Grandma’s Snatch

old lady 1When my grandmother arrived at the end stage of her life, the hospice people came and set up her home to make her comfortable. The bed was in the living room and people who knew about end-of-life care were giving her care around the clock. When I came to visit, I mostly tried to stay out of the way.

One time, when Grandma was being ushered back into bed and her nightgown swung aside, I saw her lady bits.  They were smooth as a baby’s bottom.

I thought  “Grandma! You can’t even remember my name anymore but you still remember to shave your snatch?” .

Clearly, I was a naive.  Sure, I was 37 years old, but some people just aren’t that bright.  Of course Grandma wasn’t shaving her snatch, and I’m pretty sure the hospice people weren’t doing it. Even they draw the line somewhere. I eventually deduced that hair follicles die and, if you’re lucky, you go out of this world much like you came in – smooth, drooling, and keeping the people who love you awake around the clock.  

I haven’t thought much about Grandma’s snatch in the ensuing years.  Until recently.

See, I’m now divorced.

As best I can tell, as a woman, there are two stages of divorce. The first is when you smile and say “I don’t have to shave anything for anybody. I’m free to be a hairy sasquatch and there’s nobody to care about it!”  

The next stage is very similar to that; you say the exact same words but instead of smiling, you cry. 

Here’s the deal. I’m over 50 and I like men quite a bit, so eventually, I’ll get back out there again but that shit is scary. I haven’t looked to see if there is A Guide to Body Hair for Divorced Women Over 50 for Dummies, but if there is, I’d probably need A Guide to Whether I Should Buy a Guide to Body Hair for Divorced Women Over 50 for Dummies for Dummies.  And don’t get me started on A Woman’s Guide to Pooping and Farting When You Start Dating Again In Your 50s for Dummies. I don’t even want to talk about it.

There are just things I can’t face quite yet.  

But I haven’t been living under a rock so I know how it is out there on the body-hair front.

And this is where Grandma’s snatch comes in.  How long do I have to wait for nature to take its course? Will my snatch be naturally as smooth as Grandma’s in time for this scary new dating scene or will I have to take matters into my own hand? And if I take matters into my own hand, do I risk lopping off something that’s rather critical down there? It’s not like I can see any of it anymore. This is all really quite terrifying.

They say everything comes full circle. So what happens when my snatch is, eventually, naturally as smooth as Grandma’s was and then the untamed 1970s bushy look comes back into vogue? What then? A merkin?  

I’m tired of caring about body hair (she contemplated while stroking her lady-beard). I’m ready for old age to take it away along with the the brain cells I’ve taxed worrying about it all.

I can picture the future now.  The year is 2065. Kanye and Kim are hairy as silverback gorillas, as is the fashion of the times. I’m over 100 years old and hairless as a mole-rat except for those two nipple hairs. Those fuckers would survive a nuclear winter. But my snatch is as smooth as Grandma’s was and I’m completely oblivious to everything, sitting on my hospice bed clutching a book titled A Guide to Not Giving a Fuck About Your Snatch Hair Anymore for Dummies. The family is gathered around. I smile a toothless smile and drool runs down my chin. Slowly, with devious intent, I lift my nightgown to wipe it…

In a rare instant of crystal clear lucidity, I give my granddaughter a knowing look. This moment will be burned indelibly into her memory.

Everything comes full circle, honey.

By |September 12th, 2018|Indiscriminate Drivel, Rated R|Comments Off on Grandma’s Snatch
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Losing Your Dance Partner

I can’t dance.  Dancing

I mean, I do it anyway, but I’m not very good at it.  I’m also not very good at singing but my lack of talent doesn’t stop me from doing that, either.

What it boils down to is this: I seem to do a lot of things I’m not very good at.

You might think the dance-partner metaphor above is about my marriage ending. It’s not. Not really.  Ancient history, people. 

My boss left me. It’s possible I was more devastated about that than about my marriage ending. (That would be hyperbole. Those of you who watched me go through the divorce know that I spent many months army crawling through the darkest days imaginable to find my way back to the light.)

Maybe this is about my marriage ending. Who knows.

My boss left me a few weeks ago and I tell myself every day that it’s going to be fine, just like I did when my marriage ended.  I give myself pep talks and then I roll my eyes at myself for being such a Pollyanna. Then I reprimand myself for being a cynic and then I give myself the silent treatment. I have a complicated relationship with myself.

This post isn’t really about my marriage ending or my boss leaving me or my pep-talks about how everything is fine. No, really, I’m fine. It’s just allergies.

This post is about change.

Everyone knows change is hard. We hear it all the time. It is.  In my job, I’m a bringer-of-change to others, so good thing I’m adorable and charming or people would hate me.

In my personal life, we’re all still adjusting to the change. I watch my children, they watch me. We’re learning to dance together on this new dance floor that is our life.

Every time the universe is trying to teach me a lesson, whether it’s at home or at work, I take a moment to figure out how it applies to other areas of my life.

Here’s the thing – we like our comfort zones. They are, well, comfortable.  But change is inevitable. We change jobs, we move houses, the people in our lives rearrange themselves, new ones come in, others leave.  That’s the hard one for me – losing people.

My boss left me. He and I had a pretty good work-chemistry.  He was strategy, I was tactics.  He tee’d it up for me, whatever it was, and I’d run with it.  He was my coach, my mentor.  Not the first and he won’t be the last, but we danced together pretty well.

For years, in my marriage, my ex and I danced together pretty fluidly. I lost that dance partner, too.

Losing life’s dance partners is hard.  Sometimes it means we have no one to dance with.  Sometimes, like when your boss leaves you, it means a new dance partner steps right in and you have to figure it out. For awhile, you may step on each other’s toes, apologize a lot, get frustrated.  But you’ll get there.

Change is hard. I’m learning to dance with new people, and I’m learning to dance alone.

I’ll be fine.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Epilogue: sometimes big changes are disruptive. For me, when my life got turned upside down, I couldn’t write anymore. I have tried, many times, to write and it just wouldn’t come. It’s been bothering me because I like to think of myself as a writer, I tell people I write.  And yet… I haven’t. Not much anyway. They say writing is like a muscle. You have to use it to make it strong. This is not my best writing.  My writing-muscle is weak from disuse.  But, dammit, I want to make it strong again so I’m putting it out there anyway.  This piece? Eh.  It’s a sky-is-blue essay.  Who cares.  But this is me, learning to dance alone. Thanks for being here for me.

By |April 12th, 2018|Indiscriminate Drivel|Comments Off on Losing Your Dance Partner
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Dear Teenage Daughter

I see you there.

I see you struggling to find yourself. To find your place. To deal with the cavalcade of emotions that assault you daily. With the confusion of growing up. With your parents’ divorce. With navigating relationships and responsibilities and life.

I see you, and I remember.

I want to help you, but please know that my help won’t come packaged the way you think it ought.  I do you no good, in the long run, by pandering.

I will stand strong in my place as your mother. I will share with you the wisdom I have gathered along the way.  You will often scoff at my wisdom but it won’t stop me from sharing it.  You will know who I am, how I am, and where I stand.

I am not without compassion or empathy, but I will not bend to your will.

I will love you regardless of the arrows you shoot at me, for I know you are dealing with hurt yourself and I am a convenient and safe target to lash out at. Part of my job is to know when to keep my mouth shut when you loose your arrows on me.

You should know those shots you take hurt. They leave me in tears and temporarily incapacitated, questioning my parenting. But I don’t serve you by being weak and allowing your teen angst to leave me questioning what I know.

Here is what I know:

I am a strong woman, and I am raising you to be a strong woman.

A strong woman is clear about who she is and what she will and will not stand for.

Because I am a strong woman, I will protect you from certain truths about your parents that you do not need to know.  You think you know enough about things to make judgments about me, about our situation, to pick a side, to draw conclusions. You don’t know nor do you ever need to pick a side. You can choose both sides. Furthermore, you never will know these things because I am your mother and it is my desire to protect you from some truths, even if doing so leaves you judging me more harshly than you otherwise might.  I do this for your own benefit, as a good parent should.

I am not without flaws and shortcomings. I have made many mistakes along the way. But I am no victim. A victim stays down. I do not, nor will I ever. Every single time I’ve been set back, whether due to my own blunders or through the fault of others, I have never failed to pick myself up and carry on. I have never abdicated my responsibilities. I have never not stepped up.

The only person I control is myself and I take that responsibility very seriously. My life is a series of decisions I have made, not I single one which I regret for I made the best decisions I could at the time based on the information and circumstances in front of me. I don’t control others, but I choose how I react and respond to them.  I am in the driver’s seat of my life and always have been.

So bring it. Bring your venom. Bite hard and let it seep into my bloodstream.  I am a strong woman and I will survive.  I will still love you. I will continue walking the high road in spite of this hurt.

One day you’ll understand, because one day you’ll be a strong woman.

I will help you get there with my strength. And on that day in the future, you and I will walk arm in arm, two strong women. When that day comes, you will understand what I did back when you were a teenager and why I did it, and you will appreciate it. You’ll seek my forgiveness for the hurtful things you did and said to me but you’ll realize you’ve had it all along.

Because I’m a strong woman and you are my daughter.

Love,

Mom

By |January 26th, 2017|Not even a little funny, The Parent Hood|Comments Off on Dear Teenage Daughter
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