i wouldn’t say it’s completely autobiographical. but one has to get one’s idea nuggets from somewhere. and – since our lives together have some really ordinary moments – truly ordinarily-ordinary with a smidge of extra as frosting here and there – they are somewhat easy to pull from.
day-to-day living has enough funny stuff. really. stuff happens. big stuff. little stuff. silly stuff. stupid stuff. hard stuff. poignant stuff. goobery stuff. one just has to notice, to pay attention.
and then – in the case of of a sort-of-autobiographical-sort-of-construed-sort-of-vulnerable-sort-of-stand-up cartoon – one has to be willing to share.
the perils and the summits of middle age. there are plenty.
in the land of used-to-be, i used-to-be able to wait entire days before having to find a restroom. back in the day, i could drive in, set up product and play an entire wholesale show, all day, chatting, drinking coffee, playing, selling cds, without having to leave the booth space. thirteen hours after starting the whole process, my body would remind me that the ladies room needed to be a stop before getting back in the car to drive again.
but now…
these days are a tad bit different. i would laugh when my sweet momma would complain about this. i’d reassure her and stop and look for a restroom whenever she needed to stop and find one. i’d lightly toss off, “we’re in nooo hurry! no worries!”.
i have become my mother.
and – in the way that the universe is very, very fair – so has david.
our bladduhs are just not the same as they used-to-be.
and so, it is a given that t-h-i-s a-g-e comes with challenges we didn’t have to deal with when we were younger. it is a given that timing out a roadtrip will need take into account pitstops along the way. it is now a given that walking in the ‘hood will sometimes mean having the key ready-and-aimed for the doorknob.
the check-engine light is on. i felt compelled to explain it to my daughter and her boyfriend when i picked them up at the airport, lest they worry i wouldn’t be able to deliver them downtown – in the middle of a snowy, rainy, sleety early afternoon. “we’re waiting for a catalytic converter,” i told them and they nodded. the only saving grace to not picking them up in a horse-drawn carriage (or that ferrari that chris-the-spectrum-guy had promised me) is that i brought snacks with me, making me a “pretty good uber”. ahhh, yes, it puts a momma’s heart on steroids.
we are used to a ride with sounds and not just in littlebabyscion. big red has these running boards that rattle over bumps (for which we are seeking welding help) so it is never quiet in either vehicle. neither has the sound-proofing of vehicles for which we have seen commercials….where the mom stays out in the lincoln suv and peacefully avoids the chaos in her home. no…we bring our chaos with us as part of the travel package. but eh, we don’t mind.
it is usually me who hears the new sound first: the seatbelt in the back thumping against the window, the back seat not fully engaged and squeaking over bounces, the sunglasses on the dashboard jiggling. tiny ambient sounds. the larger ones too. the sound of the hole in the exhaust system, the metallic quaking of a truck with a blown coil. i would mention the things i sniff out first too but it just might be too much here.
regardless, there have been moments when i seem to be channeling my sweet dad as i slough off the sound and keep driving. i know the proof will be in the pudding (that is a really strange saying) and we will see, if we continue on our merry way, what happens.
changing the subject i’ll look over at d and quote my poppo, “do you think the rain will hurt the rhubarb?” “not if it’s in cans,” he quips my dad’s standard answer. we both laugh and keep driving.
i wish. i wish stress brought out my sense of humor. i suppose that sometimes it does. but more consistently would be a good thing. how does worrying help, anyway?
this is not my favorite FLAWED CARTOON. although it does actually make me laugh aloud, it also makes me cringe. (and, to take it further, it makes me want to be vegan.)
in the story i tell myself, she puts down the talking-intervention-chicken and it becomes a free-range fowl, roaming with plenty of fresh vegetation, sunshine and open space for exercise.
interrupting is an art form on long island. i know this. i grew up there. and, apparently, i carried this forward. it took d a while (read: a few years and meeting crunch) to realize i was paying attention, that i wasn’t ignoring what he was saying when i interrupted…i just knew where he was going with it and jumped ahead. now, i do realize that sounds pretty rude. it’s not my intention to ever be rude, so i have tried, in recent times, to w.a.i.t. before i speak…at least a little bit longer. if you are nearby when jen and i talk, you will think we are interrupting each other, talking in a circular path and arriving back at the point; carol and i have, for decades, conversed in short snippets of interrupted tangents. regardless of our intent, no one wants to be asked to “pay attention!”
yet, we have all these ways, nowadays (using this word makes me sound old), to not pay attention. how many videos have you seen where people are walking in a mall (or somewhere) texting or reading on their cellphone and fall into a fountain (or some other obstacle.) we sit with others and try to hold a conversation, but they are busy on their phone or some device checking facebook or texts or twitter or the news…so many ways to not pay attention, so many distractions. we see the tragic effects of split focus while people are driving cars.
we are no longer just giving our attention to the moment. we are interrupting conversation, our work, the activity we are involved in, each other’s safety. we would be well-served to pay just-a-little-more attention.
i just asked david if he would illustrate a children’s book i wrote a long, long (did i mention long?) time ago. naturally, he said yes, because, uhh, what else is he going to say? so maybe one of these days you’ll see my snowflake-is-as-raindrop-does story in book form. in the meanwhile, i’ll tell you the story…hopefully succinctly.
once upon a time (because all great stories start like that) there was a little raindrop. after it had fallen out of the sky with a gajillion other raindrops it had a choice. whether to drop-and-roll quickly down the street and be transported through evaporation back up into the sky to reform and do it all over again or – and yes, i am definitely personifying this raindrop – it could choose to roll over to a small plant or tree or blade of grass that needed sustenance. the raindrop believed (had been taught by others?) that this sacrifice would end its journey…there would be no more going-up-into-the-sky-coming-down-as-a-raindrop-all-over-again if it made this choice. but the little raindrop rolled over to a little flower anyway, curled up beside its stem and sighed. what it didn’t realize would happen was this – that it still evaporated. it still went back up into the sky. it still reformed. but this time it was chosen to reform into a beautiful, unique snowflake, an honor bestowed only on those raindrops who had made a difference, who had yielded to a different choice.
so you’re thinking, ok, what does this have to do with snowflakes and snowmen? well, we just never know how our choices will impact our possibility or how we might be surprised by something different than what we perceive to be our intended possibility. you have to admit, being a snowflake in a snowman with a scarf and goofy hat that makes people smile and children dance would seem way more satisfying than being a snowflake in a dirty pile of snow in a parking lot. we learn to go with the flow. sometimes the unanswered prayers -loss of the UNlimited possibilities- turn out to be the best.
reverse threading 