Meet Me at Emotional Baggage Claim (18 page)

For a normal guy, three dates is too soon. I don’t sleep with someone until I’m in love, and I haven’t been in love for a long time, if you follow. The odd thing is, to be completely honest, I’ve gotten some pushback on the issue.

As in whining.

By which I mean, I recall one date where the guy was miffed that I wouldn’t sleep with him, saying, “Come on, it’s not like we’re kids anymore.”

Really?

I’m not sure I follow. I may be in my fifties, but I still have feelings. And there has to be a better line than telling a woman she should sleep with you because she’s too old to matter.

I still link sex with love, maybe even more than when I was younger. I value everything more these days, and yes, I value myself more.

Funny, in a way, that guy was right.

I’m not a kid anymore, dude.

And that’s why I’m not sleeping with
you.

Girl with a Pearl Earring

By Lisa

It all started when I went into my jewelry box for a pair of earrings and found four teeth.

Let me explain.

My jewelry box is a mess. None of the earrings is with its mate, which is the story of my life. Even my earrings are single.

My hoops are hopeless.

I was trying to find a pearl earring, which was lost amid a tangle of gold chains, bound tight as a rubber-band ball, and a slew of earring backs, strewn around like so many tiny Mickey Mouse ears.

It’s as if I don’t value my valuables.

Please tell me I’m not alone in this.

The problem is that my jewelry box contains every piece of jewelry I’ve ever owned, even a happy-face ring that Mother Mary gave me when I was ten years old.

Do you know anybody
less
likely to give a happy-face ring than Mother Mary? I showed it to her once, and she denied having bought it.

I think she was trying to save happy face.

I kept my first pair of gold posts, still scabby, from sixth grade, when I used to drown my newly pierced ears in alcohol, so I smelled vaguely like a pathology lab. I spent most of the school day turning my posts, panicked that the holes would close up.

This was in the old days, when the only thing people pierced was their earlobes. I wonder if people with pierced nipples have to turn them.

Their earrings, not their nipples.

Either way, serves them right.

I also have spoon-handle earrings from my hippie days in high school, which continue, in that I’m still hippy.

I have silver bangles from the years I loved silver, and gold bangles from when I got my first credit card. These things are not unrelated.

I have a high school ring, a college ring, and two wedding rings.

Two of these things make me smile.

And the other two make me laugh.

Most of my jewelry box isn’t jewelry, but random stuff. It’s as if my jewelry box had an affair with my junk drawer and gave birth to an array of foreign money, Mass cards, and old laminated driver’s licenses.

This would be the trifecta of things no woman can throw away.

I can’t throw away foreign money, because after all, it’s still money.

Except for the euros. I hear that’s not money anymore.

I have coins from Australia because I never know when I’ll be in Australia again.

And when that day comes, I’ll bring my thirty-seven Australian cents.

Then there are Mass cards. Sadly, I have more Mass cards than times I’ve been to Mass.

For those of you who aren’t Catholic, a Mass card is sent to notify you that prayers are being said for someone who has passed. I can’t throw one away, though I have Mass cards for people I don’t remember and never even knew. I even have Mass cards that were sent to me by mistake.

Still, I’m not throwing away a Mass card. That would be like throwing people away. And I can’t throw away an old driver’s license, because that would be like throwing
me
away.

In the bottom of the jewelry box were four baby teeth from Francesca, three wrapped in old toilet paper, but one loose, a cute nugget of little-girl ivory. I remembered the day she lost the tooth, after dinner, in an orange. The Tooth Fairy left her twenty dollars because it was all she had in her wallet and the bank was closed.

The teeth were with Francesca’s baby bracelet from the hospital, a plastic ring not wide enough for two fingers, which read Baby Girl Scottoline.

She still is that, to me.

And there was a lock of her baby hair, thin and gold, with a single curl like an oversized comma.

I held the teeth, bracelet, and hair in my hand, trying to decide whether to clean up the jewelry box.

It was my life, after all, with the valuable, invaluable, and just plain absurd mixed up together.

So I closed the lid, and let it be.

Magic Mushrooms

By Francesca

My mom got me dirt for Christmas.

At least that’s what it looked like at first. Then she explained that it was an at-home mushroom-growing kit.

“FUN FOR KIDS!” it said across the box.

Or for your twenty-five-year-old daughter!

But who am I kidding? I was super excited to play with the kit.

The kit is an upright rectangular box with a little trapdoor that reveals a plastic bag inside. The plastic bag looks like it contains rotting compost, but it’s actually recycled coffee grounds and mushroom seeds. The directions said all you have to do is cut a slit in the bag, soak it overnight, and mist it with water twice a day, and—voila!—you’re a gourmet-mushroom farmer.

I like some plant matter in my apartment. I grow fresh sage, rosemary, basil, and thyme in a pot on my windowsill. But since I cut most meat from my diet, I hardly use the herbs, so at this point, the plant is taking over my windowsill.

Whatever, it looks pretty.

And I support the green movement. Apparently mushrooms are normally grown on wood chips, so this kit saves trees and recycles old coffee waste. The company website says they’re on track to redirect 1 million pounds of used coffee grounds.

I get saving trees, but I had no idea coffee waste was such a threat. Are we in danger of caffeine rain?

So I set up shop. If it was meant for kids, how hard could it be?

For the first week, absolutely nothing happened. If you want to test your patience, wait for a plant to grow. I felt like an idiot, dutifully misting the outside of a plastic bag, but I had faith.

On the fifth day, my patience was rewarded. The following is a daily log of my mushrooms’ growth.

Day 5
: What I found in my kitchen looked like something you’d find on a foot. I thought it was going to look like a munchkin colony of perfectly formed baby mushrooms, like the way a baby snail is a perfect miniature of its mother.

But what I saw today was the Rosemary’s Baby of mushroom plants. It didn’t even look like a plant, just a bumpy protrusion, or the type of wart you definitely need to get looked at.

It was unappetizing, to say the least.

I frowned and misted twice.

Day 6
: Holy! These babies are twice as big as they were yesterday and, more frightening, they’ve multiplied. I’ve got what looks like a million of them. It’s a mushroom metropolis. Their roots are forming a subway system.

And did you know the mushroom seeds aren’t called seeds, but “spawn”? That’s kind of concerning, right? I needed this information six days ago.

Nervous, I checked the website, where the end-result photos show a much more reasonable number of caps, ten to fifteen, so I can only assume these wicked mushrooms eat their young. That, or it’s a
Lord of the Flies
scenario where only the strong survive.

Lord of the Fungi.

Or maybe I just have an overachieving fungus.

I’m almost proud.

Day 6½
: I take that back—I’m disturbed. They’re bigger than they were this morning. And by the way, I’m only getting my 4
P.M.
coffee.

Day 7
: They’re taking over! This rapid growth is out of control. I go out to walk my dog and by the time I come back, they’re a little bit larger. I find myself creeping over to the mushroom garden several times a day and peering at it with suspicion, inspecting it for signs of movement.

What kind of space plant have I allowed into my home?

Any minute I’m going to hear, “Feed me, Seymour!”

I risked allowing the creature near my face when I put my ear up to it to see if I could hear it crackling, popping, grumbling with growth. But I heard nothing.

It’s not so foolish as that.

I imagined the mushroom tentacles advancing when my back is turned, but just when I look at it, they freeze again.

Heedless of my better judgment, I continue to water it. I feel like Dr. Frankenstein.

Day 8
: I learned something today: A fungus is not a plant. I should say relearned, because I’m sure my high school biology teacher taught this, but all I remember of him is that he was very young, very nervous, and completely abused by us. He was only at our school for one year, after which I’m afraid we drove him to some terrible fate.

Like law school.

Somehow, nine years and a Harvard degree later, my command of science remains at, “Is it a plant, ’er is it a critter?”

With apologies to any botany geeks I’ve been annoying thus far, I now know that a mushroom is neither plant nor critter, but it is a living organism.

I find this very confusing. I was just getting used to the concept that yogurt has “live active cultures” in it.

Calm down, yogurt, I’m not even that live active most days.

But it’s true: Fungi lack chlorophyll to feed themselves through photosynthesis, so they’re classified in a separate kingdom from green plants. But fungi can’t ingest their food like animals either. Instead, they absorb it.

These freaks get their own kingdom!

But now it all makes sense—the “spawn,” the sneaky, creeping growth.

Do you think it knows I’m planning to “harvest” it?

Day 9:
Either the mushrooms are growing more beautiful, or I’m developing Stockholm Syndrome, but somehow I have had a change of heart. Checking on the mushrooms is now my favorite activity of the day.

“My pretties.”

Now that they’re larger, it’s easier to see how amazing they are. All the caps have a cute little dimple at the top where they still need to fill out. Their curved necks are bedecked with a fan of pleats, as if each one is wearing an Elizabethan collar. Some still carry the blue cast of their babyhood, while others are maturing to a warm brown.

I’m this close to naming them.

Day 10:
My little babies are all grown-up! They grow up so fast. I’m glad I kept this mushroom baby diary for them to read later. I’ll edit out the parts where I called them spawn.

Now I adore them. Every morning, I touch their spongy heads, and it feels like a wet doggie nose.

Wait, what?

I have to chop them, cook them, and eat them?

Don’t talk like that.

Not in front of the mushrooms.

I would never have cut it in 4-H.

These are beautiful, a miracle of nature on my kitchen counter. Buy these for your kids, or pretend you have kids and buy these for yourself.

Just don’t give them names.

Mythical Beastie

By Lisa

I know I’ve written about my feet before, but changes are afoot.

Sorry.

To begin, my feet barely look human anymore. My soles have thickened to an elephant’s hide, and my toenails have turned to horn, curved and yellowing.

I don’t have feet, I have hooves.

Bottom line, I’m becoming a centaur. Or maybe a Minotaur. Either way, I’m not getting remarried anytime soon.

Unless Thing Three is the Old Spice guy.

To top it off, my amazing disappearing little toenail is now long gone. I guess it was vestigial. I think it dissolved into my sock when I was fifty-one or so, but I forget.

Turns out that memory is vestigial, too.

I suppose a pedicure would solve these foot problems, but I generally ignore them. I don’t want to inflict my feet on a salon, which probably lacks the requisite nuclear weaponry.

But now there’s something about my feet that I can’t ignore.

First, a warning.

The following may be an overshare, but why stop now? Overshare is my middle name. Besides, how can sharing too much ever be wrong? It’s the season of giving, so here goes:

I have a bunion.

You know what that is? The Internet will give you the medical details, but all I know is that a few years ago, that big bone on the side of my foot started growing sideways, completing my transformation into a gargoyle.

Nobody told me that in my middle age, I would turn into something from the Middle Ages.

But as you know, I try to look on the bright side. For example, I’ll be more stable on a windy day, now that my foot is sprouting a foot. I’ll be harder to knock over now, though I bet nobody will try. They’d be afraid I’d bite them with my pointy teeth or fly at them on leathery wings.