"Tight"

I'm cheap.

It's not that I want to be; rather, it's that I've never had heaps of money, and I do so like stuff. The marriage of these realities means that I live for a bargain.

Don't get me wrong: I inherently have expensive tastes, and I would love to be flush enough to shell out $400 for a pair of shoes, or a couple of weeks' salary for that there Alberta Ferretti suit, or a prince's ransom for a leather bag (in Minnesota, incidentally, if you pay Prince's ransom, it's comprised of Sheila E's cast-off chandelier earrings, a purple electric guitar, and a stack of raspberry berets). Truly, I'm all for having and spending money, if that's what one enjoys.

I could very much enjoy.

However, while I make a healthy-enough income, we are a family of four that lives on one teacher's salary, so, resultingly, I'm cheap. Indeed, I'm cut-rate to the point that my most-panted-after rendezvous is an intimate tete-a-tete at an outdoor cafe with a flirtatious cad named "Free."

I could sit down with Free for hours and explore his every angle. I am not above making him stand and bend over. Indeed, Free needs to touch his toes and do a couple cherry pickers for me, as I cock my head to the side and analyze his subtleties, considering how to get him to come home with me.

I've hooked up with Free at a few clubs--when I was younger, and occasionally someone would buy me a drink. I've met him at the grocery store, in the produce aisle, where my kids get one of his apples to eat (FREE!) while we shop. I've bumped into him at my college, in a dark corridor; I smelled him first. There he loitered, on a table outside the daycare, lounging. In that case, he took the form of outgrown children's clothes which were being passed on to random passers-by who might need them in their own lives. Free has dressed my children.

And last summer, Free and I wassailed in our biggest dalliance yet.

I scoped him out for some time, this particularly fine specimen of Free. I admired his tight corners and hard body before making my move. It was on one of my customary running routes that I first spotted him--dejected, alone, looking neglected in the corner. I felt for him. Quite obviously, he wanted to be of use; his good intent was clear. This was a Free with potential, if I could work a little Svengali magic on him.

Subsequent to that sighting--when I first began to have feelings for him--I began a concerted stalking of Free. Twice a week sometimes, I'd jog past his house, my eyes skimming, scanning, on the lookout for Free's soon-to-be-ex.

Then, one day...there she was, way back in the far reaches of her property: Her. Her owned Free, but not for long, if I was given any license at all to work my wiles.

Calling out ahead of me, "Em, excuuuuuse me...I don't mean to alarm you, but I just was wondering..."

Within minutes, I had made my case: Her had a playset on Her property. The grass around the playset was long, untrampled; ergo, the playset seemed unused. And if the playset wasn't being used, it should come home with me. It should be the latest notch on my Free headboard.

Luckily, Her responded well to my overtures. As it turned out, Her son was 12, past the age of swinging and sliding (except in the clubs, wid his posse). She and her husband had just, three days earlier, been despairing--what is it one does with a large playset when the family has grown up?

One finds a Jocelyn and gives her the Free.

In quick order, I had permission to use their trailer, to call upon her husband for help with the dismantling, to tuck this Free unto my proverbial bosom (which, despite being proverbial, is also prodigious). I ran home, this time with pep in my step--for that's what Free does to me--and breathlessly asked Groom,

"Say, you've always wanted a marriage of three, right? 'Cause I've found a new paramour, a new Free, and he wants to move in."

Groom, who only wished he'd been old enough in the '70s to participate in a key party (mostly for the hors d'oevres, in truth), was game. He willingly invited Free into our household--in fact, Sweet Swingin' Seventies, he went on the hunt, seeking out this Free and dragging him to our home, where he, then, with no help at all, got Free set up and set Free's joint a'jumpin'.

In due time, of course, we got greedy. We loved our new Free. But we wanted more.

More.

More.

Like, for example, food.

Fer Free.

As luck would have it, the local grocery store (I like to imply we have just one, what with our town of 90,000 being such a remote outpost and all) was running a contest last summer: using one or more of the store's paper grocery bags, competitors were urged to create a figure, artwork, or diarama representing the spirit and feeling of Duluth.

Clearly, most of the Melvins entering this contest would go for the obvious: Duluth's landmark lift bridge:












But we did not want to be Melvins. We aspired to be something more original.

We aspired to be Jaspers. Or Agamemnons. Or Frejas.

And since the reward for winning this contest was a big bevy of Free (a year of costless groceries), Groom took the assignment seriously; he was gunning for our biggest-ever windfall of Free. He had the Eye of the Tiger (purchased at the dollar store with a 20% off coupon).

I'll put it this way: by the time he was done, Groom had collected gravel and baked it in the oven, drying it out so that the hot-glue gun could do its best magic.

We don't bake gravel for just anything at our house, either. Just for contests.

And dinner sometimes.

Occasionally lunch.

But never breakfast. Never breakfast.

In the conceptual stages, Groom pondered. What is Duluth? (check out this little slideshow of his thoughts...only the newest technology could capture his musings):

Damn if it ain't greenspaces and canyons and water and runners and creeks and bridges and such.

Groom could capture that in the medium of brown paper bag. Mos' def. Even more, he could capture it all AND still have the grocery store's logo showing, per contest rules.

This is what he, some scissors, and the hot-glue gun came up with:









Groom is very cute when he gets all nerdy about the Free.

As it turned out, he didn't win the regional contest nor advance to the state level (and the year's worth of free groceries). Instead, he came in a rousing third place. Second place was a paper-mache gnome holding a bouquet. First place was a giant mosquito whose body was paper bags wrapped around a garbage can.

There is indignity in losing to a gnome.

But you can't begrudge a giant mosquito much. Props to the mosquito.

We had to settle, therefore, for a $25 certificate for free groceries at the store.

You feel it? That's $25 of Free. With our mad Free skillz, that translated in to a hundred gumballs.
-------------------------------------
Later that summer, we had to work The Free even further. Seems the sun was getting into the kids' eyes and all.


Of the glasses you see here, I only paid cash money for one pair.

Dig the Free, Chachi.

"Happiness is a Red Negligee"


Two summers ago, we entered a merciful holding pattern...

metaphorically.

For nobody got on an airplane.

And nobody died.

Nobody sprang a mutated version of "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" evening on us.

Instead, we took a quick trip to Lincoln, Nebraska, meeting my sister there for a few days before she left for two years in Guatemala. We ate some bagels; we visited the Children's Museum; we played Go Fish.

It was good. It was easy.

And the rest of the summer? Unfettered by huge life moments, we simply enjoyed Life's Rich Pageant.

Rare photographic evidence of the Tooth Fairy.

Need. Just. One. More. Juice. Box. To. Push. Past. Stage. Fright.

Luigi's been tossing pies for sixty years.

He makes homemade tortillas.
He scrapes paint off woodwork.
He fixes the dehumidifier.
He cheers like a big ole white boy (check out the overbite).

That's the spoon we whack her with.

Er...: with which we whack her.

'Cause we're all about the corporal punishment.

And you can tell she's a real handful.

Yes, he ate that donut with using the hook.

Then he put on his Buzz Lightyear helmut and went to infinity.

And beyond.

Is it possible for the father to be a chip off the son's block?

A 4 for technique.

But a 10 for artistry and expression.

He's painting the words "Die, Evil Spawn" on the

back of her neck with the ends of her wet ponytail.

Once he starts school, Wee Niblet and the principal will be on a first-name basis, ja?


Dear Glamourpuss, my boy wants to make the cut for your Well-Dressed Wednesday posts. It's about attitude, confidence, and panache more than anything, right?


You think that's paint?
It's a puddle of pastel vomit.


Sultry.


One time she cleans her room.

One time.


Buzz and Niblet plot Mrs. Potato Head's early demise.

Run, MPH! Run as fast as your spindley tater legs can tote your bulk! Run 'til you feel fried!


Under the guise of "working in the garden," Groom and Girl shoot craps.

He wins away her allowance with nary a qualm. Then he spends it on booze.


Michael Kors makes hats out of paper plates, too.

Remember his Strawberry Shortcake line of 1999?


And that's the bat we whack her with when she doesn't clean her room.

Er, with which we whack her. Damn prepositions. They sure are something that's difficult to put up with.

Crap. I mean, of course, up with which to put.


You know you sleep nekkid.

But have you tried Nekkid Wid Diaper?

Once you have, you'll never go back.


After this, he put new brake pads on the min-van.

If he wants to stay, he needs to make himself useful and earn his keep. What? Does he think Little Debbie Zebra Cakes grow on trees?


Even if they're in front of the tv, so long as they're touching, it counts as a family dinner, right?


The thing about Lake Superior is that it needs more rocks in it.


Just as soon as he finds his glass slipper, he fully intends to suck your blood.


She's got his glass slipper right there, in that purse.

Behind that impish grin lurks the smile of a diobolical genius.

It's been two years now, and she STILL hasn't told him she's got it.

He looks and looks, every day, calling out, "Oh, glass slipper? Where are you?"

She never says a word.


And if he does ever find out, like he could catch her up there?


And in that bag on the front of the scooter?

She has Dorothy's ruby slippers.


Not on the tail of the international shoe thief,

it's Detective Dragon Dude.


The slipper thief serves out her jail time mid-air.


After her release, she intimates that true reform may still be a speck on the horizon.


Meanwhile, back at the clubhouse, Dr. Hypo gives shots of his legendary truth serum.


Then we took off the costumes and went to the creek.

We live by Seven Bridges Road.

This is the 7th bridge.

I know.

I know.

The whole notion makes me "ooooh" too at the very luck and magic of it all. I mean, if they'd stopped with the sixth bridge, that would have just been dumb. Who builds SIX bridges?

Oh, and we resided our 1930's garage, too.

----------------------

Thus, the dog days of the summer of 2005 passed in blessed normalcy. The kids' personalities took shape even more; we rested; we ate a lot of beets from our garden; we made some pesto.

All was infinitely right with the world.

"Eternal Youth"

By the summer of 2004, we had sold one of our two houses (no double mortgages), churned out all the kids we intended to (no notion of breeding a full soccer team), and come to acceptance of our family’s quirks (plenty of dysfunction, but no crazy Aunt Millicent tied to a chair in the attic).

Obviously, if everything was going so swimmingly, it was time to create a whole new kind of hassle.

So we moved 100 yards.

Take a moment now, if you would, to look around your house. See that heavy sleeper sofa? See that fragile antique vanity? See those bookshelves weighted with encyclopaedias? See those closets bursting with unused fabric, tchotckes, and bedding?

Now picture picking up each and every one of those things, walking the length of a soccer field (by the way, guess where I’m sitting as I type this?), and then setting it down again.

The kids' playhouse moved better with wheels under it...

Yea, we humped our masses of possessions all of 300 feet…in July, of course. This assured that every piece of furniture would be coated with sweat during the short trip, thus affording our friends and moving helpers a much-needed challenge. Many of them would be missing their daily workouts, what with devoting hours to our cause; thus, we felt, somehow, that we were aiding their fitness efforts by making sure the move was a hot and strenuous one.

Okay, the backstory. A year and a half earlier, we had met some neighbors—a lovely young couple who would have assisted each other easily to goal after goal on the soccer field, had they, you know, played soccer--and scored an invitation to dinner at their house. That evening, when we showed up for dinner and walked through the front door, I exclaimed, with my usual reserve, “I love, luv, luff your house! If you ever decide to move, you’ll let us have it, right?” Artificial laughter sprinkled all around, and that was the end of it.

...until the phone rang a year and a half later. It was Lady Neighbor, and she queried, “So. When you said you’d love to have our house, were you serious?”

Good question. Of course I hadn’t been, but when presented with the option of buying their house, since they had decided to seek out greener hillsides in the Pacific Northwest, I realized I could learn to be serious about getting the four of us out of our 960 square feet and into something more than twice the size.

Discussion ensued. Deliberations deliberated. Beers were drunk. Offsides were called.

Then we went over and walked through the possible house. And we swooned a little at the Arts & Crafts touches, looking past the orange shag carpet, the dark wooden paneling, the frosted windows. We walked the circle of the main floor; we admired the large bedrooms. We sighed. We ran our fingers along the woodwork.

In short order, we made an offer, contingent (never again would we pay two mortgages and raise children on The Scurvy Diet!) on selling our current house. These very fine people didn’t even counter but rather accepted our first offer.

The wait began. Could our realtor manage to convince some young guileless couple that 960 feet was just the right footage in which to start their own soccer team?

To distract ourselves from the tension of keeping a house “showable” with two small kids around (“No, Girl, you may not play dollies. Sit quietly in the corner with your toy sponge and practice that mopping technique Mommy showed you. No, Wee Niblet, you may not throw your toys and food out of the high chair, as potential buyers could be peeking in the windows. Use your chubby toddler paws and hang onto the broom Mommy has inserted into them. Make yourself useful, Lug”), we went to the playground a lot. And we attended my college reunion.

How on earth it had been fifteen years since I had graduated from college was a mystery to me because, surely, clearly, I wasn’t a day over twenty-four.

But as long as I’d been invited to a weekend of revelry, I was game for going along with the pretense that I was thirty-seven.

What was gorgeous about that reunion was how the comfort and history and familiarity of the place and people grounded me at the time when, in daily life, I didn’t know what was coming next (a soccer ball to the skull, for all I knew). We all lapsed into the roles, speech patterns, and ways of conversing that had become habit half a lifetime before.

Yup. That's me there, ya eagle eye!

In the midst of that easy companionship, reaching back to some of the most invigorating years of my life, I didn’t care where I’d live the next month or if my kids ever got their own rooms (picture it if we didn't move: Brother and Sister Share a Room: The Teen Years: “Mommy, why does Girl put that strappy thing over her chest every morning before she puts on her shirt?” or “Mommy, why do you change Niblet’s sheets every morning after he spends some special quiet time laying in the bed?”).

Nope. I didn't care 'bout nuthin'. I just loved my friends and drinking and dancing and rocking out and the feeling of my feet on hallowed ground. I regressed even further and was 18 again.

This dude, one Martin Zellar, wrote and sang the soundtrack to my 1985-1989. He is my second husband. Don't tell anyone. Especially him. Or his first wife. But I'm sure he loves me.

Naturally, once Reunion was over, Monday rolled around again, and with it, real life; back at home, I fretted over selling our small house so that we could move over one street—the 100 yards to bliss. As well, acting 18 again during the light of day quickly got embarrassing, especially when I kept insisting the clerks check my ID at the liquor store when no one--I mean no one--was asking.

Still aglow from reunionizing, and finally starting to detoxify, I had occasion to shine my face up to the sun and thank the gods of Home Upgrade (a bellicose crew, the triad of Scrape, Sand, and Varnish) for their blessings. Our damn house sold, to a young couple, looking to create their own wee Beckham.

Shortly thereafter, we moved the 100 yards. GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAALLLLLLL!

Here, now, 100 yards away from our previous house, life is lovely. Gracious. A place that will--knock U-Haul--witness my first grey hairs.

Not that I have any.

Nor will I for some time yet.

After all, I’m only 24.

"Emergence"

Four years ago this summer, in 2003, I started to think I might be an adult. I was 36.

Sure, I had been married for a few years, I'd been teaching at the college level for more than a decade, I'd been a homeowner several times over, and I had two kids. But up until that summer, a big part of my self-definition had always been as "daughter." However, after my dad died the previous winter, and my mom started spending more and more time in California, deepening her relationship with The Other Man, I underwent a clear separation from the influence of my parents--a separation that many people go through during adolescence. For me, my parents had always been such good friends to me that I never saw them, metaphorically, from a distance; I was their baby, even into my thirties, basking in their attention and love.

But then my dad died, and my mom started transforming herself into someone entirely new (Exhibit A: the morning after she surprised my dad by having divorce papers served on him, she got a nose job; I remind you she was 67).

I felt as though somebody had put Baby in the corner.

Fortunately, my corner was bustling with matrimonial pleasure and the swirl of small children and the enlivening presence of friends and entertaining, so the diminishment of my "daughter" role felt okay. Things had changed. Things do that.

Thus, although I felt orphaned from my previous relationships with my parents, many good things emerged that summer:

--First, I had a really big, healthy baby who gave his sister an outlet for her desire to squeeze and wuv. At age 3, she already had two avocations: babies and clothes. She was already, and I strangle as I write this, a mini-Nicole Ritchie...although I daresay Nicole Ritchie is a actually a mini-Nicole Ritchie, and my three-year-old already outweighed the real Nicole Ritchie, so maybe she was a Big Nicole Ritchie. At any rate, our Girl surely doted on her brudder and her ponchos and her embroidered jeans.

--Secondly, with complete mercenary intent (read: I didn't really care what I learned), I was taking a couple more graduate courses, one online and one through correspondence. I did this to earn enough credits to move over on the payscale at work; we would be needing more money, what with having to feed our lug of a baby and keep his handler in ponchos. My strongest memory of these courses pertains to the online advanced grammar course I was taking; every time I had to take a timed quiz, which only lasted ten minutes, I would get to the second question, only to hear Wee Niblet start his predictable yowl. For about three minutes, I'd sweat it out and let him yowl, as I muttered, "Okay, so I'm thinking about generative and transformational grammars here, not about how my breasts are leaking milk onto the keyboard. Screw the baby. Ace the quiz." Then I'd give it up, and as the clock continued to tick down the minutes, I'd race upstairs, grab him off the bed, and then nurse him at the computer while I frantically finished the quiz. The pudgy little bastard.

--Thirdly, even though our house measured in at under 1,000 square feet, our willingness to entertain and our sense of hospitality were equivalent to Oprah's Santa Barbara mansion in size--we had fourteen bathrooms and eight bedrooms...in our hearts. That June, during Duluth's yearly major event of Grandma's Marathon, we delighted in hosting out-of-town guests and filling the house with no fewer than 63 other random stoppers-by, many of whom were not the slightest bit interested in cheering on sweaty runners but, rather, who had heard the Legend of Jocelyn's Chocolate Dump-It Cake (frosting: melted chocolate chips stirred into sour cream, spread on top of the cake at least 1/2" thick). For Groom and me, happiness is a front porch piled high with piles of shoes and stacks of jackets, discarded there by visiting friends.

--Fourth, our backyard garden patch offered up a cornucopia of raspberries, and, as it turns out, picking raspberries is one of my avocations (that and ponchos). The canes had been untended until we moved in, and once Groom cleaned them up, their daily yield in August had me picking both morning and night. Naturally, a fridge full of raspberries demands that a cream cheese pie be made--and that friends be invited over to share in it, so long as they insisted on having "only a slice" and leaving the lion's share for us'ns.

Yes, it was a charmed summer, save for one thing.

The reality of my mother's new boyfriend also emerged.

It wasn't gracious or or fashionable or hospitable or raspberry-tinged at all.

When Mom and Beau decided to visit Minnesota to attend a high school reunion together, I realized this was my chance to affirm that I was still behind her, despite all the rips and tears in our relationship that had taken place with the divorce and my dad's subsequent death. I definitely wanted my mom and her "friend" to come to our home, where we could play out The Family Acknowledgement part of this new relationship.

Before their visit, I asked my mom what kinds of things Beau liked to eat and if he had any food issues we should know about and plan the menu around. The response was, "Beau says you should make a roast and potatoes. And he likes bread."

Um, okay. It appeared we were to put the recipe books away and just follow orders.

The evening of the meeting came, and, as the roast slow-cooked in the crock pot, we welcomed Beau into our home. He was chatty, which my mom liked in contrast to my dad. He was jokey though not funny, again a departure from my dad. He said, clearly and loudly, positive things about my mom, which my dad had rarely done.

And within five minutes, he had worked the words "Spics" and "Poofs" into casual conversation.

Indeed, he could not have been more unlike my tolerant father.

When the bigotry and homophobia emerged so easily, I was speechless. Then I experienced an all-over body flush, and not in a good way. Simultaneously, my brain started to spin around frantically, knocking against my skull:

"I can't just stand here and let him say those things in my house. I can't. It violates every value I hold dear. And he's saying those things in front of my kids, especially my impressionable three-year-old! This is unacceptable, and to remain silent would compromise who I am."

However, I did remain silent. In the midst of the tangled web of that previous year, with everyone in my family barely hanging on to anyone else, with so many misunderstandings and hurt feelings, this evening of deliberate acknowledgement of my mom's hard-wrought choices was huge. I couldn't see how to walk the line between my values and keeping my mother.

Hoping to compromise, I played around, internally, with ways to phrase my dismay to this stranger that my mother was thinking of marrying. How could I express my astonishment and upset in a way that wouldn't shut down our future as a family? (albeit one that would stand around awkwardly together at any rendezvous)

As I mulled over the options, Groom and I exchanged panic-stricken glances and then found ourselves, against our wills, distracted and entranced by the spectacle unfolding at the dinner table. See, not only was Beau racist, he was a bit of a pig. As he chomped on his roast and potatoes, he discovered he also liked the mandatory bread a great deal, to the point that he needed to eat seven pieces of it in quick order. Rather than asking that the board of bread be passed down to him from the far end of the table, though, he simply stood from his chair each time he wanted more, meat knife in hand, reached down the three feet of the table, across everyone else's plates, and speared himself a new piece. Seven times.

As it turns out, there comes a moment when awestruck silence is the best approach. We floundered through the rest of the evening, me with a hard nugget of sadness in my belly. In the past, I had been bewildered by my mother sometimes, but this was a new feeling.

This was disappointment.

I later asked her what she was doing with someone like that--pointing out that such language had never been used or accepted in the house I grew up in, that I had never seen bigotry tolerated from her before. My mother's response was that she just shut her ears when he started in; she didn't want conflict, so she said nothing.

This, in my view of the world, is nearly criminal. Yet I, too, had sidestepped conflict with Beau that night at our house. I had let it slide, in the hopes of some larger reparations.

Pretty quickly, though, I made up my mind that I wouldn't participate in the tacit support of his damaging views in the future. It just hurt too much.

Strangely, that whole episode--of being shocked by the new man my mom had chosen--ended up helping me understand her better. For her to abandon the values she'd lived by her whole life, just to have a boyfriend (her rationale for being with him, when I asked, was "He's a good kisser." I was very glad she was only acting sixteen and didn't actually have the eggs of a sixteen-year-old, or she'd have been pregnant within a month), well, it smacked of desperation.

Somehow, really getting how desperate my mom had been all those years, for affection from any male, well it softened my judgement into understanding. To sacrifice one's beliefs for a kiss--now that's tragic. That's lonely.

I did tell my mom how I felt and what I saw. Beyond that, it wasn't much my business. She was 68, had a new nose and a new boyfriend...and they were going to get married. In Reno. At a class reunion.

Shortly before the wedding, though, my mom called it off. She had realized that Beau not only kissed; he ranted. After extended harangues--she didn't order right at a restaurant one time, and she didn't put a stamp correctly on an envelope another time--Mom realized her stomach hurt a lot in this new relationship. Eventually, she realized he was borrowing a lot of money, not so much requesting it but rather telling her how much he needed. She also noted that he kept a lot of side relationships with other women brewing. So she called off the wedding.

Instead, she just shacked up with him in California. Rants continued. Money "lending" continued.

After more than a year, she moved out and got her own small apartment, Praise the Gay Dios! But they continued to date until just recently.

A couple of months ago, after they'd attended a bagpipe concert, Beau had a heart attack outside of his house, fell, and hit his head (something that's been known to happen after bagpipe concerts); as my mom dialed 911, he bled from the ears, and his lips turned blue. He died.

A few weeks later, another guy my mom went to high school with called. They've been dating now for a bit. The report is that he doesn't rant.

I haven't asked what kind of kisser he is.

Thus, four years ago this summer, the biggest thing to emerge was a need to be willing to renegotiate my relationship with one of the dominant people in my life. Continually doing that can be exhausting. But, heck, she attended every one of my piano concerts and cried in the audience when my Home Ec class had its fashion show. She could date David Hasselhoff and I, gulp, would still be there.

Mostly through email, though. A little distance never hurt anybody, especially when The Hoff is involved.

-----------------------

Wow. After all this typing, I'm a little peckish.

Pass the bread, woncha?