Jiggle Emancipation

I was on the deck the other morning and Nutball was skulking under the eaves of his house, pointing a smartphone at me and narrating how he would post the video of the horrible woman next door on Facebook.

Just how many people does he think will watch a chubby, middle aged, single breasted woman do yoga?

If he wasn’t so sad, he’d be comical.

I have come to think he is the price I have to pay for all the wonderful in my life. That price might seem steep but it isn’t. Near and far, I have my family and friends, people who genuinely care about me and I feel the same about them. I have my health and what looks like a pretty good care network to look after it. I have the house and every lovely thing in it, the garden, the car, the cats, a fridge full of food and wine in my glass.

But even more than all that, today I got…a bed.

Oh, what a bed.

I am grateful for the beds that came with the house, but they are jiggly and they had jiggled me out of sleep every night for the past four months. We spent 30 years sleeping on a futon on the floor. Unless there was an earthquake, no jiggles. I realized I could no longer bear the jiggles. But for once, along the bumpy, rutted road of the past two years, here was something I could fix.

Girding our loins and clutching a credit card, we approached the bed store. “Firm,” we said. “Extra firm. Solid. Absolutely anti-jiggle. Sleeping on rocks.”

We bought a bed. It arrived a virgin, swathed in plastic, untouched by nightie nor pajama, longing for human contact, eager to embrace our weary bodies, unable to suck us into the depths of saggy back-aching foam and jar us awake with endless jiggles.

At bedtime tonight, we will have a jiggle exorcism ceremony and then sleep the sleep of the just.

I don’t know if we deserved all that we went through last year. I don’t know if we deserve all we have now, this beautiful life in this beautiful place. But I’m pretty sure we deserve a decent night’s sleep.

All men, women and children deserve to be jiggle-free. So here is my blessing to one and all: May your belly be full and your bed unjiggly. Happy Thanksgiving.

I got a wace caw!

A few years ago, I was riding a train somewhere in Tokyo. It must have been pretty late because the train was nearly empty. I looked down at the seat next to me and saw a tiny blue race car, probably dropped by the sleepy fingers of a child who’d been carrying it around all day. At that very moment, somewhere in the vastness of Tokyo, that child’s sad face and quivering lip might have been breaking his mother’s heart as he begged her to go back and look for the tiny car. That thought tugging at my heartstrings, I picked up the tiny car and tucked it into my pocket, vowing to keep it safe and love it well.

Now I have my very own tiny car, L’il Six, a 2015 Honda Fit and just plum peachy perfect for my needs. Six and I were making our way home the other day, trying to merge into rush hour traffic. The people in the next car did not want to let us in. To make that clear, the young woman in the passenger seat turned to me, smirked, and gave me the finger.

Voices of Mary Poppins, Aunt Bea and other prim ladies tut-tutted in my head, asking where such unpleasant behavior could have come from.

My word. Good gracious. Heavens to Betsy.

The day before that, someone keyed our car in the parking lot at Foodland. I think it was the pouty-faced boy sitting in the back seat of the van parked next to Six, but can’t prove it. I don’t even want to. The damage is done. Maybe someday that awful child will realize what a dickhead he was and try to do better. Or he’ll end up in prison. I don’t care which.

I’ve never had any illusions about living in paradise. Along with breathtaking sunsets, mesmerizing surf and exotic flowers and birds, there are also bugs and slugs in the garden, endless rain, mushrooms growing on the deck and lava dust in the dryer. All of that is as it should be. But I was not expecting such spiteful, petty nastiness, such surly arrogance, especially among the young. And more than that: the belief that a moment of vengeance makes any difference. And even more: the ignorance of just how much damage their selfish actions do to other people’s lives.

But the pendulum also swings the other way. Among many others, there was the lovely lady at the ATM who gave me change for the copy machine and refused to take my dollar, the warm smile of the man who blessed my sneeze at Home Depot, the support and encouragement of the younger members of taiko class.

Icing on the cake, this story belongs in the Halloween Hall of Fame:

Little bitty trick-or-treater with a sad face and quivering lip: “Is that chocolate?”
Rick: “Yes, it is. Would you like something else?”
Beleaguered Trick-or-Treater’s mom : “Just take it and say ‘thank you,’ buddy.”
LBToT: “But, Mom, I don’t… [insert huge shuddering sobby sigh]… like chocolate.”
Rick, understanding this is a Big Deal, shows him the whole bowl: “See if there’s something else you want.”
LBToT: “Is that a wace caw?”
Rick: “A race car? Yeah, you can have it.”
LBToT: “THANK YOU!”
LBToT Mom: “Thank you!”
LBToT, echoing down the sidewalk: “Mom, I got a wace caw. I got a wace caw!”

Sir Isaac Newton said that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. I suppose that works for physics, but for humanity there is an additional factor. Perhaps Finger Girl and Sourpuss Boy got a moment of spiteful bliss from their horrid behavior, but I will get years of pleasure from the ATM Lady, Home Depot Guy, the Drum Kids and IBToT. The good is worth more. The good is a wace caw.

Time

On July 12 circa 1930, G. C. Lovejoy climbed the gangway to board the SS Hm Banker of the American Merchant lines. G. C. was traveling from London to New York. I don’t know if G. C. carried the suitcase or paid a porter to do it. I don’t know if G. C. stayed in first class or steerage. I don’t know if G. C. dined well or was seasick the whole way. I don’t know if G. C. looked forward to the voyage or regretted it bitterly. I don’t know if G. C. was tall or short, happy or sad, a man or a woman.

So many years later, G. C.’s suitcase found itself in my dad’s possession and in November of 2010, became the protector and resting place of two antique clocks, lovingly laid in a nest of wadded newspapers. There they slept, until G.C.’s suitcase arrived here in Hawaii two days ago. It was minus its handle but otherwise intact, its brass latches still functioning, its seersucker lining unassuming, smelling of years gone past, hopes and dreams packed and unpacked and packed again.

The newspapers mostly carried crossword puzzles and obituaries, or maybe that’s just what caught my eye. In tribute to G. C., I ironed the crosswords back to life. The obituaries were more of a lost cause.

And now the clocks sit on our Japanese cherry wood tea cupboard, only a quarter century old and made by prison inmates rather than traditional artisans, but lovely all the same.

The clocks flank Mariko, a Heian Period kimekomi doll. (What’s a kimekomi doll?) Mariko has a serene expression, as if lulled by the ticking, pleased for the company, unfazed by the hourly bong-bong-bong, as confident in her own beauty as the clocks in their control of time.

Above all this is a tapestry from a temple in Kyoto and to the left, another I found in a junk shop. Inside the cupboard are a painted case from Turkey, a carved Anubis and coffee mugs from Egypt, a Buddha-shaped incense burner, Meditation Cat and a couple of pink unicorns.

I put the clocks on top of the cupboard to keep them safe from the cats, thinking the placement was temporary. But the longer they sit there, the more they belong, their almost Gothic look somehow bringing everything together, bringing out the best of the whole rather than the oddity of the details.

Those clocks were a part of my childhood, their ticking perfectly in harmony with the creaks and pops of the old farmhouse we lived in. The slight smell the clocks give off is the smell of time, no less incongruous with the smells of Hawaii than I am.

The clocks need to be wound. That is the price we pay for the illusion of controlling time. But time is the one immutable constant, the one thing that can neither be given nor taken away. It can only be lived. All of us, our loves and hates, our joys and sorrows and disappointments, are only pieces of time, moments to be savored or forgotten, and only to be lived once. They are no more or less than what we make of them.