Dalai Mama’s House of Love

Do you know what I’ve discovered?  Love can occur in a fifth of a second, and falling in love hits the brain like cocaine does “causing euphoria-inducing chemicals to be released in 12 areas of the brain that work simultaneously,” according to The Medical News Today.*

That explains why we are so obsessed with the concept of romance as Americans.  Life is so hard and unpredictable, who wouldn’t want to remain perpetually high on love?   I mean I “loves me some romance,” and I would kick any man out of my bed who couldn’t deliver in that department.  But having been happily married for almost 34 years, I know that romance alone just doesn’t cut it (it ebbs and flows and never burns as red-hot as in the beginning).  It would be like having a diet of all desserts, but no protein, veggies, or grains.  Everything good about the body would decay, and so it is with marriage when it’s all sizzle and no steak.

Romantic love is when the chemicals in your brain kick in and you feel an emotional high, exhilaration, passion, and elation when you and your lover are together.—Sheri & Bob Stritof from The Everything Great Marriage Book (Adams Media).

I have discovered the problem with romance is that it is great when taken in context with a proper diet of true love, commitment, selflessness, loyalty, and grace, but it is a real bust when left to its own devices, and if most people were being honest they’d agree.  But online dating sites, bachelorette reality shows, and Hollywood chick-flick producers earn a fortune packaging romance as a commodity and, we the consumers, hope it will lead us to that perfect mate for life where we will live happily ever after.

Those were my thoughts when my husband WW (“White and Wonderful”) and I took our seats one Friday night for a dinner to recharge our romantic batteries after a week of having our asses kicked by life.  In my purse was the latest copy of Washingtonian magazine’s “Marriage: Making Love Last—and Who to Call When It Doesn’t (advice for everyone, including retired generals and their biographers),” which I wanted to talk to WW about to see if I could extrapolate a blog from it.  But before I could mention the magazine theme this month, my attention was drawn to a rather odd man sitting across from us.

Sitting in a booth all alone was a nebbish-looking man (the spitting image of Paul Giamatti as Harvey Pekar in American Splendor), wearing a cheap, ill-fitting suit, and nervously bouncing his legs up and down underneath the table as if there were jumping beans in the soles of his feet while his eyes lit up expectantly at every pretty dark-haired white woman who entered the restaurant door.  My initial reaction was to feel instantly sorry for the lonely diner and to feel an instinctive impending dread of what was surely to come.

Paul Giamatti as Harvey Pekar in American Splendor

ME:        Babe, babe, look at that guy over there.   I think he’s on a blind date.  I wonder if it is one of those online dating thingies.  Can you say:  ‘Here comes the Dalai Mama’s blog for the week’?

WW:     No, I cannot say anything about anyone without a vodka gimlet and some sustenance, and I need my “Lucille Ball” wife not to distract me from that goal or I’m going to keel over from hunger, and I won’t be a happy camper, believe you me.  Waiter!

ME:        Seriously, honey—work with me here!   Pretend this is a James Bond plot unfolding.  We’ve got one nebbish-looking white man, slightly paunchy, with a glass of red wine in front of him, and a single red rose dropping petals faster than I can say my name (who does that anymore—the single red rose thing?).  From the looks of it, he must have bought that rose three days ago because it is as limp as a wet noodle.  The dude can’t take his eyes off the entrance of the restaurant and he is sweating buckets.  Look at his armpits and the front of his shirt—he looks like he’s having hot-flashes.  Poor sweetie—I’ve got a bad feeling about this.

WW:     “Poor sweetie?”  What do you mean, “Poor sweetie.”  How do you know he’s a sweetie and not a serial killer?  I’m telling you “my chocolate Lucy,” mind your own business.

At that moment, an unusually tall brunette in 5-inch heels, a pencil skirt half-way up her ass, sporting a short biker leather jacket, and dog-collar choker, with her hair pulled up in a stern ponytail and her eyes encased in Goth carbon-black eyeliner and eye-shadow strolled into the restaurant looking defiantly for the guy that matched the picture on the paper she carried in her hand.  Just as she was about to turn away and go back out the door, our waiter sprang into action and rushed over to the woman who looked like an escapee from a dominatrix film and asked if she was looking for “Dennis” ?  As her eyes lit up in pleasant surprise, the waiter said, “No, I’m not Dennis, he’s over there” and gently steered “Ms. D.” to Nebbish’s table.   The woman’s back stiffened and you could tell she was not down with the guy who looked nothing like our handsome waiter.  As soon as I saw Ms. D’s reaction to Mr. N, I knew that lover-boy had not been honest about his profile and Ms. Dominatrix was going to kick his ass over the dishonesty, if given half the chance.

MS. D:   So you’re Dennis, huh?  I’ve just got to say this, right up front and right now (God, I’m so tired of this shit); you don’t look anything like your online picture.  What the fuck—the waiter looks more like this picture than you do!  Wait a minute. . .is that it, did you submit the waiter’s picture for your profile?

MR. NEBBISH:  Um, no . . . it’s mine.  Ha, ha . . . don’t get bent out of shape over a silly picture.  I mean what’s a picture compared to a heart?   At least I wasn’t crass and I didn’t send you a photo of my “little Dennis” (if you know what I mean) like some stories I’ve heard about online—right?   I mean, no, I didn’t mean to say that; I mean, yes . . . I mean maybe my waiter friend helped me out just a little and loaned me one of his photos. . .  Oy!

As “Dennis” tried to present his decimated rose to compensate for the awkward “little Dennis” joke and his pathetic life, he inadvertently knocked his glass of red wine all over the table.  And as I watched the back  of the woman’s neck turn beet red as she sat down across from her buyer’s remorse, I frantically searched for anything to write with to help hapless Dennis salvage his date (it turned out my lip liner would have to do). The woman’s back was to me, but I could see the man’s face without a problem and he could see mine.  I heard nose-diving snippets of one-liners from Mr. Nebbish accompanied by the high-pitched laughter of a hyena as his friend, the waiter, tried to rush in menus and sop up wine to help out the situation, while Mr. Nebbish’s nerves and the pitch of his voice became more strained:  “Ha, ha, you are just like my twelve-year-old daughter—she gets a little potty mouth when she can’t have her own way—you better sit down ‘little girl’ (ha, ha, ha)!” At that point I held up my frantically scrawled napkin sign for the nebbish that screamed, “Abort, abort . . . DROP THE KID ANALOGY—it’s too soon,” but Mr. Nebbish ignored me and heroically forged on with his rehearsed death march, “I thought we’d start with a bottle of bubbly, and then move on down the road to my favorite gourmet restaurant (Chipotle) for a romantic dinner.”   At that point, WW went to the men’s room (either to really do his business or escape my embarrassing, busybody antics), and I grabbed WW’s napkin and scrawled another sign, “No, no dude—can’t you see she’s just not into you—ABORT, ABORT—save your pride—save your balls!!” 

When Dennis started throwing out more desperate lines like, “I rode in on my Harley” (sure you did, Dennis!) and “Maybe I could bring my daughter next time” (Oh, Dude, there will be no next time!), I saw Ms. Dominatrix excuse herself to go to the restroom all the while proclaiming she wasn’t blowing Dennis off, and that she’d be right back.  As she left with her coat and purse (that’s a sign, nebbish-man, for the next time—nobody takes their coat and purse to the restroom unless they are leaving), I shook my head in devastation for Dennis and mouthed the words, “she’s not coming back, Dude—I’m so sorry!”

 A Chuck Ingwersen Cartoon

After the angry Dominatrix stormed off into the blue, and the dejected Dennis rode off into the sunset, WW and I talked about what we had witnessed for the rest of the evening as we cuddled and sipped champagne on our couch while a romantic comedy streamed across the TV in the background.  We had met some forty years ago, five years after the landmark civil rights case of Loving vs. Virginia that made it possible for interracial couples to marry without being in violation of the law and being thrown in jail for disobeying that law—especially in Virginia, the state where we currently live.

ME:        Honey, do you think we would have ever met if we had to rely on a dating site?

WW:     No!  You weren’t into “white men” in your radical 60s, remember, so you would have never checked “open to dating all races” even if it had been legal and socially acceptable.  What was that famous line of yours:  “There ain’t nothin’ no white man can do for me!” 

ME:        Well, you wouldn’t have checked the box that said “I’m into hot black chicks,” either.  The only black person that you ever remotely knew was the mailman and only because your dog, Trixie, used to chase him down the street and try to bite a hole in his ass.  That damn family dog of yours never chased anybody else except the black mailman.  I can’t tell you how relieved I was when your mother wrote and told us that racist dog of theirs had died.

WW:     But that’s my point:  we had to meet each other in settings far away from our families, had to work with each other in a theater group as we grew as friends, and had to mingle with each other as part of a group of accepting and inclusive friends to break down those racial barriers, or our love would have been squelched before it could begin.   Who knows if that couple tonight could have made it or not?  All they saw were the stereotypes of each other.  They never got to the issues of the heart.  Maybe nebbish-man was the softening around the edges dominatrix-woman needed and she was the steel nebbish-man needed to strengthen his spine.  It was one nebbish and dominatrix demolition derby in that restaurant tonight and “never the hearts did meet.”  This online stuff is a tool but only a tool.  If people don’t really take the time to go below the surface, it’s a faulty tool at best.  But once a couple gets together, I suspect it takes investment and hard work.  And speaking of investment, I’m tired of talking about those people we saw tonight; let’s turn off the TV and put on some music of our own.

(And so to the mellifluous strains of Marvin Gaye singing, “Let’s get it on. . .” WW and I forgot all about nebbish-man and dominatrix-woman and did our own wild thing—the romance that keeps us “keeping on” even after all this time).

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I am discovering that “romance” is simply the ticket into the amusement park:  the sexual attraction that hooks up the lovers and gives them a jump-start at the beginning and continues to turn their engines throughout the course of the relationship.  But romance was never meant to be the whole enchilada (mixed metaphor intended).

I may be wrong, but to me, marriage is 90% hard work and 10% “a thrill up your spine.” There is no “perfect solution” to finding a perfect mate to take this journey with—no matter what eHarmony promises.  I believe you can meet a potential mate wherever people gather—either randomly “falling in love” on a glorious sunny day or methodically letting an algorithm guide you to each other through a dating service.  Your husband or wife will either be the best thing that ever happened to you or he or she will be the relationship from Hell and no matter how you met your mate, both people will still have to give it all they’ve got to make it work and keep the marriage vibrant.   People always ask me, “what’s your secret to a long and fulfilling marriage,” and lately I’ve been telling them, “It’s the ’4-Hs’:

Humility:  a thirst for knowledge of a higher power (cause you could be wrong about so much shit today as well as tomorrow) and the ability to readily express to your God and partner: “I’m sorry; please forgive me!” goes a long way in going the distance

Humor: a ready ability to laugh at oneself and never take oneself too seriously—ever

Honor:  a never-ending sense of wanting to empower one’s partner and love what he or she loves—always

Hearing:  an ability to be the world’s greatest listener to your partner’s incessant chatter (hopes and dreams)—knowing that you love it when he or she listens to your bullshit

Humility is so important.  It’s easy to get wrapped up in your frustration about the ways your spouse is an asshole.  You need to remember that the ways you are an asshole are being tolerated by your spouse.”—Richard B.Smith, DC Psychologist Specializing in Marriage and Family counseling as tagged by Washingtonian/Dec 2012

“Develop a poor memory.  That is, do not collect grievances and throw them in your spouse’s face.  No one wants to hear, ‘This is just like the time on our honeymoon when you . . . .’”—Emily Yoffe, Who Writes the Dear Prudence Column for Slate as tagged by Washingtonian/Dec 2012

“A great marriage is not when the ‘perfect couple’ comes together. It is when an imperfect couple learns to enjoy their differences.”― Dave Meurer

“Marriage has no guarantees. If that’s what you’re looking for, go live with a car battery.”—Erma Bombeck

“One of the nicest things you can say to your partner, “If I had it to do over again, I’d choose you—Again.“—Unknown

WW (“White and Wonderful”) and the Dalai Mama blogger

*Christian Nordqvist.  “Fallin Love Hits the Brain Like Cocaine Does.”  Medical News Today.  Medilexicon, Intl., 27 Oct. 2010.  Web.

Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Eleanor Tomczyk and “How the Hell Did I End Up Here?” with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 

The Real Work of Love

Do you know what I discovered?  Everybody’s talking about the dissolution of the marriage of Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise.  Who didn’t see that coming?  If you really want to know the real predictors of the longevity of a celebrity marriage you just need to visit your neighborhood beauty parlor, barber shop, or nail salon—you’ll never be taken by surprise again.  At my weekly spa the technicians have names like Mary, Jane, Carol, and Judy but in real life their names are Jungyoon, Yunjoo, Joohee, and Wonjin.  They all pour over People magazine as if their lives depended on it.  They know more about Hollywood celebrities than the celebrities’ own mothers do, and they predicted the demise of the Cruise/Holmes marriage almost to the day.

For years I too had the “gift of prophesy” of predicting how long a couple would stay married because for a good stretch of time in my life I was a wedding singer.  By the time the rehearsal for a wedding was over, I could tell if the bride and groom had the fiber to go the distance or if they were just bullshitting each other and themselves.  During those days (60s, 70s, early 80s), my overall conclusion about the brides and grooms I met were that they were in “lust,” but rarely in love.  Oh, they thought they were in love, and I’m sure it would have come as quite a surprise to them to hear otherwise.  But if their union lasted more than a hot minute and I got to meet them again on their 20^th or 30^th anniversary, I usually found that by that time they were “growing up” in love because they had journeyed through Hell and back and had truly discovered the hard work of choosing to love each other rather than exiting stage right when the thrill was gone.

Image from funnanimalsite.com

As a wedding singer during that time, I had three songs that I rotated by popular demand:  Paul Stookey’s “Wedding Song: There is Love,” Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly,” and Fiddler on the Roof’s “Sunrise Sunset.”   If I had $100 for every time I sang one of those songs at a wedding, I’d be rollin’ with The Donald (no, not that slimball—never that slimeball—but I’d definitely be a baller).  I was thinking about my wedding singer season the other day, and those songs kept ringing though my head as if on a loop (possibly precipitated by the great Holmes/Cruise marital take-down) when I went to get my nails done recently.

WONJIN:  “Well, how yu doin’ my friend?

ME:  “Hey Judy, how’s life—what’s the buzz?”

WONJIN:  “Hangin’ in der, my friend—not too shabby—can’t complain.   Hey, you hear how Katie Holmes kick Tom Cruise ass?  People say she run divorce escape-plan like ‘Mission Impossible.’   Baby-girl one smart cookie, that’s what I say.”

JOOHEE:   “Oh yeah.  People say that that Puss in the Boots guy’s marriage to 9 to 5 actress is toast too, but I don’t want to say too much until I confirm it with the People.  I not surprised, though.  That Antonio has got the look of a real player, but I wouldn’t kick him out of my bed even though he not Asian.  Hee, hee!”

ME:  “Auntie, you so nasty.  What would Antonio Banderas want with an old woman?”

JOOHEE:  “How he know if he never try?  What that thing you tell me last month:  Once you go Auntie-Asian you never go back!”

ME:  “You’re a hoot, Auntie.  The expression is ‘once you go black, you never go back’ and I was talking about myself.  Only Black people can use that expression.  Somehow it gets lost in translation when you use it.”

JOOHEE:  “I can see you never taste ripe Asian fruit, my friend or you’d be singin’ a different tune—forever!”

Image pinned by Lisa Marie DeMedeiros on Pinterest

JOOHEE:  “Anyhow, I gave that Puss-n-boots and his Melanie five years when I first read about them in the People—they been married ten years more than I said they’d be.  And divorces come in threes, you know.  Once People tell me Demi and Ashton on their way down the toilet, and then Katie ditched Tom ass, I knew another divorce comin’ our way faster than you can say kimchi.”

JUNGYOON:  “What all they problem, anyway?  I understand why poor people break up—no money!  It’s hard to be all lovey-dovey when you ain’t got pot to piss in or window to throw it out of.  But how come rich people can’t just get along?”

WONJIN:  “They got money, but they get bored and like to get milk from a different cow.  Sometime they like Asian flavor and sometime they like other flavors.  They think maybe next cow give them chocolate milk, ain’t that right my friend.  Tee-hee-hee-hee . . .”

ME: tuning into the iTune stream in my head)

“Well then what’s to be the reason for becoming man and wife?

Is it love that brings you here or love that brings you life?”

 (“Wedding Song: There is Love” by Paul Stookey)

Bored Couple” funnypictures.blogspot.com||image from
joannascheezeburger.com

JOOHEE:  “Well, finally Angelina and Brad finally got engaged.  People say her ring cost $500,000.  That no chump change, my friend.  I need me a man like that—Asian or no Asian.  I think somebody tell me engagements come in threes too. ”

ME:  “I think you me mean ‘deaths happen in threes,’ Mary.”

JOOHEE:  “No, this time, I right.  Although I a little worried because karma comes in threes and it is a bitch.  After what Angie and Brad did to Jennifer, I keep waiting for the other rock to drop.”

ME:  “Do you mean the ‘other shoe. . .’ oh, never mind.”

JOOHEE:  “All I know is Angie and Brad not safe from the karma gods until Jennifer finds happiness with her man.  Last month People rumored that Jennifer and Justin may be engaged.  They even show what they thought might be her ring from three different angles, but it was false alarm.  They were pictures of rings she give herself.  I think she fuckin’ with our minds, if you really want to know.  People think that too.  What wrong with these modern American couples?  Why he no put a ring on it?

(ME: zoning out to iTune stream in my head)

“Strumming my pain with his fingers

Singing my life with his words

Killing me softly with his song

Killing me softly with his song

Telling my whole life with his words

Killing me softly with his song.”

 “Killing Me Softly” (by Charles Fox and Norman Gimbel)

Image pinned by Jennifer Bishop on Pinterest||original image joannascheezburger.com

HYUNJOO:  “Auntie, look at this—it’s the new People magazine for this month.  It says Vera Wang is leaving husband, Arthur Becker.  There’s your third celebrity divorce for the month because Demi and Ashton don’t count—they ancient history.  And this People story is about death of an Asian mixed marriage.  That makes me sad—I like mixed marriages.  I think if we all married each other there would be no more racism and war.”

JOOHEE:  “Silly girl—you talk crazy.  I think everybody stick to they own kind—everybody be much happier.  Look at Vera Wang . . . she marry that white man and 23 years later—Pow!—People say he leave her ass.  Nice Asian man would still be there.

WONJIN:  “Auntie, old woman, you don’t know what you talkin’ about.”

ME:  “Hyunjoo, that was a nice thought Baby-girl.  You’re young, and hope always springs eternal in our youth.  But your Auntie and I are old and we know that racism will always be something we’ll struggle with as people because it is an issue of the heart (and OLD PEOPLE really resist change—don’t we Auntie) . . . Besides we don’t all need to intermarry each other (nice to do if you want) to accept one another.  We’ll get better, but we’ll never get over the need to feel superior to one another.  The best we can do is to love each other as we are where we are for who we are and take a sledge hammer to our own prejudices when they pop up.  Speaking of international relationships, are we still going to see Avenue Q next week, Wonjin?”

WONJIN:  “Sure, but only if we get to sing my favorite song in the car.

ME:  “You only like that song because the Asian character sings it to her white husband and gets to scold him, the entire cast, and the audience about their racism.”

WONJIN:  (WONJIN/a.k.a. Judy breaks out in an atonal voice belting “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist” by Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx like a scalded cat while all the customers in the shop scream in protest):

“Everyone’s a little bit racist it’s true.

But everyone is just about as racist as you!

  If we all could just admit that we are racist a little bit

And everyone stopped being so PC

 Maybe we could live in – Harmony!”

ME:  “And on that note, I’m turning on my massage chair, plugging in my iPod, and I’m taking a nap—this is supposed to be my therapy time, not my eardrum bursting time.  Wake me when you find an interracial couple in People who you think will go the distance.  I’d like to place a bet on that.  Preferably an Asian married to an African-American, because you all know. . .”

JUNGYOON, HYUNJOO, JOOHEE, and WONJIN:  “Once you go black, you never go back!”

(ME: sleeping while listening to iTune stream in my head)

“They look so natural together

Just like two newlyweds should be. . .

. . . Sunrise, sunset

Sunrise, sunset

Swiftly fly the years

One season following another

Laden with happiness and tears”

 (“Sunrise, Sunset” from Fiddler on the Roof by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick)

“Interracial” Marriage||image from funnyanimalsite.com

JOOHEE:  Wake up, my friend.  Did you hear what People have to say about Joraan van der Sloot?  He may
be getting engaged.  WTF!  Go figure!  How a convicted killer get a woman to marry him in prison, and his ass
in jail (in Peru) for twenty-eight years?  I tell you right now, if what People say be true, I give that marriage two days—maybe one week, tops!

******

I am discovering that real love takes a lot of work.  Whether it is the love of a petulant toddler, a rebellious teenager, a thoughtless spouse, or an unkind friend—to love is to sacrifice.  I don’t believe in staying in a marriage where it is abusive (physically or verbally), or the partner is a substance abuser, or if the partner is so self-centered that the spouse has to play second fiddle to his or her ego more often than not.  I know nothing about Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise’s marriage, but I suspect, given the cult-like nature of Scientology that infused their lives she might have escaped a volatile situation by the hair of her chinny-chin-chin—or else why the subterfuge?  (Hey, get off my case:  I read People and I know these things—so there you have it!)

But as Americans (without an oppressive cult-like religion breathing down our throats), we’ve really been sold a bill of goods about love.   We’ve been told that it is something we “fall into” rather than “grow into over time.”   We’ve also been told that love is a “feeling,” but it is more than that.  Love is actually a choice—an action.  Feelings will ebb and flow like the tide, but the ability to choose to give and receive love is always with us—it is organic and it grows as we make the choice to choose love over self-centeredness over and over again.  I have been fortunate to find the man of my dreams and to be married to him for 33 years after dating him for six.  He is not the same race, his family did not openly embrace me, he is better educated, and our initial “hot” bodies that we had when we were young that caused us to drown “in lust” for each other now sag in all the wrong places and increasingly feel more like the Pillsbury Dough Boy when we cuddle together at days end against the slings and arrows of the outside world.  We have been to Hell and back together.  But I love him and he loves me in all our twilight failings and oddities—so much more today than we did the day we first said, “I do.”

Pinned by Jennifer Bishop on Pinterest||Image from joannascheezeburger.com

“Love is action. Love is tolerance. Love is learning your partner’s love language* and then expressing love in a way that he can receive. Love is giving. Love is receiving. Love is plodding through the slow eddies of a relationship without jumping ship into another’s churning rapids. Love is recognizing that it’s not your partner’s job to make you feel alive, fulfilled, or complete; that’s your job. And it’s only when you learn to become the source of your own aliveness and are living your life connected to the spark of genius that is everyone’s birthright can you fully love another.” By Sheryl Paul (“What is Love?”) Huffingtonpost.com

“No matter what way you dress it up, the best thing you can bring to a marriage is not the feeling of ‘being in love‘, but romance’s poor relation: tolerance. . . And while I am pontificating, one more tip for the ladies: Try to find a man who has that most underrated of qualities: character.” By Kate Kerrigan (“Blog post: Marriage Myths”) and author of Recipes for a Perfect Marriage.

Book cover for excellent study on speaking and listening to our partners regarding their needs

*“Something in our nature cries out to be loved by another. Isolation is devastating to the human psyche. That is why solitary confinement is considered the cruelest of punishments.” ―
Gary Chapman, The Five Love Languages: The Secret to Love that Lasts

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July 20, 2012 In Memoriam

Artist: Mark Rantal

Mark Rantal’s blue ribbon image interlaces elements of the Colorado state flag, a heart shape and an outline of Batman||Image from MarkRantal.Blogspot.com or “like” Mark at http://www.facebook.com/MarkRantal

MY HUSBAND AND I WISH TO EXTEND OUR HEARTFELT CONDOLENCES TO THE PEOPLE OF THE CITY OF AURORA, COLORADO AND ALL THE VICTIMS OF THE HORRIBLE TRAGEDY WHICH TOOK PLACE ON JULY 20, 2012.  OUR THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS ARE WITH YOU.  MAY GOD GRANT YOU GRACE, HEALING, AND LOVE.  E & J Tomczyk

Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Eleanor Tomczyk and “How the Hell Did I End Up Here?” with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 

A Love Story/Redo

(Formerly:  “Once Upon A Time. . .”)

This week’s blog (#50) is an updated entry of an early posting that I’m reblogging by popular demand.  Even if you’ve read it before, the pictures have changed and I’ve added to the story.  I am still on hiatus, rewriting my memoirs, but I will return next week with a brand new story.  Hope you enjoy this quirky love story (it’s one of my favorites, and I think it’s one of the funniest ones I’ve written).  Thank you for being such faithful readers.  Because of you, I’m now blowing through 31,000 views at approximately 200 hits a day.  Gracias!

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Do you know what I’ve discovered?    Years ago I realized that I was a star in my own reality show.  My husband is my handsome co-star. We have grown children, but they have their own reality shows, and they don’t live with us anymore.  This week’s episode (“You So Crazy”) features my husband and crocodiles, and the storyline outstrips anything those “biotches” from Atlanta can throw down on any given skanky day.

The Real Housewives of Atlanta||Hulu Pomo Photo

In the interest of full disclosure, my husband is a white man (I affectionately refer to him as “White and Wonderful” or “WW”).  I don’t mean that he’s just any ol’ white man; I mean he’s a direct descendent of Governor Bradford of the Mayflower type of white man.  (His grandmother – a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution – gave me papers to make sure I understood just what type of white man I was getting when I stole him away from all those white girls from his neighborhood.)  He looks like a Republican and a Presbyterian minister, but he has a wicked Monty Python sense of humor and his woman is obviously black.  I have known him for 38 years and have been married to him for 33 of those years.  He loves me like no one else on this Earth has ever loved me, and he had my heart within 24 hours the first time we went to get a cup of coffee:

Barista:  “How do you like your coffee, Sir?”

WW’s answer:  “Hot and black, like my women!”

The major difference between WW and me is that I grew up as a ragamuffin of the Ward of the State in The Cleve, and he was raised by two parents in New England who made him think he would someday be president of the United States at the very most or a successful lawyer at the very least.  He wasn’t born rich, by any means, but he was raised feeling a sense of what I call “white-man-entitlement syndrome.”  There has never been any question in my husband’s mind that the world wasn’t his oyster — until recently that is.  Our reality show has basically been a comfortable romantic comedy, but a few years ago, the storyline took a drastic turn for the insane when said white man lost his job for years and couldn’t get another one to save his life.  On top of that stress, our older daughter, whom we love very dearly, decided to do a nose dive into her own reality show entitled:  “The Lost Years.”  At that point in our odyssey, we had no idea that our child would eventually come to her senses or that good jobs would appear on the horizon for both of us.  No one ever tells you when you first fall in love and get married that “shit really does happen” to families that will end up rocking your world.

Interracial Marriage Shines||Yahoo.com

One morning a very depressed WW came into the kitchen and summarily announced:  “I’ve had enough of this shit!   The movie Men at Work was right:  ‘This is a waste of a perfectly good white boy.’”

(As a black woman, I consider myself morally superior to my husband in all things involving suffering, so I responded in my best Wanda Sykes voice:  “Weeeell, now you know how the black man feels.”)

WW shot me one of those looks that said:  “Now is not the time, Woman,” and continued trying to articulate how he had attempted to solve his current dilemma.  “I’m going to the mountaintop to pray.  I’m going to demand of God just what the hell was he thinking when he allowed this mess to fall upon us.  What did I ever do to piss him off?  If I don’t get struck by lightning, I’ll be back in time enough for lunch.  I could sure use some shrimp wiggle to cheer me up when I get back.”

“Shrimp wiggle—a white man’s canned shrimp delight.  Sure, baby—whatever floats your boat!  I’ll see you when you’re done communing with the Almighty.  Make sure you take notes.  In the meantime, I’ll make myself a gin and tonic and see if getting drunk might solve anything.”

Charlton Heston as Moses returning with “Tablets from God”||Google Image

When WW returned, he had the serene look of one who had taken the route of Moses and gone up to the top of Mount Sinai and had seen the face of God.   He’d come back down to tell his peeps (namely me) what God had spoken:

“I have been to the mountaintop and I’ve heard God!”

“Oh, do tell.” I said in my slightly intoxicated gin and tonic haze.   “And just what did God say to his ‘perfectly good white boy?’” I asked trying not to laugh.

“God said I’m to become an international adventurer and you are to be my sidekick.”

“Oh, Lord Jesus, this man done lost his mind,” I said as I banged my head against the kitchen table and let out a rather loud guffaw.

“Stop laughing—I’m dead serious!” said WW, trying to keep himself from cracking up at how ludicrous he sounded.  “Our troubles are causing our life-story to get off track here.  Our lives are being completely defined by loss—loss of employment, loss of our savings, and loss of a child.   We need to hit the spiritual refresh button before we lose each other.  We’re under enough stress to kill an elephant, let alone a marriage.  I propose we start small.  I suggest we take the rest of our savings and…wait for it…wait-for-it—get back in touch with nature and who we’re created to be by exploring a rain forest!”

There are times in a marriage when you just have to say:  Yes!  “Yes, I’ll follow you; yes, I’ll take your hand and jump into something crazy if it will help you (us) survive.  Yes, I’ll trust you in this no matter how crazy it all sounds to anybody else because if we fuck up at least we’ll fuck up together.” 

Because I love my man, I packed my bags, some mosquito spray, and said my prayers that this trip wouldn’t be the time I’d die—not just yet!

 Author and WW entering rainforest

In the beginning, the adventure wasn’t so bad.  As a black woman who believes that if God wanted people to camp he would have made us bugs, I set in place some ground rules as the “sidekick” regarding how I wished to “roll” during this adventure.

• Absolutely no camping!  We could hike and explore until the cows came home, but come night fall I wanted clean sheets, a vodka gimlet, and a spa.
• Absolutely no danger!  We could explore the rain forest and see “lizards and shit galore” but come night fall, I wanted mosquito netting, Egyptian cotton sheets, and a flat screen TV.
• Absolutely no water sports!  I’ve always engaged in the time-honored tradition that black women just don’t “do water” because it gets our hair wet, and we spend a fortune grooming our hair.  Throwing all that money down the drain just to frolic in water was a real deal breaker for me, not to mention the tiny fact that I can’t swim.  (I eventually had to compromise on this particular demand because WW loves water and swims like a fish—so we slightly adjusted our itinerary.  WW would snorkel and frolic with giant sea turtles if a way could be found for me to carry on my diva role while cheering him on.)

At first the trip was amazing and so romantic.  We were greeted by a host in a lobby with no walls, while a gentle breeze whispered softly through our hair—“Welcome to Shangri-La, Mr. and Mrs. Tomczyk.”  Our concierge gave us fresh squeezed, nectar-of-the-gods fruit juice to drink and moist towels to wipe the grime of the day from our hands.  Our man, Jeeves, assured us that my spa appointments had been confirmed with their best masseuse, and that he had taken the liberty to set up our snorkeling trip, our river cruise, and our trek through the rain forest with his best tour guides.

The next morning, we toured the coastline of our host country in a catamaran—something I’d never seen before, and it wasn’t that bad.  WW got to play hide-and-go-seek with giant sea turtles in a hidden cove while I sipped Planter’s Punches on the deck, ate fresh guacamole, salsa, and tortilla chips, read a wonderful book, and cheered my husband on in his “Tarzan’s frolic-in-the-deep fantasy” while maintaining my totally-dry-diva-self on the boat.  Maybe WW had heard God, I thought to myself.  This wasn’t half bad.  We wouldn’t have any money in our bank account when we returned, but “what the hell”—live and let live, I thought, if one could have a stress-free week or two and forget our troubles.

Diva does snorkeling

But on the second day (Isn’t there always a “crazy” second day?) things turned ominous when we took the river cruise.  Now, when someone uses the words river and cruising in the same sentence, I automatically think Aristotle Onassis’ yacht, the Christina, which is why I wore my gold hoops.  What I don’t envision is what I eventually acquiesced to:  a rubber raft that had been patched in several places with duct tape, for crying out loud!  I also don’t expect there to be rapids, and I certainly don’t expect crocodiles.  For years afterwards, WW would swear that he had offered me the chance to take the “river cruise” on a rather large river boat that held scores of tourists, but I had opted for the more intimate tour for two, because I said “I wasn’t a child or an old woman – I was the International Adventurer’s sidekick.”  Yeah, right!

Author floating down river in rainforest in a rubber tube

The moderate rapids didn’t scare me at all because long before I encountered them, I made the mistake of asking my rubber-raft captain why one of his guys was in a kayak a few yards ahead of us and kept making figure eights in the water.

“To distract the crocodiles if they decide to charge the raft.  But don’t worry, Señorita, it’s too hot for them to venture out — they’re probably sleeping.”

At just that moment, a prickly log of about two feet long appeared on the surface of the water just off to my left, and two dark eyes fixated on my blow-up toy of a boat as it rose up out of the water and yawned.  When I slowly realized that what I was seeing was just the head of a crocodile, I cautiously whispered to our guide, “So, what is the ratio of a croc’s head to the full length of its body?”

“Oh, about one ninth,” he replied, having just seen the same shady-eyed log.

“So that would make that particular ‘log’ 15 – 20 feet long — correct?”

“Si, Señorita,” he said as he began to frantically signal to his co-worker in the kayak, and they both began to stroke a lot faster.  “But not to worry—we haven’t seen a croc bigger than 15 feet in Costa Rica in years because the larger ones have been hunted down and killed.  Oh, look up at the trees, Señorita, there’s a Howler monkey.  Isn’t he cute?” asked the guide, obviously trying to distract me.

Costa Rican Monkeys||adventuresofdiscovery.com photo

As I hysterically looked to the right to get WW’s attention, we both saw the shoreline riddled with baby crocs who were sunning themselves, and I instinctively knew three things:  1) where there are babies, a mother is not far off, 2) that kayak man frantically doing the figure eights was going to be snack food at any moment, and 3) the International Adventurer and his Sidekick were going to enter heaven at the behest of a momma or a papa crocodile right after the kayak man got eaten.  Before I could utter the first syllable of the fox-hole prayer screamed by many a dying man (“Help me, Jesus, help, help me Jesus!”), the rapids were upon us and we slipped away into a safer waterway while trying to keep my bowels intact.  (I would later learn that crocs don’t like rushing water which is one reason we got out of there alive; the other reason is that there really is an appointed time to die and I guess that wasn’t it, thank you God.)  My diary that night had only one entry:  WTF—I’m going to kill WW!

Costa Rican Crocodile||National Geographic

The third day our concierge had booked us on a walking tour through a section of the rain forest with a naturalist who would help us identify plant life and the age of trees.  (“Now this is my speed —this is what I’m talkin’ about!”  I said to my International Adventurer.)   What we hadn’t noticed was that part of the rain forest journey included a zip-line tour.  We’d never done zip-lining before, and at first I refused to go near any of this shit.  But I could see that my husband was chomping at the bit to give it a try.  The concierge boasted that all his clients came back raving about the experience.  He hadn’t done it himself, but how hard could it be?  “You simply hang onto a steel cable line, slide down an incline from hilltop to hilltop, and see a great view of the rain forest going down.  Now please sign here, here, and here, absolving the resort of all responsibility.”

The first clue that things might go horribly wrong was when it took 15 minutes to strap the harness over my Dolly Parton boobs (DPs).  Then my diva hairdo was flattened in a hairnet and a helmet was placed on top of the hairnet, which caused me not a little consternation.  The final item of the attire was a stiff, weather-worn glove two sizes too big that I was told I needed in order to squeeze the brake to slow down my descent before I hit the landing platform.  But the brake was two feet above my head, and the glove was frozen into a jazz-hand pose due to years of encrusted dirt — making it impossible to bend around the brake.

Now here’s the thing:  when the makers of the zip-line (a.k.a “the death slide”) invented this demonic entertainment, they didn’t take into account what would happen to a person’s body that front-loads 38 GG boobs on their little pathetic hanger.  The one skinny rope that is supposed to hold up the rider’s body is no match for that force of nature, and instead of me being able to hold myself perpendicular to the zip-line, the force of gravity from my DPs pushed me down horizontally and I couldn’t reach the brake.  As I began hurtling down the line over the rain forest at 90 miles an hour, I envisioned myself whizzing right past the startled faces of WW and the rest of the tourists on the first platform and then barreling on down through the next 10 platforms of the zip-line as the operators screamed in horror:  “RUN-AWAY ZIP-LINER CAREENING TO HER DEATH – GET OFF THE LINE, GET OFF THE LINE!”

Author on zip line death slide (blood pressure 220/110 and rising)

I immediately initiated the only calming things I could think of to control my bubbling hysteria:  I closed my eyes and prayed while I started doing pregnancy breathing exercises (“pant-pant-blow/hee-hee-hoo”).   But before I could do much else, my body came to a screeching halt in the middle of the line approximately two hundred feet above the tallest tree in the rain forest.  I couldn’t go backwards and I couldn’t go forwards.  At that point, as I began to swing in the breeze — neither here nor there — my tour guide who was a teenage boy and weighed all of 90 pounds soaking wet began to shout in a sing-songy voice:

“LA-A-TY, JU-U-U STU-U-U-CK!   WOW, JES LUKE AT JU, SWINGING IN DE BREEZE!   OKAY — GAME TIME IS OVER, NOW.  UNSTICK JU SELF!  REACH UP AN GRAB DA LINE AN PULL JU SELF FUWARD TO SAFETY.”

“I CAN’T,” I screamed back to the guide as I arduously tried to reach for the line and pull myself upward.  Without something solid to brace my feet against, I couldn’t overcome the gravity weighing down my upper torso from my 38GGs.  I needed to sit up in a perpendicular position, hugging the cable, so that I could glide down the incline instead of causing the line to dip into a sharp “V”.  But it was hopeless.  Plus the more I tried, the more I began to swirl around like an upside down propeller. “PLEASE COME AND GET ME, PLEASE – I CAN’T DO THIS BY MYSELF!”

“SURE JU CAN, LA-TY,” said my boy tour guide, as if he were speaking to a five year old.   “JES TRY HARDER.  I CAN SEE DAT JU JES NOT DOING JU BEST – DATS WHAT I TINK.”

As my body languidly twirled around and around, and my death seemed imminently near, I am not proud of what I said next to that child, but desperate times call for desperate measures:   “LISTEN. . . YOU LITTLE SON-OF-A-BITCH; CAN’T YOU SEE I’VE FLAT LINED, HERE!   NOW GET YOUR SKINNY LITTLE ASS OUT HERE AND PULL ME BACK TO THAT PLATFORM BEFORE I GO CRASHING DOWN TO THE RAIN FOREST FLOOR AND BREAK INTO A MILLION PIECES!  SO HELP ME GOD, IF I FALL AND DIE, I PLAN TO COME BACK FROM THE DEAD, HUNT YOU DOWN, AND OPEN UP A CAN OF WHUP ASS ON YOU THAT WILL NEVER END!  YOUR OWN MOMMA WON’T RECOGNIZE YOU WHEN I’M FINISHED WITH YOU!”  And on that note, I began to wail like a frightened child lost in the middle of a dark forest, as my body twirled round-and-round out of control high above the forest floor.

******

I am discovering that our lives are a compilation of stories that sometimes we have little or no control over.  But we do have choices.  We can choose to hang tough with and for each other until we’re rescued from the middle of a zip-line or become a crocodile’s lunch, or we can give up and let someone else write our story.

WW had discovered a universal truth during his “mountaintop experience” that I didn’t know at the time, but would soon learn:  our lives are stories that connect to each other and to a universal story.  It is up to us to make sure that our storylines don’t get hijacked or become lopsided, and that we keep an authentic mix of love, adventure, sorrow, struggle, comedy, community, and worship if we want to remain vibrant and connected to each other and God.  We can’t always control what others do to us, but we can control how we respond to any given tragedy, mayhem, or offense.  We can’t know what the future will throw at us, but we can try to be as wise as possible about our choices – given that there are no insignificant ones.   It turns out our personal reality shows need to be carefully cultivated into lives that are well-lived and brimming with love.

It has been many years since the rain forest adventure.  Some type of employment returned (as it always does) and our errant child grew up and got a saner reality show entitled “What the Hell was I Thinking!”  When my husband awoke the other day, he had such a contented smile on his face that I asked him what he was thinking.  He replied, “I’m thinking how I could have never done this journey without you, and what a very, very lucky man I am.”  And then he got a mischievous twinkle in his eye and said:   “I’m also thinking of doing a Google search on African safaris.”

To which I replied in my best, Wanda Sykes imitation as I passionately kissed him good morning:  “You so crazy!”

Author and “International Adventurer”

If I have a hope, it’s that God sat over the dark nothing and wrote you and me, specifically, into the story, and put us in with the sunset and rainstorm as though to say, “Enjoy your place in my story. . . .”

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years   by Donald Miller

Photos by “WW” Tomczyk except where otherwise noted

Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Eleanor Tomczyk and “How the Hell Did I End Up Here?” with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 

So What Was That All About?

Do you know what I’ve discovered?  Before we heterosexuals try and pull the speck out of the eye of our gay brothers and sisters regarding the “sanctity of marriage,” we need to work on pulling the logs out of our own eyes when it comes to the mockery of marriage that so many of us have so cynically engaged in.  I attended Kim and Kris’ wedding a few months ago (I’m just like “this” [two fingers crossed] with the Kardashians), and I am so upset over Kim’s announcement that she is breaking up her marriage with Kris Humphries after only 72 days — I just don’t feel like celebrating another wedding ever again.  I mean I used to love these expensive, over-the-top weddings, but I’m stunned at the revelation of the demise of Kim and Kris’ marriage after such a huge shindig.  They were cast so perfectly for the reality show, and they had such a perfect fairy tale wedding.  Ask any of my friends:  I can’t shake off my grief.  I’ve become such a mess over the demise of their union that I had to write Kim a letter and get some of my disappointment and frustration off my chest.  I mean she’s like a daughter to me, so I have the right to get all up in her business if I want to, if you’re wondering – if you really want to know.

Google Image/Kim Kardashian

Hello Pookey:  I hear you’re an absolute wreck these days.  I’m so sorry.  I tossed a coin to see whether I should write to you or Kris, and I chose you because I really don’t think that child has the sense he was born with (we’ll tackle that boy’s maturity level another day).  Now you know how long your mother and I have been friends.  We go way back to the O.J. and Nicole Simpson days when they claimed to have a happy marriage, and you know what happened to them.  And as your favorite aunt who has been happily married for over 32 years, I felt that I had the gravitas to be able to write you this note. You remember how much I loved, loved, and triple loved your wedding that happened JUST A FEW MONTHS AGO?  Everything was perfect!  The entire affair was just to die for!   But now I hear you are divorcing Kris’ ass after only 72 days.  I also hear you’re not planning on giving Kris back the two million dollar engagement ring he gave you.

I’m sure you don’t want to hear this, Baby-girl, but give that child back his little 20.5 carat piece of shiny carbon, ‘cause nobody can claim to have been married when they call it quits after only 72 days.  That wasn’t a marriage, Sugah — that was an extended sleep-over with benefits.  One of your anonymous peeps said to Jennifer Garcia of People Online that “Everything she (Kim) dreamed of in her mind was right there in front of her but what she realized is that her heart wasn’t there.”  Were you in love with “being in love” and then reality hit?  Real reality (not staged reality) is a bitch, isn’t it?  You see Kim, baby, — fantasy is one thing, real life is another — and all marriages (if they are to survive) have to grow up in the reality of immature actions, screaming babies, sickness, unemployment, bad breath, laundry, disappointment, occasional smelly farts, and annoying habits.  You can’t cry “cut” like you do on your reality show when you’ve had enough.  Real love can conquer all that.  Just ask your Uncle WW and me.  BUT, GIRLFRIEND, YOU NEED MORE THAN 72 FUCKING HOURS!  Am I getting through to you here?  Also, I don’t mean to be cruel or anything, but times are hard and if you’re really serious about calling it quits with Kris, then Uncle WW and I would like our twin Dalmatian puppies back.  I don’t know what the hell we’re going to do with them, but we’ll think of something, ‘cause those suckers cost us a pretty penny.

One final note, Baby-girl:  If you really knew that you were making a mistake when you walked down the aisle, but you were too scared to call it off because of all the money and the pomp and circumstance involved — as a woman, I get it; I really do.  It takes a lot of courage to say, “I can’t go through with this; I’ve made a huge mistake.”  If you’ve discovered he’s a serial killer or a pedophile or worse, then by all means get your ass out of Dodge, and I’ll be the first in line to hide you in my attic.  But if you’ve done this for a publicity stunt as your former publicist, Jonathan Jaxson, has eluded to, or because you’ve just discovered Kris isn’t your fantasy Prince Charming, but just a dumb ol’ jock — girl, what credibility you had with me has just been shot to Hell.

 

Google Image/buzzle.com

After I sent that pissy note to Kim Kardashian, I realized there were a bunch of other people who needed to give me back the wedding presents I’d sent them because when I sent those items, it was in good faith, and they were supposed to stay married “until death did them part.”  I decided to send out a bunch of “re-po” notes repossessing my wedding gifts from the most egregious marital felons.  I didn’t give two-hoots about the gifts (they were already used or re-gifted on their part, anyway) but I wanted to make a point about how they had pissed me off.

Google Image/J. Lo, Marc Anthony, and children

Dear Jenny from the block and my main man M-A:  Really?  Seven years?  Is that the best you can do here? Did you not learn from your other marriages?  You both said you did when we chatted at your engagement party.  Now, Jenny, you know I love you, baby.  But I read online that you said, after leaving Marc Antony, in order for marriage to work, “You’ve got to love yourself first.  And until you value yourself enough and love yourself enough to know that, you can’t really have a healthy relationship.”  What kind of Scientology bullshit is that? You have to value each other enough that you choose each other over everything else – you have to both put each other first.  Couldn’t you two have figured out how to cherish each other before the twins were born?  Our children would like us to halfway have our shit together before we birth them so that we don’t mess up their lives, because contrary to popular belief, “the children will not be all right”— at least not without a bit of a struggle.  Anyway, please send me back the ant farm WW and I gave you for a wedding present (the ants are probably dead, anyway).

Google Image/Al and Tipper Gore

Dear Al and Tipper:  40 years!  F-O-R-T-Y Y-E-A-R-S!  After forty years, unless you two were into some kinky shit you hadn’t told me about, or Al had turned into a wife beater, could you not have figured how to work this out?  You’re saying that you just “drifted apart.”  People don’t just drift apart after forty years.  Al: Do you remember what you said on the Larry King show in 2002?   “Well, we fell in love, and we’ve stayed in love, and we’ve worked very hard when there were hard times to work it out, and not that we ever thought about divorcing or anything like that. I don’t mean to imply that. I mean that I think people need to work it out.”  So, “liar, liar, pants on fire,” what in the hell happened here?  Good grief!  I not only want my Ginsu knives back, but I want you to purchase me a new set ‘cause I know after forty years even Ginsu knives won’t be able to cut butter.

Google Image/Arnold Schwarzenegger

Arnold, Arnold, Arnold:  What the fuck?!   You are such a mangy dog — just downright nasty, dude!  What kind of sorry-ass governor campaigns on a family values platform, “schtups” his maid in his house, and fathers a child with her, all the while keeping the baby a secret from his wife for thirteen years while the baby’s mother continues to scrub your floors and clean your nasty-ass toilets?  And weren’t you the one who called out ‘single mothers’ as one of our biggest social problems when you were running for governor?  Sheesh Louise, Arnold — you flushed twenty-five years of marriage down the proverbial toilet!  Give me back my gold-plated “his and her” ThighMasters, today!  On second thought, my girl, Maria, can keep hers, but I want yours back so that I can burn it.  Eeuuw! “Hasta la vista, baby!”

******

 IMP. NOTE:  This is a satirical essay on marriage.  I do not know the people listed above; I have no desire to know these people no matter how talented and intelligent some of them might be.  The kind of people I wish I knew, keep eluding me – like Norma and Gordon Yeager.

Google Image/Norma and Gordon Yeager’s hands

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Yeager:   May I call you by your first names:  Norma and Gordon?  I would have given just about anything to have known you.  I read that you died the other day and I am so very sorry that I missed you.  The Iowa paper said you had been married for 72 years when you got into that horrific car accident.  You must be turning over in your graves when you hear that Kim and Kris are getting a divorce after only 72 days and you had been married for 72 years!

You were 94 years old, Gordon, and you were 90 years old, Norma, when you both died.  Your children said that you both would tell anyone who would listen that you had to stay around for each other, because, as Mr. Yeager was fond of saying:  “I can’t go until she does because I’ve got to stay here for her.” I’m so grateful that the hospital administration had the good sense to put you two together in the same room in adjacent beds in the intensive care unit.  Had the staff not done that, your children would have missed something magnificent when you reached for each other’s hands in your semi-conscious states and held onto each other for dear life.  Had you not been together at that crucial time, we all would have missed something gloriously spiritual when you died, Gordon, at 3:38 on October 19^th, but your heart monitor still continued to produce a strong, consistent heartbeat.  Then the nurses and doctors wouldn’t have seen something they’ve never encountered in their lives:  your wife’s heartbeat pumping through your clasped hands, and her heartbeat pulsing through your body which caused your heart monitor to continue to register a steady beat even though you were dead.  When you died, Mrs. Yeager, at 4:38 — exactly one hour after Mr. Yeager — the world lost a marriage that should have been celebrated on the front page of every magazine and newspaper, and should have headlined the evening news across the country.  When one of your sons (Dennis) was interviewed about you, he said:

“I don’t believe there was a big
secret to their marriage. Sometimes one or the other would get mad but they
worked everything out. 

 In the end, they chose each other and that was it. They were committed.”

******

Norma and Gordon:  When your children had you placed in the same coffin, holding hands, and then had you cremated and your ashes mixed together, I realized that I had encountered a marriage that was holy, and I wished WW and I had been a part of your lives.

******

I am discovering that there are other Yeagers out there (few and far between, but they are out there).  I accidentally ran into a “Norma” the other day and her name is Tina from Interior Elements .  She writes in her blog post “Married. . .” (married for 28 years): “Being married for a long time is a lot of work and eventually, when the expectations dwindle out of sheer mental exhaustion, you get to know the person you did not invent.  Or tried to re-invent.”  Yep, there is hope for us yet!

Google Image/Prince William and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge

Dear Prince William and Your Royal Highness the Duchess of Cambridge:  If you guys don’t go the distance, I’m giving up the ghost, and I’m demanding my velvet painting of Elvis back.  Forewarned is forearmed!

Tomczyks: Keepin’ it real after 32 years

More marriages might survive if the partners realized that sometimes the better comes after the worse.  ~Doug Larson

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 Love seems the swiftest but it is the slowest of all growths.  No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.  ~Mark Twain

 ******

I figure that the degree of difficulty in combining two lives ranks somewhere between rerouting a hurricane and finding a parking place in downtown Manhattan.  ~Claire Cloninger, “When the Glass Slipper Doesn’t Fit and the Silver Spoon is in Someone Else’s Mouth”

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People do not marry people, not real ones anyway; they marry what they think the person is; they marry illusions and images.  The exciting adventure of marriage is finding out who the partner really is.  ~James L. Framo, “Explorations in Marital & Family Therapy”

All text and photos by Eleanor and John Tomczyk © 2011 except where otherwise noted

Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Eleanor Tomczyk and “How the Hell Did I End Up Here?” with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 

Sneaky Snake’s Blog

Do you know what I’ve discovered?  The entire world is blogging.  It seems everybody has an opinion about something, and the Internet is awash with his or her viewpoints.  I don’t care what you think or how you think about it, someone will have already put those concepts into a blog before you have even formed the thoughts.  The blogs are from all types of people, with every type of proclivity, in every country on the globe, and in every language that is printable.  Still, even knowing all that, I was stunned to run across the blog site of The Devil the other day.  There it was in plain sight on a popular blog site having been “freshly pressed” (featured as the “best” of some 350,000 bloggers).  I’ve got to tell you that that was a real pisser (my blog hasn’t even been freshly pressed), because the blogger had stolen some of my pictures and an assortment of people were DISCUSSING MY LIFE (as if I need that kind of attention from an evil entity) in his comments section.  I know this is impossible to believe which is why I’ve cut and pasted The Devil’s entire blog post below (comments and all).

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SNEAKY SNAKE’S HISSY FITS BLOG

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CHURNIN’ AND BURNIN’! by Lucifer S. Snake

(Tags: Dr. Evil, sarcasm, control issues, inappropriate behavior, anger issues, chaos, mayhem)

Hey, Homies – how’s it hangin’?  It’s been a while since I’ve been able to post anything on my blog.  I’ve been roaming the Earth trying to seduce people into walking on the wild side with me.  Doing a pretty good job if I do say so myself.  My business card which is in its gazillionth printing reads:  The original Dr. Evil — creator of murder, chaos, and mayhem.

I got back into town last night and bust out some digits to make a booty call to some of my shorties.  Then I sent a text to Saddam and Osama bin Laden to meet me in the inner circle at my new club, Hades 54.  It started off being a “good, good night” until that “has-been” trio (Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini) snuck in past the bouncer.  (They are sooooo yesterday!)  They came by my private area actin’ all dope and shit — like they just knew if they hung around long enough, I’d invite them to join my exclusive inner circle.  Anyway, I could have ignored those blowhards, but when that low-life Johnnie Cochran showed up (still wearing the skanky O.J. glove) and started boasting about how “if it doesn’t fit, you must acquit,” it was just too much to handle on my jet-lagged ass.  So I left my shorties to party on without me and went home to watch a movie by myself.

I was excited to see that Netflix had sent me The Adjustment Bureau, directed by George Nolfi.  I’ve been waiting for it to come out on DVD.  But it wasn’t what I expected.  First of all, it was a “sci-fi romance” which just makes me wants to barf.  I wanted me some “sci-fi,” only!   Then on top of the romance I think they snuck some Calvinism into it.  Nothing makes me sicker than the discussion of whether God gave people free will or if they are predestined to follow a certain plan, blah, blah, blah.  And don’t even get me started on this “soul mate” shit!  I AM THE GREAT ADJUSTER AND THE ULTIMATE SPOILER, and I have a dungeon full of records of fucked up relationships caused by my single-handed inspiration of lies, betrayal, racism, adultery, selfishness, rejection, abuse, and murder against that stomach turner:  love.  Anyway, dear reader, I know you’ll agree with me when you see this movie – it’s a bunch of shit.  Since everything’s been a disappointment tonight.  I think I’ll turn in so that I’ll have plenty of strength tomorrow to plan another land war in the Middle East.

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COMMENTS

marieantoinette says (5 minutes ago):  Hey Boo!  How U doin’?  Sorry we didn’t get a chance to do The Devil’s Slide tonight.  I reeaally love that dance.  Anyhooo, I just wanted to tell you that I liked your post, but I kind of disagree with you.  Now, wait a minute…wait a minute…don’t get mad at me or nothin’, Boo — I mean there are lots and lots of couples that you’ve tried to mess with or “adjust” their destinies with each other, and they did great in spite of you.  That’s all I’m sayin’.

sneakysnake’s response (5.2 minutes ago): WTF, woman — what do you know?

Yahweh says: (6 minutes ago): Marie’s right, you know.  You don’t get the last word — you never do and you never will.  You’re a spoiler of destinies, but if couples make the choice to push back, they can make it. Love wins — it always does.

sneakysnake’s response (10 minutes ago):  Who asked you?  Get the hell off my blog!

Yahweh says (12 minutes ago):  Why don’t you try and make me, Lucy?

sneakysnake’s response (20 minutes ago):  This isn’t faaaiiir; this is my domain.  What did you do to my “delete comment” button?  Did you override it again?  This is my blog, and I don’t want you commenting on it.  And I told you before: never, ever call me Lucy.  I HATE THAT NAME!

Yahweh says (21 minutes ago):  Why don’t you want my comments, Lucy?  Are you afraid you’ll be proven wrong?  Why don’t you stand behind your convictions, Luuuuuuccccy?   I think Marie has a point.  What about the Lovings (Richard and Mildred)?  Remember how you got some of your racist’s peeps to adjust the marriage law in the United States by adding miscegenation laws so that no white person could marry a person of color?

marieantoinette says (22 minutes ago):  Ooo-oo-oo, I remember them, Pumpkin!  He was white and she was black (with a little bit of Rappahannock Indian blood). They were high school sweethearts (isn’t that precious).  They tried to get married in the State of Virginia but the law forbade them.  So they fled to Washington, DC which didn’t have miscegenation laws, and they got married in 1958.  BUUUUUT, when they returned to their home in Virginia, the sheriff waited until they were asleep, burst into their bedroom, and drug them off to jail for breaking the law. They had to move out of Virginia or face going to jail for a long, long time. 

sneakysnake’s response (25 minutes ago):  SHUT UP, MARIE!

Yahweh says (25 minutes ago):  And didn’t Mildred push back after a while (she always was a feisty little thing) and petition the US Attorney General, Robert F. Kennedy, to revoke that law?  If I remember correctly the ACLU carried the challenge all the way to the Supreme Court, and in 1967 the miscegenation laws were struck down across the country.  I believe June 12^th is known as “Loving Day” to this day to celebrate mixed marriages.

sneakysnake’s response (30 minutes ago):  Just shoot me now with this saccharine shit.  You know good and well that you stacked the deck by giving them the last name of “Loving!”  Their name was a PR man’s wet dream given the circumstances.  Anyway, I kept the hatred going so that the law still remained in force for thirty more years.  South Carolina didn’t drop its law from the books until 1998 and Alabama didn’t drop its law until the year 2000.  I’m sure that screwed up a lot of destinies.  Not to mention that most of your “churches” supported the law and went to great lengths to uphold it – so what do you have to say about that, Mr. Holier-Than-Thou?

Yahweh says (35 minutes ago):  Admittedly, it wasn’t the Christian Church’s finest hour, and it broke my heart.  When the Church should have been a leader in breaking down barriers by marrying different races who desired to do so, it let the culture intimidate my law of love.

sneakysnake’s response (36 minutes ago):  Aha!  Finally, you’re admitting your peeps have been wrong  about something.  Anyway, I don’t care about those stupid Lovings, because I managed to strike a hateful blow against them in the end:  He died in a car accident in 1975 that left Mildred blind in one eye; she died in 2008 after having been a widow for 33 years.

Yahweh says (46 minutes ago):  You’ll never learn will you:  it’s not the quantity of time spent together, but it’s the quality of the love shared in the time given.

sneakysnake’s response (47 minutes ago):  HISSSSSSSSSSSSSS!

Yahweh says (50 minutes ago):  You never know the complete story about anything on Earth, Lucy, which is why you always get tripped up.  There is always a hidden magic that defies logic. The Lovings’ life and actions paved the way for two babies born in 1948 and 1952 who were destined to marry each other in spite of your interference.  Remember the little girl called “Pipsqueak” who became a singer and writer and the little boy she would someday call “White and Wonderful” (WW) who would become the love of her life?  I found their pictures when they were children — one was born in the Mid-West and the other was born in New England.  Remember them?

marieantoinette says (55 minutes ago):  Oh, aren’t they adorable?  I remember you telling me about them Sneaky, baby.  I’ve always secretly loved that story.  She was black and grew up in an orphanage and multiple foster homes, thinking she would never amount to nothin’.  He was white, but he was a direct descendent of Governor Bradford of the Mayflower (with the papers to prove it, no less).  He always thought at the very least he’d grow up to be a lawyer and at the most he’d be president of the United States.  But then Sneaky, darlin’, you said you threw all sorts of life-altering crap their way as they were growing up, trying to make sure their paths never crossed.  Didn’t you tell me that they once passed each other on the campus where the boy went to college, but they didn’t notice each other?

sneakysnake’s response (60 minutes ago):  Bitch, you are so going to be toast when I catch up with you.  Now, shut the fuck up!

Yahweh says (60.2 minutes ago):  No need to take your frustrations out on Marie.  I’m the one you’re angry at.  Problem is your arms are too short to box with me and you know it.

Marie, there is more to the story.  Your boyfriend knew these two were destined to be together – he could smell it on them.  So he tampered with the boy’s law school acceptances (who graduates Magna Cum Laude from one of the best high schools in the nation and doesn’t get into even the bottom choice of law schools that he’s chosen?). The girl got a fellowship to the graduate school next door where the boy graduated (this is when they should have met), but the funding fell through at the last minute to attend that particular program.  Disillusioned and disappointed, the boy took some entry level job as a DJ in Virginia, and the girl went off to NYC to pursue a career as a singer, not knowing what else to do.  At that point, it seemed as if their paths would never cross.  In fact, they both made very poor choices that summer that almost derailed their destinies forever.

aynrand says (65 minutes ago):  Hello there, Ayn here!  Okay, I’ve had it with this bullshit!  I’ve been following the comments all along, and I wasn’t going to say anything because you know I can’t stand “you know who.”  But everyone keeps missing the point:  the Negro girl and the white boy do meet because “someone” interfered!  The playing field was leveled because “someone” influenced some altruistic do-gooder to give the girl a scholarship to a liberal arts school.  The boy would have never even come near the girl if she had not been his equal educationally because he prided himself on being an intellectual.  Natural selection was supposed to run its course to weed her out and it didn’t.  I, for one, am pissed!  If you had read any of my books, Atlas Shrugged or Fountainhead, you would know that certain groups are born to be on the bottom and should stay there.

Yahweh says (67 minutes ago):  Well, well, well Ayn, what hole in Hell did you climb out of?  I see you’re still trying to hawk your tale that greed and selfishness against the poor and disenfranchised is a morally superior choice.  Tell me; didn’t your self-centeredness and hatred for the weak and poor leave you bitter, angry, and alone in your old age with nothing but a shell of your philosophies to keep you warm?

aynrand says (70 minutes ago):  COMMENT DELETED BY BLOG ADMINISTRATOR (some words are too inflammatory even for Sneaky Snake’s blog).

marieantoinette says (75 minutes ago):  Poookiee – sweetie; are you okay?  I looked up the girl and the boy on the cosmic Internet, and it looks like you did deliver several juicy devastating destiny-altering blows to them both.  The girl left NYC to join a commune in NY State a year after she graduated college.  The boy was actually told to transfer to that same area of the country for his new job but refused to do so. They really almost missed connecting.  You did good, babe!

sneakysnake’s response (80 minutes ago):  BUT THEY DIDN’T MISS CONNECTING, BITCH!  Could you be more of an idiot, Marie?  Did you see the part where they both have a “religious experience” and go searching for truth throughout the land?  Of all the communes and ashrams around the world, what are the odds the two of them would end up in the same one at the same time?  Huh?  I know why:  HIM!!!

friedrichwilhelmnietzsche says (85 minutes ago): Hey Dude, Fred Nietzsche here!  Congrats on being “freshly pressed!”  Way to go!  I just wanted to state the obvious:  stop bantering with the Yahweh commenter – he doesn’t exist!  You’re getting all worked up over nothing.  Can you see him?  No!  Now move on!

Yahweh says (90 minute ago):  LOL!  Nietzsche, you kill me – not! 

marieantoinette says (92 minutes ago):  Awwww, Pookie look at the wedding picture I found of the boy and girl on Google.  I know pictures like this one aren’t supposed to affect me, but I just can’t help myself.

sneakysnake’s response (95 minutes ago):  Marie, are you crying?  Oh, for Satan’s sake!  You have gotten on my every last nerve tonight.  Don’t you have a beheading to attend or something?  For your information, I did throw a few roadblocks in their way after they “fell in love.”  His mother was totally against the marriage – she even refused to submit the girl’s engagement picture to the local newspaper so as not to embarrass the family. 

Yahweh says (100 minutes ago):  And what choice did her man make in response to The Mother’s ignorance?  He stood against his mother and all the other haters and announced to them:  “You’re either with me or against me, but I’m marrying this woman.  She’s my African queen, and wherever she goes, I go.”  The girl even wavered at one point and tried to run away and hook up with a man from Bermuda just because he was the same race as her (I’m sure you had something to do with that temptation, Lucy).  But in the end, the girl chose the boy because she knew he was the man she had been looking for all her life.  So what are you planning on telliing your blog audience, Lucy?  Was it free will that brought the little black girl and the little white boy together, or were they destined to be soul mates in spite of all the obstacles?

marieantoinette says (120 minutes):  Sweetie, are you going to answer him?  Cause if you aren’t I want to show your readers the picture I found of the couple ten years into their marriage.  Look at that beautiful family, Pookie!  (I personally think mixed couples always have the prettiest babies.)  Anyhoo, I’ve been doin’ some more research on the Web, and our couple married four years after that marriage law was struck down by the Supreme Court, BUT it was still being enacted in a lot of southern states.  It says here that they celebrated their 33^rd anniversary this year on the same weekend in June that the Lovings so courageously made a way for mixed marriages to become legal.  Oh well, looks like you can’t win ‘em all Sneaky-bear.

sneakysnake’s response (122 minutes):  HISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS! GET OUT!  I HATE YOU — I HATE YOU ALL!

I am discovering that there is really no magic formula to finding the right man or woman to travel this sometimes very scary journey on Earth with.  I wish I knew a formula because then I could bottle it, sell it, and become a very wealthy woman, while at the same time eradicating a lot of pain, including in the lives of my own children.  I’ve met people who were perfect for each other and they met randomly, or got “assigned” to marry by their parents in third world countries, or met online, or got set up on blind dates.  All of it works and none of it can work.  And that’s the point.  I’m discovering that love is a choice (not just an emotion), and how we connect to that love is a mystery.  I personally don’t believe in love at first sight.  I think we are “in lust” at first sight, unable to keep out of each other’s drawers.  But I do believe that every time a couple overcomes some obstacle or pain and they “choose” to care for and cherish each other in the midst of the mayhem instead of running away or pushing each other away, they grow deeper in love. In the midst of the worst temptation, hardship, or disappointment when a couple says, “I choose you (over everything and everyone else), no matter what the  cost – I CHOOSE YOU!” Then love rules – love wins!

“Most people live life on the path we set for them, too afraid to explore any other.  But once in a while people like you come along who knock down all the obstacles we put in your way.  People who realize free will is a gift you’ll never know how to use until you fight for it. . . .”  From the movie: The Adjustment Bureau (written and directed by George Nolfi), loosely based on the short story “Adjustment Team.”

All text and photos by Eleanor and John Tomczyk © 2011 except where otherwise noted

Photo of Mildred and Richard Loving, newspaper archives 1967

Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Eleanor Tomczyk and “How the Hell Did I End Up Here?” with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 

Once Upon a Time. . .

(Dedicated to my favorite newlyweds:  Mr. and Mrs. T.)

Do you know what I’ve discovered?   I’m a star in my own reality show.  My husband is my handsome co-star. We have grown children, but they have their own reality shows, and they don’t live with us anymore.  This week’s episode features my husband and it is temporarily entitled:  “He’s so crazy!”

In the interest of full disclosure, my husband is a white man.  I don’t mean just any ol’ white man; I mean a direct descendent of Governor Bradford of the Mayflower type of white man.  (His grandmother – a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution – gave him papers to prove it, no less.) He looks like a Republican and a Presbyterian minister, but he has a wicked Monty Python sense of humor.  I have known him for 37 years and have been married to him for 32.  He loves me like no one else on this Earth has ever loved me, and I love him with the same intensity.  He still takes my breath away and makes me weak in the knees just by the way he says my name.

I affectionately refer to him as “White and Wonderful” (WW), because I’ve never met a man like him.  He was raised to think he would someday be president of the United States at the very most or a successful lawyer at the very least.  He wasn’t born rich, by any means, but he was raised feeling a sense of what I call “white-man-entitlement syndrome.”  There has never been any question in my husband’s mind that the world wasn’t his oyster — until recently.  Our reality show has basically been a comfortable romantic comedy, but a few years ago, the storyline took a drastic turn for the worse when said white man lost his job and couldn’t get another one for love nor money.  On top of that stress, one of our family members, whom we love very dearly, decided to do a nose dive into her own reality show entitled:  “The Lost Years.”

One morning WW came into the kitchen and summarily announced:  “I’ve had enough of this shit!   To quote one of my favorite movies, Men at Work, ‘this is a waste of a perfectly good white boy.’”

(As a black woman, I consider myself morally superior to my husband in all things involving suffering, so I responded in my best Wanda Sykes’ voice:  “Weeeell, now you know how the black man feels.”)

WW looked at me and shook his head in total frustration but continued trying to articulate how he had attempted to solve his current dilemma.  “I’m going to the mountaintop to ask God just what was he thinking when he allowed this mess to fall upon me, and what in the hell does he expect me to do about it that I haven’t already done?  I’ll be back in time enough for lunch.  Shall we have a little tuna wiggle when I return?”

“Sure, knock yourself out, baby – go on with your bad self,” I replied as I watched WW try and invoke the spirit of Martin Luther King, Jr. in his quest to “get over” his first hurdle as a privileged white male.

When WW returned he had the serene look of one who had taken the route of Moses and Martin, gone up to
the top of Mount Sinai or Stone Mountain, and had seen the face of God.   He’d come back down to tell his peeps (namely me) what God had spoken:  “I have been to the mountaintop and I’ve heard God.”

“Oh, do tell.  And just what did God say to his ‘perfectly good white boy?’” I said trying not to laugh.

“God said I’m to become an international adventurer and you are to be my sidekick.”

“Ooooooo-kay,” I replied, as I surreptitiously tried to find the number of a psychiatrist friend of ours while breaking out into gales of laughter that I just couldn’t control any more.

“Stop laughing – I’m dead serious!” said WW, trying to keep himself from cracking up at how ludicrous he sounded.  “Our troubles are causing our life-story to get off track here.  Our lives are being completely defined by loss – loss of employment, loss of our savings, and loss of a loved one.   We need to hit the spiritual refresh button.  I propose we start small.  Are you with me in this, honey?  I suggest we take the rest of our savings and…wait for it…wait-for-it – get back in touch with who we’re created to be by exploring a rain forest!”

 Oy vey iz mir! — Woe is me, I am undone, I thought.   However, I packed by bags and some mosquito
spray because I love my man, but I couldn’t help wondering what the hell I was going to do with a husband who had clearly lost his ever-lovin’ mind.

In the beginning, the adventure wasn’t so bad.  As a black woman who believes that if God wanted people to camp he would have made us bugs, I set in place some ground rules as the “sidekick” regarding how I wished to “roll” during this adventure.

• Absolutely no camping!  We could hike and explore until the cows came home but come night fall I wanted clean sheets, a vodka gimlet, and a spa.
•  Absolutely no danger!  We could explore the rain forest and see “lizards and shit galore” but come night fall, I wanted mosquito netting and a flat screen TV.
•  Absolutely no water sports!  I’ve always engaged in the time-honored tradition that black women just don’t “do water” because it gets our hair wet, and we spend a fortune grooming our hair.  Throwing all that money down the drain just to frolic in water was a real deal breaker for me, not to mention the tiny fact that I can’t swim.  (I eventually had to compromise on this particular demand because WW loves water and swims like a fish — so we slightly adjusted our itinerary.  WW would snorkel and frolic with giant sea turtles if a way could be found for me to carry on my diva role while cheering him on.)

At first the trip was amazing and so romantic.  We were greeted by a host in a lobby with no walls, while a gentle breeze whispered softly through our hair – “Welcome to Shangri-La, Mr. and Mrs. Tomczyk.”  Our concierge gave us fresh squeezed, nectar-of-the-gods fruit juice to drink and moist towels to wipe the grime of the day from our hands.  Our man, Jeeves, assured us that my spa appointments had been confirmed with their best masseuse, and that he had taken the liberty to set up our snorkeling trip, our river cruise, and our trek through the rain forest with his best tour guides.

The next morning, we toured the coastline of our host country in a catamaran – something I’d never seen before, and it wasn’t that bad.  WW got to play hide-and-go-seek with giant sea turtles in a hidden cove while I sipped Planter’s Punches on the deck, ate fresh guacamole, salsa, and tortilla chips, read a wonderful book, and cheered my husband on in his “Tarzan’s frolic-in-the-deep fantasy” while maintaining my totally-dry-diva-self on the boat.

However, on the second day things turned ominous when we took the river cruise.  Now, when someone uses the words river and cruising in the same sentence, I automatically think Aristotle Onassis’ yacht, the Christina, which is why I wore my gold hoops.  What I don’t envision is what I eventually acquiesced to:  a rubber raft that had been patched in several places with duct tape, for crying out loud!  I also don’t expect there to be rapids, and I certainly don’t expect crocodiles.  For years afterwards, WW would swear that he
had offered me the chance to take the “river cruise” on a rather large river boat that held scores of tourists, but I had opted for the more intimate tour for two, because I said “I wasn’t a child or an old woman – I was the International Adventurer’s sidekick.”  Yeah, right!

The moderate rapids didn’t scare me at all because long before I encountered them, I made the mistake of
asking my rubber-raft captain why one of his guys was in a kayak a few yards ahead of us and kept making figure eights in the water.

“To distract the crocodiles if they decide to charge the raft.  But don’t worry, Señorita, it’s too hot for them to venture out — they’re probably sleeping.”

At just that moment, a prickly log of about two feet long appeared on the surface of the water just off to my left, and two dark eyes fixated on my blow-up toy of a boat.  As I slowly realized that what I was seeing
was just the head of a crocodile, I cautiously whispered to our guide, “So, what is the ratio of a croc’s head to the full length of its body?”

“Oh, about one ninth,” he replied,
having just seen the same shady-eyed log.

“So that would make that particular
‘log’ 15 – 20 feet long — correct?”

“Si, Señorita,” he said as he began
to signal to his co-worker in the kayak, and they both began to stroke a lot faster.

“And how much would a log that
length normally weigh?”  I softly queried
the captain as I tried to figure out my options as a potential lunch special to
a crocodile.

“Ah. . .about 1,000 kilos or 2,200
pounds give or take a few grams,” the rubber-ducky boat captain said as he
pointed out some howler monkeys to try and distract me.

As I frantically looked to the right to get WW’s attention, we both saw the shoreline riddled with baby
crocs who were sunning themselves, and I instinctively knew three things:  1) where there are babies, a mother is not far off, 2) that kayak man frantically doing the figure eights was going to be snack food at any moment, and 3) the International Adventurer and his Sidekick were going to enter heaven at the behest of a momma or a papa crocodile who had feasted on us as an entrée.  Before we could utter our first syllable of the fox-hole prayer uttered by many a dying man (“Help me, Jesus, help, help me Jesus!”), the rapids were upon us and we slipped away into a safer waterway while trying to keep our bowels intact.  (I would later learn that crocs don’t like rushing water which is one reason we got away – we sing your praises oh mighty rapids! – and at least one tourist a year is killed by crocs in that same river where we had our adventure.)   My diary that night had only one entry:  WTF!

The third day our concierge had booked us on a walking tour through a section of the rain forest with a naturalist who would help us identify plant life and the age of trees.  (“Now this is my speed —this is what I’m talkin’ about!”  I said to the International Adventurer.)   What we hadn’t noticed was that part of the rain forest journey included a zip-line tour.  We’d never done zip-lining before, and at first I refused to go near any of this shit.  But I could see that my International Adventurer was chomping at the bit to give it a try.  The concierge boasted that all his clients came back raving about the experience.  He hadn’t done it himself, but how hard could it be?  “You simply hang onto a steel cable line, slide down an incline from hilltop to hilltop, and see a great view of the rain forest going down.  Now please sign here, here, and here, absolving the resort of all responsibility.”

The first clue that things might go horribly wrong was when it took 15 minutes to strap the harness over my Dolly Parton boobs (DPs).  Then my diva hairdo was flattened in a hairnet and a helmet was placed on top of the hairnet, which caused me not a little consternation.  The final item of the attire was a stiff, weather-worn glove two sizes too big that I was told I needed in order to squeeze the brake to slow down my descent before I hit the landing platform.  But the brake was two feet above my head, and the glove was frozen into a jazz-hand pose due to years of encrusted dirt — making it impossible to bend around the brake.

Now here’s the thing:  when the makers of the zip-line (a.k.a “the death slide”) invented this demonic entertainment, they didn’t take into account what would happen to a person’s body that front-loads 38 GG boobs on their little pathetic hanger.  The one skinny rope that is supposed to hold up the rider’s body is no match for that force of nature, and instead of me being able to hold myself perpendicular to the zip-line, the force of gravity from my DPs pushed me down horizontally and I couldn’t reach the brake.  As I began
hurtling down the line over the rain forest at 90 miles an hour, I envisioned myself whizzing right past the startled faces of WW and the rest of the tourists on the first platform and then barreling on down through the next 10 platforms of the zip-line as the operators screamed in horror:  “RUN-AWAY ZIP-LINER CAREENING TO HER DEATH – GET OFF THE LINE, GET OFF THE LINE!”

I immediately initiated the only calming things I could think of to control my bubbling hysteria:  I closed my eyes and started doing pregnancy breathing exercises (“pant-pant-blow/hee-hee-hoo”).   But before I could do much else, my body came to a screeching halt in the middle of the line approximately two hundred feet above the tallest tree in the rain forest.  I couldn’t go backwards and I couldn’t go forwards.  At that point, as I began to swing in the breeze — neither here nor there — my tour guide who was a teenage boy and weighed all of 90 pounds soaking wet began to shout in a sing-songy voice:

“LA-A-TY, JU-U-U STU-U-U-CK!

  WOW, GES LUKE AT JU, SWINGING IN DE BREEZE!

  OKAY — GAME TIME IS OVER, NOW.

   UNSTICK JU SELF!  REACH UP AN GRAB DA LINE AN PULL JU SELF FUWARD TO SAFETY.”

“I CAN’T,” I screamed back to the guide as I arduously tried to reach for the line and pull myself upward.  Without something solid to brace my feet against, I couldn’t overcome the gravity weighing down my upper torso from my 38GGs.  I needed to sit up in a perpendicular position, hugging the cable, so that I could glide down the incline instead of causing the line to dip into a sharp “V”.  But it was hopeless.  Plus the more I tried, the more I began to swirl around like an upside down propeller. “PLEASE COME AND GET ME, PLEASE – I CAN’T DO THIS BY MYSELF!”

“SURE JU CAN, LA-TY,” said my boy tour guide, as if he were speaking to a five year old.   “GES TRY HARDER.  I CAN SEE DAT JU GES NOT DOING JU BEST – DATS WHAT I TINK.”

As my body languidly twirled around and around, and my death seemed imminently near, I completely
lost it at the pronouncement of the tour guide’s final chastisement.  I am not proud of what I said next to that
child, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

“LISTEN. . . YOU LITTLE SON-OF-A-BITCH; CAN’T YOU SEE I’VE FLAT LINED, HERE!   NOW GET
YOUR SKINNY LITTLE ASS OUT HERE AND PULL ME BACK TO THAT PLATFORM BEFORE I GO
CRASHING DOWN TO THE RAIN FOREST FLOOR!  SO HELP ME GOD, IF I FALL AND DIE, I PLAN TO COME BACK FROM THE DEAD, HUNT YOU DOWN, AND OPEN UP A CAN OF WHUP ASS ON YOU THAT WILL NEVER END!  YOUR OWN MOMMA WON’T RECOGNIZE YOU WHEN I’M FINISHED WITH YOUR ASS!”  And on that note, I began to wail like a frightened child lost in the middle of a dark forest, as my body twirled out of control high above the forest floor.

The tour guide begrudgingly dragged himself out on the line and pulled me to safety, and it was the longest
15 minutes of my life.  (Imagine someone the size of Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory TV show pulling a person three times his size with his right hand, while utilizing his left hand to inch the two of us to safety, as I cheered him on with “hee-hee-hoo/hee-hee-hoo. . . .”). The International Adventurer and I cancelled the next 10 legs of the zip-line tour and let the senior guide lead us back to civilization.  (I could tell that WW had
hated the zip-line too, because he was as white as a ghost and wasn’t saying a word.)   As we traveled back down the mountain on foot, neither WW nor I could recall what had stressed us out so badly about our
everyday lives at home.  We were just glad to still be alive.  As we tightly clung to each other, the tour guide’s father tried to comfort us by regaling us with stories about how many people never make it past the first leg of the line:  “Iz sad ju gonna miss da waterfalls but iz good ju stop here – platform three iz ‘point of no return’ and dar is no way out except on da line!”

The other day I heard one of my grown children discussing her parents on the phone, and she said lately
she’s had to call before coming home to visit, because she never knew where we’d be or what we’d be doing.  “My parents have always chosen each other first – above everything and anyone.  They’ve always known what to sacrifice for each other to get them through the scary patches of life.  They’ve always known when to laugh at themselves.  Consequently, they seem to be more in love with each other each time I come home then the time before — you can see it all over their faces.  And I can’t prove it, but I think they’re still having sex at their age – ‘eee-uuw’!  Do you think we’ll ever have that kind of adventuresome love story?” our daughter said with a sigh.

I think our child had just realized something that her father knew all along.  The International Adventurer (a.k.a. WW) had discovered a universal truism during his “mountaintop experience” that I didn’t know at the time, but would soon learn: our lives are stories that connect to each other and to a universal story.  It is up to us to make sure that our storylines don’t get hijacked or become lopsided, and that we keep an authentic mix of love, adventure, sorrow, struggle, comedy, community, and worship if we want to remain vibrant and connected to each other and God.  We can’t always control what others do to us, but we can control how we respond to any given tragedy, mayhem, or offense.  We can’t know what the future will throw at us, but we can try to be as wise as possible about our choices – given that there are no insignificant ones.   It turns out our personal reality shows need to be carefully cultivated into lives that are well-lived and brimming with integrity.

It has been many years since the rain forest adventure.  Some type of employment returned (as it always does) and our errant family member grew up and got a saner reality show entitled “What the Hell was I Thinking!”  When my husband awoke the other day, he had such a contented smile on his face that I asked him what he was thinking.  He replied, “I’m thinking how I could have never done this journey without you, and what a very, very lucky man I am.”  And then he got a mischievous twinkle in his eye and said:   “I’m also thinking of doing a Google search on African safaris.”

 To which I replied in my most affectionate, Wanda Sykes voice as I passionately kissed him good morning:  “You so crazy!”

If I have a hope, it’s that God sat over the dark nothing and wrote you and me, specifically, into the story, and put us in with the sunset and rainstorm as though to say, “Enjoy your place in my story. . . .”
  A Million Miles in a Thousand Years   by Donald Miller

THE END

Text and photos by
Eleanor and John Tomczyk © 2011, except lounge post card

Lounge post card IP/Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts

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