My husband rattled his keys and checked his back pocket for his wallet.
“Okay, let’s go.”
Surely the shock on my face could be seen from space.
“What are you talking about? Go where?”
My husband made that face he makes when he thinks I’m being obtuse or uppity. He makes that face a lot.
“Sherwood, I’m in my bathrobe. I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about or where you think that we are going,” I yipped.
I was, in fact, standing in my bathrobe—a great fluffy yellow bathrobe affair tied with an old purple poke-a-dot bathrobe belt, because I had lost the belt to my present fluffy yellow bathrobe affair and had to go back to the default belt from the purple poke-a-dot bathrobe affair. I happen to know that I looked like an out-of-work circus clown.
“We talked about it.” He was insistent.
The furrows between my eyes became deep-sea trenches.
“We talked about it? In this life? Were my eyes open?”
“Sure, you know, that time when we talked about it?”
“Honey, look at my face. Ignore the fact that I don’t have eyebrows.”
He looked at my face.
“See this?” I said, pointing at my face. “This is shock. I could not be more shocked. Do you think that if we had talked about this I would look this shocked?”
I pointed to my feet.
“See these?” I wiggled my toes in my No-Nonsense socks from Walmart. “These are socks. I’m in my bathrobe and I have no idea what you think we talked about or when. I am not dressed for going to anywhere, nor will I be anytime soon. Keep in mind it takes me twenty minutes to draw on my eyebrows with a crayon.”
For the first time he seemed unsure of our alleged conversation.
“Well . . . maybe . . . you forgot.”
Retying my purple poke-a-dot furry belt, I tipped my eyebrowless furrowed forehead at him.
“Maybe, and maybe you have conversations in your own head that you think I can hear because you’re thinking really loudly.”
His brow furrowed.
The conversation deteriorated from that point.
I appreciate that my husband and I have been cheerfully wedded for more than thirty-plus years. I appreciate that he thinks we have reached a state of sync that means we can read each other’s minds. I appreciate ESP. I just wish that it were real. Well, maybe next year.
Here’s to conversations that happen in real time and with audible words.
Linda (Read My Lips—Out Loud) Zern
Friday, May 2, 2014
Wednesday, April 30, 2014
Barefoot With Child
My first Mother’s Day was a celebration of sleeping baby atop Poop Mountain.
Sherwood worked graveyard shift. He offered to “watch” the napping baby while I went to church. He didn’t mention that he would be napping while watching.
It’s a little reported but true fact that napping babies wake up. Napping husbands who work the graveyard shift not so much.
Our eight month old woke up. His father did not. Our eight month old, unable to rouse his father, entertained himself by sketching, smearing, wiping, trailing, painting, and possibly ingesting through his ear-holes—poop, his own. I came home from church to a Mother’s Day tribute of poop-encrusted child, napping—once again—on an artful poop mound. The nursery smelled like a scene from the movie Slumdog Millionaire.
I cried.
Three more children quickly followed. They also tended to poop. I cried a couple more times—off and on. They cried.
Then they laughed and brought me wads of flowers ripped from the ground, trailing roots and dirt. I taught them to read the great books of their people, and sacrifice for the good of others, and dance the dance of duty versus personal fulfillment. Mostly, I raised them not so much to kiss me but to kiss their children.
For this, I am accused by my silly, short-sighted, materialistic society to be a do-nothing, stay-at-home mom. I have nine grandchildren and if each of those children have spouses and produce four children . . . well, you do the math.
That first kid, the poop artist, he grew up and went to the Amazon as a warrior. Then he went to Greece, and Spain, and Iraq, and Afghanistan and Texas as another kind of warrior.
This Mother’s Day he sent me a zombie novel, a rifle, and a note:
"To the greatest survivor I have the honor of knowing. In this text lies a story of great adventure. Happy Mother's Day.
From: Your Son--Stay Alert, Stay Alive!
And I earned every word! By the way, I finished a five hundred page zombie novel in three and a half days and harvested a butt load of green beans from my garden, pressure washed a chicken coop, and finished the second draft of an eighty-thousand word manuscript on a new book and . . . . try to keep up . . . would ya’.
Linda (Barefoot and With Child) Zern
Sherwood worked graveyard shift. He offered to “watch” the napping baby while I went to church. He didn’t mention that he would be napping while watching.
It’s a little reported but true fact that napping babies wake up. Napping husbands who work the graveyard shift not so much.
Our eight month old woke up. His father did not. Our eight month old, unable to rouse his father, entertained himself by sketching, smearing, wiping, trailing, painting, and possibly ingesting through his ear-holes—poop, his own. I came home from church to a Mother’s Day tribute of poop-encrusted child, napping—once again—on an artful poop mound. The nursery smelled like a scene from the movie Slumdog Millionaire.
I cried.
Three more children quickly followed. They also tended to poop. I cried a couple more times—off and on. They cried.
Then they laughed and brought me wads of flowers ripped from the ground, trailing roots and dirt. I taught them to read the great books of their people, and sacrifice for the good of others, and dance the dance of duty versus personal fulfillment. Mostly, I raised them not so much to kiss me but to kiss their children.
For this, I am accused by my silly, short-sighted, materialistic society to be a do-nothing, stay-at-home mom. I have nine grandchildren and if each of those children have spouses and produce four children . . . well, you do the math.
That first kid, the poop artist, he grew up and went to the Amazon as a warrior. Then he went to Greece, and Spain, and Iraq, and Afghanistan and Texas as another kind of warrior.
This Mother’s Day he sent me a zombie novel, a rifle, and a note:
"To the greatest survivor I have the honor of knowing. In this text lies a story of great adventure. Happy Mother's Day.
From: Your Son--Stay Alert, Stay Alive!
And I earned every word! By the way, I finished a five hundred page zombie novel in three and a half days and harvested a butt load of green beans from my garden, pressure washed a chicken coop, and finished the second draft of an eighty-thousand word manuscript on a new book and . . . . try to keep up . . . would ya’.
Linda (Barefoot and With Child) Zern
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