Fifty Things That Aren't My Fault Read online

  “No!” I say. “I want you to drive! You’re doing a great job!”

  I turn to give my “great driver” the visual of my reassuring face to go with my perky words of encouragement, but I don’t see the driver. My seat is shoved so far back and hers is shoved so far forward that when I turn, all I see is the back of her headrest.

  “Um . . . aren’t you sitting a little far forward to be safe?”

  I hear the oh-so-familiar Big Frustrated Exhale. “Do you want to drive?” she asks.

  “No! I want you to drive! You’re doing a great job!”

  “Here! Go ahead!” She tries to yank the key out of the ignition without turning off the motor. “Want to trade places?!”

  “No! I do NOT want to trade places!”

  “Yes, you do. You want to trade places.”

  “No, I don’t!”

  “Yes, you do!”

  WE ALREADY TRADED PLACES!!!

  I didn’t need to scream that last one out loud. Mom knows as well as I do where we currently sit.

  Mom. Yes. It’s not my teenage daughter at the wheel. It’s my beloved mother. I’m in Florida for one of my many new regular visits to “see how everyone’s doing,” and right now I’m seeing how Mom’s doing. Mom, who safely drove me from birth to 2013. Who drove me through blizzards to get to birthday parties and piano lessons. Who drove me through thunder and lightning to compare thirty different pairs of black open-toed pumps at twelve different shoe stores at three different malls. Who braved icy roads in the middle of the night for emergency chocolate supplies to fix my broken heart. Mom, who drove me to every “first,” her eyes all watery and blurred with panic and pride—first day of school, first sleepaway camp, first dance.

  She never got a scratch on the car. Never lost her way. Not even when I was the one with tears—weeping in the passenger seat that life was over because an eighth-grade girl was mean to me, wailing that I couldn’t go to school because my hair looked stupid. Not even when I was sulking and silent and Mom had to read all the road signs in my teenage mind . . .

  Mom was always the expert: judging when to veer around an emotional pileup, when to go slowly over every bit of buckled ego, when to do a U-turn and point us toward the nearest Dairy Queen.

  The truth is, I was never safer than when Mom was behind the wheel. I was free to tell her anything when we were on those drives, just the two of us. I could confess all my secrets and share every dream in the sanctuary of Mom’s passenger seat.

  She steered me safely through it all. Then she steered me right into my life’s work. I started working as an advertising copywriter in Detroit after college and was already quite successful by the time I was twenty-five. Mom, a picture of reserve, had always taught me to keep my feelings private, and there was a lot to feel confused about in those years. I was trying to live up to two role models—the homemaking Betty Crocker of my youth and the liberated Betty Friedan of my future.

  Heeding Mom’s advice, I didn’t talk to friends about the angst of feeling stuck in the middle. Instead, I wrote in my diary and ate. I gained forty pounds with one Betty’s Triple Chocolate Fudge Cake Mix while trying to digest the other Betty’s Feminine Mystique. Frustrated by the Bettys, I sought guidance from M&M’s. Ultimately, I summed up my confusion in crumb- and candy-covered scribbled drawings, which I sent home to Mom in letters to let her know I was coping without sharing my feelings with anyone.

  In spite of a lifetime of teaching me to keep things private, not to mention the fact that I didn’t know how to draw, Mom insisted that these humiliating scribbles should be published for millions of people to enjoy. She researched comic strip syndicates at the library and announced she was going to send my “drawings” in to someone with a nice note from Mom if I didn’t. Just to make her not do that, I mailed some to Universal Press Syndicate, the first name on the list she’d typed for me. Within days they sent me a contract to draw Cathy for the rest of my life along with a note saying they were sure I’d learn how to draw if I had to do it 365 days a year.

  I loved my advertising career and it was crazy to think I could support myself being a cartoonist, so I kept both jobs for a year and a half, working all day on one job and most of the night on the other, until I was finally exhausted enough to quit one of them.

  Mom was clear which one it should be. She said I should leave what was safe and secure and leap into the impossible. Women were just starting to have the chance to try anything and be anyone, and Mom cheered me on to do it all, to see how far I could go.

  Even when I decided to go three thousand miles away from her. When I was thirty, Mom did half the driving during the five-day trek that brought me to California. It had been two years since I’d left my advertising job to do the comic strip full-time, and I was feeling brave enough to also leave everything else that was so safe. A beautiful home, a boyfriend, friends, family, the Midwest—none of it could compete with the lure of the rest of the world. Newspapers and magazines were full of stories of women who were doing things that used to be impossible, and emboldened by Mom, I couldn’t wait to try it all, completely by myself.

  Mom helped me squash my drawing supplies and half of my closet into my two-seater sports car. I made a bed for my sixty-pound dog on top of everything we’d piled behind the two seats, and Mom lovingly pointed the three of us toward the complete unknown.

  “I’m helping you go as far away from me as you can get,” Mom joked as we pulled out of my cozy neighborhood in suburban Detroit and headed for Los Angeles, “without having to jump in the ocean and start swimming.” I didn’t see the irony in the fact that I was launching my triumphant cross-country quest for independence with Mom nine inches away in the driver’s seat.

  I also didn’t see what Mom surely saw down the road. She had to know with each passing mile that she was driving me farther away from the hope that I’d ever live near Dad and her as a grown-up, of having grandchildren close by, of family Sunday dinners at their house. We went through Illinois . . . Oklahoma . . . New Mexico . . . all the pages of the AAA TripTik, with me so excited about what might lie ahead and Mom so aware of what I was leaving behind. She still did it—rock solid behind the wheel, driving for days across America with love, enthusiasm, and the pure motherly joy of helping her girl go chase her dream.

  That’s what a great driver Mom was. That’s how safe I was with her behind the wheel . . . right up until a few years ago, when without so much as a blinker to warn us, we changed lanes in the middle of life.

  Every visit home since, the shift has been different. Mom has seemed slightly smaller and slower behind the wheel, and I’ve sat up straighter and been more alert. This visit, I’m bolt upright, in a full body clench—able to only make one-syllable yelps or those little stifled sounds that used to come from the bottom of Mom’s heart when I was young and at the wheel and she was teaching me to drive. As we sit here twelve inches out of her carport, it’s painful to see how far we’ve come.

  I wanted to drive with Mom today so I could “assess her competence.” In spite of how cheerfully I’ve reassured her what a great driver she is, she knows she’s being assessed and I know she knows she’s being assessed and it’s possibly added a bit of tension to . . .

  “CONCRETE STANCHION ONE INCH FROM THE RIGHT FRONT BUMPER!!!”

  “Do you want to drive?!”

  “No. Sorry, Mom. You’re doing a great job.”

  “Would you like me to go back in the house and get your father and have him drive?”

  This snaps me out of my reverie. My ninety-year-old mom is a little bit lurchy now, but my ninety-year-old dad has much, much more going for him behind the wheel: spinal stenosis, macular degeneration, double hip replacements, arthritic knees, and occasional episodes of briefly passing out.

  “Let’s not get Dad.”

  Mom completes her backup. Turns around and aims for the neighbor’s yard.
I do my best to pretend I’m relaxing in what is the perfect metaphor for my place in life right now: the passenger seat. The place that used to be so safe but isn’t anymore. The position from which I see everything, try to direct everything, and can control absolutely nothing. The position from which I’m doing the exact same thing in opposite directions: trying to help my own nineteen-year-old daughter get safely on the road of life and trying to gently steer my ninety-year-old parents safely off of it.

  I’m equally worried for all of them, and they’re equally as belligerent as each other. Nineteen- and ninety-year-old versions of the exact same need for independence, the exact same belief that they have it all under control. Nineteen- and ninety-year-old versions of the exact same rejection of my opinions and advice. For this tiny window of time, I’m the powerfully powerless guardian of them all.

  All I can do is be grateful for the brave mom who got me here. Say my prayers for what will be. Position my brain away from the airbags and buckle up.

  4.

  IN LOVING MEMORY OF THE LEGS I USED TO HATE

  Gradually, graciously, I’ve made peace with myself from the waist up.

  I’ve learned to appreciate my evolving face like a poem, one fine line at a time. A slow, gentle morph into a slightly older version of me. My eyes have adjusted to my maturing hands and arms too, little by little, like they adjust to the sun. I no longer have to squint when I look at them, not blinded anymore by what I see.

  But this. What I’m looking at now. This came from nowhere with no warning.

  The legs I’ve always hated have overnight been replaced by Grandma’s legs. The young legs I used to think were so horrible have suddenly, irrevocably, turned into old-person legs that actually are horrible. I stare in disbelief.

  I want the legs I used to hate back! I want my untoned, overweight young legs! The legs I hid from public view most of my life! Come back, horrid fat young legs! Come back! I am ready to love you now!!

  Another silent scream into a mirror. Another Celebration of Me Day ruined by getting a good look at me, and I am ticked. I do not deserve this.

  I didn’t wear skirts or shorts for years because I thought my legs were too ugly. Didn’t wear a swimsuit for decades because I thought my legs were too fat, too flabby, too cellulite-y, too stretch-marky. My legs humiliated me. They ruined all my outfits. They destroyed my self-confidence. They made me cry when I tried on boots. I hid them behind muumuus, long skirts, and jeans. Today, for the first time, I was finally ready to accept them exactly as they are. And now they aren’t what they are anymore.

  The mirror that just ruined my life is in the dressing room of a store I’ve previously refused to enter because I was offended by the mannequins in the window. Mannequins with long, slim, perfectly sculpted plastic legs. Mannequins that walk all over a woman’s sense of well-being like a parade of seven-foot-tall Barbie dolls.

  I was feeling too good about me to boycott today. I strode in on real-life legs I was finally mature enough to accept and love after all these years of being ashamed. I am through hiding, I declared this morning. Finished feeling “less than” because of some delusion that my lower half is “more than.” I strode right past the perfect plastic legs in the window, right up to the summer shorts display, plucked a few cute pairs off the rack and was shown into a dressing room. The first pair I put on fit perfectly. I joyfully turned to the mirror to begin my Celebration of Me.

  And here I am. Not celebrating. I’m staring at the worst my legs have ever looked in my life with the full, sick new knowledge that this is the best they’re ever going to be. Fat legs can get thin. Cellulite-y legs can get smooth. Flabby legs can get toned. Old lady legs can’t get anything except worse.

  I want the legs I used to hate back! I want my untoned, overweight young legs! The legs I hid from public view most of my life! Come back, horrid fat young legs! Come back! I am ready to love you now!!

  My fat young legs don’t come back. Neither does my skinny young salesperson, who swore she’d be back to get me anything I need. Why do they even offer? There’s never anything women need when we’re in a fitting room except for someone to shove some answers under the door.

  Why are there 5,000 products to prevent eye wrinkles and nothing to prevent thigh wrinkles?

  Why is there a zillion-dollar industry to deal with the aging of a few inches of face skin, but zip to deal with the aging of the many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many inches of leg skin?

  Why are there clinics all over the globe to “plump” the lips, yet only shame if we on our own plump the hips?

  I stare at my new old legs in the mirror. Swimwear has just been destroyed for an entirely new irreparable unthinkable reason, trumping the hundreds of ways legs have already destroyed swimwear for me up until now. This one can’t be dieted or exercised away. Nothing can make old lady legs sticking out of a swimsuit look like anything but old lady legs sticking out of a swimsuit. Ditto shorts. Skirts and dresses would be possible, except we liberated ourselves from the tyranny of pantyhose years ago, and now have to display our age from at least the knee down when we wear them. The only thing that can possibly make old legs look worse is old legs in pantyhose worn to try to disguise old legs.

  Even the wonderful Spanx Revolution missed the point. Old-fashioned control-top pantyhose used to control the top and then politely control and cover everything all the way down to the toes. Spanx stop above the hemline, leaving everything from the hem up looking youthful and smooth and everything from the hem down looking as if it’s attached to an elderly relative.

  Since the invention of stockings, no other generation of women has been expected to wear skirts and dresses with bare, aging legs. A complication of life that no one’s protested because all the time we gained from not having to shop for pantyhose is now spent trying to figure out how to get out the front door without pantyhose. Longer skirts. Drapey capes. Self-tanners. Taller boots. Huge scarves that direct the eye to the neck instead of the knee.

  I think of my mother, who used to apologize for giving me her thighs. Thighs I would be overjoyed to see again. Thighs Mom would be overjoyed to see again. She never talked about the day hers changed. Never shared the trauma of realizing how beautiful and perfect her legs used to be when she noticed they weren’t beautiful and perfect anymore. She suffered in silence. Was it too horrible to mention? Did she want it to be a surprise?

  I think of my daughter, who hates the perfect young legs she has right now. I want to shake her. I do not want to be silent. I want to show her my legs to warn her of the future. But showing her my legs would involve showing her my legs. Much as I love her, I’ve already suffered enough.

  I put my pants back on without trying on the other pairs of shorts. I walk out without saying goodbye to the salesperson, walk away without even glaring at the Barbies, who are still showing off in the window.

  In time, I’ll accept my changed legs just as I’ve accepted all the other changed parts of me. I’ll quit being sad about the places I didn’t take them and the cute clothes I didn’t buy them when I could. I’ll forget how perfect they were back when I hated them. I’ll even forget how bad they look today, because by then they’ll be older and they’ll look even worse.

  I walk into a shop down the street. For today, I’ll focus beyond the legs. I’ll celebrate other parts of me. There are at least ten parts I can think of that are still stubbornly, heroically, mercifully unchanged by time.

  “May I help you?” the woman asks.

  “Yes,” I say with pride, “I’d like to buy my lovely young toes a pedicure.”

  5.

  THE ATTACK MOM

  Hi, Mom!”

  I’ve waited two months to hear those words in person, to see my sweet college girl. I weave my way through the mass of people and their stuff in the Los Angeles airport baggage claim toward her waving hand popping up over the crowd. Only a mom�
��s ears could hear “Hi, Mom!” through so much chaos from so far away.

  The last time we were together, the sound coming from my daughter wasn’t nearly as cheerful.

  She said I treated her like a child. I said she shouldn’t have left her new $65 sweat shirt wadded up on the living room floor.

  She said I was too picky. I said if she leaves a half-eaten plate of macaroni and cheese on the counter for thirty-six hours and then puts it in the dishwasher without rinsing it off, it will not get clean.

  She said I was controlling. I said I would disconnect her video game system if I found out she still hadn’t started her psych paper.

  She couldn’t wait to go back to school. I couldn’t wait for her to leave.

  And now we can’t wait to see each other.

  My heart almost stopped when her caller ID popped up on my phone last week. She was calling instead of texting. Reaching out in the ancient verbal communication style of my people instead of the hip, silent, misspelled one of hers. She missed me . . . needed me . . . I grabbed the phone.

  “Hey, Mom.” That’s all she had to say. I’m a mom-linguist at this point—can translate four hundred slightly different inflections of “Hey” and “Mom” into four hundred completely different meanings.

  “I’ll book you a flight home,” I answered warmly, and heard many, many words of relief in her “Okay.”

  I’m weaving through airport people now as fast as possible. I’ve had time to rest and reflect, and have two months of things built up that I want to say. I can’t wait to tell her how proud I am of how she’s making it through her first year of college. How amazed I am by her bravery and determination. That I understand how hard she’s working to figure out who she is independent from me.