capes

We’ve been headed somewhere

Haven’t we?
We’ve been following
The mental trajectory
Of an overly prepared
Highly anxious
Midlife woman
In the epicenter
Of the epicenter
Of a global pandemic.

It’s been a wild ride
And loads of laughs,
But, let’s take a diversion
Let’s swerve the steering wheel,
Do a one-eighty,

Take a wild imagination
And flip it over.
Like a back handspring-
But one and a half times-
And land it on its head.

the victim is now the hero.

a hero who can do backflips!
and escape from fires
evade disease and illness
say the right thing at the right time
(and the thing is witty.)
she is 45, yes, and short
positively Napoleonic in response to the towering world around her
she has been called "small but mighty"
and she believes she lives 5 feet two inches up to the term.

you following?

it's me.
the hero is me
the short one
the insecure short one
who is 45 years old

yes,
after much debate with myself
and long consideration (roughly the duration of a shower)
I’ve decided to introduce another side of myself.

you have already met anxiety-me,
or as one reader put it:
“Dark Ginna”
–which I love, and expect to use to sign autographs if ever given the opportunity–

but “Dark Ginna” is merely the nemesis... or alter-ego...?
of the hero behind the mask
it's a mask that goes over the nose and mouth
and should be worn inside public places
the mask is pink
and was sewn by a powerful wise woman
whose identity remains hidden behind the name
 “nana.”
nana is fierce.
the mask is fierce.
it's pink and small and made by a grandma in Ohio
and it fucking saves lives.

she,
the hero,
the short one,
emerges much like anxiety-me (DG)
out of sheer fear of nothing real,
but hero-me is like anxiety-me minus PMS:
she's always having a good day
she always has confidence
and she always has good hair with great volume.
(like gal gadot
if you cut her in half horizontally,
filled her cheeks with marshmallows,
melted the marshmallows,
... and somehow maintained all the badass)

hero-me!

my super power
is an ability to anticipate what's coming
I hate to brag,
but... basically... 
... I can see the future.
yep.
I know that when we leave the house
we are going to need
mini mouthwash
scotch tape
and baking soda
...
and I am right

super powers!!!

or just
an overly prepared
highly anxious
midlife woman
with the mental free-time
to imagine
and strategize
and prepare
and prepare
and prepare
so she is ready
when The Crazy sets in:

the Christmas tree catches on fire:  she's ready
trump tweeted something incoherent and now New York City is under terrorist attack:  she's ready
the child is kidnapped by an old lady who will exploit her magic silken hair:  she's ready

no matter the dis-astrophe,
(a term my daughter coined today)
hero-me is ready

as swiftly and adeptly
as anxiety-me conjures her own death by bike accident,
hero-me conjures her triumphs:

emergency strikes!
she packs a bag of essentials
(well, she has a small child
so the bag is already packed,
mostly, and has been for five years.
new contents and snacks simply rotate in and out.
except the wipes.
there are always wipes.)
in addition to the baby-things
she packs:
extra shirts and underwear, water bottles, and a jar of peanut butter.
*never goes bad, great source of fat and protein, and thassa lotta calories in one container.
 –this hero loves efficiency –

she ties the laces of her running shoes

and puts her daughter

into the Ergo carrier

you know,
the baby-carrying contraption
that asks nothing of your arms
but much of your lower back?

yeah, that.
the child is five years old
-not a baby-
yet our hero will not part with the contraption,
convinced she will need it for an unforeseen
-or totally foreseen and heavily rehearsed-
disastrophe.
she has imagined the intrusion/invasion/fire/flood/terrorist attack too many times.
so.
she slides the 40 lb. sleeping child
into the Ergo carrier
and congratulates herself on keeping up with core strength exercises.
she's a 5'2" forty-five year old mom who drinks two glasses of wine every night.
her middle
is no "six-pack"
but it is
as strong
As
A
Mother.
they escape through the window.
they escape to the roof
they escape through the front door... no.
they would never escape that way.
(I don't know why, but they never do.)
she runs.
they hide.
she has remembered her phone charger
and a blanket
and ziploc baggies in case they need to protect their few belongings from water.
this is the kind of super hero we’re dealing with:
prepared
efficient
shops in the juniors department.
her daughter sleeps through it all.

that's about as far and fantastical as I usually get.


- - - - -

During the current period of lockdown,

my five year-old daughter has become entirely obsessed
with superheroes.
a welcome fixation
because it plays into my hero fantasy
and because we weren't sure how long

that Princess Thing was going to last

It’s troublesome.  I mean, even though the princesses created in the last ten years have a little more backbone and a lot more dramatic action than their predecessors, generally speaking, the princess narratives don't reflect my personal feminist Life View. And have you watched "Beauty and the Beast" lately? I saw it last week, for the first time in twenty- plus years.
Then you will be my prisoner! says the beast to the lovely bookish gal who is, what, 18?
. . . Uh . . .
I turned to my husband,“it's a pretty disturbing plot if you stop and think about it.”
We agreed not to think about it.
We agreed to focus on the beautiful animation of the ballroom scene:
“Oooh, the chandelier!!!”

I did nothing to stop the Princess Fixation when it took hold of my household.
to be honest, I do make-believe for a living, 

and princesses are pretty fun when they are not prisoners
and very fun when they are also action heroes
swinging from towers by their own hair...
walking through frigid temperatures to save the one they love...
using their bodies to prevent an execution...
all the while maintaining that great hair.
plus I believed the fixation would pass
it hasn’t.
it gave way to The Supers Thing, but has not entirely passed
it's a segue, shall we say?
we're at, like, 75% superhero and 25% princess.
maybe 80/ 20
the segue happened naturally as she became introduced to the DC Superhero Girls

and simultaneously, we were handed down a size-three Wonder Woman costume
-- with accessories--
and then she met Owlette of the PJ Masks
and I think that was the tipping point

tipped completely over the Friday night
just three weeks ago
when we introduced her
to the Pixar film
The Incredibles
Now
She
Is
All
In

the following week,
we watched The Incredibles II
and she fell further head-over-heels
and every granted minute of screen-time 

has since been dedicated 

to the absorption of this Super Family and their Adventures.

she quotes the characters
with accurate inflections, (she's very good)
she has questions about plot and plausibility
and she has somehow retained the musical score
-seriously-
she played the soundtrack one night during dinner
and the child could match each instrumental piece: ”duh duh duhnduhnduhn”
with its corresponding scene.
(we not a musically inclined family, so this is baffling.)

the soundtrack of The Incredibles is a little fast-paced for me at dinner hour, but if I say no, in its place I get “Frozen One or Frozen Two?”
hmm...
strangulation or electric chair?  drowning or burning?  shipwreck or plane crash?     (I'm kidding, of course, Idina Menzel's voice is perfection.  All great voices, all great lyrics, but after 400 listens,  "Love is an Open Door Wound to the Head.") 

when the tv is off
and I can hear her
voicing the dialogue of several supers
as she maneuvers dolls
around the living room floor,
I am super proud
I delight thoroughly
in the understanding
that we have this in common.
then
I wonder if this is where it begins:
what will her imagination provide for her in forty years?
will it offer the hero-mind?
or the anxiety-mind?
or the Battle of Both


- - - - -

well.
I will tell you.
in the times of Covid-19,
with my imagination -as demonstrated above-
fully employed
while I am not,
it will come as no surprise
that my two selves are at battle:

anxiety-me imagines the ambulance ride
to a temporary
make-shift
medical tent in Central Park
where she will refuse treatment
unless the medical staff
agrees that gay marriage is a good thing.
they won't,
so she has to be ambulanced somewhere else.
... mask on
... trouble breathing
... a fight to keep her i-phone with her
... panicked Facetime calls assisted by a nurse
... and a commitment to make her last words something other than an inquiry of the medical bills she will have incurred.

meanwhile,

hero-me imagines
(and executes)
her trips to the grocery
like an epic quest.
she sets her super stopwatch:
“in and out of Costco in under 20,”
she whispers,
as if somebody's listening from headquarters.
... mask on (nana, 2020 design, pink)
... no trouble breathing
... a battle with herself to leave her i-phone in her pocket (she wins)
... swift evasions of all humans
... and split-second six-foot-distance calculations
then

ninja-like through the aisles,
she masterfully select $216 worth of bulk-size groceries,

maintains a six-foot radius force field as she waits in line,

checks out without touching anything,

then loads it (gloved)

into a backpack and baby stroller.
no Batmobile
no mobile at all
so she pushes that booger uphill 34th Avenue
on foot
with
the
hamstrings
Of
A
Mother
When she gets home she disinfects everything
with the expert help of her super-partner:
he is...

"Sheffield Chastain" by day...

(even with an imagination like mine, you can't make up a better day-name than that)

but by night,
he is...
Sanitizer Man!

anxiety-me vs. hero-me

or perhaps

dark vs. deluded

who will win the pandemic of 2020?

- - - - -


recently
we made a decision:
we are planning to flee our beloved borough.
not permanently

and not because it is infected
-- the time to do that would have been two months ago--
but because summer is nearly upon us
and in our third-story, two bedroom apartment, that really means
Up
On
Us
All up in there
it’s bloody hot and the only way we've survived it in the past
is playgrounds
and playgrounds are not an option now

we will go to my parents’ home in Ohio
in supers' terms,
they are The Mighty Hobens
(we were dubbed this by a stranger, so I know it is authentic.
and he was an Irishman on a barstool in a pub in rural Ireland,
so that shit is Legend.)
there, at the home of The Mighty Hobens
my car has been waiting since my last theater job was canceled.
so we cannot drive there in our own car.
no planes
no trains
no batmobile
we will need to rent a car and borrow a car seat.
it's a 9 and 1/2 hour drive if no stops.
our daughter hates long car rides and gets car-sick easily
she requires lots of stops
and she touches everything.
basically for this to work,
we need our daughter to sleep a lot if not all of the way
and the best time for that is at night
and there are protests
and there are curfews
and we'd be traveling
across four states
who
who
i ask you
is going to win me
in my anticipation of this journey?

anxiety-me sees
a crying child
a sleepy driver
and the swirling lights of a police car
possibly a car wreck
at the very least an expensive ticket

hero-me prepares
incessantly and immediately
--don't think it hasn't crossed her Napoleonic mind
that she could bike herself back to Ohio.
if she was by herself,
she totally would
it's just that one stretch of I-80…
instead,
she will rent a car
and Sanitizer Man will Lysol the interior
until the very last germ screams for mercy.
and then he will hand-wash it
with a secret super-potion
he has concocted out of bulk-size household goods
that our hero has muscled home from Costco.
they will drive at night and not drink a lot of fluids.
they will need Dramamine for the kid
and caffeine for the adults
and everyone is wearing a pull-up
just kidding
. . . or is she?

who is winning, friends
who is winning?


---


we tell our daughter
what we have planned:
"daddy is going to have to drive through the night
mommy will have to sleep first, so she can drive early in the morning
we can't stop for meals
and we have to keep ourselves safe if we stop at all."
“what about me? what do I get to do?”
"you're going to have to take your medicine and sleep.
that's your job."
of going to Ohio,
she is ecstatic
of a her role in the adventure,
she is uninspired
we explain that there is no space for throw-up in our plan,
and she gets on board with that pretty quickly,
but she is far from sold.

she narrows her eyes ever so slightly.
she sets her jaw.
she will not make this easy.

katie,
we say,
we are going to have to be... superheroes.
it's the only way this will work.

her eyes become very serious
her cheeks become still, and
her little mouth
tightens

from top to bottom,
she is sizing
this bullshit
up

a victory is near
but for whom!?

and then,
in a complete departure
from the lessons she has learned from The Incredibles,
my daughter-
calculating
weighing
whispering into a watch that is connected to no one-
asks,
“will we wear capes?”

yes, I say,

picturing a rental car
floating through Pennsylvania
on I-80 west
in the black of night

yes,
we probably should.

The Mighty Hobens