Meet Me at Emotional Baggage Claim Read online

  But left alone, women will overfunction, God bless us. I guess it’s like buying a birthday card for your mother-in-law, and you really really really like your mother-in-law.

  If you follow.

  My computer had been sending me messages telling me I was running out of disc space, which at my age, usually means you’re having a lower back problem. But this time, it meant my computer was full, and I’d already upgraded its memory twice.

  I know what you’re thinking. If we could upgrade our memory, we’d be in good shape.

  Bottom line, I had to buy a new computer and I found myself in an Apple store, considering one. Francesca loves hers, and said it was easier to use. And that got my attention.

  Easier is my middle name.

  Easier is the lure of elastic waistbands, after all, so I started viewing Apple as the elastic waistband of computers.

  And I got one.

  It’s easier in some ways, but not in others. The good news is that it was easy to get started, because all you have to do is plug it in, and amazingly, it has no tower to put under the table, so it looks pretty in the family room.

  Still I miss my END key, which took me instantly to the end of the sentence, and I can’t get used to not having a DELETE key.

  Why did they delete the DELETE key?

  I wish there were more DELETE keys in the world. In fact, I wish life had a DELETE key. But I guess it does, and it’s called Divorce.

  Anyway, I started to work on my new computer, and all of a sudden, the way I used to do things is no more. I have to change everything, and I’m cranky.

  It was about this same time that I called Mother Mary, to say hello. I asked her, “How are you, Ma?”

  “Terrible,” she answered. “I’m mad at your brother.”

  “Why? More tattoos?”

  “No. He bought me the little bottles of beer instead of the big ones I like.”

  She’s not an alcoholic, she just likes a Bud Lite at night. And she leaves half of the bottle, so I know what my brother was thinking. “You don’t like the little ones?”

  “No, I need the big ones.”

  “Why?”

  “To belch.”

  Yes, this is my family. Impressed yet? “Maybe you can get used to the little ones.”

  “No, I can’t belch with the little ones. I need the big ones back.”

  “Change is good, Ma,” I said, eyeing my new computer.

  “Change sucks,” said Mother Mary.

  Or maybe I said that.

  Does it matter?

  We’re the same person, after all.

  Get Well, or Else

  By Francesca

  I have a nasty spring cold. I sneeze over my soup, burn my tongue on hot tea, and shuffle around after the dog, who manages to shred every tissue in my apartment.

  Yesterday, I braved the outside world—or considering the way I look when I’m sick, the outside world braved me—to get some pharmacy provisions: cold medicine, throat lozenges, more Kleenex for the dog to destroy, tabloid magazines.

  Trashy magazines are chicken soup for the brain.

  Once home, I retrieved my favorite honey-lemon Halls cough drops from the shopping bag. As I began to unwrap one, I saw there were phrases written all over the wrapper, lines like:

  “Don’t try harder. Do harder!”

  “March forward!”

  “Impress yourself today!”

  “The show must go on. Or work.”

  I rubbed my watery eyes to make sure I was reading it right. Was my cough drop yelling at me? I thought I was hallucinating. That was until I saw, written in all caps in the corner:

  “A PEP TALK IN EVERY DROP™.”

  Oh yeah, trademark that sucker. That’s your golden goose, right there.

  Could there be a product less suited to tough love than a cough drop?

  Hey, Halls, I’m sick. It hurts to swallow. I’m so desperate, I’ve turned to your disgusting medicated candy for comfort. Cut me some slack, will ya?

  I’ll “Take charge and mean it!” a different day.

  I get what they were going for, I guess. Trying to motivate me to “Get through it,” as one of the less accusatory phrases said. But listen, there’s a difference between cheerleading and browbeating.

  Where is the empathy? Why not print useful, motherly advice like, “Get some rest” or “Drink fluids”? How about “You’ll feel better in the morning,” or even good ol’ “Get Well Soon”? Sometimes you need a gentle touch, cough drops.

  I suppose subtlety is a lot to ask from a lozenge you can smell on someone’s breath from across the room.

  I tried to think of the last time my food had something to say, and I was reminded of my favorite part of Chinese takeout—the fortune cookies. I love them so much, I don’t even mind when they throw in three on the assumption that, surely, this quantity of dumplings, lo mein, and tofu with broccoli must be intended for an entire family, not just a single woman.

  Hey, I’m still growing.

  Point is, fortune cookies have the right idea. They might offer an intriguing forecast: “A pleasant surprise is waiting for you.”

  It’s always pleasant. Doom is bad for digestion.

  Or an insight into your character: “You love Chinese food.”

  Scarily accurate!

  A motivational maxim: “A person is never to [sic] old to learn.”

  A refresher on grammar and irony!

  A revelation from your personal life: “Your ex-boyfriend totally misses you.”

  Okay, so I never got that one. But he’d better.

  In a way, all carbs tell my future:

  Guilt.

  Incorporating writing into food can be smart marketing. Diet be darned, I justify buying these certain chocolate bars based on their cute gimmick: The brand is called “Chocolove,” and every bar comes with a romantic poem printed inside the wrapper.

  Isn’t that the sweetest idea? No English major can resist it.

  Not that I’ve ever read the poem. By the time I tear into the wrapper, I’ve completely forgotten there was a literary component to my purchase. I’m too preoccupied with the rich, delicious, dark chocolate about to hit my taste buds.

  Oh well. It’s the thought that counts.

  If the treadmill had love poems and compliments written on it, I might be more inclined to run on it.

  So, Halls, I reject your “PEP TALK IN EVERY DROP™,” and I suggest you reconsider your marketing campaign. You catch more bees with honey than with menthol. I’m taking a stand for the right of sick people to feel sorry for themselves.

  Unfortunately, righteous indignation is not a cold remedy. I didn’t want to admit defeat, but my throat was still sore. I swallowed. It hurt. I had no choice.

  I put the cough drop in my mouth.

  It tasted bitter.

  Gadget Girl

  By Lisa

  The salesman told me a snowblower would change my life, but so far it hasn’t.

  What a snow job.

  Because it only snowed once thus far, for two whole inches. I’m not complaining, but that snowfall cost me $300 an inch.

  I didn’t even use the damn thing, because I’m still not walking after bunion surgery, so I had to pay someone to shovel, and he didn’t think there was enough snow to use the snowblower.

  Make that $350 an inch.

  You may recall, I thought about buying a snowblower after six impossible winters, then finally broke down and bought one a few months ago, and have evidently saved all of us from another impossible winter. If I buy an umbrella, it will never rain on any of us, ever.

  I guess it’s unfair to blame the weather on a snowblower, but I do regret having bought it, at least so far. Should I wish for snowstorms?

  Or write John Deere a Dear John letter?

  I love gadgets, but my record with them is hit-or-miss. There is no in between. Either the gadget is great or it sucks, and I have succumbed to the siren song of many a sucky gadget.


  I’m talking about you, bamboo steamer.

  Turns out you can steam anything in a normal stainless-steel pot, with an inch of water and a lid. But only a bamboo steamer will retain water, so that it grows attractive mold.

  In case you want to steam penicillin.

  I’m also talking to you, costly wooden chopping board, which warps and comes apart at the seams. I am such a sucker that I even bought the Mystery Oil they sell you to keep it clean.

  No joke, it’s actually called Mystery Oil.

  I may have nobody but myself to blame for that one. You’ll be happy to know I passed up the snake oil.

  I don’t have any snakes.

  By the way, in my view, a wooden chopping block qualifies as a gadget. Admittedly, I’m not being overly technical about definitions, especially when it comes to things I waste money on. My kitchen is otherwise full of gadgets I bought on impulse, or was given as wedding gifts in my ex-life. Yes, after my divorces, I kept the juicer and waffle iron.

  Snowfall before Lisa bought a snowblower

  Lisa finally breaks down and buys a shiny new snowblower.

  Because I got squeezed and burnt.

  Then there are gadgets that are aspirational. I want to be the kind of woman who makes her own pasta, so I bought a pasta machine.

  I have never used it.

  Because I’m not that kind of woman.

  Mother Mary used it to make homemade pasta, and she showed Francesca how while I watched them, sipping a gin and tonic.

  Cooking is fun!

  Also I bought a pizzelle maker, for the same reason. I’m caught up in some Old World Italian fantasy. Some woman dream of being Martha Stewart, I dream of being Anna Magnani.

  The amount of snow that has fallen since Lisa bought the snowblower

  You might need to Google that, if you’re under seventy years old.

  Next time this mood strikes, I’m going to Olive Garden.

  Once I even tried to make my own wine, which caused me to buy a gadget with a curly glass tube that you stick in this huge glass jug filled with crushed wine goop that I drove two hours to buy.

  I did not crush the grapes with my own feet. I’m Anna Magnani, not Lucille Ball.

  I set the huge jug on the kitchen counter, where it was supposed to ferment, for three years.

  I’m not kidding. I commit.

  But all it did was scent the kitchen with vinegar, then morph into purple tar.

  Francis Ford Coppola I’m not.

  And John Deere I’m not, either.

  Maybe I’m Inspector Gadget?

  Jazz Hands

  By Lisa

  Here’s how I feel about aging gracefully.

  It’s overrated.

  Also I don’t know what it means. If it means getting older without whining, count me out.

  You can always whine. You can whine about your wrinkles, your hips, or your cholesterol levels. You can whine about anything you want to, and don’t let anyone tell you different.

  You have to fight for your right to whine.

  But if it means getting older while trying not to, you can also count me out. I know a losing cause when I see one.

  I’m divorced twice, remember?

  You can’t stop getting older, unless you die. If you think about it that way, getting older isn’t a losing cause, it’s a winning cause.

  Let’s all get older. Yay!

  If getting older is inevitable, so is looking older. You can’t stop either process. You might be able to Botox it and fill it and stuff it for a while, but not forever. Trying not to look older is like trying to cover the sky with your hands.

  And sometimes the changes as we get older, and look older, can be remarkable and even sort of beautiful.

  In fact, our hands are a case in point.

  I say this because, the other day, I picked up my car keys and happened to notice that my hand was looking really old. It was dry and kind of crepey, and the back of it was covered with faint brown flecks.

  Age spots.

  Or as I think of them, constellations.

  If you connect them, they form George Clooney.

  Really, why waste time with Orion? Does he have a house in Italy?

  No, all he has is a belt. And I don’t want to fight with a man, over accessories.

  I didn’t even recognize my own hand. It didn’t look like it belonged to me, though it was sticking out of my coat sleeve. It wasn’t the way I remembered it, when it was young.

  And hot.

  When you know something well, they say you know it like the back of your hand, but I didn’t know the back of my own hand. I called Daughter Francesca and told her as much, and she laughed.

  She said, “I was just thinking that myself. I noticed I have Mom Hands.”

  I smiled. “What?”

  “I looked at my hands, and the veins are getting bigger, either because I’m working out or getting older, and they reminded me of your hands.”

  “And you threw up?”

  “No, not at all. I like it. I always loved your hands.”

  Which made me think.

  I always loved Mother Mary’s hands, too. I remember everything about them, even as she aged. I know my mother’s hands like the back of my hand.

  Only better.

  Her fingers were little, and the nails had a neat curve, and when I was younger, she polished them with hot corals and frosted whites, the colors of the sixties, if you were a secretary.

  And not a hippie.

  I’m betting that I’m not the only one who can summon up an image of their mother’s hands.

  How about it? Try it now. Show of hands.

  And way back when, she wore a thick gold wedding ring, a basketweave pattern that had a warm and lovely hue. I used to try on her wedding ring, sliding it up and down my finger, taking it off and on.

  I think they call that foreshadowing.

  And as her hands aged, I didn’t love them any less. Just as I didn’t love her any less.

  No one of us loves anyone less, simply because they age.

  How they look is beside the point.

  I imagine this is what men are always trying to tell women when we fret about our wrinkles. The way we look doesn’t matter to someone we love, so why does it matter to us?

  And now, when I think about hands, I think about what they do. Mother Mary’s hands cooked, typed, and hugged us. And they pinched like, well, a mother.

  My hands can’t type, but they hunt and peck. And they hug, pat, and scratch a cat behind the ears.

  And applaud.

  They can always find a tick on a dog, but not always a key on a BlackBerry.

  Guess which is more important, to me.

  You can tell a lot about a person by their hands, especially as they age. We all get the face we deserve, but we earn our hands.

  We become handy.

  And I’m proud of that.

  You should be, too.

  An Open Letter from an Open Heart

  By Lisa and Francesca

  By now you know that Francesca and I talk all the time about everything, whether it’s carbohydrate counts, hair, men, dogs, or a new recipe for salmon. We end each conversation with “I love you” or “have fun,” probably because it’s our general wish for each other that we are happy. Most parents, when asked, would say that what they want most is for their kids to be happy.

  But for this last chapter, we wanted to go beyond “be happy.” We wanted to share our true wishes for each other in the future, like what we may encounter in the next five years, and how we see our roles in each other’s lives growing and changing on the road ahead. And so, we decided to write each other an open letter, without consulting each other or cheating, or even peeking.

  We spoke from the heart and we told the truth. We hope our words will strike a chord with you or someone you love, beyond words.

  Dear Francesca,

  I love to look backwards, to the times when you were little, but it’s even mo
re fun to look forward. Because I think Frank Sinatra was right when he said the best is yet to come, and I’ll tell you why.

  But first, let me back up.

  I know that I’m supposed to say that in the next five years, I look forward to you meeting a great guy, falling in love, and getting married, as well as continued success with your own writing, contributing stories to these memoirs, and finishing your own wonderful novel. I do want those things for you, but that’s not the whole picture. Those are only the milestones, events in a life, like ticks on a time line, or pages in a photo album. And as great as those things are, what I want for you is harder to define and to achieve:

  It’s to know your own power, and to step fully into it.

  You’re an amazing young girl, from the inside out, from your hugely generous heart all the way to your very skin. I won’t enumerate your many qualities here, because I tell you them all the time, and that would defeat my point anyway.

  Because what I want for you in the near future is to know those qualities yourself, inside you.

  To understand and enjoy the many things you’re good at, and to believe in them, and ultimately, in yourself. To trust in your own judgment, to have confidence in your instincts and skills. To realize that it’s not bragging to know you’re good at something, and say so.

  I say this because in my own life, I think that was a mistake I made, and one that many women make, not necessarily you. It took me until I was fifty-five to have this epiphany, and I’d like to save you twenty-five years.

  And it matters now, more than ever. Because in the short run you’ll have to make so many of those milestone decisions, like whom to marry.

  I’m trying to save you from whom-to-divorce.

  And how can I help you accomplish this? Where do I fit in? I suspect the answer is to get out of your way a little. I’m such an opinionated mom, from what to cook for dinner all the way to whom to vote for, and I need to shut up.

  You don’t need me to carry your raincoat to the movies anymore.

  In fact, you don’t need me to mother you anymore.

  You’re an adult, and you don’t need me to raise you.

  You need me to support you, as you raise yourself.

  And so, in this curious and ironic way, I will do more, and less, as we go forward on our little journey together.