Backhanded Compliments

I did something really stupid. I’ve spent the past three years playing very little tennis, a sport I love almost as much as I love Chick-Fil-A tea. To make up for all that lost time, I stupidly agreed to play winter tennis.

The thermometer registered 27 degrees when I stepped onto the court yesterday morning. But the wind blowing across the chunks of ice on the large lake next to the court acted like a giant natural air conditioner, officially making it colder than a witch’s titties during our match.

Since I’m new to the team, I met my new partner for the first time five minutes before the match. Shirley is a tall, gorgeous strawberry blonde with a powerful forehand. Before introducing us, my captain said to me, “You’ll like Shirley. She’s a good player, but she doesn’t talk much. Just tell her what to do, and she’ll do it.”

Sure enough, Shirley said hardly a word the whole first set. We clicked racquets after good points, and she nodded her approval at my better shots, but she still never spoke.

But when our opponent called out the score indicating they were at set point, I distinctly heard her say, “F*ck!”

Halfway into the second set, something happened that got Shirley talking. It was her turn to serve again, and she netted her first serve. She bounced the ball a couple of times in preparation for her second serve, then stopped and looked at me and said, “These are old balls. We’re playing with old balls.”

“I think they’re just not bouncing because they’re cold,” I said helpfully.

But Shirley was having none of it. She said to our opponents, “We need to open a new can of balls. These aren’t bouncing.”

Now, the United States Tennis Association has a rule stating that if the temperature is below freezing at match time, players have a right to refuse to play. One reason for the rule is that balls don’t bounce well when it’s below freezing. But we’d started the match, so we couldn’t refuse to play at that point. And since our opponents were winning, they were not inclined to open a new can of balls.

Shirley practically had a meltdown. “These are old balls,” she began muttering between points. And I’ve played just enough tennis to know that when a player has a meltdown, the match is pretty much over.

I tried to calm her down, but I had to admit that she had a point. Because I don’t exactly like playing with old balls myself.

For one thing, old balls aren’t pretty. They look bald and worn. And all too often, old balls are discolored, maybe even misshapen.

Even when they're warm, old balls have no bounce. And that makes them nearly impossible to play with. In fact, experienced players often can just give a ball a good squeeze and judge its fitness by its firmness.

But having entered into an agreement to play tennis that morning, we were stuck with old balls. So I said to Shirley, “They’re playing with old balls, too.”

As if a light went on in her head, Shirley laughed and said, “I guess I can’t blame my game on a set of balls.” And just like that, she was back in the game.

My new friend is, quite literally, a woman of few words. But they’re kind of profound.

Well-Preserved Happiness

The frigid temperatures most of us are experiencing have brought back fond memories of my trip to Hawaii last month. I’m not sure why, but during the entire trip, a little voice kept nagging me to spend every possible minute in the sun.

It went something like this: The sun is out. Get your ass into a beach chair immediately, and stay there until dark.

See, I’m kind of genetically blessed. I have the immune system of a crocodile and a stomach lined with titanium. I don’t get sick. But what I do get is SAD, also known as Seasonal Affective Disorder. Winter depresses me, and every winter seems to be worse than the one before it.

Knowing that I am prone to getting SAD when it’s cold and I can’t be in the sunshine, when I am in a position to soak up some serious sun, that’s what I do. I never squander sunshine.

One of the pitfalls of prolonged beach chair duty, though, is the potential to begin looking like an actual slug. Especially when I develop an intimate relationship with the roving cocktail waitress. I mean, how great is it that a cute Hawaiian girl with a pleasant personality will bring me anything I want to eat or drink?

I spotted what I wanted to drink on my very first day in Honolulu. Duke’s, the famous Waikiki restaurant, makes a frozen concoction called a “Second Captain.” It’s Captain Morgan rum and banana liqueur blended with fresh bananas and a swirl of raspberry puree. Heaven in a souvenir cup, no?

Determined that I would NOT gain ten pounds during my week on Waikiki, I avoided eye contact with the cocktail waitresses. "Tomorrow. I’ll have one tomorrow" was my mantra for the entire week. And guess what? It dawned on me during the plane ride home that I never had a Second Captain.

While we're on the subject of captains, the first captain I ever knew in my life was my grandfather. He was a World War Two fighter pilot who, for more than thirty years, flew all over the world as a pilot for an international freight company. And sometime during the 1950s, he flew to Puerto Rico. I know that because after he died a few years ago, my grandmother gave me two bottles of Bacardi rum that he’d brought back from Puerto Rico in the late 1950s.

I put those bottles away. They would never be opened, I decided, not because they might be valuable, but because they were a cool reminder of my Pa.

I opened my cabinet the other day to find that one of the bottles is half gone. And I got upset. Someone had taken the only thing I had left from my grandfather. But then I remembered this quote, which has been attributed to various sources:

“Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, martini (or Second Captain) in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming, ‘Holy Shit! What a ride!’"

So in that spirit, I’m going to blend some banana liqueur and fresh bananas with the rest of Pa’s rum and add a swirl of raspberry puree. And I’m going to toast Pa with those words and enjoy every last sip of what I call a "First Captain."

Tomorrow. I’ll do it tomorrow. The liquor store is closed on Sunday, and I don’t have any banana liqueur.

Wound Too Tight

My cuckoo clock stopped working. It’s been hanging on the same wall for several years, working just fine, until one day when it just stopped. There are no batteries to replace, since a cuckoo clock is wound by pulling on the weighted cords.

The instructions that came with it are in German, which made it difficult for me to diagnose the problem. But I gathered from the pictures that it’s very important that the clock be correctly balanced, both horizontally and vertically. Looking at it from the side, I decided the vertical balance might be off, so I stuck a folded business card behind it. And when that didn’t help, I folded the card again. Still didn’t work.

The pendulum on the clock has a weight on it that can be adjusted up and down. The higher up the weight goes, the faster the clock ticks; move it lower, and the clock moves slower. Again, balance is the key.

Fooling around with that pendulum brought back memories of the metronome that stood on the piano when I was a kid. Now, I never asked to have a metronome. I hated the thing because it was very good at pointing out how rhythmically and musically challenged I was. And that would have been fine if my parents had heeded the metronome’s warning about my lack of musical talent. Instead, that damn metronome announced to the world with every tick-tock, tick-tock that the only way I’d ever make it to Carnegie Hall would be as a paying customer or a ticket taker. And that meant I needed to practice harder.

Here’s the thing about metronomes and cuckoo clocks: if the pendulum swings two ticks to the left, then it’s going to swing two tocks to the right. It’s the law of pendulums that they must swing the same distance in one direction as they do in the other. And if, for some reason, that doesn’t happen, then the thing is broken.

I think we’re all pendulums, to be honest. In the past few years, I’ve caught up with old friends, and I can’t think of a single exception to the pendulum rule. The people who were wild in high school and college have swung exactly that far in the opposite direction, especially when it comes to how they’re raising their own kids. The straight-laced, zipped up kids from way back when (including my very own self) have turned into irreverent smartasses. And the ones who were never too extreme – well, their pendulums still aren’t swinging out so wide in either direction. They were balanced then, and they’re still that way.

Balance is everything, it turns out. Or as my friend Grant (aka Sister Louisa) says, “I know there’s a balance; I see it when I swing past.”

My clock still isn't working. And I'm thinking about not getting it fixed. Because seeing that pendulum hanging there completely still is a reminder that maybe a little tempering of the wide swings in my life wouldn't be such a bad thing. Maybe I could use a little balance.

Because minus that balance, of course, one might rightfully be called cuckoo.

Rooting for Your Dreams

One evening during my recent trip to Honolulu, I was sitting in an upscale sushi bar on Kalakaua Avenue – the “strip” – on Waikiki Beach. To my right was an empty seat, and on the other side of that chair sat an obviously wealthy Japanese woman and several of her friends. Five or six empty chairs were available down the sushi bar on my left-hand side.

As I sat enjoying a lovely miso-glazed butterfish and a Dancing Geisha (crushed blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries with tonic water and vodka), I noticed the restaurant had copies of their “house” music CDs available for purchase. I picked one up and was surprised to find that Bob Marley was the house music in a Japanese restaurant in Hawaii. And sure enough, “No Woman, No Cry” was wailing over the speakers.

At that moment, a woman slipped into the seat between me and the Japanese lady. She was barely five feet tall, and she wore board shorts, flip flops, and a Billabong surf shirt. Her hair was wet, and her clothes were damp. As she sat down, she shivered and said, “I just came in off the beach. It’s my birthday, and I’m treating myself to some sushi tonight.”

“Happy Birthday!” I said. We introduced ourselves, and then Millie began to study the menu. When she began shivering again, the Japanese lady looked at her and then took off the Chanel jacket she was wearing and put it around Millie’s shoulders.

As Millie thanked her, the Japanese woman said, “We take care of people here. It’s the Waikiki Way.”

Millie looked at me and said, “I knew it was going to be like that here. I just moved here from Washington D.C. last month, and I’ve already met the most wonderful people.”

Intrigued, I asked her why she’d moved to Honolulu. “I wanted to,” she said simply.

It can’t be that easy, I thought. It just can’t. As if she had read my mind, Millie looked at me and said, “In life, you have to decide what you want. I wanted to live somewhere with nice weather and with a beach. So I moved here.”

I’d heard those words before. In a television interview, Elizabeth Gilbert, the woman who wrote Eat, Pray, Love, a book that became an international bestseller, said this about her success: “Every morning, you wake up and ask yourself, ‘What do I really, really, really want?’” And once you’ve answered that question, she said, you move in that direction.

I told Millie I admired her bravery and wished her well. As I left the restaurant, I heard Bob Marley singing, “Don’t worry about a thing/cause every little thing’s gonna be alright.”

I was still thinking about Millie the next morning as I put on my workout clothes, grabbed my iPod, and headed out for a long walk. I marveled at the courage it must take to pull up roots and move such a huge distance.

And then I saw it, the massive Banyan tree growing in Kapiolani Park. Banyan tree branches develop rope-like “vines” that hang from them and grow downward. These “vines” are actually aerial roots that take hold in the ground and grow into thick, woody trunks. With age, these new trunks become indistinguishable from the main trunk, and that’s how the Banyan grows. In fact, one particular large old Banyan on the island of Maui covers almost 2/3 of an acre.

Interestingly, in Hindu mythology, the Banyan is call the “wish-fulfilling tree" because of it's ever-expanding state.

I wonder if moving – or even going for what you really want in life – is really the painful all-or-nothing process we like to make it, the gut-wrenching decision to give up something meaningful for something desired. If we could use the Banyan tree as a metaphor and see change as more of a process of putting down new roots, of growing stronger by expanding, then maybe we can have the courage to pursue our heart’s biggest desires with the assurance that, indeed, every little thing will be all right.

Cats in the Belfry

My tainted pussy is at it again. The expensive Bengal cat that lives in my home became a major headache for my sister and her family this past week.

Three days before Christmas, my real estate agent called. An anonymous Washington Redskin player who already owns a home or two in Atlanta wanted to see my house the very next day.

I had to set my pina colada down in the Waikiki sand to call my mother and ask her to make sure my house was presentable for my potential buyer. That meant, of course, removing the cat and her litter box from the premises for the better part of three hours.

Lauren and my mom drove the cat to my sister’s house and asked if they could lock her in an empty room of their basement. In return, they offered to take Holly to lunch.

When they returned, Lauren went to get her cat. Only the cat wasn’t there. After searching the room and calling for Bella, Lauren heard a sound coming from the ceiling. Two ceiling tiles were missing, and Lauren quickly realized that her cat had jumped from a dresser to the top of the armoire and gotten into the ceiling between the main floor of the house and the basement. There was nothing to do but wait for the cat to come down on her own.

By the time Bella finally emerged – eight hours later -- Holly’s husband was beside himself, certain that Bella had left some souvenirs in the ceiling.

But he couldn’t really raise too much of a fuss. Not when their own cat, Liza, lives between the walls.

Several months ago, he had to knock a hole in a basement wall in order to repair some plumbing issues. Liza the cat, who spends her days hiding from the four children and only comes out when they’re in school or in the bed, discovered that hiding place, and since then, no one has seen her during daylight hours.

Liza’s plight got me to wondering about something. I understand the Christian faith’s skepticism about reincarnation. But I also think that God is creative and has a huge sense of humor. Simply sending a serial killer or terrorist to hell is way too boring. Wouldn’t it be more fun to turn a radical Muslim into a pig the next time around? Or sentence Saddam Hussein to be a homeless cat who gets adopted by a family of four small children who “love” him so much that he’s happy to live between the walls? I can hear God saying, “You liked harassing innocent people, so we’re going to give you a taste of your own medicine. And this next time around, your 'palace' is going to slightly resemble the hole you crawled into when you were hiding from US troops.”

Osama Bin Laden could return as Lady Gaga.

Michael Vick could come back as a fighting gamecock, and if he’s a good boy from now until he dies, he gets to strut around the sidelines at South Carolina football games.

The dude who just tried to bomb a plane by setting his own crotch on fire? God’s probably saying, “No reincarnation. I’m gonna go ahead and give you those 72 virgins you think I promised and let you spend eternity wishing you hadn’t blown your own dick off.”

And since my tainted pussy is, apparently, the difference between selling a house or not, in her next life, she is going to be a real estate agent.

A Scandalous Christmas

This morning at breakfast, as I sat eating fresh pineapple and looking out over Waikiki Beach with Diamond Head in the distance, an article in the The Honolulu Advertiser caught my eye.

Oahu, it seems, is experiencing a Christmas tree shortage. Hundreds of buyers got in line at 4 a.m. yesterday in hopes of snagging one of the trees being flown in at the last minute from Oregon.

For me, it brought back memories of the Great Christmas Tree Scandal of 1995.

In the late 1980s, my parents bought a condo on St. Augustine Beach, and they were there every chance they got. Of course, they always spent the week after Christmas at the beach, usually leaving the day after Christmas to get there.

From the time we kids first married and the issue of scheduling our holiday gatherings arose, Mom and Dad were always great about saying, “We want everyone together, but it doesn’t have to be Christmas Day or even Christmas Eve. Sometime in the week leading up to Christmas is perfectly fine with us.” Part of the reason, I think, was that preachers work on Christmas Eve. And if Christmas Day falls on a Sunday, they work on Christmas Day. Like most families, for the Adams, holiday flexibility is a matter of survival.

In 1995, though, we somehow managed to celebrate the Adams Family Christmas actually on Christmas Day at lunchtime. Mom and Dad were planning to leave for Florida after the celebration.

We loaded our children into the car and drove to Grammy’s house. Morgan was five years old, and Lauren was not quite two. As we pulled into their driveway, Morgan said in a horrified voice, “Why is their Christmas tree in the road?”

Their limp and lifeless and sad tree was already at the curb on Christmas Day, flecks of tinsel blowing off the tree and across their yard in the cold December wind. They never have, and never will, live it down.

This year, when it came time for me to decorate a tree, I understood how my parents felt. My artificial trees were ruined in the water heater flood back in September. Since I’m moving to Florida, I didn’t want to buy another artificial tree and then have to move it. But I didn’t exactly have a vehicle big enough to bring home a real tree.

I found a Christmas tree farm in North Carolina that would ship trees to my front door. I ordered a 6’ Fraser fir for the rec room and a 7’ one for the main level of the house. The trees arrived two days later, and Lauren helped me pull them from their boxes.

The 6’ tree was my height. And the 7’ tree wasn’t 7 feet tall. I grumbled, and Lauren laughed, but what were we going to do? Send them back?

After an hour of sawing off lower branches to get them into their stands, I was covered in needles and sap. I picked up the “6-foot” tree and made my fourth attempt to shove it into the stand. When it still didn’t fit, I began cursing and slamming the tree and stand against my newly-replaced hardwood floors while telling Santa where I wanted to put the trunk of that tree. Lauren’s eyes got big, and she said, “Mom, why don’t we take a break and go get some dinner?”

I went upstairs to grab a jacket and saw the 3x3 inspirational card I keep next to the mirror in my bathroom. It reads, “Attachment to the way things should be is the source of all your suffering.”

“Should” is a dangerous road. See, my family should be intact. My kids should all be home, and we should be decorating the tree together. I should be watching the man of the house wrangle with the artificial trees that never got ruined. My basement should never have flooded, and my beautiful house shouldn’t be on the market. “Should” is a recipe for misery.

So rather than sitting around and shoulding on myself, I’m in Honolulu to see Petras and Baptiste, the two boys from Europe who lived with us and are now a part of our family, play in a tournament in their last year of college. While Atlanta is enduring freezing rain, I’m sitting on Waikiki beach drinking a pina colada and listening to Bing Crosby sing “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas.” I’ll be home on Christmas Eve to celebrate with my children, but because of scheduling difficulties, we won’t actually celebrate Christmas with my mom and dad and the rest of my family until the day after Christmas.

And since we’re leaving for St. Augustine after that celebration, my trees will be already down when all my nieces and nephews pull into my driveway.

They won’t be on the street, however. I’ve cut a deal with the guy selling trees in Honolulu. When I get home, I’m going to overnight him two slightly dry Fraser fir, and we’re going to split the profit. It will forever be known as the Great Christmas Tree Scandal of 2009.

Since that’s the way it is, that’s the way it should be. It should be a great Christmas.

Sexy on Display

Several years ago, I actually inspired an item for sale at Victoria’s Secret. Well, sort of.

My sister, Holly, and I were at the Mall of America in Minneapolis for our annual Christmas shopping trip. The mannequin in the window of the Victoria’s Secret was wearing a sexy little Santa suit, a red lace bra and panty set lined in white fur and completed with a Santa hat. I nudged Holly and said, “I bet Kevin would like that for Christmas.”

Her eyebrows shot up. Grinning, she said, “Yes, he would.” We entered the store and began looking for the little Santa suit. It was nowhere to be found, so my sister asked a sales associate, a spandexed and stilettoed twentysomething who was rearranging tiger-print bras, if they had sold out of the Santa suits. The girl looked at us with an expression that said, “Who let the nutjobs out of the psyche ward today?”

“It's for display only,” the little snot informed us as she rolled her eyes. We slithered out of Victoria’s Secret, somehow ashamed to have been asking for an outfit in the display window. Like we were some sort of perverts with a Santa fetish, some real-life ho-ho-hos. “It’s for display only,” I said, mimicking the snotty sales girl, “not for personal use.”

Apparently, we weren’t the only ones who asked. Because the very next year, we walked into the very same store to see a mannequin clad in a fuschia-colored Santa suit. And behind the mannequin was a whole rack of the outfits just waiting to be taken home for personal use.

A pretty blonde approached and asked if we needed help. Holly said, “I want one of those Santa suits.”

“Aren’t they pretty?” the girl gushed. “It’s like Christmas, only pink! And it's accentuated.”

I looked at the padded hot pink bra. It was studded with tiny rhinestones and lined with the white fur. Accentuated, indeed.

Holly paid for Kevin’s gift and brought it home to Georgia. On Christmas Eve, after all the toys were put together and laid under the tree, they exchanged gifts.

Unfortunately, it was after midnight and they were both battling the flu. So the much-appreciated gift was set aside to be used at a more opportune time.

The next morning, after the excitement over their toys had subsided, one of the four-year-old twins noticed the box. “Mommy! It’s beautiful!” the girls said, obviously thinking Santa had brought the pretty outfit for her. Holly, already busy with the breakfast she was preparing for the extended family, quickly grabbed the box and stashed it in her bedroom.

Later that morning, as Kevin’s parents, our parents, the grandmothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, and two teenage exchange students sat enjoying the breakfast casserole, cinnamon rolls, and freshly-squeezed orange juice that Holly had so carefully prepared, one of the twins came running out of her parents’ bedroom with an open box in her hands. She headed straight for my dad, stuck the box into the space between his face and his breakfast plate, and excitedly said, “Look what Santa brought Mommy!”

The Santa suit was back on display. It was, I think, a new twist on the old saying, “Use it or lose it.” Because everyone in that room lost it -- except for Kevin’s mother, who somehow pretended not to notice.

On Monday morning, Holly and I are going to Lenox Mall to celebrate her birthday and to finish our Christmas shopping. At some point, we will pass by the Victoria’s Secret on the main level of that mall, and I will nudge her and snicker and say, “I bet Kevin would like a sexy little accentuated Santa suit for Christmas this year.”

And my sister will say back to me, “It’s for display only.”