Ruth rode up as her younger brother, Solomon, and I sat on the curb, pulling out clumps of grass and shoving sticks down the sewer grate. As she dug her heels into the pavement to slow her bike’s speed, she spit in the grass next to us and said, “Hey. Meet me uptown around 1:00.”

Sol checked his arm for moisture and said, “Hey dumbass! You almost spit on me!”

Ruth laughed. I poked at a small anthill with a twig, and said, “Why? What’s uptown?”

“Just meet me by The Medallion at 1:00 for lunch. It’s too frickin’ hot to work all day today.”

During that particularly steamy summer, Ruth earned extra cash by working as an official employee of Sammy Man Ice Cream. Her vehicle of choice was a bright white ice cream cart, covered in decals advertising her tempting frozen wares. For about six hours a day, she would peddle around town, the sound of her bells serving as a sweet siren song to grubby children and sweaty construction workers alike.

It was a dream job as far as her brothers and I were concerned, because it gave us access to an unlimited supply of dry ice for experiments, and the occasional complimentary Bomb Pop® or Drumstick® to boot. Well, they weren’t exactly complimentary, but Ruth had a way of getting some of her male customers to pay more so that she always had enough cash to cover our indulgences.

And besides that, she found that it was far more profitable to fill the cart with cans of beer stolen from her older brother, and sell them to the factory workers at the auto plant. They would sometimes pay her $2 for a can of Pabst, depending on how hot it was that day.

Although only ten years old, I learned a great deal about supply and demand that summer.
Sol and I met Ruth at The Medallion, which was a corner diner that my family and I would sometimes go to on Friday nights. Ruth told us that she’d had an exceptionally good day at the factory, so she was going to treat us all to lunch. Eating lunch at a sit-down restaurant? Just us kids? This was the greatest of all treats. There was nothing quite as liberating as being able to walk into the grownup world, without parents, and be treated as an equal. But that’s what money does.

The three of us sauntered into the restaurant, smiled at the waitress, and asked if we could have the booth by the window. Nothing makes a dining experience more enjoyable than stretching out in your own private booth. I mean, if I wanted to sit at a regular old table, I might as well eat at home.

The busboy brought us all glasses of ice water, which we greedily gulped down, barely taking a breath. Our waitress asked if we were ready to order, and I waited to follow Ruth’s lead. Ruth scanned the menu quickly, and said, “Yeah – let me have a cheeseburger, some fries, and a Coke. Oh yeah, and a chocolate malt.”

Sol and I looked at each other, smiled, and told the waitress we would have the same thing. If we were getting a free lunch, we might as well make it a good one.

We gorged ourselves on huge diner cheeseburgers, and laughed as we shared stories. Ruth slurped on her malt and, with a mouthful of fries, said, “Some chick tried to rob me today. But I flew past her ass. She tried chasing me, but couldn’t keep up. I bet she thought I couldn’t go fast in that cart. Heh.”

Solomon let out a loud laugh and said, “Yeah, with those giraffe legs of yours, you should be able to peddle fast.”

Ruth tossed a fry at his head, and said, “You should talk, with your skinny scrawny bony-ass sissy girl body.”

That quickly shut Sol up, because he was very sensitive about his weight, or lack thereof. He was thirteen, and although he was taller than most boys in his class, he weighed less than a lot of the girls on the gymnastics team. Every now and then he tried drinking some of his brother’s protein powder shakes to pack on some pounds, but to no avail. It was a constant source of teasing in his household.

As we picked at the last of our fries and chomped on the remaining pieces of ice in our Cokes, the waitress came by with the bill. It lay conspicuously on the table for a while, wedged between my plate and Ruth’s. After about ten minutes, I noticed Ruth fidgeting, and looking around. I held my breath as I saw a frighteningly familiar grin draw across Ruth’s face.

She wiped her lips, threw her crumpled napkin on the table, and laughed as she said, “I’m not paying for this.”

[To Be Continued]

Filed under: Foster Files on April 6th, 2005 | 4 Comments »

I poked at the fatty tuna on my plate with my chopsticks, eyeing up the one remaining California roll sitting atop a pile of shredded daikon radish.

“You mind if I eat that?”

Natasha glanced down at the plate, and said, “No – go ahead. I ate the shrimp.”

As I dunked the roll into my wasabi-tainted soy sauce, I said softly, “Nat, I think about getting old all the time now. I think about dying alone. And without money. I bumped up my 401k last week.”

Nat sipped her wine, and looked out the window at the people running to beat the impending rainstorm.

“Yeah. I stress out about money too.”

“See, that’s why we need kids. Because then you have someone to take care of you when you’re old and sick. Who’s going to care about my feeding tube? Who’s going to smuggle in a Culvers butter burger when I’m supposed to be on a low-fat, low-sodium diet? Who will lean in close to hear me whisper Rosebud?”

“I’ll come visit you, Jen. You know that.”

“So you’re saying that I’ll die first? Why am I always the one to go? Why are all my friends still going to be healthy and playing Mah Jong in senior living centers while I’m wearing diapers and having my jewelry stolen in a VA hospital?”

“Don’t you have to be a veteran to go to a VA hospital?”

I picked at the label of my Sapporo beer, and shrugged my shoulders.

“I don’t know. Probably. And now I’m too old to join the Army anyway, so I can’t even count on that. I mean, friends are great, but they don’t owe you. Children owe you. Friends will all have lives of their own to deal with. Look – Kim just bought a house. Seamus is going to buy one. Dr. Greene owns some stuff. Everyone’s getting established. No one’s going to have time to listen to me babble about the good old days while I buzz the nurse to come change my bed pan.”

“Well, Jenny. You can always still have children. A lot of women have children later in life, and they’re perfectly healthy. Start cranking some out!”

I took a deep breath and sighed, “See. That’s just it. I always wanted to have children, and I know that it could still happen, but something changed in me this year. I don’t know if I want them now. I mean, I did want them, but I think it’s just too late. I’m too settled. I don’t want to be taking care of children when I’m 60. And I think I finally just accepted that fact.”

“So then what’s the problem? Now you don’t want to have kids, so don’t have any kids. That’s one less thing you have to stress out about.”

But that was exactly the problem.

It was accepting the idea that I won’t have children that upset me. I always thought that acceptance was the end of the line, the final destination, the ultimate goal, but it’s really just the beginning of a whole new loop. Dr. Kubler-Ross lied to us all. I find myself grieving the fact that I have accepted this childless future. And the cycle continues. Right now I’m in denial that I’ve reached acceptance. Next week I’ll be angry about it. Then maybe I’ll do some bargaining. And so on.

I can’t pinpoint exactly when this philosophical change took place, but I suspect that it was a somewhat gradual evolution. Looking back over the years, I noticed a change in the way I spoke about children. I was able to track my state of mind through semantics:

“Someday when I have kids…”

Became:
“Someday if I have kids…”

Became:
“If I had kids…”

Became:
“My nephews…”

Nat continued, “And doesn’t part of you just want kids so that you can see what they would look like? I know I do. Maybe someone could just morph your face like they do with the missing children on the milk cartons to see what your kids would have looked like.”

I laughed, because it was true. There is a huge part of me that wants kids just to see what they would be like. Would my daughter have curly hair? Would my son be funny? Smart? Talented? Popular?

But what if she didn’t have curly hair? I know it’s so wrong of me to say this, but on some level I would be disappointed with a straight haired child. Sure, I’d still love her, but I’d always wonder where my genes had gone wrong. And one day, DCFS would remove her from my home because I was deemed an unfit mother for having given my three year old an Ogilvie Home Perm.

She kept pulling off the wigs! What did you expect me to do?

I started thinking more about Nat’s idea of being able to predict what my child would look like, and I really think she may be onto something. Instead of figuring out how to store more and more songs on smaller and smaller devices, I wish the geniuses of the world would work on creating some virtual reality simulators that would let me experience the things I will probably not experience in real life, so that I can feel like I haven’t totally missed out.

You know, things like:

• iBaby

• iMarriage
• iGradSchool

This could satisfy my curiosity, without all the financial and emotional implications. I just hope someone invents that baby simulator soon, though. Even my virtual eggs are starting to turn.

Natasha listened sympathetically as I rambled on about birth and death and Social Security and hospital gowns. Somewhere amidst my monologue on dual incomes, I glanced outside and realized that it had started to hail. The steady high-pitched pinging on the windows kept time with my mind’s frantic pace.

Eventually, the waitress came by to see if we needed anything else, and then handed us the dessert menus. After half-heartedly flipping through the pictures of coconut sorbet and tofu cheesecake, I paused and said, “Nat?”

“Mmm hmm?”

“Just promise me you’ll bring me a butter burger.”

Natasha looked up, smiled and said, “It’s a promise.”

Filed under: On Aging on April 4th, 2005 | 12 Comments »

Scene: Chicago O’Hare, Winter 2005
Girl 1: About 16 years old, Asian, appears to be a foreign exchange student
Girl 2: About 16 years old, American
Girl 1 is sitting quietly in the gate, waiting to board her flight. Girl 2 is eating Mentos and reading Newsweek Magazine. On the cover is a picture of Martha Stewart.
Girl 1: It is late.
Girl 2: Yeah, I’m tired. Do you want some Mentos? I love them.
Girl 1: No. Who is that?
Girl 2: Her? That’s Martha Stewart. Have you ever heard of her?
Girl 1 shakes her head no.
Girl 2: Well, Martha Stewart is a billionaire who made all her money by doing homemaking stuff. Do you know what that is?
Girl 1 shakes her head no.
Girl 2: Well, homemaking is basically like cooking and sewing and entertaining. She has a TV show and a magazine and writes all kinds of books. Anyway, she was accused of insider trading. Do you know what that is?
Girl 1 shakes her head no.
Girl 2: Well, it’s essentially like a white collar crime. You probably don’t know what that means. White collar crime is like when business people commit crimes or do insider trading or steal money from their companies. They call it white collar because business people usually wear white shirts and ties. Anyway. So she was arrested for insider trading a couple months ago and apparently she’s getting out of prison next week. Do you understand?
Girl 1 shakes her head yes.
Girl 2: But I could really care less.

Filed under: General on April 1st, 2005 | 9 Comments »