Laurie Wagner

“Well, I … I dunno,” she says, flustered, with both boys at her
breast. “I hope so.”

“I don’t think so,” he says triumphantly — like he’s some
whiz-bang engineering genius.

What is it with husbands and minivans? And why does it reek of
keeping wives barefoot and pregnant?

Betsy says she can deal with sour breast milk all over her body
and she can deal with stretch marks. But she cannot deal with a
minivan.

I understand this. To me, driving a minivan is like going around
with a gigantic diaper bag tied to my ankle. A ball-and-chain
issue. If I drive a minivan, it’s over, or worse, it has only
just begun. Forget about getting smiles from guys in other cars.
Forget about anyone following me on the highway to see who’s
behind that swishy head of hair. I’ll be invisible.

A minivan is the big sex appeal bye-bye machine. A minivan is a
sign that you’ve joined the masses. A minivan is a guarantee that
you will be picking up other people’s children for the rest of
your life and teasing spit wads out of your hair forever. Your
clothes will always be stained. Your body will always be too big.
Get your hair cut short. Have it frosted. Get a subscription to
Good Housekeeping. Join the Junior League.

I just want to put on the motorcycle boots and walk away from
everything.

Have you ever considered driving past your exit on the freeway?
Stopping for gas whenever you run out, getting back in the car
and driving the same highway for as long as it goes? Have you
ever wondered if it were possible to disappear into thin air? To
become a lost citizen — one of those people who goes from town
to town, paying cash?

How long could it last? The first night you’d find yourself in a
cold stucco motel, in a room with stained carpets, thin orange
and avocado green bedspreads and cigarette smoke clinging to
every surface. Lying there watching an “NYPD Blue” rerun on TV
would make you so lonely that all you’d want to do would be to
call home and ask how everyone was doing: Did everybody eat all
their dinner?

I’d be home the next day.

Why is it that I can’t bear to be away from the people who make
me want to run away in motorcycle boots?

If I had the boots I wouldn’t have to dream of leaving my family.
I’d just feel like a different person. It would be enough.
I’d be shopping in Lucky but I’d be two-stepping to the twang
of a different fiddler. You’d see me and think I was just
picking up a couple of things to throw in the back of my pick-up
before heading out of town to my ranch in Bolinas, where I play
music and paint all day. You’d envy me like I envy that
Victoria’s Secret model. You’d never know that my real grocery
list was turkey dogs, wipes, Rugrats macaroni and cheese, baby
Tylenol and that clear liquid you give kids when they barf too
much.

I just can’t see the motorcycle boots in the minivan.

The minivan is marriage, two kids, life insurance. The boots are
the past. They revive the me that stayed out late, hung around
with bad boys and swallowed stuff that I don’t think I would
swallow today.

The boots are freedom. They are the time I didn’t worry if there
wasn’t enough food in the fridge or enough money in the bank. No
one depended on me or clung to me and no one peed on my office
chair because they forgot to go to the bathroom. My thoughts
percolated and bubbled uninterrupted. Sometimes I was quiet for
an entire day.

Motherhood is a gritty ordeal that would be made significantly
worse by a minivan. That Victoria’s Secret model wouldn’t know
where to begin with the stuff that goes down in my house. Could
she fathom waking to her baby’s cries every single morning for
two years — at 4 a.m., then again at 5 and again at 6? And each
time, could she blindly shuffle into her child’s room, patiently
coaxing her back to sleep?

She could if she had the boots. And so could I. I need strength.
Not ordinary cup of coffee strength, but motorcycle boot
strength. This is strength that a minivan will not give me.

I really need those boots.

What is a fight over Barbies, a trashed makeup kit (soaked and
in the bathtub) to a woman in motorcycle boots? Nada. Bootless,
these are soul killers, events from which one takes time to
recover. But with the boots, I would power through, laughing in
the face of “she pushed me!” snickering at the trivial filth in
my path. I would arrive home, on foot perhaps (no need for a
minivan here), scoop up my children with a big brawny laugh and
bellow: “Mama’s home!”

We were sitting around the table, adults yapping and ignoring the kids and out of the corner of my eye I see Zoe, my 4-year-old,take a handful of hot rice from her plate and, in slow motion, throw it at her 6-year-old sister Ruby. But instead of jumping up to squash the thing, I sat there mesmerized, watching. “She’s never thrown food before,” I thought to myself. “This is a rite of passage, the primal launch.”

The rice ball hit Ruby and exploded in her face. She immediately responded on-fire, and grabbed a handful of rice and threw it back at Zoe.

That’s how it began. And I didn’t stop it.

Here’s the thing about motherhood: You say the word “No” all the time, and this word and many of its kind slowly begin to strangle your language, like weeds wrapping themselves around the prettier words you imagined using with your child like “Yes” and “Love” and “That’s beautiful honey.” But “No” forces its way in and eventually you can’t help yourself, this urge to curb, squelch, and put a lid on almost everything your kids get into. Not because you’re a meanie but because they are constantly pushing you and it’s exhausting and …

“No!”

“Put that down”

“That’s enough”

“Only one”

“Wait until later”

“Because I say so”

“What did I say?”

“Come down off there”

“There isn’t time”

“I already told you”

“One video”

“One scoop”

“We have to go”

“I’ve asked you three times”

“I’ll read two stories, not five”

“No, we can’t pet all of the dogs in the shelter, pick one more and say goodbye.”

There you are, constantly throwing water on the passionate fires of your children. Everything you say comes from a place of dread, hesitancy, and fear that these children will mow you down in a moment if given half a chance. And you know why so many mothers are on antidepressants and why they eat too much and drive their cars off bridges, yell at their kids, fight with their husbands, stop having sex and let all the plants die.

The rice fight was a response to that.

One handful of rice inspired another. The adults stopped talking, put down their drinks and turned to watch as Ruby took another handful from the big bowl in the center of the table and threw it at Zoe and then Zoe took a handful and threw it back at Ruby, and then Zoe, then Ruby, Zoe, Ruby, Zoe, Ruby, until the girls were standing on their chairs screaming and laughing, and looking over at me like, when you gonna stop this? Only I didn’t stop them because I was so taken by how much fun they were having. And then there was more rice and more shrieking and a shirt came off and then somebody’s pants came off and then the girls were naked and rice was sticking to Zoe’s tummy and was caked in Ruby’s hair. In between throws Ruby would scoop rice off of her body and put it into her mouth and then let it dribble out, just like I used to do as a kid at the dinner table when we had a babysitter and I’d eat a whole bunch of pudding and then let it squish out between my teeth and drip down my chin.

Rice was everywhere, and Sabrina and Alex and I were honking with laughter, choking and dodging the errant grains and pointing at Zoe who had a thousand-watt smile and at Ruby, who, as the oldest, is usually reprimanded for going too far, and who had lately begun to take on the sullen, I’m-in-trouble-again look. She was free now, too. We were all free for the five minutes that the rice flew. You could feel it. A healing, starting in our feet, pushed its way up through our bodies and up through our heads, and everything that was cramped and stuffed down and repressed was coming up and everything that was wild and alive that didn’t have a place to go, every food fight we ever had, every food fight we’d stopped having, every time our parents had said “No” to us and then how as adults we’d started saying “No” to ourselves, everything that we were taught to stop doing because it was messy and dirty and ugly and it made you fat and no one did it anymore and if you did it meant you were stupid and unsuccessful, all of this lifted out of us like some great fiery griffin, angry and alive and free.

And as we watched the girls tossing the rice we laughed so hard we began to cry and I wish I could tell you that we were crying for all the sad and missed and dead moments we’d lived and how long it had been since we’d felt the freedom to throw our own food, but it was more that the moment was overwhelming. We were laughing and crying and this sound was coming out of us; sad and happy and horrified at so much pleasure and freedom.

And then it was over as fast as it had begun. The rice was gone and Zoe reached for the chicken and something clicked in my brain, the image of wiping chicken off of walls and I screamed a bloody “No!” and scooped them both up, brought them into the bathroom where they brushed their teeth. I swear, I had them in bed and asleep in 20 minutes because the rice fight had taken everything from them.

Later, when the rice, which was stuck on walls and all over the floor, had dried, Alex swept it up and he and Sabrina went home. I went to bed exhausted but alive.

But those days are gone. We traded the loft for a house, had a couple of kids, got some life insurance, made a will and started the slow climb toward 40. Needless to say, we don’t wrestle anymore. I’m sure if we did, we’d be spending a lot more time with our chiropractor, Jay, and we can’t afford that with all the other domestic expenses we’ve incurred.

Yet, what to do with those wacky marital emotions, all those annoying and evil thoughts we’ve had about each other all week? I told him to buy milk! She’s frigid! I haven’t had sex in three weeks! When was the last time you changed a diaper? Where are my socks? Try your sock drawer, for God’s sake!

And on and on. Marriage can be one giant wrestling match of the heart, and navigating yourselves toward harmony, humor and happiness can be a mighty big challenge. Throw in a teether, a toddler and way too many sleepless nights and you’ve got yourself a lot of potential negative energy. The wise couple needs to have things in place. We’ve got our Friday night dates — candles in the bedroom, a sex toy, a trusty babysitter, a great local movie theater and cheap Vietnamese food. But best of all, we have racquetball.

Racquetball, game of love. Racquetball, that crazy, whack ‘em, smack ‘em, “I’ll show you who’s boss” game. We love it. I think it’s saving our marriage.

We joined a health club a couple of years ago because between working and keeping up with the needs of our small family, we weren’t spending enough quality time together. We needed something just for us. We needed some fun.

Now, racquetball is not a nice game. It’s not a gentleman’s sport like, say, badminton or croquet. Racquetball is a nasty, aggressive, foulmouthed game. It’s perfect for couples who need to exorcise their mean and evil ways.

The game itself is sort of like tennis’s bad-boy cousin. You’ve got a racket, a hard little rubber ball and a room big enough to dodge, dash, scramble and slam around in. The ball comes at you fast and there’s no time to think or orient yourself. You’ve got to get in the ball’s way and out of the ball’s way; you’ve got to jump, leap, hustle and lunge. It’s got a rabid quality about it, just this side of ferocious.

I must admit, in the beginning I was not a good sport. If my husband was beating me, my bottom lip would jut out and steam would pour from my ears. I’d whack the ball really hard and shout things like, “Come on, just play!” Sometimes my racket would fly out of my hands. (OK, I threw it a couple of times.)

“I am not going to play with a bad sport!” Mark would say. “If you’re going to play like that, I’m going to go back to my yoga.”

“OK, OK,” I’d say, “just calm down.” Sometimes I could pull it together and restrain myself from acting like a 4-year-old, but sometimes I couldn’t and he’d call it quits. Still, after two years of playing together, I’ve become a much more grown-up partner, and it’s probably had an effect on other areas of our marriage where I had wanted to spit and kick and claw instead of using my words.

Line calls can be troubling, however. I had to get some prescription goggles so I could actually see the ball. But sometimes there’s a discrepancy between what I think I see and what Mark thinks he sees. In those cases, we leave the line calls up to Jesus, the Lord, our Savior. We take it over, and whoever wins the next point was right all along. “Thank you, Jesus,” the victor will mutter. It’s usually me, because I’m Jewish and I get a thrill out of getting the Lord to help me with my game. But Mark, a Methodist by birth, will also sometimes pray on the court. These spontaneous moments of religious devotion are, for us, a very tender perk that we didn’t expect to have included in our price of membership when we joined the club.

Sometimes one of us will hit the other person with the ball. At first I took it personally. “Hey!” I would scream. “That hurts!” And then I’d get all fussy, as if he’d done it on purpose. Sometimes this would result in a thrown racket. But since I started using my words and told him that I needed him to apologize, he now comes up to me with a big smile and says, “I’m sorry,” and I immediately feel much better. It’s so preschool, but it’s great. It’s worth the whole game to me.

And then there’s just the pure joy of being in a little, white room, sweating and screaming at the top of our lungs. I always find I have more than enough to scream about: the mounting bills, my fledgling career as a freelance writer, our toddler who moonlights as the devil, fears that my St. John’s wort will run out before I have a chance to get more. Not even our therapist can give us that kind of release.

Sure, we miss the wrestling. But occasionally my husband and I will both smash into the racquetball wall at the same time and fall into each other. Dazed and starry-eyed, we’ll look at each other with crooked little smiles.

“You look really good in those shorts,” Mark will say.

“Yeah?” I’ll say. “I feel pretty good.”

“Good game,” he’ll say.

“Yeah, good game.”

I’ll spare you the story about being raised a nice girl. We all were.
Taught to laugh things off, brush someone away without offending them,
walk past the catcalls and endure the poking. Nice girls know how to do
that, enduring the intrusion while remaining beautiful and desirable at
the same time. It’s an art really, and the more you’re able to integrate
it into the way things are, the less sensitive you’ll be to the
intrusion. Even to the point of not recognizing it — even if it is a fierce
pinch to the flesh that rides your middle. And although I’d grown
plenty in 37 years and learned to take care of myself and tell
the truth more often than not, I still couldn’t get myself to tell this fine,
Christ-loving man to stop pinching me. I didn’t want to hurt his
feelings because I knew it was a pinch in the name of some kind of love, which
I felt obligated to for some creepy reason.

Little did I know that my liberation from pinching wouldn’t come
in the form of the latest self-help book or from a flame-throwing feminist
guru charging me $300 for a weekend of shouting. No, liberation came from
my 2-year-old daughter, Ruby, loving scoundrel that she is.

I’d always hoped that if I had a daughter she’d be strong and
forthright and I’d be able to show her how to take care of herself in the world.
She wouldn’t take shit from other people, she’d feel entitled to speak
her mind and she wouldn’t let anyone touch her without permission. I wanted
her to have the self-esteem that I lacked.

But I realized early on in Ruby’s life that I was doing a pretty poor job
of showing her the way. The first time I noticed the gap between what I wanted for her
and what I was actually teaching her was when she was 4 months old
and I brought her to my exercise class. The baby sitter there seemed competent
enough; the other mothers seemed to think so. Still, I’d pick Ruby up after the
sweaty hour was over only to find unsteady toddlers running around with
sharp pencils, hopping and flopping around my innocent babe, who lay
peacefully in her portable car seat, binky plugged in her mouth. I was
horrified and sure that some harm would come to Ruby, but I couldn’t
bring myself to say anything to the baby sitter because I was embarrassed
that I would seem, well, neurotic.

Even later, when I saw the baby sitter plant a few full-on mouth kisses to
my daughter, I concealed my shock but said nothing. Aside from the fact
that she smoked and didn’t wash before handling the kids, you never kiss
little babies on the mouth. Still, I never said a word because I
simply couldn’t manage to say, “Uh, please don’t kiss my kid.” I went
home from the class night after night and tormented myself.

So when my in-laws visited last week I had already endured at least
three pinches from my father-in-law and I wasn’t even close to erupting.
My anger lay too low to the surface. I only sensed a dull, sick feeling
for my father-in-law. And counted the days until their departure.

It was an overcast morning and we were getting ready to go visit the U.S.
something or other, a ship once owned by Elvis that my father-in-law was
pretty excited about. Ruby was naked and in my mother-in-law’s arms when
Grandpa came saddling over to give her a tweak on the butt. I saw it.
Then I heard Ruby yell with all her 2-year-old might, “Boy no do that!
My butt! My body! Boy no do that!” I just froze. I could not believe what
I had just heard my kid say. I mean, it slipped out of her mouth like honey,
like it was just the most natural thing in the world. I just stood there in awe of this
person I’d brought into the world, amazed and grateful that even
after watching her own mother stuff it, that she still had the edge on,
that she instinctively knew how to take care of herself. I woke right
up.

Later that day at the park I told her that what she’d said to Grandpa
was really cool and she looked at me in confusion like, “What’s the big
deal mom?” then ran off to the swings.

Several days later, and after much buoying by friends, I asked my
father-in-law to come into my office for a talk. I asked him if
he realized that he pinches people, and he said he did. “Well, I don’t
like it,” I said. “I never have. It hurts and I’ve never known how to
tell you.”

“Gee, I’m sorry,” he said uncomfortably. “I always thought it
was a kind of sweet thing, you know, friendly. I never meant any harm.”

I went on to explain that as women we grow up taking all sorts of sweet,
well-meaning things from men that are meant to flatter us, but that
actually demean us. I said that pinching was no longer acceptable for me
or for Ruby, and that he wasn’t allowed to touch her butt either. “I
want her to grow up knowing that no one is allowed to touch her unless
she gives them permission,” I explained. My father-in-law didn’t seem
to grasp the full impact of what I was saying. He’d been pinching women
for years and was a very traditional kind of guy. You know, “I pinch, you cook,
I make the money, you make the bed.” But he did say that he’d stop pinching us and
to brick him if he ever did it again.

It was Ruby who made it all possible. I know I have things
to teach her about the world and how we ought to live in it, but instead
of assuming that I’ve got all the answers, I want to pay more attention
to what she instinctively seems to know. I want to yell more too, and scream
“Ouch!” if someone pinches me. I want to be able to tell friends that I feel
hurt or angry if they’ve said or done something that didn’t feel right to me.
I want to stop worrying about other people’s feelings and take better
care of my own. Growing up I was told that was a selfish way to be, but as
I can see in Ruby, there is a kind of clarity and liberation in having the
courage to trust yourself and speak your truth in the moment. You can always
be forgiven if you’ve tread too hard, but it’s much harder to forgive yourself for
remaining silent.