have a few laughs and share a few heartfelt moments the way moms and daughters do in tampon commercials.
From the aisle I looked over at Jason, who was leaning back against his seat now, gently snoring. Jason had been a huge help these past couple months, but he, too, was new to parenthood and slightly too neurotic to instill in me the sense of calm I was looking for. Wrong or right, I needed my mom. So I convinced him to fly to Hawaii by telling him the lie that all new parents hope is true, that parenting is easier on a beach.
For the past five years, my mom and her husband, John, had owned a timeshare on the island of Lanai. According to Wikipedia, Lanai, sometimes referred to as the Pineapple Island, is the sixth largest of the Hawaiian Islands. In other words, it’s basically the smallest. I think there might be one or two smaller, but I’m pretty sure they’re just inhabited by tropical birds and Lilliputians. Not only was Lanai ideal for rest and relaxation, it was also just small enough to provide my mom with little else to do besides focus on me.
When we landed in Honolulu, Jason gathered up our explosion of belongings and I carried our bloated baby off the plane. Equal parts exhausted and relieved, we made our way through the humid outdoor airport to a smaller terminal, where a prop plane was already waiting for us. We hurriedly boarded the vessel bound for Lanai, eager to reunite with someone on the other side whose arms weren’t about to fall off from holding an infant. I felt slightly embarrassed that I’d started to consider a seventeen-pound baby heavy. My college computer weighed more. But I’d recently injured my leg at the gym and the additional weight was taking its toll. When we stood up to disembark our Island Air flight into Lanai Airport, I was limping. As I hobbled through the tiny airport’s provisional baggage claim area, my mom and her dog came bounding toward me.
What I’d overlooked in my haste to connect with my mother was one small roadblock: a twelve-pound black-and-white party poodle named Rocky.
Part of becoming an adult means coming to terms with the fact that your mother’s dog is living the childhood you always wanted. It’s not his fault; he just lucked out and met her in a more enlightened time. She was finally ready for responsibility. She’d had a few trial runs (with me and my sister), killed a few plants, and was at last open to the idea of constantly feeding and watering and wiping someone’s ass with baby wipes. Rocky was living the childhood I always wanted. He had my mom’s undivided love and attention; they were rarely apart. Unlike Teets, Rocky was a poodle with a pedigree. Both his parents were show dogs, and he was engineered on a breeding ranch in Texas to be the ultimate specimen. To me, Rocky always looked like Michael Jackson wearing eyeliner. They had the same nub of a nose and uneven two-toned skin color. It didn’t matter to Rocky if he was black or white, because he was both simultaneously. His legs were atypically long for his body, so every time he moved he looked like he was reenacting the “Thriller” video. Rocky was sweet, but my mom’s coddling had made him into one of those high-maintenance basket-case dogs who eat only chopped chicken salad, refuse to set foot on wet grass, and travel with their own body pillow. Part of me hated Rocky and the other part of me respected the fuck out of him. What was he doing that I wasn’t? What did he understand that I couldn’t? I wanted to study his moves, learn his strategies, and then eventually usurp him.
As soon as my mom saw Sid, she pulled out her iPhone and started snapping pictures.
“What’s up with your leg, Choppy? Why are you walking like a pirate?”
My mom had called me Choppy since she’d accidentally guillotined my ring finger in a sliding minivan door when I was eight. “Choppy” didn’t refer to the act of trying to cut off my finger, but to “Chop-chop, Jenny,” because
From the aisle I looked over at Jason, who was leaning back against his seat now, gently snoring. Jason had been a huge help these past couple months, but he, too, was new to parenthood and slightly too neurotic to instill in me the sense of calm I was looking for. Wrong or right, I needed my mom. So I convinced him to fly to Hawaii by telling him the lie that all new parents hope is true, that parenting is easier on a beach.
For the past five years, my mom and her husband, John, had owned a timeshare on the island of Lanai. According to Wikipedia, Lanai, sometimes referred to as the Pineapple Island, is the sixth largest of the Hawaiian Islands. In other words, it’s basically the smallest. I think there might be one or two smaller, but I’m pretty sure they’re just inhabited by tropical birds and Lilliputians. Not only was Lanai ideal for rest and relaxation, it was also just small enough to provide my mom with little else to do besides focus on me.
When we landed in Honolulu, Jason gathered up our explosion of belongings and I carried our bloated baby off the plane. Equal parts exhausted and relieved, we made our way through the humid outdoor airport to a smaller terminal, where a prop plane was already waiting for us. We hurriedly boarded the vessel bound for Lanai, eager to reunite with someone on the other side whose arms weren’t about to fall off from holding an infant. I felt slightly embarrassed that I’d started to consider a seventeen-pound baby heavy. My college computer weighed more. But I’d recently injured my leg at the gym and the additional weight was taking its toll. When we stood up to disembark our Island Air flight into Lanai Airport, I was limping. As I hobbled through the tiny airport’s provisional baggage claim area, my mom and her dog came bounding toward me.
What I’d overlooked in my haste to connect with my mother was one small roadblock: a twelve-pound black-and-white party poodle named Rocky.
Part of becoming an adult means coming to terms with the fact that your mother’s dog is living the childhood you always wanted. It’s not his fault; he just lucked out and met her in a more enlightened time. She was finally ready for responsibility. She’d had a few trial runs (with me and my sister), killed a few plants, and was at last open to the idea of constantly feeding and watering and wiping someone’s ass with baby wipes. Rocky was living the childhood I always wanted. He had my mom’s undivided love and attention; they were rarely apart. Unlike Teets, Rocky was a poodle with a pedigree. Both his parents were show dogs, and he was engineered on a breeding ranch in Texas to be the ultimate specimen. To me, Rocky always looked like Michael Jackson wearing eyeliner. They had the same nub of a nose and uneven two-toned skin color. It didn’t matter to Rocky if he was black or white, because he was both simultaneously. His legs were atypically long for his body, so every time he moved he looked like he was reenacting the “Thriller” video. Rocky was sweet, but my mom’s coddling had made him into one of those high-maintenance basket-case dogs who eat only chopped chicken salad, refuse to set foot on wet grass, and travel with their own body pillow. Part of me hated Rocky and the other part of me respected the fuck out of him. What was he doing that I wasn’t? What did he understand that I couldn’t? I wanted to study his moves, learn his strategies, and then eventually usurp him.
As soon as my mom saw Sid, she pulled out her iPhone and started snapping pictures.
“What’s up with your leg, Choppy? Why are you walking like a pirate?”
My mom had called me Choppy since she’d accidentally guillotined my ring finger in a sliding minivan door when I was eight. “Choppy” didn’t refer to the act of trying to cut off my finger, but to “Chop-chop, Jenny,” because
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