Out on the Edge

Betsy’s been the eensiest bit testy the last few days.

A little friend who comes bearing hormones is about to visit, which is always good for making me want to slap anyone even remotely cheerful. And the month-long talent competition I’m co-chairing at Ben’s school is well underway, reminding me that the reason today’s kids don’t read is because their parents don’t read. “Are you aware that you’ve scheduled rehearsals the same week as cheerleader tryouts?” a mother asked one night this week, way past the time polite people have quit using the phone for the evening. As a matter of fact, I was. I was also aware that since said rehearsals were during the school day, when absolutely no cheerleader tryouts would be taking place, this wasn’t going to be a problem, a fact of which said mother also would have been cognizant had she read the copious amounts of information we’ve provided her and her multi-talented daughter these last few weeks.

Anyway, in retrospect, I guess this might not have been the best week to select new glasses frames. But I’m tired of not being able to see like I did as a minor. Talk about testy – being nearsighted, presbyopic, dry-eyed, and vain is a combination guaranteed to put one in a chronically foul mood. With my glasses off, I can’t see anything. With them on, I can’t see much. My doctor told me that even after laser surgery I'd still need reading glasses, which, as you 40-something readers undoubtedly have learned, actually means I'd need several pairs of reading glasses to account for phone books, regular books, computer screens, and the fact that reading glasses tend to end up in the same spot where socks escape to. (She also told me I have tiny cataracts, which is guaranteed to make a gal feel like she ought to start shopping for a Lil’ Rascal.) I’ve still got contacts, but after a few hours they start sticking like burnt cheese on the rim of a 9 x 13. New glasses with even-stronger progressive (i.e. bifocal that don't look like bifocal) lenses seemed the least unsatisfactory of an array of bad options. Besides, I’d been feeling vaguely unsettled about my eye wear since my sister suggested over the holidays that my glasses were both the wrong color and out of style.

As (I hope) readers with bad eyes know, one must never go glasses shopping alone. Who knows how many social lives have been tragically cut short by solitary eyewear-selection excursions? Back in the early 80s, on a day I was feeling feisty and independent, I acquired all by myself a pair of gigantic pink glasses that Elton John would have coveted. Only the intervention of a kind friend saved me from a life of Star Trek reruns, cat breeding, and eating Rocky Road alone.

Thursday, however, when I was ready to buy glasses, the only person available for consultation was Ben. This was not necessarily a bad thing. He’s the only man in this household who’s remotely fashion conscious; true, his taste tends toward mall stores that blare OSHA-infringing rock music and spew cologne through their air vents, but I’ve watched Project Runway with him, and he recognizes good lines. What’s more, he’s terrifically concerned with what I wear. He has studied the matter and determined that white is my best color; he’s thrilled when the pockets of my jeans bear designs that looks vaguely expensive. His ultimate compliment is “you’re looking very Fox Valley today.” A mom could do worse than have Ben serve as her eyewear consultant.

In taking the kids for eye appointments in recent months (guess who’s vision needs came last?), I’d spotted a comely pair of frames at a nearby optician’s, and it was to that office that we drove Thursday after Ben’s allergy shot. Despite my surly mood, I felt a bloom of cheer; this was going to be a quick trip. These frames were perfect; Ben would agree; I’d write a big check and we’d be home by 5.

We entered the store, and I made a beeline for the adorable frames. What luck! They were still there. I pulled off my old glasses, put on the new ones, turned to Ben, and smiled. “What do you think?”

“I think they make you look like a librarian.”

Well.

Hmmm.

And how were you planning on getting home, son? It’s a long walk, and it sure is cold.

Actually, I’d love to be a librarian. It’s nice and quiet where they work, and they get to see all the new books fresh off the presses. But I don’t want to look like one – at least not the way a 14-year-old boy thinks of one. If my own flesh and blood thought I looked frumpy, what would the general public think? And that wasn’t the only reason I wanted Ben’s approval. I wanted this whole process to be quick and easy. I have a talent show to co-chair; I don’t have time to scour the countryside for glasses.

“What do you mean, a librarian? I think they’re cute.”

“I just think you need some that don’t make you look so old.”

What had ever made me think this child was adorable? Clearly he was a mouthy adolescent who needed to establish himself a college savings plan posthaste.

Ben could tell he’d touched a nerve. “It’s not that they look bad, Mom. I just think it would be better if you got some that were edgy.”

Has Ben looked at me lately? I wear low-heeled shoes and flannel pajamas and the occasional pair of elastic-waist pants. My idea of a thrilling evening is watching Jane Austen on Masterpiece Theatre. Edgy? I wish.

Clearly we needed the voice of reason. I asked one of the women who worked there, a gal around my age, for help.

She liked the frames, as well as several other pairs, all of which elicited the same librarian look from Ben. But though they weren’t on exactly the same page, they were simpatico on one thing: everything in the store was better than what I’ve been wearing.

“Let’s see,” she said. “How long have you been wearing those?” She pulled my file and searched for a date. “Goodness – four years. The styles have changed a lot.”

Since when did glasses become extinct after four years? My mother wore the same pair of cat eyes for most of my childhood. Of course I was embarrassed to be seen outside the house with her, but that was my own immaturity, not any fashion statement. And whose side was this lady on, anyway? After all, Ben had whispered to me that her glasses looked like a secretary’s.

“Well, I’ve really liked them,” I said defensively.

“Oh, they’re fine,” she said. “I’d just like to see you in a darker color. Something edgier.”

Great – just great. Now even the woman with secretary eyes was on the edgy bandwagon. Not only did this crew want me to look like something I’m not; they were both insinuating that I’d been walking around the last four years with glasses that made people think “I sure hope she’s got a great personality.” Had my sister set this whole thing up? It was like finding out I’ve had my skirt tucked in the back of my pantyhose for the greater part of George W.’s presidency.

The whole affair was enough to push my mood from foul to toxic. I said it was time to get home and I’d think about it. Ben and I engaged in a round of “you’re mad” – “no, I’m not” on the way home. I called Bob and told him I wasn’t cooking, and we all had nachos for dinner.

The next day I went glasses shopping alone. I know – I’ve already said that’s dangerous. But I was still nursing my vanity wounds from the previous day – and wearing corrective lenses only when it was absolutely essential that I be able to see.

I made the rounds of a few stores and put a couple of pairs on hold. After I touch up my roots this morning (if those glasses looked like a librarian, then my hair must look like Janet Reno’s), Bob and Ben are going to take a look and tell me what they think. (Perhaps mercifully for him, Billy is taking the SAT this morning. Bob and Ben probably wish they could trade places with him.) I think Ben at least will be surprised at my choices. “I love those!” the woman who was helping me yesterday shrieked. “They’re so … edgy!”

Maybe. But I’m not ready to give up elastic-waist pants. And I can’t wait for Masterpiece Theatre tomorrow night.



R.I.P.
2004-2008

A POSTSCRIPT: Yesterday's trip to the eye wear store was a success (not so much the hair coloring; I give Nice 'n Easy's new Perfect 10 only one thumb up). I ended up buying the edgy frames from Friday. In an unexpected development, I actually fell in love with an even edgier pair, sort of miniature tortoise-shell Buddy Hollys with an inner, lavender layer. But they cost $200 more, and since Billy taking the SAT has ramped up the paying-for-college anxiety level to red from orange, I went with the less edgy of the two. Ben actually didn't say a lot; I think he was afraid to.

So in a couple of weeks I'll have a whole new look. I've got my fingers crossed these glasses won't induce anyone to begin a comment about me with the words "Bless her heart ..." But if you see a middle-aged woman walking around and you think she looks like Bono, just leave her be. You'll know she tried.

Meet the Birds

Call me Betsy. It's not my real name, but it protects the innocent. I’m under 50, but not for much longer; the mother of two boys, ages 14 and 17; a gratefully retired lawyer; the author of an unfinished-but-pretty-damn-funny-and-full-of-potential novel; a so-so wife (it’s the thought that counts, right?); a tragically bad housekeeper; and an ambivalent Southerner. I spend an amazing amount of time on what I like to think of as “child maintenance” –- carpools and college planning and co-chairing school events that I’m really not all that interested in attending. Sometimes –- oh okay, lots of times –- I have snarky and unkind-but-true stories to tell about the people I encounter in my daily life (myself included). You may think “she shouldn’t say that,” but in your heart-of-hearts I know some of you’ll be whispering “I’m glad she did.”

As for the rest of my brood, there’s my husband, Bob, who hasn’t bailed out on the law yet. I am forever indebted to him for saving me from a life of billable hours and advance sheets. He works for a big corporation, loves not to spend money, “fixes” lots of things around the house, and fortunately for us all is quite receptive to my fashion advice. Billy is our 17-year-old. He’s involved in the maximum number of extracurricular activities allowed by law and is determined to live at least 12 time zones away from us as soon as is legally possible. And then there’s Ben, 14, who never met a Simpsons episode he couldn’t quote chapter and verse and has the hots for Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

We live in a suburb –- let’s call it Fox Valley –- of a mid-size Southern city. Citizens of this community tend to be well off, conservative, gregarious, thin, and blonde –- in other words, pretty much the antithesis of me. Yet I call many of them my friends. I’m watching their children grow up and they’re watching mine. I doubt I'll ever be "from here," and yet sometimes, this place feels like home.

For much of the last 17+ years, I’ve been first and foremost a mom. Like many of my peers who earned expensive graduate degrees and then decided not to use them, I’ve treated child-rearing as rocket science rather than something that women have been doing since the beginning of time, including some mothers who were certifiable bumps on pickles but managed to raise productive citizens nonetheless. Now my children are getting older. They need less of me – still the best part of me, but not all of me. And I welcome and resist that change in equal measure. Sometimes eagerly, sometimes with a breaking heart, I’m emptying my nest. That's a lot of what I'll write about.

I've also entered what even the kindest of folks would have to describe as middle age. That means things hurt: my feet, my back, my hips, and sometimes, even now, my feelings. Sometimes I'll write about that, as well as wrinkles, gray hair, my neck, my memory (or lack thereof), and various forms of puffiness.

I'm a girly girl from way back, so sometimes I'll talk about clothes and makeup and shoes and how I look. I love to cook so I'll talk about recipes. I have 20 to 30 pounds that continue to return home to me like the prodigal son, so I'll talk about losing weight. It probably won't take you long to notice there's an inherent conflict between the recipes and the weight loss. To quote then 4-year-old Billy, when I nagged at him about something he kept doing, "That's just the way God made me. You'll just have to get used to it."

I'll talk about housekeeping, and it won't be pretty. Apparently, I am constitutionally incapable of keeping a house either clean or orderly, despite the fact that nothing would make me happier. (A nicer gal would say something here about world peace, but I warned you, I'm not that kind of girl.) If I found out I had six months to live, I'd ask those Magic Moments people to get me a full-time maid.

And sometimes, I'll just talk about what's going on, in my household, my neighborhood, my city, my state, my region, my country, and/or my world. I was raised in the South, so I'll try to be sweet, but I'm not making any promises.