Lullabuys

Insomnia can lead you into an entire world of weird.  

Have you ever tried to trick yourself into falling back to sleep after awakening at 2:35am?  The more you concentrate on sleep, the more it eludes you.  The first time I faced insomnia, I thought I could just ignore it.   An hour and a half later, lying there irritated and wide awake, I finally gave up and decided to do a load of laundry.  That was sixteen years ago; I was pregnant with my first child, and I’ve had insomnia ever since. 

Now, when I wake up at 3:40, I jump into action immediately, sometimes starting not just a load of laundry, but a pot roast or an epic novel. 

I am convinced my insomnia is hereditary, or related to age or hormones, fueled by caffeine, maybe alcohol.  In short, I have no idea.  But I also have no interest in fixing it.  I have learned to embrace it, concluding that I can either battle in vain, or surrender.  Or watch infomercials. 

Watching late-night television is similar to visiting a creepy aquarium.  I’ve stumbled upon some unusual creatures- a rare melon from Southern France that contains the secret to younger-looking skin.  Or a strange religious man who offers to sew your seed for $58.00, so you can get a fresh start on life.  There is a bizarre yet very cold pillow, apparently designed to help those who are dripping with sweat at bedtime.  It’s called the “Chillow” which is what they should call that French melon.

Then there’s Beachbody, as well as a device to vacuum-pack your linens, or a portable heating pot that warms food without overcooking or burning anything.  There seems to be an underground market for hair- men want it, women want it removed.  In my haze, I imagined starting an exchange program.   

The other night, I raised the bar, migrating over to PBS for a change, unexpectedly catching a refresher course in history, revisiting both the Gettysburg Address, and the grim life of Lee Harvey Oswald.  I guess I never realized what a lunatic he was, or that his suspicious behavior went virtually undetected prior to the assassination of our president.  I became so disturbed by his activities that, by the time Dear Abe stepped up to the podium in the next segment, I was positively desperate for a morsel of hope.  And Lincoln delivered: 272 words of succinct eloquence.  By 4:50, I was in tears, vowing to be a better American, and to uphold the Constitution whenever possible.  I was so distraught and overheated, I almost ordered a Chillow.

Unfortunately, I paused long enough to finally catch up with the Kardashians, confirming that there is nothing to catch.  And I still can’t figure out why Cindy Crawford is peddling cosmetics in the middle of the night.  Certainly she has something better to do.  She seems so nice.  I just worry that she is going to let that man sew her seed for $58.00.  

Megan Davis Collins embraces insomnia.  Email her at megdavcol@gmail.com

Mama Say Mama Saw

We all know motherly advice.  One asks every time she sees her daughter if she’s had a productive bowel movement, reminding her to eat her fiber.  Another focuses on hydration.  Have you had your eight glasses?  My mom’s aunt would always call out “Come back like you went!”  In early years, she was referring to honesty and integrity.  Later, she was talking chastity.

Don’t talk to strangers, or swim right after eating. Wash your hands, don’t bite your fingernails.   

Oddly, my mother used to push shoulder pads.  After discovering that a sturdy set could make one’s neck look longer, she became a crusader.  Big interview?  Get your shoulder pads!  Feeling slouchy? Shoulder pads!

We desperately try to save our kids from mistake we’ve made.  My husband’s great grandmother repeatedly told him to take care of his teeth: brush twice a day, floss, don’t eat hard candy.   Having grown up in the age of poor dental hygiene, she knew what it meant to lose a mouthful of teeth.

The more we experience life, the more we become aware of what can go wrong.  Bend your knees if you stand too long.  And we just want to tell our children how to avoid some of the awful things we’ve seen.   Wear your seat belt, don’t hitchhike, and remember the solar glare!  Don’t answer the door, even if he’s wearing a gas company hat.  Never tell someone your social security number over the phone.  Don’t share drinks, or lick your hands after feeding a cow. 

Our awareness has been so heightened, even doctors, coaches and clergy are no longer automatically trusted.

Don’t leave your drink at a party.  Even if it’s just soda, someone can spike it or slip you a “roofie” and then assault you.  Never accept a drink from someone you don’t know, even if it’s in a can.   Wipe off all flip-top lids in case they’ve been tainted with drugs or poison.   This really creates pressure for those trying to follow mom’s other advice to stay hydrated.  

In this cruel world, I often wonder if I’ve underestimated the shoulder pad.  It does make you look bigger and perhaps more threatening.  Some of those outfits transform a petite woman into a linebacker.  You could also probably hide a weapon in one, a GPS locator in the other.  And let’s face it:  if you’re wearing shoulder pads, you have purpose.  You’re heading somewhere- to work, a seminar, your arraignment.  Someone is waiting or looking for you.  An assailant would definitely have trouble wrestling you to the ground or into a car if you were packing pads.

 As my daughter gets ready to go out, I anticipate the inevitable eye roll as I remind her not to set her drink down anywhere.  I know I only have a few moments to ply her with all the advice I think she may need for the night.  

And I feel a strong urge to slip her a few shoulder pads.

 

Megan Davis Collins, LICSW loves a good dose of motherly advice. Email her megdavcol@gmail.com  

Hey, Has Anyone Ever Told You That You Look Like….?

 

                I have learned to appreciate my pleasant but not super-attractive looks, grateful even for not being a bombshell.  I began to see how annoying it would be to have people staring or clawing at you all day, lurking around you as you try to shop or walk or order a drink.   

                So, over the years, I have cherished the occasional comment about my beauty- (three to be exact, and one was my grandmother.)  I always felt like I had basically settled into a pleasant cross between Danny Partridge and Angela Lansbury. 

                       So, over the course of my lifetime, I have been injected with just enough confidence to be ready for a compliment when it comes my way.   

                As my husband and I pulled into O’Connors parking lot, an older woman approached our car tentatively and confused us slightly by asking Jeff a question about some batteries and a fire alarm.   

                She looked at me coyly, pulled another box out of her plastic bag and began peppering Jeff with questions about the expiration date on another smoke detector.  But she seemed to have another agenda.  Then she made her move.  She leaned in, over Jeff and pointed right at me.  “I thought you were that singer”, she confessed with amusement, “ I thought, is she really here?”

                I perked right up. It didn’t matter that this person might have been senile, or even blind

                  When she mentioned the possibility of me being a famous singer, I melted just a little bit.  I turned to face her, as I if I understood how she could have made such a mistake.  It happens all the time, I seemed to say.

                 Famous Singer?  Not Madonna? I was hoping for Katy Perry.  Or Pink? But this woman was in her eighties.  Carly Simon?  Who do I look like?  Joni Mitchell?  It couldn’t be Jewel:  there are limits to my beauty, after all.   

                “Yeah that singer from Scotland on America’s Got Talent, what’s her name?”  My jaw dropped:  “Susan Boyle?”  “Yes!  I came right over to see if it could really be her.”

                I was frozen.    DID SHE JUST ASK ME IF I COULD REALLY BE SUSAN BOYLE?

                I sat stunned in the front seat, as Jeff entertained her with answers, guesses really, about her purchases and whether she should return anything.  I had tuned out by then.     

                   As I got out of the car, I approached my little friend.   Was I looking for a fight? A second opinion?   She looked me over and then apologized, saying that now that I was out of the car, I didn’t really look like her.   Relieved, I hugged her.  Then the truth hit me.  We strolled arm in arm into O’Connor’s, my eighty-three year old admirer with her bagful of expired smoke detectors and me- the one she thought was almost, but not quite, as cute as Susan Boyle.

 

Nothing To Fear

Our fears are often uniquely personal, some grounded, some irrational, and people can’t talk us out of them.    What scares me may actually amuse or even bore you.  

Between my sister and me, we fear much of the natural world: tornadoes, black ice, salamanders, toads and inch worms.

I don’t like heights or confined spaces, so flying poses a problem.  I often joke that it wouldn’t be so bad if we could just go a little lower.  Why can’t the aircraft hover at a comfortable 30 feet? With the windows open?

My sister once waited in her car in the driveway, for a glassy-eyed chameleon to leave her front stoop.   We kidded her, still in her work uniform, paralyzed by a tiny reptile minding its own business on her doorstep.  I tried to explain that if she just opened the car door, the thing would dart away.  But, you can’t always talk someone out of fear.

And no one was talking me out of my fear of car washes, thanks to an old car with a back window that didn’t close completely.  During a car wash, sudsy water gushed in.  Naturally, someone seated back there could easily develop a fear of car washes.  Or, more accurately, a fear of drowning by gushing, foamy water, or of suffocating by a large whirring brush.

Elevators present another issue for me:  My father introduced us to New Orleans by bringing us up the outside of a tall building, in a glass elevator, defying both logic and my survival instinct.  My body told me repeatedly to get out of the transparent box that was creeping up the side of a building.  So I shrunk in the corner and screamed, while he pointed out various landmarks and historical sights.  In the other corner, my sister had her own problems to sort through, immobilized by a nearby spider.  He wasn’t talking us out of anything.  Not even the elevator.

Once, while driving in the Midwest during torrential rains and thunderstorms, my worst fear spun into town.  Barreling west on the interstate, I tracked an impending tornado on the radio.  Like a misguided storm chaser, wrinkled map clutched in one hand, steering wheel gripped in the other, I tried to outrun the twister that was heading right at us from the South, temporarily forgetting my fear of hydroplaning and leaking backseat windows.  I couldn’t pull over, due to my other fear of being slammed from behind by an eighteen-wheeler.   

Desperate for reassurance, I tried to wake my sleeping sister who could barely open her eyes as she scolded me for being too loud.  I wanted to tell her there was a salamander on the dashboard. 

My baby sister, the one who couldn’t look a toad in the eye, had yawned through my biggest fear, essentially talking me out if it.  Her calm during my storm was just what I needed to gain some perspective. 

And to realize that I would have been safer on an airplane.

A Milano in the moment tastes better than despair...but after you've swallowed it, the pain is still there...

Trumpet Tears

I’ve always told my children that they should find balance between sports and the arts.  I thought they should play an instrument.  And they did.  Until they told me they didn’t want to any more.  I forced it for a while, but even I knew that resuscitating a silenced piano with forced lessons helps no one; nurturing and encouraging can quickly become bribing and intimidating. 
 

Throughout all of the music lessons, I temporarily enjoyed the sounds of banging drums, fumbling piano keys, even the nasally whine of the recorders until finally, I was rewarded with the melancholy sound of my son’s trumpet. 

When my son fell in love with the French horn at a concert, I was thrilled.  He carried that passion for years, playing the trumpet first, to build up to the complexity of the French horn.  And he was a decent player.  I imagined him playing Taps one day. 

 

Then the inevitable happened.  His friends dropped out, one by one.  The music became more difficult.  He got too hungry on the band bus after school.  He stopped practicing.  Then one day, he forgot the lesson altogether.  So did I.

We tried a variety of approaches (bribes).  Ok you can have a donut when you go to band.   You can stay up to watch that show if you practice for 20 minutes.  If I don’t hear that trumpet, you’re not going to hear that iPod!  And then finally, slowly, I came to my senses, remembering that you can’t extort passion from someone.  Nor should you.  A parent’s job is to lead the baby horse to water, not to dunk its head in it.

I’m not sure why I was slightly tearful when we finally told him he could quit playing trumpet.  True, I was mourning his childhood a bit, witnessing perhaps the last musical instrument to come bellowing through our house.  But was I also watching him say goodbye to his passion simply because it became too difficult?  Had I sent my son the wrong message by letting him quit?   Did we teach him enough about the value of practice and discipline? 

 

Then I thought of my son, this child who stays out in the backyard catching pop flies until well past dark,   the same boy who clears away snow in the driveway, so he can practice his foul shots.  I’ve seen him scramble out of bed early on Saturday morning to catch his dad heading to the field with the dog, in the hopes that if he brings his bat and glove, he might get in some hitting or pitching practice, this kid who goes to basketball games just to take shots on the empty nets on the other side of the gym. 

My son didn’t get the wrong message about quitting.  And he didn’t miss the lesson on the value of practice and discipline.

When he set down his trumpet, this boy wasn’t saying goodbye to his passion; he was making room for it.

 

Twittering in My Boots

Ok I just did a trial run, sending invitations out to some friends to this blog.  I sent one to myself, because the first round of invitations didn't go out properly.  Well, they went out, but they are still out.  They never landed.   My column in the paper this week has my name under a picture of a local artist...somehow, funny flattering and awkward.  I hope she laughs the way Jeff and I did this morning...I may ask her if I can just use that picture since it is much better than any of mine...

Dirty details...exerpts

But, no matter the type of detail, let me be clear: when I take the time to send a text, I like a little something back.  Even if you want to talk about halogen headlights or rack-and-pinion steering.  Give me something.  What I do not want to find, ever, when I open a text, is this:  k
That makes me want to send back this: fu
 At least say something like:  “k let’s do lunch sometime” or “k how awesome are you??!”   Every time I see that lame little k, with nothing else, I become enraged.  
If people who feel overwhelmed by too many details have the right to say TMI, then I am going to start saying NEI (NOT ENOUGH INFORMATION)  
Then when they tell me to STFU, I’ll just say “k”.  See how they like it.

As I began my run this morning, I was distracted by the smell of BO.   Running can be difficult for me, especially as I first try to get going, so this created quite a distraction for me.  After a few minutes, the smell became more distracting, almost suffocating.  How was it that I smelled this bad already? I don't even usually smell after a long run.  What was even more disturbing, I realized, and what became even more distracting about the BO, in addition to its strength, was that it was not mine.  Yeah, not my odor.  This was a pungent, tangy cross between raw onions and jambalaya.  Worsening the situation, seemingly by every pounding footstep, was that it seemed to be emanating from the shirt, rather than my body.  Reassuring in one sense to learn that I hadn't suddenly started smelling like cajun food, it was disarming (disarmpitting?) to realize that I had a fetid creepy shirt on belonging to someone else.  I had grabbed this shirt out of the laundry basket, clearly a basket of dirty, not clean, clothes... In any event, the smell became so distracting that I had to really work to keep my mind on my jog.  Because of my time limits, stopping to get another shirt was not an option, so I kept going.    In addition to being distracted and disgusted, I became confused, almost slightly disoriented.  Whose odor was this and how did it get on my shirt?   Not to sound too dramatic, but it felt like a haunting.  Changing after the run confirmed my fears.  I smelt virtually like a daisy, while the shirt carried the odors of pig farm, sprinkled with cumin.  I tossed the haunted shirt into the laundry, thankful to be free of the smell, but worried that I had yet another challenge for my jogging regimen, just one more excuse that I didn't need:  My time was off today, my shirt was haunted.

Take Two

My conversion from dog to cat person happened rather unexpectedly in 1993 when I went to meet my boyfriend’s family.

At dinner, as I pulled out my heavy chair, I found a large cat sleeping there.   The indignant Geraldine was not interested in meeting me and she was definitely not interested in giving up her seat for me.

 I slid into the seat and placed her on my lap.  She let out a little grumble but then put her head back down to resume her nap.    I loved her indifference, her absolute refusal to either appease me or assess me for in-law potential.   

When I told my boyfriend later that I wanted a cat, he said that it wasn’t a good idea, there would be fur everywhere.   

 The next day he called to say that he had found me a cat.  One lesson he had learned from his family, in addition to how to care for cats, is how to deal with women.  He figured that a cat would be coming to live with us, so he might as well at least have a hand in selecting the right one.

 We went to see Joe and his brood of kittens.  Joe immediately started his pitch:  You might as well take two.  It’s no more work and they can play together when you’re not home.   

I glanced over at Jeff, who was busy playing with a grey cat that had shimmied up the side of the tablecloth, pulling it down and scattering trinkets everywhere.

I had a small black kitten clinging to my chest.    

 Joe should have been selling cars, not cats.  We left with two.  That was fifteen years ago.

 I watch Edie pacing the floors now, my large black cat, panther-like in her restless movements.  She stops abruptly in the middle of a room, looks up, turns around and walks out, only to turn around a few minutes later.   In the middle of the night, I trip over her dark, confused form.      

 Her once-rambunctious brother Oscar has whittled his sturdy frame to a measly eight pounds, his spine jutting out under his silky grey fur.

  In their old age and illness, as in their youth, they are as different as two cats can be, he suffering physical disease, she with neurological decline.  Yet they are still as compatible as they were fifteen years ago, cleaning each other, curling up next to each other, dining together, squabbling.   

With more evidence of their incontinence, my husband and I grumble that we should string them up by their claws.  But we don’t.  We just toss out photos, children’s artwork, furniture and shoes that have been saturated in cat pee.

We deny their declining health until the day we have to accept the truth about our cats.       We finally make the difficult decision to help them die with dignity.

We agonize over the decision to euthanize them.  Pacing alongside Edie, I search for a sign to guide me.      

    In our uncertainty, we are sure about one thing.   These two entered the world together, and have spent their lives together.   When it is time to leave us, they will go together.

 The quality of their lives has deteriorated.  There is a restlessness that defines them.    

    We are unable to manage the mess of double feline incontinence any more.  The odor in our basement is a testament to our commitment to tolerate as much as we could.

    I search my soul.   I brush my cats and love them.  I pray for guidance, forgiveness and peace.  I remember Joe hustling us to take two so they could play with each other.  I now ask heaven for the same favor.   Dear God, please take two.

     Having spent a lot of our energy preparing the children, I completely underestimate how grief-stricken I will be after they are gone.   

       My days have been marked by swells of sadness so raw they leave me reaching out for my cats.  They have been the ones, after all, who have consoled me for the past fifteen years whenever I’ve been sad.

     The physical sensations are difficult to manage.  I see their shadows in the corner of the room, thinking I just missed the swish of a tail through the doorway.    I stop when I enter a room and am faced with an empty chair.     

       I still hear the quiet flup of footprints leaping off of a chair or table.  I swear I can hear Oscar prowling on the counters, the creak of him on the table, Edie grumbling as she passes below.  Getting into my desk chair, I still wait for that sudden movement behind me, nuzzling my back.

     At the risk of offending any humans, losing a pet can sometimes feel worse.  Few people spend as much time with us as our pets do.  They love us unconditionally.  They are ideal family members who never criticize, argue or disagree.   

     We comfort ourselves with the belief that they are still together, free from pain, discomfort or loneliness.  And that wherever they are, there’s a cat person to love them as much as we did.

 

Megan Davis Collins is a writer, social worker and mother living in Billerica, the town she loves to call home. Email her at megdavcol@gmail.com