The God of Poop

November 21, 2018 ~ mstturpin ~ Leave a comment

The Dublin Bottling Works — Home of the original Dr. Pepper and definitely not a clear liquid. (Photo by Terrye Turpin)

At my last physical my doctor mentioned it had been five years since I had a colonoscopy.

“That long, huh? Gee doc, the whole experience was so pleasant it seems like only yesterday.”

Every time I light a candle in my bathroom, I feel like I’m setting up an altar to the god of poop.

I successfully delayed the colon conversation by mentioning my cholesterol. I’ve found as I grow older I can deflect almost any uncomfortable medical inquiry by bringing up another body part.

The first time I had a screening colonoscopy it took my doctor three years to convince me. She seemed puzzled that I continued to dodge major illnesses, so I felt I owed it to her to try one more test to see if we couldn’t find something. I called to make the appointment, and they told me I would need a designated driver to chauffeur me home after the procedure. Because I had spent 30 hours in labor with him, I nominated my oldest son, Robert. A few days before the big event he accompanied me to pick up the aptly named Super Bowel Prep Kit at the pharmacy.

“That will be $73,” the cheerful cashier said as she rang up my purchase.

“Holy crap!” I said. Robert laughed behind me.

I felt that for $73 the stuff should come with a sommelier, someone to uncork the bottle, swirl the liquid around in a glass, and remark on the bouquet. Reluctantly I paid for the purchase with my rapidly depleting medical flex spending card and we left with the kit — two 8 ounce bottles of clear liquid that each had to be mixed with another 8 ounces of water and then chased with yet another 16 ounces of water within an hour.

On the way back to my apartment I held up a bottle. “I wonder what it tastes like?”

“I bet it tastes like ass,” said my twenty-eight-year-old son with all the smug self-assurance of someone at least two decades away from having to drink 32 ounces of ass flavored liquid himself. We tried out different names for the drink — “Turd Tonic”, “Poopy Potion”, and finally decided the winner was “Caca Cola.”

The instructions for my prep assured me I could have all the clear liquids I wanted during the process. I enthusiastically mixed up a dozen servings of lemon and pineapple Jello. Red gelatin was discouraged in horrific detail. I discovered all the clear liquids I wanted were considerably less than the amount of clear liquids taking up room in my refrigerator.

The actual prep went as expected. I took the advice found on several internet sites and bought adult diapers to wear during the experience. They worked so well I wondered why I didn’t wear them all the time. Robert stayed with me in the beginning but when the real fun began, he left for his apartment.

“I’ll see you tomorrow!” I called out from behind the bathroom door.

The pharmacist had warned me that the prep was “very effective” and by the end of the second dose I had to agree. My colon was so clear the doctor could probably see all the way to Cleveland.

I couldn’t have anything to eat or drink the day of the colonoscopy and this worried me before I understood that by the end of the first day I wouldn’t want anything to eat or drink on the second day.

The morning of the procedure Robert strolled into my apartment. He wore an Iron Maiden t-shirt featuring a rotting corpse on the front.

“I’ll drive on the way there,” I told him.

When we arrived at the clinic I checked in while Robert discovered they didn’t have Wi-Fi in the waiting room. A smiling nurse escorted us back to a little room and I met with the doctor who would perform the colonoscopy. He looked slightly older than my son and had very nice hair.

“Awesome t-shirt dude!” he said to Robert as he flashed the metal sign and they slapped hands.

The doctor briefly explained the procedure and then a nurse brought over a hospital gown and a brown paper bag. She told me to take off all my clothes and put them in the bag.

“They’ll call when I’m ready to leave,” I tossed Robert my purse and phone as he bolted out the door.

After I stuffed my clothes into the paper bag, the nurse took a black marker and wrote my name on the outside, just in case they needed to use it as evidence. I hopped onto the narrow hospital bed as the anesthesiologist came in to meet with me. He also had nice hair and a lovely smile. He looked and sounded like the actor Antonio Banderas.

“How are you feeling?” he asked as he placed his hand on my arm. He had very warm hands.

“I’m okay,” I responded, with as much confidence as I could while my bare ass stuck to the sheet covering the bed.

“Don’t be nervous, I promise you won’t remember anything about the procedure. You will just have a little nap now.”

I smiled up at him from the bed and tried not to look nervous, despite his being one of the most handsome men to see me half naked. He kept his warm hand on my arm as he helped me turn over on my side. Then he bent down to gaze into my eyes and ask, “Do you have any loose teeth or dentures?”

My doctor came in and fussed around with something behind my back as he hummed what sounded suspiciously like “Run to the Hills”, complete with shredding guitar solo. I no longer felt nervous, I felt old and tired as I fell into the promised nap.

I had read all about the unpleasantness of the prep but what no one mentioned was how wonderful were the after-affects of the sedative they give you. I woke up to the sound of “Slow Ride” by Fog Hat playing on the room’s sound system, which was appropriate since I hadn’t felt that stoned since 1975.

“How are you doing?” asked the nurse as she took my arm and helped me to sit up.

“Wow,” I replied.

“Would you like a drink? We have Coke, Dr. Pepper, and Sprite.”

I chose a Dr. Pepper, and when the nurse asked if I wanted a regular or a diet drink, I replied, “Oh, I want a REAL Dr. Pepper!”

When Robert arrived to pick me up, I was still enjoying my not-clear drink. The nurse warned us “Go straight home. No shopping and don’t make any legal decisions or sign any documents today.”

“Can I take my Dr. Pepper with me?” I asked.

On the way home I buckled into the passenger seat of the car, propped up against the door, and enjoyed the rest of my soda while Robert drove with his usual reckless abandon. The drugs were still kicking in, so I didn’t mind when we charged through yellow lights and swerved around corners.

I wanted to make some profound comment on how wonderful it is to have a family, and how much I loved and appreciated him. Tears welled up in my eyes and I spoke in a hoarse voice.

“This is the best Dr. Pepper in the entire world.” I reached over to pat my son’s arm.

“Those must be some fantastic drugs, Mom.”

We continued on towards home, where we would listen to Iron Maiden on the stereo, watch television together, and have anything we wanted for dinner, including six or seven servings of pineapple Jello.

The Wheels on the Bike Go ‘Round and ‘Round

November 5, 2018 ~ mstturpin ~ Leave a comment

I flipped through the glossy pages of a fashion magazine and there, alongside an article on how to dress for a summer party, I spotted a glossy ad featuring a slim model posed gracefully alongside her Schwinn. I thought about the pants in my closet that no longer fit, and turned to my boyfriend, Andrew.

“I want a bicycle,” I said as I tossed the magazine back onto the growing stack on our coffee table.

This idea had been building, spurred by a desire to find an exercise that required more enthusiasm than ability. I’d gone through hiking, tennis, and yoga, trying to find something I could do and still get out of bed the next day.

Andrew agreed this was a fine idea, then asked me, “Do you remember your first bicycle?”

I have trouble remembering where I put down my coffee cup each morning, but I had an image in my mind of that first bicycle.

“It had a white vinyl banana-shaped seat with peace symbols, rainbow streamers on the handlebars, and one of those plastic wicker baskets with huge artificial sunflowers on the front.”

“Peace symbols? Sunflowers?” Andrew looked skeptical until I reminded him that my childhood took place in the 1960s. I assured him I would not add any flowered accessories to my new bicycle, and we went that next weekend to the Bike Mart.

In the bicycle shop, I sucked in my stomach as I wandered through crowds of whip-thin men dressed in spandex shorts. There were rows and rows of bikes in racks spaced around the store and organized into sections–mountain bikes, cruisers, hybrid bikes, tandem bikes, and even some that included an electric motor, handy I supposed for people who weren’t trying to fit into the pants in their closets.

I followed Andrew as he went over to look at the sturdy grey and black mountain bikes. I tried not to look at the price tags too closely. Surely they had the decimal in the wrong place. I rolled one of the mountain bikes off the rack and felt a sense of accomplishment when I sat on it without tipping over.

“Can I help you?” A young salesgirl, blond and tanned in her Bike Mart polo, walked up as I struggled to put the bike back on the rack.

“Yes,” I replied, “I’d like to buy a bicycle, and I guess I need a little help to pick one out.”

The salesgirl nodded, blond ponytail bobbing. With one hand she took the bike from me and slipped it back into the rack.

“Where will you be riding?” she asked.

I should answer, “Oh, just around my living room, and on soft, padded surfaces,” but I had an image in my mind of shaded forest paths. I told her, “Mostly paved roads, but I’d like to go off-road now and then.” This caused the salesgirl to pause for a moment, her forehead wrinkled as though she were working out a calculus equation. I wondered if she would recommend one of those adult tricycles, or maybe psychiatric counseling.

We looked through the inventory and settled on a turquoise and white mountain bike with an aluminum frame. Lighter than the other bikes, it would be less likely to damage me when it fell over, and the color matched my shoes.

I imagined myself cycling through the neighborhood on my new bike, maybe ringing a little bell attached to the handlebars. I purchased a gel padded seat, a bag for the handlebars in a somber shade of black with no flowers, and a helmet.

The helmet made my head look gigantic as though my brain had expanded. It did not, however, make me appear more intelligent. After our first outing, I added a pair of bike shorts with a soft insert supposed to help ease any soreness from riding. They seemed to hold up well, and I considered wearing them at work, where I have to sit typing at a computer for long periods.

After a leisurely five-mile ride on our local bike path, Andrew and I discussed where we should go next. He suggested the White Rock Lake Bike Trail, and I looked forward to the adventure as I packed snacks and extra water for the eighteen-mile trek.

For most of the ride, I kept Andrew in sight as he pedaled in front of me. We passed small children and grandmothers pushing strollers and I gave them all a cheery wave as we rolled down the first nine miles, but on the return loop, my strength failed. Somewhere around mile sixteen, I realized that the difference between an eighteen-mile bike ride and a five-mile bike ride was not thirteen miles. It was, instead, the distance from here to hell and back.

The bike shorts, while appreciated, had limits. When we stopped at a shady underpass, I plopped down in the dirt and tried to catch my breath while Andrew poured lukewarm water over my head and neck.
“Can you go on? Do I need to get the car?” Andrew asked. “I’ve broken my sweetie!” he said.

I shook my head as I lay there in the dirt while scores of curious onlookers passed by, among them the small children and grandmothers I had floated past earlier.

“I’m sorry,” I replied, “I thought we were getting close to the end.”
“We are, just another mile. Remember, we have Gatorade in the cooler back at the car.”

“Gatorade!” No drink had sounded so intoxicating since my college days.
My heart rate slowed to a normal pace as a family with two toddlers pedaled past us. When an elderly man cycled by on a recumbent bike, I decided I would not be shown up by an octogenarian, and we got back up to continue the ride.

For the rest of that mile, I tried to ignore the white-hot rock that my nice cushioned bicycle seat had transformed into. I stood up to pedal to give my sitting parts relief, but my legs protested the extra work. My ass, not to be outdone, reminded me that, bicycle shorts or not, I would probably sleep facing down for the next few nights.

We got to the last one hundred yards of the route and the trail turned downhill toward the park where our car was waiting. I leaned forward into the warm wind and let the bike gather speed as I coasted. The spokes lulled me with a pleasant hum, and the sharp tar smell of hot summer roads rose from the path below. I drifted along to the sounds of children playing near the soccer fields and the tinkle of a bell from the ice cream vendor.

As the wheels on my bike spun around, I imagined rainbow streamers flying out from the handlebars, and a white plastic wicker basket with large, bright sunflowers on the front. Andrew waited at the car with an ice cold Gatorade as I rolled up, and I gratefully accepted his offering, ready for the ride to be over, ready for it to last forever.

Ten Things You Don’t Know About Me

September 16, 2018 ~ mstturpin ~ Leave a comment

And Maybe Never Wondered About, but Oh Well…

Altered Photo — Self Portrait by Terrye Turpin

I was tagged in this craze by the very talented Kay Bolden, so I’m assuming there’s at least one person out there interested in learning a little more about me. So here are ten things that will tell you a bit. Most of the photographs, for better or worse, were taken by me.

There are books in almost every room of my home.

Bedside table and bookcase filled with books on writing.

The dining room is also my crafting room. The bookcase here is filled with cookbooks and craft books. That’s Dolly lurking beside the ironing board.

Archer guards the nonfiction books and my Hot Wheels collection.

I keep the children’s books in the dining room for when my grandson visits. I wrote a story about that duck.

2. I am the youngest of seven children, but because they were all much older than me, I grew up like an only child. My mother was 42 when I was born on her birthday. Three of my sisters and one brother have passed away, as have my mother and father.

My Dad Lloyd Hamilton and my older brother Ronnie

3. I’ve never lived further than 40 miles from McKinney, Texas — the place I was born.

4. I love shopping at antique, junk, and thrift stores.

5. My fiance and I own more than 30 IKEA badgers. (We love IKEA)

Sometimes we dress the badgers in holiday apparel.

6. My favorite authors are Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Robert McCammon, and David Sedaris.

If I’m in a dark mood my writing takes a twisted turn to horror.

I love David Sedaris, and you can probably see his influence in my humorous essays. I go to hear him perform his work every time he’s in the Dallas/Fort Worth area and I have all his books, four of them are signed by him.

7. I have a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry (I thought I wanted to go to medical school). When I was 45 I went back to school to earn a graduate degree. It took me five years working full time and going to classes part time to earn my Masters degree in Taxation. I worked my way through graduate school delivering pizzas part time in addition to my 40 hour a week full time job.

8. I bought a bicycle when I was 52, and started riding again after almost 30 years.

I’m just posing here, I do ride with a helmet.

9. I got divorced after 25 years of marriage. When I started dating again I signed up for OK Cupid and gave online dating a try.

I only met one person and had one date through OK Cupid.

Me and Andrew hiking in Glen Rose, Texas at Dinosaur Valley State Park

10. I’m getting married in October to that one date I met six years ago on OK Cupid.

Badgers in Bluebonnets in Ennis, Texas — This photo by Andrew Shaw

I’ll keep the thread going by tagging a few folks here, if you’ve already been tagged you can blissfully ignore this one, but I hope you’ll play. And if I haven’t tagged you please join in with your list of ten things and tag me, I’d love to read them.

KD Murray S Lynn Knight ~ 🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈 Karen Booth Nupoor Raj Sam H Arnold Paul S Markle kurt gasbarra James Finn Terijo Teresa Colón J. Brandon Lowry Louise Foerster K.C. Knouse R. Nash Ronald C. Flores-Gunkle

The Summer of Lemons

September 7, 2018 ~ mstturpin ~ Leave a comment

I moved into my first apartment in 1979. The place came with shag carpet striped in an acid trip rainbow of purple, green, and brown. By the time my roommate Ann and I lived there the rug had collected a gummy overlay of tobacco and pot smoke, beer, and other substances we ignored. Our floral print couch had broken springs that sagged our butts toward the ground when we stretched out to catch up on Love Boat and Fantasy Island. The world’s biggest fan of the rock band Queen lived next door. He serenaded us every night with “Another One Bites the Dust” and if we pushed the couch close to the wall, it would rock us to sleep with the vibrating bass line. That apartment was the first place we had ever chosen all on our own, without help from parents or school administration.

Ann and I discovered our home in August, about three weeks before the fall semester would start at Texas Woman’s University. We drove over to Denton, Texas in her 1967 Dodge Dart. The car did not have air conditioning. We rolled down the windows and hung our heads out like dogs to catch the hot air blowing off the highway. By the time we made the hour-long trip from our hometown the backs of my legs stuck to the vinyl car seat with a tacky layer of sweat glue. We pulled into the parking lot of the first complex on our list and slumped out of the car, careful not to brand ourselves with the hot metal on the outside the Dart. In the full sun we stood there pondering the faded pink brick buildings. I imagined the rubber soles of my sandals melting into the black tar pit of the asphalt parking lot and I wondered if some later civilization would find my bones, preserved and still wearing flip flops.

“There’s a pool,” Ann said, pointing toward a shimmering patch of blue in the center of the courtyard. The sharp summer scent of chlorine hung in the air and we heard laughter and soft splashing coming from the lucky residents enjoying the water. We wiped the sweat out of our eyes, abandoned the car, and raced to the manager’s office to sign a lease for our new apartment.

We moved in over the next weekend, figuring to get settled in before classes started. We unpacked in air-conditioned comfort, without realizing we enjoyed the last bit of the previous tenant’s billing cycle. On Monday we woke to the end of that free ride. No electricity meant no radio, no television, and no air conditioning. Our friendly neighbor set down his bong and turned down the bass on his stereo long enough to explain how to go about getting our own account set up. A phone call to the utility company later, we had an appointment for them to come out the next day, Tuesday.

We opened the windows and the front door and spent the day at the pool. By early evening we were both the color of the Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill wine we had been drinking all day.

“Is there any more ice?” Ann asked from the couch where she stirred the hot air with the magazine she had been reading.

“No, maybe we should go to the store.” My voice was muffled because I had my head in the open freezer, waving the last of the cool air onto my face.

“We’re also out of wine,” I added.

Ann and I moaned about the lack of air conditioning, ice, and alcohol and decided, since we were heading to the store to get ice and wine, we would stop at K-Mart to pick up a fan–yes, an electric fan, a fan that would need electricity to run.

Most people would notice the glaring gap in logic this purchase presented. However, Ann and I, stunned from the heat like lizards, and brain damaged from inhaling chlorine fumes and cheap wine all day, loaded into the Dart and headed to K-Mart.

Once we arrived at the store, we discovered the fans displayed right at the front entrance. We walked through a wind tunnel of spinning blades and overlooked the cords dangling from the back and running to the hidden power supply. We pictured our fan set up in the living room, spinning cool air out of nothing. Fan chosen and placed in the shopping cart, we picked up cleaning supplies and added a bottle of lemon scented ammonia to our cart as we headed to the cashier.

While we stood in line, Ann picked up the cleaner. “I wonder if this really smells like lemons. You know, like real lemons or just some sweet stuff.” I took the bottle from her and read the label.

“It says ammonia,” I said.

I unscrewed the cap, held the container close to my nose, and inhaled a strong breath. A line of lemon scented fire raced up my nose and entered my brain.

“Well, does it smell like lemons?” Ann asked.

I couldn’t answer as my lungs seemed to have collapsed from the ammonia. Instead I waved frantically, hoping it would be interpreted as “Yes, but help!”

I held out the bottle toward Ann and before I could warn her, watched as she took the bottle from me and inhaled. There we were, in the line at K-Mart, gasping for breath and crying, passing that bottle of ammonia back and forth between us like two drunks sharing a can of Sterno.

We recovered enough to put the cap back on the bottle, then looked at the fan sitting there in the cart. The ammonia must have loosened something in our brain because we realized then you can’t run an electric fan without electricity. We traded the fan for a pair of flashlights and left the ammonia at K-Mart. We stopped for ice and headed back to our apartment, our home where the moonlight beckoned off the dark, still surface of the swimming pool and the night air smelled of chlorine and not lemons.

What Will Answer When You Call My Name

July 21, 2018 ~ mstturpin ~ Leave a comment

My son, Andy, told me about the stray cat when I stopped over at his house for a visit. The cat, a scrawny orange and white tabby, wandered over to him at the park near his home.

“I shared my snack with it,” he said.

The cat, hungry enough to eat a granola bar, held still and purred while he petted her. She either had a taste for sweetened oats or she hadn’t eaten real cat food in a while. He told me he would have taken her home if he could have figured out a way to get her into his car.

We always had pets. A hamster, cats, dogs, a gecko, fish — every branch of the animal kingdom was represented. The last of them, our cat Miss Tiggy and the dog Greta, died not too long before my marriage came to its own timely end. When I moved out Andy came with me to share an apartment. Now he lived in a house with his fiancé. I stayed in the apartment, alone for the first time in twenty-five years.

When Andy mentioned going back to the park to look for the cat, the appropriate response at this point from me would have been “What about your allergies?” or “Are you sure you’re ready to own a pet?”

But Andy had a house in need of a pet, and there was a cat in need of a home.

“I wonder if she’s still there?” I asked as I gathered up my car keys.

We piled into my Honda SUV and drove the four blocks to Finch Park. The pecan and oak trees in the park loomed tall and shady over the playground when I played there as a child, and years later they stood over my own boys. The donated land was a gift from Fannie and Henry A. Finch and the park carries their name. Fannie was one of the first women in Texas to be elected to a school board, not an easy feat in 1917. In fact, since women weren’t allowed to vote until 1920, she wouldn’t have been able to cast a ballet for herself.

We found the kitty hiding out in the bushes that ringed one side of the grounds. She strolled out to greet us as we stepped out of the car, waving her tail like a flag signaling surrender. We hadn’t given much thought to the logistics of moving the cat from the park, into my car, and down the street to Andy’s house. We surveyed the supplies on hand.

“I have a recyclable grocery sack, a zippered cooler, and a laundry basket.” I said.

The cat did not particularly like being stuffed in the back of an SUV and having a laundry basket turned over on top of her. We made the drive back to the house listening to the cat wailing harmony to Lucinda Williams on the CD player.

I stopped in the driveway and Andy hopped out to open the front door. Once the way inside was clear we cautiously lifted the hatch on my SUV. The term “catapult” does not adequately describe the velocity that an angry cat can achieve when she launches herself from the driver’s seat of a car and out the back, past the astonished humans who stood in her way.

We lured her within grabbing distance with a can of tuna and I scooped her up to carry her into the house. At this point the cat noticed that we were approaching an open door into who knows what, and she decided to attach herself to me like a large, furry cockle burr. I don’t know who was howling louder, me or the cat, but we made it safely inside.

I searched the bathroom medicine cabinet for first aid supplies while Andy treated the cat to the rest of the tuna.

“What will you name the cat?” I called as I poured antiseptic down my arm.

“How about Killer?” Andy replied.

I was in favor of Lucy, short for Lucifer. I contemplated the angry red scratches on my arm and considered the possibility that I might perish from some cat borne illness.

Andy replied, “Don’t worry Mom, if you die we’ll name the cat after you.”

I thought about Miss Fannie Finch and the park named for her, and decided that if worse came to worse I could accept a scrawny cat as a namesake. After all, it’s nice to be remembered.

Give me Rockets Like Flowers

July 9, 2018 ~ mstturpin ~ 4 Comments

Fireworks at the Ball Park 2016 — The view from 2016 when we were on the other side of the stadium.

I am not especially patriotic, but I love a good fireworks display. I’m not sure how I came to this attraction to all things bright and sparkly. It isn’t nostalgia. The only fireworks I remember in my childhood involved a car trip with my parents down a deserted country road. We stopped outside the city limits and my dad unloaded a paper sack of bottle rockets that we carried past a herd of curious cattle to the edge of a pond on some stranger’s land. It wasn’t exactly the type of memory I’m anxious to recreate.

The other day was July 4^th, the day we Americans celebrate our independence by setting off grass fires and frightening the neighborhood dogs. My fiancé Andrew and I set aside this date every year for our annual disagreement about fireworks. He prefers to ignore them and hide inside in the air conditioning (I think he must have been a Labrador retriever in a past life) while I insist that the holiday won’t be complete unless I watch something explode.

“I could always stick a sparkler up my butt and run around,” Andrew said.

“Not spectacular enough,” I said, after considering his offer.

This year we compromised with an outing on July 3^rd to the ballpark near our home to watch the Frisco RoughRiders play baseball. The schedule stated there would be fireworks following the game. We arrived at the stadium after the first inning and settled into our seats behind first base. I counted off the innings and willed the sun to set while we ducked at the occasional foul ball flying overhead. The ice in my soda melted and my thighs stuck to the plastic seat. The air filled with what was either the aroma of grilled hot dogs or my fellow spectators roasting in the summer heat. Around the 7^th inning we rallied enough to stand and sing along with “God Bless America.”

As soon as the game ended I noticed a stream of people heading down from the stands.

“Should we follow them?” I asked.

The loudspeaker cut in, announcing that the fireworks would soon start. “They’ll be visible behind the first base section of the stands, fans will have a good view from the field,” the announcer said.

“That’s right over us,” Andrew pointed out. “I don’t think we’ll be able to see from here.” We leaned back in our seats, trying to judge the line of sight.

“We should move,” I agreed.

We hopped over rows of plastic folding seats and fought like salmon headed upstream against the crowd tromping down the aisles. The announcer warned “The fireworks will start in one minute” just as we reached the top of the stadium. I hummed the theme from Mission Impossible as we dodged a stadium attendant.

“Go! Go!” I urged Andrew as we weaved past shuttered food stands and splashed through puddles alongside the Lazy River pool. The first boom sounded as we fled through a gate and into the street beside the ballpark. I stood on the curb and leaned out into traffic so I could watch the pyrotechnics bursting in flashes of brilliant red, white, and blue. Their splendor was slightly blocked by the leaves on the tree I stood under. The display ended while I was still deciding on the best place to stand. It was like someone offered me a cookie and then broke it in half and gave me the smaller bit.

The following evening, the proper Independence Day, we celebrated with an after dark bike ride through our neighborhood. We ride at night because I will only put on bicycle shorts when there is no danger of anyone seeing me. The subdivision across from our home features roads with challenging hills. I usually complain and grumble as I downshift and pedal along. This night, as I struggled up the fourth or fifth incline, I heard the distinctive boom that meant somewhere people were celebrating.

“Can you see any fireworks at the top?” I called as Andrew cycled past me.

When we got to the peak we could hear a barrage of blasts from every direction. But we couldn’t see any fireworks. It was as though we had arrived at a free fire zone in the midst of an invisible military occupation.

We biked on through the subdivision. I struggled along hopefully at every rise in elevation while Andrew shot past me. At last we arrived at the outside edge of the subdivision, and Andrew coasted up to the stop sign at the intersection with the main road. An older man and his barefoot son stood in their front yard, watching the horizon.

“Look there.” Andrew pointed toward the east. A sound like far off thunder rolled toward us and I saw a burst of red and gold light up the sky miles away.

“I think that’s Arlington, it’s been going on almost an hour,” our neighbor told us.

We had a good view, although from our remote vantage point the fireworks resembled glittery dandelions gone to seed. As the booms faded Andrew turned to me. “If we listen carefully we might hear the people cheering.”

“Maybe,” I replied. I envied that distant crowd. I imagined the fireworks bursting in the air and showering their magic light on those below. I hoped they clapped. I hoped they cheered. I hoped they sang.

God bless America, land that I love
Stand beside her and guide her
Through the night with a light from above
From the mountains to the prairies
To the oceans white with foam
God bless America, my home sweet home
God bless America, my home sweet home

Irving Berlin

Don’t Tread on Me

June 18, 2018 ~ mstturpin ~ Leave a comment

I’ve never liked escalators. I look at an escalator and I see big metal teeth waiting to grind up my feet. I have a problem with the last section, the one that goes under the metal strip at the end. I imagine myself being sucked down under like a cartoon character, getting smaller and flatter until I disappear under the edge with a quiet pop.

Elevators aren’t much better. Nothing good ever happens in an elevator in the movies. If the cable doesn’t break and all the characters plummet to their death, they’ll get stuck inside the car with the bad guy. Or, just when you think everyone is going to escape, the doors will make that little “ping” noise and open up to the serial killer standing there with an ax.

I used to think I was safe on a treadmill. It doesn’t go anywhere, and I always manage to hit the “Stop” button, mostly when I don’t intend to. Recently I discovered how accurate the phrase “ass over elbows” can be, and I can now answer “Yes!” to the question “Have you ever fallen off a treadmill?” Nothing broken, except my dignity, but how much of that can you really have while you’re wearing sweat pants?

I was moving along at a brisk pace when I decided to take off my jacket. I could have easily turned off the treadmill, but I was in the middle of a nice series of laps and didn’t want to lose my place. I like to imagine myself huffing along in the lead in a 5k run while being chased by bears. In that situation I would hardly stop to take off a jacket, unless I planned on using it to distract the bears. So, without looking I tossed my top behind me, toward my gear stacked on the floor.

My friend, trudging along on the next treadmill, cried out, “Oh! You knocked over your tea!”

Born and raised a Southerner, I take my iced tea seriously, even if it is in a flimsy foam cup sitting on the floor of a gym. So I immediately turned around on the treadmill to see the damage, and the machine rewarded me by trying to shoot me off the end like I was the target in a skeet shooting competition.

I fell back onto the treadmill. Luckily I landed on the part of my body that was the object of the treadmill exercise in the first place. The treadmill was still running, any other time I would have hit the safety switch by accident and had to start my program all over. The treadmill seemed thrilled to have me back. I swear the belt sped up, and this time I shot off and performed a half somersault, something I haven’t done voluntarily since third grade.

I landed in a cold puddle of foam bits, tea, and ice, not quite so refreshing when applied to the bottom half of my body. I finished my work out on the stationary bicycle, figuring that if I fell off I would at least be closer to the floor.

I’ve heard people say, “It’s not the destination that matters, it’s the journey”, and I’m okay with that, as long as I don’t have to get there by escalator, elevator, or treadmill.

Here in the Dark Beside You

June 4, 2018 ~ mstturpin ~ Leave a comment

Carlsbad Caverns — Photo by Terrye Turpin

I hesitated in the candlelight in front of the locked metal gate seven hundred and fifty feet underground. The cave was slightly warmer than the inside of a refrigerator and smelled of mildew and the earthy scent of bat guano. As I inhaled the cool, moist air I glanced around me at the dark rock walls. My fiancé Andrew waited beside me, listening to the gray-haired park ranger give our small group last minute safety instructions. At the end of his speech, the ranger mentioned a story about a kidnapping in the cavern. Four armed men held several people captive for hours near the spot where we stood. Had I paid better attention, I would have heard him say this crime occurred in 1979. I was, however, busy calculating how long the candle in my lantern would burn before it left me in the dark.

I glanced at my fellow tourists and tried to imagine one of them pulling out a gun. The flannel clad young couple in running shoes had two small children with them, so I expected they would behave. The retirees from Florida, dressed in matching Hawaiian shirts, did not look menacing. I decided at the least I could outrun them if they turned out to be dangerous.

Andrew and I chose this tour from the comfort of our home, weeks before our trip to New Mexico, and we bought the tickets online. I don’t mind spontaneity, but my first love is a well-planned itinerary. I browsed the options listed on the Carlsbad Caverns website and rejected the “Spider Cave Tour” based on the name alone. Andrew lobbied for the “Lower Cave Tour”, but after spotting the words “crawling” and “rope ladders” in the description, I knew this would not work for me. When I was a child I broke my arm, swinging from a plastic jump rope tied to a tree. I didn’t think the experience would improve if I recreated it underground fifty years later.

“I wonder if they have a senior discount,” I asked, as I clicked through the Park Service website.

“Oh no, don’t fool with that, just pay full price,” Andrew insisted.

I am happy to accept any age related savings given, while Andrew searches for and plucks out his gray hairs each evening. I once offered to sign him up under my AARP membership, and you would think I had volunteered to donate one of his kidneys.

After some discussion, we agreed on the Left Hand Tunnel tour. It promised to recreate the caving experience of early explorers. The only warning listed described walking on uneven surfaces in dim lighting. I can find my way to our bathroom in the middle of the night, so I thought I would be okay.

When we arrived at Carlsbad, Andrew tried again to convince me I had the skill and flexibility to navigate the Lower Cave Tour. As we strolled along the paved path through the main cavern, the Big Room, we stopped to peer over the railing, down into the deeper portion of the cave. A narrow dirt path wound through stalagmites and disappeared through a dark opening in the cave wall below. Lovely formations like lacy curtains flowed from the ceiling, but I wondered how securely they were attached. “Crushed by beauty” might be a nice epitaph, but would be small consolation once I was buried.

“I don’t think I can climb down a rope ladder, and there are no lights down there.” I pointed over the side. In contrast, spotlights in the Big Room illuminated both the cave formations, and the paved trail with gentle lighting. There were no rope ladders in sight. Instead, people traveled up and down in elevators, dined at a snack bar, and relieved themselves in restrooms with running water and flush toilets. Still, it touched me that Andrew had this faith in me; that I could scamper down a rope ladder and crawl through bat infested tunnels in the dark. We pledged to grow old together even though I have a head start.

When Andrew and I first met our age difference didn’t matter. We seemed to be in that sweet spot of time between middle age and infirmity. However, I remember that I will retire eleven years before he does. I agonize over broken hips, and Andrew scoffs I am too young to worry about falling.

While we waited for the tour orientation to start, I looked at a photo display of early explorers to the caverns. The women wore their finest silk dresses and caps with feathers. I wondered how they managed the cave while wearing high heels. The men wore sensible loafers and looked dashing in wool overcoats and fedoras. All of them looked out of place as they dropped into the cavern in the large bat guano mining buckets used by visitors before the cavern upgraded to wooden stairs.

“How historically accurate is this tour? Will they lower us down in a bucket?” Andrew asked.

“No, I believe they phased that out,” I replied.

As we assembled in a small classroom, the park ranger who would lead the tour checked off our names. He asked us to affirm our ability to walk across a dim, rough dirt path. I felt confident about my “Yes!” until he opened a metal cabinet filled with hard hats, elbow pads, and head lamps, things a coal miner would use. When he took out a box of candles and left the crawling equipment in the cabinet, I sighed and sat back in my chair. We all lined up to select a candle, and I picked one with a fresh wick that looked like it would last until the end of the tour.

After the orientation, we rode the elevator down, and walked over to the Left Hand Tunnel entrance. We picked up our lanterns, and the ranger lit the candles placed inside. He warned us of the danger of spilling hot wax on our neighbors or the fragile cave formations and off we went.

As we entered the tunnel, my eyes adjusted to the dim light. I managed to spot my feet, fearful that I might wipe out a small, irreplaceable artifact with my sturdy hiking boots. We came to a slight incline in the path, a slick little hill about four feet tall, and the ranger offered a hand up and over to anyone who needed it. I hadn’t met my insurance deductible for the year, so I accepted. Everyone else–except the elderly couple from Florida — scrambled up and over the top as though they were stepping up onto a curb outside Starbucks.

The lantern did a fair job of lighting up a one foot perimeter of the cave around my feet, so I had a great view of the crushed rock on the dirt path. I kept my eyes trained on that path as the ranger mentioned the deep pools of water and the steep drop offs that we passed. I listened as he described other points of interest, the sparkling pyrites and ghostly pale calcium carbonate formations. When I felt steady enough, I lifted my gaze from my feet and focused on the backs of Andrew’s legs as he strode along. At one point we stopped and the ranger pointed out an area where an early visitor used a flare to burn their initials into the cave wall, proving that even decades ago people were assholes.

About halfway through the tour we came to a spot leveled out by thousands of tromping tourist feet, and we set down our lanterns. The ranger continued the kidnapping story he mentioned at the start of the tour. It turns out there was alcohol involved, which explains why the would-be terrorists thought it was a good idea to isolate themselves 750 feet underground and demand a million dollars, an airplane to Brazil, and an interview with a reporter. They got the interview, but not the money or airplane, and everyone came out of the cave without injury.

“With your permission, I’d like to do something exciting now,” The ranger said. I worried that here at last we would be asked to rappel down an underground crevice or scale a rock outcropping. I prepared to protest that the tour description failed to cover this.

“I’d like us to blow out our candles and experience the cave in total darkness.” When no one objected, he continued. “We will stand here in silence and then I will come around and light your candles.”

I breathed a sigh, standing still I could do, even in the dark. The cave dimmed as each person blew out their candle, and one by one I watched my fellow tourists disappear. The darkness enveloped me like a soft, thick blanket, and there were no sounds of trouble, no heavy breathing or whispers from a drawn pistol.

When the ranger suggested that we each hold up a hand in front of our face, I kept mine at my side, fearful if I couldn’t see it, then my hand would cease to exist. I knew my hand was there, I felt it dangling at the end of my arm, but it was disconcerting to know something was there but not be able to see the physical proof of its existence. This was the price I paid for a lifetime of reading scary stories.

A slight breeze brushed my cheek, and I heard a rustling, flapping sound that was either a bat brushing by or Andrew waving his hand in front of my face. I bumped him with my shoulder and he reached down to clasp my hand. My fingers intertwined with his while the ranger came around to each of us and relit our candles. We made our way back along the path, through the metal gate at the entrance to the tunnel, and dropped off our lanterns at the end of the tour.

When we stepped off the elevator at the surface, I left to browse the overpriced souvenirs in the gift shop while Andrew stopped to look over a table top diorama of the caverns. I came out to see him studying a map of the Lower Cave.

When I turned fifty, I traded in the recklessness of my youth. I chose my clothes for comfort rather than sex appeal. Then I met Andrew, and I took a chance on dating a man eleven years younger than me. Chance implies a risk of loss, but as we grew closer, I realized there was no risk here. The loss was in the years before we met. Here was a man who would find my hand in the dark.

I pointed over to the information desk. “Why don’t we stop and see if there are tickets for the Lower Cave tour?”

When we asked, the ranger informed us that there wouldn’t be another tour until the following week. “It sells out quickly” he told us, “It’s our most popular tour.”

“I’m sorry.” I told Andrew and tried to hide my relief. There is nothing like reaping the benefit of sacrifice, without actually having to make it.

“That’s okay.” Andrew said, “We will come back sometime. We can practice climbing up a rope ladder.”

I calculated how many years we would have to wait before I qualified for the National Park Senior Pass. I pictured a much older me, leaning on a walker with one of those cloth bags on the front to hold snacks and a book I was reading. I told Andrew I would be game to try the rope ladder, and he took my hand as we walked across the parking lot to our car. If the rope ladder doesn’t work out I thought, maybe they could just lower me down in a bucket.

The Changing Room

May 26, 2018 ~ mstturpin ~ Leave a comment

The scar on my breast is a dark reddish brown, fading slowly at the edges. It is curved, like a parenthesis. There is a slight indentation, a flat spot under the blemish that shows when I stand in profile. The scar is hidden, even by my most revealing bathing suit. Most of the time I don’t even think about it, except when I’m undressed.

My usual routine when I can’t fall asleep consists of surfing the internet for cat memes and funny videos. The other night I sat up, bolstered on both sides by the collection of pillows my boyfriend and I have on our bed, and picked up my phone. The dark bedroom was lit by the tiny bluish glow from the screen, and I turned the volume down low so that Andrew wouldn’t hear and come in to remind me I had to get up early for work the next day.

I found a comedy sketch on YouTube that started with a woman entering a gym. Her dark hair piled on top of her head, she carries a gym bag over her arm as she walks up to the smiling young woman in a green polo shirt at the front desk. As she signs in an alarm sounds and the uniformed staffer stands up and congratulates the woman. The visitor has just turned forty, and the attendant leads her back to a special area that she is now entitled to enter. It is a changing room filled with naked women. They sprawl on benches and strut around the space without as much as a towel to hide behind. One of the women appears to be shaving her pubic hair. Another lifts her breasts and towels off underneath them. When the birthday girl protests that she’s not that comfortable with nudity, her clothes magically disappear and she’s left standing there, naked. She does, however, still have the gym bag over her arm. The other women gather around to welcome her to “not giving a shit at the gym.”

I have never been comfortable in locker rooms. I don’t like undressing in front of anyone unless they’re going to have sex with me or give me a medical exam. A changing room filled with other people has always necessitated contortions worthy of a gymnast or a Chinese acrobat. I can both remove and replace my bra without taking off my t-shirt. If I’m at the lake I can completely undress and put on a one piece bathing suit while wrapped in a beach towel. It’s not the scrutiny of strangers that bothers me, it’s being seen naked by someone I might encounter later at the grocery store.

Last year, I hesitated when one of my coworker friends invited me to come with her to a Korean spa. My friend is in her thirties, two decades younger than I am. She’s blonde, single, and a frequent shopper at Groupon, where she found a great deal on the spa visits.

“Isn’t there a lot of walking around naked at a Korean spa?” I asked her. It’s one thing to picture people without their clothes when you’re nervous about giving a presentation, but it’s another thing entirely to know exactly what they look like without their underwear. After my friend assured me that the mineral baths were the only area where nudity was required, I went with her, but I arrived later and undressed by myself in a different part of the locker room. I put on the baggy pink shirt and shorts assigned to me by the spa, and wore my bathing suit underneath.

When I told my son Robert about my visit, he encouraged me to go back and try out the mineral baths. “The nude part is no big deal, Mom” he said. Robert makes his living as a plumber, a job requiring both physical skill and tolerance for messy situations. My son is very comfortable with his body. One Christmas he arrived at a gathering of friends and family and announced “I have a new piercing!” I often wish I had his confidence, and that he had my tact.

I considered his suggestion, and I went back to the spa by myself. I decided I would take advantage of every area, including the mineral baths in the women’s locker area. I checked in with the twenty-something year old blonde girl at the counter, and paused before answering “No” when she asked if I would be consuming alcohol. She strapped the electronic device that looked like a watch on my wrist. It stored my credit card information, and I would use it to both open my assigned locker, and pay for any food or drink I might want purchase. It didn’t cover much of my body, but it did eliminate the need for pockets.

After I took off my shoes and socks, I stowed them away in the first locker area and then made my way barefoot down the white tiled hallway toward the changing room. I stopped to pick up the uniform I would wear after the bath. The friendly girl at the counter handed me a folded pair of pink shorts and a faded pink t-shirt and said “Have a good visit!” Because I was still fully dressed, except for my feet, I smiled back at her and said thanks.

After checking to make sure no one there was even remotely familiar, I undressed and stowed my belongings in my locker. Had I spotted my favorite barista from Starbucks the whole deal would have been off, but I bravely set off for the shower area. I discovered that walking naked through a crowded changing room required a degree of relaxed composure I didn’t possess. I couldn’t walk through the place with my eyes closed, but I didn’t want to be seen staring at someone’s nipples either. Direct eye contact is uncomfortable for me. Even if I am fully dressed I tend to look away nervously as if I’ve just stuffed a handful of collection plate money in my purse. I gave up staring at my feet after I almost walked into a column, and finally found that the area between the collarbone and the bottom of a person’s ear lobe is a nice, neutral area. I could avoid both running into obstacles and giving the impression that I wanted to have a conversation.

The glass walls around the mineral bath area were fogged with condensation and as I walked closer, I was greeted with warm, moist air that smelled like chlorine and salt. The first spa had just two women, an elderly Asian grandmother and a middle aged Asian woman who could have been her daughter. Their eyes were closed in blissful relaxation. I lowered myself into the hot whirlpool, and found that if scooted down on the seat around the edge of the bath, the churning water safely concealed most of my body. If I closed my eyes I could imagine myself alone, and not sharing a bath with naked strangers.

I haven’t been back to the spa since my lumpectomy. The mass in my breast was familiar to me. It was there, in the upper right quadrant of my right breast, a small, hard lump that had been felt, scanned, and needle biopsied in the three years since I first discovered it. But when I went in for my annual well woman checkup, my gynecologist, a young woman with freckles and shiny black hair in a ponytail, paused during the breast exam.

“Was this lump there last year?” She gently tapped her fingers over my breast as I lay on the examining table. I raised my head a little bit to look at her instead of focusing on the many pictures of babies plastered on the walls. Her usual smile was replaced by a slight scowl. We had discussed this same lump last year. I even had a follow up ultrasound, but I felt as though I had conspired to hide this growth from her, maybe tucked away under my shoulder or behind my ear, one of the few places on my body not exposed during the annual exam.

“Yes.” I replied, “But maybe it’s bigger?” At this my doctor nodded her head and sent me off to a mammogram.

“You need an ultrasound.” The female technician, dressed in scrubs patterned with small hearts, frowned at me after the mammogram. Her eyes squinted at the images pinned up on the lightbox. She pushed her glasses up and pointed to the black and white pictures on the lightbox. “You have dense breasts” she said, shaking her head and blowing out a little puff of air. This was not news to me, although her tune was new, I’d heard the same refrain throughout my adult, yearly mammogram life.

I took my dense, uncooperative breasts for an ultrasound, which led to a referral to a specialist, a breast surgeon. My familiar lump had grown from the size of a small pea to slightly larger than a marble in the space of a year. The radiologist, a young man with dark hair and serious, black framed glasses, told me the growth did not look like cancer, but I would need a biopsy to be sure. The diagnosis read “Intermediate suspicion of malignancy”, which I took to mean I should make the appointment with the surgeon soon.

The next month I had the first surgery and a biopsy of the tumor. The week after that I met with my surgeon, a slim woman with a slight southern accent and soft, sure hands. Her walls were decorated with reassuring accolades and degrees. I sat on the examining table at her office and listened while she looked over the incision on my breast and discussed the lab results. The paper on the table crinkled as I shifted position.

“You have a phyllodes tumor” she explained. She went on to say that it wasn’t malignant, but that sometimes these tumors can come back, and develop into malignancies. “They are nasty” she said. I imagined a face on my tumor, like the Grinch from How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Nasty. I could choose to have her go back and remove the rest of the tumor, and the margins of tissue around it, or I could wait and monitor it with screenings. I imagined myself crossing off the days on the calendar until my insurance would cover the next ultrasound. I knew that I would feel the need to constantly check my breast, fingers measuring the skin over the lump, comparing and wondering if it had grown. If this urge overtook me in the grocery store check-out line it might be disturbing to the cashiers, so I chose the second surgery.

The scar, like the memory of the surgery that created it, fades more each day. Like the other bumps, stretch marks, and wrinkles, it is just a punctuation mark on my body, the grammar to my life story. If I were naked, the scar might require an explanation. I’m not embarrassed by it, but by the assumptions that might come from its presence. It is a purple heart from a battle that I did not have to fight.

I pull the covers up to my chin and slip down in my bed. The sheets smell pleasantly of floral fabric softener and they feel softly worn against my skin. I queue up the video again on my phone, and watch as the woman enters the gym. Once more the alarm sounds and the smiling attendant takes the lucky lady back to the changing room. The light from my phone screen lights up my face in the dark as I watch the naked women greet the newcomer. They all seem happy and relaxed, like friends I believe I would like to meet for coffee. I hear their laughter echo against the metal cabinets, as though from a distance. I think that maybe I am getting closer to where they are, in that kind and accepting place where everyone is welcome, as long as they are at least forty. As I turn off my phone for the night I take comfort in the thought that somewhere there is a room, a place for women, where no explanations or apologies are needed, and no one there gives a shit.

Originally published in The Same.