Why don’t we take a little piece of summer sky, hang it on a tree. For that’s the way to start to make a pretty world for you and for me. 
~ Sergio Mendez, Brazil ‘66

My husband gave me an iPod for my birthday. We’re always behind on the tech curve. They’ve been de rigueur for years but with acquired financial stoicism we have foregone most things not truly needed.

I knew an iPod would be nice storage-wise. A portable music alternative, the Scion xB, can only hold so many CDs. Also, changing discs on the hilly, curvy road on which we live is not an option. Our car even came with a special jack for just such auxiliary devices as iPods. Do they know the youth market, or what? Young people may be limited in what they can spend on a car (in which case, my husband Bill and I are eternally youthful) but there’s no compromising on the music, man. I want my, I want my, I want my I P O D !

Now I understand why.

It’s addictive. With the ear plugs, you are in your own little aural world. The master of your parallel universe, transported mentally (if not Star Trek physically) to whatever mood and landscape you desire.

My destination of choice is what I call skating rink music – surely this expression of taste sets me apart from the kids, but it’s the stuff I listened to in my adolescent years as I glided round and round “Broadway Skateland.”

I was crystal-blue persuaded back then of a prettier world than the grim one at home. There was a love train to take me there. Love could make me happy. How could I be sure? “I’ll be sure with you” whoever “you” was— an eventuality I’d just have to wait and see about. In the meantime, I could keep things loose and light by dancing in the moonlight of the faceted mirror ball casting glittery sparkles over the darkened arena.

My kids gave me an iTunes credit card for Mother’s Day. I downloaded lots of ‘60s/70s stuff. Now they’re imprinted in my brain whether I’m listening to the iPod or not. They accompany me through my day.

As I stand next to my husband in church, I tap out the rhythms of the sung prayers on the pew in front of me. Right hand steady beat, left hand intermittent. My internal boom box, to use a retro term, is firmly fixed, my musical formation having been completed long ago. Although it sometimes distracts me from total focus, I don’t mind. How could God hold against me the metronome He put in me? Or the appreciation for something so ethereal as music. God knows it’s been my salvation.

Whether running errands in my boxy little car going up and down the hills, or tapping the rhythms of the music from church, I rejoice in the simple pleasures of my iPod.

The next doctor on my path to enlightenment was a gastroenterologist. I wasn’t really sure what he did but it didn’t sound fun. Upon googling the subject, I found everything I ever wanted to know but was afraid to ask.

The thing is, my pain did not originate from any of the maladies this guy was trained to deal with. But I felt pressured because I had never submitted to some of the routine health screenings my primary doctor considered prudent. And, I was driven by the threat of that pain recurring, and me not being further along in the bureaucratic hoops I had to jump through to finally get a correct diagnosis. I could only rely on codeine for so long. As a loyal viewer of that popular TV show, was there a Dr. House in the house?

So I approached my visit to the gastroenterologist with much inner conflict and trepidation. What am I doing, I wondered. If I were into— excuse the pun— “probings” of that kind, I’d move to New Mexico and try to hook up with some space aliens. But as my mental rantings grew more fierce and wild, I realized that I would submit. A still, small voice told me that this is science and I shouldn’t argue with Mother Nature.

When I met with the youngish doctor, he seemed perplexed why I was there. My problem appeared to be musculo-skeletal. Not his field. But, why had I been sent to him? “I know,” he said three times in an AHA tone as though figuring out a trick question, “because you’re 51 and a year past due for a colonoscopy!” Ta da!

What the heck! I had been inches from a clean getaway.

Now, the ball was in my court. On the one hand, that business about being 51 sounded like ageism. No one else looked at me, I’m sure, and saw a blinking “maintenance required” light. On the other hand, I had come this far and the little voice said, Don’t quit.

I reluctantly agreed to the process and paid my $400 copay to endure humiliations galore. These included giving myself diarrhea on purpose! I had to ingest enough Gatorade to want to throw up. I had to be clean as a whistle for the procedure. I mean, who with any pride wouldn’t want to be? I just hadn’t fully comprehended what that would entail, so to speak.

Without going further into the territory of TMI, suffice it to say that I survived. The only glitch was one I could have foreseen but, maybe mercifully, did not. I have very small collapsible veins. I have to ask for the infant-sized needle whenever I have blood drawn. Even then it can take four times longer than the average patient, because the needle keeps hitting vein walls. I can’t watch. It makes me faint. I crane my neck to look the other way.

But not this day. The prep nurse informed me that a small needle would not deliver enough of the anesthesia to keep me knocked out cold. She went from one hand to the other in what I hoped wasn’t a futile probing for the motherlode. My husband held whatever hand she wasn’t sticking at the time and tried to distract me. He used his “desperate smile,” the one he uses for relatives and awkward social situations. I cried.

After that, I don’t remember. No repressed memories of operating room banter have surfaced from my subconscious. I didn’t even walk funny leaving the hospital. The staff informed me they had found nothing, which I could have guessed. The doctor says I’m good for another ten years before I have to undergo this again. Would I recommend it? Talk to me in ten years.

We drive a short distance to the court at a nearby lake park. Living in central Texas where football is a tradition but not tennis, there is seldom any competition for the space other than the occasional basketball players there to use the combined court. The view of the lake, the grass, the other people recreating all make me feel a little more alive just being there.

We started out rather proper with scoring, rules, and advice that I had read on the internet. It was fun enough at first. But after a period of beginner’s adjustment and enthusiasm, my husband’s innate frustration with his inability to master the serve started bogging us down. Yes, I had the pleasure of being the “wiener” most of the time, but this was not what we signed on for.

Recently as we drove into the parking lot in front of the court, we were surprised to see another couple playing there. They were so vigorous, they appeared to be twenty-something: a sort of hippie-looking guy (it’s Austin) and a rather beefy freckled girl. They were all over the place. WHAM WHAM WHAM, UGH UGH UGH They went for every shot no matter what. They were in constant motion. None of this “time out to gather balls and stroll to the service line.” This was guerrilla tennis.

Upon closer inspection, I realized that I knew the woman. She was playing with her husband and they are both about our age. I asked how long they had been playing. She said as long as they’d lived across the street from the court. I’d guess about ten years. Hmmmm.

I decided then and there that these people were on to something. Not only aerobics, but endorphins and, just as important, fun. All that score keeping and serving had become a drag. We even lost count half the time trying to remember where we were scorewise before someone had had to go retrieve balls. I am competitive but all I really wanted to do now was hit the crap out of the ball and keep moving. So what if it lands in the doubles space or even outside the court line?! So what if it’s already bounced twice! Just pounce on it and hit it with everything you’ve got. That’s my new philosophy.

We’ve started playing this new reformed version with no scoring and little emphasis on serving. Balls fly constantly. Also, when I miss a shot I think I should have made, some old high school language flies that I thought I’d heard the last of. That’s okay. I can work on it. Bill seems reinvigorated as well. We are now more suitably matched, so to speak. I had suspected I would need medieval weaponry one day to return his shots once he really let loose. I can see that day coming and not so distantly. But now I welcome it. I don’t want to play like a girl, unless it’s like the woman I saw that night giving it back as good as she got. I want a mad racketball-like scramble with lots of running, jumping, grunting, and gasping. A visceral siege with the satisfaction of knowing we’ve mustered all our forces and given it our best.

We play at night in near triple digit temperatures. Bill suffers from severe sleep apnea and gets up at 4:40 to commute to town at 6:00. I’ve had back spasms so bad they required three Percosets to assuage the pain. Still, we play on for simple love of the game even if these days there technically is no real “game.” To paraphrase Cool Hand Luke, in a game where “love” means “nothing,” sometimes nothing can be a pretty cool hand.

There has been a strange phenomenon in our otherwise low key little bungalow. We have gone from television sets that are teeny, to only tiny, to friggin’ huge. I was the last holdout in this transition. The aesthetics of the living room are my domain, and I’ve held to a Frazier-like eschewment of anything gaudy. Not only the monstrously humongous TV but the apparatus you put it in. I wasn’t game for a double-D-cup wall unit in my face every time I entered the living room. It took our youngest teenage son to move me past my passé philosophy.

“We need a new TV. This one is too small. ALL my friends have bigger ones.” That last line of reasoning never carried weight with me. I fought him on the size issue too. “Well, I’m sorry if our B-cup television is not good enough for you any more,” I countered with expert motherly guilt.

“Wha—-t?!” he replied, “I, I, I didn’t say it wasn’t good enough. I’d just like to actually see what’s happening. The pictures on my friends’ TVs are amazing.” Then he played the child’s trump card in parent/child disputes of this kind. “You don’t have to get me anything else for Christmas, just this. My gift can be for the whole family.”

The nerve. Also, the effectiveness!

I had to admit I was having a hard time reading the program guide on our small TV from across the room. My husband and I are both using bifocal contacts and glasses now. I guess we were ready for the large print version of television as well.

I realized that I too would like the big boob TV, but I played it coy til I was out doing some casual Saturday shopping with my husband. We had purchased a pair of wool socks at the mall and were wondering what to do next. Well, we could go to Wallie World and just browse at the large screen TVs . . . “Okay!”

This pressed the launch button in my husband. He became a man on a mission. He takes electronics and gadgetry deadly serious, and I, through my innocent suggestion, had released the hounds. He was on the scent now. We were in for a long haul of intense shopping research.

After standing a distance away from several models to compare picture quality/price ratio, we finally settled on one with the sharpest image. Now for the support system. We opted for a minimal unobtrusive design. While choosing the stand, someone from the store informed us that they were out of our carefully chosen TV model. A branch store 30 minutes away had only one in that model. They would hold it for one hour.

We quickly paid for the low profile (but heavy!) stand and loaded it up. We raced to the store that had our TV and sighed in relief when both it and the stand fit in our small Scion. This was obviously meant to be.

The credit card company called us on our way home. There was unusual activity on our card and they were just checking to see if it was really us. Yes, we laughed. Not to worry. Could we verify our purchases of the last two hours? Let’s see: a TV stand, a large screen TV; oh, and a pair of socks. Yes, that’s it. We are two wild and crazy shoppers.

Amidst much flurried rearranging, my husband erected the stand and connected all the different components to their proper ports. We eagerly awaited our son’s return home from a band trip. We played it cool. Half the fun of doing something unexpected is acting as if nothing happened. Watching the joyful look of shock on his face completed our adventure.

The old living room TV has replaced the even older one that was in our bedroom. I just don’t know. It’s looking kind of puny in there in the corner on its small table. Maybe we should check out the ads this weekend. We wouldn’t want to miss out on some large screen deal. They might be having a special on the Pamela Anderson model.

Our family lives in a house built by rugged individuals over time. That is to say that Doober, Goober, and Bubba each got just so far in their jerry-rigged, sub-code sequential renderings before each one put the hill country charmer up for sale. Enter city rubes, Laurey and Bill. We spotted this idyllic beauty in a real estate magazine and were smitten. We stayed smitten for quite some time, even while knowing the place had been built by sparing every expense. Superfluous and otherwise. Such is love.

We approached our rural digs with urban naiveté and enchantment. The surroundings were lovely; hilly green acreage that reminded us of New England. The house itself was really secondary. It was serviceable and with our hope and energy, why, we’d have this place gorgeous in no time.

The initial enthusiasm lasted for several years. Then a creeping jadedness and exhaustion began to set in. This place needed so much and we were so tired of the overwhelming labor and expense. We decided to go back to “residential living,” something that would be move-in ready, updated, and closer to town. We put our once heart-capturing hill country charmer on the market and nervously waited for potential buyers to come to call.

After a few months on a cooled market, an unannounced agent came to the door with some lean and hungry buyers. I looked at Bill. Bill looked at me. Just when what we were waiting for came to our doorstep, we realized that we did not want to sell our Goober, Doober, & Bubba special at any price. No matter its flaws, the house was our home and had imprinted itself into our psyches. We just couldn’t abandon it and go live in a cookie cutter subdivision, no matter how easy it would have made our lives. We called our own agent, paid a small fee to get out of the contract, and celebrated our narrow escape.

When funds did materialize in ample enough supply to really take on the giant, I scrutinized our property with a keen take–no-prisoners dispassion. The rutted, not so quaint country driveway was smoothed. The old blue carpet was replaced with laminate and a neutral loop. A small deck was built off the dining area to finally give us a place to sit and view the hilly vista behind the house. Driveway — done. Floors — done. Outdoor living space — done.

Now we turn to the mother of all remodeling projects: the kitchen. The words are barely out before winces of pain creep onto my husband’s face. The expenses (expected and unexpected), the anticipated time without a sink or stove, the piles of culinary detritus taking up space in another room, the “you better be sure ‘cause you’re going to live with this a lo—–ng time” choices. It can all be too much.

Upon hearing my latest estimates, my husband just stares dourly at me for sustained intervals. I awkwardly wait in limbo for the possibility that the whole thing might be scrapped. It feels like we are riding an old car that is alternately accelerating and braking every few feet. Not only are we getting nowhere but also being terribly jolted as we’re taken for a ride.

I’ve considered the idea of quietly dropping the whole thing as casually as if I were walking away from a trinket at a pricey shop. Oh, that. I wasn’t really interested. “Just looking.” But the thought lasts about two seconds before I am mentally sledgehammering my way through our old cabinets and eviscerating the room in a style reminiscent of Kathy Bates in “Fried Green Tomatoes.” I need more light, more air.

Yes, it is a test of marital strength and perhaps wisely deferred ‘til a later time. But surely we have developed enough in our twenty-six years of marriage to take this step now. Surely we have evolved enough spiritually to undertake even this character-challenging disruption in the heart of our home. Ya think?

If we can just hold the image of the beautiful transformation that our efforts will have borne for just a teensy bit of time … well then, we’ll at last have the home of our dreams.

Except for the master bath………