My Private Public Diary - November
Topics explored in this issue include: quarter-sized bathtubs, John’s “Bobbitt”, and sexual harassment in the work (from home) place.
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11.04.23
Today, upon visiting my parent’s house upstate, Dad handed me a bright red package the size of a manilla envelope and told me he’d bought me an emergency fire blanket.
“Why?” I said, and he looked disappointed that I had to ask.
“In case you ever need to put out a fire,” he said.
We hadn’t talked about fire safety in over thirty years, or me wanting a fire blanket, but there it was. He’d bought one for each member of our family.
“It’s better than an extinguisher,” he said, “because it doesn’t make a mess. Do you know the clean-up process after using a traditional extinguisher?”
I was surprised he thought cleaning up was the biggest hassle of surviving a fire.
When Mom came downstairs, she picked up the package and tugged on the black ripcord like it was a pull tab in a pop-up book.
“Don’t do that!” Dad said. “You can only pull it once!”
“Well, that’s stupid,” she said. “So, it’s just a one-and-done thing?”
“How many fires are you guys planning on having?” I asked.
Dad sat down and closed his eyes very slowly like he was overwhelmed by our lack of fire-safety preparedness.
“Why can’t we just use a traditional extinguisher?” Mom said.
Dad’s eyes never opened. “Do you know the cleanup process involved with an extinguisher?” he said.
Like me, Mom had never thought about it before. But then she did, and her eyes grew wide with fear. Despite their differences, I can see why they’d stayed together for over fifty years.
“I hope you remembered to get one for us,” she said.
11.07.23
Sam [my wife] woke up hungover from the concert she attended the night before and walked out of the bathroom angry and nauseous. “Have you tried the cinnamon raisin toast yet?” she said.
I had and told her that my stomach was just fine. She said she thought that she was going to throw up. Plus the room was spinning, her head was pounding and she was bloated.
“All from raisin toast?” I said, “And not the cocktails you had? Or the fact that you’re running on four hours of sleep?”
“No,” she said. “It’s definitely the raisin toast.”
Two nights ago, I dreamt that I’d married my Dad.
11.09.23
Today in the car, Sam asked me if Danny was short for Donald, and I asked her to clarify because I wasn’t sure I’d heard her. Whenever I ask Sam to clarify something, she always says the same thing again but slower. “Is. Danny,” she said. “Short. For. The. Name. Donald?”
“No,” I said. “Danny’s a nickname for Daniel.”
“Daniel Tiger,” Grace said from her car seat in the back. She was eating an orange, sucking out all of the juice, and choking on the pith.
“Don and Donny would be the nicknames for Donald,” I said.
“But doesn’t it feel like Danny should be the nickname for Donald?” Sam asked.
“No,” I said. “It feels like it should be a nickname for Daniel.”
“Daniel Tiger,” Grace said again and spit pith all over her seatbelt.
“Yes,” I said. “Daniel tiger, which also has nothing to do with anything.”
11.18.23
I’m continually bowled over by my sister’s boundless energy. We share a fair amount of DNA, and yet, every time I talk to her I feel like I’m taking quaaludes underwater. Was she always this bubbly? Or has her energy increased since she started teaching three and four-year-olds at school in Manhattan? She gets on FaceTime and sings and dances at Grace, and teaches her eight new songs, complete with rubber duck props that she has offscreen.
By contrast, when she hands the camera to my parents, who just came back from a museum, Dad looks embalmed. He keeps tipping over sideways on the couch, eyes half closed, and Mom keeps having to prop him up like Weekend at Bernie’s.
11.20.23
Yesterday, Sam attended a virtual meeting about workplace harassment and was told by her supervisor that she wasn’t allowed to compliment the texture or color of another person’s hair. The supervisor said that the compliment could be mistaken for sexual harassment, or, depending on the person’s background, a racially charged remark. She also wasn’t allowed to hug a coworker unless invited or ask an employee who earns less than her for a hug. I asked her if there was a lot of sexual harassment going on upstairs behind the curtain in our bedroom where she works from home.
11.24.23
Last night at Thanksgiving, we made our way around the table and listed off all the things we were grateful for. When we got to Marvin, a forty-year-old man who lives at home, he said he wasn’t grateful for anything.
“Nothing?” his mother said. “In this world, you have to be thankful for something!”
“Well,” he said. “I would be thankful for my family, but whenever I almost say that I think of Aunt Betty.”
“Well don’t think of Aunt Betty,” his father said.
“I can’t help it,” Marvin said.
“You have to be thankful.”
“I’m not.”
“We’re not getting up from this table until you are.”
“Fine,” Marvin said, “I guess I’m thankful for myself.”
11.25.23
Every time we have dinner with my parents, they tell us about a documentary I don’t want to see. Last night, it was the John and Lorena Bobbitt series.
“You actually get to see it,” my sister said, holding up two fingers to demonstrate just how small John’s “Bobbitt” was. A police photo was taken of it after it was cut off and thrown out of a moving car by Lorena. It landed on the side of the road where none of the officers wanted to touch it.
“Someone actually slipped on it,” Mom said excitedly. “Like a banana peel.”
“A very small banana,” Dad said, taking a bite of his burrito.
11.26.23
Last night, Sam rushed Grace out of the car because it was past her bedtime, and in her haste, ricocheted off a parked car in the street. She was cradling Grace like a football so that when the impact struck, the two of them spun out like Ice Capades. I watched as they completed two full rotations, and then, found myself running past them. “Throw me the keys!” I said. She threw me the keys.
We will do almost anything to get Grace in bed on time.
11.28.23
After dinner tonight, we tried to coax Grace away from the table and into the tub to get a head start on her nightly routine. Each night we’re like amateurs at an improv show. “Do you think you can, um, hop to the bathroom like a froggy?” “What if we all crawl on our hands and knees?” And then, low and behold, the three of us drop to the floor and pull ourselves across the linoleum like amputees.
We’ve never bought proper curtains for our windows, and I always wonder what the neighbors must think. Every night, at 5:30, we wipe our mouths like clockwork and drop out of our chairs like our seats have false bottoms.
Last night, we lured Grace with a riddle: “Hey! Do you think we can all fit in your tub at the same time?”
The bathtub in our house is not a full-sized tub. I’m not even sure it’s half-sized; Sam and I rarely use it. When Sam was pregnant, she tried, with all four limbs hanging out like a lobster clinging to the sides of a pot of boiling water. When I lay in it, my neck is bent at a ninety-degree angle, and I prop my legs against the walls so that only my upper body is submerged. Sam walked in on me once reading a book and asked how I could stand being in there for so long and I said I couldn’t, I just couldn’t climb out.
Grace said we were all too big to fit in the tub, but she wanted to see if we could try and went running ahead of us. When we got there, we climbed in in our clothes, and I picked up Grace and put her between us. It was cramped, and we couldn’t stop laughing, three of us. And for a minute, I forgot that there were dishes to be done, countertops to be cleaned, and pine needles (from the Christmas tree we’d bought) to be vacuumed.
“Want to turn on the water now, Daddy?” Grace said. But I didn’t, because that would mean we’d have to get out, and I wanted to stay in our cramped tub a little longer.
Does anybody else on here keep a diary? I’m curious because I LOVE reading other people’s diaries. Leave a comment, or shoot me an email so I can read yours. :)
This entire piece was absolutely delightful, David, but these lines were stellar: Thank you.
“How many fires are you guys planning on having?” I asked.
Two nights ago, I dreamt that I’d married my Dad.
I feel like I’m taking quaaludes underwater.
Dad looks embalmed. He keeps tipping over sideways on the couch, eyes half closed, and Mom keeps having to prop him up like Weekend at Bernie’s.
I asked her if there was a lot of sexual harassment going on upstairs behind the curtain in our bedroom where she works from home.
“A very small banana,” Dad said