Public Enemy No. 1
May 11th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
Saturday marked a special day for Charlie. It was the very first time he has been to the dog park in almost four years.
Charlie hasn’t ventured to this type of social setting for so long because he has been on restriction and, more importantly, because I am a responsible dog owner, with concern for the dog population at large. One would think that Charlie, who resembles a scruffy cartoon dog, was much too cute to engage in violence. His big brown soulful eyes, his poofy Pompadour on the top of his fluffy head, nothing with such a face of cuteness could ever be evil. WRONG.
For one, Charlie is a toy mauler. Every day I return home to another mound of stuffing with deflated cloth animal carcasses thrown around the apartment. A few years ago, Charlie must have grown tired of prey that didn’t fight back and moved on to baby possums, skunks and other vermin of various shapes and sizes. It was a traumatic time for me and for the wildlife population at large.
I began to look at Charlie like Cujo, waiting for him to reel me in with his cuteness and then clamp down on my throat. So, you can see my reluctance to take him to the dog park. A sunny place where other dogs come to unwind, sniff butts and drink out of the communal doggy bowl.
I didn’t think it was hopeless. I thought if Charlie went without my other dog Jack, aka his accomplice, there was a glimmer of hope. When Jack and Charlie are together they are bullies and gang up on other dogs, cats….pretty much anything they think would gush fluffy polypropylene stuffing when ripped apart.
So, I distracted Jack with 5 biscuits and while he devoured them and was none the wiser (Jack’s eyes tend to roll into the back of his head when he is eating, much like a Great White Shark’s do, rendering him completely blind) Charlie and I snuck out to the park.
The first five minutes were a blur, mostly because I kept my eyes tightly shut for them. I figured as soon as I heard yelling and screams I would open them in time to rescue Charlie’s prey. Shockingly the screams never came. Once I unclicked the leash from Charlie’s collar he was off like a bullet tearing around the park, stopping briefly to take a quick whiff of the strange doggy butt’s he passed by. We were there for almost an hour filled with wrestling, chasing, sniffing, drinking, rolling, pouncing sans barking, biting growling or fighting.
Needless to say it was a successful trip to the dog park with one minor exception, Charlie is now limping like someone shot him. I should have known he would go crazy with no confines of an apartment and with room to run like a banshee. Charlie had no warm up stretching and clearly pulled a hammy…really really bad.
So, tomorrow we will be going on a new adventure. To the vet.
Ballerina
April 28th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
Grace was never included in my genetic makeup. As a pre-teen, I was plagued with baby fat that was exacerbated by my love for ice cream, straight from the carton.
Growing up in Irvine, California, one of the safest cities in the U.S. , you’re able to make mistakes that are not life threatening and, if done within the confines of the plastic bubble, you can make it out virtually unscathed. I’m not sure if this was the reason why as a child, the only thing that rivaled my awkwardness, was my relentless drive to try anything at least once.
When I was around eight years old, my mom came across an article in the local newspaper about Mikel Barishnakov. Apparently, this Russian phenom was coming to Irvine to audition children and teenagers with little to no ballet experience, for his production of Swan Lake. I did a quick assessment and concluded that I was a child, and I had little to no experience, so by all accounts, I was a perfect fit! My mom, I am sure did a separate assessment. Taking in my plump frame, she must have considered my chances of making the performance, let alone off the ground, were slim to none.
We worked as a team to pick out the perfect outfit. With only three days to prepare for the Saturday audition we needed to be swift with our costume choice. Shorts were quickly scratched off as a viable option, since with any sudden movement they would bunch between my inner thighs and promptly ride up my butt. A skirt wouldn’t work either, as I didn’t have anything proper to wear underneath it. My vision of fluid leaps across the dance room floor didn’t include flashing the judges my Strawberry Shortcake undies. And, considering when I wore a t-shirt and the wind would make it suck to my body, I would pull it at the bottom tenting it back out, so clearly, a leotard or anything spandex wasn’t making the cut.
Saturday morning had arrived. My mom and I drove in excited silence to the performing arts center. In my mind I had already moved to New York, rented a small but spacious loft in the city and figured out how my mom could work two jobs to support my tuition costs at Juliard.
I quickly found myself drowning in a sea of tulle and pink but wasn’t the least bit concerned because clearly, I was buoyant enough to float to the top. I stood there, like a moose in the headlights, the contrast to the flower-like skinny ballerinas that pirouetted around me. Before leaving house that morning, I couldn’t have been more sure in my outfit choice. I thought my navy blue sweats with matching sweater shirt, LA gears and turquoise scrunchie socks couldn’t be rivaled by a better decision. But now, when I saw how beautiful and elegant all the other girls were, I was even happier in my decision to camouflage my belly rolls beneath the sweat suit I bought at the swap meet.
We were directed by a tall, stick like serious woman with a tight bun. She walked like she was floating on air. I was mesmerized at how effortless moving seemed for her. She ushered us away from our parents, and into a large dance room with wooden floors and a huge floor to ceiling mirror. I could clearly see that I was the “one of these things, that wasn’t like the others.” My thick red hair riddled with a bad perm, short bangs, which were sadly also permed and huge pink bifocals sliding down my sweaty nose. I was surrounded by gorgeous same-looking girls with indiscernible features. After a few minutes had passed, five older versions of ballerinas entered and a matronly woman wearing a long flowy skirt seated herself at the piano in front of the room.
One of the ballerinas spoke, ” We will teach you a routine now, you will have 10 minutes to practice and then we will move to performing them as a group. If your number is called you may stay for another routine and so on and so on.” I couldn’t place her accent, but from the best I could tell it sounded fancy. She walked us through a routine with movements that she marked by their ballet name. I had trouble following so I studied her every movement, trying to committ them to memory as the other ballerinas flitted around me.
After her instruction the ballerinas broke off into small practice circles. I was intrigued as there seemed to be little effort or discussion as to who was going to work together. It was as if they had a silent understanding as to who they would allow into each clique. The one thing they had in common however, was that none of them wanted to include me. Convinced there was no place for me within the social hierarchy of any circle, I tucked myself into a corner of the room and tried to make it look convincing that I was too wrapped up in concentration to be phased by the outcast.
The severe looking ballerina clapped her hands and hurried us back into our line formation. I knew this was my one chance to be noticed and I didn’t want to be lost in the sea of tutus, so I made my way to the front of the room and stood in the very center of the front row. The only thing that stood between me and sure fame now, was one silly ballerina routine. I willed my legs to cooperate and I prayed to God that he let this be the one defining moment in my life. The twinkling piano music filled the air and the fancy accented ballerina shouted, “Ready….begin.”
I lept off my left foot into the air and caught my weight on my right foot. I bent gracefully at my waist and curved my arm over my head as I tilted my neck to the side in my best attempt at looking swan-like. I lept into the air again this time on my right foot towards the opposite side of the room only to be met by another ballerina mid flight. We smacked into one another and she bounced off of me and collided into the ballerina standing next to her. Clearly, the routine had called for two flits left, one flit right–not one flit right, one flit left as I had rehearsed. My mistake had caused a domino effect and one by one each ballerina smacked into the next and fell to the floor. After all 15 ballerinas standing to my right fell gracefully to the wooden dance room floor, the piano playing had stopped.
In the reflection of the huge mirror it was painfully obvious who the offender was–the red headed, navy blue hippo with beads of sweat dripping down her face. I furrowed my eyebrows shrugged my shoulders and, before I was officially asked to do so, I walked out of the room as my dreams of New York, Juliard and a hot dancer boyfriend fell away.
I found my mom standing outside alone, surrounded by the plastic mom’s talking to each other in their loud hyena voices. Even though she was the most familiar with my lack of grace she still managed to ask with a straight face, “Well, did you make it?”
My Gammie, Mildred Catherine Stevens
February 26th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
The best kind of person to have in your life is someone you have so many memories with it is impossible to recount every one. Ironically, that also makes them the hardest kind of person to lose. Even though my Gammie lived for 90 years and 7 months, I will never feel as if I had enough time to share with her.We were always very close. My positioning with her was God given, if you will, favoritism attributed mostly to the fact that out of 4 grandchildren, I was the youngest and the only girl. But our connection was more than that. Growing up I always knew no moment was complete until I shared it with her. No news that I had was ever received with more enthusiasm than when I told my Gammie about it. No one thought I was prettier, smarter or more talented than my Gammie did. If I was teased at school – which I was, often – she was the first to tell me that the other kids were just jealous of me. And she said it with such conviction that sometimes I even believed her. When I would visit her, the first 10 minutes were filled with her telling me how pretty I was or how much she loved me. Everyone needs that kind of love in their life.
Without her in our life, my mom, my brother and I would have been lost. Some may think it unfortunate that my mom had to move back in with my grandparents when we were young. But it was an amazing gift and a time I will forever feel fortunate for. Living with my grandparents meant every day after school I came home to a bowl of M&M’s, Nickelodeon and my Gammie who was always there to be with Erik and me. It meant that after school when everyone else was being picked up in their mom’s mini vans, my brother and I got to be picked up by a black Camero by our Gammie who wore leather pants and dangly earrings. Gammie made my brother and I special and unique. Everyone wanted a grandma like ours. One who favored playing tennis and wearing Poison perfume over their grandmothers who knitted and smelled like old wool.
As I got older and moved out of the house my Grandma’s house was where I would return to when I felt like my world was spinning out of control. It was the one place I had on this earth where I felt safe. And like all wonderful grandparents do, my Gammie would make sure when I would visit that I had enough to eat and when I left her house I always left with more than I came with. Whether it be a bag of groceries foraged from her cupboard, coupons, magazines, candy or a few extra dollars to help me out. Gammie was my haven and my soft place to land. After our visit together she would walk me out to my car and as I drove away I could always see her lips moving as she said her ritualistic prayer for me which she was convinced would keep me safe, “Wrap Stacy in white, with Saint Christopher and Saint Jude on her shoulders.”
Right about a year before my Gammie began leave the house less and less, she and I would meet for coffee every Friday before I went into work and before she got her weekly haircut. We would spend an hour every Friday sitting and talking. I loved those visits.
Over the past few years my Gammie’s sparkle began to fade. She has been in and out of the hospital countless times. Many of which we didn’t think she would make it out from. Our visits of lengthy talks and catching up were replaced by her circle of questions, “Are you happy?”, “What have been up to?”, “What do you do for fun…see any good movies lately?” And those questions would be asked over and over for the entire span of our time together. It broke my heart to let go of her little by little. It broke my heart to see her legs swell with fluid, to hear her constant coughing and wheezing. My Gammie never wanted to be old. She never wanted to be sick and in pain. She was like lightning, strong, fiery and electric. But time had reduced her to less than that and I knew it made her sad. She was trapped in a body that didn’t match her spirit. For 90, she looked amazing but for Gammie, she looked sick.
This Christmas, although my Gammie still wore her pretty Chico’s outfit and was decked out in all her usual accessories. She had two new accessories that made my heart sick – an oxygen tank and a wheelchair. I knew it wasn’t long until she would leave me….until she would leave us. But I just don’t know how to let her go.
My Gammie is vibrant and sparkly. She would enter a room of strangers but would leave the room with friends. And I loved her so very much. I know she was hurting, I know she was sick. I know she wanted so badly to let go but no matter what, I am not ready. Even though I feel like I have been trying to prepare myself for years, I am not prepared for this. I am not ready to let her go or to let her fade away. To do that would mean I too fade away because so much of what I am is because of her. She knew how much I loved her, she knew how much she meant to me and I know how much she loved me – which is why letting her go is so hard.
