Wedding Planning

There’s this thing out there on the Interwebs, I hear, called Pinterest. I’m not exactly sure what this creature is or why people pin things that aren’t really there, but I admit that I feel a little bit out of the loop about it when I see people pinning about all kinds of things that don’t exist except in the land of Pinterest. I am especially out of the loop on this whole phenomenon wherein women plan their weddings on Pinterest…even if they aren’t, actually, you know…getting married.

How is that possible? Why would you put yourself through that horror if you didn’t have to do it? Is this what women do while their husbands are wasting time on fantasy sports? I don’t know, because I remember how much time I wasted on fantasy football and well, come to think of it, yeah, maybe Pinterest works out well for some.

Now, I know that I am supposed to have dreamed of my wedding since somewhere around kindergarten, but I can honestly say that I never thought about it until about February of 2004 when suddenly, at age 28, I was going to be a major player in a wedding of my own. I had never thought about the dress, or who would be in the wedding party, or where it would be or what we would eat or God help me what colors or flowers would be involved. I HAD given some thought to the WHO, and the IF, and the WHY, but never the WHAT of getting married. I had various thoughts about what I wanted to be when I grew up, but I put much more thought into where I would go to college or why I couldn’t just go to prom with my friends than I did any hypothetical wedding.

It makes a girl feel left out, you know? There’s this whole wedding industry out there, and it has spawned this second virtual wedding industry and the whole thing just creeps me out. So I am going to take back the wedding—for all those people like me, all 15 of them or however many there are.

Eight years ago today, I married Gabe. We did not get married at City Hall and we did not elope. We got married, people, in front of a crowd of 110 with food and music and a minister and everything. One of my oldest friends told me afterwards: “You had the wedding I wish I’d had.”

And I’m going to tell you how we did it. I would “pin” this to some “board,” if, you know, I was different.

Wedding Planning, Katy-Style

Sex Before Marriage: Yes. Often.

Cohabitation: Live together first. This way, you will not be able to blame your day-to-day annoyance with your husband on the fact that you are married.

Engagement Ring: Tell him what kind of engagement ring you want before you are officially engaged. He was the one who said “yeah, I was thinking we could get married,” before he popped the cohabitation question, so don’t feel bad about this. He is clueless but wants to have the ring before he officially proposes. He knows you hate the diamond industry, so that leaves him with a sum total of zero ideas for what kind of ring to buy. Shop online for this ring, which you decide should be a pearl. You may attempt to shop at jewelry stores, even venturing together into the din of Chicago’s Jeweler’s Row, but then you will be blinded by diamonds. Every pearl ring you see will have huge, honking DIAMONDS attached to it. When you tell a vendor, no, I just want the pearl, she will look at you with fear. So, go to www.ice.com. Instead of ice, search the pearls. Find some rings you like. Print off photos, hiding the price. Know in your heart which ring you want. Show the pictures to a few close friends and ask which one looks most like you. They will both point to the cheapest ring, the $110 number, and it’s the one you had chosen as well. You are entirely unsure what that says about you, but you show it to your boyfriend, who balks at the price and tells you he is willing to spend much more on your goddamn ENGAGEMENT ring. And you say, well, I guess this is the part where you start listening to what I want, not what some other random women supposedly want. And secretly, you know this is one reason he wants to marry you.

Engagement Setting: This should happen in your bedroom, in the condo you bought by yourself years before he ever came along. This story will live in infamy so be sure that the flannel PJs are the homeliest you own, that your ponytail is messy and you are wearing the “spare” glasses, not the funky ones. Know that when he takes that simple pearl ring out of his pajama pocket and says “I’m sorry for everything, Kate, but I still want to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me anyway?” he is hoping for a response beyond “Give me a minute to think about it.” Also know that the original plan, which caused his nerves to blow up, was for him to hide the ring in a sandwich at Hot Doug’s, where the two of you went for lunch that day. So the PLAN was to put your ring in a hot dog, and he just couldn’t handle the pressure. Remember that when you eventually say “yes.”

Announcing Your New Status: Feel free to feel slightly nauseous at the sound of the word “fiancée,” because WOW that word sounds pretentious. Call your mom the next morning to tell her that your boyfriend acted like a jackass all weekend but then he asked you to marry him and the bottom line is you said ok. Eventually tell other people, when you see them, in person. Do not even consider taking a picture of your finger with that pearl ring on it. Facebook doesn’t exist yet and no one has ever “tweeted” at this point, and really, who uses Friendster or MySpace? Anyway, realize that no one on earth will be jealous of or impressed by that pearl ring, and feel free not to care. Remember that diamonds can be created in labs, they can be crafted out of human ash, and the Russians have recently discovered a diamond mine so large it is reported to hold enough gems to supply the human race for the next 3,000 YEARS, rendering all of those wars and blood diamonds pointless and your friends' engagement rings eventually worthless, while yours is still worth…$110, plus inflation.

Picking a Date: It’s February when you get engaged, so that means you will need to wait until at LEAST March to get married. Spring weather in Chicago is horrible, and everyone gets married in the summer, so you somewhat arbitrarily decide to get married in the fall—specifically, October. You know nothing about weddings so do not realize that October is a popular month to get married. You are just thinking about turning that month into something with a fun anniversary as opposed to what you are used to celebrating. Who knew how much you’d wish for alternate October celebrations in your adult life?

Financing: Look, you are paying for this entire thing yourselves. Your mom and stepdad have offered a little bit of help, but you weren’t expecting that. A few months after you get “engaged,” you realize that you will kill each other if you don’t sell the condo and find a place that belongs to both of you, not just you. So, a few months before your wedding, you bid on a house in a neighborhood that neither of you has ever even visited. You do not put a contingency on the condo, and for one month you own two homes. Recognize that you chose a home to build your marriage in over the day that the whole thing started, so your budget is super tight, and get over it.

Picking a Venue: You aren’t religious, so you don’t even consider looking into churches, except for a few Unitarian ones that have cool architecture. Call some pretty places at park district and other scenic locations and restart your heart after you hear the price for hanging out there for a few hours. Realize that you have some limitations. Your “fiancée” was raised for years by his grandmother, who uses a wheelchair. Therefore, you need a venue that will accommodate her. Also, you hate driving from ceremonies to receptions so you require both to be in the same location. Denounce these places with weird rules like “you have to use this specific music” or “you must use our house caterers” or “you cannot serve red or dark colored drinks” on the principle of refusal to begin your marriage in a fascist state. Throw up your hands and consider a wedding in the backyard of your new house. One day, have lunch with a friend. Begin complaining about venues over falafel. Explain that your parents can’t help; they got married at age 19 in the basement of a Unitarian church and had m&ms and finger sandwiches, and your fiancée has never even met his dad, so you’re kind of on your own. Tell him you hate the idea of giving money to a venue that won’t do anything useful with it. Feel like smacking him when he tells you in an offhand voice that the community development corporation on the west side THAT HE RUNS actually has a chapel, and they do weddings. Lock down that $500 rate for the day.

Buying a Dress: There are so many designer choices, aren’t there? Especially when you shop at Nordstrom Rack. Find a very simple, satin strapless dress that is probably a bridesmaid’s dress, and try it on in a few colors. The ivory one looks like a legit wedding dress, but…you don’t like it. You choose the “mink” color. Who are you kidding? You are going to be 29 years old when you get married and white is just not your color. The mink dress costs $90, a grand $8 less than the dress you bought for your senior prom. It is also literally twelve inches too long, making you wonder what giantess convention was expected at the Rack. Go to a local tailor and tell him you need the dress for a party. Do NOT mention the word “wedding,” and he will tailor it nicely for you for only $20. When the wedding is over, keep the dress in the bag from the dry cleaner/tailor on a hook in your basement. Five years after you get married, not quite five months after your second child is born, dust off the dress and wear it for your anniversary celebration. Be grateful that it fits you at that stage in your life. Be even more grateful that it is several sizes too big for you now.

Buying Rings: Take a trek back to the dreaded Jeweler’s Row. Search for rings that have both white and yellow gold. Know that you can’t afford platinum, especially since you don’t believe it is any better. Eventually find a ring that appeals to you; it has white gold inlaid in yellow, making it impossible to re-size. Recognize it as fate that the two rings that they have are your sizes (well, the man’s ring is a little big—thank God for freakishly-large knuckles). Tell the seller what you would like to have engraved on the rings. When she looks as if she is about to call security, agree to talk to her teenage daughter, who tells her mother (you assume, since they are speaking Mandarin) to just do what the crazy white people say and if they want “to Blathe” engraved on their rings, so be it. Never take your ring off, except when you are pregnant, and marvel at how pristine it still is.

Buying a Suit: Oh wait, it’s supposed to be a tux? Oops. Buy a suit for your soon to be husband, without him there to try it on, and be proud of yourself when it fits so nicely. For the record, that was a damn good sale! Then pick out a tie that is on clearance because of a spot on the underside, which will never be seen by anyone. Know the second you see it that it happens to be the exact same strange color as your dress. Continue to be proud when he wears that suit to almost every wedding, funeral, and job interview on the calendar for the next eight years.

Bachelorette Party: Don’t have one. Be glad that you have only attended a couple of these, and one of them involved getting deep dish pizza and going to see an improv show. Do not feel prudish in admitting that seeing naked dudes gyrating just strikes you as embarrassing. You have seen enough of that from the dudes you WANTED to see. And hell if you’re wearing a penis hat or writing with a penis pen. That is not the purpose of a penis.

Bridal Shower: Assume that you will not have one of these either. You have no wedding party, after all, so who would plan it? You will be genuinely surprised when you learn that your husband got in cahoots with his aunt and one of his close female friends to plan a shower for you. You will be even more touched to learn that everyone got you the same gift: a small donation towards a gift card to Sears so you could pick out a set of patio furniture for your new house. Think of this when you sit on the glorious front porch, comfortable on those chairs that are now 8 years old, eating meals with the family that was but a glimmer in your eye back then, and be grateful for those who know you so well as to know what gift you would treasure.

Registry: Do NOT, I repeat, do NOT register anywhere. Tell people not to buy you anything, because you are too old for that and you have a lot of crap and you don’t want people to spend money on you. Panic, but just a little, when you notice that people are arriving with gifts ANYWAY. Be glad that one of the guys working at the CDC (which put your money back into the development of arts and other programs in the low-income, African-American neighborhood) suggested putting up a gift table.

Picking Flowers: There are supposed to be flowers? Why? It’s OCTOBER. Put your mom in charge of this. She buys mums at a nursery and wraps fall-colored tissue paper around the pots. She arranges them on the tables, and tells people to take them home afterwards. Do not give a thought to the bouquet. When fiancee’s gram offers to buy a corsage, politely refuse since even though the dress is cheaper this isn’t the PROM. Realize the day before the wedding that there is no bouquet. Offhandedly tell your mother this. End up with no less than three bouquets bought by various parties at the last minute.

Choosing an Officiant: This is not a church wedding, so this is quite difficult. It is unnerving trying to figure out how to go about choosing a judge. You don’t know anyone with those $5 certificates allowing them to marry people. OK, actually you do, but that just seems wack. Somehow, find a Unitarian minister, a woman who lives in your neighborhood. She charges you a few hundred dollars total, and gives you a few thousand dollars worth of service. She meets with each of you a few times to do counseling sessions, and meets with you together a few times as well. She checks in on you periodically. She comes to your aid many times, seems to genuinely like both of you, and does an absolutely amazing job writing your ceremony. You remain friends with her for a few years.

Winnowing the Guest List: Invite a few of your ex-boyfriends. Only one of them will come, but, let’s face it, he was the only other one who really mattered. Do not invite other people you probably should have invited due to the tight budget, feel guilty, and realize they don’t hold it against you.

Finding a Band: In a world wherein you are about to marry a professional IT guy who specializes in Macs, the band choice is easy: iPod. It’s really fun putting that playlist together, especially all the wildly inappropriate songs that you include--the soulful songs about infidelity, that song that you just love that happened to be your special song with your long-term ex who will be at the wedding…the whole thing is awesome, and you still listen to that mix on road trips.

Recruiting a Wedding Party (and hiring a photographer and a DJ): Choose not to have one because you don’t like picking amongst friends. Realize that this is a problem when you have no one to hold the bouquet for you during the ceremony. Enlist your brother’s girlfriend by positioning her in the front row and doing a sly hand-off before taking the stage. Ask your brother to write and read a poem; find out later that he will be forced to be master of ceremonies for the whole thing. Enlist your fiancee’s childhood friend, who provided him a place to live for at least a year in high school, to do another reading. Ask two of your girlfriends to take pictures, and ask another of your fiancee’s friends to hit the button on the iPod at the right moments.

Planning the Ceremony Details: Get married at noon. It’s cheaper. Also, recognize that weddings are intended for traditional families and neither of you has one. Ask your mom if she would like to walk you down the aisle and listen to her ask “HAVE YOU LOST YOUR MIND?” Tell fiancée that you will just have to walk by yourself. Listen to him tell you that he will be bawling too hard watching you walk by yourself because you are so beautiful and yadda yadda. Decide to walk together. Try to ascertain how to know when to begin walking; minister suggests that she bang a gong, which seems about right. Walk arm in arm down the aisle to the orchestral version of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer theme song, which ends at precisely the 45 second mark when you have reached the stage. Choose a few poems for the readings by various obscure authors. Take some of the typical vows, some atypical ones, and write the rest yourselves. Marvel in how moved everyone is at the ceremony, how everyone—including you—cried when your brother read his poem, and how many people told you they wished they had used the following Katy-authored vow in their own nuptials: “I promise to try to make your life easier, not harder.”

Planning the Reception Details: Again with the traditional families. Forgo all the mother-son etc. dances. Do not allow speeches, even from your new husband. Make sure there are lots of children present to take the spotlight off of you. Dance your first dance as a married couple to Johnny Cash’s “Will you Lay with Me in a Field of Stone,” and laugh when the friend hits the wrong button and the Beastie Boys come on momentarily instead.

Choosing a Caterer: Let a friend who got married six months earlier do the work for you. She wasn’t a big wedding person either, and she liked the caterer she used. So go with this Swedish deli on the north side, which gives you a great buffet style lunch and allows you to bring your own paper plates and plastic utensils. Smile when people, including a professional chef who attended, tell you how tasty the food is, “unlike most wedding food.” Enjoy the leftovers for days.

Buying a Cake: Remember that using the word “wedding” calls for a 3,000% markup. Enlist a bakery on the south side that makes great cakes. Tell them to write congratulations on a sheet cake. Your mom handles most of these details, including the one where they balk the day of the wedding because they are afraid to deliver to the neighborhood where you’re getting married. Begin to panic, but only slightly, until your mother calmly goes into the next room with her phone, saying she will “take care of it.” Continue to wonder what she said to those crackers to this day. Enjoy the leftovers, including the frozen pieces you save for the next year, but never use that bakery again.

Stocking the Bar: Accept that this chapel does not allow hard liquor, thankfully, since you are paying for everything yourselves. Go to Binny’s and buy a bunch of cases of red wine and beer. Buy champagne. Get a bunch of 2 liters of pop. Realize that people don’t drink a lot in the early afternoon, except for your husband’s friends who are still there when you are changed out of your wedding dress and killer shoes and you are standing there impatiently wondering WTF until your husband makes a line of beer bottles out the door so those dudes FINALLY leave.

Extras: Ah, the crucial details…the favors, invitations etc. Go to one of those invitation places online and order the simplest one. For favors, think about all the different things you have received at weddings over the years and know that nothing will top the ceramic dolphin, because nothing says I swear to love you forever like ceramic dolphins. Instead, go straight to one of your Li-Young Lee poetry books and find that one about eating peaches. Buy some pretty fall-themed stationery at Target and print that poem on it. On the bottom, include this: “Thank you for sharing in the joy of our marriage celebration. Katy and Gabe, October 16, 2004.” Roll up the paper and tie an orange ribbon around it. Use your home printer to make 110 copies, one for each guest, including the kids. Smile when people tell you that yours is one of the only wedding favors they have ever kept.

Changing Your Name: No. Just no.

Planning a Honeymoon: Stay at a bed and breakfast somewhat near the wedding venue the night before, because the Dan Ryan is under construction and lord knows how long it would take you to get there or if you would be late for your own ceremony. See that as part of the vacation, though you refuse to have sex with your fiancée the night before on some kind of absurd principle that overlooks the countless times you had had sex with him before, but no matter. Following the wedding, drive home, in your regular car. Spend your wedding night opening the gifts you didn’t expect and marveling at the fact that people gave you money and realizing that this house was now your house as a married couple. Answer the phone when your best friend from childhood calls. Talk for a bit. Eat some leftover cake for dinner; after all, you were home by 6 pm and you’re hungry again. Have sex as a married couple and realize how it is exactly the same and be comforted by that. A few days later, get in the car and drive to Wisconsin, stopping at random places on the way to Door County, including a tiny inn on a dairy farm in a town called Norman.

What to Do When Things Go Wrong: Accept it. So, your brother lives in Hungary at the time, and he has a completely absurd issue with his flight, which is extremely turbulent. His luggage, and that of his girlfriend, does not arrive. Luckily, he had an old suit left at your mom’s place, and you lend something to his girlfriend, who is much smaller than you but looks fabulous in it anyway. He is your brother and he is a teacher, so accept that he will take it upon himself to tell people where to go for the reception and other small details. It’s lucky that his plane landed, because someone had to tell everyone about the massive car accident that took place in the parking lot during the reception. “If you have a car of X Model, X Make, color silver with a license plate of X, please see me.” And then your boss, one of your old coworkers, and your best friend from growing up could find out the extent to which their cars were totaled by some drunken teenager driving in the lot. All the while, you will acknowledge that it is October, so while it is often beautiful that time of year, today it is 38 degrees and raining and you look freezing in all of the photos you took outside. This is why you did NOT plan an outdoor wedding after all.

Notice the fear in your new husband’s voice when he asks you what you thought of the whole day. Listen to him tell you that he just wants you to be happy. Crane your neck to the side with some difficulty, because all of the gifts and leftover food and cases of wine are balanced on your heads inside the subcompact car that he is, indeed, driving himself, sober as he is. Think back to yesterday, when he had to tell you that the day before your wedding, your car had been broken into in front of the house you’d only lived in for a month. The video camera was stolen, but the box of disposable cameras was still there, and those yielded the best photos of the night anyway. Remember that you spent your last day as a single woman at the car-window repair place. Ponder for a moment how you will answer his question. And then, tell him, “Well, you know…(PAUSE)

It was perfect.”

28 Years Later, Still Walkin'

I celebrate some strange anniversaries. Some people just focus on the wedding or first date, or the birthday, or the graduation or some other major life event that pinpoints how life was different before that day from how it would be after that day.

Today, I am celebrating 28 years since I was hit by a car while walking home from school.

I’ve written about this a decent amount before—at Katydidcancer. I wrote a fairly apt synopsis of how this event changed my life in a post I published on Day 11, before I really had any idea what I was facing with my cancer. I talked about how excited I was to see a friend who went to Catholic school; we had a “play date” before anyone had ever coined the term, and our entire plan was to have a leaf fight. We had to wait a full year to have that leaf fight; it was fairly epic, as I recall.

But on October 11, 1984, something else happened, changing the course of my life forever.

I was walking with a large group of kids. I sensed that something was wrong. I believe in nothing New Agey, for the most part, but I do believe that I had a very real premonition that day. I also believe that Augie is reincarnated from some kind of hard-drinking, smooth-move dancing traveling circus performer. I may not be religious or like yoga, but I do believe those two things.

I sensed something, and so I hesitated before crossing the street. I looked both ways at least five times. My friends were ahead of me. There were no cars coming in my direction. And then—well, my life flashed before my eyes. I knew I had been hit by a car, though I didn’t know how that was possible, or where the hell it came from in the empty street. I felt myself flying through the air. Random memories populated my terrified nine year old brain: learning to play tennis, walking in a park, my brother’s friend standing in our yard. I knew that when I hit the sidewalk, I would be dead. I wanted to stop time. I wished I could just STOP, right there in midair.

More than anything, I just couldn’t believe it.

This wasn’t real. This wasn’t happening. But of course, it was—or I wouldn’t have been thinking this isn’t real this isn’t happening. I was a little kid, but I knew that if I was furiously denying it, it was true.

I hit the sidewalk and lay there in a crumpled heap. I couldn’t move. I heard people screaming. I saw a woman, a mother, I suppose, with her hands over her face, crying. I saw a car with a large dent on the hood, and I wondered how it got there.

That dent was the size of my body.

I wasn’t dead.

A little boy, who was probably younger than me, came over to me. He was very small in size, dark brown skin, long eyelashes over his black eyes, very short fade in his hair. He held my hand and told me that someone was going to get my mom and that I would be ok. When I close my eyes, I can still see his face.

I have never told anyone that detail of this story. I have never known whether or not it was real.

There is another detail, one that you might question, but I swear it is true. While the ambulance and fire engine sirens were wailing and adults were standing over me yelling instructions at each other, I looked down at my hand. There was a small pebble lodged in the skin of my right index finger. I removed it, and my finger bled. I told myself that I was still alive. Then I asked myself, if I really live through this, if I am still alive a while from now, wouldn’t it be stupid if that hole from that pebble was all I had to show for it?

And, to this day, it is. That scar remains, while no other physical scars are apparent.

My mother did arrive, eventually, though it was probably only minutes later. She screamed at the paramedics, who were trying to move me, because they asked me what happened and I said that I jumped out of the way. Clearly, I was in shock, crumpled up, and the child-size dent in the car should have made it obvious what happened. This was no hit and run; the woman who had sped out of nowhere was screaming and crying hysterically, saying, I hit that girl! I hit that little girl!

It would be quite a while before we learned that the police simply let her walk away, without taking her name or her license plate number. A tow truck came for her car. I knew who she was—she was a lunch lady at my school. Years later, I saw her riding the bus, and I felt sorry for her, because she looked so scared of me. I don’t know if she ever drove again.

My mom stopped the paramedics from moving me, since no one knew if I was paralyzed, near death, or what. A neighbor, the older brother of a childhood friend, had run home to get my mom, and he had told her “Mrs. Jacob! Katy got hit by a car! It’s her leg! It’s her leg!”

I think he was eleven. I don’t know how he could tell the nature of my injuries, but he wasn’t far off the mark. My mother told me later that she thought my legs had been amputated and that I was lying there, bleeding to death in the street. She must have run the five blocks in under sixty seconds.

I really didn’t want to get into the ambulance. I had been in the hospital for a week only six months earlier, suffering from what turned out to be a toxic reaction to my anti-convulsant medication prescribed to control pediatric epilepsy, but that is a story for another post. The point is, I begged them to let me go home so I wouldn’t have to go to the hospital.

I lost. In so many ways.

My mother was not allowed to ride in the ambulance with me, so I went to the dreaded hospital alone. I have no idea where my brother was, but he was in junior high school at the time, and was probably at home—maybe by himself? I never thought to ask. The ambulance ride didn’t take long. In the emergency room, they wheeled the stretcher at lightning speed, and a strange adult came up to me and asked me to sign a piece of paper. I was barely conscious. I was, also, myself. I did not trust this lady for one minute. I told her that I wouldn’t sign anything without my parents there. They must have seen this altercation, so they came over, asked what was going on, saw the piece of paper. It was a statement saying that we wouldn’t sue the Village for the accident.

I would have liked to see how that document would have stood up in court if I HAD signed it—a dying nine year old child.

And that’s what I was. I had massive internal injuries throughout my body; my heart and lungs were mostly spared, which probably saved my life. They didn’t know if I would make it during the first few days. It took 25 years and a cancer diagnosis for my mother to admit that to me. My pelvis was broken on the left side in several places—from the impact of the car. My pelvis was broken in a few places on the right side--from the impact of the sidewalk. I didn’t know at the time how nearly impossible it is to break both sides of your pelvis at once. My injuries were all internal or in the bone, and except for a road burn and some scrapes, I looked normal.

It is irrelevant to go over how fate determined that I wouldn’t die there, that I wouldn’t be paralyzed. It is irrelevant that my parents decided not to sue anyone, even though the police, paramedics, Village staff and others acted in such an egregiously incompetent manner. In the end, we received $1200 in insurance money from the whole ordeal, and with that money, my parents bought me an upright piano, which I can still only play with my right hand. Weeks later, I described the lunchlady to the police, very very accurately. Then, they proceeded to ask me—a nine year old girl—to describe the make and model of the car that hit me. I had no idea. Didn’t you take that information down when she was yelling and crying in the street? The policeman stared at me blankly as I sat in my wheelchair. I told him I thought the car was maroon, with a white stripe across the doors. It had four doors and was one of those big, classic cars, like one of those Lincoln town cars my grandparents used to rent for vacations, but I wasn’t sure.

It turned out the car was a brown Oldsmobile with white stripes, so the police decided my statement was worthless, even though I told them exactly who had hit me. Shifts were changing at 3:30 when the accident took place, and no one wanted to take responsibility. He made me feel like an idiot, like the whole thing was my fault, and I didn’t believe that, no matter how traumatized I was.

Between that, the Village official, the paramedics who could have rendered me immobile for life for moving me before ascertaining the extent of my injuries, and the orthopedic surgeon who was such a jackass that he threw a clipboard at my mother by tossing it across the hospital bed, WHILE I WAS STILL IN IT, and that clipboard landed right next to my excruciatingly painful hip, and it’s no wonder that I don’t trust authority figures easily.

But I digress.

I spent a week in the hospital. No one knew what to do with me. The doctors didn’t want to put me in a body cast, which was the most effective way to set my bones, because they didn’t want to stunt my growth. They decided against surgery on my hips and chose to watch me over time to see if my bones fused together naturally. Once it was determined that I didn’t need a blood transfusion, and that my internal hemorrhaging was subsiding, I was released.

I was released, but to what? I could not go to school. I was bound to a wheelchair, given no directives on how or when to begin to learn to walk again. I could not go to the bathroom by myself. I spent my days on the couch in our living room and we had a portable commode installed right next to me. My mother stayed home with me, though she received no support, financially or otherwise, for my care. My parents moved me so I would not get bed sores. My dad carried me up to bed at night. I stubbornly clung to my old ways, and I slept on my left side every night when my parents couldn’t see me. It hurt so much I could barely breathe. I began to have strange rituals; writing the same phrases in my diary every night. I had daymares—visions of my fingers on tires moving at 60 mph, flashbacks of asphalt that made my skin crawl. I began to have night terrors.

There was no Americans with Disabilities Act in 1984. I had absolutely nothing wrong with my brain, and yet, I was denied an education. Can’t walk, can’t attend public school. I had a tutor once a week, who taught me math and who taught me that a quick wit was more important than the fourth grade. I received no physical therapy at all. The rehab people sent us a walker made for an adult. I was supposed to use that to transition to crutches. I had to put my hands up to reach it.

That didn’t work.

So I used a wheelchair to get around for three months. Sometimes we tried to make a game of it, racing the wheels, doing tricks, but it wasn't actually fun. I was bored, and lonely, and traumatized. I was also happy, and busy, and accepting of my new reality. I learned that it is possible to be all of those things at once. I missed my friends, but I understood how hard it was for them to see me. Adults seemed to fear me, or pity me; they shielded their children’s eyes from me or looked at me openly with disgust. While my family picked pumpkins at a nearby orchard, I heard a man mutter under his breath about how people like me shouldn’t be allowed in family places like that, and my dad “inadvertently” ran into him with the wheelchair.

When we went trick or treating, my 12 year old brother was annoyed that he had to get candy for me. I’m sure he was too old for trick or treating, or at the very least, he was too old to be seen with his little sister. I did not make the whole thing easy on the family. I was terrified to go back to the intersection of the accident, so we only went to the blocks directly surrounding the house. My brother would go to a house, get his candy, and then ask “Can I have one for my sister who is in a wheelchair?” With the exception of the close neighbors, who knew the whole story, no one believed him; they assumed he was trolling for extra candy. So my dad would wheel me out from behind the bushes, and we got shitloads of candy that year.

I knew how close I was to death, and it was very hard to understand and to accept. It took a long time. I went to therapy, and I just talked to the counselor about what I thought he wanted to hear. My pediatrician knew what was wrong with me. He told my mom: “That car accident scared the shit out of her.” I heard him say this. Somehow the counselor couldn’t get that out of me. I didn’t sleep at all for months. I drove everyone in my house nuts. One night, I watched a made for TV movie about a little girl with cystic fibrosis. Why my parents let me watch Alex: The Life of a Child, I will never know, but thank God they did. The little girl dies when she is eight years old; it is based on a true story. I lost it afterwards, beating my little fists on the ground, crying, screaming, and my mom had no idea what to say to me or do with me. Finally I shouted: “IT’S NOT FAIR! IT’S NOT FAIR THAT SHE WAS SO LITTLE AND SHE HAD TO DIE AND I COULD HAVE DIED TOO! IT’S NOT FAIR THAT I’M GOING TO DIE!”

And after that, I slept just fine, grimacing through the pain in the hip I shouldn’t have borne my weight on. I didn’t need therapy. I just needed to accept my own mortality—at nine years old. Simple, right?

No one ever told me I could have died. No one ever told me I might not walk again. No one ever told me I wouldn’t be able to play certain sports, or bear children. No one told me, and maybe that was why some of those things became true, but most did not—because I didn’t know what was possible and what was impossible. I just lived my life.

I went back to school like nothing had happened, though I was devastated when a teachers strike pushed my return back a bit. I remember learning how to walk. Think about that. I REMEMBER LEARNING HOW TO WALK. How many people can say that?

Eventually, I stopped playing basketball. In sixth grade, I was one of two girls who remained at the end of the season on the co-ed team we had joined months earlier. All of the other girls dropped out. We were mostly taller and faster than the boys, but we rarely got to play. I told myself later that was what beat the love of basketball out of me, but that wasn’t really true.

It hurt to play basketball. It hurt to jump rope. Years later, I would learn how much it hurt to use a high-impact rowing machine. As a child, I learned that I couldn’t run as I had once been able to do--at least not without pain. When I say pain, I do not say it lightly. If you were to hand me one of those hilarious smiley-face pain scales, I would still have a little smirk on my face at the point at which everyone else was bleeding from their eyes. My tolerance for pain is very high, and I am proud of it. So when I say that some activities hurt my hips, imagine your bones being placed in a vise and slowly crushed.

Even at nine years old, I never slept for more than an hour at a time, when I would wake myself momentarily and switch sides, lest my hips just locked up. I didn’t know what “high impact” activities were, so I just assumed I wasn’t particularly athletic, though I had played basketball and floor hockey for years, could throw a perfect spiral and jump rope for two hours without stopping for more than a minute or so. I just thought I had changed, and that was ok. I wasn’t competitive, didn’t care about winning, and so probably wouldn’t have pursued sports seriously anyway.

It’s interesting, though, how I never made the connection. My hips hurt before the rain. As a teenager, I learned that if I didn’t walk every day, I would feel like an old lady deep in my bones. But I never thought to myself, oh, that’s because of the car accident. To me, that accident was something that turned me into myself, gave me a deep and everlasting perspective into suffering and not taking things for granted, that made me wise beyond my years, that got me accepted into every college that received that moving essay.

That accident was an experience, a fact, not a commentary on my body. I never felt “less,” and I never felt broken, and I never felt sad for the things I had done easily that I could no longer do. I was more comfortable in my body than almost any other adolescent girl on the planet, probably, and that car accident was a big reason why. I had nice legs, sure. But damn, how they could walk!

I guess I got some things right.

I just didn’t make the connection. I got my first period when I was eleven. I wear the same bra size today (even after two kids, and breast cancer and everything else!) that I wore when I was 14. And yet, my hips didn’t grow until I was 21. I was stunted, as the doctors had feared—but, in the end, even me stunted was ok.

For all intents and purposes, I shouldn’t have been able to do many of the things I’ve been able to do—such as carry and deliver children without necessitating a c-section. But I didn’t KNOW that. So I did it anyway, and they obliged me by being small (in Lenny’s case) and by arriving 3 weeks early (in Augie’s case). My ob-gyn was surprised, but only slightly, that my body adapted so well.

Some people work out three times a week. Often, I work out three times a day. It helps me sleep, no matter how restlessly. I have always loved running in the water, and it only recently occurred to me that it was because I can’t run on land. So I hang out at water aerobics with the old ladies, furiously pumping my legs while they look at me like I’m nuts. I walk, I do strength training, I spin. Spinning is just about the best thing that has ever happened to this body. It’s so low impact, and I feel so successful in the spinning studio. I sprint faster than everyone. I have strength, and endurance. And yet, spinning too is a reminder: If I go a week without doing it, my hips start to hurt so badly I wince. My body has become addicted to activities that attempt to stave off the inevitable pain.

Deep down, for all of these years, I have known that my “old wound” was a problem that had not corrected itself, no matter what I had done to defy it. This was confirmed for me when I finally got physical therapy for my post-cancer chronic pain and scar tissue, and my amazing therapist, incidentally a former collegiate rower, learned about my past non-cancer issues. As she tortured me by breaking up my scar tissue and I just gritted my teeth through the unbearable pain, I asked her:

Well, do you think anything would be helped by getting PT for my hips now?

How long has it been?

27 years.

And they didn't set the bones or give you therapy or teach you the correct way to walk again or anything? Not ever? Well…just think about all of the things you CAN do. You are a very fit and healthy person. Concentrate on that.

Yeah, there are things I COULD do, but it hurts, and I’ve had so much pain in my life, I just don’t think I have anything to prove by hurting more, you know?

Right. Get down on the floor and do a plank for me until I tell you to stop.

Yes ma’am.


All of this helped me with cancer, actually, as the bone pain didn't phase me until they absolutely blew up my bone marrow with the excessive neupogen shots. It didn't phase me to feel weak, to take to bed. I was hellbent on walking and exercising no matter what anyone said, because even with cancer I had a very clear and real fear of atrophy--of waking up unable to move, unable to use my body. I learned to accept pain, and not to medicate it away. I learned that it is better to feel the pain than to feel nothing, and that is a lesson worth learning.

And so for almost 30 years, I have become an expert at modifying. I know myself and my body and I know my limits and my strengths. I stretch, I do pilates, I have taught my lopsided, one leg longer than the other and one hip about to break body, to balance itself. I take warm baths when the pain is too intense. I know when to take aspirin and when to just grit my teeth. I know something that I knew 28 years ago without realizing it, and it was something that I had learned when I was six:

You might have certain limitations in your life. Perhaps you can't ride roller coasters, or go to a club with strobe lights, or get dizzy, or eat or sleep erratically, or you might have seizures. Perhaps you cannot do high impact sports without your largest joints giving out. Perhaps you cannot do pushups without exacerbating the problems that remain in your post-cancerous chest.

None of these limitations are real limitations. They are not relevant in the scheme of a long and happy life. There are many, many things I can do. I can sit here, and tell myself, look! Look at your body. Look at how it works--most of the time. I mean, my quads are killer, I have strong biceps and shoulders, my butt is rounder and stronger than ever. I can do a wall sit forever. I can do a plank for two and a half minutes. I can watch my muscles ripple and pull on the hair that has grown back so auburn on my head. I can stare at this computer for hours writing about a car accident, after taking a break from my job as a professional researcher, and my brain never misfires.

I can tell myself this: You are 37 years old, and here you are, your small stiff broken crazy body hanging out at about 17% body fat, putting you in that "athlete" category according to the gym, no matter how far that seems from who you thought you were, but there it is, even after having two children. And I can see those children, the girl who has already lived longer than I did without knowing that her body or her brain might not cooperate, the boy who received the vast majority of the nourishment that he needed to become the hellraiser he is today through my cancerous breast, and I can relax. I can roll my eyes at my husband as he lovingly caresses the stretch marks that his first-born child brought to my hips, which obligingly expanded again eight years after the first belated growth. I know that he sees only happiness there, not grief. I know something that all too many people know better than I do.

In all these things, the epilepsy, the car accident, the cancer--I have been one of the lucky ones. There is nothing to atone for, nothing to prove. I can blend in anywhere. I am lucky. I am still here.

And so it goes. What I have learned is that not all wounds heal, and not all problems are solved, and sometimes realizations come too late. But even within all of that, it is possible to just stubbornly do things that you might not have been able to do, if fate had moved you an inch, if there had been a stick pointing up on the sidewalk, if you hadn’t tried, if you hadn’t done things anyway.

I’ve learned that it is possible to always be nine years old, waiting to fight in the leaves, convinced that the best colors in the crayon box are burnt sienna and marigold, laughing while you eat the candy that some stranger gave to you while you were wearing a costume, wondering how it will be next year, when things will be different, when life will open up around you like a promise, no matter how crooked or stiff or imperfect. I’ve learned to live inside that promise, the promise of turning ten. And so it goes, that I have turned ten again and again, 27 times, each one as glorious as the last.

Someone once said "the thrill is gone." But for me, it isn't. For me, the thrill will always be there. May it be so for you.

Help! My Kids are Growing!

There are moments in everyone’s life that are extremely discouraging, that force you to dig deep and find that core kernel of strength that allows you to know that you are not alone in the world and that this, too, shall pass.

I experience one of these moments every time I try to figure out how the hell to buy clothes for my kids.

I have a three year old son and a six and a half year old daughter. Five pounds and several inches separate them in size. They can wear some of the same clothing sizes. I could go on about the trials and tribulations of trying to buy pants, of any kind, for a skinny little girl who literally has abs of steel (as my husband said the other day—“do you know who has a ridiculously strong core? Lenora.”) and yet has long legs like her mother. On a fat day, 4t pants fit her waist. They are all floods on her, however. So she wears leggings almost every day, with dresses or skirts or on their own. I took her to actually try on pants in a department store and the entire situation depressed me. My mind fast-forwarded to the rest of her female life, attempting to buy pants in random sizes, sizes that might actually stand for 4 trucks or 4 teacups for all the good they do in representing 4 toddler. How is this different than her mother buying size 0 sometimes, size 2 most of the time, or just splitting the difference and buying clothes that are simply “extra small” or “small” because at least that is descriptive? I saw her try on those pants, none of which fit, and it really pissed me off--as much as it angers me to have trouble finding pants that fit my booty, or shirts that fit my biceps.

I think about how most manufacturers make adjustable waist pants for boys, but not always for girls. And those manufacturers start a mindset in those boys that says: your clothes should adjust to fit your body, not the other way around. And those boys, like my son, will grow to be men who can buy pants with actual waist and inseam sizes. I know this, because I buy all of my husband’s clothes, in an attempt to get him not to dress as if he’s off to the next anime convention, and I know how hard it is in our expanding society to find 31 inch waist pants. But when I find them—or when I settle for 32—they fit him…every time.

But leaving that tirade aside, I want to talk about the most discouraging aspect of buying clothes for small children: crazy people design all of them. ALL OF THEM.

My daughter is fairly “girly,” whatever that means, and thank god. I can’t imagine agreeing to the amount of pink she is willing to wear when I was her age. She likes dresses because they are the most comfortable thing she can possibly wear, closer to being naked than anything else, but also because, as I said, little else fits. I like for her to wear dresses because they make cute dresses for little girls, dresses that are fairly shapeless and comfortable, that have plain colors, or stripes, or subtle flower patterns on them. Compare this to the shirts little girls get to wear—the shirts covered in princess regalia, or ponies, or rainbows or ponies wearing princess costumes while sitting under rainbows. Even worse, there are the shirts that have little sayings about being a “diva” or “my best subjects: boys, dancing, shopping” or “dumb blonde” or “aspiring rich blonde socialite” (seriously, those are real). And then of course there are the glittery triangle bikinis and slinky camisoles that we all know 6 year olds want to wear. Let’s not even venture into the “low-rise” pants or “hipster” jeans made for girls; my kid is so skinny that everything she put on started showing off her behind once there was no diaper in place to keep it up. There is underwear cut in such a skimpy fashion that it doesn’t actually cover girls’ crotches, and shoes as practical as stilletos—all for the preschool set.

Now don’t get me wrong—I like little girls clothes, in some ways, more than little boys.’ There is more variety, and definitely more cuteness. And, I’m all about the two piece bathing suit. It is damn hard for a little kid to get one of those one piece bathing suits off to go to the bathroom, and she’s too old for me to do that work for her. So, to save myself, she wears a two piece--you know, a tankini that has a cute little cherry print on it. I make her wear a rash guard shirt anyway, always in a color that is neutral so she can hand it down to her brother.

Because that’s what I wore growing up—my brother’s old clothes. And his clothes weren’t all that. Polyester short sets, overalls, plain tshirts and tube socks. I had some adorable dresses that my grandfather bought for me, and my daughter wears some of those dresses today. They have smocking, or frilly bows, or other things that are very little-girly that no grownup woman would ever be caught dead wearing—BECAUSE THEY WERE MADE FOR LITTLE GIRLS. But for the most part, I wore whatever lame 70s and 80s working class fashion that I, my brother, and everyone else and their brother wore back then, and no one paid any attention, because they were marketing to our parents, not to us, and our parents were under the impression that we were cute no matter what we wore.

So girls wore boys clothes and vice versa and it was pretty hard to tell what was what if you weren’t in your Sunday best. I’m glad that Augie doesn’t understand that there is some kind of ridiculous subtle difference in the neckline of tshirts for boys and girls, because that kid has been wearing his sister’s clothes for years. His favorite long sleeved shirts are these plain blue and brown ones of Lenny’s that are “girl cut,” whatever that means. I guess those shirts aren’t made for the muscly necks so rampant on three year old boys. Lenny went through a phase where she wore button down shirts every day. She has outgrown the phase and the shirts for the most part. I hope her brother appreciates the yellow, blue, and pink “button-downs” that he will inherent, complete with pocket and buttons on the other damn side from where they lie on the boys’ shirts.

Here’s the thing—I HATE buying clothes for him. There are only so many trucks or basketballs or dinosaurs or basketball-playing dinosaurs driving trucks that a mother can stand. I will buy a ridiculous amount of plain tshirts and thermals in various sizes and colors when they go on sale, just to avoid all of that crap. And mostly, I just accept hand me downs. All the boys clothes look the same, and they are all pretty boring, so I have no attachment to them or desire to keep them for the sake of sentiment. Even the little cordouroys and jeans that he refuses to wear because they aren’t “cozy” enough aren’t that exciting. It’s like we start the low expectations early. Hey honey it’s ok to look like a little scruffpile that barely bothered to roll out of bed this morning! Some day you will be a teenager, and girls will accept you even when your drawers are hanging out of your pants, or you will be a grown man, still looking like crap, while your girlfriend or your wife looks like a million bucks in the outfit she spent 4 hours preparing! But before you get there, we will make sure to supply you with lots of shirts that say things like “hide your daughters,” “heartbreaker,” “party animal,” “fart loading” “cereal killer,” “bad boy for life” or “it’s not my fault.”

I mean, the kind of stuff that people design, and then other people buy because it seems cute or ironic, just seems one step away from that guy that Gabe spilled a beer on in an obnoxiously loud bar several months ago—you know, the guy wearing a tshirt that read “I fuck sluts” over his beer belly. The dude didn’t seem to notice the spilled beer; maybe he was looking too intently at some woman with “who needs money when you have these” emblazoned on her chest.

I don’t want my son to be a bad boy, or someone girls should hide from, or someone who doesn’t have to take responsibility for what he does. And I don’t want my daughter to be spoiled or think her looks and her ability to attract rich men are her saving graces.

I struggle with these gender issues with my kids. I live in this house where the parents hold opposite gender roles a lot of the time, so we aren’t surprised when our kids seem to follow the gender roles fairly closely, because we didn’t really have any expectations in that regard. Gabe was the quiet one who never made himself a nuisance as a child. I was the one who went tearing through a room, the one who grew up with the nickname “little shit.” Just ask my mom—that was her term of endearment for me.

So when Augie is highly aggressive or Lenny doesn’t seem to know how to defend herself, when she sits quietly or is so shy she doesn’t even talk to the kids she DOES know while Augie just sings and dances and charms and makes friends with everyone, it’s not about gender to us. It’s about personality, and age. Augie gets away with some things because he’s a nut and because he’s three—NOT because he’s a boy. Lenny is entrusted with certain responsibilities because she’s six and because we know she has an overdeveloped instinct for self preservation and a desire to never get in trouble.

In my house growing up, it was the opposite for my brother and I. Maybe that instinct for self-preservation is a girl thing, and maybe it saved me from myself. But the point is—I was a nut. And my brother, while neurotic perhaps in some ways, was the sensitive one, the one who worried. You all know that Gabe is the crier in my house. He’s the one who was reading the Hunger Games last night because he thought the Bears would choke, while I was pausing the DVR so I wouldn’t miss anything, and laughing at Lenny yelling “MOM! SACK!” when I left the room and at Augie who was just waiting for the touchdown so he could do his booty-shaking touchdown dance.

Boys and girls are different—fine. But they aren’t that different. Individuals are more different than genders, in my opinion—at least it’s true that individual personalities have more variation than the genders do. I mean, both of my kids will be good at math and reading, damnit, even if only one is good at sitting still. It still bothers me that we had to push to get them to focus on math for Lenny and that we have to push to get them to focus on reading for Augie at Montessori. They are tiny children. They can both learn EVERYTHING. So yes, Lenny has a photographic memory, a spatial memory, a memory that is unworldly and bizarre. That is NOT because she is a girl. The only other person I know with that memory is her uncle. So clearly, Augie will be different. He might not put his fingers on the Norad tracker and guess to within the minute at how long it will take Santa to get from Helsinki to Estonia. But then again, who the hell can do that? I mean, can you? But Augie notices everything—he observes the differences, no matter how subtle, in everything he sees, and can imitate even complex things immediately. Last night he watched me open a box with my keys, and he proceeded to cleanly open several others with the keys he stole while I wasn’t looking. That’s not because he’s a boy. It's because he's Augie.

Boys and girls are different. But both should be able to behave, to have empathy for others, to be crazy and joyful. Both should clean up after themselves and learn how to cook, and do other practical things. Both should be able to stand up for themselves. When Augie puts Lenny in a headlock, I no longer have to tell her to fight back. She elbows him, tumbles around with him, kicks him, uses her little biceps and that crazy core strength to counteract his manic will and total lack of fear. And they both laugh the whole time, until someone gets hurt. Augie doesn’t seem to know that his sister is a girl and therefore not into roughhousing, just as she doesn’t seem to know that he is a boy and therefore not interested in spending 4 hours just planning the party for the stuffed animals. He will go along with it, not realizing that in some houses, the animals actually get to PARTY. Lenny’s guys never do—there are too many details to arrange in the meantime.

I just can’t stand these clothes and what they say about us and what we expect from our adult relationships. I can’t stand the way they make my mind jumpstart to adult expectations for things like birth control (the woman’s responsibility, even though her parts are nice and internally contained and it’s the man’s parts that shoot out the stuff that gets folks pregnant or diseased) or chores (because you know men just CAN’T multitask, and they would all STARVE if left to their own devices) or letting boys get away with shit because of their raging hormones or their innate aggression or because boys will just be boys or whatever. I can’t stand how we dumb down both boys and girls, and men and women, by focusing on what is supposedly different or superior about each gender.

I can remember having raging hormones as a teenager, and being self-involved and aggressive. Isn’t that the definition of youth? Being aggressive in how you present yourself to the world, being reckless and rebellious and horny and a little crazy? Newsflash: girls are like that too. And they don’t get away with behaving like criminals, and we don’t think it’s funny if they are crude, and we sure as hell don’t think it’s cute if they’re crazy about boys. And on the other hand, why do we think so little of boys, that we assume they can’t be both loud and respectful, lustful and kind, strong and sensitive? You know--the things women should be able to be, as well?

My kids are very different, in almost every way. But there are things about them that are remarkably the same, including their love of comfortable clothes. I love my pencil skirts and heels and clothes that show off my figure as much as I love my comfortable workout clothes and nightshirts. And Gabe loves his comfortable jeans but also likes to put on a tie and look like a grownup and he’s pretty damn proud of those size 31s and what they say about his 37 year old abs. So there’s nothing wrong with being comfortable and happy in your body, or in recognizing that your body is different because it is male or female. But all this other stuff? What a bunch of crap that obfuscates people’s actual potential.

I’m wishing there was someone out there channeling Marlo Thomas, and I don’t care how old that makes me sound. She is what, 72? And still looks and sounds amazing. She was “That Girl,” but more importantly to me, she was the narrator of Free to Be You and Me. What a great, gender bending 70s hippie lovefest that show was. My kids love it. When we took them to see Brave, I had high hopes that the archery competition scene would rival the version of Atalanta that FTBYAM portrayed. Sadly, it fell far short. That girl hardly got to shoot her arrows, and the boys were all portrayed as idiots. I felt nostalgic for that race that the princess had with Young John, a handsome, serious, smart kid who admired Atalanta from afar for her skills and maybe for her charms. Do you remember what happened? This was the 70s, as you recall. She didn’t promise to marry him, but she left that option open, as they both planned to see the world and grow up a little bit first. But before they could have that conversation, they raced. And she didn’t kick his ass, or beat him. Nobody won.

They crossed the finish line together.

Call me crazy, or a prude, or a femiNazi. I’d like to think of myself as one of those people for whom gender is a fact, and not a statement, nor a limit. And when I buy clothes for my kids, I’m going to do it as that person—you know, the basketball-playing dinosaur wearing a princess costume while riding a pony on my way to the truckstop that lies underneath the rainbow.