Toohey'd

 

I'm coming up on six years sober, two years single, and one day since I finished reading The Fountainhead. I bought the book ages ago, but only got around to reading it a couple of weeks ago.

It’s a great read with key takeaways. First: anyone held in good public standing is a spineless bitch with no real identity. Second, altruistic pursuits are ultimately selfish; create for yourself, not for anyone else. Lastly, don’t care what other people think, because other people don’t think.

The rape thing with Dominique is strange. Her psychotic obsession reminded me of the intersection of my married, drinking, and motherhood nights when I took to cyberstalking an old boyfriend. I think there were moments in those nights when I felt convinced I was reading his mind too. I’m glad it worked out for ol’ Dominique. 

Not so much for me, in that department. I can admit I’ve been unlucky in love. My relationships haven’t exactly been success stories, but that does not define my self-worth. I’m the sum of all my experiences, and when the right person comes along, I’ll know without doubt. These past two years have been pretty fucking amazing, and cliché as it sounds, I’ve been in a relationship with myself, one I never had the space to enjoy before.

Something strange happened while reading the book: Dax Shepard referenced it twice in recent episodes of Armchair Expert. It made me wonder if I’ve been Ellsworth Toohey’d. The book offers a compelling look at how public opinion can be manipulated. I won’t say it’s more relevant now than ever; public persuasion has always been a part of the human experience.

When the kids watch South Park, I cringe and point out that the jokes are offensive, as if they’re stupid. They think the obviousness of my commentary is what’s stupid. The show is on Paramount Plus, the streamer with abusively long commercial breaks. I can make a snack, change the laundry, and wash my face during one string of advertisements. 

The other night, I was tired, so I just let the ads come at me. The first commercial was about suicide. Is their pursuit of suicide prevention really a suggestion of suicide to anyone who hadn’t thought about it? The next two commercials were for pharmaceuticals; pills promising to dissolve suffering. The final one was for KY jelly. I turned to the kids and said, “I don’t think South Park is the problem anymore. It's the damn commercials.”

Society’s fixation with mental health often feels like a distraction from a deeper issue: people living without purpose. That seems clear to me, but I’m a mother, so I worry anyway. Some days when I pick up my kids from school, I am subject to a full-blown manifesto about the injustice of having no control over life as a middle schooler.

My favorite quote is, “This is one moment, but know that another shall pierce you with a sudden painful joy.” I want my kids to hold on to what makes them unique. I don’t want the Howard Roark spirit beaten out of them. Sobriety has helped me get off the roller coaster of highs and lows, but as a mom, I have to jump in that open seat next to my kids and make sure they pull the safety bar down. I want to show them: buckle up, this ride won’t last forever, but it can throw you off course if you don’t accept it and settle in for the damn ride.

Anyway, who’s to say whether these opinions are truly mine, or if I’ve just been Ellsworth Toohey’d into thinking them? I’ll move on to a new book, and with it, a fresh set of ideas. Ones I can attribute to individualism or collectivism. In the end, I guess it’s really about how selfish I am.

Flying

 

Two nights ago, I had one of those dreams where you wake up, but you’re still asleep. I tried to fully wake by attempting to fling over on my side. But I stayed in the dream and just rolled off the side of the bed. I got up and saw Kiki in the doorway. She wore her pink pajama set, which she often wears, and it looked like she was waiting for me.

We walked through the house to the back door and excitedly opened the sliding door to go outside. The backyard looked different. There were little white lights strung around everywhere, and a huge deck with fire pits and TVs hung up. I sat in a chair in front of a fire pit and said to her, “I’m so happy we're in this dream together.”

She replied, “This isn’t a dream.”

I jumped from the chair I was sitting in and flew high into the sky, to show her it was a dream. I flew over the yard and then hovered above the house, looking back at her. Then she flew up into the sky, too.

Then I woke up. The next morning, I told my daughter about the dream, and I asked her, “Did you have the same dream?”

It felt right. The dream left me feeling so amazing. She told me no, and added something about how ridiculous the question is.

I’ve had the kids for most of this month, and it’s been lovely to have them all the time. The only extracurricular is G's soccer. He is new to the game, and he’s picking it up. I get antsy watching. My body reacts when I see the ball being kicked around as if I could pull some puppet strings attached to the players. 

When I played soccer in middle school, I was, without question, the worst player on the team. The only person who was thrilled to have me on the team was the second-to-worst person. Everyone else was indifferent because I never could mess a game up in a critical moment, since I’d be watching from the bench. It didn’t faze me, and I had fun hanging out with my friends.

G’s soccer games can be intense because the kids are damn good at soccer. They're juggling that ball, and bouncing it off their heads, and I’m at the sidelines doing the dog pound chant from Arsenio Hall. Some of the parents are cut from a different cloth. I smell their militant self-discipline. 

I was once reading my book while the team warmed up, and listened to this dad talk about his son to some other parents. He said, “He is reaching a limit. He has continued to be top of his class academically, and he has two hours of practice every night and four games a weekend.”

This explains why they're all so good, playing in multiple leagues each season. Whatever they did to their kids early on to make them get in line, I commend. I start screaming at my kids to put their shoes on thirty minutes before we actually leave, otherwise we will be late. One hour of homework has to be rewarded with two hours of TV. We are finally at a point where I can believe them when they tell me they don't have homework, after two years of parent-teacher conferences, where one time my daughter said to the teacher, in front of me, that I am too trusting. My jaw dropped.

I get it, though. When I get home, I don't want to work. The minute I walk in the door, I change into pajamas. My daughter does the same, usually the pink set. If I didn’t have to worry about one day finding a man because my kids will move out in five years, I'd probably only eat ice cream sandwiches and have a full wardrobe of matching sweatsuits. I don’t think I will find one at a soccer game, even though it is the height of my social life these days.

The kids are going to their dad’s this weekend, so I can say goodbye to these dishpan hands at the same time as I say goodbye to them in the morning, but I already miss them. Tonight, when I walked into Kiki's room to say goodnight, I said, “That was my favorite dream. I think one day you’ll have that dream too. From your perspective. Why would we have to have it at the same time?”

She said, "I don't think we're that connected. Maybe it would happen with my dad."

Then I hit her over the head with a pillow, and she started laughing.

The Stapler

 

When I was young, I remember my dad screaming about his stapler. It was either missing or broken. My brothers and sisters treated his desk as a portal to our adulthood. Stapling, taping, and scribbling just like an adult does, working on whatever they're working on at their desk.

My Dad was plagued by five kids who had no idea that the stapler had a real purpose, and wasn’t just amazingly fun to play with. We committed other criminal acts at the home, such as when thumbtacks were discovered inside the VCR. I was the family graffiti artist, and as a child, I took to our family van with a Sharpie marker. I remember when I drew all over my dad’s briefcase, and I was at an age when I was learning how to hold a pen, so it was just violent scribbling.

I suppose a child psychologist could have really tapped a pen at their lip while looking at the scene, but my dad probably just gave a furious roar, and then sucked it up, carrying that desecrated briefcase back and forth to work each day till my mom bought him a new one for Christmas.

I’m approaching my fourteenth year of parenthood, and I have gone through at least ten staplers. No one acknowledges when they broke the stapler. I find out when I go to staple, and I press it down to no avail. I flip it open and see that some part of the mechanism is broken beyond repair, but the staples have been colored rainbow with Sharpie markers.

I still think my desk is a sacred space. I love pulling my chair right up to it, organizing papers, and putting my pens in their little mug. It’s funny because even though I work at my desk, I end up taking most of my Zoom meetings in my bed, so I’m not interrupted. This is when the desk is free for someone else to pull the chair up to it. Maybe to pretend to pay the water bill by hole-punching it and sticking it inside the printer.

The wall in our entryway has a hole in it because someone repeatedly swung the door open like they were Kramer running into Jerry’s apartment. My brother-in-law had to fix our bathroom floor because of mindlessly showering with the curtain on the outside of the tub. Currently, the kitchen table has clay cemented to it from a volcano mold.

Aside from a furious growl and then a sigh of defeat, there is not much I can do about it. Now I know to buy scissors in bulk because they might be inter-dimensional objects, put a stopper in front of the wall to protect it from the door, and always have a stash of paperclips on hand.

Nothing like the act of paper-clipping to calm my nerves and remind me that I am doing important things at my desk. It’s not quite as good as a stapler, but I’ll put a new one in my stocking at Christmas.