Never be rude to your mother

I was laying on Abe's bed when the phone rang. It was my mom. I rolled my eyes. We had already spoken three times that day, and Abraham just got home from work. I wanted to visit with him.

I picked up the phone and sighed. My mom prattled about the movie she had just seen. She had recognized the actor from a previous movie.

"Why are you quiet?" she asked.

"I dunno. That was a scintillating story." I replied.

I was being a sarcastic butthole and I knew it. I didn't want to talk on the phone again. And if I let it go to voicemail, she'd just call every two minutes.

Instead of joking back with me, my mother's feelings were hurt. I was crushed.

About five minutes later the phone rang again. Just when I was finally able to talk to Abraham about his day. It was my mom. Again.

"Oh my god!" I shouted frustrated.

"Hello this is Cindy. I'm a nurse. You're mom's been in a car accident...

She continued with the details, but I couldn't hear them over the sirens of the firetrucks and ambulances.

"... she's being taken to the hospital."

I got off the phone and started looking for my shoes.

"You're going now?" Abraham asked. "We don't know what's wrong yet."

"My mom's going to the hospital. I'm not leaving her there by herself."

That's the difference between men and women. Men help by action; women help by caretaking.

Abraham drove me to the hospital. It was a rainy Friday night. The emergency room was filled with weirdos. We were ushered to her room.

"Is this because I was mean to you?" I joked as I entered the door.

She didn't answer me. She was in pain from the airbag and steering column. My mother, who I had been horrible to, had blood on her favorite sweater. There were droplets of blood on her brand new leather handbag she was so proud of. I picked up the bag, spat and wiped it clean.

"Was there blood on it?" She asked.

"No."

My mom doesn't know what happened. A car appeared in front of her and she t-boned it. She doesn't know the type of car it was. She doesn't know if the other driver was hurt. She was trapped in her car.

An officer entered the room. He must have been straight out of boot camp He issued my mom a ticket for running a red light. She argued that she was traveling with the flow of traffic. She had never received a ticket nor been in a car accident. He was curt and ignored her pain.

"He could use some improvement on his bedside manor," I observed loud enough so he that could hear me.

The accident was at 5:45 pm. We left the emergency room at 1:30 am. It took that long for one X-ray and one visit from one doctor. My mother was fine. The car was not.

Abraham drove my mother and me back to her house. I still had to get my dog and pick up my medication so I could stay with her. And then I had to find an all-night pharmacy. It was after 3 am when I got to bed.

Lesson learned: never be rude to your mother.

***

Abraham came over to the house for lunch the following afternoon. With him he brought a bouquet of flowers and a get-well balloon.

"My mom told me to bring flowers with me. I said the flowers wouldn't heal her, and my dad agreed, but she was so insistent that I told her I would say they were from her," he told me.

Once again, the difference between men and women.

"You set the bar high. Now everyone's going to feel like a jerk when they show up to visit without flowers," I kissed him.

My mother asked for Abraham's parent's address so she could thank them properly.

"My parents said they got a letter from your mom," Abraham told me a week later, somewhat embarrassed.

"Did they tell you what the letter said?" I asked.

"No."

"It said as thankful as she was for the flowers, she was more thankful for the person who brought them. She told your parents to be proud of you and that they must be wonderful people to raise someone like you."

Abraham beamed from ear to ear. I'm not sure I'd ever seen him smile so fully. It reminded me of a child's smile after she gets a certificate for perfect attendance in school. That simple, unabashed joy.

He was right to be proud of himself. My mother's words were true.

Ring in the New Year

On New Years Eve, the girls and I sat around a table while the boys watched a movie.

"2013 is going to be a big year," I smiled.

"I want to be the first to get engaged. Oh damn, we're out of Jello shots," announced Jenna. She looked at her sister Katie. "I hope that doesn't hurt your feelings, but I want to be first."

"Well you've been with Government Mule longer than we've been with our boyfriends," I sympathized.

"Yeah but he says he doesn't want to get married while he's unemployed," she frowned.

Government Mule has recently passed the one-year mark of unemployment.

"And that's perfectly understandable," chimed in Harvey.

"Abraham and I were updating Facebook all Christmas Day to see if you got engaged," I told Katie.

She frowned and shook her head. I couldn't read her expression. I don't know if she was disappointed or just didn't like talking about it or something else. But usually she's the most vocal about wanting to get engaged.

I don't really like talking about it. People's questions about where I want to get married and how soon do I want to wait before children make me uncomfortable. I'm not engaged. Yet. Nothing to get excited about. Yet.

And maybe this is where I sound like a brat, but I'm also the most confident in my relationship over Katie's or Jenna's. Katie's boyfriend has agreed to go ring shopping, but he still threatens to postpone engagement every time she talks about it. I'm not even sure Government Mule is doing everything he can to look for a job.

Meanwhile Abraham just flew me up north to meet his bubbie and to get her blessing. Which she did abundantly. She spent so long telling Abraham to hurry up and get married that he picked a pretzel out of her dish on the coffee table and slipped it on my finger. The day after he spoke to my father, I caught Abraham looking at pictures of engagement rings (I couldn't contain my squeal that time). Abraham's mother just asked him how big of a wedding I wanted.

My time is coming. I am quiet in my confidence; to be anything else would feel boastful. So I didn't tell the girls about Abraham speaking to my father or looking at diamond rings or about our families' excitement. When the attention is turned on me, I change the subject.

"So if you get engaged this year, will you also get married this year?" I asked.

"Yes," Jenna and Katie both agreed. "Before football season."

Maybe I'm superstitious after all.

Things I wish I didn't overhear on Christmas

• I was laying in bed at 10:30 pm in Washington DC. The flight didn't go so well. There was so much turbulence that the insides of my stomach had become the outsides of my stomach. Twice. And there were no barf bags on our row of the airplane, so Abraham and I were the collateral damage. The airplane steward meekly handed me a wet paper towel. To make things worse, the traffic circles of DC had me resting my head out the window of Abraham's sister's car. So I was laying in bed while the rest of Abraham's family was visiting in the living room. I heard two words very distinctly, "Propose" and "Christmas," followed by an exasperated Abraham, "SHHH."


• Propose... Christmas? But Abraham is Jewish. I knew he wouldn't propose on Christmas in front of just one half of my broken family. My mother didn't put up a tree this year. My father told me no one else was coming to his house on Christmas. I put the thought out of my mind, and, frankly, I forgot about it.


• We had finished Christmas at my mother's house and I began the hour-long drive to my father's. Abraham was pretty insistent that I find a gas station to stop at so he could buy some beer. It struck me as odd because my mother makes him more nervous than my father does, and he didn't even drink at my mother's. Abraham got beer and began drinking it immediately at my father's house.


• By this time we had been traveling extensively for the past 6 days visiting our different families in 4 different states. I was fatigued. My head drooped into the couch pillows with my cosmopolitan in hand. I was fighting a bad cold. Abraham said he was going outside to visit with my father while he grilled the steaks. Abraham is shy and has never spoken to any of my family one on one, but I wasn't being any worthwhile company myself.


• In the car while we were driving home, Abraham announced that my father wanted to meet his parents. Apparently my father even offered to drive halfway up the East coast to meet them. My father is a very outgoing person, and I was a little surprised I didn't hear my father say this five times at the dinner table. I never heard him say it at all. 


• Abraham's mother kept phoning him. Once when we were at my father's house, once in the car as we drove home and once again when we reached his home. The only person to call like that is my mother, not his. Abraham walked out of the bedroom and closed the door behind him. Usually he talks to his mom on speakerphone.


• And then it hit me: the beer... talking to my father alone outside... my father wanting to meet his parents... his mother's incessant phone calls... the secrecy... propose... Christmas... 


• Abraham had asked my father permission to marry me.  

DDF Revolve 400X Micro-Polishing System

For most of my twenties, I was able to eat whatever I want and fall into bed with a full face of smudged makeup without any skin repercussions. This is not true anymore in my thirties. I’ve had to invest in night cream and a skin cleanser and a skin exfoliator.

Products are expensive. I went to one of those in-home product shows and was introduced to a skin care line that cost over $230. Trying to be polite I asked the consultant if she only had one product to sell, which one would it be.

“All of them,” she smiled.

“Let me rephrase this,” I said curtly. “If you could only afford to buy one item, which would it be?”

“All of them. It’s such a great deal.”

It’s not a great deal. It’s $230.00 for crap I didn’t know I needed before entering the room. I’ve stayed with the basics, my skin cleanser and skin exfoliator.

Doctor’s Dermatology Formula, or DDF, is a Proctor & Gamble company, the parent company over many of your favorite personal care brands. DDF is releasing into the competitive skin care market its new cleansing system, called the DDF Revolve 400X Micro-Polishing System, which, get this, is a skin cleanser and skin exfoliator in one.

The premise behind the device is simple:

For deep cleaning, use it once a day with the cleansing brush.
For exfoliation, use it twice a week with the foam exfoliator and polishing crystals.

The device adapts to your skin’s sensitivity needs. Just change the rotation speed. To discover your personalized recommended skin care regime with the DDF Revolve 400X Micro-Polishing System, use the DDF Skin Consultation Tool.

That stupid skin consultant lady said her skin care line cost $230.00. Competitors’ cleaning systems retail for $120.00 – 150.00. DDF is running a special offer on the DDF Revolve 400X Micro-Polishing System. From now through January 31st, enter code DDFMICRODERMA and get the system for $45.00 US, including free shipping. This is over 50% off the retail cost! The system includes the DDF Micro-Polisher, Cleansing Brush, Foam Exfoliator and a tube of the Polishing Crystals.

Reindeer Games

I didn't know I was dating a Grinch.

Okay, that is neither an entirely fair nor accurate statement. He's not a Grinch. He's a Jew, and Christmas is not his holiday. Within the next year or so, it will no longer be my holiday but a tradition I celebrate with my parents.

But Abraham, he hates Christmas. He cannot walk past a trimmed tree or holiday decoration without making a snarky comment. He groans at every carol. And don't show him the Lexus commercials with the big red bows. It's enough to make him shout in anger.

I don't know his reasoning for hating the holiday. My guess is that it's so commercialized and in your face and excluding of him.

I love the holiday. Christmas will be the hardest thing that I will have to give up when I convert. I love making cookies and drinking hot apple cider. I love acknowledging the season by decorating the house. My Christmas dishes are the only thing I inherited from my paternal grandmother. (I'm not getting rid of her dishes.)

I thought about it. I can still make the cookies and drink the wassail. I can still acknowledge the season. Hang a blue wreath on my door. But the one thing I cannot part with is my Christmas tree.

My Christmas tree is my living history. It has the ornaments I collected throughout the years. The one of my alma mater. The dangling picture of the Femme Fatale frightened next to a very unconvincing Santa. The fabric gingerbread man from my childhood. I just can't give it up. I feel like to give up my tree would be denying who I was and where I came from.

Abraham and I are supposed to be creating a life together, not me melding into his life. So when I very carefully explained the importance of the Christmas tree, he sighed and agreed we could have one. I ordered a beautiful, handmade, stained-glass Star of David for the tree topper. I dug out of the closet his single ornament of South Park's Kyle holding a Menorah and hung it front and center. This tree wouldn't be mine; it would be ours.

This morning, before I went to work, I admired our tree. And then I looked closer. Abraham had purchased his own ornaments and hung them up without telling me. They were shiny plastic stars and bells of his alma mater.

"They never let poor Rudolph join in any reindeer games," I whispered softly.

Ghosts of Boyfriends' Past

I've been having this dream lately where I successively date a few of my ex-boyfriends. Ghosts of boyfriends' past, if you will.

In my dreams time has elapsed since I've dated them. It's present day in my alternate universe. We indeed broke up like we did in real life, but for some reason we are getting back together.

***

My first love is fat. He's severely overweight, just as he was in high school before we had started dating. He may be even heavier. The reason he's so fat is because he's eating his feelings. He's not happy and I'm not happy with him. We know we aren't right for each other, which is a shame.

It really is a shame that we didn't make it. He was a pretty thoughtful boyfriend until he joined a fraternity and started drinking so much in college. He and alcohol were a bad mix, as his father was an alcoholic. It was hard watching the descent into alcoholism watching him transform from someone I loved into someone I didn't.

I didn't start drinking until we broke up, and he told me I had finally become the person he wanted: drunk. Obviously there are lingering issues there. But the beginning—the person he used to be—there was no reason why we couldn't have lasted.

But here he is in my dreams fat and unhappy. Whatever the reason is, we just aren't right for each other. He's not quitting on me though, he's just eating, eating, eating. Containers of icing. Raw cake batter. And it's up to me to pull the plug and let the relationship die.

***

Mark, the reason I started this blog and the person whose existence I forget about the most (seriously, my parents mention him and I'm like who?), is back. I usually call him up after all of these years. Seven years, to be exact. And I call him up after seven years, not knowing a thing about him or where he is in life, and I ask to get back together with him. He sighs. He's reluctant. But he agrees.

Apparently he still has his old job and he's holding a training with the sales staff. Then he's on the road for work. Then he's visiting his parents. He never has time for me. I never see him in my dream: he's always on the other end of the phone line, very similar to our relationship. Finally I wised up to realize that he's not seeing me because he doesn't want to see me. He's back with me, but not the way I wanted him to be. I call him up and break up with him on the phone without ever seeing him.

***

Valdosta looks at his phone. "My favorite bartender is serving tonight," he says as he makes a grab for his coat.

"But you just got here," I protest. He literally just got here. I was cutting vegetables for dinner.

Valdosta shrugs. He'd rather be drinking with his friends.

I'm disappointed. I'm beyond disappointed. This is the first time I've seen him in two weeks and it lasted less than 10 minutes.

I look down at the white laminated counter. "You don't like me anymore, do you." It wasn't a question.

"No," he says quietly. This isn't like the first breakup where he tells me he cherishes me. This is cold. If I had left things alone with him, I could have had nice memories, but I had to drag it out.

It's awkward in the kitchen. Valdosta leaves and I feel empty and ashamed.

***

I begin to slowly wake. I'm cognizant enough to know I'm laying on someone's shoulder—my boyfriend's shoulder—but I'm not cognizant enough to know who that is.

I open my eyes like Christmas morning. It's Abe. I sigh with relief. I like this boyfriend. This is a good boyfriend.

Although, I'm tangled up in him in a curious way. My head is on his shoulder, and my hands are digging into his sides as if I'm trying to grab his ribs. My face is smooshed into his neck. He's snoring, which is really, really loud with my face pressed into him.

I shake him awake. I'm not gentle about it. I wanted the snoring to stop and I wanted to interact with him to prove he was real.

Abraham wakes up. I watch him cautiously. He looks at me and he smiles. He didn't question why I abruptly shook him; he just smiled.

I don't think I was ever so happy to see someone in my life.

Interview with Abraham

What did you think of me when we first met? You didn't get that home run in kickball.

I thought, I'm so awesome, I just kicked it over everyone's heads and I'm about to score, oh wait, why is this chick standing on home plate, oh crap, I can't stop, I'm gonna run her over...and BAM.

Did you know I was The One when I was throwing up in your bathroom?

I had my doubts, but you were in the top five for sure.

What are you most looking forward to when I move in? I bet it's getting rid of half of your stuff. You can admit it. This is a safe place.

 I'm looking forward to spending your rent (errrr love) money on upgrades for my condo!

(Edit: I refuse to let him call it rent because he's my lover, not my landlord.)

Anything that I didn't ask that you want to address?

Not yet, ask me later.

What do you think your blog name is? Go on, take a guess. 

Brad

Do you have a question for Abraham? Perhaps one that he could answer when he's not busy at work?