The Waiting Room

When body language experts deem people with crossed arms unwilling to open up, they may not be thinking of the mammography waiting room. In this eight-chair, eight-locker, women’s world, we may be unwilling to uncross our arms, but we strangers seem to be quite willing to open up our emotions to each other. A certain sisterhood forms as we slouch, firmly crossing arms across criss-cross-tied gowns in obligatory mauve—the universal hospital color scheme for women—waiting for our names to be perkily called by a radiology tech.

The newest woman timidly exits a dressing room, clutches her blouse and bra to her chest, and searches for an open locker.

“All these locker lights are blinking,” she says, bewildered.
“The lights on those lockers over there are dark,” I say, pointing to a locker on the other side of the table strewn with homemaking magazines; and another woman nods and turns back to our side of the room.
“What are you here for?” she asks the grimmest-faced woman with the tightest-crossed arms.
“I’m waiting for a biopsy,” she replies. She relaxes her pseudo-bra arms a teensy bit and tries to smile.
“Needle?”
“I think so. I, uh, hope so.”
“Oh, I’ve had one of those; it’s not so bad.”
“It should be all right,” biopsy lady murmurs, not very convincingly.

I’m not feeling all that brave myself. Having just been through a mammography a few weeks ago, I am back for another looky-loo at what they call a “thickening.” Probably just the clavical bruise inflicted by one of the machine’s appropriately named “paddles” two weeks ago, I pep-talk myself. On the other hand, I do have a family history of breast cancer … but, I don’t want to go there, to that sudden life-change place. That place where one recent late-August Saturday all the picnickers’ faces were red and flushed from the heat, and the next day they wore sweaters to church. I don’t want my mouth-watering musings to go immediately from homegrown tomatoes to pea soup. That’s what autumn is for, to meander from iced tea to hot cocoa. But if a perky radiology tech is going to flip my life’s switch to the next season, then I guess I’ll have to do more than pretend I’m prepared to fight for my life.

I pick up a magazine with recipes for summer fruit cobblers. The article promises to tell me how a crumble, crisp, cobbler, betty, grunt, and buckle differ—something I’ve always been curious about. Really. Flipping through other recipes, I vow to also make a spinach quiche and stuffed peppers soon. Oh, and here’s another recipe for something I’ve been curious about—red beans and rice. One ingredient, a half-pound of light kielbasa cut into half-moons, strikes me as funny. Or, reminding me of Elizabeth Berg’s description of “living a half-a-banana life,” it could be ominously prophetic of a frightening future. Turning back from that precipice, I wander back to the summerier recipes.

The biopsy lady’s name is called. As she stands up, her feet head toward the perky tech, while her face turns back toward me. She doesn’t want to go, but she has to. Her eyes widen, fill with tears. I wish I’d told her I’d pray for her before she left, but boy I sure pray for her after she’s gone down the hall.

My turn. After fake-smiling through all the way-more-than-this-will-just-be-a-little-uncomfortable smashing, I follow the tech into a consultation room. When she shuts us into this room with heavy, dark wooden desks and big green leather chairs (and no magazines), I am barely breathing. This is a room designed for life-and-death talking. I expect the tech to flip the switch that will catapult me into pea soup. I wish I’d brought a note pad and a friend.

“Everything’s OK!” she crows. “The thickening was just tissue.”
Yeah, probably the clavical bruise, I want to say but bite my tongue.

My blinking locker beeps open. I can go home! As I dress, I am aware of stress draining from each limb. As I spring past the reception counter, I notice its lame little jar of orange, yellow, and green suckers. That really should be a two-gallon jug of dark chocolate Dove promises, you know is what I want to say to the receptionist, but instead I skip right out to the café in the hospital lobby to order a celebratory mocha before I go home. Home! WhooHoo! In the parking lot, I pass a chorus line of different-colored support ribbons dancing across the back of an SUV. I pray they’ll be dancing for biopsy lady when she goes home too.

What a Racket

In my last post, I predicted I would not be writing about the inside of the Harley showroom. Forget that. When all your salt-of-the-earth husband wants for his birthday is Harley stuff, you go. I went today.

When I pulled up to the Harley dealership in my quiet, conservative Honda, I drove past two large motorcycles—and here, you can tell I am not into this, because I can’t even tell you what they looked like, their colors, model numbers, or maybe motorcycle models have names like Accord or Civic (haha), I don’t know. Both cycles were being hovered over by my unanimous vote for Harley-Davidson poster-child and his biker babe. His tawny, craggy face was haloed in snow-white cotton-candy hair. His beer belly bulged under a black shirt with the silver-winged, orange-flamed, Harley-Davidson logo. His bulging bicep boasted the same design in tattoo form. Both he and his lady wore heavy-duty black nylon pants with wide day-glow orange stripes. For night riding? I'm not sure, as I'm clueless about this new world I'm just setting first foot in since Robert began riding a Harley a few months ago.

From my locked car in the spot furthest from any activity, I watched folks come and go for a while. Most were men. One scooted around in an electric wheelchair. I hoped this was not due to a motorcycle accident, a topic that now strikes dread in my heart. In contrast, the intimidating thought of entering a Harley showroom was not so bad. Okay, clutching Robert’s one-inch-thick glossy catalog of Harley-branded accessories to my chest, I plodded toward the wide glass doors. Dressed in my delicate Danskin exercise capris, I felt out of place as I traded places in the doorway with a rather burly woman in Harley T-shirt and black jeans. Whoa … I might as well have entered a museum on Mars.

Timidly I wandered through displays of gifts and toys. Biker Brew coffee. Birthstone heart bracelets. Inch-and-a-half-long dangling, silver, logo-wing earrings. Orange and black logo-flame decals. Neon logo-lamps. Be-logoed beer steins. Motorcycle-decorated photo frames. Stuffed animals wearing Harley-logo clothes. Wooden motorcycle rocking horses (okay, these were majorly cool). Vast logo-clothing section for men, women, and children.

Sidling up to a cash register at a sleek, circular counter, I laid Robert’s catalog next to the ad for applying for a Harley-Davidson Visa card. A grinning young woman leapt to my aid, but then directed me to the Parts Department for anything in the particular catalog I had. (You mean there are more catalogs? This one is an inch thick, for pete’s sake. How could there be more Harley stuff that’s not in this catalog? No wonder Robert won’t carry his hog key on anything but an official hog keychain. Please tell me they don’t make Harley underwear.)

On my way to the Parts Department, I passed sales cubicles reminiscent of an auto showroom. Beyond them, in the back, I could see a sea of chrome handlebars above waves of shiny bike bodies. Above the sales cubicles hung huge posters like the sepia-toned World War II photo of the GI and the beautiful brunette smiling above his shoulder. They were of course, zooming around on a motorcycle. The caption read: The Mighty Harley-Davidson. The mighty mystique makers, I would say.

At the Parts Department counter, I wondered if perhaps I should change my poster-child vote. If the white-cotton-candy-haloed man outside in the parking lot had embodied the everyman’s-midlife-crisis stereotype, the man who waited on me was my idea of the hell’s angel stereotype. His head, from the crown of his buzz-cut to his neck, if he had had one, was red. His most prominent tattoo, when I finally had the guts to look at the details, made me blush and swallow hard. If I’d encountered this man in a dive, I would have had to remind myself to breathe as I backed out of the bar. Then I would have run for my life. (I tried to imagine this guy as yet another Harley stereotype, a salt-of-the-earth, gentle giant nuzzling his precious child, or even riding the largest, loudest be-teddy-beared Harley in the Toys for Tots parade. Really I did. No luck. The beer-guzzling image stuck.) Few words were exchanged. He barely grunted as I pointed to the catalog items Robert had circled. He just wrote part numbers down on a slip of paper and lumbered away.

While waiting, I soaked up more Harley ambiance—screamin’ guitars piercing the air, a rack selling at least ten different magazines for bikers (my favorite title was In the Wind), I-Pass Glasses (those Harley folks think of everything). The backdrop of this area said it all: 15 different chrome tailpipes mounted on the wall. One type of tailpipe will not do the job? Poor Robert, to be married to a gal who just doesn’t get it.

I will say, however, that after exiting the Harley showroom, I was mighty thirsty for the cold beverage I’d brought with me in the car. So I sank into the safe seat of my meek mild Honda and twisted the jagged metal cap off my bottle of diet sparkling black-cherry (organic) green tea with my bare hands, without even wincing at the two puncture wounds in my palm.

A Day of Firsts

Today marked the closest I’ve been to a Harley dealership. From my spot outside the service department, I heard enough motorcycles sounding as though they’d eaten way too many baked beans that I don’t know if you’ll ever read about my first time inside a Harley showroom or paraphernalia shop or backward-bandana-tying classrooms or whatever else they have there.

More firsts: breakfast at Lambs’ Farm and long, fun visit to their pet shop, including my introduction to a wide variety of cross-breed dogs like Morkies and several names ending in –Poo. (There’s got to be some symbolism there.) Today was the first time I’ve worn my new aqua shirt without accidentally squirting a mocha frappé on it. First time I’ve shown up at the café for the French meetup and no one else came. Today I harvested my very first homegrown garlic—five whole bulbs—and remembered to plant a fall crop of lettuce.

For the love of South Haven

I’d wanted a book signing in South Haven, because after all, my novel is partly set there. I figured folks there might like the connection. What I didn’t anticipate was the intensity of the connection.

When did I first go there—1988? The first time, I went because a friend invited me and some other girls to her aunt’s cottage. Why did I go back the following year? And the next? And some years twice? I don't know. Now, 20 years later, I still eagerly anticipate my South Haven pilgrimage and all its simple rituals, from walking (savoring hometown ice cream) down to the lighthouse to watch the sunset, to picking blueberries and peaches, and everything in between.

Each year I like to visit, at least mentally, places I have memories of. The road leading to the cottage I rented the summer a niece and nephew came up for the first half of the week and 11 friends came up for the second half? Hey, it’s still a dirt road. I love glancing at the blue stained glass window of our honeymoon room in a lovely B&B as I drive by. Oh, and here’s where we sat to watch the drawbridge go up. And there’s where the Tall Ships were the year we camped with friends at the KOA. Oh, and that picnic on the bluff above the beach was such a beautiful day. Certainly there have been changes to the town and some of its traditional sights. But the feeling of the town remains.

I have no words to describe that feeling. But I know I’m not alone in feeling it. At the book signing, people approached my table on the sidewalk outside the bookstore, sat down, leaned forward with an elbow on the table, and poured out their falling-in-love-with-South-Haven stories. One couple drove up once from Indianapolis and have spent 3 weeks a summer here ever since. One woman came once on a fluke, came back every year for 15 years, and finally bought a house here, where she commutes on weekends from Toledo.

The day of my book signing was a grand day. The rain was relentless. Streets and sidewalks were slick and shoppers soaked. Car tires sizzled by and flip-flops slapped against the sidewalk. Umbrellas of every color and design and shiny yellow ponchos bobbed along as people moseyed from shop to shop. Rain dripped from awnings, benches, and branches. Crystal droplets hung from Italian lights, which themselves looked like crystal droplets. The South Haven scene I saw from my little dry spot in front of the bookstore was wet, wet, wet—not exactly an ideal day in a beach and boating town. Yet people’s faces were all smiles, smiles, smiles. I guess any day is a good day to be in South Haven. Although I can’t explain this, I’m very glad to have heard the stories of others who share the feeling.

Hidey-Hole

... phphpht go the dictionary pages during another quick lookup. As I phphphlip past page headings, "hidey-hole" always makes me smile. Hidey-hole. This thick, thumping authority, this noxious know-it-all, supercilious Scrabble settler, this lister of words like repecharge also lists hidey-hole. I can almost see this cosmopolitan, tuxedoed, bow-tied tome, its beady black eyes squinting down its pince-nez at me; I can almost hear its stentorian "Do you mean to tell me you don't know what a cherimoya is?" I feel stupid for only a second. Because then I spy its belly button exposed below its cummerbund: hidey-hole. There goes the intellectual edge. We can be friends again.

(Higgledy-piggledy is further down the hidey-hole page. Mr. Webster must have dipped his quill into the bubbly instead of the inkwell when he penned that page.)

Signs of Spring

A month or so ago, I treated myself to new gardening gloves. I go through about a pair a year, especially if they’re cheap. I seldom get around to washing them, because it’s a nuisance to soak and scrub enough mud off before tossing them in the washer. I have washed gardening gloves, but then they come apart at the seams, especially if they’re cheap. In just a month’s time, my new, cheap, gloves have had a workout—planting two rounds of seeds in the basement and mega-weeding outside. They also kept my hands warm during chilly days of garden cleanup. Well, warm is a relative term, especially in early spring in Chicago. Because I was wearing gardening gloves, my fingers felt as though they’d been handling ice cubes, rather than dry ice. They were only painful enough to be run under warm water for five minutes, as opposed to needing to be treated for frostbite in the ER. Springtime in Chicago is a real test of patience. But gardening gloves help.

About two weeks ago, during fickly warm teaser temps, I optimistically washed my winter parka and put it away. A few days later, my brrrrrrrrrrrrr’s while walking into church elicited a practical question from my husband: “Why didn’t you wear a coat instead of that sweater?” I stubbornly announced that it was spring and I would not be wearing my parka any more until fall. All that April wintry week I caught flak for not wearing the parka. As I left the house to walk the dog, my husband commented, “I thought you said you weren’t going to wear a coat.” My response? “A turtleneck sweater, sweatshirt, hooded sweatshirt, and windbreaker do NOT count as a coat!” As I said, in early spring in Chicago, we measure warm against what we’ve just been through. The winter of 2007-08 was brutal and tenacious, as evidenced by snow on April 28 and the two late-April days of steady, icy 38 mph winds with gusts even higher.

Yesterday was a perfect spring day, warm by anyone’s standards, sunny, and with just a light breeze. My five glorious gardening hours were marred only by those teeny bugs with no radar. But if spring is finally here, gnats are just a nit. Notice I said if.

The Play’s the Thing

Three plays in three weeks. Oh joy!

Seasons tickets this year to Chicago Shakespeare at Navy Pier and Writers Theatre in Glencoe have brought many enjoyable evenings, two in recent weeks. Last week we also sandwiched in one play at Northlight Theatre in Skokie.

Had Writers Theatre’s As You Like It been a film production, I would have snapped up the DVD in the lobby on my way out of the theater. If the run hadn’t been ending, I would have gone to see it again. The actresses played with flirtatious glee the roles of Rosalind and Celia—Ganymede and Aliena—and then again Rosalind and Celia. At play’s end, we saw four weddings and restoration of the exiled duke, (a refreshing change from the main characters lying dead on the stage at play’s end, a frequent Shakespeare ending). My enjoyment of this play extended far beyond its happy ending though. The Forest of Arden, the setting for most of this pastoral comedy, appealed to my aging-hippie sensibilities. What’s not to like about the simple lives of this ragtag bunch of flower children singing and strumming guitars around campfires and sharing their food with strangers? Shakespeare’s lines were consistently funny. And last but certainly not least, brilliant actor Larry Yando’s punk-haired, trench-coated, beat-poet portrayal of Jaques invented a new oxymoron: melancholic glee. In a word, this production of As You Like It was delightful.

The ham in my recent Shakespeare sandwich was the world premier of Better Late at Northlight. This aptly named play told of delayed acts of love that turned out to be—not too late—but better late than never. The story, with just four characters, was fairly simple but contained by my count, six better-late acts of love. Veteran actors John Mahoney and Mike Nussbaum played the former and current husbands of one woman, who arranges for them all to live in the same household while the ex-husband recovers from a stroke. Meanwhile, her son agonizes over his marriage, and her two husbands offer wisdom gained from their failures in life and love. This play, despite its many redeeming qualities, suffers from a pacing problem. The first third was hysterically funny—I mean a laugh-a-minute hysterical—the middle third was flat, boring story development, and the final third was a bittersweet, though satisfying, ending. Better Late is neither tragicomedy nor comitragedy—it’s more like a midlife mood swing. The other disappointment was that as meaty and intelligent as 95% of the writing was, the writers couldn’t have found nonobscene words for the actors to express anger and disappointment. Having said that, however, I would encourage people to see Better Late for its wit and wisdom. Don’t be too late—its run at Northlight ends May 11.

Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s The Comedy of Errors was simply brilliant. Again, seeing a Shakespeare comedy was refreshing. What a comedy of errors it was! Not one, but two, sets of twins, separated at birth find themselves at Ephesus at the same time. Imagine Antipholus of Ephesus’s and Dromio of Ephesus’s chagrin when Antipholus of Syracuse and Dromio of Syracuse show up in Ephesus. Slapsticky confusion reigns until the mystery unravels and the separated twins reunite. Elevating the funny factor is the fact that the Shakespeare play is being filmed in a British movie studio next door to a munitions factory during World War II. That screenplay was written by Ron West. The lucky audience gets to doubly laugh as the actors and director iron out their personal and professional difficulties with melodramatic élan, replete with flouncing capes and arched-eyebrow exaggerations. All performances were spectacular, but I must say Ross Lehman’s portrayal of the film director Dudley Marsh and Dromio of Syracuse was nothing short of transcendent. From Dudley Marsh’s visionary directing and witty, clever handling of his prima donna film stars, through his own profound grief as his actress wife finds passion with a fellow actor, to his silly Harpo Marxish Dromio, Ross Lehman carried me through a wide range of emotions, as only Pachelbel's Canon in D can do~well, okay, Yanni can too. Somewhat like a constant fresh breeze with gusts up to 30 mph, this zany play within a play kept up the steady laughs with occasional laughs so hard we were holding our stomachs and slumping our heads on our friends’ shoulders. And doubling the fun—the actors seemed to be enjoying themselves just as much as we were.