Practicing Grace

I don't have a lot planned this weekend. I have my baby girl, we're going to learn to crochet now so we'll be really good when we're little old ladies and are supposed to. Then we may go looking at puppies, just because. Probably some shoe shopping and yard work and the book store, all in that order.
But as usual, the weekend exploded. I thought I’d mow the lawn one last time, a really quick one. The back yard took longer than I expected, because I wanted all the pretty zigzag mow marks. I moved to the front.
Crap, Lou was out. I left the lawn mower running, so he would know I was busy, and kept my iPod blaring. I was halfway through when he snuck up behind me, motioning for me to turn off the lawnmower.
But like a good neighbor, I plastered a smile on my face and let it stop.
He began talking. I wondered if he would notice I was listening to the iPod instead. Then I remembered my new mantra. Be graceful to those with lesser brainpower.
So I sighed and pulled the earbuds from my ears.
He hadn’t noticed, and was in the middle of a conversation. “--now, sweetheart. I haven’t asked a woman out in years, you know. I’m a bit nervous… So would you like to go out to dinner?”
“No.”
Behind the glasses that magnify his eyes, he blinks in surprise.
“Why not?”
I could have mentioned he was in his LATE eighties. But he knows that. I could have mentioned he smells. But he knows that also.
And I was still working on my grace.
“I have my child this weekend.”
He wasn’t about to let me have a tactful excuse. “So? The kid can stay alone for an hour.”
I ground my teeth. “But I enjoy my time with my kid. I don’t choose to waste any of it when I have her.”
A wasp flew around his face. I was actually kinda impressed with the way he stayed calm. It buzzed around his mouth, drawing attention to his rather large, false, horse-teeth, upward to his thick eyeglasses.
Suddenly he twitched, as he heard the buzz. In a split second, I realized I shouldn’t have been impressed with what I thought was his zen moment. He wasn’t calm at all, but had a delayed reaction.
He spun his eyeballs around to see what was buzzing. When he realized what it was, he raised his hand to smack it. Unfortunately, he miscalculated (the quadruple-focals are tricky) and smacked himself in the nose on the way to the forehead, which he hit also.
The wasp flew away. Lou tried to act casual, as if he didn’t just bop himself twice.
Then he leaned back, body stance sultry, and I realized he forgot he’d already asked me out and was about to do it all over again. Damn dementia.
Suddenly, a fit of giggles caught me. I coughed into my hand, then cleared my throat. “Why don’t you ask Eddie to go to dinner with you instead?”
He looked astonished that I read his mind in the asking out of dinner. Then a wave of disgust washed over his face. “Awww, I go to dinner with him all the time.”
Eddie is our other neighbor, and lost his wife right before old Lou did. They were currently on the prowl for women.
“Now sweetheart,” he starts again, “I haven’t asked a woman out in years, you know. I’m a bit nervous… So would you like to go out to dinner?”
This time I was more prepared. “No. I have a date already.”
“He’s not black, is he? Bah!” he throws his hand down at me in disgust. “I don’t know why such beautiful women go out with black men!”
Holy crap. My fingers twitch on the lawnmower. I fight the urge to mow him down, though the mental image of bloody body parts flying every which way sends me a perverse sense of glee. Instead, I smile. The gleam of my recently bleached teeth makes him blink in surprise.
“Because size matters,” I whisper slowly and distinctly. “Because once you go black, you never go back. Never, ever let a woman tell you dick size isn’t important. It is. We lie through our teeth. When you pull your pants down and have an average little willie, we fight the urge to laugh. That’s why we lie and try to make you feel better. Silly women are guilty creatures. But then we dump your ass for the luscious guy built like a show-horse.”
“Geeezus!” he mutters, his face white.
I smile wider.
“Mommy!” my child yells from the upstairs window.
“Gotta run,” I say, in the sweetest voice I can muster. I turn and deliberately let my hips sway in a bellydancer walk. I am practicing grace, I chant. Mostly it's guilt, because I don't know how much baby girl heard.
I let the door slam behind me. “Yes, tickle-bug?” I ask the child who resembles me the most.
“You were talking to Lou an awful long time,” she begins tactfully.
Great. The child who resembles me doesn’t need to remind herself of grace, it’s already there. Somewhere in the last twenty years, I’ve lost mine. Suddenly I want her to keep hers.
“Yes.” I refrain from telling her the racist comments, knowing how it instantly fires up my first daughter to the boiling point. I decide I can let my littlest daughter retain her charm. But the anger is still there, under my skin when I say, “The dirty old creeper asked me out again.”
“Mommy,” she chastises gently. “It takes a lot of courage to ask out a woman! What a brave soul!”
I smile, ever so sweetly. “Then you should go out with him.”
She smiles sweetly back, then sighs. “You turned him down again, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but it was gently,” I share.
Because it was. I didn’t mow him down. There weren’t bloody body parts scattered up and down the block. Bravo for my grace! All the mantra chanting works. I recommend it highly.

Shoe-Ho-Ho

The things we do for girlfriends!

Especially when we know our own weaknesses. Trish called me up to go with her to the dance shoe store. She needed a pair of Zumba shoes for our latest addiction. (I'll admit to already buying mine at an online price I couldn't ignore, and felt quite proud at my savvy bargaining.)

Being the supportive friend that I am, I sucked it up and agreed to go with her, even though there is nothing that I need. In December. The month of Christmas shopping. The month of budgeting.

Now, you must understand, me and shoes...it's like putting a drug addict in a pharmaceutical closet and telling him there's no inventory tracking. But I psyched myself to be strong, cuz Trish needed me. I would do what it takes.

Close my eyes.
Hold my breath.
Think baseball.

She tried on Zumba shoes but dammit. There was one size in Size 6. My size. Coincidence? I think not. I think fate was screaming my name. Trying to give me a clue...you must buy. You only live once. Enjoy life.

“I don't need Zumba shoes,” I argued with the Rena who wears devil horns at conferences.
“But what if the bargain pair you bought gives you...bunions?” the bitch argued back.

Bunions? Holy shit, I never thought of that. I'm not even quite sure what bunions are. It's something about a blister and an onion, right? I ask my friend AnaMaria, the store owner- who by now we've talked into going to salsa with us.

“Ugly, ugglly painful growths on the side of your foot, base of ze toe. You must tape ze foot to keep them from hurting! But worse ever than the pain, they are soooo ugg-lly. A fate worse than death, a woman with uggly feet,” she says in her heavy accent. The woman speaks five languages and mixes all at least four of them together.

Tricia and I stare, wide-eyed. Horrified. Ugly feet. That is a fate worse than death.

The pain – oh, well... whatever. Every woman can handle pain. Childbirth. Breast cancer. Death, divorce, desertion.

We're supermoms.

But, Lord help me, please don't give me ugly feet. Please, please, please. I promise to be good. Forever. I'll feed the homeless. I'll foster horrible children. I'll be nice, even to the wackos. Amen.

And then I see Trish's eyes cross over in a glazed look I know too well. Oh, no. I try to think about saving her, but all too soon I'm sucked in.

My body starts to shake, my eyeballs rattling back and forth in tiny convulsions as I fight the urge to look. I continue to stare into her eyes, but get distracted by the glowing flecks of glitter reflected in them.

“...I designed these little beauties for salsa,” AnaMaria is speaking from a distance, her own voice in a fog. I can tell she's in the same zone as Trish, the pull of which I'm resisting desperately. “I saved a pair for myself. I shall wear them when we go.”

Trish starts to reach out, her hand stretching in slow motion. “Do you have 'ize Eht?” she asks in the same Italian/Portuguese/Spanglish accent of AnaMaria because her brain is not fully functioning.

I try to slap Trish's hand from the little hand-made sin of leather and rhinestones. But I make the mistake that will cost me my credit card limit increase. I look away from her eyes, and hear the little Demon Rena laughing over my shoulder, the way she always does when I sucker for curiousity.

Oooh, the pain of the glowing beauty when it hits my vision! Black, soft leather rubbed to perfection. Tiny little cutouts filled with silky black mesh, like the eroticism of smoothing black hose over your legs. Long, curling straps of elegance that wind around in criss-crosses around slender ankles. Imbedded are dainty rhinestones that twinkle in the night, adding the bling-bling in the slightly trashy way one who leans toward prostitution loves best.

My voice hasn't taken on the thickened accent of the other two yet. Instead, it comes from my throat in a monotonous, Stepford Wives quality.

“Do you have size 6?”

The most sickening part of the whole adventure is... I don't need Zumba shoes. I don't need salsa shoes. But Trish and I trudge back to the car, hampered by our huge, garbage-sized bags of boxed shoes, four pair to be exact. Guilt has stricken us both to utter silence, we're unable to even look at each other, like two junkies who fell off the wagon. Two AA members who were caught passing a flask at a meeting.

Hanging our heads down in shame, we climb in. Still taking care to place the precious shoes in gently, and strapping them into the seatbelt, lest they break during the ride home.

“You have got to be kidding.” Her daughter says from the back seat, counting the boxes, her voice dripping with disgust.

We ignore the child, knowing all to well her day is coming too.

Later that night, I text Trish.

“Are you walking around the house wearing the strappy shoes?”
“No.” she responds immediately.

It takes me a few minutes to text back.
“Oh. Me neither. Just doing the dishes.”

I hop up on the counter and guiltily unhook the winding, looping straps that grace the gentle curves of my Zumba-induced, super-model ankles.