Heidi in Real Life

I am still dumbstruck by people who can co-parent and co-exist with someone who has broken their heart.   There is a hollow, gnawing black hole in your body when you end a marriage. A massive, vacuuming abyss, and sometimes the only thing that makes it feel better is imagining your former love dangling above a pit of hungry (hungry) hippos. Later, you’ll catch sight of a family picture with HIM and his fat face in the middle of it, spoiling your happy memory.   You morph into a pulsing, sweaty bull, snorting, stomping-- getting ready to charge.   And then you find a pair of scissors and you cut that face—the face you once loved, the face that now mocks you, out of the picture, leaving a blank silhouette.   Childish?   Maybe.   But I was 24 when I divorced my first husband.   I was a child.   It would have been easier if I’d put the in-law on the end for less compositional disruption.   It would also save me the trouble of sticking a pictu...

Believe it or not, “My Mother the Car” was real sit-com in 1965 starring Jerry Van Dyke who owned a car who was inhabited by his mother’s spirit.   She talked to him via the radio.  Nightmare?  I say yes.  My own car makes passive aggressive suggestions just like my mother did, especially when she was driving with me.   My Honda reminds me all the time about cars approaching me on the right and left.   “I KNOW!” I hear in my brain.   Dolores (my mother) is just trying to be helpful.   There are lights, but that’s not a good enough warning—I need to be beeped at as well. Apparently, I don’t brake soon enough for my car’s taste.   Just as once, my mother’s foot used to stomp on the floorboard while she road shotgun alerting me that she thought I should slow down, Honda flashes a BRAKE warning in orange, large font.   “Yes, Mom, I know, I see the red light.”   Annoyingly, Dolores, as my Honda, will turn down the air conditionin...