It’s my whole family, by gum.

1.

Daria: Mom learned a new word today and she really liked it.
Tata: What’s happening here?
Daria: Mom learned a new word: furfuracious.
Mom: Furfuracious!
Tata: How are we spelling this?
Daria: F-u-r-f-u-r-a-c-i-o-u-s.
Mom: It’s a good word.
Tata: I’ve never heard of this word. What’s it mean?
Daria: It’s kind of like fur, squared. And we thought you should know it because you have two cats.

2.

Mom: I learned another word yesterday and it too was a really good word.
Tata: Fascinating. What was it?
Mom: It was a very good word and I can’t think of it right now. It started with S.
Tata: So many of our best words do. Can you describe this word?
Mom: It started with S and it was a very good word. Daria, your dictionary is in the same place?
Daria: It sure is!
Mom I’ll just go look it up.
Tata: Did…did Mom just take the two-year-old and head off to read the S-section of the dictionary during Thanksgiving dessert?

Siobhan and I embarked Saturday on a pilgrimage to Macy’s one day bra sale. Bra shopping is depressing, exhausting and never occurs without incident. This incident was special, I think: we ascended on an escalator to the floor where lingerie waited, if lingerie can be said to wait. Honest, I was minding my own business. There before us stood a man wearing jeans, a jacket and a t-shirt with the words partially obscured. Immediately furious, then doubtful, then furious again, I pursed my lips and pushed past him and his pasty clan.

Siobhan: I can’t believe it! You’re offened by that guy’s shirt!
Tata: I was, but now I’m not sure.
Siobhan: You’re offended because that guy’s shirt said FUCK, admit it!
Tata: I was offended because I thought that guy’s shirt said, USE BIRTH CONTROL? GO FUCK YOURSELF!, but then I wondered if the jacket concealed other words, and the shirt actually said, NOT USING BIRTH CONTROL? GO FUCK YOURSELF! I mean, if I’m being invited to go fuck myself I’d like to know why but I’m not going to get into it with him before I purchase two bras and get two bras free.
Siobhan: No, no. I’ve seen that shirt before. It says, USE BIRTH CONTROL? GO FUCK YOURSELF!
Tata: What is that asshole’s actual message?
Siobhan: His message is that you should go fuck yourself.
Tata: Sure, but why? I mean, is he saying he’s not gloving up for anything? Is he saying he has a moral issue with preventing unwanted pregnancy? Because his shirt is designed to provoke a response and he’s wearing it where children can see it. Even meek mommies have a problem with that.
Siobhan: No, no. His actual message is that you should go fuck yourself.
Tata: Me in particular? How’d he know I’d be here?
Siobhan: Magic 8 Ball.

When this scene was described to him later, Pete asked good questions.

Pete: Was he alone? Was he with a woman?
Tata: He was.
Pete: Did she have her front teeth?

I allowed as I didn’t know because to get even a little tangled in this scenario would involve Constitutional issues I didn’t want to discuss with the local constabulary in Ladies Lingerie. But hey, I appreciate his honesty in wearing that out in public because I could see what kind of misogynist douchebag he was, and that discussion would prove fruitless. I wondered briefly what other ideologically revealing t-shirts he possessed. Then we bought bras.

According to the New York City rock and rock and roll radio let’s go, today is National Bologna Day, while tomorrow is the immensely popular Punk For a Day Day, which fortunately comes with a side of eyestrain, so you know what all the shouting’s about. Yes, it may turn out we were all just in a bad mood for a few years, with safety pins. So old age won’t bring many surprises. Thus, it is fitting that I have an appointment with my gynecologist.

“Ta darling,” you’re saying, “That was an odd segue. I feel vaguely uncomfortable, like a million voices cried out and were silent – nearly enough to make me reconsider my breakfast combo.”

You’ll live to dine again. Among the things bugging me today are that I need to get a mammogram, and that my insurance company requires women to get prescriptions for mammograms. My insurance company assures women that preventive care is good care. Get a mammogram! Everyone should have one! Take two, they’re small! So…why the prescription? Send me a pushy postcard once a year from one of those resorts only insurance company CEOs can afford.

Having a lovely time. Wish you were here! – I kid, because I love! Princess, make an appointment for the old smashy filmy. It’s cost effective for me!

So why the permission slip from the gynecologist? Are breasts a controlled substance? Have I been wielding them without a license all this time? Scheduling unpleasant tests willynilly? The doctor assured me years ago that one day, mammograms will go the way of the dodo, replaced in the balance sheet ecosystem by MRIs when their costs come down. The MRI makes sense to me because you hold still and a technician takes very detailed pictures of your innards. I have had my extremely photogenic innards photographed, if you will, in this way and it was completely painless. I enjoyed the complete painlessness of the test, and would like to enjoy it annually, but if I have to have a half-assed and unpleasant test every year, can I just get it and get it over with without the insurance company both pushing and pulling? That’s too much to ask? Baloney!

Recently, I’ve been all over the map. For a few weeks, I was in the kind of pain that makes the eyes water and in person makes me mysterious. For instance, sometimes I lie face down on my cubicle floor, which used to induce panic in my officemates but now elicits giggles. For another, if you and I meet in the local grocery emporium and you see me holding very, very still next to the dog chow, singing along with the P.A. system at the tops of my lungs, I might be riding a wave of pain and waiting to crash on shore. Or I might be conjuring up a dog chow-based prank. We don’t know! I’m unpredictable that way. For the last month or so, the explanation for quirky behavior has most likely been startling pain that bursts forth in my brain like Roman candles.

Yes, I’ve been going to yoga and it helps. No, not as often as I could or should. Pete convinced me to drag myself to his chiropractor, who twisted my neck this way and that, which I enjoyed about as much as unplanned dental surgery. Then, to my surprise, the agony stopped. Just…stopped. I spent the next two days waiting for it to come back, then simply waited. In the course of the last week, I’ve felt ordinary aches, pains and a few twinges but no agony. I have now seen xrays of my spine, which resembles not so much a straw as a Slinky. The chiropractor looked at the films, looked at me, looked back at the films.

Doc: Did you ever fall on your head a lot?
Tata: I did gymnastics in the seventies. Sometimes we fell on mats but there was also concrete.

I have an appointment this afternoon, which is very exciting because I will enjoy the planned neck adjustment like further unplanned dental surgery, and very much look forward to pretending it’s not happening. Around 4 this afternoon, don’t be surprised if you feel a disturbance in the Force when it takes every ounce of restraint I possess to keep from punching the nice chiropractor.

Every age we attain lies between familiar territory and terrifying frontier. The little changes we see are mostly annoying but not, as a matter of course, shocking unless you have no signposts in the wilderness. People who were adopted face this because they can’t see their birthparents age and die in one of the cases where genes count; further, society as a whole is more open to discussion of changes in our bodies but that doesn’t mean we tell each other the unvarnished truth, which is that we have a whole lot less control over our bodies than we like to imagine. During August and September, I ate like it was my job, assuming the hunger was hormonal.

Tata: Mmmmph mek mek mmummphy glump.
Siobhan: Ahh, the eating. How long?
Tata: Mpppquch.
Siobhan: That’s unusual for you. Your complexion is also a touch flushed.
Tata: Givvus!
Siobhan: If you still had all your internal organs, we’d know what all this meant.
Tata: Pffffffft!
Siobhan: Right! If you still had all your internal organs you’d be lying on the floor, screaming. I forgot!

About a week ago, the eating also just…stopped. I feel like I’ve been hit by a bus – in reverse. Yes, I’ve been un-hit by a bus. Let’s see if I can walk that off.

I can’t help it. When Pete says, “You’re so pretty,” I hear Johnny Rotten.

Damn, I love those boys more every year.

But enough cuddly crap: I’ve got a potential human to protect from the evil of pastels. Miss Sasha, who has taken to heart my desire to eschew dumb baby garbage and get trashy, forwarded a few links to unusual purveyors purveying unusual merchandise with the advice, “Here, make your dream come true.”

Tata: What exactly is my dream?
Miss Sasha: To dress your grandson like the Ramones.
Tata: Right…right! Well, it’s collar spikes and torn up jeans for him, then!
Miss Sasha: One of these sites has lullabye versions of Nirvana, Metallica and The Cure!
Tata: What, no Bauhaus?

Look at these fashionplates. Who wouldn’t want to dress up babies like Joey and Dee Dee? It’s all I can do to hold off buying a leather jacket in toddler sizes. And I sure hope someone makes leather bracelets for pre-schoolers, because if not, I’m prepared to take up leatherworking just for this. That’s the kind of sacrifice I’m willing to make!

In the meantime, I’m TOTALLY cleaning them out for black onesies and embroidering the Anarchy symbol where most kids wear Barney.

People ask me questions all the time, everything from Who told you you were funny? to Why are you sleeping on my lawn? This morning, my student worker asked if I planned to dance all the way across the building. I told him it was a long way to hula. So that was an easy one. The trickier questions involve my family and the one I hear most frequently: does that wacky Daria exist?

Yep. Our cousin Monday snuck up on us and snapped this moment for gobsmacked posterity.

Here you see me in a charming ensemble dragged from the back of Daria’s closet describing to Daria how I’d dried my hair upside down for our sister Dara’s eighties-themed sweet sixteen party. Yes, that is my butt. No, you can’t have it. What would I sit on and complain? Sheesh. Daria had just finished explaining that her hair is naturally a giant cloud of Jersey Chick curly hair but that wasn’t retro enough, so she went with a hairband with a streaked coif attached. It’s a nice touch.

Further, that purple balloon behind me was altogether familiar. I slapped it and yelled, “Masher!” which caused Daria to spit her adult beverage.

We don’t finish a lot of drinks.

Some time ago, I used to get up Sunday mornings and stare at the TV until my vision came into focus after Saturday nights at the bar. If I were very, very lucky, I found Simon Schama’s History of Britain while I was playing “How Many Historians Am I Holding Up?” I like history but I’m no pushover. The History Channel never impressed me. Simon Schama, art professor and possessor of imperfect teeth, rocked my world with his stunning and muscular accounts of events I’d read about a thousand times. Holy crap, I loved his ability to shock me. I mean, it’s history. We know how it turned out. (Side note: movie about a big boat? Yeah? The boat sinks. Yes, I’m that kind of bitch.)

About a year ago, Schama came out with another series on BBC2: The Power of Art. On Sunday, Pete and I watched the last two episodes, which were FANTASTIC. Despite the torrential rush of television news, it can seem as if history has already happened and the day’s events are just drops in a great, meaningless bucket. I’m not saying that impression is good or apt, I’m saying it’s possible to feel that way, and it can be especially possible to believe that all the great art that will ever be already exists. It’s not? When was the last time you went to a gallery show of contemporary artists? (Mr. Rix: hush, you!) When was the last time you saw art at all?

“Art is the enemy of the routine, the mechanical and the humdrum. It stops us in our tracks with a high voltage jolt of disturbance; it reminds us of what humanity can do beyond the daily grind. It takes us places we had never dreamed of going; it makes us look again at what we had taken for granted.”
– Simon Schama

It is possible to reduce the history of art into glossy dorm room prints chosen for pretty colors and matching decor, but such reductions are truly vulgar, as Schama points out. Case in point is Jacques-Louis David‘s Death of Marat. From the program guide: Painting became an important means of communication for David since his face was slashed during a sword fight and his speech became impeded by a benign tumour that developed from the wound, leading him to stammer. He was interested in painting in a new classical style that departed from the frivolity of the Rococo period and reflected the moral and austere climate before the French Revolution. David became closely aligned with the republican government and his work was increasingly used as propaganda with the Death of Marat proving his most controversial work. That sounds neutral. David was controversial. Actually, that painting was so loaded a statement his family wasn’t allowed to bring his body back into France after David’s death. Let Schama tell it. As stories go, it’s a doozy.

Joseph Turner’s Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On) (1840) is just a painting, you might say.

You might also say there’s nothing on TV.

I’m sitting in the aromatic family store again on a beautiful, sunlit afternoon as Putumayo’s Sahara Lounge plays. Coffee and taboule sit on the counter. Pedestrians, languid in the sunshine, window shop contentedly. Sometimes, I lie on the floor and consider how I can photograph a single object or group of objects for the store’s website. I think about it and think about it, then I do it, then my sun-drunk mediocrity soaks into the fabric of the web.

Two weeks ago, I popped into the family store and my sisters’ mother went full-metal hinty.

Joan: You used the bathroom before you came here?
Tata: For years. What?
Joan: You might not want to use ours. Did you know gas builds up in toilets? I didn’t know that. The toilet blew up yesterday. We found the lid on the floor. Imagine if one of the kids had been in there. Dan spent half the night with a wet vac.
Tata: Wait. Are you saying that the toilet blew up, sending the tank lid flying through the air and the pipes spewed raw sewage?
Joan: You should have smelled the basement.
Tata: And when did this happen?
Joan: Last night!
Tata: Just as soon as I quit puking I’m going to laugh all day.

Thus, spending the day at the store is a mixed blessing as we regard normally dependable indoor plumbing with suspicion. This is especially serious as I have the hair-trigger gag reflex, meaning that Daria calls me every time she changes a diaper because hearing me try not to hork is music to her ears. Yesterday, Mary came clean, so to speak.

Mary: Remember on Saturday, when you came running into the store?
Tata: You were shouting, “DAMN IT! DAMN IT! DAMN IT!” and my ears were burning, yup.
Mary: The toilet overflowed and I called my friend Mia. You saw her there.
Tata: She was there. Why did you call her?
Mary: To bring me the Target-red plunger. It had just happened. I was gonna tell you but I asked if you were working Sunday, remember?
Tata: I do remember! I was on my way to a dinner party and not working Sunday.
Mary: Yeah, if you’d been scheduled the next day, I thought I’d tell you why you might need two plungers. So I’m telling you now.
Tata: Are you saying I might need two plungers to use the bathroom? And why do I keep asking people what they’re saying?
Mary: Fear not, for I will translate.
Tata: Omigod, if you tell me the Charmin’s a plan I am going to yak on your shoes.

Supposedly, everything is working. Supposedly – but I doubt the bathroom! I fear it! A customer tells me I should open the Yellow Pages and find myself a bathroom therapist. I tell him they’re all bathroom therapists. He tells me I have a fear of bathrooms. I tell him no, just the one – just this bathroom. He laughs nervously and recommends an all-cheese diet.

Just now, the bathroom has forgotten about me. I have gained the element of surprise.

Yesterday, in a crowded room and the course of conversation, someone casually said, “Morgan’s getting married.” Nobody saw this, I know, not even Siobhan, as I held perfectly still and felt the universe skip a beat. Talk continued and the subject changed. This, I learned in childhood: when in doubt, freeze. No one has to see how you really feel, especially if you’re not sure.

When he left in September 1996, he took Me with him and I haven’t seen Me since. I loved him more than breath, though he didn’t love me. Still: eleven years. I genuinely want him to be happy, so this shouldn’t matter, but it burns like battery acid. I didn’t flinch. No one has to know.