Perforation Problems

There’s a room upstairs in my grandparents’ house that’s full of boxes and miscellaneous junk—blankets, pillows, unused furniture. My grandma used it as her storage area, and before her funeral we used it as a place to shove things from downstairs so there’d be more room for people to visit after the service. Nobody’s been up there in a year. This weekend my mom and I spent the night at Grandpa’s. We picked him up on our way to Wabash for First Friday, where we went shopping to spend the gift cards we still hadn’t used from last Christmas. Grandpa stood there quietly looking at things while we shopped, helped Mom get a purse down, said he liked the sweater I was trying on. I kept watching him out of the corner of my eye, waiting for him to get irritated, but instead he reminded me of a docile puppy—agreeable, patient. After we walked over to a restaurant for dinner. They were understaffed and slow—it took an hour longer than it should have, but again, no more than mild complaints...

Monday evening I got back home after dinner with Amanda and checked the mail. Local sales fliers, the power bill, my ever-present Cheryl's Cookies catalog tempting me with buttercream-covered deliciousness—and a Christmas card from my grandpa. A thin green card with penguins on it, one he probably picked up at Dollar General, where he told me he'd been doing all of his shopping. "Merry Christmas to you both," the inside said. "See you on Christmas Day. Love, Grandpa." For some reason—maybe it's because I've already been overemotional this month, maybe it's because I was tired and overwhelmed with everything to do—this made my eyes well up. It seemed like something special, a turning point. Grandpa had not only picked out cards, he had signed them, addressed them, mailed them. Christmas cards! Grandma would be so proud. "Got your Christmas card!" I texted him. "Grandpa sent us a Christmas card!" I texted both Mom and Mi...

I first saw it Monday morning, the "me too." "If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote 'Me too.' as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem." I'd been trying to avoid Facebook and Twitter, with limited success. I'd logged myself out on all my devices so that when I went to Facebook out of habit, I'd have to think twice, have to take an extra step. The result was that instead of going to the Facebook app I just went to facebook.com on my phone, which I somehow convinced myself wasn't as bad. "I'm just checking real fast." "I'm waiting in line, I might as well." "I just have to check my clients' business page. I might as well see if I have any notifications while I'm on there." I might as well, I might as well, I might as well. I've been thinking and reading a lot lately about the addictive nature of Facebook and how it nega...

When we were kids, twice a year we'd pile into my mom's mini van and make the trek from Georgia to Indiana: 10 hours to Indianapolis where my dad's parents lived, 11 hours to my mom's parents in Marion, and 12 hours to the lake. At 13 I prided myself on the fact that I could go the entire drive without having to stop to pee. In retrospect that wasn't the healthiest thing, but my mom's need to stop every couple hours grated on me and somehow seemed an indication that she was weak. God, Mom! Develop a stronger bladder!  I'd put up with the visit to my dad's parents, but it was just dues we had to pay before we could get to the lake. There in my grandparents' ranch house with the 70s furniture and seashell themed bathroom, Grandma Drummond would feed us vegetables I wasn't allowed to turn down, while my brothers and I sat, backs straight and on our best behavior, listening to the adults talk. After dinner we'd all adjourn to the living room...

Preschool: There was a giant yellow Big Bird you could ride. I have an impression of the room being red-orange, which must have been the carpet. I cried when my mom dropped me off, but she distracted me with a flower we were going to plant in a little ceramic pot and slipped out while I was busy. Next thing I know the day was over and she was there to get me, and I was taking my little marigold home. Kindergarten: All I remember from kindergarten is the classroom decorations. A cut-out, laminated image of the Morton Salt girl on the wall, and all the students' names on raindrops surrounding her umbrella. A calendar on the inside of the door that changed every month. I remember "March: In like a Lion, out like a Lamb" and "April Showers Bring May Flowers." There was a laminated ruler with my name on it on my desk. We might have made Valentine's Day decorations by creating animals with heart shapes. I don't remember my teacher, or any of the students. Ju...

Giving blood is one of those things good people do. I've never done it. I've always known I should—it saves lives, and everyone says it doesn't hurt much. But even in high school, when everyone used the blood drives as a way to get out of class, I couldn't bring myself to do it. Am I scared of needles? Not particularly, though I don't love them (who does?) But I'm not terrified like my grandma always was, crying and pulling her arms away as the nurse tried to do an IV. I let them do it—I just choose not to look. And years ago I learned the trick of digging your nails into the palm of your other hand as the needle was going in—if you're hurting yourself more than the pin prick, you won't even notice it. This seems like some kind of dark, unhealthy metaphor for life. So I'm capable of giving blood. I could handle it. Why haven't I? I suppose it's a combination of fear of the unknown and a resistance to giving up my time—both silly and selfi...

It was a small farmhouse in Atlanta, Indiana, down a gravel driveway. There was no sign, just a name on the mailbox: Gayle Jordan. “Is his last name Jordan?” I asked my mom, parking my Volt near a discarded wheelbarrow. “What? No, Robert.” “Robert Jordan?” As we get out of the car, a blond woman in her sixties steps out, carrying tote bags to the nearby open van. “Are we in the right place?” My mom asks. “If you’re looking for the studio, yes! Just give me one second.” Just then we see a face in the large window above the garage—a man with long, curly gray hair, beckoning us with a hand. He looks like an artist. The woman puts the bags in the van and leads us into the garage and up the stairs, where the space suddenly transforms from a storage area filled with old sets of Monopoly and trampolines and a creepy antique locomotive with carved animals peering out the windows into an artist’s loft. It’s beautiful. A desk chair in front of a wooden drafting table, fille...

My great grandparents’ house in Wabash, Indiana was full of antiques. Some antiques lived there, like the sleigh bells hanging from the back door that jangled whenever you stepped too heavily on the old floors. Some were waiting to be fixed by my Grandpa T—latches repaired, paint stripped, wood stained—so they could go to their antique shop on Canal Street.   The entire house felt like a treasure trove to a little girl, with something new to be discovered in every crook and cranny. Baskets hanging from the ceiling, glass grapes on the 1800s Hoosier cabinet, huge blue and tan crocks on the porch with various old yardsticks and canes and other wooden riffraff piled in. The steep stairs going up to the bedrooms always had things piled on them—old postcards, books, frames. And in the guest room, where I often slept, there was a giant four-poster bed with a lace coverlet that felt like it had been delivered straight from the past. Somehow I got the impression someone had died in i...

In Columbus we rented a house on Heathmoor Drive from a female firefighter. I remember a blue beaded curtain in a doorway, a phone on the wall with one-button contact to 911 (I got in trouble twice by hitting this), a backyard with an electric pole in it that backed up to my best friend Missy's house. We buried her hermit crab under the fence that separated our yards. This was the house where Matt and I wrote notes to welcome our new baby brother and set them in his crib for him to find when he came home from the hospital. In the basement, my dad built a balance beam for me, and Missy and I made doll houses out of cardboard boxes and constructed tiny rugs with glue and yarn. Matt and I turned the area under the stairs into a dressing room for our elaborate musical productions set to our Disney Channel cassette tape. Our big numbered was centered around the  Talespin theme song . We got our dog Max while we lived here—he was my Uncle Jerry's dog and for some reason Jerry cou...

Splitting time between Indy and Cincy has made being home feel especially luxurious. Our Cincinnati apartment is small, but fine for our purposes—it's in a good location, it has high ceilings and wood floors, appliances are new, we have our own external door so in some ways it doesn't even feel like an apartment building at all, etc etc. But home...every week when I pull in the driveway, open the door, and put my bags down, it's like, well, coming home. I open the back door to let in the breeze, I check all my plants, I plop down on the couch, and I'm just...happy. Everybody should have a place they feel that way about.

We knew it was going to rain but we set out anyway, driving my little electric car down the mountain, relishing the way the mpge shot all the way to 250 as we swooped and coasted. We hadn't brought the dog because he'd been limping after our hike yesterday, so it was just the two of us. Maybe we wouldn't have gone out, but it was Michael’s birthday and our last day at the cabin, and it seemed like we shouldn't spend the day like we had the six before. The GPS took us to the wrong end of the state park, so we made a big loop before finding the visitors center. And then just as we parked - the downpour. Gone was the sun, the blue sky. We sat there in the car, raindrops pelting the windows around us, and waited. All the scenic overlooks on the hiking path looked out on a valley hidden by fog. We laughed and took pictures of white blur after white blur, joking about how we'd show everyone the magnificent views, the beautiful Hudson and Mohawk valleys. At one poin...

Time gets distorted on road trips. One minute I think it's going incredibly, achingly, wretchedly slow, and then I realize we've been in the car for 8 hours already and in retrospect it seems like somehow it's gone...not fast, but not as torturously slow as it should. We still have 4 hours. I'm not sure I can even call this a road trip, because road trips have the connotation of being fun. Stopping to see giant balls of yarn or Cheese Palaces, eating ice cream at unique little town ice cream parlors, all that jazz. We're just in the car to get where we're going. That's not a road trip, that's just travel. The only elements of fun in this involve the occasional good podcast or music choice. "I would eat some ice cream," I say, looking at Michael next to me in the driver's seat. "Would you?" "Wouldn't some ice cream make this drive better?" "Would it? Or would it make it worse?" "I don't ...

Packing is always an existential dilemma for me. What if I bring the wrong thing? What if I'm too hot? Too cold? What if my shorts are too short and make everyone notice all my cellulite? What if my shorts are too long and I look uncool? What if we end up going somewhere unexpected and I don't have the right thing to wear and then I feel out of place? What if what I'm wearing makes me feel awkward and then my confidence suffers and then I start doing weird things and feeling like a loser? Meanwhile Michael throws three pairs of shorts, a bunch of t-shirts, and his swimsuit in a bag and calls it a day. I tried to pack early tonight but couldn't finish because there's one more load of laundry to do. We're leaving for a week at Michael's parents' cabin in upstate New York on Saturday, and as always happens before vacations, no matter how ahead of the game I think I am, I'm suddenly overwhelmed with everything that needs to be done before we leave. T...

I just spent the last two hours making homemade peanut butter & pumpkin dog biscuits for Clyde and the other doggies that will be at the cabin next week for the 4th of July (I must call them doggies or puppies, not dogs, because that's just how it is). I did this despite the fact that Clyde has infuriated me twice in the last two weeks by getting in fights with a raccoon in our backyard. Do you know what a raccoon sounds like in the wild? It's not Meeko in Disney's Pocahontas. This was no twittering or cheerful chirping. This is a Satanic snarling and growling, interspersed with the occasional high-pitched scream—sounds that are especially disturbing 1) when you hear them mixed in with branches cracking and your dog's whining and barking  2) when you're hearing them from somewhere above you while you stomp around in the dark woods in your pajamas, trying to find your possibly-injured dog by the light of the flashlight on your phone. Clyde is fine. Mad at me ...

Tomorrow's my grandma's birthday—or would have been her birthday. 75. I don't know what the right approach is for this—mention it to my grandpa and mom, that I'm thinking of her on this day, or don't. It doesn't really matter. I think about her every day. But this day is specifically her day. If I'd been thinking ahead, I would have had flowers delivered to my mom—she's been having a rough couple of weeks anyway—but I didn't think ahead. Last year I got Grandma flowers for her birthday and gave them to her at the beginning of a lake weekend. She texted me later that week to tell me they still looked beautiful. But anyway. What I really meant to write about is how my plants are going crazy. Look at these suckers. They're too big for their pots. They're so big two of the three can't sit on the window sill anymore because the weight of the overflowing plant makes them topple off. I have something like 13 or 15 houseplants n...

I look up from my computer in a Starbucks in Broad Ripple. Through the mesh of the free-standing fireplace in the center of the room I can see a man, maybe in his late 40s, olive complexion, balding head, blue worn t-shirt. He's staring off into space. When I look back a second later, he's got his hand out and he's talking, laughing quietly, shaking his head. It's as if he's got someone in front of him, talking back, except he doesn't. I don't see a phone, earbuds, or a computer. He's just sitting in Starbucks, eyes closed one moment, open the next. His face turns upset, sad, his words quiet but frantic as he whispers, like he's pleading with someone, begging—then immediately he's laughing again, chortling almost, bringing his fingers up to his forehead as if the joke's so funny he can't take it. At first I think it's amusing, but the more I watch him the more he makes me paranoid, scared. He's not doing anything to me—why shoul...

My teddy bear's name was Teddy. He was soft and dark brown, with a lighter tan circle around his nose and two threads making up a mouth that pointed slightly down, like he was a little upset about something. I took him everywhere. He was the perfect size to fit right under my chin when I slept. I think the hospital gave him to me when my brother Matt was born, but that could be a detail I've confused in my head. I would have only been 3 years old. Likely he filled the void left when my dad threw away my beloved, raggedy blankie and told me I'd lost it. Still hurts, Dad. Still hurts. When my mom enrolled me in fire safety classes, I somehow got the notion that fires were inevitable and everybody had to have their house burn down at some point in their lives. It was going to happen to me and it was going to happen between 1 and 4 am, the time when my teacher said most fires happen. So I pulled together my most treasured items into a pile—my Little House on the Prairie boo...

As kids we'd ride around the neighborhood in the summer looking for someone with a swimming pool. My best friend Katie knew a kid named Jake whose parents were friends with her parents—he was always our first stop. He was younger than us and obnoxious, but he had a pool, and that made you forgive a lot. If Jake wasn't home we were pretty much out of luck, but we still had hope—hope that a pool would somehow magically materialize, hope that some forgotten-about or overlooked friend, or friend of a friend, would appear on the street, ready to invite us over to their luxurious, cool, refreshing backyard oasis. That never happened. Nicholson Elementary School, where I went to fourth grade, was within walking distance of our neighborhood. My dad and I jogged over there the few times he convinced me to run with him—through the neighborhood, around the school, then back home, where I would collapse red-faced and overheated in the shower. "It's much easier if you just ke...

I used to have a memory of sitting in my high chair in a dining room. In my head the room is slightly pinkish—not Barbie pink, but rose pink or mauve—and I'm at the corner of the table. The furniture is dark and has those flowery curves to the arms and back.There are other people there. I'm pretty sure I'm eating cake. I say "used to" because I remember feeling that this memory was certain, that it was my earliest memory. I used to be able to tell you what people were there, what people were saying, what I was doing. There might have been presents, there might have been streamers. But over time the memory has gotten fuzzier and fuzzier and now I'm not sure if I made it up or if it's actually real. I could be remembering my brother, it could be another baby, it could be something from a movie or tv show. I could be merging a bunch of memories together and adding content from my own imagination. I just don't know any more. So that memory is lost. But...

I have a picture of my grandma's hands in my head. She had arthritis, like her mother before her and like my mother, now. I know it's coming for me, too, and on especially cold days I can feel an ache in my finger joints that seems especially foreboding. My fingers right now are straight on my laptop keyboard, except for my lefthand pinky that bends to the right just above the top knuckle. I look at it and I can see what my hands will probably turn into. Grandma's fingers were a little crooked and gnarled, like someone stuck the bones back together in slightly the wrong configuration, her skin spotted with age and her knuckles swollen. But her nails were always nicely polished, usually a shade of pink. She always had her wedding ring on, a thick gold band with a diamond, and an art-deco-ish ring that had been her mother's. When she first got sick, it started in her fingers. She showed me while we sat together at the kitchen island at the lake, unwinding the gauze to r...