I do get a lot of mileage out of poo. I apologize to readers with weak stomachs. It’s a scatalogical life I am living, a life spent with large animals and small children who are all quite forthcoming about their poo. I find it impossible not to address the topic from time to time.
My husband is Canadian, and as some of you may already know, Canadians do not poo. So it was a great shock to me to discover—quickly—that the children we spawned do poo. Everything about Canadians is pure and clean as sparkling glacial rivers and fine beer. Canadians absorb all things consumed, with no messy waste products. If my husband has a heavy meal, it merely evaporates from his sweet-smelling Canadian skin and forms beautiful maple-leaf-shaped clouds in the sky.
I besmirched our children’s insides with my dirty American genes. Our dogs, they are clearly American as well.
Poo, poo, so much of it. So much befoulment!
Poo, and panic. Let us speak of panic tonight. Do you panic?
Friends, I panic. I have not always panicked. My father used to say to me, Don’t panic. I’ll tell you when to panic. He stopped saying this to me a while back, and this has led me to the conclusion that it is indeed time to panic.
The supermarket is Panic Central. Not only do I not know what to do with the foodstuffs the supermarket offers (Panic #1), but every foodstuff sets my head spinning and I do not like the way it spins.
Juice boxes: How many children have suffered corneal abrasions from juicebox straws? Panic #2.
Organic vs. filthy chemical nasty others that I can afford: Do I deserve e. coli? I don’t know. Do I deserve bovine growth hormone? No. I believe I manufacture it on a cellular level myself. You have seen my lush bottom. I may be part cow. Panic #3 and #4.
Trussed lobsters: Two words: Supermarket Holocaust. Panic #5.
I cannot walk by the lobsters anymore. David and I went to the supermarket the other night to pick up milk on the way home from a dinner party. I began trembling the moment we set foot inside the sinister we-know-you-are-here doors. He put a clean Canadian arm around my shoulder, sensing my mounting anxiety.
I began whimpering. “Lobsters. Lobsters. Can’t.”
“No problem. We’ll go the other way.”
I froze in my tracks. “Steely Dan. Can’t. Can’t handle.”
“I’ll talk to you. Shh. Shhh.” He led me past the candy aisle, not a trigger so far.
“What is there to talk about in such a place? Death is everywhere. High fructose corn syrup is everywhere. Muzak is everywhere. I can’t bear it. Help me.”
He held me close as we walked. “Did you really not read any Dostoevsky in college? I can’t believe it.”
I froze again at the bestseller chick-lit and magazine aisle. I have written a book. Two years ago, I wrote a whole damn book, and nobody wants it. This is not a good aisle for me. People often ask me about my book, and once one writes a stupid unwanted book, there is no pretending it doesn’t exist. Damn stupid book. The futility. I could have been tanning.
He drags me down the bread aisle. I see starving Russians. Gulags. I cover my eyes and moan.
“What would be good?” he asks lovingly.
“Chocolate-covered halva. But it’s near the lobsters,” I say.
He takes me the most roundabout way, back to the deli, which whispers dead things dead things dead things as I grab four halva bars and bolt for the checkout with my husband.
“You’re a modern Dostoevsky, honey. A modern Chekhov.”
I whimper. We pay. We forget the milk.
It is all very, very hard, this living. I eat lobsters although they break my heart. I eat dead deli things even though I meant to get a Vietnamese potbellied pig instead of my dog. I have not read the things that matter, and I have a book that no one wants.
But my husband is as pure and unsullied as a glacier, and he still loves me, for some reason.
It is almost too much to bear.
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