Well, except when I try to eavesdrop on my son and his girlfriend. Then the sound of young love – “dub step” — is, well, not “moon/June/spoon”- inducing.
Back when John and I fell in love, well, things were different. Music was wonderful, made to share. And so I did.
About three months after John and I started dating, I made him a tape. (For the youngin’s amongst us, it’s like a portable playlist that can be played on any appropriate device available in the prehistoric period in which your parents were, ummm, young.) Yes, I made my love a cassette tape of my very favorite songs from that and every era. It contained, among other songs, the following:
Juice Newton, The Sweetest Thing
Joni Mitchell, A Case of You
Bonnie Raitt: Home
Linda Ronstadt: Blue Bayou
It was too late when I learned that not only did John not love the songs I loved, he hated them. Every single one of them. Over the years, he has solidified his position. For example, John has threatened to divorce me should I sing Blue Bayou within range of his supersonic ears, an approximate 5 square mile range.
Let me tell you this: It is not an ideal situation for a critically acclaimed former singer to be banned from singing her favorite songs. Especially when the ban includes those rare times when I am actually doing housework. It has been a rather sticky issue for 26 years now.
I try to be accommodating because I am wonderful. And because I have a huge repertoire of first verses of songs that will get stuck in John’s head for when he really pisses me off. John has been accommodating by vacating the house immediately when I begin singing/playing/thinking about any of these songs. Generally he is in search of a divorce lawyer.
But you know what? Payback is hell.
You see, in the past, I’ve often told John that he needs to outlive me, because I don’t want to have to deal with all our financial issues. Seriously – I haven’t balanced a checkbook since we got married, and I don’t intend to start.
But now, after reading an article in today’s Reuters.com, I’m reconsidering my position on who gets to “go” first. You see, I read that there is:
Because now I can get John a specialty coffin complete with seriously impressive stereo speakers, hooked up to the latest iPod/music technology. And I will get to choose the playlist.
In the spring and summer of 1986 random parts of my face started growing for no apparent reason. I would be at home, on the subway, or off working somewhere around DC.
First it was a swollen eyebrow. Then that would go away and a day or two later, my cheek would grow so that I couldn’t see well out of one eye.
Mostly it was my lips, though. They would grow, sometimes individually, sometimes together. I looked like a duck.
Did I mention I was also getting married in September? That September? And while John and I had a fairly small and simple wedding, I was unenthusiastic about going to the altar looking like a daisy. Especially this one.
Of course, John’s lips would have been normal. Mine? Not so much.
But work was so completely crazy that I ignored it. I was a lobbyist/flunky at the time, and was spending long days up on Capitol Hill working on the Tax Reform Act of 1986. (And it was the perfect assignment for me; I did my own taxes – on the U.S. Government 1040-EZ form. Tax Returns for Poor Dummies.) I was in over my head, didn’t have a clue what was going on, what was important, or which way was up. I was a wee bit stressed.
Plus that summer we decided to buy our first house just so we could send my stress level through the roof of my brand new adorable little house.
But back to my problem. My ever changing facial features.
People were looking at me strangely which I understood – I often and suddenly looked really odd. But even stranger, they stopped talking whenever I would approach. These were people I’d worked with for more than six years. Something weird was going on.
And I found out what that was early one morning as I stood talking in the front lobby to my boss, also (irritatingly) named John. He was giving me instructions on that day’s most important issues, when to pay especially close attention, when to call him immediately with an update.
At the beginning of the chat, my face was normal. But as we talked, my lips spontaneously grew larger and larger. More duck-like.
“Elyse,” my boss said, “what’s happening to your lips?”
“They’re growing. Spontaneously. I don’t know why. But you’ve seen me with a swollen face off and on for the last couple of months. Haven’t you noticed? And it keep on happening. Luckily, John has promised to marry me even if I look like Daisy Duck when I arrive at the church.”
The look of relief on his face was instantaneous – he joked with me about the fat lips, about stress, about what I might be allergic to. He’s a really nice guy, and he cared about me. But it wasn’t until much later when I realized just why he had looked so relieved.
He thought I was being abused by my husband-to-be. And he, a very powerful Washington DC lawyer, who knew/knows everybody in town, had no idea what to do. He didn’t ask me if anybody was hurting me. He didn’t threaten to report John, or try to find out discretely whether folks in John’s office thought John might be abusive. No, my boss talked to other folks who also cared about me and who also didn’t know what to do to save me from what, had it been true, would have been a huge mistake.
(In fairness, they didn’t know my John at all – it wasn’t a very social office.)
And once I made the connection, I remembered feeling similarly helpless once. I thought about a secretary named Kelly who had worked with us briefly a few years earlier. She and I had become a bit friendly, even though we worked on different floors and in totally different departments. We both loved to play softball. One day I saw Kelly with an enormous black eye.
“I was playing softball with my husband’s team,” she said, shaking her head. “I should have caught the damn ball.”
“I once caught one with my left thigh,” I responded to her, truthfully, but naively. “You could see the stitch marks on the bruise.”
The next day she was gone. Obviously to everyone else her husband had been beating her, and she got help and got away.
The image of her face has haunted me. What would I have done – would I have been able/willing to help her? Would I have ever figured out what was happening to her?
My story ended well. I hadn’t had time to eat properly and subsisted pretty much on a diet of Milky Ways for two months. Woman cannot live on Milky Ways alone. Maybe ducks can. I stopped eating chocolate and looked OK at my wedding. Or at least, I didn’t look like a duck.
I don’t know how Kelly’s story ended. I never will.
* * *
Yesterday, the GOP in the U.S. House of Representatives allowed the Violence Against Women Act, which had been law since 1994, to expire. And they let it happen because it would have expanded coverage of the law to more women including immigrants and Native Americans.
Perhaps you don’t know what the Violence Against Women law does.
My bible, Wikipedia, says that it provide programs and services, including:
Community violence prevention programs
Protections for female victims who are evicted from their homes because of events related to domestic violence or stalking
Funding for female victim assistance services, like rape crisis centers and hotlines
Programs to meet the needs of immigrant women and women of different races or ethnicities
Programs and services for female victims with disabilities
Legal aid for female survivors of violence
But what it really does is help abused women. To let them know that they can get help. That they are not alone. And it can also give their families, friends and co-workers vital, life saving information about how to help. How to act. What to do besides wonder amongst everyone else but the person most impacted. Literally.
Now tell me, what’s not to like about this law? It gives vital assistance to vulnerable women – those who most need it. A place to go where they can take their kids, get help.
It gives folks who don’t know what to do or what to say a clue as to how to help women in need.
Where they don’t have to give up that last little bit of their heart.
I have stated this more often than I can stand, but the men in the GOP are not on the side of women, or on the side of men who respect women.
GET THEM OUT OF OUR LIVES
Then, Damn them to Hell where they belong
***
What you and I can do:
Contact your representatives in Congress and demand they pass the Violence Against Women Act as it stands today with expanded services: http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/
I take war pretty darn seriously when it comes, so I try to pay attention to the rumblings and rumors of yet another conflict. That way, I can be sure to make my feelings known.
That probably comes from the fact that when I was in 9th grade everybody in my entire school got on a bus and drove down to Washington DC to that huge rally on the Mall. Me and John C were the only two kids left behind. Spending a day with John C was NOT my idea of a good time, but my parents wouldn’t let me go. I’ve never gotten over it.
I DID make up for it though. In 2003 I saw Peter Paul & Mary live on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, singing Blowin’ in the Wind and Give Peace A Chance, just like they had back in 1971. We were all there to protest the impending invasion of Iraq the next day. George W Bush flew overhead in Marine 1 on his way back from Camp David. He hovered over us, just long enough for the assembled protesters to flip him the finger. I’m sure he returned the gesture.
For this new war? I got no warning, no notice, nothing from MoveOn.Org or Code Pink or anybody else. How could that happen? I’m on every single political email that goes out to special people like me. And you know what a news junkie I am – I read everything. Still I missed it. Damn. Because this war might be in my living room before long. And yours. Or maybe it will snake its way upstairs, into our bedrooms.
It’s The War on Men.
Yup. At least according to Phyllis Schlafly’s niece, anyway. Oh you remember Phyllis, don’t you? She was one of the main spokespeople behind the anti Equal Rights for Women movement.
Why didn’t she just stay home and bake?
So, in keeping with having a family full of non-feminist women who stay home and bake cookies, Phil’s niece, Suzanne Venker works outside of the home. She “stumbled” upon a bunch of men who are unhappy with women and who say that they aren’t going to get married. Not no way, not no how.
Why?
Because “Women aren’t Women anymore.”
Well, I’ll be. Excuse me while I check on my lady parts.
Now Suzie wrote about it (well sort of, it’s an article on Fox). She claims that men haven’t changed. Apparently they still have all the same instincts that they had back in the day. But women? They’ve changed. And not for the better according to Suzie.
They’ve gotten uppity. They want to work. They want to get paid for working. They want to use their hearts and their minds. (And I bet they still want Equal Rights.) THE NERVE!
Suzie also says that this whole attitude on the part of women, well
“[It] has not threatened men. It has pissed them off. It has also undermined their ability to become self-sufficient in the hopes of someday supporting a family. Men want to love women, not compete with them. They want to provide for and protect their families – it’s in their DNA. But modern women won’t let them.
It’s all so unfortunate – for women, not men. Feminism serves men very well: they can have sex at hello and even live with their girlfriends with no responsibilities whatsoever.
It’s the women who lose. [Sniff] Not only are they saddled with the consequences of sex, by dismissing male nature they’re forever seeking a balanced life. The fact is, women need men’s linear career goals – they need men to pick up the slack at the office – in order to live the balanced life they seek.
So if men today are slackers, and if they’re retreating from marriage en masse, women should look in the mirror and ask themselves what role they’ve played to bring about this transformation. [Emphasis mine all mine.]
Perhaps it is the fact that in the decades that most of us have lived in [and I think we can assume that Suzie has been stuck in a perpetual space-time continuum] well, we’ve been able to make our own choices about when to have children, and a whole mess of other economic issues that earlier generations of women couldn’t because they were barefoot and pregnant.
But fortunately, Suzie tells me not to worry about this war. You see, I can actually do something about this one. And actually, you can too. I’m relieved. Aren’t you?
Women have the power to turn everything around. All they have to do is surrender to their nature – their femininity – and let men surrender to theirs.
I grew up poor and white on the Gold Coast of Connecticut in Fairfield County. Yes, I grew up surrounded by beautiful mansions of the very rich. My family? We were really poor. One bathroom, share-a-bedroom poor. No heat those first few winters-poor. Clothes that weren’t hand-me-downs were bought at Barkers, the local discount department store. Way before saving money and Targét became cool. Barkers was decidedly not cool.
The Gold Coast. That house on the left behind the trees has a ballroom. Literally. They held Cinderella balls there. Or Gatsby balls. They didn’t invite this guttersnipe, though.
We never complained. Not that we didn’t want to, but it did no good. Once, my sister Judy complained:
“None of my friends have to buy their Easter dresses at Barkers,” she began to whine. She stopped when she saw that Dad had overheard her. She knew what was coming. So did I.
“Well,” said Dad, “you’ve never gone to bed hungry, have you?”
Judy and I exchanged looks. It was coming. The hot dog story. That was the reason we never moaned aloud about our penury. We knew we’d have to hear the hot dog story. Again. And we’d have to figure out what “penury” meant.
“When I was your age,” Dad continued, (Judy and I tried not to look bored) “When I was your age,” he repeated, “the Depression was on. My Dad, your grandfather, who built some of the houses around here, couldn’t find work. No one was building. No one was hiring. No one was paying for anything. No matter how hard anyone was willing to work, there was no work. No way to feed the family.”
“There were seven of us. And I remember being hungry. Going to bed with an empty stomach because I made sure that my mother would have half of my share. Whatever we had. One night I remember I had to go to the store to get two hot dogs. That night, there were two hot dogs and some beans for dinner. And that was a feast. For seven of us.”
The story never had the impact on us that Dad intended. It made us roll our eyes. It made us certain that he was exaggerating. It made us feel embarrassed that he was even more poor then than we were now.
Of course we didn’t go to bed hungry. We lived in America. Duh! Kids don’t go to bed hungry here! Jezum Crow!
But you know, our friends were oblivious to the idea that there were things that folks like us couldn’t afford. They didn’t understand why we weren’t jetting off to the Caribbean or to Europe or to Disney the way they did. They didn’t understand that we couldn’t be in the school play because we couldn’t afford the special (very expensive) skirts that became the von Trapp children’s outfits that were supposed to come from Maria’s drapes. That we couldn’t even bear to ask our parents for it.
Lack of money was something that our friends simply had never experienced. They weren’t intentionally callous, they just didn’t get it. It was like trying to explain music to a someone who had never been able to hear. Possible, but challenging. And it took a lot of work.
Now I tell you this story so you know that I have been surrounded by rich people. So I’m familiar with just how completely oblivious folks can be if they have never had to live on nothing more than two hot dogs and some beans.
Today, I would give anything to have Dad deliver his hot dog lecture. And I know just who needs to hear it.
You see, today I read an interesting article about Ann and Mitt Romney, and how poor they once were. Yes, it’s true. Mitt and Ann were once poor. Ann said so in an interview in 1994!
I was astonished. Aghast. I wished I had a couple of hot dogs to offer them. (Sadly, they now have a “no dogs” policy.)
Ann tells the gut-wrenching story about how they once lived in a basement apartmentwith no carpeting. They had to eat tuna and pasta. They didn’t entertain. They struggled. They had to sell stock to pay the bills!
Yes, the poor Romneys. [Hanky, please!] All they had to live off was the stock that Mitt’s Dad had given him for his birthdays. Stock that had started at $6 per share but ended up at over $90. And, hard swallow here, Mitt and Ann were chipping away at the principle! Eating their seed corn! Whatever would become of them?
Imagine that. Just imagine having to sacrifice so much.
So I totally get how big-hearted they must be. How they understand the plight of the working poor, how they understand the sacrifices needed to achieve success.
Because all you really need to do to succeed in today’s world is to get stock from your parents. Duh.
As a kid, I really did feel like I was poor. But I wasn’t. As an adult, I learned that there really were poor people, people who went to bed hungry and whose children went to bed hungry.
I also learned that “The Poor” does not include folks who live by selling bits and pieces of their stock portfolio. There is a big difference, and it’s not just in perception. It’s in reality.
I have a house full of folks, meals to cook, wine to drink and stories to be told. So I’m neglecting my blog. Yup, me.
So here is my very favorite post, from Long, Long Ago, when I was a baby blogger, in case you desperately need to get a life! need to hear my voice.
Happy Easter! Happy Spring!
Downsizing
My husband John and I had an appointment to look at smaller houses with a realtor. We were going to go this afternoon, but after going to the grocery store early this morning, I cancelled.
“Why did you do that?” asked John, puzzled. John wants to get rid of the big house. He wants to get rid of the big mortgage.
“Sorry,” I told my husband. “I can’t downsize.”
“Why not?” he asked again.
“Toilet paper.”
“Huh?”
Everyone I know talks “downsizing.” Our friends are mostly middle-aged like us. We all bought 4 bedroom 2-1/2 bath colonials back when our kids were small – we thought it was a legal requirement that came with the birth certificates. Now the kids are off at college, or off working, or just off. Occasionally friends decide to downsize because they are not yet empty nesters and are trying to push their overgrown open-mouthed offspring/bloodsuckers out of the nest.
As I said I had just come home from the grocery store. With 36 rolls of toilet paper. Double sized rolls. That means I had actually just come home with 72 rolls. For two adults and one dog.
What made me do it? We really only need a fraction of that. Why not get a six-pack? And then a six-pack of toilet paper?
Earlier, I stood in the aisle at my local Safeway and considered my options. Hmmmm. I thought. This HUGE package costs $15.00. The size I really need costs $9.00. But the 36-which-equals-72 roll package was only 6 bucks more. I had no choice; I bought the big package. It was cheaper — unless you totaled up today’s groceries. And then it wasn’t cheaper at all. But into the cart it went.
I continued on down the aisle. Damn, I thought. I need paper towels too. Sixteen rolls? Why not?
Go through any grocery store. You can buy small, but it’s gonna cost you. You can buy a six-pack of soda for $4.99. Better still, you can buy a twelve-pack of soda for $6 or two twelve-packs for $12 and get three twelve-packs FREE! What a deal. You save $18 just by spending $6 more than you were going to spend in the first place! I must buy them.Just because I stopped drinking soda in 1996 doesn’t mean I should pass up this deal.
Twenty-four 12 oz. bottles of pure spring water? Sure. I only have six left from the two dozen I bought in 2007.
These promos work on me every time.
The price of wine also goes down as the quantity goes up. I can buy one bottle of my favorite Pinot Grigio for $9.00 or I can buy two for $7.50 each. If I want to buy even more, I can buy six or more bottles for $6.00 each, get totally sloshed and not really care what I’m spending. There’s some logic there.
It even happened in the produce section. I wanted one small container of blueberries and one of strawberries. Instead I took home two hefty containers of each.
“Are you going on a ‘berries only’ diet?” asked John as he helped me unload the groceries when I got home.
“No,” I responded. “It was ‘buy one, get one free.’ I couldn’t let them go to waste, could I?”
“Well at least not until the extras have been in our fridge for a few weeks,” John muttered.
So you see, I can’t downsize. I cannot get a smaller house. I can’t even get a smaller car. How would I get my groceries home?
I think I’m going to call the realtor back. We need a bigger house.
