what you give and what you get

It was a sad story. Really tragic, I thought when the show was over.

The cool, calm voice of my mother, embedded in my head, replied, It wasn’t a sad story. She went back to her husband and her life. She went back to her family. She did what she should do.

Years after it happened, my mom told me that one day she put my four-year-old self and my baby brother in our old brown station wagon and drove away. My dad was working, either at his regular job or the rapidly failing business that once-friends had abandoned to him. She left forever, but she had no cash and knew the credit cards wouldn’t work. She was running out of gas and didn’t want to end up, embarrassed and un-pitied, at her parents’. She didn’t know where else to go, so she went back home.

It’s the stuff Oprah’s Book Club is made of.

I don’t remember it.

It’s not a sad story, it turns out. It’s a story about responsibility and obligation and enduring.

My parents have been at the coast, odd for the middle of the week. My mom took a nap on a friend’s yacht and my dad caught the biggest fish she’s ever seen. She had to get off the phone so she could get back to shopping for beach houses before dinner.

It’s a story about rewards.


~beatrix

fatty

My mom said, “Well that’s what happens when you have a boyfriend.”

I stepped on a scale at Bed, Bath, & Beyond. The number shocked me, and in the nanosecond of terror, my handbag and two bathmats ejected from my sides in an effort to get it under control. My first thought was, Why didn’t anyone tell me?

“Remember after Aunt Stacy married Mac and she woke up one morning and instead of getting on her treadmill, she thought, I don’t have to do this anymore, and she got back in bed?”

The scale was broken. I didn’t actually gain thirty pounds without noticing and with my clothes still fitting.

I’ve gained 7 pounds in the year-and-a-half I’ve known Ted, along with a general, all-over softness. I’m weighing in at a whopping 112 pounds, and I like to think I’ve earned my jiggle.

~beatrix

rumors

“I heard a rumor that you and Ted might be moving in together.”

I was on the train out of the city with Ted’s cousin when I realized that the only thing more exhausting than a family might be two families.

We went to Princeton for his family’s Seder, and after the meal I could hear Ted’s dad from the other end of the table. Palms flat on the table, he was explaining to Ted’s old cousins:

“Well, Ted’s lease is up in June, but Beatrix’s isn’t up until the end of the year. . . .”

So, you know, I guess it was a thing. A thing about which my parents should probably be informed.

My mom had a hard time explaining how she felt. Which I understood:

“You sound exactly like we do when we talk about it.”

She told me:

“I think it will be fine. I think it makes sense for you.”

I never expected glowing excitement over the living-in-sin thing. So, I’ll take it.


~beatrix

the synopsis:

One meal blended into the next and we ate until we couldn’t eat any more, then we had dessert.

I came from early-morning shopping with my mom to find my brother and Ted at a breakfast table covered with cereal boxes, laptops, and newspaper, laughing and watching ESPN. I decided we might be on to something.

My dad took us for a drive, we stopped at a sporting goods store, and while Ted and I looked at elliptical machines, my dad bought a shotgun. Seriously. A shotgun.

Welcome home.

~b

maybe because it's easier to imagine bad things than good ones

I gripped his wrist. I had a vision: wind ripping a wing off, the plane falling out of the sky in the tight spiral of a pinecone seed. We were hours late, and the ride was too bumpy for anyone to even bring us drinks.

I should have been terrified.

We were going to visit my family. Ted was going to meet my dad and my brother for the first time.

It might already be springtime there.

At Christmas my brother and I get out of bed while it is still dark and go climb in our parents’ bed to wake them up. We have three-hour breakfasts that sometimes include performances and end with clean-up dance parties. Clockwise, we sit: dad, sister, mom, brother. Unless we are in the car: dad, mom, brother, sister. We’ve spent decades just the four of us, and in this system of inside jokes and assigned seats, I’ve never been able to imagine how someone new will fit.

I should be terrified. I should be at least anxious.

“Remind me not to let you drink coffee at the airport,” he’d told me when I just could not stop talking.

But I was excited and I am excited and I’m pretty sure everything will be fine as long as this plane can land wheels first.

~beatrix

a big thing, but not with capital letters

My dad was slightly concerned that we were coming to visit because of a Big Thing.

But my mom assured him that the two of us had cooked up this plan and Ted didn’t even know anything about it yet.

We-- my mom and I-- decided it was time, and I told Ted to free up a weekend. He’s going to Georgia.

I realized later that I’d sprung it on him rather suddenly, but I’m too excited to care. And anyway, he deserves it.


~beatrix

emergency contact

Now well aware of bad things that can happen to you in doctors’ offices (even eye doctors’s offices), I was filling out a stack of paperwork and trying to remember if any of my grandparents have glaucoma and decide if having my wisdom teeth out counts as surgery when it asked for an emergency contact.

Out of habit I put my mom. She is dependable and I know her phone number by heart, but it seems silly because she lives too far away to be of any help in a real emergency.

I almost put Ted. Almost.

~beatrix

when you know

Julianna’s parents knew they were going to be together two weeks after they met. Her mom was seventeen, her dad only slightly older. They know they are lucky.

Ted’s parents dated for six weeks, were engaged for six months, and have been married for more than thirty years.

Jules and I realized that virtually all our friends have still-married parents.

My own parents have the opposite of a love-at-first-sight story. They met at school when they were five; my mom says my dad didn’t invite her to his birthday party. They went to school together and had a lot of the same friends and ran into each other in the parking lot at Disney World when they were twelve. My dad went on FFA trips with my mom’s brothers; my mom dated all my dad’s friends.

When my dad asked my mom to marry him in the driveway of her parents’ house, no one inside cared because the United States had just beat the USSR at hockey. And they already knew what it had taken my mom and dad fifteen years to figure out.

~beatrix

holiday correspondence

“Do you know a Dave and Patricia? How about a William and something that starts with an E or an L? Enid? Louis? Do you know a William and Louis?”

My mom had been out to check the mail and came in with a stack of envelopes and some boxes. I opened the Christmas cards-- all from people I’d never heard of-- and she opened a save-the-date for her college room mate’s daughter’s wedding.

It seemed impossible because Margaret is a little girl. She’s enough younger than my brother and me that we called her Baby Maggie until . . well. . . now. But the truth is that she’s graduating from college this spring and getting married this summer and that that’s not so unusual.

It was a magnet.

One box was a coat my mom had ordered. The other was a surprise, addressed to my parents. Inside was a gift basket.

“Read the card,” my mom ordered, mouth corners twitching.

It was from Ted.

It was full of delicious things, and my mom told me the history of the company that made the basket itself, and I was thinking how I’m glad he cares enough to do something like this.

“I’m impressed,” my mom said during dinner, looking across the room at the still fully intact basket of treats.

I laughed, “That might say something about the quality of boys I’ve dated before.”

~beatrix

perfect strangers

It suddenly occurred to me that just because they are two of my favorite people doesn’t mean that they want to spend this much time with each other. Dinner followed directly by brunch the next morning might have been a bit much to ask of near strangers.

The thought dawns as my mom and I approach Ted on the sidewalk in front of one of Ted’s and my favorite brunch places (the name of which I will omit only because I dread the day we have to wait for a table).

But they laugh and smile and this all seems too easy. I’m not used to caring much, but this seems to matter, and I’m not even nervous. Wow, I love french toast.

He walked us to the train, and I even held his hand.

~beatrix

so. . . here we are

Nothing makes me feel old and boring like when he gets out of bed and goes to the living room to read on the couch.

I feel like. . . my parents.

~beatrix

on budgeting time

I spend my waking energy

23% Working at my actual, paying job
19% Making out / Watching Glee
5% Trying not to fall asleep
4% Deciding what I want for lunch
9% Doing something to my hair
5% Pinching my belly fat / using a combination of mirrors to check the visibility of the bones in my spine / wondering if my boobs are shrinking
6% Idly speculating about the lives of strangers
8% Remembering what it was I was going to blog about
6% Deciding if this matches / is too short / requires a bra
5% Calling my mom
10% Trying to convince friends and strangers to get a puppy and/or let me cut their hair

I’ve given a number of successful haircuts. In fact, the only mishap occurred on my own head. And even though I think I might be slowly convincing him, Ted’s not so sure it would be good for our relationship.

Maybe he should just get a puppy.



~beatrix

word of the day: payots

I called my mom while I was walking because that is what I do. I told her how I’m going to Ted’s parents to celebrate Rosh Hoshanna, and she told me about a conversation with the wife of one of my father’s very conservative business colleagues.

“She said her husband never would have let their daughter date someone who wasn’t Episcopalian, or whatever they are, and I said, ‘Beatrix is a grownup. She doesn’t live in my house; I can’t tell her what to do. And. . . and I trust her.’”

And that was cool, so I took a few minutes to gush about my boyfriend and talk about how the two of us should come visit her and my dad some time soon. I think she’s excited about this.

And, well, then she said that it was fine that I have a Jewish boyfriend as long as her grandchildren didn’t have to have those dreadlocks, by which she meant the curls, by which she meant payots, which I had to look up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidelocks

I really think she means well.

~beatrix


so, i had the kind of day that may or may not have involved my shouting at my boss that i he can't try to make me feel guilty for not wanting to work weekends (even though he knows i will) but he should thank me for being at work at all. and then i cried. a lot. and now i'm eating more pizza than i should. and i think i might have a cold and i just hope i don't have what sammy has 'cause it's GROSS, trust me, he emailed me a picture.

so anyway. feel free to tell me i'm pretty.

~b

laughing through tears. . .

One time my mom was sick and in the hospital, and I was in New York and with David who couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to go to a birthday party with him. He was angry and frustrated at my tears, and he said, “Do you know what I did when my dad died? I went for a run.”

I didn’t even know what that meant. My mom wasn’t dying, but I cried harder. And a run is not a birthday party for a friend he’s never even mentioned before.

I met Ted on Friday after work. The week was long: a fight with Fin, a project that just would not come out right, a million things left on the to-do list. We’d deserved the gimmlets we had before we left that afternoon. As I was getting in the elevator, my mom called to tell me some bad news. Her voice broke; she sounded so sad.

I felt like I’d forgotten something while I was walking, and I wished it would stop raining because I was getting sort of wet. Fifteen blocks later, I realized I’d forgotten my umbrella. I might have been a little drunk when I got to Ted’s.

And we split some pita chips and a six-pack (proportionally according to weight and alcohol tolerance, meaning I had 2 and he had 4) while we watched a movie. I could blame it all on being a little drunk.

Because even I was surprised when my breathing caught in my chest and fat tears showed up on my cheeks. I’m sobbing. And I’m honest-- when we say nothing’s wrong, we don’t mean it. I made a list-- a long, liberating list of worries.

And he’s beautiful. He’s just rational enough to be believable. He takes me seriously while he squelches my irrational fears. This boy says all the right things.

And it’s the strangest feeling. The tears are still flowing like mad, and I’m pretty sure I deserve every one after this week. But I’m laughing. Because I’m unbelievably happy. It’s unbelievable in the truest sense of the word. It feels like shedding a skin or like a seed must feel when it sprouts.

So maybe I’m drunk. Or maybe I’m crazy or maybe I’m just caught up in this whole love business. But I could get used to being myself. For someone who seems to get it.

~beatrix

spy

I spied the email address over his shoulder while he was typing.

I was careful to use capital letters where appropriate. I want her to like me. And since Lazy Pinky Syndrome is only something I made up, I use them.

Since when is this my life? Sending a secret note to my boyfriend’s mom to make sure it’s ok if I bring a cake to his family birthday dinner?

Maybe there’s some sort of girlfriend instinct. Maybe my body has released a hormone that makes me want to cook and bake and tidy and plan.

She said to please call her Alice. That’s one of my favorite names.

~beatrix

sibling bonds

While we were on vacation, my baby brother and I found some time alone to catch up on those things not meant to be heard or known by parents.

He described a party where he was yelled at by three girls and slapped by two. I can’t remember how many he kissed. And he told me about waking up one morning in a strange apartment. He couldn’t remember the name of the girl next to him, but even worse, he had to use his Blackberry to locate himself using GPS (thank Google for maps!) without waking her. He was two towns over from where he’d started the night before.

“How’d we end up like this?” I asked a mostly rhetorical question.
“I blame mom and dad.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”

I prescribed a sabbatical-- some time with no girls to refocus-- and he said he’d think about it.

And as our laughter waned, I realized I had nothing new to contribute. Aside from meeting a boy though blogs, my own dating drama has slowed dramatically as of late.

“What do you think mom and dad think about Ted? I mean he’s Jewish. . .”
“I think they’re just glad you’re with someone.”


~beatrix

one fine day

My cousin got married on a Thursday afternoon at the courthouse, and my parents decided that they should help throw a party for the newlyweds the next weekend.

It was last-minute and bit thrown-together, and I wasn’t able to go.

“It wasn’t perfect,” my mom told me.
“It wasn’t exactly what we had in mind,” my dad said.

These are my parents. They’ve been planning my wedding for 27 years. I’m sure they thought idly about the party they’d get to have one day as their only daughter, dressed in floufy dresses and ruffle socks, scattered silk petals down aisles or passed around countless rice bags, but it’s reached a new intensity in the past five years or so. These days, at every wedding they attend, they compile a list of to-dos and not-to-dos.

“At Beatrix’s wedding, I want people to walk around with the food,” my dad will say, filling a plate with appetizers from a buffet.
“Yes, but I do like the bridesmaids’ bouquets,” my mom will answer, carefully examining a centerpiece.

I’m surprised they haven’t started taking notes. On the way home, they analyze the favors before launching into the age-old band-versus-deejay debate.

Sometimes it comes completely out of the blue.

“I was thinking that at Beatrix’s wedding, we’ll have fried quail,” my mom will say over dinner (of something that is not fried quail).
“I thought about that, but it makes your hands smell funny,” says dad.
“Oh, I guess it does. . . .”
“Maybe we could have some kind of towels. . . .”

At the beach, our next-door neighbors were having a wedding, a casual weeknight party on the sand. We watched from our deck.

“Yes, you have to wear a shirt,” my mom told my brother, as she dragged a living room chair outside.
“Yeah. Is nothing sacred?” I asked, craning a bit to see the guests arriving and taking a sip of a daiquiri from a red plastic cup.
“I want y’all to have real weddings, not at the beach,” my dad told us. “I don’t look good in these kind of clothes. I look best in a suit, don’t you think?”

At least they haven’t given up hope altogether.

And one day, maybe, I hope they get to throw the wedding of their dreams.


~beatrix

proceed with caution

I told my mom I was having dinner with Ted’s parents, and she told me she was jealous that we weren’t having dinner with her. I’m just surprised that I’m going to their house on purpose.

“It’s so weird. I have a real boyfriend.”

It has been very close to four months since this whole thing started. Four is the magic number, the score to beat. In college, it’s the length of a semester. It’s time enough for the weather to change. It’s a natural out.

It’s possible that I’ve declared that I’ll marry any boy who can make it past four months.

In retrospect, that seems a little drastic.

So I’m bracing myself. There’s no good reason for it, just a precedence.

If you could know the day it all would end, would you want to?


~beatrix

maybe the worst children's book ever

“If this was a children’s book, it would be called Ted and Trix and the Torrential Downpour.”

“Or Ted and Trix Should Have Taken a Cab.”

It had seemed like a good idea to walk back to his place when we started. And it still seemed like a fine idea when it started sprinkling. And then it seemed silly to stop once we were halfway, even though it was pouring.

We had one umbrella between us, and it wasn’t helping much. And I wasn’t helping much by walking erratically, trying not to get my boots full of water.

“I have waterproof boots, but they aren’t as cute as these.”

“At least I think it’s slowed down.”

Which was practically a request to the heavens for the hardest rain they could muster. There were no longer rain drops at all, just solid sheets.

So by the time we did get to his apartment we were soaked and my boots were full of water and my hair was enormous. But it wasn’t so bad. My hair had stayed nice long enough for me to meet his mom and to realize she’s not terrifying but cute and would probably make you delicious dinner. And I get the feeling that I’m just one in a steady stream of girls, but I’m more comfortable with that than with this being a special occasion. And the boy held my hand for all three hours of The Merchant of Venice, the story of a Christian versus a Jew.


~beatrix

a brief history of fear

I really had missed him.

After he helped me get an A in that awful French history class, and we were friends, and then he was away in Lyon for a whole year, I missed him and I told him that.

So when he came back, we were hanging out a lot, and of course we kissed. And then we hung out a few times in restaurants, just the two of us. So, sure, we were dating. But then we were walking one day, by that bar where you had to be 21 and water burst through the ceiling that night with Harper and I was too drunk to stop playing pool and notice, and he said,

“Can I ask you a question?”

And I just knew it was going to be The Talk I had been dreading so much, but you can’t really say that someone can’t ask you a question. So I started to prepare my oh-it’s-fun-but-I-value-your-friendship-so-no-you-can’t-be-my-boyfriend speech and said yes.

“I just wanted to make sure I was being a good boyfriend.”

That wasn’t actually a question, but that’s not the point. The point is that I was shocked and the words I had ready piled up in my throat like when a train slams on breaks because there’s a cow in the way and the cars go all sideways and off the tracks, and I was so unprepared that I said yes again.

And then he was my boyfriend for a while even though it was sort of an accident. And one night he took me to dinner and said it was to celebrate our month anniversary, but I’m not sure what it was the anniversary of. And anniversaries should only be for years because of the etymology. But anyway, it was after the whole boyfriend thing but before the month-iversary when this awful thing happened.

I was sitting quietly waiting for him to get off the phone. And he just handed it to me, and said, “She wants to talk to you.”

It was the most terrifying thing; I had to talk to his stepmom, and I’m pretty sure she told me not to break his heart, which is a promise I’m not usually prepared to make.

So I’m a little scared of moms. I mean, moms are almost always nice and cute and they make you dinner, but there’s just something about boys’ moms in this context that makes them frightening. My high school boyfriend’s mom was so scary-- confrontational and unwilling to listen to logic and seemingly the type who would scratch or bite you in a fight. I hid from her at the grocery store once less than two years ago. David’s mom was scary in a different way-- smug and disapproving with her lips all pressed together. I’m pretty sure she never spoke directly to me, and she might never have even looked at me even though I always tried to fix my hair before I saw her. But for the most part, I never meet moms because I never get that far into things, and even if I do get that far I’m rarely dating a boy whose parents live in the vicinity so I just don‘t have to deal with it.

Ted had a really lovely activity planned, but mentioned that we’d have to see his mom, just for a moment. It’s purely logistical, and the words “quick” and “painless” might have been used, but that’s hard to believe.

I am so so bad at this sort of thing. Tell me you need to introduce me to Brad Pitt or the Dalai Lama or Martha Stewart, and I’ll be fine. But this-- this is something different altogether.

“If I have to cancel tomorrow it’s because I’m sick; my tonsils are enormous. For real. It won’t just be because I’m afraid of your mom.”


~beatrix


p.s. i named him ted. and this is more how i sound in real life.
~b