I don’t know anything about this woman, but I like how she wrote about her life over the past week:
My grade school was a polling station. A few days before the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, men wearing grey khaki pants and long-sleeved grey shirts buttoned to the neck would start wheeling those enormous voting machines into our hallways. The Monday night before Voting Day, the janitors would buff the brown-tiled hallway floors to a glow. On Voting Day, even through our closed classroom doors, you could hear the men saying hi to other men and the click click click of the women’s stiletto heels as they hurried down our halls to vote. Smoke from their cigarettes would seep in under the classroom doors. Sometimes a parent would knock on the door and ask to take their son or daughter out for a few minutes so they could go vote with their parent. Mine never did this although I wished they would. I wanted to help pull the voting levers, but mainly I wanted to pull the lever that opened that Oz-like curtain with a swinging swissssshhh.
We voted last week. It wasn’t the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. It was just the middle of the morning on some random weekday. The swishing curtains were gone. It was all touch screen monitors on spindly legs. I missed the old levers that required a bit of muscle to pull. And isn’t that how it should be? Shouldn’t voting require just a minimum of actual effort? I voted. It was anti-climactic but, still, I did feel that little thrill of knowing that I cast a ballot. They gave me one of those little stickers that said I Voted. All of the people voting were white. Most were elderly. I actually had to show an I.D. which was because of our attorney general’s crusade to halt illegal voting. Last I heard, his crusade had stopped something like 24 illegal voters and disenfranchised somewhere between 13,000 and 18,000 legal voters. Mission accomplished.
When we pulled into the driveway after voting, the new little girls next door were hanging out of their tree and they yelled hi Pete hi Russ Ann. I was shocked. Not because they were hanging out of a tree but because they knew my name. I was never one of those moms that the kids liked. I was never a Room Mother. Never coached soccer. I think most of my kids’ friends felt kind of sorry for John and Caitlin—-to have me for a mom. Pete was never one of those dads who drew kids to him until, somehow, he now is. As we sat on our driveway, they yelled over to him Pete I got a new bike. I looked at him and thought what the hell happened with you? I said how do these kids know your name and he said how do they not know yours? I acted all nonchalant when the kids said Hi Russ Ann as if I weren’t, you know, shocked. I guess now would be the time to say that I don’t really like that they know my name. Now they’ll want me to talk to them about their imaginary friend or listen to them sing a new song about pumpkins or, soon, turkeys. I don’t really do kids who aren’t my own. I am, perhaps, not as bad as I sound here.
To make conversation with the little people hanging out of a tree, I asked what they were going to be on Halloween. Snow White. Cinderella. A (generic) Princess. A Dolphin Trainer. That Trainer bit caught my attention. I was looking forward to seeing what that costume might involve.
On Halloween night, Pete was all about answering the door. He did that thing that kids hate which means that he kept trying to talk to them. I said Pete, quit talking. They don’t want to listen to you. They want to get the candy, mumble thank you, and head to the next house. They don’t want to tell you who they are or hear that their bags are springing a leak or could use a sturdier handle. Just Stop Talking.
Except that some of the kids did want to talk. They yelled Hiiiii Peeeeete and spun around showing him their shoes and ruffles and wands and crowns. When I heard the Dolphin Trainer’s voice, I peeked around the corner to see what a Dolphin Trainer looked like. Apparently, a trainer wears turquoise sweats and holds a hula hoop with a whale (dolphin?) attached to and swinging from it. I was, let’s admit it, kind of disappointed.
Early on Saturday, we went to my mom and dad’s to do things. Mother had made a list. She wrote things in her still-perfect cursive. She wrote change light bulbs in three rooms. Move coffee table from here to there. Fix toilet. Install storm windows. She tried to get us to eat chocolate cake. She said eat this so your dad doesn’t. With his diabetes, he knows he shouldn’t be eating this stuff and yet he still does. I wanted to say maybe you should stop making this stuff. Then he couldn’t be eating it, but you never say things like that to my mom. She can, should we say, dish it out but she can’t take it.
As always, my dad needed computer help. I changed his ink cartridge. Aligned his printer. Cleared a printer jam. Solved a Quicken error. He spends so much time entering expenses into Quicken. $3.62 at QuikTrip. $45.19 at HyVee. I looked at the receipts and electric bills and check stubs and thought do you really need to know how much money you spent for the month at Freddy T’s or Kohl’s? but then I remembered that, once they became old, once they became people who could no longer do anything or go anywhere, this was all my dad had. So, I reset his Quicken options that my dad said changed all by themselves—-imagine that—-and backed up his data and thought you are breaking my heart just a little bit with your entering dollars amounts into columns that no one gives a fuck about. But I would never say that, mainly because it would hurt my dad and also because I have never ever said fuck—-hell, I’ve never even said hell—-in front of my parents.
My dad was quiet. He dozed off. Awoke with a start. My mom forgot a word and punched her fist into her forehead and said what was the word? Getting old is so hard. What was that word? I thought about how frail they were, but then my mom popped up out of her chair and flitted around the room like a hummingbird. I noticed that they, my mom and dad, had done the NY Times crossword puzzle and all the blanks were filled in. They still talk about Gaza and Walking Dead, crisp fall apples and healthcare and, don’t get them started even though I agree with them, about guns and gun control. I was reminded that, all through their marriage, they’ve talked to each other. I’d wake on a Saturday morning and hear them talking over coffee and cigarettes and the newspapers. They’ve done a lifetime of talking and they still seem to find things to say. So, I sat there in the fog of cigarette smoke and forgotten words and decided that, while I had things to do at home, I could sit there for a bit.
Pete had so much work to do and still he said let’s go look at that carpet you wanted to see. We walked into a showroom bigger than two football fields at Nebraska Furniture Mart and I was edgy and confused and just mad that I couldn’t make a decision. Pete said why don’t we ask for help even though he knows that the only thing that makes me madder than asking for help is him asking for directions. I swear we can only be lost for, oh, about five seconds and he’s pulling over to ask for directions which makes me so angry. So, anyway, he said why don’t we ask for help and I said God Pete I brought you to help me make a decision I don’t need someone else’s help and maybe we should start on one room how about the bedroom and he said this looks nice and I said good Lord Pete that is so not what I’m looking for and he said what are you looking for and I said if I knew what I was looking for I’d just find it now wouldn’t I and he quieted down and did that being patient thing where he really was being patient and not just pretending to be patient and nothing makes me madder than someone being nice and, you know, patient when I want the other person to be as upset and stressed out as I am. And we picked some carpet and they’re mailing the samples to us and so we accomplished something but not really. Pete said that’s so great that we decided and I said do you really think anything was decided? That was just the first step and he said oh I thought you’d made a decision and I thought to myself the only snap decision I ever made was marrying you. Carpet takes waaayyy more time than marriage decisions.
Then we went home because the stitches in my leg were hurting and I was banging cabinet doors as I searched for the vinegar and he said what are you looking for and I said I’M LOOKING FOR THE VINEGAR. GOD. And he said why are you so mean? And I had no answer.
He had to work on Saturday and also on Sunday on a color rendering. It’s one of the few things that I can theoretically help him with. He said don’t forget to not color over the sidewalks and driveways and make sure to go in one direction with the markers. And we both knew that I would color over the sidewalks and the driveways and my directions with the markers would be kind of—-directionless.
We worked for hours and we listened to CBS Sunday Morning and I wanted to sneak in some House Hunters or Kitchen Cousins but thought I shouldn’t press my luck. I heated up leftovers and he said slide your chair down here so I can sit in my favorite spot and still be by you so I slid down and we shared our old Chipotle. And he was the one who colored over the sidewalks and he was the one who spilled impossible-to-wash-off black ink all over nine of his fingers and he had to use mineral spirits and gasoline and other aromatic liquids to try to get it off.
On Sunday, we made pancakes. When we make pancakes, I mix the batter and then Pete fries it up in the pan. Just like that song about bringing home the bacon and frying it up in the pan except that he’s a MAN and not a Woman W-O-M-A-N. I’d bought special pumpkin batter from Trader Joe’s and almost didn’t fix it because it required melted butter and I thought that might be too much trouble. I went ahead and just melted it. It wasn’t that much trouble.
We watched K-State football and what a production that has become. Even when my kids were little, KSU was still one of the worst teams in the country. John and Cait could go right down near the field and get Willie the Wildcat to pay attention to them because, God knows, there was nothing to pay attention to happening on the field. Now it’s sold-out stadiums and cheerleaders who build pyramids that the girls flip down from into the arms of the guys and purple wildcat face decals and Wabash Cannonball and Willie doing push-ups for every point scored and I thought about how that wouldn’t have been much of a fitness regimen back in the day when we might have scored three points. It’s ABC with their huge satellite dishes in the parking lot and purple purple everywhere and I can’t even relate to what football now means in Manhattan.
And, at precisely 8 p.m., Pete said popcorn? which is what he says every night at precisely 8 p.m. and I said do I have to help and he said no but I did anyway. I got up and got my mom’s silver bowl that was a wedding gift to her in 1955 that always holds my popcorn and I got out a plastic Target bowl that holds Pete’s portion of popcorn and I gathered the salt and the butter spray and I started the popcorn in the microwave and then I sat down because Pete would handle it from there.
Pete’s brothers called while we were watching football. As he was hanging up, he said love you too which implies that his brothers had said they loved him first. I can’t even fathom this. When I married Pete, the Oppermann boys, all of them, were BAD ASS. They emptied movie theaters with chains as they searched for some guy that might have needed beating up. They were moody. Dark. We could go visit the brothers when we went back to St. Louis and they might not say one word to me. And that’s how I liked it. I liked the edge that you felt you were always teetering on. Now they say things like I love you Pete and tell Russ Ann that we love her too. To quote Butch Cassidy, “Who are these guys?”
I woke up to the news that Brittany Maynard had died on her own terms. Well, that’s true as far as it goes. But, of course, to die wasn’t on her own terms. To have lived a long and healthy and fulfilling life would have been on her own terms. Instead, she chose to die, not because she wanted to, but because it was what life gave her. She said she wanted to die in her own bed with music that she loved playing as those most dear to her surrounded her. I have many opinions about medicine and what it does to extend a life beyond what might have been possible a hundred years before. Sometimes that extension is a blessing. Sometimes it’s just medicine doing what it chooses to whether we would, with reflection, choose that for ourselves.
I thought about lifting a glass of water. Putting a pill in my mouth. I told Pete that I couldn’t bear to watch him do that but that I would. He said I’d be broken without you. And I said I know you would. And I without you.
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