The Meat and Potatoes of Life

by Molinari, Lisa Smith;

  At the end of the week, when Moby had accepted the fact he would be wearing that blasted cone for the rest of his life, it suddenly cracked and fell off while he was rolling in the snow. Moby stared at the cone a moment, not sure if he should be sad at losing another appendage or happy to be rid of it. Instinct took over, and Moby pounced onto the cone, grabbing and shaking it with all his might.

  Killing the cone restored Moby’s faith in his lingering masculinity, and as he trotted back to the house with his head held high, I could almost hear him say, “Nothing will ever get between me and my balls again.”

  SEASON 4 EPISODE 18

  WHAT REMAINS TO BE SEEN

  What happens when two parents, three kids, one overactive puppy, and several marauding mice are cooped up in a remote cabin in Maine, with no internet, no phone service, and no cable television during the last week of summer vacation?

  The answer to my question depends on who’s answering.

  Hayden, despite the fact he was an opinionated college kid who loved nothing more than debating the palatability of dorm food or the effect of computerization on the global economy with his roommates, would have given the same response he had given to every parental question: “Good.”

  Anna, who relentlessly milked her victimization as the middle child, would claim that our end-of-summer vacation in Maine was like teetering on the precipice of hell.

  Lilly would give a sincere response based on her genuine observations and honest opinions—right after she answered the five hundred and thirty-seven texts and social media posts she missed while we were off the grid.

  Moby, in dog language, would say, “I loved it! I love you! I love my family! I love the cabin, the trees, the birds, the bugs, the sticks, the lake, the canoe, the lodge, the fire pit, the dirt!” Moby would blather on and on ad nauseam, until someone threw a ball or shook the dog food bag to distract him.

  Ask Francis while we were stuck in two hours of Boston traffic on our way home, and he would’ve snapped impatiently at the kids to knock off the racket, complained his sciatica was killing him, and shouted in a hangry rage, “For the love of God could someone please get me a flipping snack from the cooler before I starve to death here?!”

  Ask my otherwise pragmatic, rational husband the same question after we were back at home with the car unpacked and three pizza slices in his stomach, and he would offer a simple answer uncluttered by over-analysis and untainted with emotion—although possibly intended to shut me up—“It was a perfect vacation, Dear.”

  But what about my opinion? Was our family’s week in the woods a success? Did we accomplish what we set out to do?

  Did we pluck ourselves from the suffocating tidal wave of modern technology and rapidly changing cultural norms long enough to breathe in the fortifying strength of familial bonds and renew our uniquely human ties with the natural world?

  Heck if I know.

  I had to accept that it might take years before hindsight would bring the answers to my parenting questions into focus. In the meantime, I’d stop trying to draw conclusions and concentrate on making good memories.

  Like everyone eating a late breakfast of hot buttered pancakes with peach slices, pecans, and Maine maple syrup. Like teaching Moby to swim. Like seeing my computer scientist son paddle around in a kayak. Like hiking Acadia trails in the rain. Like taking the whole family out in a canoe to watch the sun go down over the lake. Like being so bored on the fourth night in the cabin that, after watching our two-hour and five-minute DVD of Dog Day Afternoon, we watched it all over again with the director’s commentary. Like hearing our girls giggling up in the loft after carving “I have lice” into the ceiling over their bunks. Like sipping local pale ale in Adirondack chairs around a roaring fire. Like beating Francis at Othello.

  Like falling asleep to the scratching of mice and the call of the loons.

  SEASON FIVE

  ARE WE THERE YET?

  SEASON 5 EPISODE 1

  LOST ON MEMORY LANE

  I lifted the heavy wooden hatch over the narrow staircase leading to the basement. All the houses in our row of 120-year-old base quarters had hatches covering up the basement stairs. Each house in the row was like the other, but our house, Quarters C, had the scariest basement by far.

  When the housing manager gave us the initial tour before we moved in, he took us down to the basement, a labyrinth of small spaces partitioned by studs half-covered by tacked-up pieces of drywall, stacked stone, and rickety cabinets from the turn of the century—not the most recent century, either. He was jittery as he led me into each space, flipping light switches as he went.

  Strangely, he passed by one door as if it wasn’t there. I stopped, grabbed the doorknob, and said, “What’s this?” as I pushed the door inward. He scurried toward me.

  “Oh, well, wait …” he bumbled nervously as I flipped the switch inside the door—and gasped.

  A single lightbulb barely illuminated the large space, which I judged was under our living room. The floor was uneven dirt and rubble that rose up on one side toward a huge chunk of bedrock the house had been built over. The monstrous mound of rock was almost as tall as I was. It looked as though two eyes and a mouth might open to reveal Jabba the Hutt. Maybe the builders, unable to get rid of the outcropping of rock, decided to enclose it. Behind a door.

  In the corner, a filthy dehumidifier hummed and rattled. The manager forced a shaky grin, advising me to keep that door closed. And so, I did.

  But we used the other spaces of our scary basement to store our over-abundant belongings. My family often complains about my propensity to save everything from hospital bracelets to matchbooks, organized and categorized into bins in our basement. It’s true, I’ve always felt compelled to squirrel things away, like my old Holly Hobbie sewing machine, Anna’s and Lilly’s confirmation dresses, Hayden’s sock puppet, and the collar from our long-dead runt of a cat Zuzu.

  When Hayden graduated from high school, I sent thirty-six t-shirts I’d been saving in a tub since he was a baby—from Montessori preschool, Taekwando, Boy Scouts, football, band—off to a quilter who made him a one-of-a-kind bedspread to memorialize his childhood. The quilt was such a meaningful graduation gift, I knew my hoarding tendencies were finally justified.

  When Anna’s graduation approached, I had to brave the basement labyrinth to find my stash of her t-shirts. With the heavy hatch secured to the wall, I descended the grey-painted stairs to our subterranean, cobwebbed, perpetually damp storage room. Normally, the fear in my gut would compel me to finish my task in the basement quickly and get back to the first floor. But on this day, what should have taken ten minutes took an entire afternoon and a half box of tissues.

  The first tub I opened was full of baby items I hadn’t seen in years. I let out a sigh and thought back more than a decade to those sweet moments when Anna was small enough to carry. There, in a musty fluorescent-lit corner, I got lost in memories. I caressed the soft flannel receiving blankets, remembering when she was born in a village hospital in England with an Irish midwife, who insisted I labor in a tub laced with lavender oil as she brought me tea and toast.

  Pastel afghans, a tiny gingham dress, and Anna’s baptismal cloth took me further away. The layers in the storage tub were like the rings of a tree. In between were lumps—a special rattle, a tattered pink doll, and a string of brightly-painted wooden beads. My eyes lost focus as I recalled Anna as a sleepy toddler, rhythmically stroking the beads, over and over.

  The next box I found was full of old toys. I envisioned the plastic yellow baton, gripped in Anna’s perpetually sticky fingers, relentlessly beating her chunky Fisher-Price xylophone. The purple cloth play purse took me back to our old house in Virginia, where Anna would strut around with the bag over one arm, stopping to apply the fake lipstick and pose precociously before a mirror.

  Pink and yellow plates, cups, and pots looked exactly like they did when Anna served up smorgasbords of plastic toy pizza slices, hamburgers, peas, bananas,
cupcakes, and cheese wedges. “Mmmm,” I would say, smacking my lips loudly and pretending to chew, eliciting her brightly dimpled smile.

  At the bottom of the box, a doll marked by an ink scribble in the middle of her forehead looked serenely relieved to have retired to a cardboard haven. Her life with Anna had not been easy. With the doll slumped in an umbrella stroller, Anna would push her around our cul-de-sac, sometimes hitting a crack that would catapult the poor doll head-first into the pavement. A quick kiss on the scuffed head, and Anna was off again.

  A tattered file box contained artwork, crafts, and primitive pottery—ancient relics with cracking macaroni and yellowing glue. Strangely, these gave no indication of Anna’s later talent for art and design. Small spiral notebooks were scribbled with her endless ideas, garment sketches, and redecorating plans. “How to make money this summer: 1. Sell my old Barbies; 2. Make lemonade; 3. …,” on one page. “Rules for Secret Club House,” on another.

  It’s an incredible privilege to watch a human being grow, I thought. Cradling a helpless budding newborn in my arms, I couldn’t have imagined the distinctive person who would bloom before my eyes over eighteen years.

  I finally found the box of t-shirts, and the wonder of our exceptional daughter came into watery focus. Bossy, stubborn, controlling, and pensive. Intelligent, driven, hilarious, and creative. With big brown eyes, a sparkling smile, and an uncommon dimpled chin.

  As I switched out the lights and lugged the box past the door to the lair of Jabba the Hutt, I realized I hadn’t kept all those boxed relics for my children’s sake. I had kept them for my sake, so I could remember. I squirreled items away that would take me back to the moments of motherhood I was afraid I’d forget.

  Sniffling up the narrow stairs into the comforting afternoon light of my sunny kitchen, I shrugged off my irrational fear of losing childhood memories. Anna’s high school graduation, like so many moments of her life, would surely be unforgettable. The monumental event would meld her past and present together, imprinting the incredible image of our daughter’s evolution on my mind—forever.

  SEASON 5 EPISODE 2

  NEVER SAY NEVER

  I swore I’d never do it.

  But there I was on a gurney, begging my doctor to please, for the love of God, give me a flipping epidural right this minute. It was the birth of our third child, Lilly, and up until that point, I had insisted on enduring labor pains without medication.

  Ridiculous, I know. Something a crunchy California nurse had said during my first prenatal classes had me believing epidurals caused prolonged contractions and emergency C-sections. However, twelve hours into labor number three, I discarded my fears, scruples, and dignity, and begged the doctor to inject me with something—morphine, vodka, battery acid, anything to stop the pain.

  Life is funny like that. One minute, we think we have it all figured out, and the next thing we know, we’ve changed our own rules. Milestones like marriage, childbirth, military service, parenting teens, and financial responsibility present us with new sets of circumstances requiring new standards.

  Before marriage, I rolled my eyes at those couples I’d see canoodling in public. “They’re faking it,” I thought, and believed people in real relationships didn’t give each other eyelash kisses and lick ice cream off each other’s noses. I thought I’d never be corny like them.

  But then I met Francis.

  Within weeks, we became one of those annoying couples who couldn’t be in each other’s presence without fingers laced or limbs intertwined. We would stare into each other’s eyes, sniff each other’s hair (Francis had hair in those days), and pick little bits of lint and crumbs off each other’s clothing.

  Nauseating!

  During pregnancy, I said I would never nurse my baby in public, change his diaper while in an airplane seat, let him cry it out, strap him to a toddler leash, let him watch two Disney movies in a row, give his binky back after he dropped it in the dirt, or scream like a lunatic at his pee-wee soccer games.

  Oh well.

  Military spouses make rules to stay organized and deal with stress. Some proclaim they’ll never live on base, join spouse clubs, or let the kids eat Fruit Loops for dinner during deployments. But at some point, “I will never” turns into “Don’t knock it till you try it.”

  Parenting teenagers crushed my “never” edicts like walnuts. Despite my many prohibitions, I eventually gave in and let them use electronics in their rooms, watch R-rated movies, and wear jeans to church. And I’ll admit—I’ve used my cell phone to call them for dinner, even when they’re in the same house.

  Once we felt the pinch of college tuition bills, I started pushing my Aldi cart a half mile across the parking lot in a torrential downpour just to get my quarter back. I’ve waited around at the commissary for a rotisserie chicken to be reduced to three ninety-nine. And after going to the movies (using a military discount) I’ve even found popcorn in my bra and eaten it.

  Reality has driven us to do things we previously thought tacky, lazy, or negligent. But life’s challenges and milestones have also revealed courage, strength, and character we never thought we had.

  So, whether choosing between a minivan or a sports car, or deciding whether or not to stay in the military for twenty years, experience instills this simple life lesson: Never say never.

  SEASON 5 EPISODE 3

  ONCE A MILITARY FAMILY

  It was seven in the morning, and the late summer sun was already shining crisp and bright on the train platform. Francis hastily parked my luggage at my feet, inadvertently nicking my toe in the process.

  “Oooh, sorry Hon, but I’d better get to work. Call me when you get to your mother’s.” He leaned down to give me a quick kiss goodbye. He was wearing his khaki uniform—buttoned, tucked, pinned, and polished. As a navy wife, I’ve become quite accustomed to goodbyes, but this one felt different.

  I observed the other passengers waiting and drew conclusions about their lives. A sleepy student, a hip grandmother, an arrogant businessman. It dawned on me they had taken notice of Francis’s uniform, and deduced: A military family.

  The uniform I often took for granted had defined us for more than two decades.

  The uniform symbolized not only Francis’s military service, but mine as a military spouse and our kids’ as military brats. It told a tale of duty, deployments, separation, transition, challenges, hardships, patriotism, pride, and adventure. The uniform spoke to the strength, resiliency, and courage of the people who wore it, washed it, and hung it on the backs of their kitchen doors.

  At our wedding in 1993, Francis was a young navy lieutenant and I was a brand-new attorney. Within two years, we rocked our baby boy, Hayden, in base quarters in Monterey, California, at the Naval Postgraduate School. In another couple years, we were in rural England, where Anna was born by an Irish midwife, and where Francis drove a beat-up Fiat on dark, winding roads to stand the watch. A few years later, we were in Virginia Beach, where Francis completed a sea tour, three shore tours, and a yearlong deployment to Djibouti while our family grew to include our youngest daughter, Lillian.

  After a three-year adventure in Stuttgart, Germany, we found ourselves at Naval Station Mayport, Florida, where we could see dolphins, frigates, and destroyers in the Atlantic waves just outside our base house’s kitchen window. Then, in Rhode Island at the U.S. Naval War College, in the twilight of a long military career, we watched our children use their skills as military kids to succeed in high school and college.

  A rooster suddenly crowed from behind a house across the tracks, bringing me back to the train platform. I gulped hard, remembering that in a few short months, Francis would retire from the military.

  Where do we go from here? I wondered, squinting at the sun’s reflection on the tracks. Francis and his uniform were long gone, and I was there, just another passenger on the crowded platform. Is this what it’s like in the civilian world?

  “Stand clear of the yellow line, fast train approaching,�
� blared a voice from the loudspeakers. Instinctively, I gripped my heart, as a flash of metal and momentum blew by, sucking the air from my chest and clearing the cache of my wandering mind.

  Our military identity lay deep within our hearts, not in outward signs and symbols. Even with Francis’s uniform stored in the back of the hall closet, he would always be a navy veteran. And our family would always be a military family, through and through.

  The Number 95 arrived right on time, and as I stepped off the platform and onto the train, I knew our military life was not coming to an end. We were simply boarding the next train on our journey.

  SEASON 5 EPISODE 4

  SHOP, DROP, AND ENROLL

  “Three decorative pillows or just two?” Anna asked in front of a colorful display of bedding at a local store. It was seven in the evening, and we had been shopping since the stores opened that morning.

  The first place we stopped was the Apple Store, where I spent more than a thousand bucks in less than fifteen minutes buying Anna a new laptop that was required for her major. After that we hit Zara, H&M, Macy’s, JCPenney, Target, Walmart, Bed Bath & Beyond, Joann Fabrics, T.J.Maxx, and HomeGoods.

  “What’s another twenty bucks at this point?” I replied to Anna in utter defeat and near starvation. “Definitely get three.”

  Two weeks later, Francis, Anna, and I pulled up to her dorm at Syracuse University, our minivan packed to the gills with fluffy new bedding, posters, a clip-on lamp, school supplies, throw rug, shower caddy, towels, desk set, fan, pop-up laundry bins, six months’ worth of toiletries, various snacks, cases of bottled water, a microwave, a coffee maker, and yes, three decorative pillows.