As people grow up, create their lives, start a family, they bring bits and pieces of their life with them as gentile reminders of where they come from or how far they have gone. My mom’s objects were very simple, sea shells from the beach, which was 20 miles from our house and a few family heirlooms that seemed to anchor the house with their presences. There was Great Uncle John’s piano that moved from our house to my brother’s house and now resides with my niece, and a dining room set from my Great Grandmother on my Dad’s side of the family, which now is at my house, and books. My mom loved books. Some were old; some were new. No matter how busy mom’s life was as a single mother, she always read to us. Some people have to have a swing set in the yard, ice cream in the freezer, candy stashed in the bottom of a drawer (It’s the secret candy that everyone knows about ; everyone eats, but for some reason, everyone sneaks into the drawer as if it was a hidden treasure).
These are the things that we choose as comforts to give us peace and a sense of belonging. Then there are the things that for some reason just seem to plague us no matter where we go in life. We can move out of state, move up or down in the social latter, be unemployed or a millionaire. But for some reason, you always end up with a house with a rose bush and you hate roses, a boy dog that loves to jump the fence and chase down girl dogs in heat, the relative that seems to eat at your house more than their house, or you always seem to break mirrors (hand or wall mirror doesn’t matter you will break one very 2 to 3 years). For me, I would gladly take one of the above inconveniences.
What do I get?
Poop. Yep. You read that correctly. My life has been plagued with crap. For a woman who is naturally constipated, I certainly have a lot of fecal matter issues to contend with for one person.
It all started when I was young. You see, my mother believed that administering a lukewarm enema would cure most common ailments from the common cold to food poisoning to mental illness. “You’ll feel much better after all that stuff clogging you up is gone.” From an early age, I learned to monitor my bowel movements for signs. After writing that statement, I am completely surprise that the study of BMs did not require chicken bones and a brewed concoction of chamomile and eye of newt with a pinch of licorice root although it would account for my fascination with the forensic sciences and the occult world.
In Kindergarten, I found out that being afraid to go the bathroom in the middle of class has various side effects. One of which is a really bad nickname that can stick with you for several years and is only relieved when one changes schools. The second being that labeling of human waste as dirt when discovered on the floor near your shoes fools no one, not even other 5 year olds.
From this point on, my life seemed to take a turn for the better with only a few incidents of an old dying dog with weak bowels or a niece or nephew to change their diaper during a babysitting gig. Even after having kids, the monitoring of my family’s bowel activities was something I did quietly in the background of living life in the suburbs.
Then one day I did something that was totally out of character, and it must have thrown the Fecal Gods into a tizzy. I decided I would travel France to visit my brother and sister-in-law and to take a book art class. I am not sure how this offended the Gods of Shit, but it did. I had just finished up a day of book making when a screaming email came to my attention. Back home, the family dog had just crapped all over the house. My then husband had to take off the rest of the afternoon from work to clean it up. The next day, a similar email arrived from home only this time, the dog had wrecked havoc upon the master bedroom. This lead to a total melt down in judgment, and my x-husband decided to wash one of the Dupioni silk curtains in the washer and then run it through the dryer. From a small reading nook located in a turret of a 16th century chateau, a horrifying scream was heard for miles. After the news that bathroom cleaner, which contained bleach, was used to clean the celery colored bed skirt from the Pottery Barn, I simply passed out from the shock of it all.
My relationship with bodily waste was improving and then a warning sign came from nowhere. After walking the dog one evening, I notice dog poop on my shoe. Now typically, this happens from time to time when walking a dog along the same path in the woods. However, I knew something was askew when the poop was on top of my shoe and nowhere else. I promptly called Dateman to inquire if he was breaking up with me. He said no. A few weeks passed, and I completely forgot about the pending doom that was before me. Then it came from nowhere in the middle of the day. College Dude (my son) called my cell phone frantically. The call went something like this…
“Mom, the dog just crapped all over the house, but mostly in the kitchen.”
“OK, where is the dog now?”
“Outside. We opened up all the windows because it stinks in the house. We thought we were going to throw up. I think she is sick because it looks really red.”
“OK, take the dog to the vet;’ I’ll meet you there. Make sure you take a stool sample for the vet to test.”
For a stool sample, a large size Tupperware container filled to capacity with poop was transported to the vet’s office. The Vet tech commented on the “ample amount” of the stool sample the boys (College Dude and neighbor side-kick) had gathered and praised them highly for their efforts.
$200.00 later…we all were back home. The boys ran across the street to the neighbor’s house so they didn’t have to finish cleaning up. I walked into a kitchen with dried diarrhea covering floor and a serving spoon lying in the middle of it. To collect my composure, I closed my eyes and thought of the beach for 10 seconds then turned on the radio, grabbed some paper towels and a garbage bag and sang as I cleaned. After the Hazmat team certified that the house was now fit for human occupancy, the dog and College Dude both came back into the house.
Quietly, I monitor the fecal cycle of everyone in the house and wait for the next bowel explosion to occur.
