Bought the Farm

The good news about ant farms is that they haven't changed an iota since they were conceived and designed as a child's learning toy sometime around the Inquisition. There's still that John Steinbeck farmhouse in molded plastic, sitting high up on a fertile hill next to a proud silo. We know it's summer because the trees are full, giving the entire scene that smack of ideal bucolic optimism that will surely help me rationalize confining them to their enclosed, plastic fallout shelter for the rest of their leetle ant lives. Or until divine intervention intercedes and my ant farm gets knocked over by a raccoon, inciting a jailhouse patio break that would make Steve McQueen proud. But this is not that story.

The ants had to be ordered from the great ant warehouse that also supplies sea monkeys and live bait to all manner of iguana, lizard and snake. Once they arrived in a padded envelope, all twenty of them entangled in a single ant scrum, laying lifeless in a small cylindrical tube like failed astronauts on a doomed mission, I called the company.

"Don't worry," they said. "They'll wake up. They're just sleeping. Put them in the fridge and when you're ready to dispense them, pour them in to the ant farm and they'll wake up once they warm."

Like Ophelia. Or Walt Disney. Kind of a DIY home cryogenics lesson for kids. I get it, I thought, and dutifully put them in the fridge.

It was around this time that I got the bright idea of offering to bring in the ant farm to my son, Jimmy's, 4 year old pre-school class, to stay and live To donate forever. I thought I was pret-ty crafty, offering to donate our ant farm in the name of science and higher learning. My true m.o. was not wanting to have the ants anywhere on our property when the inevitable freedom break happened. Let the pre-school deal with an exterminator, was my line of thinking. I was surely on my way to hell in a hand-made, hand-painted, play-doh and popsicle stick fashioned hand-basket.

The big day arrived. I had read the instructions like I always do a new toy. I poured in the special life-time supply of magic sand and checked the plugs on the sides for damage control. I understood how often they should be fed, what optimum light they needed for superior existence, and went over my presentation to the students in my head. Finally, the moment was at hand. I was on.

"Does anyone know what this is, children?" I said smugly to the class as I pulled out the ant farm and rested it with a flourish on the low rhombus shaped table. Nine or so grubby little kids gathered around; my son among them. A few others were setting up shop or home or surgery elsewhere in the room, but I didn't take it personally.
"It's an ant farm," I answered myself in hyper-enthusiastic Chanel Thirteen-speak. Even Jimmy looked unimpressed. Thankfully, his teacher had left the room to handle some administrative business. Or have a smoke.

I continued, "You kids are going to get to see ants live and work and make a home for themselves over time. It's going to be really cool, you'll see."
They just looked at me with their big eyes and chubby wrists. Tough crowd.
"And these," I said, reaching into the bag and feeling around for the small, cylindrical vile, "are the ants." I pulled out the vile and held it up to the class.

Much to my delight, all twenty of them were writhing and crawling over each other like an over-caffeinated bacchanalian orgy. I slowly waved the vile over the crowd like a seasoned spokesperson on the Price is Right. I managed to garner a few ooohs and ahhs which boosted my ego and fueled my game. I looked at the vile then over at the leetle hole that I was supposed to shake the ants into once I removed the stopper. "Ready kids?" I said, and placed the vial right up against the ant farm's entrance, exhaled, and removed the stopper. Two, three, four, ants immediately crawled out of the vial's mouth and up along the vial and onto my hand and up my wrist before I could close the stopper again. I immediately, reflexively, swatted and flicked them off my wrist and and forearm with precision and force. I don't get it, I thought, not a single one of them went down into the hole were they were supposed to go. Didn't they know what utopia waited for them? Stupid ants.

"Why did you do that?" one of the kids asked.
I had to buy time. I needed to think.
"This is boring," another one said. Okay, okay, I thought, I had to think fast.
"Let's look at the directions kids. How many of your mommy's and daddy's read the directions when you get a new toy?" A few hands went up. "Good," I said, "well, they all should, and sometimes it's a good idea to read them again. So let's do that, shall we?" I quickly scanned the fold-out for guidance because I was losing my audience to the costume box.

"Here, kids. Right here is says, 'When you're ready to dispense the ants, cool them in the refrigerator for fifteen minutes then pour them in.'" Right! Their comas! I'd completely forgotten. Like sixteen little sleeping beauties in the back of a moving truck, I would just pour them in and they'd tumble down like good sports. They may wake up a bit dazed and bruised, but they'd shake it off and be jest fine.

But I didn't have fifteen minutes. Jimmy's teacher had popped in and tapped her watch. "I know," I reasoned out loud to the kids, "fifteen minutes in the refrigerator must work out to about two minutes in the freezer. It's called con-ver-sion. I'll be right back."

I slipped out of the room and over to the kitchen where the big fridge held a lifetime's supply of apple juice, popsicles and boo-boo ice. Into the frozen tundra I tossed the tiny vial and it landed without a sound on a hunk of frosted over ice cream drip. The minutes ticked by like hours as I counted to only ninety seconds before reaching in; god only knew knew how hard it would be to get my audience back.

"Here we go, kids, gather around, gather around," I sang brightly as I cursorily inspected the ants. Yup, they were asleep alright. Balled up into tiny knots, they didn't even flinch. I passed the vial once again in front of the five or six die hards who's golden attention spans had brought them back for the grand finale.

"They look dead," my son's best friend, Marvin, said.
"Oh, no," I trilled like Glinda the Good Witch, "the ants are sleeping very soundly." And as I unstopped the vial and tipped it toward the hole, they tumbled and rolled dutifully into their sandy shangri-la. For a full half a minute, we all watched in stony silence. The anticipation was so thick you could cut it with a dull, plastic, Fisher Price knife.
"When are they gonna wake up?" one girl asked through a fireman's mask.
"Oh, soon, very soon," I said. But I was starting to wonder.

"Did you kill them?" a round-faced boy asked.
I stammered, "Well, I wouldn't say that I killed them, per se..."
"What's per se?" my son asked.
"I'll explain later," I said; my lilting voice was deflating fast but I held on.
"Why don't we do this, kids," I said, "Let's put the ant farm on top of the piano in the sun, and give them a good, long chance to wake up in their own time."
"But what if they don't wake up?" the round-faced boy asked. His Kean-painting eyes seemed to grow bigger and rounder with each word he spoke.
"What if they don't wake up? Well, then, we'll know that they're in a happy place; in their very own ant heaven."
"Did you kill them on purpose?" my son asked.
"No Sweetie, no," I said and I reached across the table and cupped his chin in my sweaty hand. Could it be that he knew me this well, already? It's not liked we kept them on the patio and I came in one morning and made up the raccoon story. I could have just as easily done that, but no! We donated the ant farm to the school! Here I was, trying to parlay this into teaching moment to prove that I'm precisely not the mom he thinks I'm capable of being. But, it was too late. He knew me already.


"Oh, kids," I said with calm resignation, in my own voice; deciding to drop the lilt and the dulcet tones. My voice now carried the weight and timbre of the cold, hard truth. "If the ants did die, and they're not waking up, then it means that they died by accident. And I'm truly sorry. I read the directions, but I may have made a mistake. And people make mistakes all the time. Even grown-ups. Do you forgive me?"
There was a pause while I perused the stricken crowd.
"Yes," I heard a muffled voice say from behind the fireman's mask.
I didn't cry. I could have. But I didn't.
"Thank you. Now let's give these little guys a chance to wake up."

After explaining to my son's teacher that I'd killed off all the ants in front of the class, she decided that it would be best if I brought the ant farm home. I did, and set it on the patio table, in the sun, for a week. I wanted to give those ants every chance that the kids had given me. And that I hoped my son would give me in the future. Because a week in ant years is like a lifetime for us. And you don't have to read the directions to know that.

Artist, Funny Guy, Dad

The thing about funny people, that is, if they're really funny, they're funny 'til the day they die. Such was the case with my dad.

He died a couple of weeks ago, and if you think there's anything funny in that, there is, remarkably.

On the oncology floor of the hospital, Dad was king of the A jokes. His style was dry, his timing spot on, and every single joke killed. Even as the nuances of his delivery and subtlety of his facial expressions went over the nurses' heads, he kept us in stitches. We laughed for five days straight, my mom, two sisters, brother-in-law and me. Doubling over behind the fabric curtains, hiding behind hospital promotional packets, our bodies shook with muffled laughter. That is, when we weren't crying. Or trying to hide the tears. Or laughing through them.

Then one or two cancers morphed into three as we pried the truth from his doctors. When Dad figured out he was dying, he asked my sister point blank. She answered yes and he told her that he wanted to go home. So we unhooked, untethered and untangled him from the ICU, and off we went-- home again, hospice, jiggity-jig. We settled him into his favorite sun lit room, with his own sheets and favorite squishy pillow, down at the Jersey shore where he loved to paint the skies and sail his boat and watch his grandchildren swim in the ocean. He was now very, very home.

He continued to make us giggle although things were growing darker even as the sky outside was bright. Two of his dearest friends came for a visit and brought more mirth and thoughtful conversation. Even the minister had a great sense of humor. Very thorough and exceedingly honest, he spoke to my father with tempered delight which, in turn, gave Dad great comfort. Dad listened, saying, "Wonderful, wonderful," as he heard the wise words with closed eyes. After the good reverend left, Dad asked us repeatedly if we were OK. We lied and said we were.

That perfect day would be his last and he died the very next morning. He died quietly and without physical pain, in the bosom of his family. He always loved to say, "In the bosom of my family." And he would linger on the m as his mouth turned into a grin. That very same impish grin, as it turned out, would follow him out of his body and off into the sunset he so dearly loved to paint. We laughed and sobbed as we watched him go. Like a transatlantic voyager, which in a way I suppose he was, leaving for an extended trip. We tried to be happy for him, knowing that he'd pondered this trip his whole life-- had been perusing its brochures for eons. And now he was finally off and it was so hard to comprehend. It had been just seven days since he'd gone into the hospital and he'd only felt odd for two weeks prior. But as rushed as we felt saying so long and farewell, he left us with calm assurance and full closure. He died with his ducks in a row. He left us with a smile on his face.

Days later, my mother, sisters and I would circle the dining room table with his random stuff spread out like at a flea market. The mirror ball he installed in the ceiling 35 years ago hung over our heads, still. My mom had wanted to do this. "It has to be done," she said. So we surveyed his life and we laughed.

My one sister asked for the scrolling LED light up belt buckle that he wore with a smirk and reprogrammed for family holidays. My other sister asked for his other belt buckle, the one with the pink lips that we all remember him wearing in the seventies, with an even bigger smirk. I asked for his Michael Jackson "Off the Wall" album cover imprinted-onto-mirrored-sunglasses, which I can promise you, we all begged him not to wear out in public. (He did anyway.) And we each got a Buddha. It took a while, but finally, it was all divvied up and done.

My mom mostly watched. She had already kept what was precious to her-- his Soupy Sales autograph, his saved ticket stub from the Newport Jazz Festival. This round was for us.

So now I've got to find a place for his Swiss army knife and his grandfather's pocket watch. I'll pack away assorted bow ties for my son, should he grow up to be the sort of man who wears them. It's a crap shoot, I know, and he's only 5 1/2, but what the heck. They're his grandfather's ties. And books, and pipes and a trucker hat that reads Tolstoy in curly red letters across the front, which I'll wear intermittently with my South Park baseball hat when it rains and shines. And I'll keep his T-shirt that heralds the onslaught of the menacing "Med Fly" folded up with my "Free Pee Wee" tee. And maybe I'll set his little carved, wooden man-scratching-his-head statuette next to my framed photo of my sister mowing her lawn in Vermont, topless.

And I'll be reminded of his sense of humor, as dorky, cornball and endearingly hokey as it could be, when it wasn't masterfully sophisticated and clever. And I'll be glad that I have mine and my mother and sisters have similar. And I'll thank him for it. And remember.

Because if there's ever a time to be grateful for a sense of humor...

Drive-Thru

I keep writing new pieces then spend weeks revising them then send them off to publishing concerns which prohibits me from posting them here. And so you think I've died.

Well, close. But not quite. I wish I'd died, most days, but not the permanent kind, more of the Walt-Disney-cryogenic semi-permanent kind. I envision me and my son going to sleep and waking up a year from now in our wonderful, cozy home with pancake batter already mixed and fresh flowers on the breakfast nook table, all of our problems seamlessly worked out, a new rhythm to our life together, hope lingering in the air all around us like pixie dust. All I need to do is wipe the kiwi-sized sleepies out of my eyes, heat the griddle and put on some lovely, soothing, morning music. Sounds divine. Unrealistic to be sure, but heavenly.

Speaking of heaven and death. Did you know that there are drive-thru funeral parlors in the good 'ole USA? You follow the arrows, slowly driving around the building, like at a bank or Burger King, and stop at the podium next to your car door, on which lays the guest book and a pen. Just behind the podium there is a low, long rectangular window cut out of the funeral home's basement floor. There, behind the glass, lying in eternal grace, is your dear friend you were too lazy-assed to get out of the car for.

You glance at your friend, or maybe your mother, and decide what to write. Maybe you even turn down the radio or shush your kids in order to better organize your thoughts. You could just sign your name, but they'll know that this is the outdoor guest book on account of the dried rain drops and bird doo on its sun bleached pages, so perhaps a little note is in order. Something sentimental will do nicely.

"Dear Gertie,
Sorry about the piano. I was sure the smoking would kill ya.
Aren't you glad you didn't stop? Ha, ha! I'll miss you at canasta.
Love, Vickie"

or

"Dear Mom,
I'd get out of the car, but I've got the kids with me and whose going to watch them now that you're gone and besides, I knew you wouldn't want them to get caramel corn on your precious casket that could have paid for ballet/jazz and tap lessons, but OK, fine.
Sorry to see you go. I told you not to smoke.
Love ya, miss ya, Vick"

I could go on, but I won't.

Sometime I'll tell you about the place out west where you can have your loved one's ashes shot into space where they'll orbit Earth for 64 million years. Now that's death. Eternal life ain't got nuthin' on that.