Starshine Roshell Posts

If I could begin again, I would change the setting. But not the sentiment. The sentiment was perfect.

We were in line at Jack in the Box when I first said “I love you.” Young, broke, and decades from cholesterol issues, we had diddled away the morning in bed and were hunting for affordable, at-the-ready gut-fill. I stood behind you with my arms around your waist, deliriously inhaling the scent of your shirt, when the words tumbled clumsily from my mouth.

I love … you.

The sound of it was electric; it shocked me. It crackled and buzzed with the gravity of the future. I wanted to retract it, to bang the oral “delete” key like a maniac. I also wanted to shout it until I was hoarse, and to tattoo it across my chest in ornate purple letters.

The phrase was so leaden with significance that I thought it might fall crashing to the ground before it rose to your ears. In just three stunted syllables, it quashed my protective cool, exposed my secret notions of what’s worth loving, and declared my reasonless allegiance to all that you stood for, and did, and said.

And then it was time to order. Two sourdough burgers, a side of fries, one marriage, a mortgage, and two kids. To go …

Kristy McNichol has come out as a lesbian — in order to help people.

Do me a favor and read that sentence again. In a rational world, that string of words would make no sense whatsoever. In a reasonable society, the apropos-of-nothing proclamations of a 1970s child star and all-but-forgotten TV actress wouldn’t even be interesting, much less beneficial. In the universe I’d like to one day inhabit, no one would care about the sexual preferences of a woman whose face you probably can’t even picture.

I have nothing against Kristy McNichol. As a girl, I had a poster of her and her brother Jimmy, whose feathered mane, hairless chest, gold chain necklace, and loving proximity to his all-American tomboy sister made him precisely effeminate enough to be irresistibly, nonthreateningly attractive to a 7-year-old girl. (Oh, the ironies.)

But it disappoints me that Kristy can release a statement a third of a century later saying she’s a lady lover and it makes the damned news cycle. Who cares if Kristy McNichol is into girls? Who cares if the Osmond brothers like to dress up in women’s clothing (I made that up, don’t sue me) or if a young Danny Bonaduce ran a prostitution ring out of his Partridge Family trailer (I made that up, too, but would you be surprised if it were true?).

It’s been 30-some years since my last confession, and as you well know, I’ve done some hard time on the naughty list. But I’ve been thinking a lot about you this week. After spending a month shopping, hauling, wrapping, schlepping, baking, trimming, toasting, and cleaning endless candy sprinkles off the floor from a gingerbread-decorating fiasco, I’m depleted. My kids’ holiday season has been as magical and memorable as the Target ads insist it should be, but damn if I’m not out of money, out of energy, and — can this even be right? — out of eggnog.

What about me, Nick? Aren’t I entitled to a little magic? Don’t I deserve more than a morning of wielding the camera and serving up sweet rolls followed by a week of cleaning up gift wrap, boxing up ornaments, and coiling up yards and yards and still more tangled yards of twinkle lights? Who’s gonna jingle my bells, man?

Blame the scotch I’ve been splashing into my cider all evening, or the heady Spruce It Up!™ PlugIn® I bought to rectify the dispiriting odorless-ness of my fake tree. But I took the liberty of scratching out a last-minute wish list, on the off chance that you care.

Here’s what I’d really like this year. Or any year, really:

(I’d like to point out some unusual formatting in this week’s column. Every time you see an asterisk [*] in the text below, I want you to squeeze the muscles of your pelvic floor. I’ll explain later; just do it. Every time.)

Being the mother of a teenager brings an undeniable sense of accomplishment. By the time our kids are a decade-plus out-tha-womb, we’re masters at soothing bee-stung toes and sleepover anxieties. We can produce perfect potluck side dishes and create a Shutterfly holiday card in 20 minutes flat.

We’re competent. We’re confident. But … we’re not especially continent.*

Let me paint you a picture: I’m the cool mom who buys my kids a trampoline, relinquishes half of my backyard to the unsightly contraption, and then — excellent sport that I am — scrambles onto the bouncy spring pad with my boys to have a go on the thing.

Yes, good times. Look at us, cavorting together. Get a load of me, the fun mom, launching into the air, cackling with glee, and flopping around like a middle-aged rag doll until — excuse me?

What* just* happened?*

It seems I sprung a wee leak. And being neither a potty-oblivious infant nor a nursing-home resident, I’m confused. It’s as unexpected as if my eyes had just popped out of my head — things that have no business leaving my body without my say-so.

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