Recently, a former client and current friend, rushed through my shop door turned and locked the door and stormed on back to my conference area. At first I thought, "Wow, if she is going to close my business she best be having a fat checkbook with her". But as she came in range of my short sighted vision I realized the look on her face was either terror or panic, so my first thought took a back seat. Before she got all the way to me she demanded this,
"You have got to help me!"
"Okay", I replied, " What's the issue?"
"I am having a melt down, or a breakdown or a personal apocalypse"
"Wow, what is the genesis?"
"My damn daughter!"
Since this woman , like me, has but one daughter whom she adores and cherishes, it was quite the surprise for her to reference this beloved offspring as her "damn daughter".
"Would you like a cup of tea?"
"Do you have booze?"
"There might be some wine back in the fridge, will that do?"
"Bring the bottle", she replied.
I went to fetch, decant, pour.
I returned with a generous glass of wine and a slab of chocolate as things seemed serious indeed.
"Tell me," I invited.
Words spilled out in such a quick fury I wasn't sure I had heard her correctly. But the gist was her daughter was now dating an individual of whom she seriously disapproved. Her husband even more so and they had endured quite a confrontation on the issue; which had apparently ended with her husband demanding, " what the hell kind of woman raises a daughter that would
make such a dreadful choice and bring this kind of despair to her family!" Since this particular Dad is one of those who dotes on, protects and spoils both his wife and child beyond measure, the statement was itself quite a shock. In fact, I think my friend was in as much dismay over her husband's misplaced wrath as with her child's choices. As a couple, they are one of the few who have managed to keep the connection, and the fire, through 3 decades of courtship and marriage. So for him to lash out at her in such a cruel way was a stunning event. She stopped to gulp some wine , then parked a giant wedge of chocolate in her mouth, making me wonder if I remembered how to do the Heimlich and CPR.
Eventually I asked, " What is your objection to this man?"
She wailed, thrashed, cried, pounded the desk and finally slumped face down on it, but she uttered no coherent words. I waited, occasionally giving her a little comforting pat. I was actually wondering on the back channel if I wanted to hear about all this. But truly this woman was the embodiment of despair. She is my friend and I could hardly stand up and invite her to take her misery out the door because I had work to do. So I patted some more and waited for her to get over the worst of it.
Once she began to speak, I wished I had poured wine and fetched chocolate for me too.
She started not by talking about her child, but about her belief system. Be a good person, have standards, ethics, morals, a purpose. Give generously, set a good example, be fiscally prudent,
give back to the community, face challenges head on with grace and humor, nurture your marriage and your family, be an every day christian not a Sundays only pew sitter. Then she talked about her husband, their marriage, the building of a family her expectations to one day be a MIL and a grandmother, to expand the family and the love.
Then she tearfully stated,
" I have never once thought what it would mean to my marriage or our family if our "Willa" came home with her chosen and he would not only be someone I couldn't love but whom I loathed on sight!"
Wow, this is not an individual who loathes on sight. She volunteers monthly to serve at a soup kitchen and unfailingly does so with a kind heart as well as a kind hand. But then, none of those people ever courted her daughter either.
"Tell me", I said.
She gulped some more of her wine and said,
" Do you know I have worked for the past 12 years to help pay for Willa's education and to save money for her wedding? Do you know it costs more than $160, 000 to buy your brilliant, beautiful child an Ivy league education? Do you know I never once thought the return on a lifetime spent on the investment of love , shared experiences, trips, sporting events, mission work, education and lots of damn sacrificing would be a broken heart? A fractured family? An enormous feeling of my entire world smashed?"
"Tell me", I said.
"You know Willa has been home for a while now. We were so thrilled she found a great job in her field in this area. We had hoped, but of course there were no guarantees but, I swear I would rather have her live half way around the globe than this!"
I raised an eyebrow. My only child lives hundreds of miles away and I could certainly tell her some aspects of that reality she definitely would not enjoy. I refrained and again said,
" Tell me"
" Willa met "Beau" at a tailgating party. I just don't know what made her even speak with him, except she said she was really hungry and he was manning the grill and she was hanging out to get the first snitches of food and I guess they got to talking during the wait."
"That doesn't sound terrible"
"No, in fact we have been hearing lots about Beau for the past several months but we had never met him and didn't know anyone who knew him or his folks. We encouraged Willa on several occasions to bring him by for supper or to go with us on the boat but there was always some reason why those invitations were never accepted. Until now."
"She brought him home for you to meet?"
There was a lengthy pause. "No, she most assuredly did not. We decided to go see the new movie out about Amelia and when we got to the theaters there was quite a queue. As it turns out a ways up in the line were Willa and Beau so once Bill spotted her he went on up to greet her and then of course came the big shock"
"TELL ME!"
The tears poured from her face. The anguish on display was huge.
" Oh God, he is just so awful! He has no education, no social graces, and I think he
is what they call 'Appalachian'. He wears horrible clothes, his face is unshaven , his fingernails are filthy , his hair is too long, he chews a toothpick and he has tatoos." That last word disappeared into a plaintive , extended wail. I felt a little queasy. Okay, more than a little.
" It can't be that terrible. You make him sound like that man Sandra Bulock married"
More wailing, and trust me, she actually did bang her head on the desk.
I dispensed a few more pats, poured more wine, rummaged for additional chocolate. This made no sense to me, Willa is an amazing young woman. She is attractive, athletic, academic. As in she has a masters in geophysics from that expensive Ivy league school, has hiked a mountain range, looks lovely in her deb photos and landed an awesome job doing research on geothermal energy. She is not a geekizoid, she is charming and funny.
" There must be something good about him, as Willa likes him."
More wine and chocolate were consumed while she shook her head.
" I hate that man Sandra Bullock married."
" I don't think you know that man so how can you hate him?"
" Shut up. You have no idea how crushed I am so don't annoy me with nicey nice sayings."
The QUEEN of nicey nice was telling me to shut up. In my own office. With the door locked. On the other hand, I could indeed see the extent of the crushing. I paused before speaking again then asked, " Did y'all sit together in the movie?"
"No!" she wailed, "Bill decided the crowd was too big so we left. On the way home we were just silent in the car, both of us consumed with our own thoughts and then I actually spoke a thought out loud and things got sooooooooo much worse." There was a new round of waterworks and nasal clearing before I asked,
" What thought did you actually speak?"
" What we were both thinking! What I said was,
'OMG, do you suppose Willa is out there making like rabbits with that man'?"
Talk about a spectacular lapse of judgement! I guess that lapse was itself a testimony to her
inability to comprehend this new swirling reality. I decided my minimal supply of wine, chocolate and kleenex was soon going to be insufficient to the needs.
"Um, did Bill actually respond to that query?"
"Oh Fishy, you will just not believe his response. He turned the wheel of the car so suddenly I thought my head was going to smash the door window. Then he threw the car in park and jumped out of the car. Fishy My Bill tossed his stomach in the ditch on the side of the road!"
Now I was shocked. I could not come close to a vision of that elegant, graceful man in his perfect monogramed shirts standing in a ditch on the side of the road tossing his cookies.
Poor Dad, poor Mom, they were reeling. I searched my soul for some comforting thought and came up empty. The thoughts I was having were not on the comfort side of the scale. So I sucked in air and said,
" Well, your Willa is a fine person. Maybe this is all about that rabbit behavior you mentioned and is temporary. You know my Daddy told all us girls we couldn't marry every boy we kissed and to choose wisely was essential. Maybe this is just a frog Willa is kissing on her way to a prince you and Bill will accept and love".
" Willa is in love. She's never been in love before. She certainly has never dated anyone Bill and I found shocking. She's done more of that go with a crowd dating format . I just cannot understand this and Fishy, when Willa got home you would not believe the words that flew through our home. I feel bludgeoned. I feel like everything I know, everything I believe, every thing I have strived for is null and void."
There is not enough chocolate, wine , wisdom or pats in the world to soothe such angst.
So I held my tongue , patted some more and prayed for my friend.
She looked up with such misery as she asked,
" Did your Mermaid ever date anyone you and Blowfish loathed?"
" Yep."
"How did you handle it?"
"Not well."
" What did you do?"
"Prayed, screamed, thrashed, suffered, fought, cried gallons."
" Is that all? Did it help? Did you and Blowfish blame each other? How did you survive?"
I did not want to answer than last question.
I did not want to lie.
I did not want to tell the truth.
So I settled on a half truth and told my friend I tried to practice a type of positive imaging meditation where I concentrated hard on seeing Mermaid come to see her reality rather than hold onto the mirage of the person she loved. I envisioned Mermaid learning and growing from the experience so she could move forward with positive energy and direction. And I prayed for our family.
What I did not tell me friend was what I envisioned most was smashing to mush the cranium of that undeserving man with my biggest cast iron skillet.
She will get there soon enough on her own.
Showing posts with label Woes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Woes. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Friday, February 6, 2009
A Frothy Pond
The water was afroth at the Pond this week.
Blowfish stomped on my very last nerve .
According that graybearded puffball even minimal civility is a struggle.
Visions of blunt force trauma have danced through my head.
Very creative trauma too, in wonderfully vibrant K9 ish colors.
This gets complicated.
Maybe boring .
So don't feel like you have to read my wrath.
Saturday I went on a cooking spree. I do this from time to time. I cook up pots and pots of my favorite comfort foods and package them in vacuum sealed , space age plastics for the freezer. I do this more often in the Winter because I need comforting more in the winters.
This Winter seems particularly hard cause the snapdragons, pansies, violas and dianthus I plant in all the big pots around the Pond to cheer me thru the Winter are absent this year.
Blowfish came home one day in late Fall with some chemical in a bottle you hook up to the hose for cleaning gutters and such. He did a great job on the gutters but he didn't read the warnings about hazzards to living things like plants and animals and......well , there are no potted plants this year. I even had to dump all the expensive dirt out of the pots and bag it like toxic waste.
Anyway,
I was up and out early buying ingredients and hauling them back to the Pond. Usually Blowfish helps get things unloaded and hauled into the house, but this time he didn't. He was reading and seemed a bit broody.
"You okay Blowfish'? I asked
No answer.
"Are you ill" ?
A big puffy sigh before the Blowfish said," Listen Fishy, not everyone is a morning fish. Not everyone wants to haul 50 grocery sacks inside before the first cup of coffee is fully savored and the paper is recycled."
Well, okay.
So I set about doing all the hauling, unpacking, sorting of those 50 sacks. Blowfish came on into the Kitchen to investigate the scheduled productions: pasta sauce, three meat chili, chickenfishy, vegetable beef soup and roasted rib split pea soup. He asked a few questions about the schedule of events. I explained I wasn't cooking for the day, I was cooking for the freezer. He puffed up a bit but finned on out of there without comment.
I decided I would season up the spare ribs and get 'em ready to go in a hot, hot oven. That way they could be roasting while I washed and chopped a mammoth amount of veggies. It wasn't too long before Blowfish came back thru asking about the good smells. I told him he was just smelling the onions grilling . He sniffed and commented it smelled like more than onions to him but went on back outside to tinker with his tools.
When those ribs came out of the oven they were perfect. Crusted on the outside, juicy on the inside and smelled wonderous. The Hound was half a house away, out on the deck standing on her hinds to look inside and was sniffing the air between the yowls. Blowfish came in and said,
"What's the matter with that Hound"?
"Rib envy" I speculated.
Truth is, Blowfish looked about the same as the hound; leaning over the counter and breathing in big. He started to reach toward the pan when I brandished my wooden spoon thru the air.
"Those ribs are going in my pea soup" I reminded.
Blowfish gave me a stern look and said,
"Fishy, I am having some of those ribs right about now. That's a half a rack of prime spareribs there and all of em don't need to be in your damn soup".
"My DAMN soup?, don't you mean my wonderful soup"?
"What kind of fool puts ribs in soup!" he yelled.
I paused, something was definitely wrong with Blowfish. I mean, there he was standing in the Keep looking snarky and yelling at me about some ribs and cussing my soup.
" Are you really going to stand there and tell me what to do with my ribs"?, I asked.
"If you have a powerful hankering for ribs why not just be polite and ask if there's enough ribs for the soup and a Blowfish snack? Why get crazed about it and ,will you please do something about the dreadful noise coming out of that HOUND !" By now the hound was hurling her body at the door and making enough racket for the neighbors to be wondering if they should call 911 about a murder in progress.
Before I finished getting the words out of my mouth Mermaid was on the cell phone calling to tell about the hardships of life in an icestorm. I left the kitchen so I could hear my child rail about the vagaries of Mother Nature and the many complexities of dealing with large animals confined by weather, etc, etc.
As I came back downstairs I was thinking Thank God Blowfish did something to quiet the Hound. As I entered the Kitchen I noticed immediately the ribs had been reduced in number by about a third. Well, I thought, I am not going to war over a few ribs, I have cooking to do.
So I happily scrubbed , chopped, stirred and cleaned for an hour or more. I got things to a point where I could leave the pots on low heat and went to start the weekend laundry. For once I was actually enjoying the domesticity of the day.
When I came back to the kitchen, there were just 4 ribs remaining. Not enough for the soup and now I WAS thinking about going to war. I made my way outside for the confrontation only to find Blowfish wasn't playing with the tools. So I wandered around til I found him out on the deck drinking an icy cold beer and feeding rib bones to the Hound.
"Stop"!
"Blowfish, you can't feed rib bones to that dog! Good grief, that animal has the most touchy digestive system of any living creature on the planet! If it doesn't kill her I guarantee you it will make a ginormous problem to deal with directly'!
Blowfish took a swig of his beer , puffed up a bit and informed me he and the Hound were bonding. He knew exactly how she felt about rib depravations. He mentioned he had fed table scraps to all his dogs his whole life and there wasn't any reason he couldn't or shouldn't do the same thing with this one. What did I think animals in the wild ate? I clearly did not know what I was talking about and ,by the way, those were the best ribs ever.
"How many ribs did you give her?"
"All of 'em"
"All"?
" Yep. I ate the meat, she ate the bones. Bonding is good".
"Yes well, we'll see how bonded you are in about an hour"
I figured I knew what was wrong with Blowfish, he'd clearly lost his mind.
I left the deck, returned to my domestic activities and turned on a movie.
About half way thru the movie I heard the most godawful noise. Made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. I started running before my brain could even process the source of those ever increasing dreadful sounds. As I was running toward the Garden Room door to the Deck I saw Blowfish come rushing from the far side of the Pond. I flung open the door but stopped just in time before opening the storm door. Blowfish wasn't as quick.
The Hound!
That poor Hound with the touchy tummy, was keening like a wounded animal. Spinning round and round like a whirling dervish and just slinging the spew from her backside like the psychedylic paint machines at the fair. It was a pitiful site. That animal was suffering something fierce. I yelled thru the door for Blowfish to help the dog while I phoned the vets. Blowfish looked stunned as the psychedylic decorations from the Hound sprayed over newly painted house walls, windows, railings, doors ... and Blowfish.
If there is no bleeding said the vet, then she hasn't perforated anything so you need to give her some doggy pepto bismol stuff and a tranquilizer. I could barely hear her the keening was so loud. I went to tell Blowfish I was off to the vets to pick up injectable medicines and would be right back.
Well,
we got the hound medicated to a nice calm on all fronts. Gave her a bath and even snuggled her up to a hot water bottle to aid in soothing her terrible tummy ache. When the drama was over and the dog was settled I got up and went inside. I did not say a single word to Blowfish during all that drama except to say, hold this or that .
I was on my way to the shower when my cell phone rang.
It was Blowfish standing at the Deck door on his cell phone.
"Fishy", he said "Are you coming back outside to help me?
There's quite a bit of cleaning up to do and I need to come inside and get squared away myself"
I could not believe my ears. I marched over to the Deck door and stared that Blowfish in the face while informing him he was not setting foot in my house, I had locked all the doors . I also informed him the clean up was his duty, not mine . I went on to say once the house was sanitized he could call me back and we'd negotiate from there.
I red phoned him and headed back to get a shower.
My phone rang, I turned it off.
The back doorbell rang, I didn't answer it.
I made it upstairs and stopped to peak outside. Blowfish was looking as tired and gray as that bleak winter day. He was just standing, looking forlorn and confused . He didn't look bonded to a damn thing besides his own misery. I suspect he was trying to figure out how he and the house came to be covered in dog muck. Eventually he will figure it out and I'll unlock the doors.
Blowfish stomped on my very last nerve .
According that graybearded puffball even minimal civility is a struggle.
Visions of blunt force trauma have danced through my head.
Very creative trauma too, in wonderfully vibrant K9 ish colors.
This gets complicated.
Maybe boring .
So don't feel like you have to read my wrath.
Saturday I went on a cooking spree. I do this from time to time. I cook up pots and pots of my favorite comfort foods and package them in vacuum sealed , space age plastics for the freezer. I do this more often in the Winter because I need comforting more in the winters.
This Winter seems particularly hard cause the snapdragons, pansies, violas and dianthus I plant in all the big pots around the Pond to cheer me thru the Winter are absent this year.
Blowfish came home one day in late Fall with some chemical in a bottle you hook up to the hose for cleaning gutters and such. He did a great job on the gutters but he didn't read the warnings about hazzards to living things like plants and animals and......well , there are no potted plants this year. I even had to dump all the expensive dirt out of the pots and bag it like toxic waste.
Anyway,
I was up and out early buying ingredients and hauling them back to the Pond. Usually Blowfish helps get things unloaded and hauled into the house, but this time he didn't. He was reading and seemed a bit broody.
"You okay Blowfish'? I asked
No answer.
"Are you ill" ?
A big puffy sigh before the Blowfish said," Listen Fishy, not everyone is a morning fish. Not everyone wants to haul 50 grocery sacks inside before the first cup of coffee is fully savored and the paper is recycled."
Well, okay.
So I set about doing all the hauling, unpacking, sorting of those 50 sacks. Blowfish came on into the Kitchen to investigate the scheduled productions: pasta sauce, three meat chili, chickenfishy, vegetable beef soup and roasted rib split pea soup. He asked a few questions about the schedule of events. I explained I wasn't cooking for the day, I was cooking for the freezer. He puffed up a bit but finned on out of there without comment.
I decided I would season up the spare ribs and get 'em ready to go in a hot, hot oven. That way they could be roasting while I washed and chopped a mammoth amount of veggies. It wasn't too long before Blowfish came back thru asking about the good smells. I told him he was just smelling the onions grilling . He sniffed and commented it smelled like more than onions to him but went on back outside to tinker with his tools.
When those ribs came out of the oven they were perfect. Crusted on the outside, juicy on the inside and smelled wonderous. The Hound was half a house away, out on the deck standing on her hinds to look inside and was sniffing the air between the yowls. Blowfish came in and said,
"What's the matter with that Hound"?
"Rib envy" I speculated.
Truth is, Blowfish looked about the same as the hound; leaning over the counter and breathing in big. He started to reach toward the pan when I brandished my wooden spoon thru the air.
"Those ribs are going in my pea soup" I reminded.
Blowfish gave me a stern look and said,
"Fishy, I am having some of those ribs right about now. That's a half a rack of prime spareribs there and all of em don't need to be in your damn soup".
"My DAMN soup?, don't you mean my wonderful soup"?
"What kind of fool puts ribs in soup!" he yelled.
I paused, something was definitely wrong with Blowfish. I mean, there he was standing in the Keep looking snarky and yelling at me about some ribs and cussing my soup.
" Are you really going to stand there and tell me what to do with my ribs"?, I asked.
"If you have a powerful hankering for ribs why not just be polite and ask if there's enough ribs for the soup and a Blowfish snack? Why get crazed about it and ,will you please do something about the dreadful noise coming out of that HOUND !" By now the hound was hurling her body at the door and making enough racket for the neighbors to be wondering if they should call 911 about a murder in progress.
Before I finished getting the words out of my mouth Mermaid was on the cell phone calling to tell about the hardships of life in an icestorm. I left the kitchen so I could hear my child rail about the vagaries of Mother Nature and the many complexities of dealing with large animals confined by weather, etc, etc.
As I came back downstairs I was thinking Thank God Blowfish did something to quiet the Hound. As I entered the Kitchen I noticed immediately the ribs had been reduced in number by about a third. Well, I thought, I am not going to war over a few ribs, I have cooking to do.
So I happily scrubbed , chopped, stirred and cleaned for an hour or more. I got things to a point where I could leave the pots on low heat and went to start the weekend laundry. For once I was actually enjoying the domesticity of the day.
When I came back to the kitchen, there were just 4 ribs remaining. Not enough for the soup and now I WAS thinking about going to war. I made my way outside for the confrontation only to find Blowfish wasn't playing with the tools. So I wandered around til I found him out on the deck drinking an icy cold beer and feeding rib bones to the Hound.
"Stop"!
"Blowfish, you can't feed rib bones to that dog! Good grief, that animal has the most touchy digestive system of any living creature on the planet! If it doesn't kill her I guarantee you it will make a ginormous problem to deal with directly'!
Blowfish took a swig of his beer , puffed up a bit and informed me he and the Hound were bonding. He knew exactly how she felt about rib depravations. He mentioned he had fed table scraps to all his dogs his whole life and there wasn't any reason he couldn't or shouldn't do the same thing with this one. What did I think animals in the wild ate? I clearly did not know what I was talking about and ,by the way, those were the best ribs ever.
"How many ribs did you give her?"
"All of 'em"
"All"?
" Yep. I ate the meat, she ate the bones. Bonding is good".
"Yes well, we'll see how bonded you are in about an hour"
I figured I knew what was wrong with Blowfish, he'd clearly lost his mind.
I left the deck, returned to my domestic activities and turned on a movie.
About half way thru the movie I heard the most godawful noise. Made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. I started running before my brain could even process the source of those ever increasing dreadful sounds. As I was running toward the Garden Room door to the Deck I saw Blowfish come rushing from the far side of the Pond. I flung open the door but stopped just in time before opening the storm door. Blowfish wasn't as quick.
The Hound!
That poor Hound with the touchy tummy, was keening like a wounded animal. Spinning round and round like a whirling dervish and just slinging the spew from her backside like the psychedylic paint machines at the fair. It was a pitiful site. That animal was suffering something fierce. I yelled thru the door for Blowfish to help the dog while I phoned the vets. Blowfish looked stunned as the psychedylic decorations from the Hound sprayed over newly painted house walls, windows, railings, doors ... and Blowfish.
If there is no bleeding said the vet, then she hasn't perforated anything so you need to give her some doggy pepto bismol stuff and a tranquilizer. I could barely hear her the keening was so loud. I went to tell Blowfish I was off to the vets to pick up injectable medicines and would be right back.
Well,
we got the hound medicated to a nice calm on all fronts. Gave her a bath and even snuggled her up to a hot water bottle to aid in soothing her terrible tummy ache. When the drama was over and the dog was settled I got up and went inside. I did not say a single word to Blowfish during all that drama except to say, hold this or that .
I was on my way to the shower when my cell phone rang.
It was Blowfish standing at the Deck door on his cell phone.
"Fishy", he said "Are you coming back outside to help me?
There's quite a bit of cleaning up to do and I need to come inside and get squared away myself"
I could not believe my ears. I marched over to the Deck door and stared that Blowfish in the face while informing him he was not setting foot in my house, I had locked all the doors . I also informed him the clean up was his duty, not mine . I went on to say once the house was sanitized he could call me back and we'd negotiate from there.
I red phoned him and headed back to get a shower.
My phone rang, I turned it off.
The back doorbell rang, I didn't answer it.
I made it upstairs and stopped to peak outside. Blowfish was looking as tired and gray as that bleak winter day. He was just standing, looking forlorn and confused . He didn't look bonded to a damn thing besides his own misery. I suspect he was trying to figure out how he and the house came to be covered in dog muck. Eventually he will figure it out and I'll unlock the doors.
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