Putting the F in Family

Someone is always throwing up or urinating or defecating on or around our home each and every weekend. We have ten grandchildren. The oldest is nine. The whole bunch lives five minutes away from us. Do the math.

A lot of people told my husband and me that we were too young to get and stay married. We didn’t listen. We just staggered to the edge of the cliff of life and jumped off. Our oldest child was born thirteen months later.

One of my most vivid, blurry moments of those impossible early years is that of my young husband and new father—naked—stomping around the bedroom, gathering up our wailing first born, sinking (still naked) into the rocking chair, and shouting, “Back to the damn chair.” I know why he cussed, but I can’t remember why he was naked. That part is still fuzzy. Assorted stomping silliness, sans clothes, ensued for the next two decades.

With the help of organized religion and sheer tenacity we managed to raise a United States combat soldier, a ballerina with a degree in dance education, a political science major, and a organizational communications major. So, if you need someone to shoot straight, dance angelically, or talk passionately about politics, we’re your people.

I like to say that we didn’t raise our children to kiss us, as much as we raised them to kiss their children. And they do, because . . .

Firstly:  Our children actually had children or as my son-in-law declared to my daughter, while fleeing a public park with a possessed, head spinning, screeching toddler, “Our life is already crap. We might as well have more kids.”

Secondly:  They chose family over “fun.”  A lot of young married folks like to say that they’ll have kids after they stop having “fun.” Come to our house; I’ll show you some fun.  Or as great grandpa Zern said—as he watched Conner (7) get his loose tooth pulled by Uncle T. J., Sadie (4) sail by in a Fisher Price Dune Buggy, Zoe (9) dig a series of “honey badger” nests, and Kip (4) pee on some ants, “This is better than television. I should have brought my movie camera.”

And Thirdly:  Of children, it is said, “For of such is the kingdom of Heaven.” Then we must conclude that Heaven is a noisy, busy, joyous place. Or as Zoe said when she noticed the full moon for the first time as a tiny little girl, “Wow!”

After one particularly rowdy family event my husband shook his head and said, “There was public urination, wrestling while nude, and sword fighting. It’s like being at a medieval bar.”

Or a frat house on Saturday night where someone is always throwing up, urinating, or defecating in public.

And that starts with ‘F’ and that begins the fun and that stands for family.

Linda (Fun Stuff) Zern

           

CABING FEVER FLING

The first time I contracted cabin fever I came very close to committing murder, and my husband of thirty plus years came whisker close to having his skull bashed in with a baseball bat. The two events were connected. 

 My husband got me to move to a state with north in the title by telling me, that while it got brisk in the wintertime, it never snowed, or at last report, there had not been snow in North Carolina since the Civil War.

I bought it. We moved. Our first winter arrived. There was a freak snowstorm that dumped two feet of snow across a sheet of glacier ice, which floated over a river of liquid sleet, piled on top of hell—which had, in fact, frozen over. The fine state of North Carolina was, to put it nicely, not ready. Our little band of strangers in a strange land was snowed in for two weeks.

I was not ready. 

I contracted cabin fever on day two of our entrapment. Cabin fever is a malady that causes the sufferer to experience irrational irritations over seemingly minor annoyances magnified by a factor of about twelve, times the national debt, multiplied by 666. An infected person gets stinky mean.

Until we were  “snowed in” or as I liked to describe it “buried alive,” I had not really noticed that my darling husband had been saying exactly the same thing every single morning of every single day, for the entire span of our thirty years of marriage.

HE HAS SAID THE EXACT SAME THING, EVERY SINGLE MORNING OF EVERY SINGLE DAY, FOR THIRTY YEARS –THE EXACT SAME THING—EVERY! SINGLE! DAY!

Every morning he has sat straight up in bed and said, “Well, I guess I’ll go and get cleaned up now.” 

And it’s not JUST that he says the EXACT SAME THING. It’s WHAT he’s saying. He “guesses” he’s going to get cleaned up! What would the alternatives be? To get up but not get “cleaned up” and walk around with a Wooly Mammoth on his face all day, or to not get up at all, remain in bed in his own filth, and eventually have his skin grow into the mattress (and yes, that can happen, I saw it on TV!) 

By day five or six of being snowed in and with a cabin fever of about 212 degrees, I had not only picked up on this unfortunate verbal pattern, but I had started waiting for the inevitable, predictable, rhythmic cadence of his morning declaration like a cobra tracking the movements of a wounded mongoose.

On day seven, I rolled towards him and with eyes narrowed to slits and with a reptilian hiss said, “Sherwood, Do you know that you say the exact same thing, every single day, and that if you say it tomorrow I can’t be held accountable. There is a baseball bat under this bed. It is for crushing the brains out of the heads of robbers, but I will use it--on you--if you repeat yourself ever again. I swear it.” 

He backed carefully away from his side of the bed, his eyes focused like laser beams on my face.

“I mean it. I’ll do it.”  By this time, I had quit brushing stuff (hair, teeth) . I was close to terminal.

That day passed as snow drifted, settled, melted, and re-froze.  I floated in our garden tub like a giant lily pad in water hot enough to blanche carrots. The night brought another ice storm and the sound of tree trunks blowing up. The water inside the trees froze, expanded, and then exploded, sending splinters of wood catapulting away into the night—also into the siding of the houses. Trees toppled. Expensive landscaping froze to death. Morning came. 

I waited under the blankets. Wrapped in knee socks, flannel pajamas, a bathrobe, and an overcoat, I lovingly stroked the baseball bat that I clutched to my chest hidden under the covers. Tension pulsated through my hands and fingers and hair, as I lay in wait, er . . . I mean . . . waiting for my husband to wake up.

Sitting straight up in bed, he said, “I guess I’ll go and . . .”

My hands tightened around the baseball bat. He paused and got strangely still, the way a rabbit goes still when it smells fangs.

“I guess I’ll go and . . . get a shower.”

Adrenalin oozed from between my fingers. I relaxed. He showered. The thaw came.

Winter in Florida is a bit different. We have a few of those murky winter days that make going out an ugly business, so we put on a sweater and walk fast to the car. I haven’t had cabin fever as much as cabin canker sores.

As I write this, Sherwood is in bed calling me on his cell phone. He is, literally, ten feet away from my desk, sending a signal into outer space, so that it can bounce off a satellite and ricochet back to earth. He’s propositioning me.  Sometimes he calls me on his cell phone from the bathroom to ask me for toilet paper.

Spring cannot come soon enough.

Linda (Spring Fling) Zern

BUG ZAPPER BLUES

When we were young and newly hatched—also young and in love—my husband and I lived with our four young children on the Space Coast of Florida. The massive propulsion of rocket and shuttle launches from Cape Kennedy often rocked the windows and doors of our little love cottage. We were always properly respectful and impressed by the reach of mankind’s achievements.

It was a point of pride to stop whatever we were doing (dishes, dinner, dancing, sleeping, fist fighting, etc.) to watch the eastern horizon—hands on hearts, tears in eyes—as the United States of America raced into the frontier of space.

One deep, dark morning (about 2:00 am) I shook my husband awake to watch yet another triumph of human advancement.

“Get up,” I mumbled to Sherwood, “the shuttle’s going up. We gotta’ watch.”

Sherwood moaned, “The garbage is out all ready. Let me die.” He did not open his eyes.

“Come on. We should watch. Night launches are amazing.”

He dragged himself upright and clung to the window ledge behind our bed. We knelt, with our chins braced on the ledge, our bleary eyes fixed on a blazing light in the eastern sky. We watched. The light did not appear to move. We stared some more. The light remain fixed. We struggled to focus. The light blazed away.

We waited for the light to fade into the blackness of space. It did not. We watched and watched and watched. The light stubbornly refused to move.

At last, collapsing back into my pillow I said, “Honey, go back to sleep.”

Sounding confused, miffed, and a little whiney Sherwood asked, “Why?”

“Because for the last eight to ten minutes we’ve been staring at our next door neighbor’s bug zapper.”

He went back to sleep. And I lived to worship at the altar of space exploration another day.

This story pretty much sums up who we are, and how we got this way—excessive staring at bug zappers. And this is my blog, a space-age way of recording one’s thoughts, ideas, embarrassments, and foibles for the entire known world. Once upon a time, I would have made this record on papyrus, rolled it up, stuffed it into a ceramic jar, and asked to have the whole thing buried with me in my sarcophagus. I still might.

Disclaimer: Some of the stuff you will read here is true. Some of it is not. Some of it is the result of wishful thinking. Some of it is the result of too much thinking, and some of it is the result of too little thinking. But all of it will be written with joy and laughter, because the alternative is despair and weeping, and isn’t there more than enough of that stuff out there?

Thank you for your support,

Linda (Zippity the Zapped) Zern