there's always TiVo. 

Aunt Zelda had a way of sounding sage, droning, and boastful at the same time. 

Jo-Jo (referring to her husband): I think Billy has anxiety. I don't know if it's free-floating or on the ground, but he definitely seems anxious. Sometimes it drives me up the wall because I literally have to scream at him to snap him out of it. He has issues up the win-wang."

Darlene: That's yin-yang.

Jo-Jo: Win-wang, yin-yang, wherever they are, they're there.

Darlene: You know, there's all kinds of anxiety. There's the free-floating kind, and there's panic attacks, and there's ODC . . .

Aunt Zelda: Good God, Darlene; it's not ODC, it's O-C-D - obsessive-compulsive disorder. It can make you do things and think things you don't want to. The obsessive part is thoughts you can't stop thinking, and the compulsive part is things you can't stop doing. Some people have one or the other, and some have both. I read about it on the internet. 

Jo-Jo: I think I have OCD. I can't stop thinking I want to divorce Billy, and I can't stop myself from screaming at him.

Aunt Zelda: I knew a girl in high school who, when she got her driver's license, she found she had a compulsion for driving into potholes. I mean no one knew she had OCD - she just happened to share the whole pothole thing with me one day and asked me if I thought it was weird. Of course, I tried to be reassuring and said it seemed perfectly normal to me. She just couldn't stop herself whenever there was a pothole coming. She'd even purposely veer right into them. I always emptied my bladder first if she was going to be driving.

Darlene: I might've known her. Who was she?

Aunt Zelda: I'm not telling, but she's a therapist now, which just goes to show you can conquer your demons. 

Darlene: Come on, Zelda; what's her name?

Aunt Zelda: I said I'm not telling.

Darlene: Oh, screw you, Zelda.

Jo-Jo: You know, I hate it when the two of you talk to each other this way.

Aunt Zelda: Shut the fuck up, Jo-Jo.

Jo-Jo: Dammit, Aunt Zelda. I hate it when you swear.

Aunt Zelda: Oh, I'm sorry. Jo-Jo, shut the frig up. How's that?

Jo-Jo: Better.

Aunt Zelda: Gin!

Darlene: Zelda, you asshole!

Jo-Jo: Ma! What did I just say?

Darlene: "You said that to your aunt."

Jo-Jo: I think next time we should play Scrabble.

Aunt Zelda: I once played Scrabble with a man who was a master at the game. When he played the word BEARS for 72 points, I said that's amazing! And you know what he said? He said: "It's not the bears, it's where you put the bears."

Darlene: I'd like to tell you where to put the bears.

Jo-Jo: You know, what that man said - about the bears - that applies to a lot of things in life. 

Aunt Zelda: That it does, my dear niece, that it does.

After more helpless shouting to her mother, Lucy hung up and went to bed. The next day, when she told her mother what happened, her mother yelled at her for eavesdropping.

Kay-Baby

I have an older sister named Kay. We don't speak, we never exchange gifts, and we've never borrowed each other's clothes. There are no fading, curling black and white photos of her, age eight, awkwardly cradling a newborn me just home from the hospital.

Image by Teece Aronin

There never was any of that, but for one day there was Kay, a tiny train that barely left the station. And for more than fifty years there has been me, the train that left years later to travel miles beyond her.

Kay was born at full-term but breathed too soon, and with that over-eager breath, ingested amniotic fluid. She was cleaned up by the nurses and placed in a bassinette where whatever could be done for her back then was done. On the other side of the nursery window my father stood, murmuring over and over, "The more I see her, the more I want her."

From that day on, when my father spoke of Kay, he called her "Kay-Baby."

When Kay died, my father got back to his job, and my mother returned to the full-time care of their toddler son. That's how the Greatest Generation grieved, by blowing their noses, wiping their tears, and getting back to the tasks at hand. Not long after that, my parents had another child, a boy who thrived. They considered their family complete and once again, got on with things.

Almost seven years later, I was born, an oops baby if ever there had been. My mother was 32 when her doctor broke the news, my father, 47.

My mother wasn't thrilled to learn of her pregnancy. In those days, even at her age, she was considered a bit old to be pregnant, and her boys had long since stopped draining her with the demands of babies. Then, my aunt said something that turned my mother around: "Maybe this one will be a girl."

My father was delighted from the get-go.

Like my brothers and unlike my sister, I was born without complications, and I knew from early on that a baby girl had come before me but died. I stood on a kitchen chair one day, helping my mother bake cookies. I asked her if I was Kay. To me it made perfect sense that if a little girl was born and died, the sister born after would be the kind of do-over that God would permit Himself under special circumstances. 

My mother's reaction to my question, along with her response, are lost to me now. 

I pictured Kay's soul as a beautiful piece of cloth blowing in the breeze and hovering over the world. With my birth, it floated back down, became my soul and helped me become me, Kay-Baby restored.

The idea that I might be Kay, that the universe can recycle a soul taken out of circulation too soon, still appeals to me somehow.

Today Kay-Baby's remains lie in a cemetery next to my parents'. But maybe, just maybe, the bigger part of her is sitting here writing these words. 

Short Comedians

My ex-husband is a stand-up comic who for years milked our kids for all the free material he could get. Actually, being a writer, I did, too so I’m not pointing any fingers. Now the kids are teeenagers and suddenly they aren’t that funny anymore. Any parent of adolescents knows what I mean. But the ages of three to ten were the golden age of kiddie comedy in my household, and it was great while it lasted.

            When my son, Jon was three, he was sick and I left him in the car with my mother while I ran into the store for his prescription.

            “Grandma,” he announced from his little car seat in the back, “I’m gonna throw up.”

            “Just a minute, Jon; I’m coming,” my mother said, fumbling to unfasten her seat belt and find something for him to vomit into. Due to my fortuitous failure to clean the car, she was able to get her hands on a fast-food paper bag. “I’ll be right there,” she said.

            Scrambling out of the car, despite her bad knee and reliance on a cane, she threw open Jon's door and thrust herself in just in time to hear him say, "But not today."

            Jon was the kind of kid who would chatter happily to anyone who would listen - and often to those who hadn't planned to. One day, when he was about four-years-old, a friend of my husband's stopped by. And even though Jon had never seen him before, he linked his arm through Larry’s, guided him to the love seat and cuddled up against him. Within seconds, Larry couldn’t get a word in edgewise as Jon explained the intricate plotline of a Teletubbies video he was watching.

            “. . . and the yellow one is La-La. La-La almost always has an orange ball with her. The purple one is Tinky-Winky and Tinky-Winky has a big purse. The red one is Po, and Po . . .”

            After at least five minutes of this, Larry glanced at me and made a brief comment, prompting this gentle reprimand from Jon, “Excuse me, Larry, but if you’re going to keep talking like that, you’re not going to be able to hear this.”

            By the time our daughter, Sydney was three, she had perfected a dry, low-key delivery that takes some comics years to develop. And when she was three-and-a-half, her father and I were sitting at the desk of a carpet salesman who was writing up our purchase. Sydney started fiddling with the man’s calculator. When I told her to put it back, she put me in my place by quietly but arrogantly dismissing me: “Talk to the man, Mommy.”

            Flash forward to Jon age five and Sydney age seven. I was driving somewhere with the two of them in the backseat. Not surprisingly, Jon started complaining about his sister.

            “Mom, I’m never going to believe Sydney again. She always tells me these really great things she’s going to do for me and then she never does them. She just lies to me, so I’m never going to believe her ever again.”

            Sydney executed a masterfully elongated silence before saying in a very sly tone, “Hey Jon, I’ve been workin’ on that rocket ship for ya.”

            “Oh really?” Jon called out in a delighted little yelp, all excited and ready to jump on board.

            When I recounted this anecdote to the kids the other day, Jon said, “I hate you for lying to me about that rocket, Sydney.”

And Sydney said, “It’s still in the attic.” She was even lying to him about the attic since we don’t have one.

Anyway, even though they rarely cough up charming and quotable nuggets these days, the kids are still the cheapest source of material my ex and I have – at least until they get wise to us, unionize and demand compensation. If that happens, I’ll hire a couple of four-year-olds. Like elephants, they work for peanuts - except for the ones who are allergic, and they work for cookies.