To Keep Your Balance, You Must Keep Moving

My daughter Phelan was born in 2004. She knows Winona Ryder from the series Stranger Things. She thinks Johnny Depp’s Wino tattoo is because he has a drinking problem; who knows, not judging.

Stranger Things is set in the 1980s. The kids in the show ride bikes with banana seats and handlebar tassels, just like the bikes I knew growing up. This makes me feel younger, immortal maybe, the same way I feel whenever I hear Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird” or Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven,” which the radio stations here in Pittsburgh have been playing on repeat since forever.

“Did you eat eggs and talk about current events?” Phelan wants to know about The Breakfast Club. “Did you love toast?”

Whatever, Phelan, my beautiful daughter. I love you so much.
***
I remember a time when breakfast detention was a serious thing, though I was straight-edged and had to do time only once.

I got caught selling oregano in a baggie to a girl in prep school who thought the oregano was some premium weed and made everyone call her Robert Plant because, Led Zeppelin.

But that’s another story.

Robert Plant would know the difference between oregano and premium weed. Just saying.
***
We were talking about time.

In the 1900s, before energy drinks, we had coffee and NoDoz pills and diet pills and naps. Kids who couldn’t get premium weed would sometimes smoke banana peels, but that just gave them headaches.

I remember a time before schools were in the news, before shelter in place was a thing, before automatic weapons and metal detectors, before English teachers turned in students who wrote essays about madness, before anyone worried about active shooters or anything other than mean girls and bullies and what was in the mystery meat the cafeteria passed off as hamburgers, and where we’d sit on the bus, and who drew the dicks on the buses’ metal seat backs, and who was the artist who remembered to put wiry hairs on all the ball sacs — that attention to detail, genius really — but I don’t tell my daughter any of this.

About The Breakfast Club I say, “We should watch it together.” I say, “I’ll make popcorn.”

Phelan says, “Okay, maybe,” like she’ll have her people call my people to maybe set a date somewhere around never.

These days my daughter kisses me on the top of my head, the way I kissed her when she was younger, a kiss that says, “There, there,” a kiss that says, “I love you,” a kiss that says, “Oh, sweetie, the things you don’t know.”
***
Some days I switch on WDVE, which is the most classic of classic Pittsburgh radio stations, and I’m back in the 1980s, which were the 1900s, nearly prehistoric in my daughter’s lovely mind.

When I listen to ’DVE — no one in Pittsburgh uses the W, kind of like in New York when tourists pronounce Houston Street the same as that place in Texas and get spontaneously mugged — I’m back at Ardmore Roller Rink, All Skate, figure eights, backwards, forwards, pink pom-poms on my skates, disco lights flashing, the smell of burnt pizza and Super Pretzels and teenage sweat, all moldy grapefruit and Love’s Baby Soft, the snake-slither of a pink satin jacket over my arms, my long hair crimped and teased and Aqua Netted big enough to have its own zip code, a strange boy’s raspberry-Icee’d tongue in my mouth, Ladies’ Choice, everything possible, free as a bird now.

How can life seem so long and short all at once? Albert Einstein could explain it, maybe, but he’s been dead a long time.

First Ardmore Roller Rink became a gym, then a realty office, then nothing. It sits vacant, the empty basement of a brown-bricked bank building.

“Time is a construct,” I say to my daughter, who rolls her lovely eyes.
***
Einstein died of an aneurysm in Spring, 1955. He refused a surgery that maybe could have saved him, saying: “I want to go when I want. It is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share; it is time to go. I will do it elegantly.”

After his death, pieces of Einstein’s brain ended up in mason jars. Thomas Stoltz Harvey, the man who conducted Einstein’s autopsy, drove the brain-bits around in the trunk of his car for years until he was discovered doing so in 1978.

Einstein’s brain had traveled across many states and into Canada.

“Life is like riding a bicycle,” Einstein once said. “To keep your balance, you must keep moving.”
***
I never wondered until this moment why Lynyrd Skynyrd’s name is spelled like that.

I know the band took its name as a joke about Leonard Skinner, a gym teacher who hated long-haired boys.

But why all the Ys?

Marketing, probably.

Weed, definitely.

Something for kids to ponder while staring at album covers and smoking in their parents’ basements.

Remember album covers?

If you’re from the 1900s, you do.

I studied those covers. I loved Led Zeppelin’s “Zoso,” an old man carrying a bundle of twigs, the meaning of which no one has ever fully deciphered. I loved all those humans hidden in the lion on the cover of Santana’s debut album. I loved the sweet faces of Lynyrd Skynyrd on the album that spelled their band name phonetically, those long-haired hippie freaks, the horror of gym teachers everywhere, those babies — Ronnie Van Zant, and later Steve Gaines, Cassie Gaines — who would be dead before I could love their music like I would later in life when I quit trying to be cool.

I’m feeling philosophical these days, which is something that happens, maybe, when facing what could be a dire diagnosis about a disease that has become as common as acne.

“The goal of all art is to gain access to the one or two images that first gained access to our hearts,” said Albert Camus, who I’ve referenced on repeat, who we should all read and re-read.

All those album covers. Remember? Remember?
***
“When you’re dead, you’re a dead pecker-head,” dear John Prine used to say, but he was quoting his father.

John Prine’s album covers were often just a picture of John Prine, looking earnest and eternal in jeans and a work shirt.

John Prine thought his father was wrong about death. In one song, John Prine plans a party in the afterlife where he gets to say “told you so” to his dad.

I like that. Indulge me, please.

We’ll have fun in the afterlife together.

You, John Prine, me, and everyone we’ve ever loved.
***
My husband Newman says some people believe weed not only wards off dementia but also could cure cancer.

Forget dementia. Let’s deal with the thing at hand.

My husband is a practical man. He loves me nonetheless.

I don’t know this yet, but a few months from now, after some surgeries, whatever, when I have to sleep in a medical recliner because a bed won’t do, because a bed will cause pain, my husband will take a single mattress from our son’s bunk bed and place it by my side. The mattress will still be covered in Spiderman sheets, faded in the places where my sleeping son used to lie.

Newman, built like the football player he was, will sleep on the floor on this tiny Spiderman mattress for weeks. He’ll reach up to hold my hand and his bad shoulder will lock up because he won’t let go.

But that comes later.

For now, Newman keeps doing research. He keeps reading medical journals. He has two master’s degrees to my one, and seven books to my six. Not that it’s a competition. I’m establishing him as a trusted source — and trust for me is no easy thing.

I’m adopted. I don’t believe in people, though I love so many of them. I believe in my husband and love him. We’ve been married almost 20 years, but I want more.

Eternity. What an amazing word, the way it stretches the mouth, expanding like a universe of vowels and consonants. Eternity.

In Words with Friends, the word Eternity is also a bingo. All seven letters, plus one.

Seven, that angel number, all mysticism and perfection. In the Bible, seven is the number of God’s creation, perfection, the number of days in the week.

The seventh day, Sabbath, the day of rest.

Eternity is worth 50-plus points in Words with Friends.

How many points are enough for a lifetime?

How many years are enough for a lifetime?

Whatever freedom used to mean to me, now I want the opposite. Grounding. Family. Love.

When I am very sick, my husband will reach up from his tiny mattress and hold my hand for weeks, months. The Spiderman mattress will meld from the imprint of my son’s tiny body to my husband’s body.

Set us free from this mortal coil, someone said. William Blake, maybe.

No, thank you. I’m good.
***
“I’m sorry,” the oncology nurse on the phone says.

She’ll repeat it, again and again, her words skipping like a scratched record, a hiccup.

I love her. I hate her.

She reminds me of passengers when I worked as a flight attendant years back. That fleeting connection, an intimate blip, a sweetness, something else.

Saturday Night Live had a segment back in the 1900s called “Total Bastard Airlines.” Helen Hunt and David Spade made the airline “buh-bye” famous. In that segment, the plane landed in Pittsburgh, my home country, often the punchline of jokes.

David Spade, that sweetheart, was on my flight once. It had been a hard day, I don’t remember why, but there were a lot of hard days. David Spade cheered me up by helping me de-plane when we landed.

De-plane. What a word.

David Spade stood at the door with me and sent passengers off. He said, “Buh- bye,” and “Which part didn’t you understand? The Buh or the Bye?” and “Buh-bye now.”

He said, “Knock, knock.” He said, “Who’s there? He said, “Buh-bye now.”

David Spade, you sweet funny beautiful human. Thank you for the memory. Thank you for the light. Delight.

De-Light. See what I did there?

Sometimes on flights sans David Spade, I played with words a little, like I do now. “Apple pie,” I’d say as passengers de-planed. “Apple pie now.”

In all my years of flying the only people who ever caught on were kids and this one old lady, a beauty who, during a particularly rough flight, shouted with joy mid-turbulence, “They should charge extra for this!” while everyone around her gripped their armrests, prayed, or hyperventilated into airsick bags, certain we’d crash.

The thing about airplanes: A lot of things happen that feel like the end, but planes rarely crash. When they do, it’s awful, of course, but most of the time, it’s fine. We’re fine.

Cancer isn’t the death sentence it used to be. I try to remember that.

That lovely old lady on my flight kept calling me nurse. “Oh nurse! You’re a good one,” she said whenever I brought her juice and snacks.

Apple pie. Buh-bye. Apple pie now.

Get it? Funny, right?
***
The nurse on the phone?

Later I will have to ask her to repeat many things. I will exhaust her patience because of how little I’ve paid attention. An appointment for another biopsy. No, it can’t wait. Yes, sooner is better.

Later I will have to write things down and ask for clarifications. I will replay the words again and again before I can begin to understand.
***
Back in the 1900s, there was a show called Fantasy Island that made the phrase “de-plane” famous before it meant anything in airline-speak.

Ricardo Montalbán, the star, described Fantasy Island as TV’s version of Purgatory.

Montalbán’s character, Mr. Roarke, had the power to fulfill people’s fantasies, often to nightmarish ends, since the people who ended up on Fantasy Island were more or less shitheads who deserved whatever they had coming.

Hervé Villechaize played Tattoo, Mr. Roarke’s diminutive assistant.

Montalbán saw his character Mr. Roarke as a fallen angel in charge. He called Tattoo his little cherub. Hervé Villechaize, a little person who preferred the word midget, became famous for shouting his catchphrase at the beginning of every episode of Fantasy Island.

“The plane! The plane!”

Later in life, people would stop Hervé Villechaize on the street. They would come up to him in restaurants. They’d post up outside his home and beg him to say it, say it.

Hervé Villechaize, born in France, an acclaimed painter before he became an actor, had a bit of an accent. “The plane! The plane!” sounded like “De-plane! De-plane!”

Before he landed on Fantasy Island, Hervé Villechaize played an evil henchman named Nick Nack in a James Bond movie. Before that, he worked as a rat-catcher’s assistant in South Central Los Angeles. Later, he can be seen as the legs of Oscar the Grouch on Sesame Street; such is the life of a little person in Hollywood.

We all do whatever it takes to get by in this life.

On “That Teen Show” in 1983, Hervé Villechaize, bullied as a child, troubled as an adult, fired from Fantasy Island over salary demands and bad behavior, said he’d finally learned to love life. Ten years later, Hervé Villechaize shot and killed himself. He’d become very sick and was in pain. His lungs were too small. Other organs, including his heart, were too big.

“He thought of himself as a proud mustang, but he’d become a carousel pony,” his wife, Kathy Self, said.

Hervé Villechaize recorded his own death, including his final words, on a tape recorder he hid in a potted plant. On the recording, he says, “I just have to do this, and everything will be fine.” After he pulls the trigger and doesn’t die, he says, “Whoa. Well, I guess I just have to wait.”

Hervé Villechaize was 50.

“I just want everyone to know I love them,” Hervé Villechaize said.
***
Ricardo Montalbán went on to have a career that spanned seven decades, Star Trek: Wrath of Khan, etc. But Ricardo Montalbán is also famous for commercials he did for the Chrysler Cordoba, where he touted the luxury of the car’s fine Corinthian leather.

There is no such thing as fine Corinthian leather.

The leather for the Chrysler Cordoba came from New Jersey.

Before he died, Hervé Villechaize starred in an ad for Dunkin’ Donuts’ mini donuts, where he said “Da plain! Da plain!” and pointed to the donuts he wanted.

In his last note to his wife, Hervé Villechaize wrote, “Your love made me feel like a giant. That’s how I want you to remember me.”
***
About Skynyrd, a band he loves, Newman says, “They were probably high and someone figured, hey, Ys are cool. Plus, it might have kept them from being sued by their gym teacher, Leonard.”

Imagine Leonard, a whistle around his rubbery sun-pocked neck, running kids around a track, ordering the long hairs to drop and give him 20, or worse.

Leonard in boxer shorts and a stained t-shirt.

Leonard retired in his dank basement.

Leonard smelling of boiled hotdogs.

Leonard listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd on the radio, those long-hairs making millions.

Leonard, considering how little he knew about anything,

Leonard, who maybe wondered if he wasted his one and only life.