Copyright © 2019, Lesley Crewe
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission from the publisher, or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, permission from Access Copyright, 1 Yonge Street, Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario M5E 1E5.
Nimbus Publishing Limited
3660 Strawberry Hill St, Halifax, NS, B3K 5A9
(902) 455-4286 nimbus.ca
Printed and bound in Canada
NB1475
Editor: Penelope Jackson
Editor for the Press: Whitney Moran
Cover design: Sarah Crewe
Interior design: Jenn Embree
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Title: Are you kidding me?! : chronicles of an ordinary life / Lesley Crewe.
Other titles: Newspaper columns. Selections
Names: Crewe, Lesley, 1955- author.
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20190159480 | Canadiana (ebook) 20190159804 | ISBN 9781771087926 (softcover) | ISBN 9781771087933 (HTML)
Subjects: LCSH: Crewe, Lesley, 1955-—Anecdotes. | CSH: Women authors, Canadian (English)—21st century—Anecdotes. | LCSH: Motherhood—Nova Scotia—Cape Breton Island—Anecdotes. | LCSH: Marriage—Nova Scotia—Cape Breton Island—Anecdotes. | LCSH: Families—Nova Scotia—Cape Breton Island—Anecdotes. | LCSH: Cape Breton Island (N.S.)—Biography—Anecdotes. | LCGFT: Anecdotes.
Classification: LCC PS8605.R48 A6 2019 | DDC C818/.602—dc23
Collectors Edition (NB1514) ISBN: 978-1-77108-845-9
Nimbus Publishing acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities from the Government of Canada, the Canada Council for the Arts, and from the Province of Nova Scotia. We are pleased to work in partnership with the Province of Nova Scotia to develop and promote our creative industries for the benefit of all Nova Scotians.
FOR HUBBY
When I was about ten, I had a diary with a horrible pink cover depicting a pensive little girl sitting by a wishing well under a trellis draped in flowers. The perfect spot for writing down her thoughts, apparently. I had nothing in common with this chick. She was beautiful and thin. I was fat and homely. And I only wrote in my diary while draped over my unmade bed, on my dirty bedroom rug, or in the bathtub to get away from my pesky little sister.
But it was filled with my day-to-day observations. “Ernie S. is such a fink!” “Went home with Pam for lunch. Her mother wasn’t there. She made her own sandwich. It was lonely.”
Jotting things down has always been my way of making sense of the world. I would write letters home, helped compose our summer newspaper, The Round Island Mackerel, and was offered the chance to write a column, Home Fires, for The Cape Bretoner Magazine twenty years ago.
“What should I write?” was my first question.
“It’s up to you.”
They shouldn’t have said that, because I’ll always make it about myself. Or about my family, which embarrasses them to no end. Then I wrote some columns for the short-lived magazine Cahoots, which eventually led to my writing for The Chronicle Herald, first under the heading Family Matters, and eventually, Are You Kidding Me?
The writing itself spans almost two decades, but it describes forty years of bringing up a family and all the joy and horror that entails. I have a story about breastfeeding. Do you know how long ago that was? Can I even remember it? Well, yes, I can, because I wrote it down for some strange reason, just so today my grown children can make faces and say, “Eww.”
What I never expected was the love that comes with this gig. People write to me all the time about how we must be soulmates because I’ve just said what they were thinking or feeling or doing or planning. When you write about ordinary things, people understand you. They are living ordinary lives too, and those lives are made up of the same ingredients. It feels not quite so lonely to know that other people are struggling out there.
And the bottom line is, people like to laugh.
It was on my last book tour that I noticed the increasing amount of interest in my columns, mostly from middle-aged women who were dying to meet hubby! And believe me, hubby was tickled pink. We all had to talk about the columns before we got into my latest book, so that was the germ of the idea for putting these offerings under one roof.
The funny part about this is that people feel they know me. And why wouldn’t they? All I do is tell them what I think, how I feel, what bugs me, what I love, and what I can’t stand. But there is always a fine line between bringing something up and giving it all away. I think the reason people put up with me is that I don’t profess to know anything about anything. I have a much easier time putting myself down than patting myself on the back, and that’s something else we all recognize. We are so hard on ourselves. We need a collective break.
One thing that writing a weekly column has taught me is that a week goes by really, really fast. I often have to scramble for a topic. I’ve got one! “Deadlines and Anxiety Medication: A Perfect Match.”
Fifty-four years later, my horrible pink diary has turned into a fabulous pink book, with the cover designed by my very own baby girl, Sarah, which makes me weep when no one is looking. These silly jottings over the years have turned into the story of my life. It’s not a grand or fabulous life, but it’s an honest and difficult and blessed one, thanks to my wonderful hubby and my amazing kids. They are and always will be my inspiration for everything. Thank heavens. Can you imagine if I had to pay them?
A friend of mine is about to have her first baby in a couple of weeks. She’s forty. I never know whether to laugh or cry when I’m around her. She asks me what it’s really like to give birth. I love this woman. Why tell her? The only advice I have given her is what the nurse told me as she wheeled me into the elevator when I was in labour with our first.
“Leave your dignity at the door, dear.”
I could bore my friend to tears, or frighten her to death, with the multitude of strange and mysterious things that happened to my poor body over those four days. This was in the early eighties, when they didn’t kick you out three hours after giving birth. But the incident that sticks most in my mind was the breast-pump affair.
I was determined to nurse my baby. It was the healthiest option for my little boy, and since I was going to be the world’s best mother, I might as well start off right. It’s the most natural thing in the world. It had to be dead easy.
Wrong.
I wept for the first two days. Nothing worked. I sucked at it. The baby didn’t.
“Don’t worry, dear,” the nurse would say. “Sometimes it takes a little longer.”
She would then position the baby in what they call a “football hold” to see if the little critter would grab on better. But since my breasts were as tight as footballs themselves, this proved difficult. Add to the equation my sore and cracked nipples, and you had a really happy girl by the time hubby came to visit.
“It’s all your fault,” I snivelled into a box of Kleenex.
“How’s that?” he piped up.
“It just is!” I threw myself into a fetal position and howled.
“Well, I apologize then.”
This guy was no fool. The nurse must have cornered him in the hallway and told him of the precarious mental state of new mothers. “Agree with everything she says.” Nudge nudge, wink wink.
Finally, they took pity on me and tried a new tack. “We’re going to use a breast pump, dear. It will give you a little relief and your baby will get your milk.”
I’d seen them on drugstore shelves. They looked like little gramophones with a rubber bulb attached. Well, that seemed harmless enough. “Okay,” I said.
I heard it before I actually saw it. Something heavy being wheeled down the hallway. The nurse arrived pushing a large piece of grey equipment with dials and what looked like fat test tubes hanging off it. I’m sure dairy herds the world over would recognize it instantly.
“I’m not sure I like the look of this,” I squeaked.
“It looks worse than it is,” the nurse assured me.
She latched my left boob into this monstrosity and turned the dial to minimum. It worked! The relief. I watched the watery milk collecting in the bottom of the tubes.
“Oh, I like this, can I take it home?”
The nurse smiled and said she would be back to do the right side in fifteen minutes. I sat there, happily milking away. I got a little bored by minute five, so I reached over and opened the bedside drawer and took out the Mars bar my sweetie had brought me the night before. Such a nice bloke. A chocolate-induced euphoria enveloped me as I munched away. Life was good.
In some faraway corner of my brain, I registered footsteps. Lots of them. They seemed to be stopping at my door.
“Mrs. Crewe, I have my students with me on rounds today. Hope you don’t mind.”
With a mouth full of chocolate nouget and caramel, my cries of, “Go away, don’t come in!” were misinterpreted as, “By all means, please come in.”
The doctor pulled the curtain back with a flourish just as I reached for the on/off switch. I miscalculated in my frenzy and hit the speed control instead.
My entire left breast disappeared up the tube. As I flailed wildly, the male residents beat a hasty retreat into the hallway. The females ran around making sympathetic noises. Only the doctor had the presence of mind to reach over and switch off the pump.
We spent the next few minutes extracting my pound of flesh from the miserable contraption. The nurse arrived, took one look at my face, and ushered everyone out of the room. She patted my back and told me that someday my girlish figure would return.
My self-respect, not so much.
Thank goodness summer’s over and the kids are back in school. Parents everywhere are giving a little prayer of thanks. But we always forget there’s a price to be paid for our few hours of freedom from the kiddies.
Not only are we taking out a bank loan to buy new clothes and shoes and school supplies, we must soon attend our first parent-teacher interview of the year. This is an exhausting procedure, and I’m not talking about physically getting to the school in question and running around like a rat in a maze or lining up behind a parent who insists on yammering about their little darling for twenty minutes.
It’s the gruelling ordeal of trying to avoid “real-speak” with our child’s teacher. It isn’t a picnic for the teachers either. These interviews are a battle of wills, everyone trying to be polite without being hurtful, truthful without being mortally offensive. Hence the exhaustion. If only we could say what we mean and mean what we really say.
“Come in Mrs. Crewe, how nice to meet you,” the teacher smiles. I hope this doesn’t take too long, I want to go home and watch Downton Abbey.
“Very nice to meet you, Mrs.…” Good lord, what do the kids call her? Mrs. Frumpy? That can’t be right. “Mrs. Frum, yes, very nice to meet you too.” I hope this doesn’t take too long, I want to go home and watch Downton Abbey.
“Take a seat, Mrs. Crewe.” She could lose fifty pounds.
“Thank you.” A little less eye shadow wouldn’t go amiss.
“Well, let’s talk about Junior.” God, I’m dreading this.
“Yes, let’s.” God, I’m dreading this.
“Junior certainly is an active child.” He should be on medication.
“Oh?” He’s as lazy as sin at home.
“He’s also very chatty and sociable.” He never shuts up or sits in his seat.
“That’s nice.” He’s a sweet child. Takes after his mama.
“However, he does seem to require a more structured learning environment.” The kid has the attention span of a goldfish.
“His father and I try to help him with his homework.” Who can understand Grade Five math anymore?
“Perhaps you might consider a tutor.” Instead of depending on me to do everything for you.
“Perhaps.” If you did your job properly, he wouldn’t need a tutor.
“Every child has potential, and I know that with the right motivation we can help Junior with his gregarious and rambunctious playground activities.” Don’t you ever discipline the brat?
“By all means, whatever’s necessary.” Is she suggesting he’s a bully?
“He also seems to be having trouble staying awake in class.” What ungodly hour do you put him to bed?
“That’s not like him.” I told his father that computer needs to come out of his room.
“As you can see on this chart, he has a hard time with language skills.” He has a mouth like a sewer.
“Every child is different, I imagine.” Flaming cow.
“Well, we’ll continue to monitor his progress. It was nice to meet you. Thank you for coming.” Thank God that’s over.
“Yes, thank you. Goodbye, now.” Thank God that’s over.
I am in the middle of the winter blahs. I can’t seem to summon the energy to do anything. Except complain about my pet peeves. They seem to come to the surface with astonishing regularity during the winter months. Maybe because we are all a little testy by the time spring finally rolls around. Being on top of one another for months on end through a Canadian winter seems to have that effect.
My number-one all-time gross thing is when people take too much margarine, peanut butter, cheese whiz, jam, or especially honey to spread on their toast, and then they take the knife with the excess stuff on it and scrape it back into the container, jar, or dish.
Is this necessary? Who wants to eat something with toast crumbs in it? Why is it left to the mother of the household to remove this offensive muck? And no amount of screeching seems to stop this rampant habit.
I also hate it when I ask someone to bring up the laundry from the dryer. I’m usually running out the door when I say this, only to come back a couple of hours later to find the laundry out of the dryer, all right—but it’s still in the clothesbasket at the end of my bed. A whole mountain of, by now, really, really wrinkly clothes. All their father’s shirts for work. This never seems to happen when it’s just towels or socks.
Another thing that drives me mad is the fact that there is never a pencil to be found when I need one. I find them constantly when I’m vacuuming or dusting, but let the phone ring and they disappear like magic. Ditto for paper. We have phone messages covering the kids’ artwork all over the fridge. A sweet picture of Santa Claus my daughter drew looks like he’s waving and yelling, “Dad, call Bernie back, there’s no hockey tomorrow.”
I know you will agree with me that the miserable so-and-so who leaves two tablespoons of milk in the carton so they don’t have to go to the fridge downstairs and bring up more deserves to be grounded.
The child who leaves the dog-food fork to harden with dog-food goop in the sink and doesn’t wash it off should be made to eat supper with it.
Folding towels is not a hard job. I believe you just take both ends and join them together. Place over a towel rack. Simple. How is it possible that no one in the house except me can fold a towel to save their life? The towels are usually lumped together on the floor or hanging on for dear life over the shower-curtain rod. And naturally no one in their right mind would think of using the same towel twice in one day. They might get their sibling’s germs on them. One wipe and throw it in the hamper.
Which reminds me of jeans. Do you remember washing your jeans when you were a teenager? I can’t. They got washed once a month at most, and only because Mom dragged them off me physically. What is it with kids today? I have seen jeans worn a total of two hours thrown in the washer.
“Are you nuts?!” I yell at the offending child.
They get huffy. “There’s dirt on them.”
“Where? Get me a microscope, I must have missed it.”
Finally, we have the really annoying habit of no one ever closing anything. Chip bags are a good example—four chip bags, open at the same time, getting staler by the minute. Shampoo bottles left lying on their sides, open and draining their life away into the tub. Cupboard doors left open at the perfect angle to bang the top of your head on. Toothpaste oozing out of the tube. Underwear hanging out of open bureau drawers, closet doors left gaping so everyone can see the mess. And no one seems to notice any of this but me.
I know in the scheme of things this doesn’t amount to a hill of beans, but if one more child leaves the toilet seat up for me to fall into in the middle of the night, I’m buying a bus ticket outta here.
My Cinderella is going to the winter ball, and I’ve turned into her fairy godmother. My wand’s been working its magic up and down the corridors of the Mayflower Mall, and I’ve discovered a shocking secret.
I’m enjoying this more than she is.
For years and years, I’ve been the first one to mouth off about how ridiculous all this nonsense is, having your daughter look like a million bucks by spending a million bucks. And all so she can waltz into a school gym somewhere and prance around for three hours.
It used to be that mothers only had to worry about a prom in Grade Twelve. Now I’m told there are semi-formal dances for kids graduating from elementary school into junior high.
Really?
I had a son go through the system first. For him, a winter ball would have been on the same pain scale as attending a ballet or mowing the lawn. I’d shake my head at girlfriends as they rushed around like fiends trying to find the perfect strapless bra or sparkly hair clip.
“It’s only a stupid dance,” I yelled at one friend as she shoved her daughter in the car to make the time-honoured trip to Halifax to find the perfect gown. She ran over my foot backing out of the driveway.
Now suddenly it’s my turn—excuse me, my daughter’s turn—and I’ve become a woman possessed. I have so much invested in this, both monetarily and emotionally, I should be going to this dance.
I didn’t even realize it until the day we went shopping for the perfect shoe to go with her perfect dress. I made several suggestions in every shoe store in the mall. She informed me she had no intention of buying any shoe that looked like an old lady shoe. (All the pretty strappy ones.)
She was immediately attracted to one pair that would be suitable if you were into leather and whips and army boots. I knew better than to react, but inside I was pulling my hair out and screaming, “Are you serious? That fabulous dress, sullied by those stinking things? NO.”
To my enormous relief, the saleslady didn’t have her size. A very close call.
It occurred to me that my blood pressure had no business going through the roof over a pair of shoes. Shoes that were never going to be mine anyway.
What was going on?
I had Cinderella fever. That’s what was going on.
If I’m like this over a stupid dance, what on earth is the prom going to be like? Or her wedding?! If this experience is anything to go by, you might as well kill me now.
I have a new appreciation about why mothers cry at weddings. Sadness that the shopping is over.
But it’s more than that. It’s this silly girly thing we females are known for. It’s when your baby girl walks into a room or down the aisle and she looks like a princess. Your heart stops for a minute because you honestly can’t believe that she’s yours.
She’s so young and beautiful.
Were we young and beautiful too? Probably. But we missed it at the time because we were in a lather over a pimple.
So here we are, thirty years later, getting to do it all over again. This isn’t about the winter ball. It’s about grown women getting to play with their real-live Barbie dolls, and secretly loving every minute of it.
For those of you who don’t have a daughter, borrow one. Then find a magic wand, a pumpkin, and a couple of mice.
And have a ball.
I’m sorry, but you’ll just have to indulge me. This column is for me alone and no one else. A selfish but necessary act.
My very first column was about my son leaving home for university. Even writing under my maiden name didn’t afford him the protection he needed. I gave him an alias.
Today, I am outing him. It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t know you and you don’t know him. I’m sure there are worse ways of embarrassing him. Well, maybe not, but too bad. I’m the mother and I’ve had a lot of practice. His friends don’t read this, anyway.
Since Paul won’t let me put his graduation picture in the paper, won’t be going to his graduation ceremony, and won’t buy a school ring or yearbook, I have no other way of letting him know that all I feel like doing right now is tweaking his cheek and shaking it back and forth vigorously like some old biddy.
(Newsflash: He did go to his graduation, and I knocked over a few hundred other parents to get to the front of the stage to take his picture and the battery in the camera chose that particular moment to die. I nearly did too.)
Parents the world over are excited when their children graduate from university. But I’m sorry, folks, this is Paul we’re talking about.
This child of ours has told us every day since he was five that he wanted to blow up the school. Shocking but true.
He was excited about his first day. He came home that afternoon and announced, “There. That’s over.”
When I told him he had to go back the next day, this “blowing up the school” business started.
He’d get annoyed if I asked him anything.
“Where’s your seat?”
“Behind Bradley.”
“No. Where do you sit in the room?”
“Behind Bradley.”
“Okay then, where does Bradley sit?”
He looked at me like I had two heads.
“In front of me.”
Do you get the picture? This was when he was five. It’s been downhill ever since.
I had one lovely teacher come up to me and tell me it was the highlight of her teaching career when she tried very hard to give him a great day at school and asked him about it as he was leaving.
“Did you have a good day, Paul?”
He shrugged. “Yeah.”
With that ringing endorsement, she floated into the teachers’ lounge.
In keeping with his low-key attitude, we didn’t have a graduation party with friends or relatives, and we didn’t present him with a car or whatever people do these days. We four sat around the supper table. He opened a card from us and one from his sister.
Sensing the significance of the occasion, his sister kindly put her boyfriend on hold.
It was a private moment, so I’ll keep that to myself, but suffice to say those no-name napkins aren’t worth a darn.
He let me in on his last moment of university. He and his girlfriend and his best friend since primary walked out of their final exam on their very last day.
He turned around, held out his arm, flicked his thumb, and said,
“Kaboom.”
It’s always so great to have a long weekend to look forward to. The kids will come home and we’ll laugh and talk together over long family meals, swim at the beach, enjoy a board game or two, watch a funny movie together. It will be so much fun.
And it always is, even though a lot of other stuff happens that I hadn’t counted on.
Like hubby cleaning the barbeque in anticipation of our steaks that evening, and dumping a small amount of grease and grimy bits in the woods across the road. When you live in the country, you can do that. Not five minutes later, our daughter arrives home from Halifax with her sturdy Sherman tank of a Labrador, Josie. She’s adorable! We all try and hug her, but she instantly rushes into the woods and eats the grease. Josie’s mommy has a fit, hubby is in the doghouse, and she’s on the phone to the vet. I’m still holding her bags.
The vet says to give her some salt to make her throw up. I’m still not sure why this is such an emergency, but I go along with it and we try and give the dog salt. This is not pretty. Josie’s mommy is a mess, because she feels like a heel.
The dog eventually has to come inside because the mosquitoes are dive-bombing us. That means the cat has to be put downstairs, but my daughter-in-law is afraid of the cat and she and my son are sleeping down there. I proceed to take up all the rugs and mats in the house, because this dog is going to be sick. We wait and wait but she is still fine hours later. The vet said that Labs have stomachs made of cast iron, but eventually it happens. I can’t describe it. Then it happens again at two and four o’clock in the morning.
All the while there are cries of, “Don’t let the dog downstairs!” “Don’t let the cat upstairs!” “Close the door!” “Open the door!” “Let the dog out!” “Let the dog in!” “Don’t let the cat out, in, up, or down!!” It’s a revolving circus, as are the texts that are fast and furious between Josie’s mom and her dad, who’s visiting family on the other side of town.
We’re just settling down after this brouhaha when the boy and his wife go digging clams at six in the morning, and come home with enough to feed all of Homeville. Now there are suddenly fourteen buckets of fresh water, salt water, sea water, and water water crowding what little space there is in the kitchen, the porch, the shed, and the back deck. Everyone is on Google, making sure we’re doing everything the right way, because I know it will be our luck to get botulism instantly. The clams need to soak and spit out sand. Our daughter, the vegetarian, is horrified that this is going on under her nose, and we have to slink from her accusing glare.
Everyone wants deep-fried clams. Now I’m making batter. Someone gets a pot and throws a bottle of oil in it. My daughter-in-law only likes using chopsticks to fry things, and I can’t find the pair she gave me. Hubby comes home and screams blue murder that we’re using a pot and not the deep-fryer that’s been in the bungalow for a hundred years and that no one has used in two decades. According to him we’re going to burn down the house, so he roars off to get it, and now we have to transfer everything over in the middle of this delicate operation. There are six dishtowels on the go (all of them damp), two sinks full of dishes, Josie in the middle of the mayhem trying to lick the spattering grease off the floor, while the cat howls the song of his people through the crack in the door because he’s missing all the fun.
Then hubby accidently opens the door and Pip comes sauntering in. We freeze in terror as he slowly approaches Josie. He’s casual about it. Maybe we’ll have a miracle and they can coexist in harmony.
Nope. Pip launches himself claws first at Josie’s head as she recoils in horror. Josie may be a husky girl, but she is a delicate flower in the personality department, and this assault is too much for her. Josie’s mom screams at the cat, I scream at hubby, and everyone scrambles to separate the duo—except my daughter-in-law who shrinks into the nearest corner, as far away from Pip as she can get.
Finally, it’s time to wave goodbye, and I get to replace all the rugs, strip the sheets off the beds, wash three loads of towels, and gather up the stuff they forgot to take back with them.
And this is why family weekends are so much fun, and why we can’t wait to do it again at Thanksgiving.
So, I received a phone call from my baby girl.
“Hi, Mama, just wanted you to know before I posted it on Facebook that I got a tattoo.”
Now, this is a pivotal moment. How I handle this news is something she will remember forever. If I scream, that’s bad, so I say, “Oh?”
“Oh?” gives me a few seconds to think. And this is what I’m thinking: Has she lost her mind! That beautiful unblemished skin! It will get infected! What will her father say?
Then I remember that she’s thirty, not fourteen, and it’s her body, not mine. Even though if it weren’t for me, she wouldn’t have an arm. When she came out, that arm was pristine and ink-free. The way nature intended it.
My generation only knew tattoos as something old Navy guys had: badly drawn anchors, or Betty Grable, or a heart with “Mother” written in the middle of it. People with tattoos were not to be trusted. They belonged to motorcycle gangs.
Obviously, they’ve become more mainstream now, and they’re a little easier to accept, and I don’t mind some of them…on someone else.
She’s always been interested in art of any kind, so I’m not surprised this happened, and she says she remembers the day her father told her he’d rather she got a tattoo than put a ring in her eyebrow. An eyebrow is too close to the brain, was his way of thinking. She rolled her eyes at that logic, but naturally never forgot the first part of his sentence.
Then I think, Stop being an old fuddy-duddy. I’m sure it will be something cute and small and you’ll hardly see it.
“I’ll send you a picture.”
I wait for the email to come through.
“What do you think?” she says.
The picture comes up. A sharp intake of air.
“Well? Do you like it?”
“It’s big.”
“I love it.”
“Oh. Good.”
She explains the symbolism of her chosen image. It even includes a tribute to her grandmother, which makes me weepy. I understand everything she says. I can see why this is so precious to her. I get it.
But it’s so big.
I walk into the bedroom and look at hubby. “Do you want to see Sarah’s tattoo?”
“A tattoo?!”
“Yes.”
“Oh, brother.” He gets up from the bed and comes into my study. He stares at the screen.
“It’s big.”
That’s all he says.
I understand that this is none of my business, but when does a mother stop being a mother? When do I stop caring about the littlest thing? It doesn’t matter how old she is; my kid is my kid. I own her. Or feel I do. Then I remember she’s married. Oh well, that doesn’t make any difference. She was mine first.
I’m already practicing for when I actually set eyes on this new arm. In my mind, her tattoo will be coming through the door before she does. I can see me now, sitting on the beach, fixated on that arm. Trying not to look at it, but it’s everywhere. Like a huge pimple on someone’s nose. How do you ignore it?
To be completely honest, she and I sometimes talked about getting a tattoo together. I have a few friends who’ve done it with their daughters, and I always thought it was sort of cool. Now I don’t know what to think. She tells me I should get one.
If I did, it would say:
I can’t help it…I’m your mom.
One of the tasks of a serious mucking-out of the old homestead is taking down tired, faded, and dusty old curtains. You never think about curtains ordinarily, but remove them to give your windows a little elbow grease, and you realize how their absence leaves a room looking ghastly.
First of all, now that the outdoor light can get in, it reveals all the warts in your housekeeping regimen. It’s a wonder we weren’t on inhalers all winter, with the amount of dust that has settled in every nook and cranny.
Never mind. I get up on a stepladder to release the curtains from the rod, only to find I have to undo tiny screws from each bracket. That means I have to get up and down the ladder three times. I manage to pop out the rod, but the curtains are heavier than I imagined, and one side goes up in the air and hits the ceiling with a bang while the other side loses the finial on the end of the rod and crashes into an ornament on the bureau, breaking it, then falls behind the bureau for good measure.
Naturally, because the finial is no longer on the rod, both panels of the curtain slide off at the speed of light and drape themselves all over the rest of the stuff on my bureau, clattering a few more doodads to the ground.
One fat cat opens an eye at the noise and quickly closes it again. The other cat takes a flying leap from the bed and lands on the curtain, briefly using it as a hammock before taking the material to the floor with an almighty thud. He is now spooked by the tangled material around his body and proceeds to take his claws and rip his way out.
Yelling at the cat doesn’t help. It only alerts hubby, who now shouts, “Are you all right?”
“YES!”
“What’s going on?”
“I’m washing curtains.”
He knows me by now. He doesn’t ask again.
So I clean up, sponge the windows, and put the curtains in the washing machine. Now I take a tape measure and write down the length and width of the window. I’ve decided I need new curtains. I want shorter ones, even though every decorating show always has floor-length curtains everywhere. I’m tired of the curtains being squished behind the bureau. I just want something bright and airy and short.
My first mistake is thinking I can find what I want. I go to Walmart, because I had to go there anyway. My second mistake is writing down inches instead of centimetres. My third mistake is not remembering which number is the width and which number is the height.
All the curtains are floor length. All of them. Then I reach the end of the aisle and happen upon a few shorter ones. But they seem to be for kids’ rooms. A lot of primary colours and the cast of the movie Frozen sprinkled about. I pick up one that’s kind of pretty, with little stars on it. I read the label: “Glow in the dark.”
Marvellous.
I pick up a beige pair with a pattern that should go well with our blue walls, I can only hope; they are my only option. Once I get home I take them out of the package and put one panel up. It’s exactly the wrong length. Too long to be useful, too short to be attractive. Typical. Now I have to fold it up and try to put it back in the package so I can return it. No matter how hard I try, I can’t do it.
Maybe I’ll just buy a blind. But that means taking down the brackets for the curtain rod. Then I’ll have holes in the wall. And I’ll have to find a place to put the rod. It’s more trouble than it’s worth.
I put up the now clean but cat-frayed curtains. An interior decorator I’m not. But it doesn’t matter, because hubby and I and the cats are the only ones who ever go in our bedroom. And after forty-one years of marriage, we don’t need to impress each other with our fantastic taste.
We picked each other.
Mic drop.