Have a Nice Guilt Trip (14 page)

Luckily, my door doesn’t have a corset.

But it’s hung at an angle, like all the doors in the house. Either the doors have shifted or the floors have, but there isn’t a right angle to be found in the house. When you walk around my house, you feel drunk. And if you’re drunk when you walk around my house, you’re in deep trouble.

After a margarita, I need a designated driver to get to my bedroom.

How did I get myself into this mess, er … I mean, old house?

Let’s talk turkey.

I always thought that the world divided into two groups: people who like New Construction and people who like Old Houses. It’s like Democrats and Republicans, except the disagreement is over something that really matters.

Like an attached garage.

Furthermore, to be perfectly honest, I always sensed hostility between the New Construction people and the Old House people.

Each thinks the other is a snob.

The Old House people look down on the New Construction people as not being classy, as if it’s more high-rent to have heating you can hear.

And the New Construction people look down on the Old House people as being dirty, because they prefer what’s essentially a Used House.

It’s like New Construction people think that Old House people are filthy, and Old House people revel in their colonial filth.

To be fair, all of this could simply be PTSD from my second marriage. Thing Two was an Old House person, and I was a New Construction person, albeit secretly. I kept my preference to myself, as I sensed it wasn’t as ritzy, so when we looked at old houses, I fawned over the deep windowsills that would look so great with a windowseat, which I would never use, as I’m not a cat.

All I really wanted was a family room.

Because in an Old House, there’s no place for the family to be, except around the hearth.

Where’s the hearth? Take a right at the butter churn. Don’t trip over the spinning wheel.

So of course, my second marriage being the picnic that it was, we ended up with an Old House and no family room. I lived in my Old House for years until I subtracted a husband and added a family room.

Yay!

My solution since then has been to take my Old House and constantly remodel it, thus changing it into New Construction.

Or Old Construction.

Like me.

I Want a Name When I Lose

By Lisa

Weeks later, I’m still recovering from my visit with my mother.

She’s Earthquake Mary.

And I’m having aftershocks.

I have written about how love and worry bind Mother Mary and me, in that she and I always worried about Francesca, when she was a baby. Well, times have changed, and now Francesca and I are worried about Mother Mary.

Why?

No reason, aside from the fact that she’s eighty-nine and alone all day, while my brother is at work. Francesca and I worry that she could fall, or choke on food, or any number of things that Mother Mary and I used to worry about with baby Francesca.

The trip down to Miami only made us more worried. For example, when I was leaving the hotel to go pick up Mother Mary, she called me on the phone. “Help!” she said, her voice trembling.

“What happened, Ma?” My heart started to pound. “What’s the matter?”

“I need you!”

I grabbed my purse and headed for the door. “I’m on my way, but what is it? Should I call 911?”

“Don’t be silly. I can’t change the channel on this damn remote.”

Whew.

So I exhaled.

Until I found out that after we hung up, she left the house, went to the next-door neighbor’s, and asked him to come over and change the channel for her. That made me worry even more. I told her, “Mom, why didn’t you wait until I got here? You could have fallen on the sidewalk.”

“I didn’t fall.”

“But you could have.”

“Oh, shut up.”

“But I’m worried about you.”

Mother Mary waved me off with a frown. “I don’t need you to worry about me.”

“I can’t help it,” I tell her, raising my voice. “I love you!”

I don’t add, she’s the one who taught me that love and worry are the same thing, and the way you show someone you love them is to yell at them.

The more you love, the louder you yell.

That’s why if you drive past any house containing Scottolines, you’ll hear screaming.

It’s not murder, it’s love.

We’re going deaf BECAUSE WE LOVE EACH OTHER!

Anyway to stay on point, the three of us go out to dinner, but the incident with the remote control occasions the umpteenth version of this conversation:

“Mom, why don’t you move up north, with me?”

“No.”

“But I’m home all day. We could be home all day together.”

“No.”

“But, if you had a problem, like with the remote control, you could tell me. You should move up north with me.”

“Don’t tell me what to do.” Mother Mary scowls deeply, which is when I realize we’re talking about a different kind of remote control.

In fact, we’re having remote control issues.

Mother Mary has the control.

I have the remote.

So I let it be, for this round. I know I’m not the only one trying to come up with the best solution for where an older parent lives, and I’m lucky enough to still have a mother around to worry about.

Or yell at.

So we talk again about her getting a Life Alert, but she says no. Mother Mary doesn’t think she needs it and she hates pendants.

I yell, “BUT IT’S NOT ABOUT THE PENDANT!”

“I SAID NO!” Mother Mary yells back.

After our testy dinner, she actually agrees to go to see a movie with Francesca and me, which I suspect is her way of saying I’m sorry for not wanting to live with you.

Works for me.

Francesca reads through the movie listings on her phone, trying to lighten the mood, though I’m cranky and Mother Mary is crankier.

We buy tickets for
Les Misérables
because we are Les Misérables.

We go to the movie and sit down in a little row, three generations of unhappy Scottolines, now with popcorn and Raisinets.

But in time, my mood improves, and so does Mother Mary’s. Rapt and teary, we get swept up in the movie, because it’s almost as dramatic as we are.

Three generations of fun

And at some point, Mother Mary rests her head on my shoulder and falls asleep, like a small child.

I stay as still as possible, so she stays asleep.

The yelling may be over, but the worry abides.

And the love.

Thought Bubbles

By Lisa

You’ve probably seen the Dove soap commercial in which a forensic artist sketches a woman according to her own description and she looks terrible, and then sketches a second picture of the woman according to a description of her by a stranger, and she looks great.

Who is surprised by this?

Not me.

I could’ve told you that women are their own worst critics. I also could’ve told you that forensic drawings make everybody look ugly.

But that’s not my point herein.

The tagline of the campaign is, “You Are More Beautiful Than You Think.” And everyone is hailing this as a profound way to look at women’s self-esteem, or for women to look at their own self-esteem.

I don’t agree.

I think it really doesn’t matter if you’re beautiful or not.

Let’s be real.

I don’t need a forensic sketch to tell me what I really look like, because I have a mirror. And to tell the truth, every time I look in the mirror, I have the exact opposite reaction:

I thought I looked better than that.

It’s not like I have a big ego or think that I’m especially attractive. But I can tell you that when I look in a mirror, it’s a disappointment. So I don’t even want to think about what would happen if I ran into a forensic sketch artist and he started drawing me. I might take his pencil and stick it where the sun don’t shine.

In other words, my own personal tagline should be, “I’m Not As Beautiful As I Think.”

But who cares?

I’m not a model.

I’m a writer, a mother, and a fifty-seven-year-old woman. Bottom line, I’m fine with how I look, even though I’m not beautiful.

And all I want from Dove soap is to get me clean.

When did a soap company get to be our national therapist?

I wish Dove would get out of the self-esteem business and figure out how to get me even cleaner, longer. Or how to make soap with more suds, because I like a lot of suds.

Dove, don’t flatter me by telling me I’m not only beautiful, but more beautiful than I think. Because I wasn’t born yesterday, and I don’t look it.

In other words, don’t lather me up, just lather me up.

I guarantee we’ll never see a soap commercial like that for men. Nobody will ever sell soap by talking about how men are handsomer than they think. In the first place, most men aren’t half as handsome as they think, but they don’t care.

And they’re right.

I like Dove soap, but I don’t need it to build my self-image. And I don’t want it to do so by telling me that I’m
more
beautiful than I think, because it assumes that beauty is the key to our self-esteem. What should matter to women is who we are and how we act, and if we set our own dreams and fulfill them.

None of that has anything to do with what we look like.

It’s what you do, not what you look like, that makes you feel happy and good about yourself.

And even ugly women deserve self-esteem.

Dove might know something about soap, but their analysis—like beauty itself—is only skin deep.

I don’t even give them an A for effort. Dove has us worrying about the wrong things. Dove isn’t our friend, it’s our frenemy.

I think that this is the softest sales job ever.

And you know who’s taking a bath?

Women.

A Dog’s Pursuit of the Far-Fetched

By Francesca

When was your last field trip? Was your mom still packing your lunch?

Mine was last Monday, when I convinced my boyfriend and best friend to accompany me to the Westminster Dog Show.

The best part about Westminster during the day is that you can see all the dogs “backstage.” Prep areas are designated by breed, and each exhibitor sets up shop differently. One Bichon Frise’s station was decorated with a T-shirt with its face and name in air-brush script hung like a banner, like something you’d see in a tribute to Tupac or a prize-winning boxer.

A human boxer, that is.

But here, the dogs were the celebrities, and I was star-struck. We were members of the grubby public, weaving through rows of Pomeranians posing for photos like Kardashians, Yorkies with smoother hair than a supermodel, and greyhounds slim enough to wear sample-size couture.

Their groomers could have a great side business doing people. I want the Silky Terrier Blow-Out for my next party.

At one point, I lost my boyfriend. I used my Terminator-Girlfriend Sight™ to scan the crowd for any girls hoping to give new meaning to “professional handler.”

I caught him staring, but not at a woman. He was drop-jawed at the strangest-looking dog I’d ever seen—medium-sized and the color of burnt toast, the dog was completely hairless except for a wiry little Mohawk.

“It’s a Xoloitzcuintli!” my boyfriend said. He explained it was an Aztec name for this ancient dog once bred to guard the dead. The handler had been showing Xoloitzcuintlis for seventeen years, which is how long it takes to correctly pronounce the name.

Meanwhile, my best friend was busy snapping pictures and asking questions about certain breeds, ostensibly to help her brother choose a dog back in Boston. But as I watched her coo over a sheepdog, her inquiries began to sound like, “I’m asking for a friend.”

I see pet hair in her future.

My dog is a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, so I was dying to see the Cavalier-breed class. I worried my less-obsessed friends might get bored watching thirty nearly-identical dogs prance around a ring, but they were game. We picked our favorites and placed imaginary bets on the winner. Our judging standards were: cute, really cute, insanely cute, and shiny coat.

Toward the end, one of our favorites got eliminated. But just our luck, the female handler brought her dog right behind us to watch the rest. I couldn’t wait to pet the dog, but when I turned around to ask, I saw the woman was upset; her face was flushed and she fought back tears.

I went into comfort mode. “He’s beautiful. We all loved him from the start.”

“Thanks. He should still be in there,” the woman said, crestfallen. “He’s so good, he should’ve gone farther. There are dogs in there that, that—” She shook her head before saying anything unsportsmanlike. “He’s just a terrific dog.” She held the wiggly pup closer to her chest and softened. “But thank you.”

In the end, the winner was chosen, a beautiful dog selected from a group of equally beautiful dogs, but I couldn’t get the woman out of my head. It’s unusual to see someone so unguarded and emotional. She lost and she was disappointed, angry, sad, the works. She wanted it, she wanted to win, and she wasn’t afraid to show it, even in the face of defeat. Her guts and her passion impressed us more than any cup or ribbon.