The Meat and Potatoes of Life

by Molinari, Lisa Smith;

  At the end of the third quarter, the ref called the game because they were beating us forty to zilch.

  The rest of the season was more of the same, and it was not easy to keep the morale of our little Sharks above water. Instead of emphasizing winning, we became determined to surprise the other team with our undying spirit.

  We waved our purple towels, blared the Jaws theme song, and shouted our original Sharks cheers. No matter the odds against us, the Sharks played every game to win.

  We never scored one point.

  The following year, I ran into a former Sharks mom at a local grocery store. She said even though her son was placed on a winning team that fall, he confessed, “Mom, I wish this team was more like the Sharks.”

  In spite of losing every game, the Sharks were a winning team after all.

  SEASON 1 EPISODE 8

  CHEESEBALLS, PERVERTS, AND OTHER FINANCIAL ADVISORS

  Nothing spells financial panic like looking into the eyes of your newborn baby.

  Before Hayden was born, Francis and I dreamed our savings would go toward Caribbean getaways and self-indulgent automobile purchases. We had no idea the “fun” in our “fun money” would be sucked dry like formula from a bottle, and we would eventually be scrambling to save money just to give the little tyke a fighting chance in the world.

  Soon after Hayden was born, we called for help.

  We used a financial planning company that specialized in advising military families. Once enrolled in the company’s program, we were connected with a financial advisor who was assigned to the US military base near our home in England.

  When our new financial advisor arrived at our door, we thought he was going to tell us exactly what we needed to do to avoid certain disaster. But he had other plans. He sat with us at our economical Montgomery Ward kitchen table and rattled off a canned series of rhetorical questions from a script in his faux-leather three-ring binder.

  “Do you want financial security for your family?”

  “Would it make you proud to send your kids to college?”

  “Would you like to retire with enough to pay your bills?”

  As he posed the absurd, rehearsed questions, Francis and I glanced sideways at each other. We knew with each cautious “yes,” we were leading him through a flow chart ending with us forking over a bunch of money, so this guy could earn a commission. Although we were both disappointed our would-be financial savior turned out to be a cheesy salesman, we couldn’t help but see the humor in the situation.

  After the painful presentation, we politely led the financial planner out and waved toodle-oo. As soon as the door clicked shut, Francis and I doubled over with pent-up laughter. We spent the rest of the night asking each other ridiculous rhetorical questions.

  “Is it your dream to have edible food for tonight’s dinner?”

  “Do you enjoy the feeling of good dental hygiene after brushing?”

  “Is it your ambition to have hot coffee in the morning?”

  When we moved to our new duty station in Virginia, we set up an appointment to meet another advisor. Arriving at his office, we were relieved by his straightforward style. After very little small talk, he got right to it. No canned series of questions, no faux-leather three-ring binders, no glossy pie charts with pretty colors.

  This short, bald man knew his stuff, and we knew he was there to help us. He scrambled excitedly around his office like a chipmunk, gathering our financial nuts and building our little nest egg for the future.

  At one point in the meeting, he was having some difficulty getting us to understand the various options for setting up college funds. He tried simple verbal descriptions, dry erase board drawings, and even hand motions. Seeing us still dazed, he scurried behind his desk to retrieve an explanatory graph he had saved on his computer.

  As he plopped his plump frame into his oversized leather chair, he swung the monitor around so we could see it. At that moment, the screensaver photo of his wife and kids blinked off, and we could hardly believe our eyes. In its place was a full-screen photo of a woman posing seductively in skimpy lingerie, advertising a local “After-Dark Escort Service.” Our sense of relief over finding a trustworthy consultant was shattered.

  After a split second of intense shock, our little financial guru swung the monitor out of our view, found the college fund chart file, and began nervously jabbering away about 529 plans as if we had not seen his dark secret.

  We said our goodbyes and headed for the parking lot.

  Although we got a good laugh out of the situation, we wondered if there were any decent, honest people out there who could give us good advice about our personal finances. Third time’s the charm, they say, but we were skeptical about finding Mr. Right.

  Waiting in the lobby of our third financial guy’s office, we speculated he might be in the witness protection program or on parole for a double murder.

  A receptionist brought us Styrofoam cups of coffee and led us to an office filled with family photos, basketball trophies, and children’s artwork. As we waited, we wondered if the poor family in the photos knew their husband/father was really a hit man for the mob.

  After a few minutes, our new financial manager walked into the room with a folder under one arm and a World’s Greatest Dad coffee cup in the other. He was tall, wore glasses, and had a warm smile. We imagined the horror the tellers must’ve experienced when he robbed all those banks at gunpoint.

  He introduced himself as Stanley, and we began to talk.

  By our fourth or fifth meeting, Stanley was so exasperated with our suspicions, he slumped into his chair, put his hands over his eyes and said, “Do you have any idea how little money I make from your account?” Dropping his hands onto his lap, he said, “Exactly eleven dollars and seventy-five cents a month.”

  Slowly but surely, Stanley won our trust. He and his family lived nearby, and we ran into them at school functions and community events. He chatted with Francis and me at a Cub Scout meeting one night, wearing a large dried-up splotch of spaghetti sauce on his chin. To us, the spaghetti sauce represented Stanley’s private life and revealed, perhaps, he had nothing to hide.

  We contact Stanley every year, and he helps us manage our money. He may not be Charles Schwab, Merrill Lynch, or T. Rowe Price.

  But we’re just happy he’s not an axe murderer.

  SEASON 1 EPISODE 9

  AIRING DIRTY LAUNDRY

  Each summer our extended family of eleven squeezed into a 1970s beach cottage that slept ten uncomfortably. Like one of those bad reality shows, our annual vacation on the Outer Banks of North Carolina began with a chaotic dash for the good beds. Suitcases exploded, turning the previously tidy old cottage into a veritable landfill. Floors became littered with swimsuits, towels, and toys; countertops with soda cans, chips, sunglasses, lotion, shells, coffee cake, peanuts, and sticky spots from spilled daiquiri mix.

  The cast of our reality show included me, Francis, and our three kids; my mother, Diane, affectionately called Maz the Spaz; my brother Tray, his Canadian wife, Jacqueline, and their three children. Tray and Jacq raised a fit family of type-A personalities who aggressively and successfully fought for whatever life had to offer. Francis and I, both a bit soft and squishy literally and figuratively, raised our kids to be B-plus personalities, who appreciated eccentricities and a reasonable level of mediocrity.

  Our combined six kids brought goofy exuberance, infuriating sass, angsty brooding, attention-seeking, and plenty of whining to the table.

  Adding to family tension among the cast, my cantankerous father Durwood and his second wife Sherri retired to a house a few blocks away from the cottage, and a myriad of other odd relatives would drop in to visit while we were there. Consequently, the drama of our annual vacation was more akin to The Perfect Storm than Beach Blanket Bingo.

  Even though the size of the beach cottage we occupied necessitated us being physically close, we all tried to avoid learning intimate details about each other durin
g our shared vacation time. For the first few days we maintained a façade of virtue, cleanliness, and self-control. However, after two weeks, awkward personal secrets were inevitably revealed, the crude realities of life exposed.

  Toiletry bags in the shared bathrooms divulged our need for embarrassing pharmaceuticals, such as stool softeners and anti-fungal ointments. Meals together revealed whether we put too much mayonnaise on our sandwiches, dipped into the chips every couple of hours, or got caught taking another brownie from the pan. When we dozed off on the couch, everyone saw the unflattering ways our mouths fell open and chins multiplied when we slept. And commingled laundry allowed everyone to bear witness to the sometimes-alarming size of some of our undergarments.

  “Whose are these?” Jacq said one day, laughing and holding up a large pair of underwear from a basket of warm laundry. Voices rang out from around our beach cottage.

  “Whoa! Not mine!” came from the couch.

  “Me neither!” broadcasted from the staircase.

  “Mine aren’t THAT big!” emanated from the hallway.

  “Uh, yeah,” I admitted sheepishly, “those would be mine, thank you very much.”

  I claimed my stack of folded clothes and slunk off to my room.

  This kind of humiliation was just part of the family vacation experience. Whoever volunteered to fold clothes would become privy to the size of everyone else’s underwear, setting up perfect opportunities to crack jokes. Admittedly, my Jockeys “For Her” were ample enough to fold over several times, while my thinner relatives’ teensy-weensy skivvies were constructed with so little material, I once mistook a pair of my niece’s underwear for a hair scrunchie.

  When vacationing with my relatives, harassment, browbeating, rude sarcasm, and relentless needling fell under the category of playful banter. My family considered these personal pot shots a kind of vacation-time sporting event, like cornhole or ladder ball.

  Over the course of my summer beach vacations—when one of my relatives said the mole on my chin looked like it was growing an eye or offered to put Metamucil in my daiquiri to help out with my “little problem,” or imitated my dance moves to make the cousins laugh—I learned the best plan was to let it go and laugh along.

  And, most importantly, always fold my own laundry.

  SEASON 1 EPISODE 10

  TRUE LOVE IS A GAS

  One busy night after the kids had gone to bed, I settled into my well-worn spot on the sofa for some mind-numbing television.

  “Can you believe this guy?” I asked Francis, gesturing at whoever was blathering away on TV. Francis, seated in his favorite recliner beside me, didn’t answer. I glanced over to witness an all-too-familiar scene: Deeply embedded in the recliner’s cushions, my husband slept soundly.

  Normally, I would giggle, turn the lights out around him and go to bed—a sort of revenge for being “abandoned” for the umpteenth time. Francis would eventually wake up alone in the dark and trudge upstairs to find me tee-heeing under the covers of our bed.

  But on this particular night, I gawked at my dreaming husband as if I were seeing this for the first time. Is this the man I married?

  Panic gripped my soul as I realized: We’re tired, boring, predictable. We’re doomed.

  I remember one evening in 1992, my fiancé, Francis, and I were at an Italian café in Pittsburgh, sipping wine and falling in love.

  “I really want to travel,” I said. “Me too,” he said. “I want to live near the ocean,” he said. “Me too,” I said. “I don’t care about money, I just want happiness,” he said. “Me too!” I said. It was a match made in heaven and our future was destined to be perfect.

  But maybe if we had understood the reality of marriage our conversation would have been different.

  Me: “I might have a lot of stretch marks.”

  Him: “That’s okay, we’ll just dim the lights.”

  Him: “I’m going to go bald, but ironically, hair will sprout out of my ears and nose.”

  Me: “I’m good with tweezers.”

  Him: “I have no mechanical ability whatsoever and will feel no embarrassment if my wife handles all the home repairs.”

  Me: “I won’t have a problem with that for the first ten years or so, but then I’ll get fed up.”

  But back then, we weren’t thinking about annoying habits, taxes, and clogged drains. We were too busy planning our perfect life.

  Our unrealistic expectations persisted after we were engaged. “Oh, pardon me!” Francis yelped after accidentally belching. Although he insisted he would never expel any kind of gas in front of me, it didn’t take long for his steely resolve to erode. Expelling gas is commonplace. It happens mid-sentence, under the covers, in the recliner.

  Before marriage, I preened and pampered Francis like a primate, manicuring nails and plucking stray hairs to maintain his ruggedly handsome good looks. I thought this giddy nurturing stage would last forever; I had no idea those stray hairs would later multiply so profusely that our grooming sessions would eventually take place in the garage and involve the leaf blower. The pedicures became completely intolerable after my husband’s left piggy toe grew to resemble a tiny hoof. One of the kids asked him if it was made out of wood.

  I had to draw the line somewhere.

  Are we doomed because we haven’t met our premarital expectations?

  That night as I watched Francis dozing, I realized something very important: We did not meet our original expectations, we exceeded them. Back when we were dreaming of a life of romance uninhibited by responsibility, stress, and aging, we couldn’t fully comprehend the complexity and depth of the marital relationship.

  We didn’t understand that romance is more than candlelight dinners and adventurous travel. The foundation of long-term romance is commitment, companionship, and comfort.

  My initial annoyance at the sight of my sleeping husband turned to a sort of sweet adoration. As I turned the lights out and sneaked upstairs to wait for him to wake up alone in the dark, I felt happy our marriage turned out to be better than I’d ever imagined.

  SEASON TWO

  IN THE MIX

  SEASON 2 EPISODE 1

  TOTALLY TUBULAR

  The summer we moved to Germany, I stood by without uttering a word of protest as I watched Anna and Lilly race downhill in our new neighborhood riding in an abandoned shopping cart. Anna gripped the handle and gave the cart a big push. Balancing her hips on the handle, she lifted both feet off the ground and leaned into the wind. Lilly sat in the basket holding on for dear life. Both girls were clearly loving every second, each in her own way.

  Call it counterintuitive for a mother to allow her daughters to engage in potentially unsafe play. Call it negligent parenting if you like. I call it nostalgia. I grew up with an older brother, so although I wasn’t present for the pre-ride planning, I knew exactly how this event transpired. Clearly, the shopping cart ride was Anna’s doing.

  Anna was a born instigator. As an infant, supported by parental hands, she would stiffen her legs and stand up as though insisting on independence. At six months, she pointed a slobbery finger at Zuzu, our fat runt of a cat, and slurred, “kitty-kitty-kitty.” Francis and I knew Anna was clever, but we did not understand her precociousness indicated a rapidly-developing need to be in control.

  By age three, she had an opinion about everything. She loved making friends as long as she could be the one making all the decisions. Throughout childhood, Anna’s best friends were those who were content to let her be the boss. She practiced dominance and manipulation regularly on everyone, particularly her little sister, Lilly.

  Lilly was an easy-going baby. No doubt her low-key temperament was partly the result of her birth order. She didn’t fuss or cry for attention while I attended to her needy older siblings. While I worked in the kitchen, she entertained herself, playing with pots and pans, or splashing in a makeshift bath in the sink. I carried her in the Snugli or on my hip while I multitasked, cutting up onions, blowing leaves, or o
pening cereal boxes. She was content to tag along during errands, in and out of car seats, therapists’ waiting rooms, and shopping carts.

  From the start, Lilly idolized her big sister and happily accepted her role as Anna’s protégé. She clearly had her own personality and sense of humor but never showed any desire to be the center of attention. Through many military moves, Lilly had a gift for finding herself a best friend on the first day at a new school and maintaining these relationships long term. People were attracted to Lilly by her sensitivity to others’ feelings and her desire to make them happy. If Lilly was around when Francis and I were having an argument, she might walk into the room and say something like, “Wow, you look really handsome today, Daddy.”

  Lilly’s innate qualities made her the perfect foil for Anna, the faithful, willing companion for whatever Anna dreamed up. When we moved to Germany, Anna adopted the phrase, “Adventure awaits!” At the airport, at home, at the dog park, in the neighborhood playground, in the commissary, Anna would goad Lilly into hair-brained but creative schemes.

  Having had a dominant older brother whom I once idolized, I completely understood why Lilly agreed to go along with Anna’s plans, including the shopping cart ride.

  One summer back in the seventies, my brother Tray and his friend Tracy scored two large inner tubes. Tray and Tracy were in junior high school, way too cool for little sisters like me. So I trotted barefoot up the hill to the neighbor’s backyard playhouse, picking newly-sprouted dandelions along the way.

  About an hour later, there was a knock at the playhouse door.

  “Hey, Lisa! C’mere! Wanna do something fun with me and Tracy?!”

  Flabbergasted by this unusual turn of events, I threw the baby doll I had been tenderly rocking into the spider-webbed corner and ran out the door.