Summer Salad

Boss-Lady passed this one on to me -- a nice twist on a mix we've made in my family for years. I really can't get enough of it. (But if you don't like cottage cheese, you won't be fond of this.)

In a medium to large bowl, combine:

Large container small curd, good quality cottage cheese
1/2 cucumber, chopped
1 fresh tomato, chopped
1/2 medium onion, finely chopped
2-3 generous dollops mayonnaise
lemon juice, to taste
salt and ground black pepper, to taste.

Refrigerate several hours to allow the onion to flavor the mixture through.

(Variation: Add sliced green olives.)

bridges standing still

Chicago celebrated the Fourth of July on the night of the Third, holding its annual fireworks display over the lake. I was there visiting J.; she had just finished taking her national board exam in her med program, and I had chosen that week for my vacation, and Chicago in summer is a great way to blow off some restless steam and add another year to what I hoped would become an annual tradition. We spent the late afternoon and early evening with her fellow med student friends picnicking in the park.

Unlike some of my experiences with students in the humanities, the med students willingly accepted an outsider into their social ranks without unspoken judgment or talking too much shop, and I had a lovely time. Once real dark set in, we packed up and moved with the rest of the hundred thousand celebrants to stand in the streets on the lakeshore and admire the gorgeous explosions over the water.

I've always loved fireworks, and these were truly spectacular, all the deep, heart-jarring booms and trailing streaks of color that I look forward to every year. J.'s friend O. snapped pictures, hoping to get a good one; we all alternated between making fun of each other and standing in silent appreciation of the show.

The amazing part of the night, though, happened when the fireworks ended and the crowd began moving. I've driven on some of those streets in the daytime, and they're always whizzing with traffic; but every year for one evening automobile traffic stops and human traffic swarms the pavement. The festive atmosphere was made even more jovial by this rare release from the traffic laws that define American orderliness: We felt patriotic, and we felt naughty, and since patriotism started off as naughtiness, we gloried in upholding our country's origins by breaking, for a little while, from its laws. The men in our group mapped out the best way back to where we were going, the girls followed, and my heart burned with good American pride every time one of those well-bred boys turned and craned his neck to account for everyone else in the flock.

Our mapped-out route took us along a different way than the previous year's: This year, the bridge over the River was stopped. Cars sat silent, bumper to bumper on the arch, and we commented on its rather eerie resemblance to a zombie movie like I am Legend. Like an army of ants the pedestrians overtook the bridge en masse, even more delighted to be allowed to be naughty and walk between the waiting cars.

The view from the center of the bridge was astounding: The dark water curved directly to the horizon, a mirroring centerpoint for the lit high rises stepping back from its walls. I pulled out my cell phone to take pictures, not caring how touristy it looked; but then I heard hundreds of exclamations, and looked up to see Chicago natives everywhere running to the walled edges of the bridge, whipping out their own cameras and leaning over the river, calling their friends to take their portraits against the backdrop.

Snapping her own shots of the view, J. explained, "Pedestrians are never allowed on this bridge."

All around me I heard people saying, "...once in a lifetime view..." "...never see this again..." "...omigod, once in a lifetime, c'mere, get me standing right here..."

Our group scattered considerably, since all of us were hanging back to capture the moment. I savored it as long as possible, hardly looking where I was going when I finally decided that the naked-eye experience topped anything a picture could show me later. The cityscape was breathtaking, one of those sights that makes you somehow believe in human achievement and human goodness, that makes you catch your breath in pride at what you are, and what you all are together.

My cell phone doesn't take the best of pictures. I erased most of them. I don't need them to be terribly good, however; when I look at the ones I have left, once in awhile, I see against the dark backdrop of my mind the shimmer of lights, caught and held by black water under a black sky, and I hear around me the sounds of human wonder at humanity, astonished and captivated, united by a sudden beauty.

My Funny Valentine

(7/27/08 Construction notes: I've added a new Part V.)

I

It’s Easter break my senior year in college, a raw rainy night typical of Pennsylvania springs, and the yard is swathed in mud. My friend Kristin, who grew up in nearby Erie but whom I never met till college, is sitting with me on the outside swing so that she can smoke a cigarette while we chat. Her chipper, round baby-doll face, half obscured by her curly baby-doll black hair, grins up at my shoulder. Like me, she walks on the outskirts of acceptability at our tightly conservative school, and her company makes my loneliness less lonely, particularly as she possesses the rare gift of complete acceptance.

I first met her looking crazy on the sidewalk bordering the Quad next to my dorm. It was a crisp late September day, that perfect kind when the leaves riot in wild stabs of color and hurl themselves into the air, and, drunk on the autumn smell, I was cavorting around trying to catch them, one hand already full of the leaves I’d found remarkable. Kristin and her boyfriend Eric, one of my fellow English majors, came upon me just as I straightened up with an armful of leaves and a branch or two clutched to my chest.

"Tree lady!" Kristin said delightedly as they stopped. She laughed at me, but it was an exuberant, joyful laugh, one that didn’t say, as others’ laughter usually did, My God what a freak; it said, Oh how interesting!

As such acceptance is still rare, I drum my heels into the mud and laugh with her, staring happily into the empty small town streets. An indefinable something, a noise or a movement, catches my attention, and I turn my head to see, several yards behind me, the black cat Mom told me about, hiding behind the front wheel of our ‘87 Volkswagen Golf. His eyes are fixed, wide and fearful, on my face.

"He won’t come near anyone," Mom had said, "and he looks hungry."

Fear in any creature transports me to an overwhelming compassion, yanks out of me the passionate need to soothe and comfort, and my love for cats has defined me since early childhood; so I ease away from the swing, putting a little more distance between me and the cat, and crouch down the way any cat lover knows to crouch when trying to woo one.

"Heeeere, kittykitty," I croon, one hand extended, fingers rubbing in a soft shh. "Kittykittykitty, priiitty kitty."

I can hear Kristin telling me something that sounds like, You’re weird, but it only breaks halfway into my consciousness. All my attention focuses on willing the cat to come to me.

He inches out from under the car. He takes half a step in my direction, changes his mind, cringes back, and then begins to pace – quick, jerky paces, a movement I recognize as desire combating terror. Just before I change tactics, I see him take a breath as if gathering all his courage to him, and then he shoots across the yard and thrusts a ragged head under my hand and freezes.

I look down at him; his eyes are tightly closed. I croon again and begin, slowly, to stroke his head. His eyes pop open, he casts one look of relieved exhaustion at me, then flops on the ground, rolls around and begins to purr a throaty black-cat purr (which always sounds a little junglier than other cats’ purrs).

"I can’t believe that," Kristin says. Running my hands over the rough bones of starved ribs, I look up at her and smile.


II

"We named him Simon," Mom says.

I hold the phone away from my ear and stare at it in horror. Simon? I should have tried to sneak him back to school somehow. Of all the awesome names in the world for a black cat, "Simon" was never one that crossed my mind.

I can hear the phone buzzing, so I shift it back to my shoulder and say, in a defeated tone, "Simon...okay. How is he adjusting?"

I hear her masking worry under an irritating cheerfulness. "Oh, well, he’s still getting used to the other cats," she says.

As it turns out, "getting used to the other cats" isn’t so much a process as a state of being. Simon hates the other animals. When I move back home for the summer after graduation, I always find him hiding in the basement, looking sullen. If I cajole him for long enough with little tickles under the chin, he’ll usually emit a reluctant purr; but he prefers to be alone.

Occasionally a mood swing takes over and he follows me all over the house, charging from room to room, whirling in circles like a hairy dervish, and bolting back out again.

"Weird cat," is my sister’s remark.

"I like him," I respond.

Mom looks after him disappearing into the basement after growling at the dog one morning, and says, with a sigh, "Well...he still likes you best."

"Darn straight," I say.


III

"Okay, baby, we’re hooommme," I say in my crooning-to-Simon voice, pushing open the door to my apartment and wedging the cat carrier through. All my luggage still waits in the car, suitcases and bags and boxes of Christmas loot; but I wanted to take my best present right upstairs.

I’m terrified he’ll hate it here; the five-and-a-half hour ride seemed to traumatize him. I’m still mad at the State of Indiana for thundering uncalled-for hailstones down on the car just as Simon was starting to relax and cautiously emerge from under the coat I’d thrown over him, but I mask my worry under an irritating cheerfulness, close the door, set down the crate and pop its door.

Instead of remaining crouched inside, he flows out and perks his ears, looking down my little hallway toward the living room. As he sniffs the air a few times and begins to investigate, his deep purr rattles from his ribcage. Kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, living room – his expression, as he inspects my furniture and the size of our living space, is self-satisfied. Happy. In fifteen minutes he’s made himself at home.

At bedtime, once I’ve wrestled the suitcase upstairs to dig out my pajamas, I creep under the covers, shivering, and turn off the light. Somewhere in the night I vaguely wake enough to realize that I’m warm; when I open my eyes in the morning, I find Simon curled up on my feet, his blunt profile statuesque against the mirror.


IV

We’re a physical family. Always touching each other, simple absentminded touches: Mom running her hand along my shoulder as she passes me sitting at the dining room table, me whacking my sister gently on the hip to ask her to move to one side so I can get in the bathroom cupboard, Dad reaching for Mom’s hand after she passes him the chicken at supper.

Physical with our pets, too – always scratching the cats under the chin or petting them, sometimes the wrong way just to annoy them; thumping the dog’s barrel when he asks for a little affection. We discipline the pets physically as well, often necessary especially with the dog, a stubborn Doberman who needs constant reminders that he’s bottom of the family food chain.

We kind of control our pets, actually, but I didn’t think of it that way till now, trying to coax Simon out from behind the couch where he’s been hiding for an hour.

I caught him eating my favorite plant, and gave him a smack. Our other cat, Alex, glares at us, offended, when we do this and stalks off with injured dignity; but Simon gave me a horrified, terrified look and fled the room. I’ve spent the last hour in an agony of guilt, trying to love-talk him back to the hand he seems so afraid of.

When he finally creeps into the kitchen and touches my hand with his nose, I carefully stroke him, then gather him up. He starts to purr in my ear, and I vow aloud that I’ll never touch him in anger again.

I never do. And it’s funny how, after awhile, I notice that whether I stretch my hands toward him, or reach out a toe to scratch his jaw the way he loves, he never, ever flinches at my approach.

V

I've never put a whole lot of credence in ghosts. The supernatural, certainly; but the idea of not-quite-departed souls lingering in physical places didn't sit well with the theology in which I was raised.

My childhood best friend Hillori and I had all sorts of theories of our own to explain weird happenstances, particularly the ghost stories surrounding Gettysburg -- we both had a passion for the Civil War, and she reinacted as a soldier in a local regiment. Our pet theory involved rips in time, through which people could occasionally view the past. It didn't matter to us that it was uncorroborated by anyone else; we liked it, and that was that.

Of intense interest to us was an old house, uninhabited but maintained, that rested half a mile outside town. We discovered it one day on one of our after-school rambles, both of us avoiding, for our own reasons, going home. As we trekked down the road talking our favorite kind of nonsense, we looked past two shaggy rows of grapevines and a wild line of trees and saw the house. Small and white, with pieces of colored glass sitting on the inside windowpanes, it gave off every neglected air of a long unlived-in dwelling, although someone had mown the lawn.

The spirit of investigation overtook us, and we walked around peeking in all its windows, then ventured onto the surrounding property. The late spring balminess of the air brought out a charming, distinctly haunted atmosphere to the place. A few enormous lilac bushes in heavy bloom dotted the side yard; on the other side of the house was a tangle of vine-choked pines and a half-rotten cherry orchard. An outbuilding containing a couple of rusted classic cars shored up the backyard, and attached to that were the broken-down walls of something that had once been a cement-block room.

As we started around the back of the fallen walls, our feet crunched on the spiky balls of horse chestnuts. I felt a strange, threatening feeling coming from somewhere around me -- the feeling you get when unfriendly eyes are watching you. The sensation increased, and I looked up and saw the tree.

It was a huge chestnut, looming over the garage and most of the backyard, with its arms thrust violently upward and outward. Immovable, unshakeable, it threw off an aura of menace. I felt distinctly unwelcome.

Hillori and I glanced at each other, and turned without speaking to make our way back to the side of the house, where the feeling lessened considerably and became merely the sadness of an abandoned home.

"Did you feel it?" Hillori asked.

"Yeah," I said. "It was creepy."

"I think it was the tree," she said.

We returned many times to the house over the course of the next couple of years, enjoying the strange blessings the place yielded up -- English roses in early summer, wild grapes in early fall, wide cherry branches to perch on and watch the traffic from hiding while we talked. The lawn was always mown, but we never saw the mower.

And we never went back to the tree. Occasionally we'd creep a little closer to it than usual, to see if the forboding was still there, and it always was. We never came to any conclusions about it, never invented any theories beyond that trees are mysterious, and this one bore us ill will.

I think of that tree, and those deliciously half-creepy, happy times as I come thoughtfully back to my apartment's bathroom where I had been getting ready for bed. As I washed my face, I distinctly heard, in the upper ranges of my hearing, a faint jangling noise that sounded like my cell phone ringing. Most of my friends, and all of my family, live far away, and I spend a good deal of my off-work hours on the phone; any time it rings I rush to it in the delighted assurance that people love me.

But it hadn't rung. No "missed call" message blinked at me when I flipped open the cover to check. I carry the phone with me back to the tiny bathroom, put it where the volume will blast my ears if it rings, and return to rinsing my face.

And I hear the faint jangling again.

It happens rather frequently, and only when I'm in the bathroom. The house is old for the area -- built in 1901 in one of South Bend's historic districts, it was divided into four apartments many years ago, and I have speculated that my bathroom is one of the most unchanged in the house. It's been renovated, certainly, enough to put in caulked paneling around the cast-iron claw footed tub and rig pipes for a shower, but I strongly suspect that mine is the house's original tub, and there's a feeling in the bathroom -- not, as with the tree, a feeling of malice, but a strange kind of longing.

I conclude eventually that the whatever-it-is -- I still don't buy into the idea of ghosts -- attempts, from time to time, to make its presence known, to communicate something, and in the attempt does a weird mimicry of my cell phone, since that sound always brings me running. I don't talk about it much to anyone, because even I think the idea is crazy, but I'm not much given to hearing things, and this phenomenon is fairly consistent. Since it doesn't bother me, I shrug it off and learn to ignore it.

When Simon comes to live with me, the room he avoids most is the bathroom. Every time I step into the shower, he pushes his way through the door and sits on the floor yowling anxiously until I poke my head out from behind the curtain to reassure him that I'm still there. His worried, sharpened eyes fix on the place of my disappearance until I reemerge, and then he inevitably jumps into the tub to inspect every worn-enameled inch, lap at the standing water a few times, and jump back out to rub against my wet legs.

After a week or so, I realize that I don't hear the jangling half-music anymore. I look at my companion thoughtfully that night, as I brush my teeth and he stares at me, recalling all of the stories I've read claiming that spirits dislike cats. Whatever was or wasn't happening in that old bathroom, now whenever I bend down to wash my face in the cast-iron sink, I hear nothing at all, and when I lift my head to reach for the towel, the first thing I see, sitting in the doorway with watchful eyes tracking my movements, is Simon.

VI

Exhaustion and worry have horrible ways of intensifying each other, and the fluorescent lighting has me sitting with my head in my hands, trying to drive away a headache. Simon hunches as far under the counter as he can get on the other side of the exam room. I've tried reading but I can't concentrate. It's the third time in four days I've had him to the Animal ER, and my stomach hurts with the fear that I'll lose him, or, worse, have to make the choice to give him up.

He hasn't peed in days, and although my friends laugh a little when I tell them this, my tears quiet their scoffing.

"Look," I say, "a cat's urine is very, very toxic. If they can't pass it, it can kill them."

They offered sympathy, then, but now it's far too late to be calling anyone and I feel terribly alone.

Other unfortunate patients crowded the waiting room when my turn finally came to sit in one of the exam rooms -- a teacup poodle that had been standing in the wrong place when his owner kocked a can of Campbell's soup off the counter, a huge Golden Retriever panting in terror and pain from the lawn ornament stuck in his haunch, a mangy cat that looks merely old. Simon stopped yowling once I brought him in, and didn't move except to brush his nose against my fingers when I stuck them through the slats in the crate, until the exam room door closed and I let him out.

I watch him pressed up against the garbage can, trying to hide from the shrillness of the light and my palpable, though repressed, panic. Memories riot in the front of my mind, a montage of moments that made my life with him so idyllic. Me on the phone, saying, "Mom, it's so nice to have something care when I come home!" Simon flopping at my feet to stretch himself full length on the floor, backwards, until he looked so much like a big black hairy piece of elbow macaroni that I started calling him Noodle. Me laughing as Simon chases me in circles around the apartment, doubling back to charge me head-on, rolling triumphantly on the floor every time he startles me into a shriek. Me sleeping better with a heavy lump of warm kitty pressing on my feet. Waking up every morning to a hard furry little skull cracking against my forehead with a sharp purr. Mom saying, "He talks? He barely made any noise here, he's a different cat since he started living with you..."

And Simon sitting at my feet, his yellow eyes fixed on my face, lidding themselves slightly to my singing, "You've made me so very happy / I'm so glad you came into my life..."

I rub my forehead and look up, watching him watching me. He won't come over to me, and his fur looks matted and sweaty, and his eyes are glazed a little with pain.

I take a deep breath and start singing.

VII

The State of Denmark is rotten in summer. I've spent every day so far since the weather warmed up waving insects out of my path.

small world?

I shifted a little bit in the leather chair so that the cards I dropped into my lap wouldn't slither into the creases.

"Well, you know," I was saying to Meg, "I just really like E. She's one of the only ones who didn't look at me as if I were lying to her."

We were discussing, as women will, the difficult nature of obtaining a decent OB/GYN while I played solitaire and Meg bottle-fed Josie.

"Plus, she hates how insurance companies don't cover stuff for women," I said. "She promised to write a nasty letter if they give me trouble."

"Nice," said Meg. "Where do you go?"

"That one on Lafayette."

"Oh really? No way!" she said. "That's where I go! What's your nurse practictioner like?"

"Pretty, curly light hair..."

"...tall?"

"Yeah! That's the one."

"Wow! She did our ultrasound, I really liked her."

We grinned at each other and sat back, murmuring about small worlds and the strange coincidences that bring women together. We swapped a few more stories while she played with Josie and I reshuffled the deck.

Later, as we got ready to take Josie on a walk with Meg's husband Phillip, Meg looked up from squeezing Josie into her adorable little pink pants.

"Wait," she said. "Didn't I recommend you to that place?"

I thought for a second and burst out laughing.

"Yes," I said. "You did. Three years ago."

We spent the next few minutes doubled over, mocking ourselves. "You know you've been friends forever when..." we said.

Phillip told us later that he'd overheard the conversation from where he worked on the computer in the next room.

"Did you hear us realize how stupid we were?" Meg asked.

Phillip said placidly, with his usual edge of sarcasm, "I heard. I remember Meg telling Sarah to go there."

Meg and I decided that completely forgetting certain things make life a constant and delightful surprise. Everything seems like a coincidence.

rushed

I've been staring at a computer screen all week at work; it's crrrrrazy.

In lieu of a more thoughtful post (I have one or two in the works, but they're a little more in-depth and therefore time-consuming), I'm going to write about fingernails.

My maternal grandfather's best redeeming quality is his fingernails. They're indecently long, strong, smooth, lovely. I always glare at his hands when I visit, irritated with my DNA for throwing out that gene and handing me the ridged, brittle, flaky fingernails that were a horrendous plague to a teenaged girl learning about obsessions with nail polish.

The best and most socially acceptable solution was to take piano lessons, which required the short, stubby fingernails my hands naturally seemed to favor. Fortunately my nail beds are deep and well-shaped enough that my fingernails still look elongated and slender; applying nail polish was just a bit messier for me than for other girls.

I found, in the end, that ingrained habits are like ivy, working stubborn little prying roots into the cracks of girlhood wishes: I prefer short nails. My undressed fingertips are more readily in control of what they're doing, and I have fewer calluses where the nails embed themselves in my palms when I write.

But if ingrained habit is strong, busyness and laziness are even stronger. And so, for probably the first time in my life, my fingernails are, for me, long (for the rest of the world, there) and strong (I must be eating properly), and all day as I've been typing dictations and murdering my eyes on the computer screen, my fingernails have skittered over the keys threatening me with typos and carpel tunnel.

And, true to form, and the dilemma that is modern womanhood, I'm torn between following my preference and cutting them off, and vainly preserving the prettiness of their social normalcy.

hello, goodbye

I remember as a teenager watching my favorite TV shows and movies and feeling a certain amount of derisive confusion regarding the characters' telephone conversations. Always curt and dramatic, however dull the call, the actors delivered their dialogues and hung up without saying goodbye:

"No, I won't drive you to the park. My schedule's too busy. Ask Ernie, okay? Okay." Click.

"I love you so much. I can't wait to see you again." Click.

"Hi, Mom, I'm in the hospital and this will probably be my last phone call. I know you can't make it here in time, so I want you to know that I love you and forgive you." Click.

"When are we meeting for lunch? Okay, sounds good." Click.

At the time I thought this absurd. "There's Hollywood for you," my friends and I would say, "inciting drama at the expense of real life. Nobody gets off the phone like that. Who doesn't say goodbye? Maybe they're trying to cut screen time."

And yet, I've noticed, very few people in real life have time any longer to say "goodbye." Even "'bye" seems to take too much time. Most of the calls going into or coming out of my office end in "uh-huh," "okay," or "thank you." And then, just like the actors I ridiculed in my adolescence, both parties hang up.

Have we grown too busy and impatient, with all the forms of instant communication available to us? Have we succumbed to the example of the television and the big screen in our haste to get more done? Have we become ruder as a people?

Or is it, maybe, all of that and something else? "Goodbye" is a contraction of the Old English for "God be with you." In most of the Romance languages as well, bidding a person "goodbye" commits him to God (the Spanish "adios," as well as the French "adieu," the Italian "addio," and the Portugues "adeus," literally mean, "to God"). In more dangerous times, when travel was long and difficult, visits were few and far between, plagues abounded and the mortality rate was generally high -- and the populace as a whole believed in God -- the bidding made excellent sense; even if the person was your neighbor, you might never see him again.

So perhaps the gradual disappearance of "goodbye," at least from the business world (at least in my area), reflects our cultural worldview.

"Hello," on the other hand, comes from OE/Latinate "Hallo," or "Hollo," or "Holla," basically meaning, "Hey, you!" Which strikes me as funny -- the irony is significant, because "hello" doesn't seem to be going anywhere, and is foundationally kind of rude.

Whatever the cause, saying goodbye to goodbye feels a little strange, now that I've started to notice it.

will you lie your way home?

Yesterday in the office I received a lengthy business-related phone call from a man who then came into the office today and began telling me about the issue all over again while he waited for Boss-Man to come to the front.

I stopped him with a smile to say, "I was the one you spoke with yesterday, Mr. ____."

He pointed at me. "That was you."

"Yes."

"Oh," he said, with a leer. "The sexy one."

There are not words sufficient enough to express how much I hate these kinds of incidents. I find that word, from a stranger, extremely offensive – how much more blatantly can it be stated that to him I am only a body on display for perusal? And why must he state that at all?

Yet even when the word is less offensive – pretty, beautiful, etc. – I find the situation uncomfortable. I don't know these men. They're not my friends; I'm not dating them. I’m not at a bar; I’m at work. If I were in a bar, I would be able to respond more freely; but since, at work, I am restricted to professionalism, I can do nothing but a.) become freezingly polite; b.) try to find something to do, preferably out of the room, where I don't have to look at the man in question; or c.) attempt to pretend that I’m not bothered by what feels like a kind of coercion, since I’m in a situation where a man is not acting like a gentleman, but, as I can do nothing to tell him so, I must act as though his actions weren’t rude, suggestive, and inappropriate.

Strangely it’s usually the older men who act this way; men closer to my age or younger tend toward a politeness we’re taught not to expect from our generation. If I’m sitting on my front porch, which faces the road, and someone drives by honking, he’s most likely over forty; if someone drives by and waves, he’s in his thirties or younger. (Teenagers are a coin toss.)

I don’t fault humanity for its sex drive; almost everyone has it, and I don’t have a problem with men in general; I like guys a lot. But I don’t like feeling, from specific individuals, that I’ve suddenly been reduced to the mental role of stripper in an environment where I have every right to feel professional and safe. These little instances make a girl feel embarrassed, powerless and soiled. They make a girl feel ashamed.

I don’t like that our culture has done this to us. To all of us, men and women alike. There’s something horribly wrong with this era of supposedly outspoken freedom. It's freedom in all the wrong ways.

high 80s

The laughable result of driving oneself everywhere with the window down: I looked at my arms yesterday and noticed that my left is a distinct shade browner than my right. So much for that even tan.

Okay, my fellow Children of the 80s, I was thinking about some of the indoctrination we received from the public school system when we were knee-high to a grasshopper (I'm not referring to it in a negative light, by the way), and wondered if it was uniform and nation-wide, or specific to certain regions. I'm planning a post on the issue, sharing my memories of those happy days, but I wanted to take a brief poll first:

When I hear "3 Rs," I think of one (well, three) thing(s). Do you? What are they?

(If no one responds in a couple of days, I'll give a hint.)

the ants come marching forth in hoardes, hurrah. hurrah.

My home has become in insect petting zoo.

It's completely disgusting. I don't object to creepy crawlies in the outdoors; I consider that "their" territory, and while I don't shed a tear or lose any sleep about stepping or sitting on, or swatting, a few here and there while walking or picnicking or what have you, I'm much more content to leave them alone, or observe them from my gigantic height with interest.

Inside, though, they transform into the insidious stuff of nightmares. And my little house -- which I've christened The State of Denmark -- having been built in a slipshod manner to serve as a summer cottage, seems to invite them in. Welcome! Come, occupy my corners high and low, bring all your relatives, bring a friend. Here there are damp dark spaces in plenty which no invention of human hands can clear. You shall live long and prosper in the baseboards and around the sinks. Your children's children's children shall look upon the weatherproof tiles and countertops and be glad.

So I am set upon from all sides.

But the good God has sent me a weapon forged in the groves of Florida: Comet. (Not just a bathroom cleaner, it turns out.) Last week I flipped on the bathroom light to start the bedtime process, and what met my eyes drove all thoughts of sleep away and sent gooseflesh crawling over my skin: two dozen enormous black carpenter ants just starting to scurry nervously in the sink. Two. Dozen. They were in my drinking cup. They were on my toothbrush. They were beginning to swarm over the lip of the sink.

I shrieked and rushed from the room, trying to think in a blind panic what I might have on hand that would kill them. I couldn't flush them down the sink until they removed themselves from the faucet handles. I ran in a little circle in the kitchen, then grabbed the 409. Once in the bathroom, however, the 409 failed me; too close to empty, it sputtered at the ants a little bit and subsided. I cursed and threw it from me. I scrabbled in the bathroom cupboards and my hands fell upon the bottle of Comet.

I rose from the floor brandishing my ally in what, to an ant, was probably the equivalent of Ursula emerging, huge and roaring, from The Little Mermaid's stormy waves. Only I didn't get close enough to let them dangle from my crown; I let loose a cannon spray of cleaner, shouting, Die!

They did. Quickly. I began reinforcing The State of Denmark's defenses by spraying down the walls and corners behind the sink where I suspected they had retreated upon seeing the ranks of their sistren fall.

I've been on the warpath ever since. It's sadly a losing battle -- the wet chilly summer has contributed to their flocking in droves away from the rain and into my living space. No matter how much I vacuum, however spotless the kitchen, however regularly taken out the trash, they reaccumulate at a horrifying rate. I've taken to wearing OFF! in the house and moving from room to room with the Comet clutched in hand. (The weird thing about Comet is that its active ingredient is citric acid. Not ammonia or bleach. Bizarre.)

This morning I finally picked up a can of atmospheric spray which promises to kill everything. I'm going to overhaul The State of Denmark to free myself of these ghoulish pests.

It all just underscores my decision -- my need -- to move out of this freaky little house when my lease runs out. If I don't, I'll have to a.) spend another stuffy, dreary winter in a tiny dark abode, and b.) pay another ten dollars a week for this already outrageously priced dwelling. (Dwelling? I don't actually call this dwelling.) And THAT's an idea that can take itself somewhere very hot.

But yes -- in the meantime, Comet has become my best friend. I think it's undermarketed. And it's less ghastly in the lungs than Raid.

May I help you?

I'm in Chicago, visiting my friend J. She and I have spent the evening poring over Mediterranean cookbooks to the dulcet strains of Peter Jackson's King Kong, and now she's curled up in bed and my sleeping bag lies open on the floor and I'm standing up to turn off the lights by the door.

I notice the light on in the closet that serves as a passageway to the bathroom. Since I hate sleeping in anything but cave-blind darkness, I stick my head in and crane my neck around, searching for a switch.

"How do you shut off the closet light?" I ask.

"Oh." Her drowsy voice sounds apologetic. "You can't. It had a string you pulled, but it came off and I keep forgetting to call the landlord, so the light's been on about three weeks."

"Three weeks?" I say. "Do you have a chair?"

We drag one into the closet and I climb up to search the light fixture, which resembles an umpire's mask, painted red. No knob or switch presents itself. I reach up to explore the rim and yank my hand back. It's oven hot.

I shake my fingers. "We should take out the light bulb."

"I don't want you burning yourself," J. says.

"It's not going to get any cooler," I answer. "Do you have any gloves?"

As she searches through a bin of winter clothes, I remember a hundred instances of my mother performing similar acts of fix-it rescues. She's pathologically helpful. Show her a person with a flat tire, and she's stopping the car and rooting through the trunk for a jack. Present her with a lost child in a crowded mall, and she's taking his small sweaty hand and marching off in search of a security guard. Become her neighbor and mention a broken window, and she's scaling a ladder with duct tape or filling her hands with splinters yanking a long-forgotten board out of the garage.

Something about it always annoyed me. Part of what I detested was how her attention would shift immediately from me to the helpless loser on the side of the road. I also disliked her openness -- she radiated "I want to help you" like a miniature sun of good will. She moved instantly from dropping and breaking glasses in the kitchen sink and bumping into table corners to possessing a do-or-die confident authority, even if she had no idea how to fix what was broken, and she seemed to do this mostly for strangers.

I didn't realize until a few years ago that I didn't like it because I had it too. Nothing interrupts your life like a rescue compulsion. I think our family was, somewhere far back in history, descended from St. Bernards. I could be screamingly late for an intensely important meeting, dancing in rage at the long lines at the post office, but should an elderly woman in a walker totter toward me on my way out the door, I'll wait five minutes for her to catch up so I can hold it for her.

On one of my summer college breaks, I was heading to the car to meet some friends when I saw a boy, about eight years old, take a tumble from his bicycle on the sidewalk bordering our yard. I think I broke light speed reaching him. He was just getting to his feet, staring at his bleeding hands with a pre-howling-fit horror, and he was all alone.

"Are you okay?" I said. "That was quite a fall. Let me see your hands."

Tears were spilling over his long blond lashes. With liquid blue Bambi eyes fixed on my face, he held out his hands for my inspection. Dirt and grit showed through the cuts under several layers of skin.

"We'd better wash that," I said. "Come on, I'll get you a Band-Aid."

He hung back, quavering, "My mom says I shouldn't go anywhere with strangers."

I wanted to fold him in my arms and keep him safe forever. "She's absolutely right," I said. "We won't go in the house. Just come into the yard and I'll wash your hands with the hose."

A little convinced but still wary, he followed me into the yard. I told him to wait there, went into the house for Neosporin, soap, a washcloth and Band-Aids, and went back out to him to fetch the promised hose. I doctored him up and sent him on his way, hoping that his mother wouldn't yell at him for following a stranger into her yard. My friends wondered why I arrived so late to the party. I shrugged.

You don't toot your horn when you have this thing, this by-product of an insane Boy Scout and a rabid paramedic, living in your chest. It's not something you do to look good. Most of the time it's embarrassing. Often I would love to be invisible, or have no face, or wear a mask. The thanks make me feel ashamed. I'm not that good of a person. I'm often lazy and bitchy and resentful and snide, ungracious to the people closest to me. I don't help out because it's good; I help out because I have no choice. I don't decide to help the man in leg braces reach the other side of the road. I don't choose to lift top-shelf groceries down into the carts of shorter shoppers. I don't choose. Something chooses for me. Helplessness, pain and fear yank out my inner St. Bernard and I'm at it before I've realized what I'm doing. So applause is pointless. I know the deeds are good, but they're not acts deserving of praise. And I can only fix small problems. If I had my way, I'd have a lot more power to fix larger problems, life problems, diseases, emotional trauma, poverty. Of course, I'd royally screw it up if I had that kind of authority, but still, my little episodes of helpfulness serve sometimes as a kind of apology for not being able to do more.

Learning not to fix things has been the hardest lesson of my life. I used to think I could save the world. I wanted to erase every line from every suffering face, I wanted to make people's lives happy and comfortable, and it seemed like everyone was suffering. In short, God wasn't doing it fast enough, and I wanted to take over.

I never got a Bruce Almighty shot -- and doubtless a good thing, too. Instead I failed, over and over, to fix people, and started to realize that a lot of human misery stems from free will, and that people tend to choose the things that will hurt them. Myself included. I chose, many times over, to take on the burdens of others' choices, thinking each time that maybe this person I could heal. It never worked.

But I learned. I can't pull a Peter and straighten the old man's crooked legs, but I can open the heavy door for him. I can't heal the pain of the divorcee still fighting with her ex over custody, but I can offer her a tissue. Others, and experience, have taught me that the small things matter the most in the end. The little things are like crossing a hot beach barefoot and stepping in a small spot of shade. The tree can't follow you all the way to the water, but it can keep the sand, here and there, just a little bit cool. The moments when the cashier voices her concern over the macabre self-loathing message on my shirt, when the middle-aged man asks if I can manage my heavy suitcase -- those are the moments that pull a person through the rough patches that nobody can overcome for him. I also learned this watching dozens of faces suffuse with gratitude as they yielded to my mother's compassionate authority.

And I still compulsively hate seeing things broken. So when J. straightens up from her bin with a glove and a heavy sock, I flip open my Swiss Army knife, put my hands in their protective coverings, and begin unscrewing the umpire's mask from the closet ceiling, saying, "Sorry. You probably just want to go to sleep, but this is where I'm my mother's daughter."