May 8, 2006

The Other Mrs. Glamore

There are two Mrs. Glamores: Bill’s mom and me.

Before you start mixing us up, let me hasten to add that I am not the one who drove her Mustang through town, failed to yield to a funeral procession, crashed into the hearse, and ended up with her picture in the paper. That would be the other Mrs. Glamore.

Also, the other Mrs. Glamore is a huge packrat. I’m not sure she’s ever thrown anything away, and I don’t know how she can stand it. When the boys are at school, I roam
through their rooms with a garbage bag, grabbing handfuls of plastic crap and tossing it without a second thought. When I’m in a particularly bad mood and a “masterpiece” is in the wrong place, I’ve been known to dispose of their art– even some of the pictures where they dipped their hands in paint and formed flowers out of tiny fingerprints.

The other Mrs. Glamore didn’t lose or throw away any of Bill’s art. Instead she framed it, and that is why I have a priceless picture Bill created around 1972. He drew a girl in a red dress with brown hair and in sure letters wrote “I bon’t like girls” across the top. It’s framed on the bookshelves in the den. Bill’s mom didn’t want to give it up– I had to arm wrestle her for it. Thank God I won.

She saved so much stuff that she has made two scrapbooks detailing Bill’s childhood, up until the time he graduated from college. She has all of his school pictures mounted and
labelled, so you can really appreciate what a skillful job his orthodontist did with a challenging set of buck teeth. She’s done the same with memorabilia from all her relatives, and my boys love looking at the old pictures of their great and great-great relatives standing by their buggies on the very same property where their
descendants live today.

She saved all of Bill’s old toys, too. When the boys are at her house they get to play with vintage Hot Wheels, metal trucks with sharp rusty edges and a real dried up turkey leg that serves as a pull for the light switch in one of the closets. She has Planet of the
Apes and Star Wars action figures and the Lone Ranger with all his clothes. Everytime they come home from a weekend at her house they bring something else that was Bill’s– his red corduroy robe, his polyester Auburn jersey, an arrowhead, an elephant statue. I’d be tempted to put all the stuff on eBay to get it out of my house and make a fortune, but she’s happy to keep it and let them strew it about her house.

His mom and I both know that Bill adores salad, but our salad-making philosophies differ. The other Mrs. Glamore makes salads like nobody’s business. She doesn’t just shake lettuce out of the bag and pour on some dressing. She candies walnuts, whisks together a homemade vinaigrette, chops cheese and green onions, and puts the salads on salad plates. She doesn’t think twice about the extra room those plates will take up in her dishwasher.

I think making salads is a pain in the ass. They require tons of chopping for something that’s not even the main course unless you’re a rabbit. Every week I buy salad in a bag, blue cheese, green onions, and a cucumber. If Bill wants a salad, he has all the ingredients and he can make it himself. Salad-wise, he’s dropped a notch since marrying me.

It’s all I can do to take care of my husband and my boys without going nuts. And if something unusual happens, like a trip to the hospital for breathing problems or stitches, you can be sure that I am going to let everyone know about it so I can garner the proper amount of sympathy.

The other Mrs. Glamore looks after lots of other people and makes it seem easy. From the moment I met her, she’s always had relatives to care for. I’ve watched her nurse her mother and father-in-law, father, and numerous aunts and uncles, all of whom lived to be quite elderly. And she doesn’t just call them occasionally, or visit on Sundays.

Mrs. Glamore wakes up early and makes homemade food and drives it out to the town where her relatives live so they have healthy meals. Some have had to move to the nursing home, and she checks on them and decorates all the doors on the hall with glittery paper for Christmas. She takes her relatives to their doctors’ visits or the emergency room as needed, but she doesn’t talk about it unless you ask her specifically how the great-greats are doing. She’s selfless that way.

Occasionally Bill and I will go away for a long weekend and she’ll come to our house and keep the boys. Actually, I suspect she might send them boys to another planet, because when we come back she’s accomplished more in a weekend than most humans without children can do in a lifetime. The house is clean. The laundry is folded. There’s dinner in the refrigerator, including a fancy salad. She’s soaked all the boys’ nasty socks in bleach overnight and run them through the washer twice in hot water to whiten them. One time we came home to find she’d refinished the dining room table in her spare time.

When I had my spine surgery two years ago, the other Mrs. Glamore kept the boys the whole time I was in New York. She realized she’d have to switch from the gum-giving
grandmother role into the substitute mom role. She asked for a list of the house rules and studied them carefully, and read a copy of How to Help Children Through a Parent’s Serious Illness for good measure. She didn’t flinch when I handed her the voluminous spreadsheet that detailed the carpools, appointments, practices, and school projects she’d be responsible for.

I didn’t worry about my boys for a nanosecond while I was away.

I don’t know of an official Happy Mother-In-Law Day, so I’m creating my own, and here it is.

May 3, 2006

Coming Apart

I’ve been writing a lot about Africa lately, and not so much about what’s going on here at home. The six month anniversary of my mother’s death hit me much harder than I had expected it would, so I’ve been riding the proverbial emotional roller coaster the last few weeks. It’s been harder for me to find the humor in everyday things.

My mom’s absence still looms. I was weeding my garden the other day. The rose campion we bought together that has sat infuriatingly like a lump of stubborn green cabbage for three years, refusing to send up even the tiniest shoot, is finally blooming.

My first instinct was to call her, and then I remembered that she’s not there to pick up the phone. Porter’s actually been participating in his soccer games, which is a major accomplishment for him. I wish she were standing on the sidelines with all the other grandmothers, cheering him on.

This week especially I have felt like I am one step away from going totally cuckoo. My eyeballs hurt. My head has been pounding. I drink water constantly, but I stay thirsty. I haven’t even had time to have a good breakdown. The kids had physicals, soccer and baseball practices, art and drum lessons. I had to go on a field trip with the first grade and get food ready for Teacher Appreciation Week.

All week I’ve moved like a robot, mechanically fixing dinner, listening to Drew and Porter read, making sure their math sheets were done, shepherding everyone into tubs and showers, saying prayers and bestowing kisses. (Except to Porter, who is currently refusing kisses and accepting only bedtime hugs.)

Last night, as I got in bed, I vowed I’d wake up today just long enough to get the kids off to school. I’d hop back into bed with some Kleenexes and a good supply of “poor me” thoughts guaranteed to trigger the tears. This morning my alarm went off and I listened to NPR for a few moments, then trudged to the kitchen to oversee the morning routine. Finn was slumped over the counter. He looked up dully when I walked in. Everything about him said “Stuffy. Pollen. Congestion. Watery eyes. Misery. Not going to school.”

I won’t describe the next couple of hours in detail except to say that Drew and Porter went to school, Finn stayed home, and I made no effort to play the role of the loving mother. I gave him Benadryl and stuck him in his room with strict instructions not to bother me. As I shut his door in frustration, he gave me a look of nervousness and hurt. I ignored it. To emphasize my point, I put a sign on my door warning him not to bother me.

I tossed and turned in my bed, unable to sleep. After an hour, I got up and apologized to him, but I still feel guilty, on top of everything else.

It’s hard to be a good mom when you still need a mom yourself.

May 2, 2006

They Are Hippos Hear Them Roar!

NEW AND IMPROVED WITH SOUND EFFECTS!*

(personally, I’d be careful about playing these sounds at work unless:

1) You are the boss,
2) You are prepared for someone to dial 911, or
3) You were planning on quitting anyway.

No one tells you when you buy a sleep machine or sound soother that you’ll soon become addicted to the calming whirs it emits. I became so dependent on mine that when I traveled to places to get away from it all, the silence was deafening. I shelled out some major moola for a travel sized sleep machine, and it is the second thing I put in my suitcase after I’ve packed all my medications.

Bill points out, and rightly so, that our house is quiet after everyone has been put to bed. (In the interests of marital harmony, I didn’t comment on the decibel level of his snoring.) The boys are old enough that they no longer cry out at night. We don’t live in the middle of a large city, so we aren’t bombarded by horns and sirens at all hours. Occasionally the dog from hell emits his piercing bark late at night, but even that is on the side of the house opposite our bedroom, so it’s more of a problem for the neighbors than for us. Still, I turn on the white noise every night and snuggle into my covers.

My addiction to the machine is strong enough that when I was packing for Africa, I tossed in the travel machine. I took it even though I had been told I had to adhere to strict luggage limits. I also knew that we’d be traveling in the remote places, and that electricity would be spotty at times. It’s a true testament to my love for the machine that I decided it was better to take it, knowing it might never be used, in place of a pair of all purpose black flats in order to make the weight limit.

At our first camp, the one with the bucket showers, we didn’t have any electricity at all. It was pretty primitive. You’ve already seen seen the potties there. Here are picture of the interior and exterior of our tent, just so you can assure yourself that in fact there was no outlet for me to plug my travel sleep machine in.

This would seem to be the last place on earth that you’d need the soothing sound of white noise, wouldn’t it? That’s what I thought.

During the night a herd of wildebeest came through our camp. I swear several hundred of them brushed against the sides of our tent as they passed by.

Here’s what a herd of wildebeest looks like:

Here’s what one wildebeest close up looks like:

We had no lights, and we extinguished our lantern when we got on our cots, so you may be wondering how we knew the wildebeest were wandering outside our tent for what seemed like hours. We heard this sound all night. (Turn it up all the way and play repeatedly for 3 hours to get the full effect).

Eventually I stuffed wet Kleenex in my ears and managed to get some sleep.

In the morning, I started to grumble about the fact that my sleep had been interrupted by what appeared to me to be glorified goats with a fancy name. But just then, a Masai warrior came to the tent with coffee, and I opened the tent and gasped when I saw the view:

Mount Kilimanjaro had been shielded by clouds when we arrived the day before. Seeing it first thing in the morning was surreal. Suddenly, I forgot all about my lack of sleep. Kilimanjaro will do that to you, I guess.

Things got dicier when we reached the second camp late the next afternoon. Our “tent” was considerably fancier.

It was right on the Mara river, and the manager advised us that although there was an electric fence separating the camp from the river to prevent wild animals from coming in, it was not foolproof. The week before our arrival, a hippo had wandered into the camp and spent three days in the swimming pool. They also cautioned us that a warthog regularly walked in through the front gate, and that we were not to walk about at night without a Masai warrior to guide us.

Here is a picture of a warthog.

I knew right away I did not want to encounter one of those alone. They seem so cute in cartoons, but in person that snout is pretty menacing.

Here’s a picture of our view of the Mara river from the deck of our tent. You can see the electric fence if you look carefully.

At first the nearness of the river didn’t pose a problem. It looked like your average river filled with muddy water and a few rocks.

Before dinner, I sat on the deck to admire the view, and realized how tired I was from the combination of lack of sleep and the long journey from the previous camp. I blinked my eyes a few times, and wondered if I had time for a nap, because I was hallucinating. Every time I looked at the river, the rocks seemed to have moved or grown. I felt a bit like Alice in Wonderland.

It slowly dawned on me that those weren’t rocks.

They were hippos.

Nine of them were hanging out in the water in front of our tent. They stayed submerged most of the time, but they’d come up for a moment here and there before hunkering down under the water again. As the sun started to set, they rose from the water and alternately swam down the river and ambled over the rocks for some strange hippo purpose.

I’m pretty sure that they came back to their spot in front of our tent in the middle of the night. Again, I didn’t see this happening. I heard it.

We did have outlets at this camp, and we were able to use the sleep machine to go to sleep. However, the electricity was switched off for most of the night, and I bolted up in the bed when I heard the wildest sounds imaginable. They sounded like this.

You should hear the sound automatically when the page loads. If you don’t, calm down. Go to this page and this page listen to the sounds that serendaded us all night. I think the hippos were horny.

The rest of the safari proceeded the same way. Sometimes we could use the sleep machine, sometimes not. When we couldn’t, we often heard strange and wonderful sounds. Sometimes we heard frightening ones.

Now that I’m back home, I still use my sleep machine every night. I don’t think I’ll ever break that addiction.

But when I want to remember the sights and sounds of Africa, I look at the picture of Mount Kilimanjaro while I drink my coffee. Oten I’ll bring the boys here in front of the computer and we’ll play the hippo sounds and laugh hysterically. It’s a good way to remember an adventure.

*********************************************************************************

*you may need Quicktime to hear the sound effects