Box Girl (32 page)

Maybe, as my dad likes to say, the most honest answer someone can give is, “I don't know.”

Maybe, I don't know.

Mom-Like

The assistant at the commercial agency called to tell me I
had a last-minute audition for a Budweiser commercial later that afternoon. He recited the usual rundown: time, address, what to wear. At first I thought he said the wardrobe was a “skin-tight dress,” but I was relieved when he repeated that it was a “mom-like dress.” And then I was sort of disturbed. Had I really entered into the “mom” category of the casting world? I wasn't even thirty. And since when are there mom-types in beer commercials anyway?

I headed to my closet, dressed in fluorescent orange shorts and a cropped Red Hot Chili Peppers T-shirt.
I don't even like the Red Hot Chili Peppers
, I thought, scratching my unwashed hair.
Where did I acquire this shirt? And why is it cropped? This is not a “mom-like” thought
, I thought.
Moms know where their clothes come from. Right?

I swatted through my closet, which was so overstuffed, my clothes actually wrinkled on the hangers. To my surprise, I realized I had a lot of “mom-like” dresses. (Most of them had
been my mom's.) But what sort of “mom” were we talking about? A tan and toned, Lululemon-clad So-Cal mom? A Talbot's-sporting PTA-board-member East Coast mom? Or any number of mom-types in between? Being a mom for the first time was very confusing. I opted for a conservative yet form-flattering wrap dress. My mom (of the Talbot's school) has told me many times, “Nothing flatters a figure better than a good wrap dress, especially with a three-quarter-length sleeve!”

After slapping on my wrap dress, I combed some baby powder through my hair because I didn't have time to wash it. I must have squeezed the bottle a bit too eagerly, though, as a giant powdery cloud enveloped my head, turning my blonde to a lovely shade of frosted gray. I looked in the mirror. All of a sudden, I'd gone from “fresh young mom” to “hot grandmother who's had lots of plastic surgery.” I flipped my head upside-down, attempting to shake the elderly out of my hair.

I am currently at that cruel crossroad in a woman's life when you start to get wrinkles but you haven't stopped getting the occasional zit. I recently went to an upscale skincare store and loaded up on proper products. I had always just used the stuff from the drugstore, but nearing thirty, I decided I needed to step up my skincare game. I also decided I should get the occasional facial.

About half way through one of these facials, the aesthetician told me I needed to “stop doing that with my face,” or it was going to stay that way.

“Stay what way?” I popped up to my elbows, two saturated cotton pads falling off my eyes and landing in my lap.

She held up a hand mirror and pointed at the fleshy troughs between my eyebrows.
Oh my god
, I thought,
I look like a Pound Puppy
.

“I didn't even know I was doing that.”

“You've been doing it the whole time.”

This is probably because I don't find facials very fun, all that picking and poking and extracting. I raised my eyebrows as high as they would go to smooth the Pound Puppy ripples, and this left my forehead looking like a layer cake.

She coached me through some exercises to relax my face.

“La la la” she said, while flicking her tongue in and out of her mouth like a salamander.

“La la la,” I said, while flicking my tongue in and out of my mouth like a salamander. “Do you know the sound a horse makes?” she asked.

“Neigh?” I answered.

“No, the other noise.”

“Wait, I do know this one!”

I pressed my lips together and made a noise like a motor-boat. The aesthetician and I made the horse/motor boating noise at each other for a few minutes, split flying everywhere.

Since that facial, when I catch myself making the face that might make my face get stuck that way, I'll start doing the horse noise and flicking my tongue in and out of my mouth like a salamander. Normally I do this in the privacy of my own home, though I'm also not afraid to do it in the false-sense-of-privacy of my own car. People passing me on the road probably think I have Tourette's.

Flipping my head right side up, I glanced once more at my reflection and smacked some youthful, melon-colored lip gloss on my mouth. With that, I grabbed my purse—also my mom's—and headed to my audition.

Weltschmerz

Thumb-tacked to the bulletin board beside my desk is a
small, square piece of paper that reads, “weltschmerz,” written in my handwriting with ballpoint pen. The piece was pulled from the tower-like notepad my mom keeps next to the phone in the kitchen, for jotting down messages. One night, many years ago, I was sitting in that kitchen watching The National Spelling Bee. It was early evening in late summer, one of those days that feels like it's never going to end; something that thrilled me as a child. But during that long, confusing summer, dark couldn't come fast enough. It was the August after I graduated from college, and I was in the throes of a self-diagnosed “quarter-life crisis.” I stared at the TV that night in the same catatonic state I had stared at my computer screen all summer. I'd sit at my desk, a plate of food on my lap, and incessantly hit the refresh button of my inbox, waiting for responses from jobs I'd applied to. Occasionally, convinced my email wasn't working, I'd send a message to one of my friends who already had a job.

Yep, I got your email
, they'd reply.
Hey listen can I get back to you later? I'm really busy
.

“Sure,” I'd say out loud. “Sure you can.” Then I'd contemplate my options for the rest of the day: help my dad organize the recyclables in the garage before his weekly trip to the dump, or accompany my mom to Curves. I could have asked to borrow the car, I suppose. But where would I have gone? All my friends either already had jobs in New York or were also half-dead, staring at their computer screens, eating their parents' food. These were petty problems, I know. I was living at home with parents who were more than able and willing to take care of me. But that just made me feel more pathetic.

One morning, while watching a commercial for
The New York Times
, I let out a long, dramatic sigh and said to no one in particular, “I wish I had time to read
The New York Times
every day.” My dad looked up from his
Wall Street Journal
and responded, “You do.” But somehow I couldn't seem to find the time. The needing to get a job, the needing to figure out “what I was going to do with the rest of my life” was overwhelming. Because there was so much to figure out, I just let the paralysis consume me. Late at night, I'd crawl out my bedroom window onto the roof and look at the stars because it seemed like something to do. I was brooding. I was depressed. Or I wanted to be. Then, at least, I would have had an excuse to be loafing around in such a ridiculous condition. I was so pitiful, one night I burst into tears while watching a Staples back-to-school commercial. I missed my friends. I missed school. I did not like this new phase one bit.

I understand, of course, how insipid this all sounds. But that is the problem with being a member of the most self-absorbed, entitled generation in decades. We were reared on '90s catchphrases like “The sky's the limit!” and “You go girl!” As a woman—as an anyone, actually—I was lucky to be at this
crossroads with so many choices. But I was overwhelmed by all of the roads. Never had my life been so in my control, yet never had I felt so out of control. It was like a
Choose Your Own Adventure
book, but instead of “If you want to slay the dragon, jump to
page 47
,” it was, “If you want to go to law school, if you want to join the Peace Corps, if you'd like to be a lift operator in Vail . . .” I mean, I could have even been president. The year was 2004. Look at Hillary, look at Condi,
you go girl!
And of course, it's a great thing that we've come so far. When my mom's generation graduated from college (if they went at all), their choices were much more limited. Most of my mom's friends moved from college back to their hometowns in Georgia to marry their high school sweethearts and have babies. My mom did not. She's always been an extremely independent woman, a free thinker, and a hell of a champion for liberal causes, even among her almost entirely Republican friends (and husband). When she graduated from college (in three years), she moved out of Georgia and enrolled in graduate school at The University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, where she got a master's degree in biology. Afterward, in Georgia, she got a job teaching high school science (and Sex Ed, for which she almost got fired), and bought an apartment. All on her own. My dad did it all on his own, too. He paid his way through college with academic scholarships (and sometimes by donating blood) and put himself through business school. When his job transferred him from Georgia to New Jersey in the late '80s, he uprooted all of us—me, six; my brother, nine—to a place we'd never heard of: Connecticut. I knew it only as one of the small pieces on my United States puzzle that was always missing. But he went where the opportunity was. My parents think you do the most with what you have. You go as far as you can go. Yet at twenty-two, this sentiment just made me all the more anxious and confused. It was like the toothpaste aisle at the grocery store. I don't want seventeen
choices. I want toothpaste. While I desperately wanted to be an adult, I still felt like a kid. I just wanted someone to tell me what to do, to just give me my goddamn toothpaste.