Welcome Back

Because MB reminded me of my own God-dramas at our meeting the other night, here's my own first person ramblings on the subject...

I remember losing Jesus. I let him go pretty recently, actually, after the eighteen years of Sunday mornings, several more years of Christmas eve masses and even the continuing thanksgiving graces before turkey. It was a little bit sad, sort of like saying good bye to my friends on the last day of college, but it happened when I started to realize I needed to explain the him to my kids.

See, kids are these amazing lie-detectors. They force you to figure out what's real and what's make believe, and though the magic shows you get to put on at Christmas and Easter and for the first eight lost teeth, are the most beautiful, heartbreaking part of this parenthood thing, I had my own come to Jesus, and figured out he just wasn't the one for me anymore. Especially since I needed to explain him to my kids. And just like Santa Claus or the giant bunny that I'd dealt with as a kid rather quickly once the word was out, I let Jesus go. The tooth fairy was actually harder, I'll admit. A lady with glittery wings? No matter the creepy part about the teeth, she is much harder to let go of than Jesus, I'm afraid. Sparkly wings totally trump the water thing. We parted on friendly terms, and all. I just didn't plan on seeing him much anymore, save the occasional birthday greetings on Christmas.

I didn't graduate to the absence of God til last year. I brought him back again recently, though, after witnessing one too many miracles for my own good. The most recent one took place after my husband lost some very important bike racing equipment and something called Sirius radio because I'd stored them along with all the junk from his front seat in a trash bag while I was driving his car (you can see where this went, right?) and the bag got dumped and God handed it back to us after a mere focused request, which some might call prayer.

See I'd been driving my husband's car for a few days because of a bike accident that left him with a fractured clavicle, unable to shift gears in his Lance Armstrong Subaru. So we'd traded cars and I accepted that sipping coffee on my way to work was a thing of the past. It just can't be done while downshifting in the city. So one morning I needed to clear his front passenger seat of all the items he stores there: letters from the city regarding our rental properties, computerized biking equipment, gum wrappers, pumpkin seeds, energy bars, and boxer shorts. See, I needed to drive a colleague of mine to a fundraiser we were attending that afternoon. So I grabbed a trashbag from inside my office, carried it out to the parking lot as we were leaving, cleared the front seat of my husband's life's work, ate a few of the pumpkin seeds, threw the rest toward the grass, and then banged wildly against the blue fabric, hoping the dog hairs would vaporize. And we drove to our fundraiser in the dirt-mobile, me grinding gears and watching her head bob as I shifted.

Two weeks later, the bag went into our dumpster along with about fourteen others during a wild-eyed mid summer cleaning I did to prepare for a realtor's upcoming visit to tell us how to best sell the house in the fall. I hadn't noticed the difference between trash and his treasures. But that's not part of this story, really.

The story is that I saw my husband cry when we figured out this bag was lost. Not because of the Sirius radio, nor the important city paperwork lost in the dump. And not even, because of the four hundred dollar bike racing computer thing that was tossed. And they weren't duck noise type tears, just a few tears of defeat snuck in when he thought I wasn't looking. A defeat I hadnt' seen yet with the broken shoulder. He wasn't going to race again for a very long time. He had metal in his shoulder, and had yet to move his arm. His life temporarily sucked, and he hadn't yet realized this. But having his things--the important things that bike racers hold dear--having these things placed into a trash bag, and loaded into a dumpster by his wife insulted him to the core, may have even re-injured his shoulder and his pride. This is the man who never sulks. He is carefree to the point of infuriating others with his rastafarian attitude toward life. Don't worry, be happy may as well be tattooed on his forehead. But at the moment of realization--his things were likely loaded into the trash and the trash was dumped this morning--he caved.

And I walked away. I went to the stairs for some reason and stood there stairing at the wooden steps. And I said inside my head: God please give us back his things.

And the next day my husband opened our roll-out dumpster to drop in the morning's trash and there were two bags stuck in some goo at the bottom of the can. One of them was the bag from the front seat of his car.

So God is back. Jesus, I'm afraid hasn't visited in a while. Maybe I'll see if he's available next week.

To Unexpected Cash

So I'm driving home from my office tonight. It's past six and I've called my husband several times to say I'm on my way, I'm sorry, I'll be home in 20-10-40-five more minutes I swear. And i pull up to the first light and look down. I'm driving my husband's car, because of the broken collarbone thing (it's a stick and his shoulder now contains metal plates and screws) and I see the gas light is on. Way on. And i have no idea how long you get once the light comes on in this car, where as in my own, I know that I get about five more rides before I really ought to get some gas. And I hate pumping gas. But there's this Sinclair station right near my office, and I really like the station because this very cool black man who drives this giant shiny black truck with neon lights underneath bought this and the car wash across the street and turned them both into these brightly lit beacons of light where there used to be a ratty old closed up fallen down filling station that I would have never even considered pulling into.

So I pulled into the station and there's eight pumps and seven are in use and I maneuver the little stick over into the one empty spot and I start to turn off the engine and I remember that the tank is on the other side in this car. So i pull ahead a few feet and start on a three point turn and just as I start to pull in to my pump, this bitch in a blue something or other pulls into my space stopping about five inches from the front of my car. It took me a moment to sort this out in my brain, as I was reeling a bit from the shock of the stolen gas pump and i had visions of this scene from fried green tomatoes where this young bitch in a sports car swings in front of this older woman to steal her spot and the woman begins repeatedly ramming the young girl's parked car, and I just stared at the girl with this dumbfounded look on my face (i may have mouthed fucking whore, but I'm not certain) and pulled around a jeep wrangler that had just entered the scene and headed for the newly empty spot on the other side of the lot.

Well, I rounded the station squeezing around all the hungry cars and started to pull in to my space when out of nowhere the jeep wrangler (red, like mine was when I was young and cool with my long hair and the top down) screeched (i'm not kidding, screeched) around the corner and landed in front of my pump. I do believe i laughed a short hysterical laugh at that point, and I also believe I made eye contact with the jeep bitch when I said fucking whore again (she smiled) and then I fumed out of the station (literally) and continued my trek through the hill on my way home.

I was driving up Columbia fuming about the whores when I got this sudden flashback to my yoga class earlier, and swore Buddha himself told me to calm the fuck down and to stop carrying the fucking bitches. So I did the full yoga breath that my instructor taught us today and I tried to let it go a little. Then I remembered the station at Kingshighway would be at least in walking distance if I did indeed putter out on the way home.

I made it to the other station just fine, and chose my pump based on the two that were available for the handicapped cars with the pumps on the wrong side, pulled in for my gas and got out to pump. I was feeling a little calmer now and did the credit card thing, turned on the pump, briefly acknowledged the man in the pimp-my-ride who had turned on his car alarm once or twice from inside his car just enough to get my attention (I figure I'm good for maybe three more years of pimp-my-ride appreciation so I'm generally gracious during the occasional flirt these days) Frankly I'd almost forgotten about the whores completely by this time, and I hung up the pump, closed up my tank, hit yes for a receipt, waited, and then walked around the car to my door, opened it, sat down, reached over to pull the door shut and glanced down at a roll of cash lying there on the asphalt under my car door. I believe I heard heavenly music and saw the money actually glow.

Now how often does this happen?

I couldn't believe it at first. I looked around to sort out the situation but couldn't. The only thing I COULD do was pick up the money, scan the gas pumps quickly, confirm that there was nobody looking around for a lost wad of cash, thank my lucky whores and pull out of the station. What the hell? Pimp my ride was long gone and there was nobody else nearby looking a hundred dollars poorer.

So I pulled into traffic and headed home, somewhat stoned from this unexpected highlight of my day.

The rest of bizarro night went like this: I get to the light and call C and say you're not going to believe this. He says: what'd you do run out of gas? This because I'm now an hour and a half later than I'd said I'd be. And I said no, there were these bitches and now I have like a hundred dollars and what would you do? Would you turn it in? And he said no way in hell. Found cash is yours. Now if it was a wallet or something you'd have to turn it in. But found cash lying around is the finders. There is no way anyone you bring that wad of cash to is going to do anything other than put it in their own pocket after you walk away, so that is yours baby. You got some money. Now this SORT of sounded like Buddha, but somehow not so much. Maybe it was the Gold Buddha, that fat and happy one in the chinese restaurants.

Now the strangest part of this entire truth-is-much-stranger-than-fiction tale is this: I got home, told my kids about my strange luck (I left out the fucking whores part) and started playing miniature soccer with them on the back deck. C brought me a Widmer. Now if you're a Widmer fan as we are, you know that we only recently got to start purchasing this fine Portland microbrewed Heifeweizen in St. Louis very recently because of some red tape with A-B's monopoly on the beer distribution in this city. Thankfully the ban on good beer is over, and we can now find Widmer in our favorite pub (O'Connell's) and the fancy grocery stores in town. Now if you drink Widmer, you also know that under every cap there is a prost--German for toast--to something or other--fresh starts, skirt-blowing breezes, drive thru liquor stores. The prosts are each different--we've rarely seen the same one twice--and reading them is fun, like opening fortune cookies, I suppose.

C poured a beer for me and sqeezed in a lemon. Then he brought me the icy cold glass of beer and my bottle cap. It read "A Prost...to Unexpected Cash."

Temporary Digs

So we're moving. Not far, mind you, just away from the degenerates in my backyard. I SO hate them, and this hatred is very very bad for my children. There are at least 8 people on the fire escapes hanging out/smoking dope/drinking beer/braiding each other's hair at any given moment. And there are six fire escapes overlooking my back yard. And the dopesmoking isn't what bothers me. It's more the loud talking way that certain people communicate in at all times. The loud talking "get yo mowfokin ass back in dis house fo I pop a cap in yo mowfokin ass stupid mowfoka." This from the mother (fucker) to her seven year old child, who now speaks to my children this same way when they go outside to swing. It is not a nice thing to try and enjoy a back yard, which we worked very very hard on for six years, building decks, swingsets, planting grass and growing a nice little oasis where there used to be a car graveyard. Urban pioneers we were, rehabbing this house in the hopes that the neighborhood was on its way back. It is, but just not in my backyard, unfortunately. And now we're prisoners--forced to our front porch by the fire escape dwellers spewing hatred at us from their stoops. We even tried several times to make friends with them, but I swear we come off looking like the stupid white people that are usually featured on movies that star nice black families (why is it that white people in black movies always look like they have sticks up their asses). C doesn't have a mustache or a combover and rarely wears khaki pants. I wanted so badly to teach my children there is no difference between people, and that there is no race better or worse than any other. So we live in the city and we buy the black baby dolls from Target and we try to not be intimidated when walking past a group of four black guys in white t-shirts holding up their pants. But then we go into our backyards to swing and we get "stupid mowfokin white ass bitch shut the hell up" from a seven year old with corn rows in response to "row row row your boat sung in time to my four year old's swinging. And even with a few years of Raven as one of their favorite tv shows, my youngest said the other day, you know what mom? I like Chelsea best on that show because she has a white ass, just like mine.

I give up.

4th of July

so my husband broke his collarbone in a bike race last sunday. and with a new titanium shoulder and eight screws as of this pas monday, I believe he qualifies as a bionic man now.

on the fourth, the girls and i took him breakfast in the hospital after a long day of visiting the day before. he was not well. he didn't eat and was kind of a grayish shade of white most of the day. we ended up going home to let him sleep more and returned to drive him home at about 4. he can't sleep because of the sling now and what with all the bolts inside his body, it makes for long nights and weird days. he's doing better today, and actually getting more and more color in his face by the hour, so things'll return to normal soon. I did find his bike rigged up to a trainer in the basement last week (before the surgery) and i believe it was down there so i wouldn't know he was riding while on pain pills and in a sling with a fractured clavicle. he's truly addicted in a frightening way.

this was our fourth of july night: the girls and i drove to webster for a carnival in the rain. we wore rain coats and carried two canvas lawn chairs and two umbrellas. after spinning wildly on a tilt a whirl, and snapping a few wet photos of the girls on a car carousel, we threw a dart at a balloon and won bracelettes before the fireworks started booming and we plopped our two chairs down in the center of this muddy sloggy carnival, close enough that they made a sort of love seat, and lay back with the umbrellas just covering our foreheads and watched the most fantastic fireworks show i've seen in st. louis. maybe it was the company. or the rain and the much muted crowd because of it. but i agree with my four year old jellybean of a daughter who said at one point mom? i had no IDEA there was a holiday that was this much fun.

tough decisions

So I can't decide: start smoking or train for the Disney Marathon in January. Both sound equally appealing at the moment. But one I can do from my new porch swing.