Story Archives - Page 5 of 5

14 Jan 2014

5 Ways To See The West

by Mary Fons | posted in: Day In The Life, Paean, Story, Travel | 3

"Desert Girl 3," by Gastounette. — “Desert Girl 3,” by Gastounette.

I may be done with Arizona, but Arizona might not be done with me.

This morning, they cancelled my flight. When I checked in for the replacement, the Phoenix Airport ticket lady gave me a warning. “There’s weather in Chicago,” she said. “We can’t guarantee your flight will take off. The airline assumes responsibility to get you into Chicago, um, eventually, but assumes no outside costs for necessary accommodations or meals.” One might put it another way: “You’re on your own, kid. The days of ‘Here’s a burrito punch card and a straw mat at the Holiday Inn Express’ are extremely over. Take care. Next customer please step up?”

To pass the time, I’ve been working. I’ve also been looking out the panes of huge floor-to-ceiling glass here in Terminal 3 because the desert’s out there and there’s no better place to look than that.

It’s odd, but there’s something in me that doesn’t want to love the desert. Whither this ridiculous feeling? I intensely dislike “Southwestern-style” artwork, with the howling dog silhouettes and the tutti-frutti sunsets and all those terra cotta jars, but can that really be my problem? It doesn’t seem fair to dismiss an entire landmass because of a few cheesy art galleries. Is my resistance to falling head over heels for the desert born out of my love of oak trees and the lushness of land near the Mississippi? There is no oak, no mighty river out here. As I look out across the sand, I feel perhaps that it’s not the desert itself that I love: it’s the West. From Cali to just before Kansas, baby. I am in love with it.

And could you blame me.

Grand Canyon
In 2004, my friend Sarah and I hiked Grand Canyon for six days. We hiked down, down, down into the rocks, we camped in a tent, we cooked beans in a tin. We talked. Nietzsche said that “The best thoughts are conceived while walking” and hiking through a field of daisies with Sarah, yes. We skinny-dipped in an ice-cold stream at the bottom of the canyon. That day, the light was silver and we were gold.

Tuscon, Arizona
A rodeo. I watched the riders with the wide-eyed fascination and glee of a six-year-old at Disney. This was when I was married. My former husband and I had a ball. We ate a whole bucket of buttery popcorn, he had a couple beers. The smell of horse manure mixed with the smell of Tuscon cowboys and those horses! Bucking and throwing and running, running in the ring. The only thing more exhilarating was the endless, dusky sky above us. We saw the stars come out.

Las Vegas, Nevada
Last year, I understood how to love Las Vegas: you gotta open your hands and turn your wrists up, so that Vegas can bind you with its rope. If you let it do that, Vegas will lead you around and you won’t trip, but you must submit. Don’t fight the lights. Bring your bathing suit. The moment you moralize, you are at odds. Be one with the hammer. You’ll dig the hit.

Somewhere Outside Sacramento
College, 1998. I went with my new college BFFs to Sacramento to visit my aunt and uncle for spring break. We drank fresh orange juice on the terrace and smoked cigars at night. Madonna’s Ray of Light album had been released. We listened to that single on blast, over and over and over in our rented pick-up truck, flying down Interstate 5. I still remember Nellie’s blonde hair whipping and I remember Scott just laughing.

Denver and Boulder, CO
I flew in to visit my high school girlfriend. I remember coming up out of the bowl of Denver and how the whole place seemed dove gray, steely. Then on into Boulder and the rolling green of it all. The air was better than anyplace I had ever been.

See ya later, cactus-gator.

:: plane takes off ::

13 Jan 2014

This Be The Flight.

by Mary Fons | posted in: Day In The Life, Story, Tips, Travel | 12

I’ve said it, I’ll keep saying it: I love airports and I love flying in airplanes.

Flying around is one of my favorite things and that’s lucky because I’m set to jet all over the place approximately twice a month starting now and going through June, give or take a take off. Why, just the other day, I remarked to myself, “Self, it sure is great, flying around in the sky. Airplanes are the best!”

It was as though an evil airplane jinn heard me, rubbed his naughty hands together, and cackled, “Ooh-hoo! Well, let’s have a little fun, shall we?” My flight to Arizona yesterday was comically bad. I’m still laughing. And crying. And laughing. Mostly crying.

I fly Southwest almost exclusively. At this point, I’m putting several Southwest kids through college and thus have been granted “A-List” status. This means I get to choose my seat early in the queue, which has never been that big of a perk for me, as I am one of the only people I know who kinda likes a middle seat up at the front; A-List or not, I rarely don’t get a seat I’m okay with. But yesterday, I decided to use my Fancy Pants Status and take a coveted place by the window to see how the other half lives.

The moment I took my seat, I saw that I had made a terrible mistake. I had trapped myself in a cage of pain.

The pain began with the squalling — but it wasn’t a baby. Rather, it wasn’t just a baby.

It was a family, in the row in front of me and to my right. A family of screeching humans who, the entire time we were joined together in that unholy, winged union, yelled, insulted, and ignored each other into a frenzy. There were so many of them. Grandpop and Grammy. Mom. Brother. Uncle. Baby. And then there was Gracie. We’ll get to Gracie.

Watching this family interact could short-out wires in a normal person’s head. The social contract meant nothing to them.

Now, it’s a delicate thing, sharing the defining physical characteristic of my fellow journeymen, but it’s a fact: they were enormous. All of them, except the baby and Gracie — we’ll get to Gracie — demanded seatbelt extenders, which speaks to their size. Pointing out their obesity is not a condescension: it’s a problem. It was for me, anyway, because I was claustrophobically wedged in the onboard land they had claimed. The two square-feet of space I had for the next four hours had been drastically compromised. No one in the family was able to reach a decision about seating. Everyone changed their seat twice in twenty minutes, including Gracie — and we’ll get to Gracie. This seat-changing meant that the Doe Family girth was continually heaved up, over, down and back up again and I was tossed, tossed like a smelt upon the sea.

But I’m cool. It’s gotta be tough to travel with a big (!) family. But then Grandpop was extremely rude to the airline attendant and this I could not forgive. The pleasant-but-weary Southwest employee made a comment about moving to the side to let other travelers board and Grandpop, in a mean voice honed over years of practice barked, “Oh, relax, honey.” My blood boiled. My shackles shot up. My hyena-sense was in the fully upright and locked position. Oh no you don’t, you [REDACTED.] I bit my tongue and withheld the desire to punch the back of his seat. It was at that point the flight attendant spoke to the family. What she said proves this story is not a dramatization. The woman calmly stepped over to the family and said:

“Folks? There’s an easy way to do this and a hard way. You all have done it about as hard as I’ve ever seen. Take your seats. Now.”

I have a theory as to why it was so bad, pretty flight attendant lady. Her name is Gracie.

That toe-headed girl of six was a genius. She was running the entire show. From the pink barrettes in her pigtails to the purple laces on her shoes, that Damienette was 100% committed to fulfilling her needs 100% of the time and she was doing a fine, fine job of it. She was a puppet master, I tell you. One scream, one caterwaul, one throw of her stupid video game at her mother’s head and it was, “Gracie, honey, what do you need, sweetheart?” and the steady stream of “Gracie! Stop it! Gracie! Sit down! Gracie! Gracie! Gracie! Gracie! Gracie!” only served her purpose. Her bad behavior whipped her family further into a hot, smelly lather, making it easier for her to work her dark magic. (I think her goal was candy, but it was still dark magic.)*

We took off. And it didn’t get better. It got worse. Because that’s when the farting began.

I gasped when the first one hit. ‘Twas an evil stench; Macbethian in its foulness. I covered my nose and held my breath and tried to keep reading my book. But then, a few minutes later, another assault. I sat up, ramrod straight with a wild look in my eyes. “No!” I cried. “No, no, no!” The gal across the aisle looked over at me and then her eyes widened and she slapped her hands over her face. She smelled it. She was in this with me. (“This” = fart fog.)

Spluttering, choking, I folded myself in half to get to my wrap, which was under the seat in front of me — Grandpop’s seat, which was the source of the issue, if you know what I mean. I held my breath and dove down, grabbed the blue-and-white polka-dotted material and wrapped it around my head, making sure I had two layers at my nose. I spent the entire flight in a burka because Grandpop spent the entire flight as he spends it in his easy chair back home. Farting. Under a rock.

A bad flight can’t make me not love flying, but that was a rough one, comrades. When I told a friend about the experience, he gave me a tool to use the next time it’s that bad. He reminded me of the advice Queen Victoria gave her daughters on each of their wedding nights:

Lie back, grit your teeth, and think of England.

*Gracie is why I get scared to have kids. My kid won’t be like Gracie but my kid might meet Gracie and I love my hypothetical kid and would like to see him/her not be pushed to his/her death by a sociopath named Gracie.

9 Jan 2014

Losing The Punishment — But Keeping My Figure.

by Mary Fons | posted in: Day In The Life, Story, Tips | 3

"And lift! And lift!" — “And lift! And lift!”

On and off (mostly on) for three years or so, I was a Bikram yogini. Bikram yoga is the hottest of the so-called “hot yoga” practices. The room is heated to 105 degrees. For 90-straight minutes you stand in very little clothing in front of full-length mirrors with the rest of the class. The twenty-one poses in the practice are always the same. And it’s as hard as it sounds, which means that it feels fantastic. Exercise is like that: the tougher the better — at least when it’s over.

But I got a little too into Bikram. The practice is advertised (!) as being most effective when it’s done daily; I jumped onboard with the fervor of a new cult recruit. I would frequently take two classes in one day. Two classes a day! Once, just to prove I could — I’m hesitant to admit this — I did three. Three Bikram yoga classes in a single day. But why?

Subconsciously or consciously, I thought Bikram yoga could fix me, cure me, make me acceptable as a person. Acceptable to whom, I do not know. I spent much of my twenties, I see now, concerned about everything that I felt was wrong with me. I don’t do that anymore. There’s plenty wrong and I haven’t given up aspiring to be more happy, more helpful, etc., but rather than seeing myself as a damaged, cute-but-junky heap in need of major renovations, I simply make tweaks and modifications to a person that I actually like pretty well. Dammit, I’m not broken. You’re not either. That’s the key to the lock.

Bikram drifted away, eventually. At some point, there came some peace; I needed it less. But to tell the truth, there was also a traumatic event that helped me let go: my ostomy bag leaked in class. Oh, yes. Yes, it did. If you’d like to live a nightmare, I recommend that one. The combination of feeling like I didn’t have to kill myself in class everyday and the desire to actually die when that happened put me off my yoga.

To keep my figure these days, I do dance aerobics because I love to dance. I mean I love to dance, though I’m hopeless in classes. In classes, I have two left feet. My dancing is best when I’m at a club or in my living room. Even in the construction, my condo becomes my dance floor. I put on legwarmers and short-shorts and pull my hair into a ponytail and hop around like a bunny rabbit, leaping and twirling and whipping my hair all around.

When I’m dancing, it’s fun. It’s not punishment. It’s not obligatory. I don’t do it three times in one day for 90-minutes a pop. Dancing like this comes from a place of spontaneous joy: it doesn’t work, otherwise. I sweat, I keep my figure, I smile. And I hope the neighbors in the mid-rise building across the street can see me. I do better with an audience. Always have.

3 Jan 2014

New Year’s Alarums + Excursions

by Mary Fons | posted in: Chicago, Day In The Life, Story, Travel | 0

Find this lovely computer wallpaper -- free of charge -- on this equally lovely website: http://paper-leaf.com/blog/category/free-friday-wallpaper/ — So elegant! Go to paperleaf.com for a free download of this wallpaper. This is not an ad, I just like this wallpaper.

I made noise some time ago about whooping it up in Miami for New Year’s Eve. If “whooping it up” means “nursing the same glass of wine for several hours” and “”Miami” is “my condo,” that’s just what I did.

No, there was no bacchanal in a Cuban mafia-run nightclub this year; my party pal had a project at work that interfered. I can’t say I was horribly bummed not to go, however. The trouble with going to a nightclub, Miamian or otherwise, is that you have to actually enter the thing (see: bouncers, loud girls who are twenty-two, cover charge) and eventually you have to exit it (see: bouncers, puking girls who are twenty-two, empty wallets.) My friend and I stayed in Chicago and just plain stayed in. He had a slight fever and I had a quilt top to finish. Party. Animals.

But being in a quiet place meant that I heard the sounds of Chicago when the clock struck midnight and was reminded of a cultural meme that has died: the sporadic midnight cheer across the city.

Now that most of America has smartphones, we’re all on the same clock. When my phone clicks from 11:59pm to 12:00am, so does yours, regardless of the operating system or the service provider. Midnight is midnight is midnight. At midnight on New Year’s Eve, my phone clicked to 12:00, Jan. 1, 2014 and the moment it did, the city outside my window erupted in fireworks, hollering, whooping, cheering, noisemaking — all from various condo balconies and down in the streets, at exactly the same moment. The city felt the moment together because we were all together in time.

But it hasn’t always been that way. In fact, it’s only recently changed.

It used to be that you’d get a bunch of “Yeah! Hap-ee Nuuu-yeeer!” cheers from over here; a few seconds later, another crop from across the street. Then, falling over each other, in a kind of round, the alarums would fall over each other and you would reach a kind of critical mass of celebration. There might even be a few stragglers, sending cheers up a minute or two late, which only prolonged the moment for everyone, which was fine. More kissing.

That’s over, now. I’m not the sort of person who thinks “the good old days” were that terribly good; I’m a fan of science and progress. But we do lose things in the march. While it’s nice to hear everyone hosanna-ing on cue, it was also nice to hear a collection of hosannas, all a little different, all a little off.

29 Dec 2013

Tops, Ramen.

by Mary Fons | posted in: Day In The Life, Food, Sicky, Story, Tips | 7

When I had the flu the other day, I had zero appetite. The mere mention of eating was enough to make me holler in anguish from my sickbed. Except that one thing actually did sound good: chicken-flavored Maruchan Top Ramen.

Look, I don’t make the rules. I have no idea why a block of sodium starch is a curative for me, but when I am at death’s door, convenience store ramen noodles save the day. I can say with conviction because when I was gravely ill with ulcerative colitis and the first of the surgical complications years ago, Top Ramen kept me alive. Fine, okay, the horse pill antibiotics and the doctors did their part, but if it weren’t for the inexplicable deliciousness of cheap ramen, I would have had a feeding tube earlier than I did.

I would sit on my mother’s couch, an increasingly wispy wisp of a thing, dazed with morphine and woozy from the blood thinner delivered in my hindquarters twice a day via injection. I would watch something on television (I think?) and I would try and get up to walk because that was supposed to be important, but mostly I just waited till Mom or my husband at the time would come to flush my wound drains. I’ve described a fraction of it. It was horrid.

“Honey, what do you think you can eat?” my mother would ask, coming into the living room. She had new lines on her face.

We tried ice cream. We tried cheese. We tried pudding. We tried crackers. Chips. Soups. Cookies. I would take one bite and push it away and I missed my appetite. So many times as a twenty-something woman I had dieted for periods of time, fervently wishing I could have no appetite — it sounded so simple! — so that I could slim down my hips for the summer or whatever crucial event I felt couldn’t be fun or successful unless I was skinny. But when my appetite actually vanished, and for such a long time, I mourned it. Nourishment is not just about calories; it’s about vitality. I was not vital. There was no bloom in my cheek.

Then one day, I said, “Mom, I think I want some ramen noodles.”

I ate them. The whole block. They were salty and easy to swallow. They were fun to eat, those looooong curly noodles and the bullion broth was free of bits, chunks, vegetal matter of any kind. It is a benign substance, Top Ramen. There is nothing to avoid; there is surrender to simplicity. It is the anti-foodie food. The nutritional value is dubious at best, but dammit if there aren’t 400-something calories per block and at that point, that was 400 more calories than I was getting.

Every day, I ate ramen for breakfast, my sole “meal” of the day. I even looked forward to the moment when Mama would come in with my tray. It makes me cry to think of her now in her red robe, coming in with a chipper smile and the wooden tray with the big bowl. She always had a cloth napkin for me and a dinner fork. She’d place the tray on the big trunk we used for a coffee table and say, “Bon appetite, sweetie,” and I would say “Thanks, Mama,” and start to eat, slowly, bringing a forkful of noodles all the way up, high above my head. I’d tip my head back and open my mouth and the day would begin that way, looking up at the ceiling, at nothing but the moment and the noodle at hand. At that dark time, the moment was the wisest place to gaze.

My regards to Mr. Maruchan.

25 Dec 2013

“Teach Me How To Do That.”

by Mary Fons | posted in: Chicago, Day In The Life, Story, Tips | 1

Today, we’re going to skate in Bryant Park in the name of Santa!

I have my own ice skates in Chicago, but I didn’t bring them. Placed in my suitcase, they left room only for a pair of panties and a toothbrush. Some people would argue that that’s all you really need when traveling to New York, but let’s not be those people.

I got my skates last year for Christmas after being a renter for years. Mama gave me a pair of pretty white ones with pink blade covers and a can of balm to keep the skates supple. I hooted with joy when I opened the box and promptly suppled up. When you love something, you should take care of it.

My first time with my very own skates was a cold night in January. In wintertime, the Millennium Park cafe space turns into an outdoor ice rink. The rink is a fifteen-minute walk from my condo, so I tied up the laces, slung the skates over my shoulder, wrapped a warm scarf around my neck/head and headed out. When I reached the park I looked like a character from a Normal Rockwell painting, all rosy cheeks and woolen mittens. I went through the gates, took a seat on a bench and laced up my skates. My skates! I was so excited.

That night, there was a group of teenage boys who were dominating the rink. Some would say they were terrorizing it, but they were having so much fun it was hard to be negative about them. The three boys were doing tricks, skating backward so fast they got the whistle blown at them, and doing spins and funky toe stuff. It was the backward skating thing that got me, though. I’m a decent ice skater but I have a really hard time going backward. I wanted them to teach me how to do it and of course the first thought was, “Well, it’s not like I can be like, ‘Hey, how do you do that?'” My second thought was, “Why on earth can’t I ask them?”

When the boys took a break and were hanging out just outside the gate talking to some girls, I skated straight up to them.

“Hi,” I said. I was out of breath and nervous, too. “I wanna skate backward. I don’t know how. Teach me how.” Saying “please” could come later, but in the moment, I felt a direct approach was best.

The boys were surprised, but they grinned after the initial “Who the hell is this chick?” reaction.

“Aiight,” said one of them. “I’ll teach you. Come on.”

And he taught me. To skate backward, you gotta stick your butt out. A lot. Yes, I was well aware that this young man was telling me to stick my butt out and that he might’ve had ulterior motives for doing so. But he was sticking his butt out, too, and he could skate backward like a champ. He also told me when I was sticking it out too much, which struck me as gallant. He praised me when I was getting it right, he helped me up when I fell, and he corrected me plenty, which — trust me — was appropriate.

Just ask for what you need. You might be surprised. Merry Christmas!

21 Dec 2013

Greetings From New York.

by Mary Fons | posted in: Chicago, Day In The Life, New York City, Story, Travel | 0

I wrote a poem for my friend Billy years ago. It goes like this:

In New York,
I think of you;
When I am,
I always do.

To tell the tale of this poem, however, we must leave New York for a moment and return to Chicago. When I moved to the city in 2001, I found a decent studio apartment for an unheard-of $420/mo. A year into my life there, Billy called to say he was moving to Chicago too. I felt like I had won the lottery. I was really lonely. Bill and I had met in college and instantly liked each other a lot. He was a tousled musician, I was… Well, it’s up to him to describe a junior co-ed me. But we bonded on enough occasions to become bonafide friends.

When he was on his way here, I nabbed him a unit in my building, so we were sort of like roommates except I didn’t have to wash his dishes, which was for the best. And so it was in the early 2000s, Billy and I were the best of friends during some tough times. We were both struggling to carve out lives in Chicago and we clung to each other. We never dated. We were just…Mary and Bill. He wrote songs. I wrote poems. We both worked nights: he worked the desk at a mental health facility on the west side; I worked coat check at a couple nightclubs downtown. We were simply there for each other, and even though he’d disappear for awhile or I would, we always came back together just in time.

Today, Billy is in a rock band that is doing very, very well. It was always so clear that that was exactly what he would do with his life. We always knew. And I always knew that it wouldn’t be long before I was making a living doing what I loved — and we were right about that, too. By 2005, I was a full-time freelancer, writing and performing; no waitressing or coat-checking needed.

So why is the poem about New York?

Because some of the best memories I have of New York City involve Billy. It hasn’t happened in a long time, but for years of our lives, even before that important time in Chicago, we would frequently end up in New York at the same time. And we’d connect and have an adventure, some bacchanalian night that ended up with him driving me in his red car to wherever I was staying. Sometimes we’d make out. Sometimes we wouldn’t. But there was always love, always creativity, inspiration, and learning.

One night, in Times Square, we were walking around. It started to rain. Billy was a few paces ahead of me. Suddenly, he turned around and grabbed me by the face and kissed me full on the mouth. He pulled back from me and smiled this huge smile and said,

“This the first night of the rest of our lives, baby.”

And we walked into the blur of Times Square, into the city, into the night. I’m pretty sure we were holding hands.

In New York,
I think of you;
When I am,
I always do.

17 Dec 2013

Grief Quilt, Holiday Quilt, Impossible Quilt.

by Mary Fons | posted in: Chicago, Day In The Life, Family, Quilting, Story | 4

A Jewish friend of mine told me that if you do a charitable act…you kinda aren’t allowed to talk about it. Obviously, an office charity fundraiser requires group knowledge; a marathoner gets pledges; a wife will need to know about a sizable gift her husband wants to give this year, etc. That’s all fine. The point my friend made is that if you do something nice and go around crowing about it, it can all but cancel out your good deed. Your gesture toward your fellow man becomes about you and this great thing you did. “Suboptimal,” my friend said, and I agreed.

So in telling you the story I’m about to tell you, I am taking a risk. But it’s a story about a quilt, so I gotta. I also want to tell you about Alameda* and what happened to her this week. By doing that, perhaps her ball of grief will dislodge in some cosmic way and allow her to rest.

Alameda works in the receiving room in my building. It is a depressing, windowless box in the back hallway. She’s been there about four months, I’d guess; she came on when the management changed. Alameda is from Mexico. She’s around twenty-four, I’d guess, and smart. She’s funny, too, and upbeat, even in that dank, horrible room, and we chat whenever I’m picking something up or shipping something out; Alameda and I have become friends, because there’s a lot of shipping in my life.

Yesterday, I picked up a package. Alameda came from around the desk to take it and she looked awful. “Puffy” didn’t describe her eyes; they were red-rimmed, swollen, spent.

“Oh my,” I said, quietly, because there were other people behind me. “Are you okay? Have you been crying, Alma?” She nodded. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” she said, and smiled a “thanks for asking” sort of smile. I gave her a furrowed brow and a pat on her arm and I left.

Later that afternoon, I had to drop something off for UPS. I went in and no one else was there. Without being terribly nosy, I made the attempt to talk to her if she wanted to talk.

“Bad day?”

“Yeah.”

“Can I ask what’s wrong? You don’t have to… If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s totally cool.”

Alameda paused. “My brother died yesterday.”

I clapped my hand over my mouth. I asked her if it was an accident. It was not. Her brother killed himself. The entire family was at his house for Sunday dinner. Alma’s brother went downstairs and hung himself in his room. She said they “heard something” and didn’t think anything of it, kept eating dinner. He had been very depressed, she said. He was working three jobs, he wasn’t a citizen, he had a bad breakup, he was scared and anxious all the time. And he ended it on Sunday, right there in the house, while his two-year-old daughter sat in her booster seat eating mashed peas.

When she told me all this, I was too shocked to burst into tears, though it’s so awful, I wondered why I didn’t. The truth is, I cry less than I used to. When she said that his fondest wish was to join the Navy, get a pilot’s license, and fly, that’s when the tears burbled up for both of us.

“The potential,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said, and put her hand over her face.

It was hard to leave her. As soon as I did, I knew I wanted to do something for her for the holiday. But what? I called my sister Nan and asked for her sage advice. She didn’t disappoint.

“What do I do for this girl?” I asked Nan. “What do I give her?”

Nan paused. “Well, I reckon you should give her a quilt.”

I slapped my forehead, which hurt a lot because I was outside in the Chicago icebox. “Of course,” I said. “Of course.”

“People in crisis, they get quilts,” she said. “Think about the Red Cross. Floods, tornados, family crises — it’s quilts that bring people comfort.”

So I’m going to give Alameda a quilt from my collection. I’m not sure exactly which one, but I have an idea. And I’ll put a label on the back and I’ll put it into a big box, wrap it up pretty, and stick an enormous, obnoxious bow on it.

He hung himself. He hung himself downstairs.

*Name changed.

15 Dec 2013

Swinger.

by Mary Fons | posted in: Art, Chicago, Day In The Life, Family, Plays, Story, Travel, Word Nerd | 0

Notice happy chap, downstage left. — The Swing,” by John-Honore Fragonard, 1767. Notice happy fellow downstage left. He’s there for the view, I’m guessing.

Yesterday I swung on a swing. I swang. I love to swang almost as much as I love to ice skate. “Swang” is not a word according to my spellcheck, which is going nuts. But I think it should be a word, so take that, spellcheck.

In the afternoon, I went with my friend Sonja and her little boy to see Redmoon Theater’s Winter Pageant, an annual show heavy on glowy tableaus, light on coherence. No matter; the kids love it. As is customary for Redmoon, when the show is over, the audience is invited to hang out, touch the actors (!) and explore the set. It’s cool. They had rigged up several swings on loooong chains in the huge warehouse that serves as their performance space. My 5-year-old comrade took to them at once. The middle swing was a two-seater so at his request, Aunt May-May hopped on with him. He calls me “Aunt May-May.” I call him lots of loving things, e.g., “Squirt,” “Captain Bunker,” etc.

Sonja gave us a push. We kicked our legs. We sailed over the theater seats, whooshing back, then plunging headlong into space. I looked over at his tow-head and said, “Hold on tight, Babycakes.”

The last time I was on a swing I was home in Iowa. My mother and I had had words and this happens so rarely, I was quite upset. When our conversation had reached a fevered pitch, I tersely excused myself, put on my sneakers, and literally took off running. I ran to the city park, trying to calm down and expend (destroy) my unpleasant energy. Halfway through the park loop I spied the swings up on the hill. I turned on my heel and jogged up to them. Man, did I ever swing. I went so high on the swingset that the chains went slack at the top; this harshed my mellow a bit — I like my skull and would like to keep it from splashing onto park district gravel. I pulled back and settled into a blissful rhythm. I probably swang for a half hour, letting the wind rush past my ears on the back push, feeling my heart in my chest when I cut through the air to go forward.

An object in motion tends to stay in motion. A kid on a swing tends to want to stay there all night. A fight with a parent is usually over something important. Dusk in Iowa in June is heartbreakingly beautiful. Theater is relevant, but only to some people.

These are things we know.

13 Dec 2013

Best Christmas Ever.

by Mary Fons | posted in: Family, Food, Story | 1

Here’s stuff people win:

a bet
money from a slot machine
a raffle
BINGO
favor with the king

These are all good things to win and I have won maybe two of them. When I was very young, I also won a prize from a pack of gum. Now, this wasn’t some lame Tootsie Roll Pop prize from a Tootsie Roll Pop star. Remember those? If you got an Indian* shooting a star on your Tootsie Roll Pop wrapper, you could take the wrapper to the dimestore and get a FREE Tootsie Roll Pop. This wasn’t that long ago, even though it sounds way too good to be true; this happened right there in my small town in Iowa in the early 1990s. (I promise you: the next time I’m back home, I’ll take a starred Tootsie Roll Pop wrapper to the counter and let you know here on the blog if it still works.)

So.

It was a sunny afternoon. I was knee-high to a cornstalk. My sister Hannah and I were playing in the living room of our family’s country home. There was this huge picture window that looked out onto the orchard and I remember being afraid of the boxelder bug that was making its slow path up to the top. Somehow, gloriously, I had scored an entire pack of HubbaBubba bubble gum and I was working my way through the stack, making every piece count. I chewed one soft pink wad until it was dead and then went for the next. I unwrapped the hot pink wrapping on the gum carefully, probably because I wanted to make a dress for my finger out of it later.

Then it happened. Tearing away more paper, I saw that one of the individually-wrapped cubes of gum was wrapped in a different color of paper.

“MARY!” my sister Hannah screamed. She practically took flight, so fast she was in moving from her spot on the couch to where I was on the carpet. She tackled me, gaping, wide-eyed at the pack in my paw. “MARY, YOU WON!”

It said it right there: “YOU WON!!! YOU WON!!! YOU WON!!! YOU WON!!!” again and again, printed round and round in teeny-tiny little hot pink letters on a white gum wrapper. Dumbly, I examined it. I won? What did that mean? Luck was not a concept I grasped at that point in my life, to say nothing of fate or providence — I was just excited because my sister was. She patiently explained to me that I was going to get a toy just because I had the pack of gum with the special wrapper and I think that was exactly the moment I did understand the concept of luck. File under, “Paradise, lost.”

My prize was the coolest. I was given the chance choose between a He-Man action figure and a She-Ra action figure. I didn’t get to choose the specific doll, but I could call gender. I firmly selected the She-Ra doll and about a year later I received my Hubba Bubba spoils. I got a Catra doll. Catra was a member of — wait for it — “The Evil Horde,” the fearsome (or just “fierce” — heyy!) pack of villains in Mattel’s She-Ra: Princess of Power series. Would I have rather had She-Ra? Yes. Would I have settled for Castaspella, Spinnarella, or Sweet Bee? Don’t remind me! But Catra would do; she was the most powerful of all the Evil Horde and she was free, after all. That’s the second best part of winning something: first comes the surprise, then comes the free stuff.

When I think about childlike wonder this time of year, I think of winning a She-Ra doll in a pack of Hubba Bubba bubble gum. I guess it’s because I felt like there was magic in the world that would find me, or that there were forces beyond me that were waiting to grant favors to kids who were good. The best news ever is that we’re all good and the force is with us already. And yeah, I know I just mixed my sci-fi action figure catch phrases, but I don’t think Yoda minds. He didn’t sign with Hubba Bubba.

4 Dec 2013

Soup So Good, I Laughed.

by Mary Fons | posted in: Day In The Life, Food, Poetry, Story | 1

I once ate something so delicious, I burst out laughing.

It happened in Paris; so many glorious moments do. Was I twenty? Was I blonde? I think I was twenty and blonde and I was in Paris on the back-end of a trip to Provence to visit fabric manufacturers with a murder of quilters.*

I entered a cafe on that end-of-June day. It was any cafe, every cafe. The sun was setting over Paris; Paris, that jewel-encrusted dot on Planet Earth. I was full of Paris but my stomach was rumbling and I remembered what Hemingway said in A Moveable Feast: “…the pictures do look better when you are hungry.” Sure they did, and I was ravenous. I ordered a large chicken (prepared) and ate with gusto, the only person in the cafe actually having dinner. Parisians seem to eat nothing — and they eat late. But I didn’t care; I had sacrificed real shoe leather exploring the city that day. I had earned my supper.

I also earned my dessert.

The snooty waiter — straight out of central casting — handed me the dessert menu. Rhubarb soup. That was on the menu, rhubarb soup! I had not had rhubarb soup. Growing up in a town of 5,000 people in rural Iowa, you don’t get many opportunities for these sorts of things.

The soup came chilled in a shallow, wide-lipped ceramic bowl. There was maybe three-quarters of a cup of this impossibly delicate, translucent pink wash. Floating on top were slivered strawberries and a few green springs, which I determined to be mint.

“Et voila,” said the waiter, and he sashayed away. I took my spoon and dipped it into that cold little lake, swiped a touch of the cream on the top, and delivered the spoonful into my mouth.

Float. Moment.

It was like drinking water that had made love to a strawberry bush. It was like sucking a peach. It was like having a crush on a boy.

I burst out laughing. “This is so good! Oh, it’s so good! Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god.”

And I just sat back and laughed. I was like Sarah in the Old Testament, except that she was a really long way from Paris. It was absurd, this bowl of chilled rhubarb soup. I had never eaten anything like that in my life and to be honest, I haven’t since. I’ve had some fine food in my day: ’tis no small praise to say it was the most marvelous thing I’ve ever put in my mouth.

Turns out this is a Norwegian dish? My internet research tells me so. It’s called rabarbrasuppe and the recipe is as simple as can be. My people are Norwegian on my father’s side. We’re fierce Vikings to be sure, but I like to think of my Thors and Vals sitting around slurping rabarbrasuppe between battles, holding onto their horned helmets as they laugh out loud at impossible things: death, losing a battle, and chilled rhubarb soup.

*The most compelling choice for a group of quilters is not a gaggle or a flock (what are we, peahens?) but a murder, as in a murder of crows. We’d get a little more street cred.

30 Nov 2013

Under Attack!

by Mary Fons | posted in: Day In The Life, Family, Story | 7

*see below for caption — *See below for rather long but heartwarming/deer chilling caption.

I broke my usual rule to opt out of Black Friday shopping. I broke my rule because it was a matter of survival. I bought $50.04 worth of hunter orange today to protect my kith and kin.

Up here on the Island, we are at the height of deer hunting season. This means dozens of people are in the woods with guns at any hour of the day, prowling around for animals to shoot. As everyone in this house is an animal and most of the Island is woods, the past few days have been ever-so-slightly tense — and it ain’t because we’ve been playing 6 hours of Yahtzee every day. Mom spoke to the sheriff at the general store last week and the conversation centered around one main idea: this week, if you leave your house without dressing in head-to-toe hunter orange, you’re probably going to get shot.

When Mom reported this, many pairs of eyebrows were raised. We’ve been on the Island at all times of the year for decades and we’ve never been on such high alert. Apparently, there are way more people hunting this year than ever and apparently, my family has been taking our lives in our hands for years, taking out the garbage, walking to the car, opening a window, etc., in normal-people clothes.

Last night, everyone at the house under 40 went out to Nelsen’s for carousing. Nelsen’s Hall is the ale house on Main Road where you can get a bucket of Maker’s Mark for three dollars. We shot pool, we played songs on the juke, we laughed till our sides hurt, and we made sure to check with some locals on the whole hunter orange thing. We simply didn’t believe the sheriff that it was that dangerous outside.

We asked the bartender first. She was beautiful; pleasantly plump, with the creamy skin one can only achieve by being fed cheese curds from infancy. She looked at us all blankly.

“Why do you want to be outside? It’s winter.”

We didn’t end up asking anyone else.

Today, I stopped by the mercantile and I bought fifty bucks worth of neon orange stuff: a vest, a sweatshirt, some duct tape, two hats, and a kerchief that was so stiff you could use it as a bone saw in a pinch. Better safe than shot, I say.

Ah, I forgot: I bought something else, too.

Kristina and I stopped by Fisk’s restaurant to inquire about the fish dinner tonight and we spied two freshly baked pies cooling on a shelf. Pumpkin! They were clearly not on offer for sale, but we asked if we could buy a whole one, anyway. Sure, they said, twelve bucks. We forked over the cash and promised to bring back the pie tin when the pie was gone. That means I actually spend $62.04 on Black Friday, but for survival and pie, I shall make exceptions.

*Blaze Orange is a photographic coffee table book full of timeless images of the Whitetail Deer gun hunting season in Wisconsin. Wisconsin deer hunting is all about family. Families raise their children safely into the sport of hunting which is filled with traditions. Wisconsin’s Whitetail Deer gun season is 9 days long and requires hunters to wear Blaze Orange for safety. The season in closely monitored by the Wisconsin DNR. The DNR expects more than 600,000 hunters, about 10% of the state’s population, to take to the Wisconsin woods and fields next weekend. Wisconsin deer hunting runs deep with heritage for many Wisconsinites as the deer season here has an almost cult-like following.

27 Nov 2013

“Why’s It Called ‘PaperGirl,’ Grandma?”

by Mary Fons | posted in: Art, Day In The Life, Family, Poetry, Story, Word Nerd | 9

WWII propaganda poster by Fougasse; ironic appropriation by me.

“Why’s it called ‘PaperGirl,’ grandma?”

“Sit on my knee, child, and I’ll tell you.”

“Can I have a another cooky first? You tell long stories.”

“Here. Anything else?”

“No.”

“Good. Okay, then, PaperGirl. Well, once upon a time, long ago, I wrote a poem.”

“What was it called?”

“I’m getting to it. It was called ‘The Paper Poem,’ and it was an extended metaphor about the nature of existence being fragile like paper, but beautiful, too, like paper is beautiful.”

“What’s paper?”

“Before your time.”

“Oh. Your poem sounds cool, grandma.”

“I liked it. Other people liked it, too, and I performed it in many places all over the country.”

“Like in Bismark?”

“No, never actually in Bismark, I don’t think. Maybe. It was a long time ago. Anyway, there’s a verse where I say ‘I will be your paper girl,’ and that’s where ‘PaperGirl’ comes from.”

“What’s the verse?”

“You want to hear the whole verse?”

“Is it long?”

“No, it’s not long. It’s the second-to-last verse of the poem and it goes like this:

But if you are a paper doll, too, then I shall know you on sight,
And if you are with me, come with me tonight; I will match up our bodies
by the tears in our arms —
We will form paper barricades against matchstick harm;
I will make paper love to you for as long as I can in this shreddable world;
I will be your paper girl.

“That’s nice, grandma.”

“Thanks.”

“And you named your blog that because of that poem?”

“Yes. And PaperGirl is the name of my LLC, too. And that small island I bought. And the Beaux Arts building you like so much in Paris. And my foundation in Dubai and all the vineyards in Spain. Everything in my empire, it’s all under the PaperGirl umbrella.”

“I wanna go to the zoo and see a rhinoceros.”

“Get your coat.”

26 Nov 2013

PaperGirl Celebrity Sighting: Joe Bastianich!

by Mary Fons | posted in: Chicago, Day In The Life, Food, Story | 6

There are a handful of moments in my life that could be described as “smooth.” When playing Trivial Pursuit once, I was asked, “Who was the Duke of Flatbush?” and without missing a beat I replied, “Levi Strauss?” My sister actually shot Mountain Dew out her nose. And in Las Vegas once, I winked at a man before he shot dice at the craps table and he won an enormous pile of money. These are the moments we cling to when we realize we’ve had a shred of Kleenex hanging out our nose for the better part of the afternoon.

Well, I was real smooth last night. With a celebrity.

I was walking to dinner with Yuri. We were on Michigan Avenue and turned onto Ohio, where I noticed the banners for Eataly. Eataly is chef Mario Batali’s death star, an enormous, multi-level Italian restaurant/marketplace that first opened in New York City. At Eataly, you can have a fishbowl-size glass of wine, buy imported salami, sit down to dinner, and then be rolled out the door by attractive young people in chic aprons who will give you a cannoli for the road. And we’re getting an Eataly here, on Ohio and Michigan, and ours will actually be bigger than New York’s, coming in at 63,000 square feet to Union Square’s runty 50,000. Doors open next week.

Yuri and I were arm-in-arm (it was freezing) and I see the Eataly banners; as we pass the first bank of papered-up windows, I see standing under the entrance a man I recognize to be Joe Bastianich. I recognize him because Joe Bastianich is famous. He owns vineyards and produces fine wines; he is one of three celebrity judges on popular television program Master Chef; and he’s a restauranteur titan who aside from having his own 3- and 4-star joints scattered ’round the globe, works closely with chefs — such as Mario Batali of Eataly. Joe Bastianich was standing under the eaves of his new restaurant, presumably waiting to meet someone. Maybe his wife, maybe his buddy, maybe God. He’s a very important guy.

I see him, he sees me see him. With nary a pause in my gait (and without breaking from Yuri), I glance up at the Eataly banner above us and go, “How’s it goin’ in there?” And Joe Bastianch looks a little surprised, like maybe he should know me, and he goes, “It’s good.” He looked at me again, closer, but he can’t place me.

I was like, so cool at that moment I felt I could speak for the entire city of Chicago, so as I pass him, like over my shoulder, I go, “We’re looking forward to it.”

“Me, too,” says Joe Bastianich, and Yuri and I just keep on a’walkin.

“Who was that?” Yuri asked me. Yuri doesn’t watch Master Chef.

“That was a famous man,” I said with a tiny little bunny hop, allowing myself to finally geek out. Being smooth with a celebrity is tough for one simple reason: broad exposure in television, print, and film makes a human being seem like an alien life-form that can eternally replicate itself. We would all act a little weird around a replicating alien if we met one, so that’s why it’s weird to see Madonna hailing a taxi, or Igor Stravinsky eating at Jimmy John’s. Or Joe Bastianich checking his text messages on Ohio Street.

Mr. Bastianich, you don’t know me. And I am not nearly as cool as I may have appeared last night. But Chicago is looking forward to Eataly and I can speak for the city when I say welcome, sir.*

Cin-cin.

*Mary Fons may be reached for gift cards, exclusive wine tastings, and general VIP treatment at Eataly via the contact form on this website. Thank you. — The Management

15 Nov 2013

I Still Don’t Know Why It Worked, But It Worked.

by Mary Fons | posted in: Chicago, Day In The Life, Fashion, Sicky, Story | 16

What can I say about this time last year?

The physical suffering for several months was greater than anything I had felt in four years of the fallout from my ulcerative colitis and multiple (botched) surgeries. The pain began to have a shape, a personality. Its tyranny was beyond belief, so bad I would giggle, sometimes, in the midst of an attack. One night I actually turned on the voice memo recorder on my phone when I was spluttering and screaming to have proof later that it was as bad as I thought it was; the most incredible thing about pain that bad is that you don’t remember how bad it was when you’re out of it, usually. This is a blessing, because you might start looking for the nearest set of train tracks if you thought it would happen again.

All that and ensuing hospital trips, lonesomeness. I have loved ones and friends aplenty, but I was stuck in a weird silence, longing for a different sort of hug in so many dark nights of cold snow.

And then an acute, Stage IV existential crisis slammed itself into my chest, which sounds sorta funny except that those aren’t, really. What is the purpose of life? Why does it have to be so beautiful and then end? How come I’m getting older? What happens when someone in my family dies? Why does my body have to hurt like this? What is the meaning of this? I’ve heard people joke about having an existential crisis, but I actually caught one last year and trust: they are no laughing matter. I would cast about each day, numb, going through the motions of work (glorious life-raft) and at night would try to sew, try to take a walk and let the cold sting my cheeks into roses. I felt the blues, the mean reds, and yellow bile in my throat, pretty much all the time. Primary colors.

But then something happened and I turned the corner.

I was walking down State St. one evening, wide-eyed and gaunt. I hadn’t been able to eat for awhile because it hurt to eat and it hurt to digest and it hurt to poop. I was a shell. There was still snow on the ground from the last storm. I went into a designer discount place that contains buried treasure if you’re willing to look. I was not interested in shopping that night; I was interested in not shuffling down State St. as the Ghost of Christmas Future. So I went in.

Up the escalator to the second floor. I floated around for awhile and got sadder. It was so depressing, all those lifeless corpses of clothes, all those clearance tags. And then, snapping through the hangers on the rack in the very back, I saw something remarkable. It was a dress. A white dress by Celine, my favoritest designer ever. It looked like paper. It was like a paper doll dress. It had a Peter Pan collar; it looked like a candy-striper’s dress without the stripes. And it was filthy. It had been marked down from $2,200 to $1,500 to $1,200 to $800 to $425 to $225 to $80 ($80!) and it showed every month of mark downs, every try-on, every grubby hand of every shopper in the store. That poor, poor, beautiful dress. I seized it and looked at the tag. A French 40. My size.

I raced down the stairs with it. I paid. The clerk shoved it in the bag and I hurried home as fast as I could. I felt strange and knew what I had to do. I had rescued the dress from the floor of the store and its fate: certain destruction. It was bound for the mill of damaged-out apparel, destined to become true paper, which is what they do with useless clothes, turn them into paper. I had rescued it and now I had to restore it, nurse the nurse dress back to health. My own vulnerability seemed tied to the dress; my health in the balance, too.

A garment so fine, even made from cotton like it was, cannot be put into the wash. In fact, the beat up tag even advised to take it to not just any dry cleaner but to give it “the highest quality of professional garment treatment.” I came into the house and took off my boots. I took the gentlest detergent I own from the laundry shelf. I ran cold water in the bathtub. I swished and swished and made a gentle, cool, soapy bath. I lay the dress in the water. It floated on the top and then slowly sunk down. I knelt at the tub. And I cleaned it. Like I was washing a baby bird, I tenderly rubbed the dress on itself, took a never-used soft toothbrush and flicked the dirt off. I rinsed that thing nine times, probably. I got it spotless. It was white as the newly fallen snow. I opened the window and hung the dress on a wide hanger on a jerry-rigged stand so it would touch nothing. It dried through the night, retaining its paper doll shape.

Then I made a small rack of lamb chops rubbed with rosemary and devoured each chop like I had been starving for a week. Not too far off. I got into bed and sank into sleep and that night, I didn’t wake up in a panic.

In the morning, I felt better. A lot better. I put the dress on. I pulled thick tights and boots on and wrapped myself up in a sweater; the dress is a summer dress and for it to work in winter, I needed accoutrements. I was warm. I braided my hair and went out into the world and I swear, the sun was shining.

I have felt better ever since.

6 Nov 2013

Another Bathroom Story or, “Toilet Humor.”

by Mary Fons | posted in: Day In The Life, Story, Tips | 3

I locked myself in the bathroom Monday night and against all odds, with nothing but human ingenuity and good old fashioned fear, I escaped.

The bathroom I was in is the one that today is absolute rubble and exposed pipe and tufts of insulation. Before it was rubble, though, it had to be a bathroom without any stuff in it. This is an important detail.

“Get everything outta there,” my contractor said on the phone, “’cause on Tuesday the whole thing’s going into a dumpster.” My eyes got real big and I began at once to move my belongings into my back bathroom with visions of Danny and his crew tossing my perfume samples and sea sponges into a bin with the old tile. By the end of the day, the bathroom was denuded, empty of mouthwash bottles, bobby pins, half-rolled up tubes of Ben Gay (when did I buy Ben-Gay?) and contact lens juice. I did leave a roll of toilet paper in there, however. Until they removed the toilet, the bathroom was still functional in that regard and I might as well use that part of it, right?

No. Dumb.

On Monday night I went into that bathroom to pee. (Well, it’s true!) I shut the door behind me, heard a tiny click, and A Great Dread passed over me. There was no doorknob on that door. What there was was the inner apparatus where there is typically an attendant doorknob. This meant that the door’s internal tumbler latch thingy was latched but there was no knob to turn the works. I stuck my finger in the metal and wiggled it. Okay, wow. I was locked in my bathroom. An empty, tool-less bathroom. Had I not taken every last item out of the space earlier in the day, I wouldn’t have been terribly worried. A toothbrush would jimmy the latch all right; one of those bobby pins would’ve worked great. But I had nothing. And I would need something to work in that door latch. Immediately.

I spun around. Ah-ha! The shower curtain! I hadn’t taken it down! I seized the curtain and pulled off one of the hooks. Yes, a piece of skinny metal! But it was useless; the curve of it was too thick and tight and it wouldn’t fit where I needed it to go. I tossed it to the floor. What else, what else? Ah! There, by the sink, an empty matchbook! I grabbed it and tore it into a hard little cardboard stick and jimmied at the latch. The stick bent. It bent into a wad and the door laughed. I was getting concerned. My ultimate “I will do anything to get out of here” plan was to body slam myself against the door again and again and again until I broke it open, but getting a running start from the tub was not going to be easy. It would be more of a flying leap from the edge of it and I foresaw a chipped tooth and a concussion, but I ask you: What price, freedom?

Just as I was about to start my flying leaps, I saw it: the doorstop. One of those spring metal ones. I wrenched it off the door and uncoiled it, bending it back on itself, fashioning a dandy and rather dangerous-looking tool. I worked it in the latch. Worked it some more. Turned. Jiggled. And then…

Ah.

There was no fanfare. No picture in the paper celebrating my derring-do. I had but the personal satisfaction of a job stupidly done (locking myself in my empty bathroom) followed by a job well done (getting out.) Incidentally, I had an appointment with my shrink yesterday and when I got there, he had locked himself out of his office — the key had broken in the lock. The session would likely not happen, he said, which was fine with me. Sometimes I don’t feel like digging through the dirt. The weather was so rainy and cozy, I just wanted to drink cocoa and read a book.

“I’m so sorry, Mary. I’ll call you to reschedule,” said Dr. Herman. “Twenty years of practice, this has never happened to me before.”

“You’ll figure it out,” I said, opened my umbrella, and walked out into the rain.

29 Oct 2013

Roses On Noses.

by Mary Fons | posted in: Art, Chicago, Day In The Life, Family, Poetry, Story | 6

I dated a vaudevillian magician. Talk about confessions!

This was an astonishing eight years ago, before I got sick, before I got married and divorced, before all of that.

The Magician and I met at the Green Mill Cocktail Lounge, a legendary jazz club here in Chicago. If you are good at jazz, you work a long, long time to get to play at the Mill — all the known greats have done so, all the future greats will. But every Sunday night for the past twenty-five years, the Uptown Poetry Slam takes over the club and it’s “See ya later, jazz, hello, poetry.”

The show’s format includes a half-hour set from a feature performer. The night I met The Magician, he was that act. Usually it’s a poet in the slot, or on rare occasions it’s a music group, but because The Magician was/is a bit of a lyricist and, as he would tell you, a sesquipedalian, (lover of big words) he fit right in and his act was quite popular with the slam crowd. He wore a three-piece suit and he was in his thirties and he had this broad smile and a head of thick black hair and I was smitten. He saw me be a bloodsport poet onstage that night. I saw him pull a Queen of Spades from his shoe. We met and were laughing with each other in under twelve seconds. Et voila: le boyfriend.

One morning months later, I was lounging in his spacious apartment in Logan Square, beaming at him as I watched him rehearse. He was always rehearsing because being good at magic was his profession (it still is.) Magic is all that he does, work-wise, and he’s made his living doing it for over twenty years. I was admiring his dedication and also his jacket and tie; he always wore a jacket and a tie, always. He didn’t own bluejeans. I thought that was so cool.

“Would you like to see something special, Mary?” he asked me. I nodded and clapped and bounced in my seat. Watching magic tricks makes you seven.

He took a rose from his magic case. He kind of shook himself once to loosen up and focus. Then, talking to me sweetly while he moved, he tilted his head back and brought the stem of the rose up to the tip of his nose. That is where he placed it, the tip of the long-stemmed rose, right there on the end of his nose. And then…he let go.

He was balancing it. I couldn’t believe it. He made microscopic movements to the right, back, left, left, backforward, backright to keep the rose upright, right there on his nose! He had definitely stopped talking. I didn’t even breathe. This was not a fake rose, a trick rose. This was a rose rose, and he was magnificent, like a seal or a cartoon come to life. My boyfriend kept it there for fifteen seconds or so until “ah!” it tipped over and he caught it and bowed deeply.

“Wow,” I said, mouth hanging open. “That was so cool! Do it again! Do it again!” And he did do it again for me and many times after that. But I’ll never forget what he said when I asked him how long it took to be able to do it.

He said it took him about ten years.

“Ten years??” I pictured him practicing tilting his head back every day for ten years. All those roses!

“That’s right. Ten years of daily practice for ten seconds of your enjoyment,” he said with a twinkle in his eye. He turned back to his case and began to put away his tools. I sat and thought about the time it takes to really learn something, the years that we spend to get good at what we do, and how there are no overnight successes. Roses fall off noses for years and years and then, with a pinch of luck, we keep them up there. And someone sees.

28 Oct 2013

Storytime: The Hotel Coffeemaker

by Mary Fons | posted in: Day In The Life, Story, Work | 3

The Hotel Coffeemaker

Once upon a time, there was a girl whose alarm went off.

She fumbled for her phone and knocked it off the bedside table. Thus, she began her day the way she always did, with panic that she had just broken a piece of plastic that cost five hundred dollars. Finding that her phone was fine, the girl shut the alarm off and rubbed her eyelids for awhile.

She got up and shuffled to the bar sink in her hotel room. She took a little paper hat off a coffee mug and plugged in the coffeemaker on the counter. “Hello, coffeemaker,” she said.

The coffeemaker said nothing.

The girl filled her mug to the top with water and poured the water into the coffeemaker’s reservoir. She put the coffee pod in the coffee pod basket. She pushed a button that said BREW and then she stood there at the sink and thought about her job.

The coffeemaker burbled and steamed for a few minutes, and then with a rather rude “Pah!” it was done. The girl — who needed coffee very badly — was excited until she looked at what the machine had produced: a half cup of coffee. But she had poured a full mug of water into the reservoir! However much water was in her mug, when it ran through the coffeemaker, shouldn’t she get exactly that much coffee in her cup? Even adjusting for evaporation/inflation, there was definitely coffee missing. But where had it gone?

The girl drank the coffee, but it was gone too quickly and she was confused.

“Let’s try this again,” the girl said, and she studied the directions on the coffeemaker’s lid. She repeated the steps: mugful — truly full — of water, pod, BREW. Sure enough, “Pah!” went the coffeemaker when it was finished and her mug was again only half-full.

“Coffeemaker, why did you not make a full cup of coffee?” the girl said in a stern voice. Again, the coffeemaker said nothing.

The girl picked up the coffeemaker and shook it. She unplugged it and plugged it back in. She read the instructions on the lid once more; she even tried making two cups at once to see if that might be the ticket, but every time, no matter what she did or how much water she poured into the coffeemaker, she still only got a half cup of coffee in her mug. Every time.

“I don’t like you,” the girl said, narrowing her eyes. “At best, you’re terrible at making coffee. At worst, you’re drinking it. If you don’t explain yourself in the next 60 seconds, I’m going to the breakfast buffet where there are faucets of coffee just waiting to fill up every cup in Houston. Do you understand me? Now talk!”

The coffeemaker was silent. The girl tapped her foot. Almost a minute went by.

“That’s ten more seconds you’ve got, Mister…Coffee,” said the girl, though really it was a different brand so she knew she had just weakened her position. After ten more seconds, after the coffeemaker had stubbornly refused any attempt to explain itself, the girl sniffed and turned on her heels. She promptly tripped on her bathrobe, catching herself on the closet door handle on the way down. The day was shaping up great.

Pah!

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