Some Assembly Required (23 page)

Jesus had his good days and bad days and stomach viruses. Not to mention that on top of it all, he had a
mom
who had bad days and good days of her own. She’s like me and Amy, like all of us; she would have been as hormonal, too. And she must have been jealous sometimes of the people Jesus
chose to spend time with instead of her. Jealousy is such a toxic virus. “Who
are
these people? And what do they have that I don’t have?” It’s pretty easy to be deeply selfish when it comes to sharing your child. Even Mary must have been like: “Back off! He’s
mine
.”

Amy brought Jax into church late, sound asleep in his car seat, and he stayed asleep in the rhythmic burble of the prayers and the first hymn. Then, at the second hymn, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” one of our members began to accompany us on her exotic Korean drum—how had I not noticed her up by the choir? Bam, bash, like rifle fire, a funeral salute—
Crash! Crack! Blam!
Jax bolted awake in Foster Brooks mode, and looked around. I had to force myself not to glare at her for waking the baby. Jax’s eyes landed on Amy’s, then mine, then back on Amy’s. Then he dropped back to sleep.

He’ll be ten months old in a few days. He is a full partic ipant in human life, except when, as today, he has been drinking. He has all sorts of human skills and desires, like being able to focus on things for as long as he chooses, talking away with a thoughtful expression even as he makes farting, spluttering noises. He also wants things now, and holds on—our two most human tendencies: he needs and grasps everything within his range, and doesn’t immediately lose interest in something if he can’t have instant gratification.

When he woke up for real, we took him out of his car seat so he could look around. Danielle, my hairdresser, held him for a long time. She is very large, and fully tattooed to her neck, with her arms, her cleavage, her everything brilliantly decorated in flowers and hearts of all sizes, and Jesus and sunrises—her entire retirement fund seemingly spent on these designs. Jax stared, just a few inches from each body painting, touching them carefully as if he could trace them, which he can’t quite yet, and gaping as if at an IMAX movie screen, stoned.

During the sermon, our guest preacher, Laurie, asked from the pulpit, “What do we do when we are at our most scared and lonely, feeling overwhelmed and misunderstood, guilty and abandoned?”

There was a long pause.

Then someone ventured: “Eat?”

Amy left Jax with me for the whole day. I loved it, but as usual was wiped out by the time she returned. Luckily, I have a gift for getting him to take naps with me. We took two, one in the late morning, one mid-afternoon. I hold him, swaying, and sing him Jesus or union songs until he drops off. Then I curl up with him on the couch, with him tucked into my armpit, between the couch and my side, both of us under a baby blanket.

I went hiking with Karen early this morning, up in the hills with the dogs. In late spring, the land in these parts is covered with a great fleece quilt like a landscape weaving, with clumps of interesting textures, feathery Asian touches, lots of broccoli trees, infinite poppies, buttercups like buttons securing it all. There are shades of purple-brown and orange in all the green, in the trees and the grass, and heathery rose, colors you don’t see except in paintings, like someone up here is spinning and dyeing her own yarn.

It’s Wordsworth up here, the glint of an infinite field of benevolence.

Karen lets me catch her up on Jax for the first ten minutes of every weekly walk now. It can’t be very interesting. I used to hate new grandmothers. I told her about Jax lifting his knees off the ground to walk, how brilliant he is to pay attention to his pain-avoidance instincts—something I don’t always do anymore, especially when it comes to men.

He’s figured out that when you can’t find things, they might still be there: if you cover up an apple with a hat, he now lifts the hat, and by God, there’s that damn apple! But I feel a recurrent bittersweet sadness in realizing what’s in store for him—what a mishmash of surprise and joy, tedium and desolation this life will bring.

Nature is the greatest solace.

Karen, who is five years younger than I am, has had a physical ache in her heart for a week, and is going in for a day of heart tests this afternoon. I asked whether we should even be hiking. She thought I was crazy. What if this is her last day on earth? She wants to have hiked; I want to have had dessert. She says she wants to get a tattoo on her chest that says “Do Not Resuscitate.” But she is not a grandmother yet.

We had a Cousins lunch today, with Clara, Jax, Stevo, and Amy, to celebrate Jax’s ten-month birthday. Sam was in school. Stevo and Annette are getting married in ten days. It is a great happiness for our family, right up there with having Jax join us; and we are sad only that Millard didn’t live long enough to celebrate with us. There are gaping holes in everything. Life is a nice fresh batch of Swiss cheese. (Note to self: Savor the holes, too, like the spaces between musical notes.) I am the officiant, Sam will be Stevo’s best man, Clara will walk her dad down the aisle of redwoods behind the restaurant, and Jax will steal the show.

Jax is so together now that he could be in the wedding party. He’s a total smiling charmer, mastering new skills every day. Really, he’ll be working the fax machine soon. All smiles, drool, focus, grabbing, and motion. Whenever he’s on his stomach, he does a workout routine that would have put Jack
LaLanne to shame, a hybrid of push-ups, with a mad stationary dash. It’s exhausting to watch.

Today we were hanging out in the sun with the dogs. Jax, wearing just a diaper, started crawling around like Speedy Gonzales and then realized the concrete was hurting his knees. So he straightened his legs and got around on his hands and the bottoms of his feet. Lily was stunned—it apparently turns out that the baby unit is
not
a badger, as previously thought, but a primate of some sort.
Proconsul africanus. Australopithecus. Ecce
Homo!

I met Amy, Sam, and Jax at Fort Mason, the presidio near the southern base of the Golden Gate Bridge. A friend of Sam’s who is a professional photographer had offered to take their photos, and I got to be a part of the process. I could tell Sam and Amy had had a bad morning—he was at his most petulant when they arrived, and she was in enraged-victim mode. They managed to pull out of it somewhat as Sam’s friend and her assistant herded us from backdrop to backdrop—in front of various buildings, statues, and the Bay. I watched the woman photograph Jax on Sam’s shoulders, and with the sea shimmering behind them, I fixated on the specter of Amy’s taking Jax to Chicago. My thoughts careened off one another like bumper cars: happy
thoughts about the beauty of the day and the blessing of Jax; thoughts about how to bribe Sam into behaving better with Amy, and how to get Amy to be nicer to Sam; images of me drowning in the frigid bay, and being eaten by a great white shark out by the Farollon Islands.

Then, out of nowhere, I remembered something a man named Bob Earle said years ago: that his mind wanted to kill him and try to live on its own. And in a blink my bad trance was broken. I said to my mind, “You can’t have me,” and then said to God, “Do resuscitate,
do
,” and the wind blew, the gulls cried, and Jax laughed. I stopped thinking about trying to fix and rescue Sam and Amy; and much more important, I stopped talking. I was revived.

As she worked, the photographer said how great the pictures of this day were going to be, and this surprised Sam and Amy. They both rose to the taxing occasion, and the beauty of the setting—the pelicans; the jewel that is a former prison, Alcatraz; the macramé Golden Gate Bridge.

They were being friendlier to each other when they left. Jax was learning to wave bye-bye, which added ten minutes to our windy farewell.

I have a fabulous beautiful vintage dress from the fifties that I always wear when I perform weddings. It’s soft rose,
with cap sleeves, a scooped neckline, lots of shimmering pink sequins, and side zippers from the waist to the armpits.

I went to get it out yesterday, for Stevo’s wedding to Annette, this Sunday—and it had shrunk in the closet. I hate when this happens. I could zip it up when I put it on, although the zipper kept trapping and pinching bits of rib-cage fat. Amy was watching me try it on, and laughing. There’s tummy there that (I like to think) looks sort of adorable when covered with a T-shirt or jammies, but it’s not quite as cute when bulging into a tight sequined bodice.

I did get the dress on and the zippers zipped, but barely. I haven’t lost my grandbaby fat. Also, what happens in a dark closet, where there is no air circulating, is that the fabric can’t breathe, and it dies a little every day. It atrophies and contracts, like old apples or balloons. I’m certain of it.

You can take items suffering from closet shrink to be altered, or you can starve yourself. Or you can do what every woman in her right mind does: buy a tubular latex girdle containment product for the gut. Which is what I did that afternoon. I bought some Spanx.

Sam and Jax came over for a couple of hours. Sam was lovely and relaxed, and we ate vast quantities of corn chips, salsa, and carrot cake together, since Spanx has solved all my
imminent problems. Jax race-crawled around the house, stopping to study and drop things, manhandle the animals, and smash up bites of banana on the table before shoving them into his mouth. He’s Koko the gorilla gone bad.

Sam gave him his bottle, and rocked him to sleep in his arms, as casual as can be, and it filled me with a crushing love, something like pain, and with pride, the way I felt when other kids fell in love with my father.

I asked Sam, “How would you describe Jax to someone who’s never met him?”

Sam said, “I’d say he is an intellectual.”

“Jax?”

“Oh, yeah, he’s a thinker, but a cool guy, not a nerd. He is just like his dad—he can’t leave something alone until he understands it.”

“How would you describe him physically?”

“He’s a strong yet softly rounded boy. He’s a lunk, very powerful in his own thinky way. He’s golden olive-brown—he has the color skin every white person wants.”

“Tell me about his sense of humor.”

“He likes candid situations—he’s not going to laugh at what you think is funny. He loves spontaneous things, and sight gags. The funniest thing on earth to him is anyone sneezing, including himself. He just loses his mind laughing.”

“How would you say you and I are most different?”

“Well, you’re more fearful. You need a lot more things to be in place for you to feel safe. But you did not get hit by
the lavish thing. I definitely have the lavish thing. I want to own a lot of great shit. You don’t have this—I mean, look at your old car. I guess where we’re most different is that you’re very simple.”

My mouth dropped open. I hadn’t seen that coming:
me
, a simpleton.

Then he added, “No offense.”

It is devastating to watch the second month of BP’s catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. There is apparently nothing anyone can do, not even Obama. The whole country feels a collective, agitated despair.

I don’t see how God can turn this tragedy around. He didn’t send me the e-mail yet. This is always a difficult decision for Him: “Hmmmm, let’s see—should I send Annie the briefing and get her
always
excellent ideas and input? Or should I just call it a day?”

I wish I could see the hand of God more clearly. Tom says I am one of those people who run after Jesus going, “Give us a sign, Lord, give us a sign.” So He gives me a sign—and then two days later I’m running after him again, crying, “Show me another sign.” Tom says this is why I am on God’s special list: I’ve gotten endless signs of the greatness of God’s love and hilarious care, but I always end up needing a newer sign, maybe one that is cuter and more spangly.

The day finally arrived. It was sunny and warm for the wedding yesterday under the redwoods at Deer Park. Annette’s daughter Rachel and the other maids of honor led the procession down the aisle past one hundred or so beloved friends and relatives. Sam was next. Clara and I walked Stevo down the aisle. Stevo looked like our father, tall and handsome, blue-eyed, with dark wavy hair and a long nose. Our older brother, John, looks more like Mom, darker and sturdier, brown-eyed, with a smaller nose. His health has been poor for the last few years; he is very religious, and involved with his church in Chico, so he definitely had that radiant love thing going. All three of us got clean and sober twenty-plus years ago, and we are all believers, which must leave our parents scratching their heads in the grave or in heaven, and wondering, “Where did we go wrong?” It is actually a miracle that we are still alive, all things considered. And it felt like that today, especially, I might add, because I hadn’t even needed to wear the Spanx—talk about cute signs from God. This was like Lourdes.

Most of our cousins were there, and Sam’s two cousins: John’s teenage son, Tyler, who is half Japanese-American; and Clara at her most gorgeous in lace and little heels, with flowers in her hair.

Jax looked like a drunken Cuban bandleader in a black-and-white
vest, a white dress shirt, black shorts, and black bow tie. Amy wore the sexiest sleeveless clingy blue dress.

I said what I always say at weddings: That two people fall in love and decide to see if their love might stand up over time; if there might be enough grace and forgiveness and the occasional memory lapse to hold their love together into the fullness of time. That we celebrate the commitment to this work, to the joy, to the inevitable struggles, to the energy that is both sweet and deep that the two people exude in their love for each other. That we celebrate our senses of humor and patience, and the greatness and cost of enduring family love.