Blaze of Glory

All I can hear is my own breathing, accelerated with adrenaline. Within seconds, it’s thick, heavy, and hot inside the giant stuffed dog’s head the school nurse has just awkwardly lifted to my height and plopped on my (stuffed dog) shoulders. Everything inside the suit is amplified: my breaths, with their Vader-esque density; my voice, as I assure the nurse, Yes, I am okay. Yes, I can see . . . kind of; the piercing velcro adjustments and readjustments as she works to hide any sign of the human within. I do my best to “get comfortable,” and rest my (already damp) forehead against the metal bar designed, I suppose, to literally keep my head on straight. Everything outside the suit is muffled, underwater, as both my peripheral vision and my place in the room  become compromised. The nurse, I can make out through the screens that comprise my new eyes, straps on one giant paw and then the other. For no reason, I clap my paws. I encourage her (once, and then again for extra measure), to recheck the giant velcro seam that runs the length of my back, because my only fear in this adventure is the opening of said seam and the revelation to a crowd of hundreds that underneath is, in fact, a human woman sporting nothing but a wife-beater and her husband’s lucky-clover boxers.

It’s time, the nurse tells my screen-eyes. My heart races, but not from this claustrophobe’s worst nightmare. I am thrilled.

She leads me down the elementary school hallway, and even across the building and through my fake fur, I can hear the kids screaming. It’s the Blazer Blast, the quarterly pep rally designed to celebrate the school and the spirit within its walls. Instantly, I realize my celebrity status, as a teacher walks past and waves enthusiastically, “Hi, Blazer!” I wave my paw, and blow a kiss from my giant snout. It comes naturally for me to exaggerate my movements, I discover, and there, in the hallway as I stumble awkwardly toward the cafegymnatorium, something inside me awakens.

I am SO ready for this. 

Hidden behind closed doors at the back of the giant room, I wait in the hall, kicking my paw-covered tennis shoes, pacing a bit, and steadily streaming sweat. The noise swells as Mr. D congratulates honor roll students, asks grade level after grade level to “make some nooooiiiiise!” and amps up the crowd. On the other side of those doors, I know from five years of attendance, is a room full of some 400 anticipatory students plus the eager parent paparazzi corps. 

Suddenly, through the windows in the back of the room, I’m spotted.  A little sister in the crowd stares wide-eyed directly at my screen-eyes, simultaneously screaming in her mom’s ear, begging her to come see me. I wave; I blow my kiss. The mom and daughter, amidst the chaos, sneak out of the crowd and into the hallway. Instinctively, I reach out my paw for a high-five, but the girl, unable to contain herself, runs directly at my knee for a tight, deep hug, where she remains for a good fifteen to twenty seconds, until she is finally urged away by her camera-snapping parent. I fall in love within two of those seconds.

At last, my cue. Screaming. Piercing, giggling screaming broken only by Blazer’s theme song, which blasts out of the now open doors. “Who Let the Dogs Out?” with its fantastically cheesy, dance-inspiring beat electrifies the crowd and pulls me into the packed, frenzied room.

I am a star.

I high-five. I wave. I blow kisses. I sing to myself loudly (no one can hear me, after all). I wave to my unsuspecting friends. And I dance like I have never danced before, with abandon and with energy I didn’t know I possessed. The crowd is wild, reaching for Blazer, cheering for Blazer, and as I slowly dance my way up to the front of the room, relishing these seconds, I notice the evolution of the crowd’s reaction. Because up front sit the kindergartners, and the closer I dance to the younger kids, the more the frenzy melts into amazed awe. Toward the front I slow down my energy, bend down for the high fives, silently reassure the timid, and share the joy. Once up front, at the base of the stage, next to the principal and in front of thousands of eyes, I let loose, pulling out dance moves from decades past and making up some strange innovations in time with the music. Out there, somewhere out there beyond my sweat-blurred screen-eyes, is pure, unbridled, love. I soak it all in, and I revel in giving it right back.

I am as goofy, as happy, and as free as I have ever been. It is fantastic.

My celebrity passes too quickly. I only have a few minutes, and I know it, so I use them wisely. I single out kids, one by one, looking for someone who is sad or someone who seems afraid. Pointing directly at those waving to me with the pure joy and innocence of those in this room. My friend’s daughter is here, here at her retreat from her mother’s chemotherapy, and I give her a special wave. Another child looks petrified. I blow him a kiss, and he looks around, back and forth, as if to say, “Who, me?” I nod overenthusiastically. It becomes my mission: Sad kids? I will find you! As the principal revs the crowd, I put my paw to my gigantic ear high above my actual head: I can’t hear you! The crowd goes wild. I dance some more.

Finally, the crowd is told to say goodbye to Blazer. (The human inside is encouraged to not get heat stroke, so appearances must be brief.) Before I go, I have one last mission. I spot my target as I leave the room. She’s there, looking so old among the little kids, a fifth-grader in the back row, giggling with her friends. I stop. I wave directly at her until she notices me, and then I point and blow my final kiss. One special one for my baby girl, my daughter.

Cammie has no idea her mother is the one entertaining the room. She gives me the “Who, me?” and I nod, touch my paw to my heart, and saunter out of the room. My work here is done.

Out of hundreds of people, I am happiest.

Karen

Ask anyone else the first word that comes to mind when they think of her, and undoubtedly, it’d be “ugly.” Even I must admit there was a rather unfortunate aesthetic transformation as she aged alongside me. And in all fairness to those who didn’t know her the way I did, yes, I suppose she could be a rather surprising assault on the eyes. Okay, some could call her fairly hideous. But me? Picturing her now, each perfect imperfection wrapped up in that snuggly, scrawny package, brings to mind just one word of my own: “everything.” 

She was, you see. It wasn’t just that she was my most prized possession; it was more complicated than that. Because to me, she wasn’t a thing, a possession. She was a she. A companion. And she was mine.

If you’re one of the humans closest to me and you’re reading this right now, you know know who I’m talking about already. You knew from the word “ugly,” didn’t you? But once, she was beautiful: a bright pink, floral, cloth body, grandiose in its 1960s-ishness. The flower child taken to the literal, the boldness of skin choice ideal for a small girl. Her hands and face? Those were plastic of the caucasian variety. Tiny-little fingers, all stuck together in one plastic mold, topped with tiny-little carved fingernails. The head, true to the anatomy of a wee one, was huge. Bald save for etched, wavy “hairs” painted a pale whisper of brown. 

I’ve seen pictures of her this way: fresh, fluffy, pink. Well-dressed, hugged tightly between chubby toddler arms. Photographs tell only pieces of our story together, but there are a few, including one notable visit with the big man himself, Santa. I sit, staring mid-giggle just to the right of the camera (likely at the parent dancing to its side), and the top of her head peeks out from the crook of my arm. A formal Sears photo features the two of us, me in my smocked sundress (its innocence carefully chosen by my mother), she completely naked, pink skin glowing--small white polka dots, green and blue flowers all gloriously bright. By this point likely a package deal, a compromise, more entrenched in my history with each flash.

Through the years, I came to know every square millimeter of her. She was well-loved, to be sure, so as time marched on, the wear on those millimeters became more obvious. Not immune to the battle scars of youth, and not built nearly so well to hold up to them, her aesthetics, shall we say, suffered.  Over two decades, slowly, she eroded: bright pink faded to dull then morphed to “dirty.” Stuffing shifted, flattened out. Still, I would picture silk beneath her flowers as I rubbed her skin back and forth between my anxious (or tired, or eager, or excited) fingers, soothed by the smoothness, never even missing the fluff. Thick to thinner to thin, she aged rather ungracefully. A strange box floated within her, no longer making baby cooing sounds--just a clunk when it thudded against something hard. She grew tired.

Poor thing suffered at the hands of others, too. A fight with my sister resulted in a tug-of-war; she was the rope, and (thin arms nothing but faded fabric now) lost most of her hand in the process. My mother sewed her back together with dark blue thread, and those stitches remain. I’m not quite sure when her left eyeball began sinking into her socket, but family lore has it that the culprit was once again my sister. She claimed she wanted to see what would happen to the (beautiful) clicking sound if one eye was held shut and the other stayed open, and the result was rather disastrous. What started as as a left-eye-that-wouldn’t-blink eventually became a sunken, twisted mess that made it rather difficult to look either my sister or my companion in the eye. That accident, along with her tragically slow loss of eye lashes throughout the decades, the permanent dents left in those tiny fingers (from years of chewing? from the cat? from my baby brother? who really knows), and the increasingly tragic way she hung her oversized head in what could be interpreted as shame, marked mere parts of her physical decline.

Those in my life treated her presence with anything from mild amusement to agitated disgust, which, on a few occasions, led to outright abuse. She was hidden from me on numerous occasions by my siblings, playing not-funny jokes through the years until my tears brought her forth. Friends sleeping over found her creepy.  One morning in college I returned from class to my room, where I had left my boyfriend of two years sleeping that morning. There, hanging from the ceiling in a noose fashioned from one of my belts, I found my sweet thing, inexplicably swinging and not remotely funny. Another time, I developed film and found pictures of my guy friends singing to her, stroking her head. She had that reaction on people. They simply didn’t know what to do with this strange looking thing that was an obvious presence in my life. Most of the time, their reactions were quite funny, and I shared in and contributed to the laughs. After all, I was a grown woman. Even my own daughters haven’t known what to do with her, besides relegating her to the freezer for a week to kill off dust mites. All this time, and still, deep down, I don’t want Karen to be uncomfortable, hurt, tormented, made fun of, or laughed at. I tucked her in for far too long. I covered her tiny-little plastic ears to protect her from the mocking, but only in half-jest.

At all ages, she was real to me.

Her presence went deep, past that sixth sense and well into the seventh: the sense of comfort. I miss her still. Occasionally, I’ll settle into bed, flip and flop to get comfortable, quietly aware that something is missing. I’ve reached for her regularly in the years since I’ve been married, since she was relegated to a bookshelf, a chair, or now, a box (where I hope she lies comfortably). I long to feel that silky comfort still, smell the familiar scent of her big head, and need her sometimes when things are a little rough. I’m not quite sure if this makes me normal, this attachment to a constant in a world full of inconsistencies and pain, or if this is a confession I should burn after sharing. But I’m glad she’s still around, even if it’s in a box, sleeping peacefully.

Thank God for my dog.

For NPR's Three-Minute Fiction Contest

This is officially the first fiction piece I've ever entered anywhere. I'm sure it's full of all sorts of holes and all kinds of fiction sins, but I'm determined to come back to my beloved Big Hips Open Eyes, and figured this is a good change of pace for any readers who have decided to stick with me.


I entered it in NPR's "Three-Minute Fiction" contest, the rules of which dictated 1) it must be 600 words or less, 2) must be fiction, and 3) must begin with the sentence, "She closed the book, placed it on the table, and finally, decided to walk through the door." Such parameters didn't feel as scary to me as normal ole' fiction for some reason.


But the topic was hard.


Room 19

She closed the book, placed it on the table, and finally, decided to walk through the door. With a feeble push, she is in Room 19, which is a good fifteen degrees hotter than the freezing waiting room where she has spent the past three days, shifting on uncomfortable hospital chairs, avoiding this exact moment. 

Just inside the door, a curtain blocks the room, and a cart blocks the curtain. On the cart is an endless supply of safety gear: masks, latex-free gloves in three sizes. She adjusts a mask around her ears, and breathes in deeply. The paper is supposed to protect her from her mother, her infectiousness, her poison.

If only it had been that easy, she thinks fleetingly, but then checks her bitterness. She remembers the words in the book, dog-eared and waiting, just outside the door. Slowly, she pushes the curtain aside.

The dusk barely drips its blue light through the blinds. In the dim room, countless machines surround the bed and emit green lights and numbers and wavy lines. The steady beep, beep, beep is at once mesmerizing, soothing even, and grotesquely harsh.

And then, she sees her. Swallowed by blankets, a skeleton. Her mother.

She closes her eyes reflexively, imagining the garden. The one she found two nights ago, when the racing confusion and absolute nothingness overwhelmed her, and she pronounced to a roomful of waiting-room strangers that she was going for a walk. Off the lobby, following tiny signs, she stumbled upon a tiny outdoor Japanese garden, scattered with pebbles and quiet corners.

It was dusk, and the garden was gauzed in blue. The December air cut to her lungs. In the far corner, a waterfall sputtered a slow, frozen trickle. On an icy granite bench, the feeling of nothingness that had overwhelmed her dissipated. And, at that moment, she felt close enough to God to know what to do. 

She prayed. For what, is between her and God. But it had something with everything ending soon.

Opening her eyes, rising to leave, she saw the book. Stuck behind the bench. As she read the title, her stomach lurched. Mothers: The Gifts They Give Us. Without thinking, she tucked it under her arm and headed back inside, feeling certain her prayers had been answered. Knowing, just knowing, she could find what she needed in this book: understanding. She felt certain that if she understood, she could forgive.

Two days later, and she had still not gone to see her mother. Instead, she had combed this collection of short stories, poems, and tributes. She had read. And read. Searching with a fervor she had not felt in years, desperately wanting to find her mother within its pages. 

She had found nothing.

At first she was angry. The words in the book isolated her. (What wouldn’t she give to have such fond memories? Such admiration for the woman who gave her life?) But as Room 19 visitors came and went, she knew it was, finally, time. Time to say goodbye, defenses high, but nakedly unarmed. 

And now, studying the woman in the bed, she cries without warning. She forgets worrying about how she is supposed to feel. The search for understanding. The answers that she’ll never find. 

She forgets the book. 

Kissing her softly on the forehead, she brushes aside gray wisps of hair. My mother loved me, she tells herself, willing herself to believe. Her mother’s chest is cold, which feels nice on her hot forehead. There she rests in room 19 until the blue disappears and the soft darkness comes.

Three Little Words

I left the house feeling sassy. Cute lil’ dress (color-blocked, as they say on Project Runway), necklace, cutey-cute shoes. Great fall toenail polish color (wine). Hair? So-so, still looking a little dark and stringy for my taste, but all in all, okay.  Happy to head to my friend’s house for a rare afternoon tea with friends . . . and with a local candidate. Looking pretty good, feeling pretty good. Even as though I could hold my own in a political conversation if 1) my legitimacy were to be based on cute outfit alone and 2) I kept my mouth shut, unless eating a bite of cheese dip or laughing approvingly at the candidate’s jokes.

So yes, I felt good.

At the soiree, I mingled, hugged my dear friend, the hostess with the mostest, and talked to other familiar friends. I introduced myself to the candidate, listened to her positions on all sorts of things, and liked her a lot. Beautiful, autumn Sunday afternoon? Check. A nice party with friends? Yep. A good day all around.

Until.

As I was leaving, I was introduced by a good friend to another woman, somewhat older than myself, whom I had not yet met. Within moments of meeting me, instead of wasting time with chit chat about celebrity gossip or the candidate’s stances on stuff, she got right down to business, looking me enthusiastically as she spoke, smiling:

“When are you due?”

Such was my ignorance (I’d like to call it humble naiveté) that I was genuinely confused.

“I’m sorry,” I said, smiling, happy because she was happy, briefly thinking to myself Dammit, what deadline did I miss now?, “Due with . . . ?” I grinned foolishly, leaning in, waiting for her to fill in the blank.

“Um,” she leaned in herself, obviously thinking that I was so adorable with my pregnancy-addled forgetful brain. Smiling broadly, she spelled it out slowly, as if to an absent-minded foreigner who doesn’t know the language: “Your baaabyyyy???”

Anyone who’s ever falsely been accused of carrying fruit in her womb can tell you the odd way that time stands still while your brain processes what you have just been told: I look so fat that this person thinks I am somewhere more than 16, but less than 40, weeks pregnant. While time is still standing still, the nonfruitbearer does two things instinctively: suck in her stomach with every abdominal muscle she’s ever dreamed of possessing and stand up straight. Oh, and a third, less noticeable thing: try not to cry.

"Me?!" I answered, my shock clear, “I’m not.” For clarity, and to talk through my surprise, I added a second, “I”m not,” followed by a bewildered and somewhat crazy sounding, “I’m not DUE with anything.” I couldn’t bring myself to say, “Pregnant.” Perhaps they removed my ability to even consider myself pregnant when they removed my uterus four years ago, but I found I couldn’t even form the word.

What fascinates me most about this whole experience, two weeks later, is my reaction. I did, indeed, struggle to keep myself from crying. Time did seem to stand still as I felt both embarrassed and sorry for the woman who asked, as though it was my responsibility to reassure her. It was work to stay smiling as I hugged folks goodbye, thanked my friend for her wonderful food and hospitality, and made my way to the door. If I were forced to make a video re-creation of the experience, I would hire a (thin) wide-eyed, befuddled-looking actress, making her way through the grass toward her car using that camera technique that makes everything look swaying and dizzy. There would be melodramatic, soap operaesque music playing as the victim climbs in her minivan and, crying steadily, turns the key. The actress would then bang her palms on the steering wheel, pleading to the heavens, WHY??!!! WHY??!!

Then all of that stuff would end up on the cutting room floor, because it wouldn’t be real. That’s not what really happened. The self-bashing, the drama, was all inside. Not visible to viewers. For it is inside of me where the memories lie, and I am both my harshest critic and biggest bully.

In the short drive home, I was a EKG report of emotions: up, down, down, up, up, down, up, down, down . . . down. Those three little words (“Um, your baby?”) were all the black magic necessary to zoom me back through years (nay, decades) of wishing for the dedication to have better eating habits. For the wanting to want to work out more. Back through the thousands of times I’ve made faces at myself in the mirror or thrown clothes off in disgust. Of memories of looking around and always being one of the largest people, if not THE largest person, in every room. They brought back memories of a freshman girl hanging a sign on her door that said, “DO NOT EAT, TRACY. YOU ARE FAT.” Of flipping through magazines knowing that none of the styles would work on my body. Of countless years of Weight Watchers, of losing 68 pounds, of gaining 20 back. Of watching my body go from young to older to older in the mirror, wishing I had the tenacity to be more fit.  Of the life-long struggle to practice what I preach: caring about the beauty inside a person, not outside. I would never care about or judge someone based on their appearance. Why couldn’t I spare myself the same abuse?

I never have. It’s a quiet little secret that I carry around within me, silently yelling at myself on the sly, and I know too many women (and men, and girls, and boys) do the same. 

Maybe it was losing my breasts, for many women the very definition of their physical appearance, that caused me to change. Maybe it’s age, wisdom, or being too tired to care. For you see, if the “UmYourBaby” experience had happened five or ten years ago, I would not have bounced back in the five minutes it takes to drive to my house from my friend’s. But a few Sundays ago, that’s exactly what I did.

Here’s the thing: I know that I’m not anywhere close to being obese. I’m a good ole’ size 12. I know that. So, why was it bothering me so much? More to the point: why has it consumed me for so many years?

I’m not sure I’ll ever know the answer. I’m blessed that my image struggles have never turned physically unhealthy or led me to harm myself. But sitting behind the steering wheel, driving with tears in my eyes, the disappointment in myself suddenly became entirely too ridiculous for me. Thinking I’m overweight, calling myself names, worrying about every last crumb I put in my mouth became, in one split second on my ride home, tremendously, tremendously exhausting. And stupid, pointless. I’ve worked hard to have the body I have today, and I’ve wasted way too much time in my life being too mean to it, physically and emotionally. I was finished.

Sure, I’ll struggle to accept myself and my not-perfect bod.  But it’s clear to me now that I’ve wasted too many good moments that would probably add up to too many good hours, days, even weeks of beating myself up for the way I look, for not being able to fit in a pair of pants with single-digit size. I’ve lost my breasts and, thanks to my quick-and-painful shove into early menopause, gained a lot of hips and stomach in the process. My body may not be a temple, but in it, I’ve done a whole lot of worshipping and have come to see that the old cliche about life being too short is not at all cliche. I’ll constantly strive to eat healthier and to exercise more, not because someone thinks I look a little pudgy or because I am literally afraid of the cellulite that is creeping up and down my legs like kudzu (Seriously. I’m afraid of it.), but because it’s good for me and I like it. My body’s not modelicious. It never will be, and I’m closer to being okay with that than I ever have been before.

What did the woman do, many of you are probably wondering, once she realized her gaffe? She just grinned and said, “Oops. I promised myself I would never do that to any woman.” But she didn’t apologize. Maybe she thought it was my it was my girth’s fault, not her own. And truly, I am laughing about it now. 

I find that this is a much less exhausting place to be. And I like myself more, which is super groovy. Plus, there’s a big upside: I still look fertile AND young enough to bear a child. 

I’ll take it.

Has Anyone Seen Wonder Woman?

Forgive me, Blogger, for I have sinned. It has been one month, one week, and six days since my last entry.

For a while there, I was on a roll. That is to say, I was confident. Not confident about the words on the page, per se; those still needed a lot of tweaking, rethinking, or even complete overhauling. Rather, my confidence came from the simple belief that, yes, I can do this. Look at me! I’m writing! I have something to say, and I’m saying it! My dozens of followers seemed to like what I have to say and maybe one of them has been affected in some way. I’m living the dream. Creating my very own 20s Left Bank Paris right in the middle of my suburban Panera. 

Words were flowing. Ideas were germinating. Deep down, a strange, exhilarating sense of balance was stewing and powering me through each day. All the random, every-day stuff? On it. Reaching down to the inner-passion stuff too? I got this. I turned into Wonder Woman: driving carpool, making dinner, shopping at Whole Foods (because Wonder Woman’s organic, too!), AND writing words that felt right to boot.  All the passive voice and excessive use of gerunds in this paragraph wouldn’t have bothered Wonder Woman, because she was creative and artsy and could throw grammatical caution to the wind.

Balance. Wonder Woman felt it. I felt it. And it felt great.

But then, a crucial error. I tried to make myself smarter. On my brief roll, I tried to make things move along faster, jump ahead of myself. In short, I began to do everything that I thought I should do. What must, logically, come next if I wanted to be a success at this writing/blogging thing. 

Creating a Facebook page for this blog was a start. I thought of the idea one day in the shower, where man- and womankind does its best thinking. It felt right, so I started it.

Next I dove headfirst into the overwhelming and creepily complex world of Twitter. What? What? What? did all of it mean? I still don’t know. But I did enjoy feeling like I was Neil Patrick Harris’s best friend for a few milliseconds. Almost immediately, it didn’t feel so right. I was in over my head, which was now swimming with technology speak and hash tags and updates and little red numbers on my iPhone cruelly reminding me that I was behind in yet another thing in my life.

Internet research told me I was behind, too. Market yourself, I would whisper angrily to my furrowed eyebrows. Get the name “Big Hips. Open Eyes.” to mean something to the world.  Educate yourself about how to successfully blog, how to grow an audience, how to reach more people every day. Read the stockpiles of brilliant insight; attend blogging conferences; define your audience; choose your wording carefully; make your site more colorful; make your site less colorful; appeal to more than moms; appeal to only moms; don’t ever appeal to moms; write more than you think you should; write less than you think you should; hug your children more; be a better friend; be a better wife; return all your damn phone calls; clean your room; eat green leafy vegetables . . . . Aaaaahhhhh. It was all too much.

You’re a failure at this already, I found myself lecturing one night while lying in bed. Everyone wants to be a writer. Everyone has a blog. Everyone wants to make a difference. Who are you to think you’re any different?

You’re nobody special. There’s no wonder to your woman.

So the writing stopped. I stopped the writing. It felt lonely. It felt wrong. I found myself frozen where I was, in some weird in-between space of not wanting to do anything half-assed and not wanting to fail at what I love so much.

That is, until people started asking me, simply and honestly, “When are you posting another entry?” A friend I hadn’t seen in months walked up and said, “I love your blog. I love what you have to say and the way you say it.” Another friend told me how much she enjoyed my style, the way I bring the end of an essay back to the beginning and find connections between ideas that aren’t immediately apparent. “Yes!” I jumped out of my seat, “That’s what I love to do!” Still another friend took me earnestly aside and said, “Don’t stop. You can’t stop.”

She was right. I can’t stop. I have missed it tremendously. This blog helped me discover a piece of myself that was always there but I hadn’t recognized. This piece, let’s call her Lynda Carter, has disguised herself as a college major, an interest, a proofreader, an editor, a journal scribbler, or a dabbler in really piss-poor poetry throughout the years. Lynda has always been along for the ride. Keenly aware, taking mental notes, keeping her eyes open.

Being a successful blogger does not mean being a successful writer. I can do the latter without doing the former. Maybe, occasionally, I'll get lucky and do a little bit of both . . . sometimes at the exact same time, rockin' my world in the process. No matter what, I'll learn a bit along the way (and potentially figure out how to retweet something).The lasso of truth be told, I can’t be Wonder Woman. It’s not in me. But Lynda is. I’ll write for her, and for me.

How Reality Television Can Save the World!

In a previous post, I mentioned how there is a well meaning Facebook friend of mine who finds it beyond appalling that I watch the Emmy-neglected Bachelor/Bachelorette franchise. Let me start off by saying that I don’t know this woman well, but I have friends who do, and we live in a small community, blah, blah, blah. This woman (bless her little heart) feels the need to scold me should I ever post about any single element of the show whatsoever. Each and every time. Apparently, she does not get my tongue-in-cheekness when I regale readers with my description of true love’s blooming like, well, a rose. (She also does not get ME, period, having once asked me if I subscribe to Gun and Garden magazine because she thought I’d really like it.)

Anyhoo, despite attempts to appear to the contrary, I can be a bit defensive. Or, rather, I let the defensiveness well up within me until I shake uncontrollably and give myself some sort of minor aneurism. Then I let it all release through a sweet, kind, neighborly little reply like, “Oh, I know. It’s silly, but it’s fun. [smiley face]” It’s like letting the air out of a hot air balloon by poking it with a straight pin. The defensiveness takes a while to hiss out that way.

Truth is, I love reality television. Whether it’s “reality” or reality, I love it and I will defend a big ole’ handful of shows, from said Bachelor franchise to the Hugh Hefner trainwreck and its spin-offs and beyond. Now, don’t get me wrong, I can be a snob. Like with books and music, there are some lines I simply cannot cross. Jersey Shore? Can’t do it (yet). Anything involving Bret Michaels? Not a chance. He slightly scares me. And although I can sing every word of Public Enemy’s “Bring the Noise,” I shan’t watch Flava Flav go any further down the path of destruction and VD. The overexposure of drunkenness and asinine decision making has also led to the demise of my Real World obsession. May it rest in peace.

Legally, I cannot put a picture of "The Situation" here. This is a comparable situation.

But in more ways than I’ll bore you with here, Reality TV is, for the most part, perfect for yours truly--and, I’d argue--for most Americans out there, should they give it a chance. I love to travel, laugh, seek adventure, celebrate escapism, and (most significantly important to me) learn more about fellow humans on this little bitty earth. Reality TV puts all of that right in front of my eyeballs.

Take, for instance, last night, and the season finale of the world’s best reality show, The Amazing Race. I could go on and on about what makes this reality show a great reality show, but instead, I’ll give you a summarized play-by-play of musings (and all of these nuggets of wisdom are from just one episode):

• Damn, those Harlem Globetrotters are hilarious. I would like to be their best friend.
• Why do contestants keep speaking Spanish to the cab drivers in Rio? 
• I thought Brazilian waxes are supposed to involve simply your nether-regions. Who knew that, in Brazil, it’s full body, including armpits?
• Armpit waxing hurts.
• Now the Globetrotter is doing the samba in a Speedo. Delightful.
• CBS has to put a blurry line over the butt-cracks of thong wearers on the beach.
• Rio is much prettier than I ever thought it would be. Oh, and they’re hosting the World Cup soon? How’d I miss that?
• There’s a bike bridge that’s 7 miles near Miami? Cool.
• Look how beautiful the water is in southern Florida. We should go there sometime.
• Kisha and Jen, the sister team! They won! Raised by a single mother, they look forward to helping her like she helped them. Great, now I’m crying.

What does this list say, aside from the likelihood that I could benefit from a small dose or two of Ritalin? It says I learned something last night. Several things, actually, not the least of which is that Phil’s eyes have the ability to look straight into my heart. Like millions of viewers, I traveled all over the globe throughout the past few months. My fellow viewers and I saw cultures crazy-different from and similar to our own. We became a part of the workings of people that looked a little like us but spoke languages not understood. We learned logistical stuff (it’s possible to shop around lots of places for airfare and one should avoid taxis in India at all costs if you have motion sickness), and we learned something deeper (autism does not have to stop you from conquering fears or traveling to dozens of places). 

Have a disability? One contestant this season did; he is deaf, but he traveled all over the world and met all sorts of nutty obstacles head on with bravery and humor. I watched his mother be his friend, translator, and sometimes frustrated companion; in the process, I discovered a hell of a lot about what it means to love each other.

Project Runway, another fanTAStic show, has taught me a ton about creativity and artistry, what it means to be a struggling artist but never giving up, and the fashion industry, which I didn’t even know I was interested in before. It’s made my older daughter teach herself to sew; she now spends her spare time designing dresses and wondering which college programs have degrees in fashion, design, or merchandising (she’s 11). PR also gives me a regular dose of the beyond-brilliant Tim Gunn and led me to the amazing Project Rungay blog. [ed's note: just discovered this is now called Tom and Lorenzo: Fabulous and Opinionated] A previous devotee of Survivor, I now feel fairly equipped to handle life stranded on a desert island with nothing but a colorful scarf and a conniving villain at my side.

And the Biggest Loser? Don’t EVEN get me started. Sitting in my chair each week with a big bowl of ice cream in my lap, I’ve watched miracles of health and wellness unfold before my eyes. My husband and I look forward to each episode with (low-fat) relish, and yes, I typically cry. More than once. 

In fact, I’m fairly certain that if we got Kim Jong Il, Kadafi, President Obama, the ghost of Ganghis Khan, and Flava Flav all in one room for a marathon viewing of Biggest Loser episodes, we’d solve all the problems of the world. They would watch as Moses gives up his chance of winning the grand prize solely so Olivia, a woman he hardly knows, can continue on her weight-loss journey and ultimate gain the chance to have children. You see, HE knows what joy children bring to the world, because he has two daughters he loves; that’s why he’s on the ranch, for God’s sake, and he wants Olivia to know that same love.

[pause to reach for tissues]


Reality TV may be mind-melting for some, but for me, when I was on chemo, that was exactly what I needed. Anything with drama or written words or a plot, much less something that made me think the eensiest bit too hard, well, it was off limits. For me, it was exactly what the doctor ordered. Maybe it wasn't my oncologist, but still. Now that I'm (mostly) back to my old self, Reality TV and I will never, ever part. 

At the World Leader Reality Show Peace Summit, tears would flow and hearts would open and everyone would discover that yes, Kendra was once a stripper but is now a mom and realizes what’s most important in life. They would see that people, although they may get really drunk and pee on themselves in unfortunate situations, are ultimately good. People would listen to each other. Political parties would work together more and point fingers less. Wars would end.

That said, I know that’s not reality. But I sure would tune in to watch.

This picture is here because when I Googled "peace," this came up and it creeped me out.

That's So Inappropriate

There’s a word in the Lynch household that is used rather often. I wouldn’t have thought much of this word even a few weeks ago, but for some reason, its presence has buzzed around my ear lately like a fly-by gnat. Not annoying, but just enough to get my attention.

The word? “Inappropriate.” 

When my daughters used this word as littler wee-ones, it never failed to crack me up. Hearing a five-year-old use any word too big for her mouth is always fantastic, but to hear one say, Pop pop, don’t say ‘butt.’ That’s inappropriate . . . well, now, that’s pure adorableness gold.

Lately, however, I’ve noticed a difference, a shift in my response from adoring to slightly unsettling. I can't help but realizing that this shift comes right alongside my girls’ rapidly advancing maturity. For them, there’s a shift, too. No longer does That’s Inappropriate mean something forbidden, something wrong in their worldview. What it means now is something along the lines of I know that’s wrong or feels weird to me, but I don’t know why and I don’t think I want to know. Or maybe I do. Why are the grownups laughing? What’s going on with my understanding of the world around me?!

Take, for instance, our dog. A couple of years ago, my eight year old, giddy on the high of first-time puppy ownership, yelled for my attention. I found her standing in the den, giggling hilariously, Fergus the puppy going to town on her little leg. “Look, Mama! He’s hugging my leg over and over again! He loves me!”

Fast forward to present. Same daughter, now a goofy eleven year old, rough-housing with said dog, stops suddenly to chastise him for this (now, thankfully, infrequent) behavior. “Fergus! No! Bad boy. That’s totally inapporpriate!”

A line has been drawn: the line of understanding. It’s a thick, fuzzy, foggy line; it’s a big patch of dry sand, where footprints and sandcastles can’t exist, right next to the wet sand, plaything of youth. She knows enough now, thanks to her growing brain, sex ed, television we probably shouldn’t let her watch, and Pop Pop, to realize that there is something she just knows is not right. But she also knows enough to know that she has no idea what that is.

Inappropriate. Why such a negative word for such natural phenomenon? For me, with my daughters, I’ve been listening for it and swatting at it with my own attempts at understanding, and finally, finally, I’ve come to this: “That’s inappropriate” is an off switch; it’s the way to stop the conversation, the image on the screen, the dog humping your leg . . . and thereby stop yourself from thinking too much about something that just doesn’t feel right. In itself, it’s its own misunderstanding. If something is inappropriate, we stop ourselves from walking that thick fuzzy line, through the unpleasantness and toward understanding. “That’s inappropriate” keeps us safe.

For my daughters, for kids of all ages, that’s okay. That’s called learning your own boundaries, something we all hope the youth of the world can do. We give them permission to ease themselves into what is and is not appropriate because they are, after all, kids.

Sometimes, though, we have to give them a little shove. Recently, my older daughter was MORTIFIED when I took her bra shopping. Out of respect for her (and soul-numbing fear that she will somehow read this post), I will not go into details, but I will tell you that she pretty much summed up the entire two-hour experience with a big, fat That’s Inappropriate, symbolized by a whole bunch of eye-rolls, several minor yells, and a full-on sprint away from the counter at checkout. I was there, though, to help her realize that no, it’s not inappropriate. It’s life. It’s growing up.

How did I do this? Well, I pulled out the only weapon I really ever carry with me: humor. I tried to make her laugh at herself a bit, loosen the mood. When it didn’t work, I got the eyerolls. But when it did, I got the shy smile, aimed toward her flip-flops, that demonstrates both processing and acceptance.

And no matter what, I got a kick out of it all. Sometimes, you’ve gotta just make yourself laugh. So when she was hiding out about 100 yards away pretending to get water at the water fountain, I waited in line for the older gentleman to ring up my size 32AA bras. Once, I caught her peeking up at me. That’s when I reached both hands to my chest, made little circles with them, and mouthed, “She’s getting her boobies,” quite dramatically. Of course, she didn’t realize that he wasn’t even looking at me. That was my little secret for the moment. I told her later, after I had stopped laughing at how funny I was. 

Was I being inappropriate? Me? Never. Was I perhaps teaching my daughter a slight lesson about messing with me in public? Maybe. Truly, though, I was trying to help her cross through that foggy line and emerge on the other side with understanding as the souvenir. The trip seems lighter with laughter.

As grown-ups, I propose we strive to constantly re-evaluate what we consider inappropriate. For some (ahem, me), political discussions seem inappropriate. So do religious ones. I know why. It’s because I get too nervous about discussing a point in which I’m not well-versed for fear of being called out, not knowing my shit, not having a valid point. Certainly, I could benefit from the understanding that broaching these inappropriate topics could bring. Probably. Maybe.

Earlier this year, I had the overwhelming honor to communicate and work briefly with David Jay. David is a photographer who is slowly and powerfully gaining world respect and recognition for his SCAR project. SCAR stands for Surviving Cancer. Absolute Reality. His is a series of moving, passionate, and real photographs of women who are on the other side of breast cancer. And they have the scars to prove it.

I had stumbled on David’s photographs in the same way I stumble on most of life’s truths: on Facebook. It’s hard to write about the effect they had on me, not because I’m quiet about the emotions they brought (and continue to bring) to the surface, but because, for a long time, I wasn’t quite sure what those emotions were or how to describe them. Here was a man who was putting to print the most secret, private part of me, for to share these photographs with people--as I felt compelled to do--was to show them myself naked. Literally and figuratively. Walking around without breasts had become a whisper of who I was, my own absolute reality. David’s photographs ripped off my clothes and invited others to click “like” at what they saw.

Or to be confused. Or surprised. Or, even, afraid.

After my surgery and subsequent healing, my own daughters, after all, had no longer been able to be with me when I undressed. A nudist by nature, I was profoundly altered by their response to my naked body. Nights spent putting our pjs on together were no more; instead, if they saw it was time for me to change, they practically ran to their room, often shutting my door behind them, lest I forget to do so myself. They are little and could not, therefore, be casual about their aversion. My younger daughter, nestling with me in my chair one night and resting her head on my chest, told me she missed my breasts, that I was too boney and not comfy anymore. The same daughter, with her trademark full-disclosure honesty policy, instructed me once to change clothes in our hotel room bathroom, alone, away from them. She waved her hand in my chest’s general direction and explained, “That’s just creepy.”

These things crushed me for more reasons than I could count. I was less of a woman to my girls. I was a mystery. I scared them.

That is, until months after I first discovered David Jay’s photographs. On this particular night, I was re-examining his extensive collection on line. One by one, I clicked through the photographs, until I slowly became aware that someone was looking over my shoulder. It was my daughter.

“What are you doing, mama?” she asked, quietly.

“Looking at these amazing photographs.” Long silence. “Do you want me to stop?”

“No,” she said softly, so I continued on. Eventually, we reached a photograph of a beautiful woman, arms stretched high over her head, that revealed her penetrating eyes and double-mastectomy scars.

“That looks like you!” my little girl practically gasped. I agreed, and we sat there in silence until my other daughter came over, timidly, ready to see, too. They were safe there with me, computer screen in my lap, and they saw something new in that woman who looked like their mother.

A few days later, getting in my comfy clothes for the night, I gave my usual precaution to my little girl: “I’m getting ready to change, honey.” Our unspoken agreement was yes, it's okay for you to leave now.

“That’s okay, mama. I don’t need to go.” So she stayed. And we talked, and we giggled. And neither of my girls has looked away since.

David Jay’s photographs have been deemed by some as inappropriate. They are too real, too honest, and show too much. There are nipples. There are lack-of-nipples. There are the curves of a woman’s shape. There are the glaring absences where a woman’s shape should be.

This winter, while working on a writing project with David about SCAR, I discussed as much with him. The topic came up as he explained that only on-line articles ever showed his work. Not one print piece had ever shown a photograph. As one Italian journalist put it, her editor chose not to include the images in the story about SCAR because “he says the images are too much strong, that he makes feel bad.”

Despite the hilarity of the accompanying translation problems, his statement says a lot about what we, as grownups, see as inappropriate in the world. For kids, facing the inappropriate may be scary because they’re learning something that they didn’t know before. Growing up is, after all, scary for us all. It makes feel bad. But it’s best that we all do it, no? Was the Italian editor afraid of that blurry line, the one that allows us to cross into understanding? Did he turn the switch to “off?” I think he did. Luckily, my daughters did not. They were pretty damn brave. 

And I am pretty damn grateful.