On Turning 15: Driving, Shaving And Growing Up

Me and my boy

Tomorrow, my house is going to be overrun with a dozen or so teenage boys. They’ll play some basketball, go to the field to throw the football around and then come inside and take over the den. If they can all fit in there.

You see, my baby is turning 15.

Gulp. How the heck did that happen?

One minute, I’m walking along Spring Street in NYC, watching my husband eat a slice of Ben’s pizza while I’m holding on to a pole waiting for my latest contraction to pass. Hoping that I’m dilated enough for the doctor to send me to the hospital.

The next minute, I’m living in Florida, divorced and re-married, and getting my house ready for an onslaught of testosterone fueled teenagers. Bottles of water and Gatorade. A huge bag of veggie sticks from Costco. And a coupon to help defray the cost of the eight pizzas I’m going to order for their lunch.

Quite different from the birthday parties we had when he was younger. Like when he turned four. We rented a pavilion at the beach and hired someone dressed as Woody, from Toy Story, to entertain the kids. Woody came with his own handler, an older woman who was really mean. Plus, it rained in the morning so we got nervous and changed the plan and had it at our house. Not my finest moment.

No, we're long past those days of sending out sports-themed party invitations. Of making goody bags. (Oh, how I hated those.) And waffling over how many kids could spend the night. My kid’s not even calling this a birthday party. He’s just having more friends over at one time than I would usually be able to tolerate. And he’s really excited.

And, for the most part, so am I.

It's just that I'm feeling a little nostalgic. I pulled out his photo album yesterday and looked through it. The one I did during his first year of life. (It kind of stops after that.) From the days when you actually took film to the store to have it processed. And it put me in that place where you kind of panic a bit because, oh no, you can't stop time. And how did he get from there to here? And where is he going?

So sure, I can lament his getting older and mourn the things that are no more. Like the types of conversations we used to have that would start with him, always curious, asking me, “What would happen if...” Or the way he used to end so many of his statements with  “Right, Mommy?” Or the fact that I can’t help him with his homework anymore because no, I don’t remember Calculus and I dropped out of Physics.

Or, I can be excited for him to start this new phase of his life. That he’s almost done with his first year of high school. That he has to shave every week and has at least seven inches on me. That in a little more than three years, he’ll be going to college. (Yikes.)

And that, come Monday morning, after his appointment at the DMV, he’ll have his learner’s permit and will be able to drive me all around town. Like I’ve been doing for him the last 15 years. I'd do anything for him. Except clean his room.

My baby. My kid. My teenager.

Smart and handsome. Kind and sensitive (most of the time).

He's turning out pretty good.

Another Conversation With My Kid: Diaphragm Edition

Most every night, my daughter and I read in her room before bedtime.

We’ve been doing it since both of my kids were so young that I had to read to them. My son is now almost 15 and most nights would prefer to be in the privacy of his own room with the door shut. That’s fine. I get it.

But my daughter is 12 and she still wants to spend the last 30 minutes of every day with me, which I love.

And last night was no exception.

I had just started reading Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Marriage Plot. And she is a few books deep in to Meg Cabot’s Princess Diaries series.

The thing I love about reading books while sitting side by side with her is that she’ll ask me questions. A word will come up that she doesn’t know how to pronounce. Or know the definition of. Or just plain doesn’t have a clue as to what it is.

Like this:

Kid: Mom, what’s a diaphragm?

Me: (Not sure if she means the body part or the other one.) Read me the sentence.

Kid: “Whatever happened to her diaphragm? ... I found it once in the shower...”

Me: (Ok, so I know that she doesn’t mean the body part.) It’s a form of birth control.

Kid: Well, how does it work? It says in the book that the girl used it as a birdbath for her Barbies.

Me: It’s rubbery and kind of looks like a miniature frisbee. (Hoping we can stop here.)

Kid: Ok, but what do you do with it?

Me: (Here goes. Honesty is best, right?) You put it in your vagina and it covers the cervix.

Kid: (Interrupting me...) Oh, you mean it stops the penis from going in too far?

Me: (Totally laughing inside.) No, it stops the sperm from going past the cervix. First, you put spermicidal jelly in it. (Wait, shit, why did I take it that far?)

Kid: What’s that?

Me: A gel that kills the sperm so that they can’t make it past the diaphragm.

Kid: How do you get it up there?

Me: Well the diaphragm is very flexible so you fold it in half and insert in to your vagina. It opens up and lies against your cervix.

Kid: And, um, how do you get it out?

Me: Same way you got it in. With your fingers.

Kid: You put your fingers up there? Ewww. How do they fit?

(I’m thinking, “Kid, you have no idea.”)

Me: Well, if a baby’s head can come out of your vagina, a few fingers can definitely go up there.

Kid: (Makes a grossed-out face.) Did you ever have one?

Me: Yep, once.

Surprisingly, that satisfied her curiosity and she went back to reading.

I, of course, starting think about the one and only diaphragm I ever had. I got fitted for it after she was born. And never, ever used it. 

When she was three years-old, her father and I got divorced. 

And four years after that, I found the diaphragm, still in it’s original box, when I was cleaning out the cabinet on my ex’s side of the sink to make room for my soon-to-be second husband’s toiletries. I had no need for it. I had an IUD. So I threw it out.

Just another conversation with my kid.

P.S. Think I'll save Fifty Shades of Grey for when I'm reading alone. For the same reason that the Story of O is hidden in my bedside drawer. Imagine the types of questions she would have if she read over my shoulder. And the horror I'd have answering them.

Chickpeas Out The Wazoo

Roasted chickpeas

My husband has a new mistress.

Her name is Restaurant Depot. She is an open-to-the-trade-only wholesaler of all things restaurant-related. In very large quantities. (That bitch.)

A five pound bag of shredded parmesan cheese.

A gallon of Crystal hot sauce.

A case of chopped sea clams. Or ocean clams. Chef’s choice.

And a number 10 size can of garbanzo beans. You know, chickpeas.

A few weeks ago, my husband brought home one of those big, heavy cans of chickpeas from Restaurant Depot. 108 ounces worth. Almost 13 cups.

I love chickpeas. They're full of protein and contain lots of iron and calcium. I sprinkle them on my salads. I saute them with cauliflower.

But I usually buy them in smaller cans. Much smaller cans. 15.5 ounce smaller cans.

You can’t just open a jethro-sized can like that and not have a plan for what you're going to do with them. Luckily for me, and my over-enthusiastic chickpea purchasing husband, I had a few recipes floating around in my head.

So here’s what I made:

Roasted Chickpeas
I first saw a recipe for sweet and salty roasted chickpeas on Pinterest a few weeks ago. And I was intrigued by the simplicity of it. Then my friend Meri posted another version on her blog, The Food Yenta. (I’ve been getting a lot of my cooking ideas from Meri lately.) Her recipe calls for truffle oil, parmesan cheese and parsley. I made it last weekend and my daughter and I fought over the last of them.

Chickpea Curry
This is a quick and easy curry my cousin posted on her blog a while back. Curry, onions, coconut milk = comfort. Over the last few years, I’ve made it dozens of times and always add in whatever it is I have in the house like roasted cauliflower or peas. If you like eggplant, and I do, here’s a version that includes roasted eggplant.

Hummus, of course
There are a ton of hummus recipes out there. I took this one, from the Moosewood Cookbook I got from my mother when I graduated from college, and modified it slightly. I like my hummus extra lemony and I like to sprinkle on a little spicy, smoked paprika before serving. And the good old Restaurant Depot sells giant packs of whole wheat pita.

And this is something that I want to make:

Falafel
I love falafel. When I worked in Manhattan, I used to frequent a deli around the corner from my office, on Third Avenue just north of 42nd street. In the back was a small kitchen that served up Middle Eastern food to go. Their falafel was fantastic. Warm and crunchy. Never soggy. You could get a whole falafel meal, with some hummus, pita and pickled radishes, for cheap. And be full all day. I worked for a newspaper and wasn't making a ton of money, so cheap and filling was important. Here’s a recipe from Bon Appetit that looks fairly uncomplicated.

So my husband is going to the Restaurant Depot today. He's bringing me back another can of chickpeas. Do you have any other ideas of how I should cook them? Help me. Please share in the comments.

P.S. I'm starting to look like a chickpea. And feel like one too.

I Am Scarred

I look at my body when I am in the shower and catalog my scars.

I have a teeny, tiny scar on my right thumb. Where it got stuck in a screen door when I was a toddler and I tried to follow my older brother outside. I wanted to do everything he did. The door had to be taken off the hinges to free my thumb. And I have the picture with the bandages to prove it.

I have a mottled-looking scar on the top of my right kneecap. An elementary school field trip to the Everglades gone bad. I was running along a rocky path, letting my fingers trace the handrail. A bump on the handrail threw me off balance and I skidded along on my knee. Once the tiny rocks were removed, I was left with a flap of skin that healed unevenly.

I have a scar on the inside of my right ankle. From when I was a teenager and Sperry Topsiders were all the rage. One of the round metal eyelets on the side of the shoe had come unfastened. And for an entire summer repeatedly cut my ankle. It never occurred to me to ask for help fixing it. Now my ankle just looks dirty.

I have a scar on the inside of my left pinky toe. From playing tag, barefoot, in my childhood home with my father. I know that I was younger than 13 because my parents were not yet divorced. Running away from my father, my little toe got stuck on the side of the doorway. And didn’t follow the rest of my foot. I laughed until I saw the blood drop. Then the tears came. My father swooped me up in his arms and took me to the emergency room to get stitched up.

I have a scar on my face above the left side of my mouth. From the removal of a beauty mark. A mole. I never liked it. Even though Cindy Crawford had the same one. A guy I met in a bar one night licked it. That was not a turn-on. I wanted the mole gone before my wedding. A wedding that resulted in a marriage that ended up lasting less than a decade.

I have a scar above my pubic bone. It was my children’s portal in to the world. Almost 15 years ago, after laboring for 24 hours, my obstetrician told me that I had cephalopelvic disproportion and needed a C-section. My pelvis was too small to release my 7 pound, 14 ounce baby boy. I tried again with my 6 pound, 11 ounce baby girl two years after that, and nearly had a uterine rupture. So she came out of the exact same spot. It still itches from time to time.

I have a scar above my left nipple from the removal of a dysplastic nevi. A pre-melanoma spot that looked like a freckle. The kind that appears years after the damage has been done. The spot grew where my bandeau bathing suit top, the kind I used to wear in my Miami youth, stopped. But where the baby oil made me glisten like a goddess. A dozen internal and external stitches later, the threat is gone. At least in that spot. And at least for now.

When I am naked, and see these scars, I realize that they help tell the story of my life. Childhood, childbirth, relationships, getting older.

I have other scars too. Ones that aren't visible, even to me. But I know they're there. And they are a part of my life story also.

Without all of these scars, I would be someone else. Someone I wouldn't recognize.

And I wouldn't want that.

Pillow Thief

You never know who you can trust.

I woke up at 3:48 last night from a deep, deep sleep. I think that I was dreaming about llamas. And I was looking for a bathroom on the farm. But my brother kept wanting me to go look at the enormous pigs.

And when I woke up, I really, really had to pee.

I hate getting up at that time of night, so close to my normal waking hour of 5:30 that it’s sometimes hard to fall back asleep. Most nights, I would just suck it up and try to go back to sleep without peeing. But unfortunately, I have a UTI. Yes, a urinary tract infection. My first in a few years. So I knew that on this night, I needed to get up and take care of it.

(I’m going to the doctor today to pee in a cup. They wouldn’t just call in a prescription. Bummer.)

We re-arranged our bedroom furniture a few weeks ago and I’m still not quite used to it. Especially in the dark. So I had to wake up a bit more than normal as I made my way across the room. I sat down on the toilet (at least the seat was down) and was greeted by the love/hate sting of the UTI. Wiped, front to back, and went back to my nice, cozy, warm bed.

Ahh.

I laid my head on the pillow. Or at least I tried to.  All I felt was the mattress. My pillow was gone.

WTF? I was out of bed for two minutes, tops.

I felt around on the bed. Nothing.

I felt around on the floor by my side of the bed. Nothing.

I felt around the foot of the bed. Nothing.

I fricking got up and made my way around to the other side of the bed to see if somehow it was on the floor next to my husband. Nothing.

Well, nothing except for his Tempur-Pedic pillow on the carpet.

What? So if his pillow is on the floor, what is he sleeping on?

At this point, I’m wide awake. Confusion turns to annoyance.

Because I can see, now that my wide open eyes have adjusted to the slightly lit room, that my husband has a pillow under his head. My pillow. My special pillow. The one I bought from the Wynn Las Vegas a few years back when I was feeling flush with cash.  I even bought him one too. For his birthday.

Let me ask you this: What kind of asshole husband steals their wife’s pillow in the middle of the night when she gets up to go to the bathroom? What are we? In high school?

Don’t answer that.

My purposely loud rustling around, and the (accidental) bumping of my thigh in to the bed, roused the beast, who asked me, “What’s wrong?” As if the mother fucker didn’t already know.

Well, maybe he didn’t know. He swears that he didn’t do it on purpose. He was asleep. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. He’s been so sweet lately.

But revenge is sweet too. And I can’t wait for the next time he gets up to go the bathroom in the middle of the night. Oh, and he will have to. He’s almost 50. You know how that goes.

Pillow thief.

My Hairy-Armed Cocoon

Sometimes, it’s all just too much. Even for me, former Happier Than Most poster girl.

Tired, moody teenagers. Injured husbands. Dreary weather. Ex-husbands and shared custody. PMS. Lack of sleep. And not enough exercise.

Last week was just one of those weeks where the stars aligned to tell me to go f*#k off.

It was the kind of week you drag your ass through for most of it until you can see the end and then, you launch in to a sprint to make it be over faster.

The beginning of the end of my week-long fight with the cosmos came to a screeching halt when I spent an evening chatting with a woman, my age, with terminal cancer. Her life these days consists of taking care of herself, spending time with family and friends and planning the trip she and her husband are going to take soon in the new RV they bought. You know, before she dies.

Kind of changed the view of my little world.

I came home that night and said to my husband that the past week had left me feeling vulnerable in a way that I hadn’t felt in many years. And it was such an odd feeling for me. The kind of feeling where you may start crying at the drop of a hat. Where you feel backed in to a corner by the sorority bully. Or the guy you’ve been dating has decided to go back to his high school sweetheart. After he took your virginity.

I’m hardly ever the one to feel this way. I’m the ignore it and it’ll go away type of person.

And I don't like to lean too hard on anybody for help but I did this time. My husband held my hand through the weekend and helped me re-group. No, he didn’t literally hold it for the whole weekend. But it was just the two of us. Our kids were with their other parents. And it was nice.

He cooked a few meals for me and we also went out on a date to one of our favorite restaurants. I got dressed up in heels and a short frock. We sat at a table for two and just enjoyed: each other, the wine, the food, the night.

I also caught up on my sleep, exercised and did a little Spring cleaning. I even spent part of an afternoon reading a book in bed. A true rarity. Saw my kids for a few hours on Saturday and they didn't even fight. Another true rarity.

I felt like I was cocooning. Wrapping myself up in all the things that are good things in my life, including my husband’s arms. Kind of a cheesy description but that is truly how it felt.

One of the hardest things for me has been recognizing the need to do this and then giving myself the time and the space to do it.

But I’ve learned the power, and necessity, of retreating. At certain times in life, you need to get to a safe place, where you can think and figure out where to go from there.

And I’m fine now. I’m done cocooning. But I don’t want to talk about it. Because I just did.

Image via puuikibeach/Flickr

I Am A Fraud

I am a fraud.

If you look closely, you’ll see it.

My rosacea showing through my tinted moisturizer.
My gray roots starting to show on the sides of my hairline.
My muffin top hidden by the expensive shirt I got from Anthropologie.
That someone else paid for.
The $13.95 sticker on the bottom of the sandals bought at Marshalls.

My house isn't what it seems either.
It looks nice on the outside.
Sky blue with a front porch and a red bench.
But inside, it’s mostly filled with old furniture.
The ugly dining room table that was never mine.
An old, scratched up Bombay Co. coffee table.
The tea cart from my ex-inlaws' old house.
Photographs of fruit received as presents two weddings ago.

And after 14 years, the wear and tear is showing.
A refrigerator with a broken ice maker.
Laminate floors with water stains and deep grooved pock marks.
Baseboards that are dinged up.
Holes in the sliding doors’ screens.
Bathroom towels that are stained and ripped.
Kids’ closets with clothes strewn about.
Age-old paperwork thrown in to a laundry basket.

My writing isn’t always honest either.
Not full of lies but one-sided.
It’s mostly funny, self-deprecating stories.
Because I love making people smile and laugh.
And giving them a little jolt.
The un-funny tales are too hard to tell.

Too personal.
Too painful.

What’s not fraudulent?
The love of my children.
That’s real and runs deep.
All the way to my core.
Growing as they grow.
My pride and my joy.

And my marriage.
Also not fraudulent.
I truly love my husband.
Down to his smelly, chickeny, bleachy core.
And I know his love for me is unconditional.
He's my biggest fan.
And my biggest supporter.

But it’s not all fun and games.
And trips to Las Vegas.
Blending families isn’t easy.
Even after 6 years of marriage.
My kids, his kid.
Trying to make them our kids.

Contrary to what others think,
We don’t sit around the table singing Kumbaya.

We try to sit around the table.
But sometimes, we snap at each other, we yell and we fight.

And we’re not having mad, passionate sex every night.

But this is how it really is.
This is how real people live.
And our lives are oh-so-very real.
We’re doing the best we can.
But it could be better.

I’ll keep trying.
Because I love my husband.
I love my kids.
And for better or for worse, I love my life.
No sham there.

But I no longer think that I am Happier Than Most.

And that’s okay.
I’m happy most of the time.
And that just feels right.