The Meat and Potatoes of Life

by Molinari, Lisa Smith;

  Happy, helpful sophomores garbed in blazing orange, whose parents had been victims of “The Dorm Room Shakedown” the previous year, were awaiting our arrival with huge rolling bins to cart thousands of dollars’ worth of unnecessary products up to assigned rooms.

  “Hi!” they shouted with rehearsed enthusiasm, shaking us out of our road trip stupor, “I’m Sean/Cassandra/Matt! I’d love to help you move in!” They filled two of the rolling carts to capacity, then guided us like sheep to the dorm elevators.

  In the newfangled coed hallway, Anna found her room, which was a “split double”—one room separated down the middle by a wall of closets and dressers. This gave Anna and her roommate their own private spaces within one room.

  Anna’s roommate, Chandler, had already moved in, and her side was spectacular. It looked like something straight out of a Pottery Barn catalog. We stared at her shabby chic bedside table, complete with a vase of peonies and a trendy mirrored lamp. There were whitewashed faux ironwork wall hangings, cool enlarged letters, clear canisters filled whimsically with popcorn and pretzels. Her rug was larger, her bed risers were higher, and she had way more than three decorative pillows.

  Concerned that Anna’s room would look like a cell at Rikers Island by comparison, we quickly unloaded everything we’d already purchased, and left to find the nearest Target. Another two hundred bucks later, we added modern shelving, storage bins, two strings of twinkle lights, curtains, a coat rack, hangers, plastic drawers, and a bowl of fresh fruit.

  While Anna and I scrambled to decorate, Francis retreated to the busy coed hallway. “Eyes forward!” we heard him bark in military fashion when passing boys tried to sneak a peek at his daughter.

  Before saying goodbye to Anna the next day, we all went to her dining hall to take advantage of the free lunch offered to new parents. I contemplated filling my purse with chicken tenders to supplement the beans and rice we’d be eating at home for the next six months but selected a modest plateful of quinoa-spinach-mango salad and coconut shrimp instead.

  “You know, Anna,” Francis said between mouthfuls of made-to-order chicken salad panini, “when I went to college, all I brought was the blue quilt off my bed and a Journey poster. And our dining hall only had things like casseroles and meatloaf. Do you have any idea how lucky you are?”

  Looking confused, Anna chomped her gourmet veggie pizza and said, “Want anything from the fro-yo bar?”

  When it was all said and done, Anna’s room looked better than the hotel room we stayed in at the Syracuse Holiday Inn and had much better coffee. But then again, our hotel was only a hundred bucks with our military discount. I guess the old adage is true: You get what you pay for.

  Or in this case, your college kids get what you pay for.

  SEASON 5 EPISODE 5

  FOR THE ONES LEFT BEHIND

  I was entering the tenth grade when I suddenly became the object of my parents’ undivided attention. It seemed as though their eyes were locked on me, reading my every thought, prying at my secrets, peering uninvited into my soul.

  The light over the dinner table swayed, uncomfortably bright. Beads of cold sweat dotted my hairline. Every night, I braced myself for the inevitable interrogation. …

  “How do you like the roast, Dumpling?” Mom asked, with a nonchalance that belied her intrusive stare.

  “Delicious, Mom,” I sputtered between cheekfulls of beef and potatoes, hoping the compliment might end my ordeal.

  “So, what happened at school today?” my father pressed while pushing applesauce around his plate.

  Wide-eyed and hunched in a self-protective posture at the opposite end of our kitchen table, I muttered the one word that had allowed me to avoid my parents’ attention for so many years: “Nothin’.”

  “Well, something must’ve happened at school today. Here, I’ll help you out. So … you stepped off the bus, and then?” he badgered, mercilessly. So it went, night after night.

  My brother, Tray, had gone off to the U.S. Naval Academy, leaving me at home, alone with my parents. For so many years, I had flown completely under the radar. But now, my only sibling was gone.

  As the first born, Tray had always carried the entire burden of my parents’ expectations for their offspring. I had been merely the unremarkable little sister of The Golden Boy, The Favorite, The Apple of Their Eye. Tray not only fulfilled but exceeded their hopes—he was a popular top athlete with gifted math and science skills who went on to become a navy jet pilot. His obvious superiority left me free to drift contentedly through childhood, bouncing unnoticed between mediocre and above average.

  Wearing ratty Converse Chucks, hand-me-down jean cutoffs, and a camp t-shirt, I’d ride my yellow Schwinn through our neighborhood, my Kool-Aid backpack packed with a cheese sandwich, a few Wacky Package collector’s cards, and a Thermos of Tang. On rainy days I’d stay in my room, lost in elaborate pretend scenarios, or I’d play my mother’s old forty-fives on my Fisher-Price record player.

  As a child, I did not resent Tray for getting all my parents’ attention. Quite the contrary, I relished my quiet, comfortable, ignored existence, and happily hid in the humongous shadow of the older brother I idolized.

  But then he left home, and the jig was up.

  It was as if my parents, Durwood and Diane, looked through the unexpected void left by my brother’s absence and noticed, “Oh yeah … Who is that there? Is that the other one … what’s her name again? Oh yes! It’s Lisa!”

  Mom was now interested in what I wore, my social behavior, and how I did my hair. “Oh, Dumpling, let me help you give a little height to those bangs,” she would say, licking her thumb.

  My dad, who had no previous interest in my athletic accomplishments, which by the way included a second-place ribbon for the standing broad jump at church camp, started showing up to all my high school swim meets. My teammates knew this sudden change in attention made me nervous and would alert me when he appeared in the chlorine-steamed stands, “Heads up, Lisa! Durwood’s here!”

  Night after agonizing night, I was interrogated by my parents at the dinner table, forced to reveal my likes, dislikes, social pursuits, academic achievements, ambitions, disappointments, hopes, and dreams. Durwood and Diane took an unprecedented interest in me, having long talks about life, getting me horseback riding lessons, taking photographs of me before dances, and bragging about me to their friends.

  It was like I was their kid or something. Weird.

  Decades later, our youngest child, Lilly, sat wide-eyed and defensively crouched in her chair at the dinner table, as if we were about to pummel her with dinner rolls. Hayden had been away at college for a couple of years, and Anna had left for college the week before. Lilly’s instinct was telling her, the jig is up.

  But I let Lilly know, there’s nothing to fear. I’d lived through it myself and was there to tell the tale about how those left behind suddenly become the center of attention.

  The strange people who ignored you all these years? Don’t worry, Lilly, they won’t hurt you. They are simply your parents, and they’ve finally realized you are pretty darned interesting after all.

  SEASON 5 EPISODE 6

  THE ELEPHANT IN THE BEDROOM

  I’d seen those awkward commercials. Unrealistically tall, thin, good-looking actors holding hands in outdoor bathtubs and canoodling in public. The woman had silky long hair and flowing garments that looked like they might fall off at the slightest tug, and the man had a rugged jawline, piercing blue eyes, and impossibly white teeth. They exchanged come-hither stares and knowing smiles, as one led the other by the hand toward the bedroom. …

  But I’d been married a long time. I knew igniting passion was not a matter of popping a little blue pill. Presumably, Francis had plenty of lead in his pencil. It was the numerous other realities of everyday married life that got in the way of romance.

  On any given night, Francis and I started yawning—not a particularly attractive human reflex I might add—about an hour after d
inner, the sure sign that we only had one crime show in us before our eyelids would drop. My yawns began discreetly, but as I reached maximum inhale, my face contorted, my nostrils flared and my double chin tripled. Francis, on the other hand, made a dramatic scene of every yawn, with a gasping deep inhale, followed by a hacking exhale that made everyone around him duck for cover, and ending with a bizarre jaw-chattering finish that sounded something like, “Gi-gi-gi-gi-gi-gahhh!”

  When we finally trudged upstairs to our bedroom, we didn’t just hop in the sack. As a middle-aged couple with achy joints, breathing issues, and persnickety bedtime habits, there was a whole rigmarole we still had to go through before we could actually attempt sleep.

  Unfortunately, this routine was not conducive to romance.

  After the dog, Moby, dutifully flopped into his crate in our bedroom, Francis headed to the bathroom in his boxer shorts. With the door wide open, he made all necessary deposits before flushing and leaving the seat up. Then he stood at the mirror, trying to decide whether it was worth brushing his teeth or not. Groggy-eyed, we passed in the hallway just as Francis finished up an especially noisy yawn. “Aaaah (inhaling) … achhhhhh (the hacking exhale) … Gi, gi, gi, gi, gahhh (the dramatic finish)!”

  After brushing and flossing, I took my fiber pills and ginkgo biloba, and then inserted the bulky, drool-producing mouth guard that kept me from grinding my teeth.

  “I’m ex-thauth-ted,” I announced with a night-guard lisp after entering the bedroom. I put on my flannel pjs, while Francis fiddled with the equipment on his nightstand. It took a few minutes for him to fix the complicated straps of his sleep apnea headgear, and at the same time, I wrestled with the Velcro fasteners of my plantar fasciitis night splint boot.

  Francis flipped a switch, and I heard the whirr of his CPAP machine.

  I placed an extra pillow under my knees to stave off hip pains and opened my book. Francis couldn’t sleep with the lights on, so I grabbed the reading glasses I had recently found at a local discount store with little LED lights built into them. I pressed the buttons on either side of the lenses, and two piercing rays illuminated the pages of my book.

  “Good night Thweetie,” I lisped in the dark.

  Francis jerked out of a half slumber, and like something out of Alien, turned his head toward me with four feet of flexible tubing extending from the rubber nose piece strapped to his face. I glanced over at him from my contour pillow, looking like some kind of drooling underground miner, and nearly blinded him with my laser beams.

  He squinted in recognition and mumbled an airy reply through his plastic elephant trunk, “GNooo nihhht, Hhhonhhee.”

  A few minutes later, in the white noise silence of our marital bedroom, ironically, the dog began to snore.

  I sighed and figured, any couple who manages to get in the mood in the midst of middle-aged reality has far more passion in their marriage than any little blue pill could ever provide.

  SEASON 5 EPISODE 7

  TRAVELING ON AUTO POTTY

  It was June, time for my annual columnists’ conference. The events were held in different cities each year, and I looked forward to getting away from my “home office” (i.e., my laptop on the kitchen table) flying off to a different location and feeling like a real journalist.

  This time, I was headed all the way to Los Angeles to spend a long weekend with the group of newspaper columnists that had become both professional colleagues and friends since I joined the group in 2010.

  In all the years of military moves and traveling, I never loved flying, but I felt a certain excitement that day about going off on my own away from Francis and the kids and the perpetually repeating responsibilities of being a wife and mother. After a quick goodbye with Francis at curb-side drop off, I wheeled my bag confidently into the Providence airport, chin in the air, preprinted boarding pass in hand, heels clicking—playing the part of a seasoned traveling professional.

  Damn, security screening. The hassle of flying always took me by surprise.

  My role as a traveling journalist shriveled as I entered the raw humanity of the TSA line. I shuffled forward, foot by foot, staring clumsily at the same twenty people every time we zig-zagged past each other toward the security screening agents who held our destinies in their latex-gloved hands. Thirty minutes later, I’d formed a silent kinship with my fellow travelers. In the microcosm of airport society, they were my friends. At the end of the line, I bid them a temporary adieu and nervously approached the TSA agent’s podium.

  The agent looked from my documentation to my face to my ID, making me feel like a fugitive wanted for heinous crimes. I feared that TSA German shepherds might sense my natural guilt complex and attack, but somehow I passed and was directed to the security screening conveyor belts.

  Everyone tried to act nonchalant as we fumbled for grey plastic bins. We wanted to appear to be a savvy travelers, but all were uneasy with the indignity of the process. I scrambled to remember the complicated rules: Do I remove my jacket in addition to my shoes and belt? If my laptop has to be in a bin by itself, does my phone get its own bin too? Will that packet of ketchup in my purse be flagged as liquid? Will the screener think my hairdryer is a gun?

  I stood, legs spread and arms over my head, in the futuristic metal detector as an exhaled puff blew my hair into the air. The lady behind me was selected for a random pat-down. I tried not to gawk. We retrieved our bins, and as my comrades and I put our shoes and belts back on, I felt like we’d all had an awkward one-night stand.

  Finally headed toward my gate, I stopped to get a cup of coffee, but the Dunkin’ Donuts line was longer than the one at TSA. Turned out, I had plenty of time. My flight was delayed two hours due to a flight attendant calling in sick at the last minute.

  The large latte hit my bladder about a half hour before boarding, so I went in search of restrooms. Heeding the prohibition against leaving bags unattended, I muscled my wheeled carry-on into one of the many stalls, latched the door, straddled the humongous bag, and grabbed for the paper seat cover dispenser. The first three paper covers ripped in half, the fourth fell into the toilet while I was trying to position it, and the fifth one disappeared when the toilet unexpectedly flushed. Those phantom flushes in automatic public toilets had always scared the you-know-what out of me, which ironically would have defeated the entire purpose of being in the toilet in the first place.

  With a seat cover finally in place, I took my position.

  Strangely, the otherwise noisy bathroom fell dead silent. I could see the feet of the occupants next to me, but I heard only silence. I hoped someone would turn on the sink, while my bladder refused to release the sixty-four ounces of coffee I’d consumed that morning.

  I had experienced bathroom stage fright on other occasions, most notably in college when perpetually clogged bar toilets caused long lines in the bathrooms. The one working toilet usually had no toilet paper, a broken door lock, and gaps in the stall that allowed everyone in line to stare through the cracks. Once it was my turn to go, I was paralyzed.

  While waiting there with my elbows on my knees, it occurred to me that travel pottying had changed significantly since I was a kid. On family trips, my dad would pull over our station wagon to the side of the road for quick pit stops. If we managed to find a gas station with a bathroom, it wasn’t worth the effort because Maz insisted on spreading half a roll of toilet paper on the seat before I was allowed to sit down. Francis had told me his family didn’t even bother to stop, because they kept a large mayonnaise container known as the “tinkle jar” in the back window of their station wagon.

  But those improvised methods of yesteryear were no longer considered apropos—or sanitary for that matter. I sat there in that state-of-the-art public toilet facility, unable to go, longing for the simple practicality of a roadside patch of weeds.

  At one point, I fidgeted, and—WHOOSH!—set off the phantom flusher again. It scared the bejeezus out of me—and provided the nudge my bladder needed. Relief!
>
  The toilet paper was affixed to some type of conservation dispenser that stopped the roll at each half turn. The flimsy tissue ripped with the slightest resistance, forcing me to make several attempts—roll, stop, rip, roll, stop, rip, roll, stop, rip—until I had enough scraps to do the job.

  Finally, I got up to trigger the flusher, which up until now had seemed able to react to a falling eyelash from three stalls down. However, nothing happened. I stood there, wondering if the sensor had a tiny camera inside that transmitted to a flushing control room. Had the person on duty gone to lunch? I swiveled my hips, bobbed my head, and waved my hands to no avail.

  With only minutes to boarding, I gave up on flushing and left the stall. Halfway to the sinks, I heard it—WHOOSH! I imagined the flushing controller giggling over his ham and cheese.

  The bank of sinks had no knobs, controls, or buttons. “Here we go again,” I thought, waving my hands in search of automated soap and water. I had a choice of hand dryers: a high-tech version powerful enough to take off my skin, or the old-fashioned kind that emits a warm breeze and eventually ends with me giving up and wiping my hands on my pants.

  Frustrated with newfangled automation, I chose the latter.

  Soon after takeoff, the flight attendant came by.

  “Coffee?” he asked.

  “Sure,” I said, secretly wondering if anyone had an empty mayonnaise jar somewhere on the plane.

  SEASON 5 EPISODE 8

  THE HAIR OF THE DOG

  I didn’t believe those who warned us.

  “You’re getting a Labrador retriever?” they asked in disbelief. “You know Labs shed, right?”

  Yeah, yeah. Whatever.

  When I first set eyes on our puppy, Moby, he was eight weeks old and adorable. Someone could’ve said he would grow up to have poisonous tentacles, razor sharp claws, and skunk-like scent sacs. I simply wouldn’t have cared. He looked just like one of those impossibly precious L.L.Bean catalog puppies, and nothing, including common sense, was going to stop me from taking him home.