The first big overseas trip that my late husband Richard and I took together began in Amsterdam. It’s a city that’s just as fun as you’ve heard–and that’s all I will say about THAT in this forum. The second afternoon we were there, we were meandering around in the Red Light District. Richard stepped into an exchange bureau to exchange some American money so we could buy more…souvenirs. I waited for him outside on the narrow sidewalk by the canal.
When he stepped out of the tiny storefront, Richard took my hand and we continued on our walk. Before we had gone 20 feet, a very stoned and twitchy man who looked alarmingly like Osama bin Laden approached Richard. He stuck his hand out and muttered something about money. Richard waved him off and said, “I don’t have any change.” We kept walking with purpose, eyes forward.
Well. That dude thought he had found an easy mark. A short, slight American who had just stepped out of a currency exchange office and now had a lump in the pocket of his jacket? The guy snarled, “I’m not interested in CHANGE!” and snatched as hard as he could at Richard’s pocket. He was disappointed when only a pack of cigarettes fell to the cobblestones. And when Richard gave him a sharp side elbow to the face.
It was on. I expected the man to run away, but he was ready to fight. The two of them circled each other. The pickpocket kept waggling his hands at Richard in a “come at me bro” way and saying “Fucker mother! Fucker mother!” Richard kept his hands up and all his weight on the balls of his feet. The thief took another dive at his pocket. Richard feinted to the right and popped the guy in the head.
Dude KEPT ON yelling “Fucker mother! Fucker mother!” and swatting at Richard. By that time, even in the sparse afternoon crowds, a few people had come over to see what was going on. The pickpocket decided it was time to move on.
I ran to Richard. He was breathing heavy and shivered from adrenaline. He knelt down and retrieved his Marlboros. “Don’t mess with my cigarettes, right?” We laughed in relief. I turned and shouted at the pickpocket’s retreating back: “It’s ‘MOTHER FUCKER!'”
Richard took my hand and we ducked into the nearest bar. I always felt safe after that when I was holding his hand, because he may have been small but I had proof he was fierce and wily. Richard was 5’4″ of badassery if ever the need arose.
This story came back to me last night when Facebook displayed an ad in the sidebar for a trip to Amsterdam. The trip is offered by Olivia Travel–the premiere lesbian travel company. Sorry, Facebook ad algorithm. You misinterpreted all those Wesleyan posts where I talked about how much I love my sisters. Still, I was intrigued by the concept of a lesbian travel company, so I clicked the ad to see what makes it different. This line jumped out at me in the description of Amsterdam as a host city: “You can feel very secure holding hands and being yourself while walking the streets of Amsterdam.”
Dang. Going on vacation to a place where you can feel secure holding hands and being yourself. That wasn’t in my Top 50 reasons to visit Amsterdam. True, The Netherlands was the first country to legalize gay marriage. It’s also the site of the Homomonument in Amsterdam–a series of pink granite triangles built in memory of those killed by the Nazis for being homosexual. Jews wore the yellow star; homosexuals wore the pink triangle. We went there on our way to the Anne Frank House. But it never even crossed my mind.
The tagline on the Olivia ad was “feel free.” They charter the entire ship, or rent out an entire resort, so that their clients can relax and be themselves.
My eyes were opened a little wider because of that ad and I’m glad for it. I’ve never had to go somewhere other than my home just so I could be myself. To do something as simple as holding hands as I walk down the street beside the person I love. My experience of feeling safe holding hands in Amsterdam is very different from some of my sisters’. I only had to worry about being robbed–not being judged and robbed.
I feel free to squeeze my partner’s hand, or give him a peck on the lips, or say goodbye with a hug wherever we are–PTO meeting, Kroger parking lot, cafeteria at work, airport curb. Hell, I feel free to have a snarling fight with him in those places, too, because we’re just free.
Holding hands for a stroll down the beach, or for comfort after a robbery attempt, or during the prayer at church–that’s a simple thing so many of us take for granted. And so many of us can’t.
A few weeks ago, in the flurry of prom snapshots on Facebook, I saw an image that took me right back to being young and aflutter. In the photo, my friend’s daughter posed with her date. Smiles and smiles and smiles. Poses with their friends and with just the two of them. They weren’t a “couple” couple, but not “just friends” either. It was a date date. And they were young and so so sparkly.
The picture that got to me was a candid snap of the crowd of kids. The boy had taken the girl’s hand as they turned to cut a path through the crowd. The look on her face, and the look on his face, even though they weren’t looking at each other–it was clear that holding hands was a big deal. They both looked a secret kind of happy, like maybe it was the first time they had held hands right there in front of everyone. The energy that flowed through their hands made them one as they moved through the group. The touching was something new, but the way it marked them apart as a pair was something new too.
When’s the last time you felt a secret kind of happy because you were holding someone’s hand?
Really. Think about it.
Now that we’re Adults, most of us have moved on to more…expressive forms of touch. Sure, G and I still hold hands when we’re out on a date, but most days we are holding the hands of those tiny people that we created (via the previously referenced “more expressive forms of touch”). At this stage of life, we hold hands to keep people from darting into traffic, not to declare our coupledom to the wider world.
Richard and I used to joke about “who got to be on top” when we held hands. I liked to be the hand on the bottom. I liked the protected feel of my hand tucked into his. Besides, I already had a good five inches on him in the height department, so I didn’t want it to look like I was dragging him down the street to a dentist appointment. He liked being the bottom hand because he believed that it gave him more steering control–he swore this was a lesson he learned as a ski instructor. So we joked for years about who got to be on top.
Anywho. Where was I? Oh yeah, high school….
Right in the middle of all this thinking about hand holding, I read a book that I cannot recommend highly enough–“Eleanor and Park” by Rainbow Rowell. I give it five stars then I would color in two more stars with a Sharpie. That Good.
If you lived in the 80’s, read this book. If you ever felt like a misfit in high school, read this book. If you ever got swept up in first love, read this book. If you lived an absolute perfect life through your teen years, shut up because you’re lying then read this book. If you know how to read, read this book. As John Green, author of “The Fault In Our Stars,” (the other book that knocked me to my knees this year) said in his NYT review: “Eleanor & Park” reminded me not just what it’s like to be young and in love with a girl, but also what it’s like to be young and in love with a book.
Eleanor and Park begin their courtship on the school bus. It is a slow and furtive reel of comic books, mix tapes, snark, and sentiment. It is sensuous in the truest sense of the word. Rowell’s characters revel in the touch, smell, sight, and sound of each other. And eventually, the taste–but there is so much that comes before that. Remember the days before kissing and all that comes after kissing? Remember leaning in to read something together just for the excuse of being that close? Remember when it took weeks to work your way up to hand holding, and then only if no one was watching? Remember?
Here’s a story that I wrote almost a year ago. It’s about all those strange quivery feelings in the pit of your stomach–the “butterflies” that come from anticipation of new adventures. Click the butterfly to flutter on over!
I hope you feel the sun on your wings today.
Our family had one TV when I was Vivi’s age. Black and white, no remote, rabbit ear antenna. It got three channels (four if there was a solar flare or something)–ABC, CBS, NBC. One TV, three kids. The rule was “whoever gets there first decides what we watch.”
This is why my dad says that he would get up on a Saturday, get dressed to go to work, and walk out in the living room to find me already awake and watching the test pattern on the TV. I loved me some Saturday morning cartoons and I had one narrow window to watch them. From 8 a.m. to 1:30. Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, Super Friends, Land of the Lost (my favorite!), Electro Woman and Dyna Girl, Far Out Space Nuts, Isis, Shazzam, Hong Kong Phooey.
By the time American Bandstand came on at 12:30, then Soul Train after that, we were sated. With brains full of brightly colored Sid and Marty Kroftiness, we wandered out into the rest of the weekend. Once the cartoons were over, we spent the weekend doing the stuff we could do any day. We rode bikes, played with the dogs, played on the swing set, explored the woods, read books, played games, made up stuff to fill our time. Ordinary stuff. Cartoons were only available for four hours; getting to watch them was a special opportunity.
I got to thinking about all of this last Saturday. Our whole family was in the backyard all morning. I was vacuuming the pool. G went down to the river and took cuttings from wild roses that grow down the bank. Vivi and Carlos played on the play fort with its slide, swinging bridge, rock climbing wall, fire pole, swings…you get the idea. But what struck me as strange is that my kids have no sense of “Saturday morning cartoons.” They can watch cartoons whenever they want. Not that we let them watch whenever they want…I mean, cartoons are always an option for them. If Carlos wants to watch Peppa Pig at 6 p.m. while I cook dinner, we have it On Demand. If Vivi wants to watch Littlest Pet Shop at 6 a.m., she knows to punch 186 on the remote. And keep the volume below 15.
My kids only get to play like that in the backyard for a few hours on weekends. I know, I know. Free range kids and all. We live on a river and have a pool (#goodproblemstohave). Even though both are fenced, I’ve always been nervous about turning the kids loose in the yard without keeping an eye on them. They get most of their Vitamin D on the deck where I can see them and put a lock between them and drowning. I spend money on sand so they will have dirt to play in when there is an acre of dirt at the bottom of the stairs. Duh.
When they are free to gallivant in the backyard, they look like this:
Sometimes you need to tie a zebra to the swing with a pink feather boa. You just DO.
Dirty feet are happy feet!
Giving his sister a little shove…with his head.
My goal for the summer is more Saturday mornings like this, and fewer Saturday mornings like this:
Keeping the ship afloat, maties!
I’ve got a story up over at Work It, Mom! today. It’s about diving into three months of summer with three very different kids at three very different stages of life:
I hope you’ll check it out! Click the picture or here to head on over.
We do a good bit of this…
If I have one wish for my daughters, it is that they will find a tribe of girlfriends like the ones I have found. I’m lucky to have a couple of tribes–the GHPers from high school, the Wesleyannes from college, and lately, the Cool Kids from work. “The Cool Kids?” you ask? Yep, The Cool Kids. All capitalized.
Along the theme of “choosing yourself” instead of waiting to be chosen–we named ourselves The Cool Kids. It seems that not a single one of us (except maybe Susan, the elegant blonde and Nicole, the sassy one) was a cool kid in high school. We were the B team, on the margins, always worried that we might be found out and kicked out. So now that we are All Grown Up, we decided to become The Cool Kids. Our table in the cafeteria is the one ringing with laughter, the one people walk by and say, “Y’all are having too much fun!” Nope, no such thing.
…and a little bit of this.
How did The Cool Kids begin? Well, I made a speech about employee giving at New Employee Orientation and I began by saying that my baby had kept me up all night (Vivi) then went on to mention that the cancer support center for which we were raising money had really been a great resource when my fiance was diagnosed with leukemia. Heather came up to me at the break and said, “So it sounds like everything turned out OK?” Um. No. Well, eventually, but….no. She was mortified, but had the strange similarity of also having been a young widow. We bonded quickly over that shared part of our past.
Then one day, Heather and I were having lunch in the cafeteria and Jean joined us. Jean is a palliative care nurse, and she and I had talked a lot after Richard died. A week later, Erica, a nurse like Jean and a singer like Heather, came by and fit right in. And Susan joined us a while later, the woman who used to intimidate the hell out of me because she was so wise and elegant–but funny and genuine too. Heather started working for Jana and Jana joined us, too. Libby and I started talking babies when Carlos came along. And Courtney had a little boy, too. Then Courtney hired Nicole and she fit right in. After about a year of evolution, there we were…The Cool Kids.
Jean’s Merry Christmas. I still have a jelly worm in my purse.
What does it mean to be a Cool Kid? It means that we fill in the gaps for each other. Last year, Jean confided that she had never really had a nice Christmas. So we got together and surprised her with a Christmas lunch with all her favorite things: a Loretta Lynn album, a tiny tree decorated with jelly worms and dog biscuits, books, and dog toys for her Scout. She couldn’t believe it.
When I was at home on maternity leave, Erica made me black bean burritos that I could eat with one hand. When Erica went to Chile for five months, Heather kept her dog like a member of the family. Libby and Erica get their sons together to play XBox. Nicole and Susan swap baseball mom stories.
Two of us are adult children of alcoholics and a few of us need to hear those lessons. Some of us know about grief. Some of us know about divorce. Some of us are learning about divorce. Susan has been married for the longest time and she shares advice that begins with, “I remind myself, ‘Don’t Kill Wes…'”
Two of us have left that place where we all worked, but we still get together for Friday lunches. A few of us just survived a hellatious few months on the job, with the help of our tribe. Sometimes Jana comes to lunch with two phones, but she comes to lunch. Sometimes Libby can only stay for 15 minutes, but she’s there.
Warrior Dash 2012
When Erica is out of paid time off, Heather picks up her son from school and gets him to his playoff game. Courtney brings books for Nicole’s son to share. I pass Vivi’s clothes to Libby’s daughter and Heather sends her son’s toys to my son. When Libby is making hairbows for her daughter’s softball team, she makes extra for Nicole’s daughter. I buy books that I loved for Libby’s little bookworm. If there’s a birthday, Courtney bakes a cake from scratch that would make Julia Childs pull her hair out in envy. Susan once came to my house and decorated for a birthday party in the June heat because I had strep rash and was nine weeks pregnant kind of sick.
Go, girl!
We cheer for each other. When Nicole is running, I holler from the sidewalk. When Libby wants to do something crazy, Courtney and I lace up our shoes and get muddy. When Heather took a sabbatical, we mailed her a birthday party in a box. When Jana won Boss of the Year, we shouted Hooray!
Wrong one of us and get the stink eye from all of us.
Our friendship really shined through this weekend. One of us needed to reclaim a rental property that she had been leasing to a person she used to be married to. Ahem. Not the best of situations. He, despite a month’s notice, hadn’t done SHIT. And let’s be honest–he hadn’t done shit for SEVEN YEARS. That place was Single Man Nasty. Like cheese that expired in 2010 and old underwear beneath the kitchen sink. The toilet was so filthy that we thought about just buying a new one.
But down swept The Cool Kids, in a bustle of good intentions and steadfast “get yo ass outta here”-ness. Jean loaded stuff on his truck and backed that trailer up like a girl who grew up on a hay farm. Hit the road, Jack. Heather put together a trundle bed that Erica had procured and when she didn’t have the right tools, Nicole called her husband to swing by with the toolbox. Nicole and Jana snatched a knot in that kitchen, even bleaching the floor behind the refrigerator. Courtney shampooed rugs while Susan crawled around on her knees cleaning stains out of the carpet.
Coolest Cleaning Crew Around!
Libby washed the blinds while Terri cleaned a ceiling fan that was black with dirt. I spent an hour scouring muck out of the tub. And Erica? She may have gotten there late because she wasn’t going to miss church, but damn if she didn’t hit that forsaken toilet like it was nothing but a thing. Cleaned it with a toothbrush and a smile. I learned that if you have a nasty mess to clean, invite a couple of nurses to help, because they aren’t afraid of ANYTHING. Through it all, we laughed. The sweet aunt and uncle who brought lunch for our weary work crew said, “I’ve never heard such laughing!”
And in the middle of all that GROSS, Jean looks over at me and says, “This feels so good. To help out, doing something together.” I said, “Yeah, it’s one thing to love somebody enough to clean their toilet, but it’s a whole other thing to love somebody enough to clean their ex-husband’s toilet.”
There comes a time in every one of our lives when we look around and think that it’s all gone to hell. I’m so grateful to know that when that day comes for me, I’ve got the Cool Kids. A good set of girlfriends is the key to life.
I heard the thrum of a hummingbird this week. Did you know that their feet are only used for perching, never for hopping or walking on the ground? They live only in the air. Tiny jewels that fly.
Here’s a bijou of a story about G’s grandfather and a tiny friend in Brasil. Click on the hummingbird below to read more!
What’s the most fun you ever had when you broke a rule?
