Seuss

TechPapa recently got a new truck.

Still wrapped from the carrier.

There is no word for this truck other than badass.  I mean, seriously.  People see this beast coming at them in their mirrors and they MOVE.  Like, they HAUL TAIL to get out of the way.

This is a big change from what TechPapa was driving: A lightning blue John Cooper Works Mini Cooper Clubman.

There are two explanations for this:  a) He has lost his mind or b) Mid-life crisis.  Okay, maybe three.  Add c) He’s always wanted a truck.  It’s probably a combination of the three, but in the end, this transition from Mini to Raptor he gained 118.5 total inches of car.  That’s, what, right around 10 feet of CAR??  Seriously?

Now, I love the truck.  I ADORE the truck.  I saw it on the lot while he was out of town just after they’d taken it off of the hauler.  “DO NOT TOUCH IT!” was his text to me when I teased him with a picture.  My reply?  “I don’t want to touch it.  I want to lick it.”  As I’ve said.  Bad. Ass.  {melt}

The Mini was fun, though.  And forbidden fruit.  He had it for 5 years during which time he let me drive it ONCE.

See, I have a confession to make.  I can’t drive stick.  I never learned.  Never needed to.  Closest I ever came was in New Zealand in 2001 when The Kiwi and I were traveling the North Island, but I shelled out the extra moolah for an automatic.  Driving on the wrong side of the road was challenge enough.  I didn’t need another pedal and a gear shift to boot.  So when TechPapa got the Mini which was a 5-gear manual, I was simply stranded at home whenever he decided, for whatever reason, like it might rain (Heaven FORBID the Mini get WET), to drive my car.

There was one time, a couple of years ago, when he took me to some random industrial parking lot and tried to teach me to drive it.  Let’s just say that was NOT a banner day in our marriage.

So imagine my surprise when the other day while he was at work, I got a text:  “Go take the Mini for a spin.  She leaves tonight.”

Seriously?  The car is all but SOLD and NOW he wants me to go try to drive it?  WITHOUT HIM?

Heh.  Awesome.

I called my mother and told her I was on my way to get her IN THE MINI.  Somehow, in the 5 years, she had never even RIDDEN in the thing, so if I was going to drive it, dadgummit, she was going to ride shotgun.  Besides, she only lives a half a mile down the road.  Plus, she knows how to drive stick, so if I got in trouble, I knew she’d have my back.

I only stalled twice backing out of the garage.  I coasted through the first stop sign going slighly slower than I would have been going if someone was pushing the car.  I stalled once at the second stop sign where I had completely stopped to wave four cars past and wondered momentarily why there was a traffic jam in the ‘hood just when I needed the roads to be clear.  Managed to make it through that stop sign, and just as I was getting all confident in myself (HA!), I got stuck at the third stop sign.  In front of a friend’s house.  Who knows how to drive stick.  And who would never let me live it down if she’d spotted me.  No matter how hard I tried, I could NOT get away from that stop sign without stalling.

After several minutes of praying and REALLY trying not to Lose My Everyloving Cool and waving another 8 cars through the intersection around me (there are NEVER that many cars out here, I swear!) I tucked tail and called my mom.  “Um, Mom?  Can you come get me?  I’m stuck.”

She calmly talked me through the lift-off-the-clutch-while-you-press-the-accelerator-and-reclutch-through-the-kicks rigamarole, and I nearly cried when I finally started rolling.  Very very slowly, and never getting out of first gear (so, you know, turtles were passing me), I drove toward her house to pick her up.

For the next half hour, we drove around the neighborhood, TechPapa’s stated limits, laughing until our sides hurt at my efforts, however fruitless, to actually come to a stop then GO again without stalling.  He had turned the A/C off for whatever reason, I was too caught up trying not to kill this sold car to try to turn it on, and Mom was absolutely clueless where to even start (the Mini’s controls were always a bit of an enigma to me), so we rolled down the windows and let the neighborhood hear our raucous laughter.  And my occasional swearing.

Finally, we drove down the alley to our garage and I looked at our driveway just off to the left.  Slight slope up with my rental car (oh, that’s a whole other blog post) parked on one side.  I paused.  Mom and I both sighed.  “Well,” she finally said.  “Here’s your chance to total two cars you don’t own at once.  Go for it.”

I cackled, she covered her eyes, and I eased off the clutch as I pressed the accelerator.  Without a hiccup, I started rolling, gave it a little gas, and eased up the slope.

At which point the car promptly stalled.

“DONE!” I proclaimed, yanked up the emergency brake, and called TechPapa.  “Okay, I drove it.  It’s in the driveway.  If you want it in the garage, come move it yourself.”

“So you drove it!  How was it?”

“Oh, it was fun!” I admitted.  “But ask mom how I did next time you talk to her.”

“Why?  That bad?”

“Well,” I wiped the sweat from my brow as I opened the back door of the house. “Let’s put it this way.  She’s walking home for a glass of wine.”

“But it’s 11:30 in the morning.”

“Exactly.”

Her step-son gave her that name because it was a combination of his favorite things: Judy (her), potatoes, football, and dixie (as in Alabama).  For a while it was abbreviated to Jupotato, then eventually to something that’s somewhere between “Jue” and “Jude” – I can never really tell.

To me, though?  She’s simply “Mom.”  Or “Mother.” (frustrated)  Or “MOTHER!” (shocked)  Or “Moooooo-ooooommmmm!” (whined)  Or occasionally still “Mommy.” (hey, would you really kindly please do me this one eensy-weensy humongous favor)  Or, on a really bad day, she has the same name as Earl because, well, I’m getting older and sometimes pulling the right name out of the hat on the first try just simply doesn’t work.

By whatever name I call her, though, my mother is simply awesomesauce.  Yes, I said it, because it’s true.  And it’s Mother’s Day, so I get to wax nostalgic for a bit.  Therefore, I present to you:

Things I’ve Learned From My Mother (an abbreviated version)

• • Laugh.  A lot.  There is humor to be found in anything, and that humor is usually what keeps us tethered to sanity, especially in the hard times.

• • It’s a good idea to keep a hatchet in your car.  You never know when you might encounter a fallen tree across the road, when you might run off into the river and need to break a window quickly, or when you might need to fend off angry moonshiners.  It also will make for one hell of a story when your son-in-law takes your car to the CDC, unaware of the hatchet’s presence.  “It’s my mother-in-law’s!  I swear!” is perhaps the best punchline to a story ever.

• • Arch supports will cure anything.  Including heartburn.  Don’t ask how, they just do.

• • Don’t pass the salt hand-to-hand at the table or you’ll fight.  Set the salt down, then I will pick it up.  If you insist otherwise, I will cut you, thus making the superstition true.

• • Always warn your kids about what they should already know.  Because the one time you don’t tell them, “Don’t cut your fingers off with the hedge trimmer,” you have just set them up.  When this adage starts making you crazy, you can shrug it off and just say, “Blame it on Eddie,” because the one time she didn’t remind him, he nearly did.  Thanks, bro.

• • To find the four-leaf clovers, simply don’t look at the ones with three leaves.  It works the same with people: To find the good ones, just don’t even look at the bad ones.  How do you know?  Follow your heart and your instinct.  Both are usually right.

• • When you are old, wear purple.  But you know what?  Life’s too short.  Wear purple anyway.  Wear your eccentricness proudly!  It’s what makes you you.

• • DO NOT HIT MY WALLS OR I WILL RIP YOUR LEGS OFF AND BEAT YOU OVER THE HEAD WITH THEM !  (I fail horribly at this in my own house.  Know any good painters?)

• • Threatening a kid with, “I will rip your legs off and beat you over the head with them!” is the best threat ever in the history of Momkind.

• • Remember where you came from.  Listen to the stories of the past.  Learn them.  Take them to heart.  Because you come from a line of survivors and strong men and women.  The stories of the past will help guide you in the future, but you have to know them first.

• • Carrying snow boots in your car is the best insurance policy against snow.  Honestly, I think she’s somehow voodoo cursed her snow boots to ward off snow.  The weatherman can predict 10 feet and, if those boots are in the car, IT WILL NOT SNOW.

• • Illegitimus non carborundum est.  I don’t care if it’s Dog Latin as someone will surely point out.  It’s still a damn good phrase to live by.  (Apparently, according to a random thing I read on Google, “Noli sinere malos te vexare” is a closer translation, but I never took Latin, so I have no idea.)

• • B.S. is the ultimate art.  Learn it, know it, use it.  Make Mom proud.

And, finally:

• • Love is unconditional.  Also, nothing, and I mean NOTHING, shocks mother.  So don’t even try.  You will lose.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.  You rocketh my sockseth.  Thanks for giving me life and the possibility to pass your wisdom down another generation.  May Earl be as awesome as we are!

My dear friend TPO just wrote so eloquently about processing the fear from incidents like what happened in Boston on Monday.

“Incident” somehow makes it sound too small.  “Tragedy” too syrupy-oh-how-sad.  “Terror” makes it sound like it will win.  Just flat out “violence” is a better word.  Actually, a better word would be a phrase I won’t repeat here because I have family members I’d like to not disown me who read this.

Design by kippybdesigns.com, swiped without apology from TPO’s aforementioned post.

Fear is such a deep emotion.  I had the privilege of being invited to be part of a “massage-a-trois” (get your heads out of the gutters – it was two therapists, one client) the other day.  A large part of that session was spent trying to loosen up the client’s hip, which had been completely “stuck” for weeks, and a large part of that effort was energy work.  The other therapist, about halfway through the session, stopped, her hands frozen in place, and said, “Fear.  I need you to know that this is fear.  It’s old fear, probably over 30 years old, but you need to let it go.  You can let it go.  You don’t need to analyze it, or think about it, or even really acknowledge it, but you need to know what it is, and you need to give your body permission to let it go.”

That conversation led to a conversation standing out in the hallway about things that get stuck in your body.  It’s true: The muscles are like little lockboxes.  Think about it.  When you’re scared, what do you do?  Do you fling your arms out to welcome it?  Or do you curl your shoulders in, wrap your arms around your stomach, clench your gut, and duck your head?  Your muscles don’t just feel the emotion, they act the emotion and, therefore, can hold the emotion.

Later on that day, I was sitting at my desk coding when the Facebook messages started coming through.  Boston.  Bombs.  Marathon.  Finish line.  “Shit!”, I thought (excuse me, family), “I know someone running that race!  One of my neighbors is up there!”  I turned the news on and watched.

When September 11 happened, I couldn’t stop watching. I was trying to force my brain to acknowledge “This is real.”  Days later when I found out a dear, life-long friend of mine was there, in the Marriot, running from the falling towers, covered with debris, I had to stop watching.  Suddenly, it wasn’t just THERE.  It was HERE.  I may have been all the way in New Zealand at the time, but it was HERE.  In my body.  In my heart.  I went from being a complete spectator who was basically rubbernecking to my mind suddenly slamming itself into her body, feeling it at an absolute gut-wrenching level.

Then Newtown came.  I didn’t know any of the victims, but I was once a good friend to a good friend of the aunt of Noah Pozner.  There was still some distance, but I couldn’t completely separate it out.  Social media meant I was watching the family’s pain through the aunt’s words and through the words of her family.  I watched, but not much.  I watched for information, not to try to reconcile or to force my self to acknowledge.  There was less of that barrier there.  I simply had not been able to throw that barrier up.

And now Boston.  When pictures started emerging and I started really looking, I told myself, “I’m seeing things.  That’s not her.  There were thousands in that race.”  But there, in so many of the photos, of the videos, and, in the following 24 hours, interviews, there was my neighbor.  Someone I’ve sat down across the table from at Starbucks.  Someone I don’t know all that well, but whose kids go to my school, whose house I pass daily.  She credits her safety to the fact that her family was sitting in the bleachers on the right side at the finish line.  She’d run most of the race to the left, but moved over at the finish to be closer to them.  The bomb went off as she was steps away from done.  She is safe, her family is safe, but they were right there.  They all saw it.

After she crossed, when she finally looked back. Image swiped from WBTV.com.

It’s hard to put up any kind of barrier when it’s that close, when things that scary get that close to home.  Yesterday, I stayed away from the news.  Instead, I chatted with a group of neighbors trying to figure out what we could best do to support them when they returned home.  Some left flowers, some took gift certificates to favorite restaurants or stuffed animals, someone took a backpack to replace the one lost by one of the kids in the chaos.  I bought them all journals.  “Just write,” was part of the note I left.  “Write what hurts your heart, write what scares your soul, write however you may like, just writing is the goal.”

It was all I knew to do, the only comfort I knew how to give.

It’s funny how when something is separate from you, when you don’t know anyone, don’t know of anyone, it can impact you deeply, but there’s a distance.  That barrier is easier to build.  But when you know someone, it’s like you can’t even get a foundation built for the barrier.  It’s unavoidable.  It’s real.  It’s scary.

The world gets smaller and smaller, and the smaller it gets, the harder it is to distance one’s self from what goes on around us.  For me, at least, that familiarity means it’s easier to feel the fear more acutely, much more deeply.  It’s harder to ignore it, harder to go on despite it.  And it’s harder to keep that fear from turning into terror.

But one must have hope.

I’ve never been a huge fan of Patton Oswalt, but he really did say it better than I can.

I remember, when 9/11 went down, my reaction was, “Well, I’ve had it with humanity.”

But I was wrong. I don’t know what’s going to be revealed to be behind all of this mayhem. One human insect or a poisonous mass of broken sociopaths.

But here’s what I DO know. If it’s one person or a HUNDRED people, that number is not even a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the population on this planet. You watch the videos of the carnage and there are people running TOWARDS the destruction to help out. … . This is a giant planet and we’re lucky to live on it but there are prices and penalties incurred for the daily miracle of existence. One of them is, every once in awhile, the wiring of a tiny sliver of the species gets snarled and they’re pointed towards darkness.

But the vast majority stands against that darkness and, like white blood cells attacking a virus, they dilute and weaken and eventually wash away the evil doers and, more importantly, the damage they wreak. This is beyond religion or creed or nation. We would not be here if humanity were inherently evil. We’d have eaten ourselves alive long ago.

So when you spot violence, or bigotry, or intolerance or fear or just garden-variety misogyny, hatred or ignorance, just look it in the eye and think, “The good outnumber you, and we always will.”

Good will conquer evil.  Just like we must remember that hope can conquer fear.