The Twelve Days of Forty

Day 11

I wish the sinus infection would just take me quickly and be done with it, yet as I prepare to return to work I know this won’t happen. We had a storm last night. Desert weather can be so extreme and so very beautiful. The morning broke, beautiful as ever, and I’m glad to be here. Glad to be alive—my sinuses notwithstanding.

Forty draws one day nearer, and I wonder whether I’ve learned much. Shouldn’t I feel wise by now? Is there some incredible thing that happens on your fortieth birthday? Some enormous flash of insight which will punctuate the event and validate my existence? Probably not. Perhaps the lesson is right there. Much of our lives are spent in the more mundane business of work and family; enormous flashes of insight and brilliant clarity are few and far between. If they occurred on a daily basis how could we recognize and appreciate them?

My idle mind races…so when did it become the norm to advertise prescription medication on television? “Ask your doctor if Celebrex is right for you…” “I felt so silly. It was only a couple of toenails… but I asked my doctor and I’m glad I did…” “Broken [Propecia] tablets should not be handled by pregnant women…” “Who’s asking about Viagra? Maybe it should be you.” “My overactive bladder was ruining my life…” What the hell? My personal favorite is the one where the entire dialog consists of a man turning to his wife in the car and says, “I asked by doctor about Lipitor.” That’s it. Scene’s over; commercial’s over. Am I supposed to be motivated to run to my doctor and say, “What’s this Lipitor stuff? Do I need it too???” Please.

And remember when the most risque thing you saw in a bra commercial was the mannequin bust with the Cross-Your-Heart bra on it? The new Victoria’s Secret ads are making my stepson blush.

Another thing I remember fondly is when it was my mom—not me--who reminisced about the “good old days”. Oh, well, maybe I do need “Lipitor”. Who knows? Maybe it’s a cure for sinus infections…

1968

We’ve returned to live in my hometown, Austin, Texas, and he did not come with us. Mom divorced him, after all, probably in an attempt to save both our lives. It does not even cross my eight-year-old mind that she could possibly miss him in any context, or that she might have loved him once—or still. I can never remember loving him, or even liking him. Only the dread that he’d come home and, when he did, terror. Now he’s gone; no longer the near-invisible object warping our familial orbits. Without him, what is there to define us? To define me? Some awful definition had already taken place, but it would be years before I discovered and understood it. In the meantime, I was finally free.

A family friend, MaryLynne, would frequently visit from Houston, and eventually relocate to Austin. Somehow, I didn’t like her. She was tall, slightly overweight, and seemed somehow coarse and loud. She scared me and, I think, disliked me as well. She always seemed to want to fix me, somehow. The night before my third-grade pictures were taken at school, she looked at me in disgust and announced, “We’ve got to do something about that shaggy hair. Here…I’ll just trim it for you.” I was placed in a chair with a towel around my shoulders as she went to work on my hair. The results were recorded forever in a school picture with a horrible, soup-bowl cut, and bangs cut nearly back to the hairline. I was so thin at the time, my picture looked like one of those poor starving “Save the Children” ads.

In a subsequent return visit to Houston, she took me aside one day as my mother was napping. Apparently, I’d been a bit too bratty for her taste (she never liked children) that day, and probably whined excessively. Honestly, I can’t remember, specifically, what set her off. She grabbed me—hard—by the shoulder and dragged me into the bathroom, closing the door behind us. Still clutching my shoulder, she knelt to eye-level with me and hissed “YOU are the reason your mother can’t remarry! Who would want her with a nasty little brat like YOU around?! Just remember that: YOU are the reason your mother is alone and unhappy!”

I was shattered and stunned. Me? I was the reason Mom hadn’t remarried? I was a brat? I didn’t even know a person could remarry… did she want to? Who would it be? When would this happen? And what was wrong with me that I was so awful I could prevent this wondrous thing? I looked in the bathroom mirror and watched as the tears rolled down my cheeks. What had I done? Could it ever be righted? I never stopped to wonder why an adult, a “friend”, would speak to an eight-year-old child in such a manner. Adults had behaved strangely throughout my life thus far, and I had no frame of reference for how they might be any different.

MaryLynne would be an on-again-off-again fixture in my life until my early twenties. I grew to loathe her and would avoid social contact whenever possible. At some point in my adult life, I realized the true horror of what she said to me, and though I know I should forgive, I cannot. I hate her still.