Pool Duty

"Miss?"

A squat, pear-shaped woman glared up at me from the other side of the wooden counter top. Her chubby arms were crossed over her chest. Damp gray ringlets clung to her scalp. She dripped water onto the green, heavily trafficked, all-weather carpet.

I held up a finger to indicate that I was in the middle of a conversation with another resort guest.

"No, sir, our massage therapists do not wear bikinis. No, sir, only one massage therapist per customer. No exceptions. Thank you for calling."

I made a few notes, added a package of Bic plastic razors to the glass fronted display case, filled a wicker basket with hand towels, and placed three pens and one pencil in a precise line before I replied.

"Yes? How may I help you?"

"There's something black in the pool," the pear-shaped woman stated.

"Something...black?"

"Yes," she sniffed. "I'm not sure what it is, but I want you to go and investigate. It could be you know...poop."

"Poop?" I repeated.

I followed the dimply thighs of the pear-shaped woman to the 75 foot indoor lap pool at a popular resort in southern Vermont, where I was employed as "Front Desk Girl." Mostly I whisked carts of bagged dirty towels from the women's locker room to a large closet alongside the indoor tennis courts. I dumped the dirty towels and loaded up the cart with stacks of clean white towels tied in bundles with red string. Then I raced back.

The pool, enclosed in a paneled room with vaulted ceilings, had a wall of large sliding glass doors, clusters of green plastic tables and chairs (from which I removed droplets of water during my rounds) and groupings of plants. Squeaking children with bright orange swimmies tight as blood pressure cuffs cavorted with their parents. Small boys cannonballed into the water, whooping, and screeching Geronimo! A few dutiful lap swimmers churned back and forth, black swim caps poking through the water like the heads of dolphins.

"There! See! Right there." The pear-shaped woman pointed to the deep end.

 I peered into the wavering sunlit surface.  There were several amorphous black shapes clumped on the bottom of pool.

"Hmm," I said.

"Yes, and there are more over there and over there."

"Poop usually floats," I told her, "But, I'll check it out."

Against one corner of the room leaned a 60-foot long-handled aluminum pole with a squeegee attached to one end. I began to lower the pole, backing carefully along the side of the pool. I balanced the pole in my hands like an aerialist on a tight rope, veering away from the wall of sliding glass doors. I swung it over the heads of the unsuspecting swimmers. Next, I replaced the squeegee head with a blue rimmed pool strainer.

"What's she doing, Mommy?" called out an observant little girl in a lavender two-piece.

"She's looking for poop," the pear-shaped woman stated loudly.

"Poop? Poop? Poop in the pool?" Frenzied voices bounced off the ceiling.

"Poop usually floats," I called out. "No cause for alarm."

"I think everybody should evacuate the pool area," the pear-shaped woman advised.

"Nobody has to evacuate until I say so," I said. "I'm in charge here."

"EVERYBODY OUT! Poop in the pool! Poop in the pool!" the pear-shaped woman shouted.

Swimmers churned to the edge of the pool in a blur of thrashing arms and legs as if someone had suddenly yelled out, "SHARK!" Mothers shrieked.

As I swung the long arm of the pool skimmer around, the pear-shaped woman ducked. I plunged it deep into the water, scraping it along the bottom until it came in contact with the first black clump. I pulled it towards me, deftly scooped it into the skimmer and lifted it aloft.

"Is it poop? Is it poop?" the crowd of towel draped onlookers chanted.

"Hey, if it is poop, does my Dad get his money back?"

I flipped the pool skimmer so that the troublesome black clump landed at the feet of the pear-shaped woman. She jumped back.

I bent down.

"It's not poop," I announced.

"Definitely not poop?" interrupted the pear-shaped woman.

"Not," I said."Just some leaves from those plants over there."

"Well," she sniffed, "that's a relief, but I don't feel like swimming anymore anyway. You need to clean the pool."

"And you," I suggested, "need to go towel off."

Mirror, Mirror

My thinking went like this: mid-January, time for a lift. And I didn't mean chocolate. There were those pesky frown lines etched between my eyes.


When I called the office of Plastic Surgery and Dermatology to make an appointment for an evaluation, the cheerful receptionist informed me that depending on my needs, I could receive an injection of Botox at my very first appointment.


"Does it hurt?" I asked.


"I'm terribly squeamish myself," she admitted, "but, when it's my turn, I practically jump in the chair."

I spent the days until my appointment scrutinizing my face in a magnetizing mirror - well, I also went

snow-shoeing and avoided aspirin to prevent bruising at the future injection site -  but, when I caught myself retracting the skin on my face with my fingers in different lights, I knew I had acquired a new obsession.

 "I'm going for Botox," I confided to my friend Jane.


"Big deal," she said. "You're certainly not the first."


I arrived for my appointment the day after a snowstorm; in fact, I had checked snow accumulation around my car with OCD-like regularity throughout the night. A quick glance in my car mirror revealed the same sort of dark circles produced by those trick binoculars that gave one black eyes in one's youth. And what about those laugh lines? Maybe they should go too.


As I filled out several pages of forms, an older woman - a stranger -  bent down and peered into my face.


"What are you having done?" she demanded as I drew back. I noticed that her face was crisscrossed with as many lines as a railroad yard.


"Um, I'm not sure," I said. "But, I think a little Botox right here..." I pointed between my eyes.


"You don't need Botox!" she exclaimed.


"Well, I..." I faltered. 


Just then, another patient emerged from an interior office, dark glasses obscuring her face, her hair tied up in a Hermes scarf. She was accompanied by someone I assumed to be her husband. 


"You here for a face lift?" she asked me, smiling.


"No! I'm just here for an evaluation," I said. "And possibly a little Botox."


She removed her dark glasses to reveal swollen eyes circled by shiny skin, tinged with faint blue and green bruises and slender tracks of black stitches.


"Dr. X is the best," she declared. "And I've spent the last year doing research."


"You had your eyes done?" I asked politely.


"I had horrible bags," she said.


"Pouches like pillows," her husband piped up helpfully.


"Really," I said.


"We even searched outside the U.S. in Canada, and Dr. X is the top guy."


"Well, that's reassuring," I said, returning to my forms.


Under a question reading: What Are You Looking for in a Surgeon, I wrote "skill."


Smiling men and women began to fill the smartly decorated waiting room. Had they all received Botox? I wondered.


Eventually I was ushered into an inner sanctum with terrible light. As I gazed like Snow White's evil stepmother into a hand mirror, not one thought of being the fairest in the land entered my mind. Instead, I saw sallow, blotchy skin and runnels like trenches on either side of my mouth when I grimaced.

"Hello, Amy, how can I help you?" the boisterous Dr. X demanded, bursting through the door. His eyes roamed my face like a prison guard's searchlight. I could tell that a frown wanted to emerge, but couldn't somehow. He read over my answers on the questionnaire. Under: How Soon Would You Like to Have Your Surgical Procedure? I had written NOT YET.


"I was thinking a little Botox or something," I said. Dr. X's own forehead was smooth as glass.


"We can do that," he murmured. "No problem. I think one syringe will do it. Hmm," he continued, trying, but failing to squint.

"What about the maxio labial blahdeblah here?" He had found the runnels.  "We can do that today too, if you wish, but, that might take two syringes, especially on the left side."


My stomach lurched. "I think just the Botox."


Dr. X tapped a pen on his clipboard. "Are you considering plastic surgery?" he asked.


"Um, what would you suggest?" 


"We could pull the skin beneath your chin up and under, leaving just a tiny line here," he explained. 

"And then tighten the skin here," he added, as he smoothed skin back on my cheeks with both hands. 

"Leaving a hairline scar there that would be hidden beneath your sideburns and run behind your ears..."


"Thanks," I said hastily, feeling an anxious heat spread upwards from my belly, "But, I think I'm good with just the Botox."


"Great," Dr. X said. "Make yourself comfortable, this should take about 30 seconds."

"Oh," he said, pausing, syringe in hand, "Do you have any milk product allergies?"

"What do you mean?" I asked. I pictured myself seizing and dropping to the floor when the Botox hit my bloodstream.


"Do you eat cheese?"


"Yes," I answered.

"Then you should be okay."


I closed my eyes as Dr. X drew six little target dots. I felt a tiny pinch and heard a minute crunch as the needle pierced muscle. Six times. Then it was over.

"If you want to consider the face lift procedure," Dr. X remarked casually, "I need to let you know I'll be retiring in August, so be sure to schedule it before then."

"Right," I said.

I wrote out a check for roughly $10 a second and grinned at the roomful of beaming patients awaiting their turns. 

The camaraderie, at least, felt real.

For Peggy

A few years ago, I watched the enormous screen suspended above Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts for a first glimpse of His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. He walked slowly through the same chute that emitted the thunderous football Patriots, a smiling monk wearing the most pedestrian looking brown shoes beneath his maroon robes. His Holiness clambered to the top of his seat and beamed his Yoda light out over the crowd. He spoke of peace and basic goodness and gave a teaching that I absorbed through the pores of my skin. The audience rested in contentment, respectful, silent. He wore a Patriots baseball cap.


At intermission I seemingly sailed from my seat on the field upstairs to the food concessions. No one pushed. There was no elbowing, nor jostling. People simply moved together. As I made my way, I looked up and recognized someone I knew, a woman named Peggy. A glowing face in a sea of people.


Peggy had given me her own teaching at a time in my life when despair had become an all too comfortable cloak. My son had left for college, and I felt untethered; my role as a mom no longer defined me. I was a woman obscured by sadness; past losses subsumed me. I had lost my way. 


It was then that grace in the form of Peggy appeared. She had come upon me in a retreat, sobbing, great sobs shuddering through my body, and had offered me a space to talk. She listened, handing me tissues. When I ran down, she sat with me as if we had nothing around us but space.


Then she said, "Amy, I wish I could tell you that everything will be all right, but it won't. That's not how it works."


The message was as powerful as a thunderclap. I laughed. 


I had been pushing feelings away for years. Dread and fear had lurked beneath the surface and I had been paddling away fast, but like endless sets of waves, the feelings kept coming. I was drowning.


"Maybe you could try to make friends with your sadness," she suggested. "Welcome it, let it teach you. When you truly know sadness, you will know what it is to be happy. You will have endless moments of happiness."


I wrote Peggy a letter of thanks for her wisdom and kindness. I got that it wasn't about my mother or my childhood or my son leaving home. It was about allowing space for every moment, every feeling - as best as I could. It was about unwrapping the cloak and letting in the sun.

Boxes

I had to exercise caution when choosing a title for this post. When I told my daughter it was going to be called What's in Your Box? she burst out laughing.


"Mom, you can't call it that!" she chortled.


"Why not?" I asked. 


"Mom! Don't you know what box means?" she snorted.


"Of course I do," I said. "I knew what it meant before you were even born."


Then I added, "Oh, ew," echoing her response whenever I mention sex in a way that suggests I might actually be having some.


"Oh, go ahead, call it that, it would be awesome," she teased.


I collect painted wooden boxes - or, used to, before I gave up searching for the imagined happiness that comes from accumulating things. Things equal clutter. Clutter causes psychic claustrophobia. At least in me.

It's what's in the boxes that gives my son Will yet another reason to stand in the middle of the living room and list reasons why he thinks I'm insane.


"Okay, so look," he said recently to a gathering of assorted family. He opened a beautiful painted box from Russia and began to list the contents.


"Tibet Almond Stick that wipes out furniture scratches 'quick as a wink,' a piece of cartoon from the Wall Street Journal showing a mother at a book signing with the caption, 'Meet the Author's Mother'-- "


"Your grandmother sent me that years ago," I interrupted. "She was acknowledging me as a writer."


"Whatever. Next, we have a jolly Santa mug with a half-burned red candle in it, a compass, a packet of American Author cards, a book of Witty Women quotes, this piece of wood with your initials burned into it - "


"You made me that," I said. 


"In third grade!"


"I like it," I muttered.


"...an acorn, some sort of ivory-looking letter opener with a painted-on reindeer spelled 'r-e-i-n-s-d-y-r' --"


"That happens to be in Norwegian and it's from the North Cape."


"...two golf balls, a Duracell battery, the end of a Phillip's head screw driver, an empty film canister from before there were digital cameras, a Get Well Soon card from Katherine that says, 'Hang in there, Buddy --"


"When you pulverized your elbow snowboarding," I said. But, I giggled. I suddenly remembered I had a photo of Will at about age four, his head wrapped in a bandage after receiving his first stitches. It was a literal head shot - just his head, no body remained of the photograph. It was in a box.


"But, wait! My personal favorite," he announced. "12 mini Cheeky Chimp for Nails emery boards." He lifted his arms, as if demanding an answer from the assembled company, who were bent double, clutching their stomachs.


"Everyone can use an emery board," I said.


"All right, and then we have Box #2," he continued, lifting the lid of a smaller green box from India and presenting it for open inspection.


"Let's see...another acorn, six striped pebbles, a box of matches with my initials on them, a ball marker, a domino and one of those tricky puzzles that unhook."


As he continued his Mom-is-a-whack job performance, I thought about my friend, Linda, who for ten years had postponed going through her deceased husband's things. She had been afraid what she might feel when she opened the box: loss, sadness, the bleak pit of despair. Then, one day, for no particular reason, the time was right. She sifted through some familiar clothes and photographs, and discovered some crayoned drawings celebrating Father's Days and birthdays long gone created by her then little girls.


"I had to laugh when I saw how they drew what they thought he looked like," she smiled. "Here I thought it would be so painful, and it made me happy to remember those times."


I can't remember the significance of the odd acorn or the 12 Cheeky Chimp mini emery boards, but it's fun to open a box and discover random objects - like the silver handcrafted circle bracelet with the initial H I meant to give my niece 13 years ago. It's like finding treasure.


So, what is in your box, Katherine, and I don't mean the one in which my kicking yet-to-born grandchild resides? (Ew.) Anyone?

We Gotta Play, We Just Gotta

The women in my family would rather die than be kept from their sports. Take my grandmother, Helen: small, tyrannical, competitive. A cut-throat bridge and gin rummy player. A golfer.

"That Helen," one of her friends told me once. "So short, you'd lose her in the rough, but tough as nails."

As the story goes, she'd been very ill the day before a golf game at Saranac Lake in New York, up vomiting most of the night. Although she still wasn't feeling so hot the next morning, she went ahead and played nine holes. When she finally went to the doctor, he informed her that she'd just suffered a heart attack.

"Helen," he said, "Are you aware that you played nine holes following a myocardial infarction?"

"Well," she said, "I didn't take any practice swings."

Before two bum knees made golf impossible for my mother, whenever I visited her in Florida, we played nearly every day.

"Maybe we should take tomorrow off," we'd say after a hard fought battle on the links. 

My mother used what she termed "a rolling mully," short for "mulligan," which meant she could take a do-over on any shot at any point. Even putts. We wrangled, we bet. There was the occasional nudge with one's foot. We sliced, we shanked. We walloped those little white balls - well, sleeves of little white balls - from the tee, from between trees, from surrounding property owners' lawns, down the fairway, over (and into) water hazards, flew it, threw it to the green, delighted or disgusted. 

Our conversations went like this:

"Amy, you're so long. I used to be long," Mom would sigh if I smacked my drive. In her youth, she had been so long she had hit the Prince of Wales in the calf from an adjacent hole.

Or, after a particularly unfortunate shot of her own, she would moan, "I'm just plain rotten is all, just plain rotten!"

"No, you're not," I'd say soothingly. "You made a great chip shot. What shall I give you for the hole?"

"Give me a 5."

"I thought you had a 7."

"Give me a 5."

Or:

"Mom! I saw you move your ball."

"Did not."

"Did too."

As we'd drink our morning coffee the following day, one of us would rustle the Times and cough with significance.

"Maybe, we could fit in a few you know --" my mother would hint, and we'd grab our golf shoes and be out the door.

When it rained, we parked our cart under a tree and ate sandwiches, willing the sun to return.

"I think it's just a passing shower," Mom would muse, as hail bounced off the roof. Once in Vermont we nearly killed her dear friend, Mrs. Anthony. It was mid-October, and as we stormed the 16th green, snow began to fall.

"Shouldn't we call it q-quits?" Mrs. Anthony stammered, blue-lipped, as we raced to our balls.

Mom and I shrugged.

"Only two holes to go," we said. 

Mrs. Anthony, who turned 94 last week, got pneumonia.

Two Women Laughing

We are late for our 7pm dinner reservation. It takes time for my 92 year-old mother to negotiate curb heights and uneven sidewalks, slick with winter slush. The flagstone pathway to the door of the restaurant is dimly lit and treacherous. Hungry patrons brush by us, wearing expressions of false friendliness, their impatience singeing the night air. Sometimes, I'm tempted to pick my mother up under one arm and make a dash for it like Tom Brady; sometimes, I want to grab her cane and whack someone. Occasionally, I breathe deeply and practice patience. 


This is the mom who made me a robot costume one Halloween - a square box spray-painted silver with a hole cut in the top for my head to poke through. She wrote Victor Robot Model A on it, and I wore some sort of tin hat and grey grease paint on my face. The box covered me. When Tommy's mother took us trick-or-treating, I got stuck in the car door, legs in black tights kicking.


Because we're late, they haven't held her favorite table nearest the door by the window. It's tricky for her to thread her way through chairs and tables. The manager impatiently ushers us up a flight of stairs into another room where everyone is yelling to be heard. It isn't easy walking two abreast amongst waiters bearing steaming plates. My daughter is waiting at the table. We settle my mother, cane there, purse here, coat there. She beams at Katherine.


"Oh, Katherine, you look simply wonderful," she says.


"Thanks, Gogs, so do you."


"I hope you're not getting too many of those sonograms," she says. My mother is worried about the effects of electro-magnetism from cell phones, cell towers and microwaves. In her way, she is an activist. She is also worried about dirty electricity. Sometimes she gets carried away, so I'm poised to interject an alternative subject.


"No, Gogs," Katherine says easily.


"That's good," my mother nods. "And no wi-fi in the bedroom?"


"No, Gogs," Katherine smiles.


 My shoulders relax.


Katherine entertains my mother with details about her recent business trip to New Orleans. In her role as corporate event planner, she had arranged for her clients to participate in a private parade that included a brass band and beads.


I'm observing these two women together. My mother inclines her head toward Katherine, so as not to miss a word. She is genuinely interested, full of praise, and Katherine is glowing with pregnancy and pride. 


When the waiter comes to take our order, my mother turns to me,


"What is it I always have?" she asks.


"Gnocci!" Katherine and I chime together.


"Of course! Gnocci, and don't spare the cheese," Mom says.


"I must tell you about this new recipe for stuffing turkey," she says to Katherine.


"What's that, Gogs?"


I lean in.


"You use popcorn," my mother explains. "Only the best gourmet popcorn."


"Popcorn?" my daughter queries.


"Popcorn," my mother repeats emphatically.


She pauses.


"Then, when the turkey's ass blows off you know it's done."


I guffaw so loudly that Katherine shushes me. "Mom." 


At neighboring tables, despite the din, heads swivel.


I can't stop. My mother is laughing too. This just happens to us - instantaneous hysteria. Coursing tears, loss of breath. It's happened in golf carts - twice in this particular restaurant. We share an unbridled hilarity, an intimacy free from the mother-daughter yoke. 


We're just two women laughing.

All About Juan (Per His Request)

After reading a piece of my writing to Juan the Gardener recently, a fidgety sort of expression crossed his face.


"What?" I asked.


"Nothing," he said.


"No, really, what? You don't like it."


"It's not that...it's just - "


"Just what?"


"It's just not about me."


A few days ago, packages arrived from San Francisco, from Juan's family. There was an enormous wonderful mug from his grandson, Oliver, painted green on the inside and inscribed "Yeh Yeh," which is what he is called. It's perfect for his morning beverage: half and half with a splash of coffee, or for soup, or chili, or stew. Then I opened mine and discovered a beautiful white tea pot with some yellow splotches around the top which remind me of sun rays; there was a tea cup as well, with an interior orange glow. Now, whenever I drink tea from the special cup, I will think of Maggie and sun. The packages were wrapped with hand-painted green and red paper.


"Your painting is nice," Juan commented, "but, mine is better."


"Better?"


"Yes, mine is quite brilliant."


"I think mine is equally brilliant," I countered.


"Okay," he said in the sort of condescending-merely-humoring-me voice that made me want to wash his face with handfuls of snow.


"Are we competing over the paintings of four-year-old twins?" I asked.


Without answering he said, "Your tea cup is really beautiful. You can make me my tea in it."


So, Juan the Gardener is not, as my cousin Adele erroneously imagined, a poor Mexican immigrant who, having wended his way North of the Border, found himself in Vermont caring for me and my family.


He does enjoy gardening, and describes his beloved bonsai plants in glowing terms as "short and muscular," which may (or may not) be a projection.


He makes perfect raspberry crepes with blueberry sauce for breakfast, when he wants to.


His grandson believes him capable of superhuman feats of strength, like lifting a canon bolted with iron to concrete above his head. He is incredibly powerful, so when his hand clamps down on the clicker like a steel trap, it makes prying it from his fingers close to impossible when I want to watch a movie. 


He is a masterful storyteller, especially when it comes to long tales about witches hiding in trees; he lies on the floor to do puzzles with his grandkids, and makes a perfect foil.


Occasionally, he surprises me by offering to accompany me to the gym, but it's really an excuse to watch football on a larger screen.


He encourages me. Earlier this morning when I boasted about a 13th follower adding herself to my blog, he commented, "Yeah, you're really bursting onto the literary scene."


Yesterday, "we" decided, it being the first day of the new year, to clean the house; we were also expecting house guests. When the house guests begged off, one of us lost interest in cleaning with amazing rapidity, although he did unpack his suitcase, which had been lying on the floor of the bedroom for two weeks.


"It's just so hard," he said.


As I finished making the bed, he flipped over a corner of the quilt and gave it a small tug.


"Wow, thanks," I said.


"Well, I mostly made the whole bed," he intoned.


He is sartorially splendid. See above.