Slightly Compromised; or I’m Sure I’ll Be Fine

My memory used to travel down seasonal paths.

What’s that?  What restaurant?  Oh, yeah!  When were we last there?  I remember it was cold, but no snow.  Was it November?  I remember wearing the “winter white” coat, the one with the fabulous collar.  And Diana wore flats with no socks?  How does she stay warm?  Oooh, and do you remember the restaurant on the lake?  Peg was there.  She wore a one-piece pantsuit she came to regret around the end of her second drink.

People.  I remember hanging out with people, sometimes in large groups.  We sat next to each other, broadly grinning into each other’s faces.  Sometimes we hugged or sang karaoke.  

Now?  The sun rises, falls.  Little changes but maybe my shirt.  When did I last wear a pair of pants with a zipper?  Was it yesterday?  Was it last week?    Does it matter?  

Is there anyone keeping score?

Pearl, to borrow a phrase, has become unstuck in time.

I mean, don’t get me wrong.  I hear people.  Sometimes I even see people.  Almost five months into a work-from-home situation that I would’ve thought far more pleasurable than it actually is, there are people on Zoom. 

There are people just over that fence.  People on TV.  People upstairs. 

But are they present?  Nay, my friend.  Pearl – who now refers to herself in the third person, occasionally with what she imagines to be a 19^th century English accent – can go days without a mask-to-mask conversation.  Unless, of course, we’re talking about the mask I’ve adhered to the wall, the one I call “Wilson”.

Wilson and I are tight.  

It’s like he can read my mind.

Perhaps things will be better in the fall.  I’ll find that coat, maybe get a mask to match.  Wilson and I will go out, split an order of fries.  Maybe share a straw.

It will be magical.

Shake, Rattle, and WHO LEFT THIS HERE?!

I took a good hard fall Friday night.  What?  No, there wasn’t drinking involved!  Why would you even say that?

Oh.  Yeah, well.  Good point.

But no.  Drinking was not involved.  It was a clean fall, a perfectly reasonable fall that included a sloping sidewalk, an armful of recyclables, and a child’s bicycle that had not been there just 10 minutes before.

Knees.  Palms.  Ribs.  Wrists.  ELBOW.

Much elbow.

When given the option of not charging briskly into a prone bicycle, my advice is to take it. 

Since then, of course, I’ve been listening to my body complain: an exclamation from my back, a shout from wrist.  Even my eardrums, afraid of being left out, have hollered once or twice.  I’ve begun imagining myself as a skeleton, clacking and jiving down the mean streets of Minneapolis. There may be a jaunty hat involved, something I tip at all the other skeletons.  I’ve got an index finger in the air, wagging it to an imaginary beat.  Howdy-howdy, what’s buzzin’, cousin? 

Not sure why, but my skeleton sounds like she’s from the 40s, a wise-crackin’ skeleton, see?  A killer-diller dame with moxie.

From one set of bones to another, Happy Monday.

Oh, Just Shut Up and Lie Down Somewhere

I’ve been sitting here for, oh, three days or so, breathing through my mouth and contemplating a future in voice-over.

Surely everyone would be as amused as I with my voice?  Somewhere between the croak of a hungover amphibian and the creak of a rusty hinge, I amuse myself intermittently with “Ave Maria” and my impersonation of me, with a cold.

“What’s that, Pearl?  You’d like some cough syrup?  Ha ha ha!  You don’t have any!”

Apparently Prior Pearl has failed Present Pearl in this.

She will be spoken to. 

Through the advances of technology, of course, I am no longer just sick, but I am now Sick and Working From Home, or as we in the business like to say, “Swiffing”.  Working in this state leads directly to emails that begin “Come in, Tokyo!” and end “Hugs and Kisses, Pearl”.

I may be exaggerating.  Or maybe not.  I worked until 10:00 last night, and who knows what those last few emails said?  Sure, I could check; but what’s the fun in that?  Better I wait for a response – or some sort of communique from Human Resources.

In the meantime, Dolly Gee Squeakers (formerly of the Humane Society Squeakers) is confused.  She crawls in and out of the backpack in which I brought the laptop home, mews piteously at her food bowl (which is only three quarters of the way full), walks from the couch to the dining room table back to the couch in hopes that I will join her.

Cats.  What do they know, huh?

I've Gone Straight

I recently started seeing a chiropractor.

This, after a lifetime of disparaging them.

It was a medical doctor who got me started.  “No matter what,” he said, “never let anyone “crack” your neck.  It will paralyze you.”  He tapped the x-ray of my neck, a crooked, convoluted depiction of a Jenga tower, with the end of a pen liberated from a Holiday Inn.

“Really?”

“Absolutely,” he said.  “Never see a chiropractor.”

So I didn’t.  Because if there’s one thing that can be said of me, it’s that I’ll listen when it’s convenient.

And so to compensate for the increasing instability of my neck I took up yoga.  And wearing one of those bags of uncooked rice you heat up in the microwave.  And purchasing pillows.

And margaritas.

And it all worked until the day it stopped working, the day I couldn’t raise my left arm, couldn’t pull a shirt over my head, couldn’t raise my own margarita glass.

“Hmm,” says the doctor.  “What pharmacy do you use?”

And so I consulted with a professional, took out a small loan; and am here, before you once again, as a woman with two sets of fully functioning limbs.

I go twice a week, where a small and intensely chatty woman hooks me up to electricity and heat lamps.  This is then followed by another woman – not as small but just as chatty – who tells me to relax and then bends my spine to her will.

I take back all the things I said about chiropractors.

I Haven’t Always Been as Hot as I am Now

I regularly burst into flame.

Of course, you wouldn’t know it to look at me.

Or maybe you would.  It’s hard to have one’s internal temperature moved to “Bake” – and without permission! – and not give it away.

Take, for instance, the flush of my downy pink cheeks.  There’s a giveaway.  What once spoke of a day in the sun now shouts of increasing distraction and the urge to get into some sort of hollering match, preferably one in which I am absolutely in the right, something that perhaps ends with a massage and offers of treats.

“You can’t tell by looking at you,” he says, turning on the fan.

“But it’s true,” I say.  “I’ve been set to Intermittent Broil.”

He says these things, perhaps, because it’s in his best interest.  Or so I imagine.  Frankly, while I like to envision myself as somewhat formidable, I’m just not that scary.  I rarely shout, berate, or demand, in general; but I am beginning to see why some women do.

“I see perimenopause as the reverse of puberty,” I tell a friend.  “Whatever your puberty was like, it’s going to come up again.”

She shakes her head.  “I’m gonna crawl out my bedroom window,” she says, “looking for parties.”

“Me,” I say, “I’m going to burst into tears.”

She nods.  “Probably do that, too.  Hey – can we write our boyfriends’ names over and over on something?”

“Only if you call mine and ask him if he like-likes me.”

We are quiet for a moment.

“You want to go to Dairy Queen?” she asks. 

I rise.  “Think they will let me stand in the walk-in cooler?”

Sneezy Rider

Monday morning:  After a brief dabbling into sidewalk ice-dancing, followed by a light bit of graffiti-scraping at the bus stop (whoever Coni is, he has clearly mistaken my bus stop for his), I found myself feeling my forehead with the back of my hand.

Am I feverish?

My head!  My head is enormous!  Was it this big when I left home this morning?  And my ears – does anyone else hear that buzzing?  And the eyeballs.  What’s with my eyeballs? 

I take out a compact, take a look. 

Holy cow, did I look like this when I left the house?

And that’s when the coughing begins.  And with each cough comes the explosions in my head – near the front, somewhere between knowing how to crochet and my scheme on how to notify someone that I am in distress (it involves holding and actually drinking a Bud Lite).

For decades, I have banked on the words of a blue-lidded dental hygienist.  Palpating the glands on each side of my jaw, she had said, “You never get sick.”

And since that day, I have relied on her wise words.  Do I get sick?  I do not.  And you want to know why?  Because a dental hygienist in the 80s told me that I didn’t.

But here I am.  With every cough, bits of my brain are hurtled toward the cranium, my eyes pop and water, my throat burns with indignity. 

I never get sick.

Unless, of course, I do.

Send soup and foot rubs. 

Mid-Winter Reflection; or Is that Brownie Batter on your Lips?

It bores even me to say it, but dang.

It’s cold.

It’s always been cold. 

As is common for my people at this time of year, I’ve clean forgotten the sodden heat of a Minneapolis summer; the brisk, clear skies of fall; the loamy, promising fragrance of a spring day. 

All that is, and ever was, is the possibility of an icy death.

It was eight below zero at the bus stop this morning.  I mention this not by way of bragging or inspiring your pity but simply so that I can then say this:  It’s going to warm up over 40 degrees by Saturday, all the way to freezing.

And don’t think that we don’t get a perverse pleasure out of saying things like that, out of pointing out to lesser, softer beings, that we regularly experience 100-degree swings in and out of our comfort zones.

Because we do get a perverse pleasure out of saying things like that.  This is what keeps us warm:  the knowledge that we are special, if not in our ability to “keep on keeping on” then in our ability to meet the bright, hectic look in our fellow Minnesotans’ eyes as we clap each other on the back whilst declaring “Ha!  Only nine more Mondays until spring!”

It is here where we shut our eyes, ever so briefly, and envision going home, whipping up a batch of brownie batter, and giving up, just laying in the tub hoping our absence at work goes unnoticed until the thaw.

It’s warming up 40 degrees this weekend.   

Only nine more Mondays until spring.

Well It’s Not Like I Signed Up For It

I have friends who aren’t sure, exactly, if they’ve ever seen a cold sore.  This amazes me, as I’m pretty sure that everyone in my family – and we’re counting the cousins as well – is a carrier.

“We’re not even a huggy, kissy family,” I explain to friends. "I mean, babies, yeah.  Babies are open game.  We kiss the dickens out of babies."

“Huh,” they say, looking for an exit.

“Seriously,” I  say.  “I can’t remember ever kissing my parents on the lips.”

This is usually met with some sort of blank stare and then a broad grin.  We are, after all, Midwesterners. 

Kissing on the lips is meant for your wedding night.

I point out, of course, that the cold sore is caused by a virus, that nothing will get rid of it, that it’s not something I picked up whilst working as a carnie, nor was it part of a two-for-one deal with any other crusty-sored display of dubious affections.

This is met with exactly the kind of response one expects amongst the smart-aleck set.

And so it was Easter this last Sunday.  There was ham, there was asparagus, there was a lemon pound cake that I begged my mother for.  And there were stories.

My mother is holding a bottle of water.  The ham was particularly salty, and we are all swollen as ticks.

She regards the bottle.  “Isn’t it funny?  Bottled water?”  She takes a drink.  “You know, there was 14 of us kids growing up.  Mom would keep this big pail of water in the kitchen, and when you wanted a drink, why, there was a big ladle in there.  You’d go in, grab that ladle and drink as much as you could.”  She shakes her head, amused.  “Bottled water,” she says. 

And there’s another mystery solved. 

Why does the family have cold sores?

Well ladle me tell you a story…

Maybe I'll Just Lay Down for A Bit...

You may not know this to look at me, but at one point I was capable of sleeping well into the early afternoon.

O, how I miss those days.  The bed was a warm, comforting place, a place from which I easily dreamt elaborately scripted scenes of world-wide adoration.  Freshly minted coins bearing my likeness dropped from hot air balloons; sumptuous desserts were stacked one upon another, teetering precariously over banquet tables lined with well-wishers; banners were strung from lamp post to lamp post proclaiming the virtues of my excellent posture, my dainty foot, my ability to do the splits in one direction but not the other…

And then, as we say, I woke up.

When did I stop being able to sleep? 

It may be in my blood.

We’re not a family of sleepers.  Both of my parents, for example, give the early-morning impression of having been up for hours.  Look at them, with their pressed pants, their tiny little teefers glinting in the sunlight.  It’s 6:00 a.m. and they’ve hit the ground running.

These people are ready to take on the world.

It’s a heavy responsibility, being their child.

Sleeping in is considered a treat in my neck of the woods.  I came to know this the morning my grandfather leaned over my sleeping form at 5:30 a.m. and said, in a low, Midwestern kind of voice, “Sleepin’ in?  What is it, your birthday?”

Even at five, I could sense an obligation that would stay with me for the rest of my life. 

But now, the sleep I once welcomed and held with chubby, loving arms eludes me, shows up in the early afternoon to tease me, a handsome sandman of temptation whispering in my ear, “Why don’t you just lay down?  Go on, take a nap.”

You can ask my mother, however, about my stance on naps.  Naps, as I once explained to her, are for babies. 

Tired, overworked, sleepy babies.

What are the odds that someone will hand me a bottle (a nice ale, perhaps), take my shoes off, and make me lay down right after lunch?

“You don’t have to sleep,” they’ll say.  “You just have to be quiet for an hour.”

Oh, but I’ll complain:  I don’t wanna take a nap!  I wanna stay up!

And then I will drink my bottle, lay down and close my eyes and dream dreams of greatness.  And cakes.

Greatness and cakes.

Wherein My Body has a Good Talk with my Brain

My body has had quite a lot to say recently.

It started talking last Thursday, when I developed the headache that I now carry with me at all times.  Oddly enough, this headache, while making me squint and periodically push my fingers into my eye sockets until  colors explode with black and red abandon, has not put me in a particularly bad mood. 

“I’m the same way,” my sister says.  “Why let pain get in the way of a good time?”

Still, I’ve been subconsciously reaching for my temples for days.

“Kinda expect to find a vise there, don’t you?”  This from my body. 

“Yes,” I admit.  “I reach up, expecting to find a bolt, a set of calipers perhaps.  And yet, I find nothing.  I don’t know what’s going on. ”

“Wait’ll tomorrow,” my body says.  “Hoo, boy.”

“Hoo, boy?”  I frown.  “What does that mean?”

My body shrugs, snaps open a newspaper and pretends to be deep in thought.  “Hmm.  Says here we can expect falling temperatures.”

My brain squeezes itself past the pressure being applied to my eyeballs and barks a mirthless sound approximating a laugh.  “Ha!  You do realize it’s February in Minnesota?  You can repeat the words “falling temperatures” until March.”

The brain, she squints at the body.  “Are you, sir, toying with me?”

And for the first time since puberty, my body sets down its paper and looks my brain square in the face.

“One,” it says, “I need you to drink more water.”

“But I’m not from –“

“For cryin’ eye, Brain, if I hear that tired old line about not being from water-drinking people one more time, I’m going to take you to a strip club.”

“Well I shan’t go,” the brain says.  “It’s exploitation.”

The body shrugs.  “Some of them are nice to look at.”

The brain purses its lips primly.  “Do shut up.”

“And sleep,” the body goes on, “I want more sleep.”

Silence from the brain.  The brain likes to stay up.

“And the neti pot.  You said you’d use it more often.  It’s a very dry time of year, and my nasal passages are aching.”

The brain nods cautiously.  “I found myself cogitating on this just the other day, that the headache may, perchance, be the inadvertent result of self-created dehydration.”

The body snorts in disgust.  “And I’m cogitating,” it says, “of giving you a swirly, you keep that kinda talk up.”

“A swir—“

“I’m gonna stick my head – full of you, brain-face – in the toilet and keep flushing until you shut up.”

The brain blinks slowly, rises, clears its throat.  “Upon further reflec – um, I’m thinking that perhaps you know best in this case, my dear body.  In bed tonight by 9:00, I promise.”

“And water?  You’ll drink more water?”

“I shall make a concerted effort.”

The body heaves a sigh of relief.   “You’re a good brain when you try.”

The House on the Hill; or, Hey. That Was Kind of Scary.

“Tell me a favorite story of yours that you haven’t told yet,” she says. 

I look off to the left, slightly upward, and think.  “I have one,” I say, “I don’t know if it’s my favorite or anything, but I have one.”

I take a drink of my Diet Coke, lick my lips.  “It was 1981,” I say, “and I was 19 years old.”

The House on the Hill

Art’s got a cherry car.

“What year is this?”

He walks to the hood, pats it fondly.  “1967 Camero Convertible.”

“It’s beautiful,” I say.

“Canary Yellow,” he says, “The color, I mean.”

I run my hand along the top of the driver’s seat.  “Is this leather?”

“Mm-hmm.”  There is a slight pause as he hits upon a thought.  “You want to drive it?”

“Me?  Drive this?”  I turn to look outside, past the open garage door.  It is late June, and Minnesota is postcard pretty, all blues and greens. 

There isn’t a cloud in the sky.

“Yeah,” he says.  “Why not?  You got a license.” 

I open the car door, throw my purse onto the front seat.  I turn to him, and he tosses me the keys.

The lakes are beautiful.   We crawl, 15 miles an hour, as is befitting the stature of the car, along with the other beautiful cars on the tree-lined, sunlight-dappled parkway circling Lake Calhoun.  Art leans over, touches my hair.

“Hey!” I laugh.

He straightens up, puts his back to the passenger seat, smiling.  “It’s pretty,” he says.

There is a heavy, rumbling to our right.  We both turn to look. 

“Halleluiah,” Art breathes.

“What is that?”

“That’s a 1967 Pontiac GTO.  360 horsepower.  Hey!”  Art leans toward the car.  “Great car, man!”

“Thanks, man!”

The light changes, and the two cars inch forward together.  There is talk of engines and paint jobs, glass etching and lift kits.  I ignore it all. 

I am awash in the feeling of the sun on my shoulders.

“Hey.”

Art is talking to me.

“Huh.”

“You want to go up to these guys’ place?  I said we would.”

I frown at him.  “Then what’re you asking me for?”

He grins.  “Follow them.”

And I do, follow them to some neighborhood somewhere on some street.  Who knows where it is?  Summer is here and the sky is so blue.

The Pontiac turns right and up a long driveway.  I pull over at the front of the house.  The yard is large, surprisingly large for the city, and slopes upward to a house.  It is a plain house with a large porch at the front.  It is beige, or maybe white. 

I stare at it.

And Art stares at me.  “Are we going up?”

“You go,” I say. 

He gives me a look, then shrugs and opens the door.  I watch as he trudges up the front yard, as he mounts the porch stairs.

A heaviness has settled on my chest.  I watch as they talk, as the men from the GTO point in my direction, watch as Art shrugs.

My father tells the story of driving in a blizzard in the late 50s, hours of dark, lonely road with nothing but the driving snow hitting his windshield, a one-colored spinning kaleidoscope.  After coming close to falling asleep, he spots a man’s open hand coming toward him, flying down the road, larger and larger until the hand is directly in front of the car.  And so he did, my father will tell you, exactly what the hand commanded.  He pulled over, and he slept two hours under the backseat blanket he kept for just such an occasion.

And I am reminded of my father as, before my eyes, a shadow falls over the porch and everything and everyone on it.

The sky is blue. 

The porch is dark. 

Art is on the porch, and he is nodding.

He trots down the sloping front yard.

“Hey!  Pearl!  Come on up.”

I shake my head.

He leans on the passenger’s door.  “They want you to come up.“

“No,” I say.  I shake my head.  “There’s something weird up there.”

“You can’t just sit out here.”

“I can,” I said.  “And I will.”

Art is taken aback.  “What’s going on?”

I shake my head again, serious as death.  “I can’t go up there.  I can’t explain, but I can’t and I won’t and if you try to make me go up there I will dig in my heels and try to pull one of your eyeballs out.”  My mouth goes dry. 

“Whoa!  Whoa!”  Art laughs.  “OK, OK, I get it.”  He looks up toward the porch.  “Yeah, I don’t care.  I’ll just go up there and tell them we’re takin’ off.”

I start the car as he lopes to the house, then turn to dig through my purse for the stick of gum I hope is there.

There is a murmur of voices – wheedling, insistent voices that get louder, louder until --   

“NO.  SHE SAID SHE AIN’T COMIN’ UP!”

I look up.  Art is charging down the hill. 

He climbs into the car.  “Burn rubber, baby. They can get bent.”

I don’t need to be told again, and I don’t look back.  “Bent?” I say, pulling away.  “Why can they get bent?”

He is breathing heavily.  “They didn’t want me there, they wanted you there.  I mean, they didn’t really say anything I can put my finger on, but I don’t think those guys were right in the head.”

I can feel him staring at the side of my face.

“What did they want?” he says.  “Pearl.  Was that weird?”

I shake my head.  “We’ll never know what it was,” I say.   

And I shudder.