*kendraspondence*

In every house, there is a certain drawer full of shame. I have to believe this is so. I must believe this is so, because the chagrin that the drawer chock full o’ scrunchies in my mother’s bathroom would be too unbearable should this cask be unique to my family. Years have passed, my parents separated, I went to college, the scrunchies drawer still remained. A sizable bathroom drawer, devoted entirely to ribbony, ruffley hair ties. No longer cool post 1994. In fact, I believe that movie with Toni Colette and Cameron Diaz, about the two sisters, what was that called? ::checks IMDB for verification:: Oh yeah, “In Her Shoes,” well anyway. I think there’s a line in there that says, “1994 called, it wants its scrunchie back.” My mother never got the call.

My mother is not one of those sentimental to a fault people, nor is she a true pack rat. She’s just very busy. Not a busy body, her time is just divided and spoken for, and she doesn’t get around much to projects like throwing away expired coupons, liquidating the garage of busted hoses, and TOSSING THE SCRUNCHIES FOR THE LOVE OF DEBBIE GIBSON.

My mother got remarried on Saturday. Lovely, lovely affair. I think she and her new hub are so happy together. BFFs with so much in common, it’s just plain uncanny. Prior to the wedding, my mother informed me that she had “cleaned out the scrunchie drawer.” Cleaned out as in totally evacuated all traces of scrunchiness. Except for the green one that she wore to Trader Joe’s with me on Friday. It took everything I had not to say anything, like, please, can you not? Scrunchie it up? Since it was her special weekend and all. But now she’s packing for her honeymoon and if that green scrunchie somehow makes it into her suitcase, I beg of you, please be kind to her. It’s all she’s got left of her life as a single girl.

***

Doesn’t it look like my family doesn’t want to formally annex The Others yet? I think we’re just awkward.

If you have been riding the Red Line on Wednesdays this year, chances are you sat next to a rude woman who clearly didn’t mean to be. She was hauling Mary Poppins-ish luggage and taking up more than her rightful cubit of space on the T. But her socks didn’t match. And she had large gray gullies under her eyes. And why did she have the biggest, stupidest smile on her face?

If you were on the morning train, it’s because she was dreaming of a little thing we’ll call MANNA IN MELTED MILK CHOCOLATE FORM waiting for her at Burdick’s in Harvard Square before heading in to her internship.

If you were on the evening train, it’s because she was dreaming of a little thing we’ll call BABY SMILE IN HEART MELTING FORM waiting for her on a little Chubby Dumpty when she got home.

***

My internship is over and it was one of the most positive experiences I have ever had – as indentured servanthoods go. I learned a great deal about trade journals and the beverage industry and also that if you drink a Guru energy drink at 2 p.m., you are still going to be swinging from the disco ball at 3:30a.m. wondering if maybe you should buy the special combo vacuum on the infomercial. And maybe one for your mom. I’d like to give a shout out to my homeys at Beverage Spectrum Magazine because they’re all fantastic, like if Statler and Waldorf had a party up in their balcony with free non-alcoholic drinks for everyone.

***

Also, a shout-out to our babysitter Princess Diana who blessed our lives in ways that she will not begin to realize. As a new parent leaving the Chubby Dumpty with a stranger, and as an unpaid intern, I was extremely nervous we might not find someone who would accept the pittance we would pay them to tend to the life of our defenseless daughter. But Princess Diana answered our e-mail and our prayer and the TLC she has shown Baby Girl over the course of the last few months has been unmatched.

Baby Girl was so grateful, she repaid Diana with endless fits of rage, and frantic bouts of tears. Ergo, I am sad and glad the Wednesday Special is over.

I heard about a therapist, possibly one that I know, possibly even one that I live with, who was working with a child who had a proclivity for touching classmates’ body parts. Particularly the privey parts. Which the classmates were not at all diggin’. So, the therapist devised an exercise in which he would try to normalize the aforementioned body parts of fascination, along with the other parts of the body. The therapist and the child would rattle off body parts in no particular order, saying each aloud, with the object of the exercise that when the body parts of fascination were said aloud, they would not produce a giggle, a smidgen of a chuckle, because what really is all that funny about the parts of the body that everyone has, depending on whether one is a male or a female?

The exercise, I have to imagine — since it’s possible I don’t know the therapist personally and that he didn’t tell me how it went — sounded a lot like this:

“HEAD. EARS. BOOBS. EYELASH. ELBOW. ACHILLES HEEL. PENIS. BOOBS. FOREHEAD. NOSE.”

And every time I try to envision this going down in one of those neutral toned offices with leather chairs and a candy dish? I nearly die from laughing so hard.

How much are you concerned with what others think of you?

I just finished editing a sermon for print that one of my most favorite – barnone – speakers, Pastor David Asscherick, gave at a youth conference some years ago. The sermon is called “Because of Those Who Sat.” It is about the “Godience” – a word he coined to convey the importance of concerning oneself with God as an audience of one. At one point, he cites the words of a famous rock-climber lady who was scaling craggy walls before it was acceptable for a woman to do so. She (her name is Jan Con) said to the notion that her hobby was uncouth, “What others think of me is none of my business.”

What others think of me is none of my business.

Don’t you love that?

At times, I’ve been obsessed with what others think of me. Family. Church members. Bosspeople. A born people pleaser, I have been consumed by conversations that I rehearse in my head, some of which will never play out.

I went to StrollerFit class the other day and I was totally bringing up the caboose in all the exercises, eating the ever living dust off the heels of the other hottie fitty mamas, totally getting burned by their toddlers who were wearing Crocs that were slipping off their four year-old feet. I started to think what they all must be thinking of me, pushing the lightest of the strollers there, and still getting all tomato-faced.
But then I congratulated myself for having been spliced open four and a half months ago and having all of my major organs displaced to pluck an 8 lb. Purdue human out, then healing to the point where I can run and not look like a deranged duck being chased by a predator.

What others think of me is none of my business.

***
I’m much more interested in other kinds of business. Primarily silly business….