SO SUMMER IS FINALLY HERE, PEOPLE! Pardon me for yelling, but I’m excited. Truly excited. Even though it’s only May 8, which is not technically summer. And even though spring lasted, like, five minutes or something. BUT I’M NOT COMPLAINING. Even though I’m complaining. I AM SERIOUSLY NOT COMPLAINING. After a winter that lasted, hrrrrrm, eight years or so, I am so traumatized by cold and so distrustful of the warmth that I still haven’t removed the snow shovel from the porch. Still!

Summer. Ahhhh. And Mother’s Day around the bend! I love it. In Albany that means the annual Tulip Festival and all those bulbous, buxom lily relatives that pop out overnight in Washington Park for a sweet breath or two before losing their heads and standing there, sad and decapitated, in the encroaching heat of June.

The other day, I visited the park with my old friend Steve and his mom Karen, a new friend whom I seem to have known forever. We strolled past beds of tulips named Oxford and Ice Cream and Sensual Touch, their silken blooms exploding in yellows and purples and reds that sang for attention. And as we walked, they took on noisy and vivid personalities — like cheerleaders in short skirts and brightly colored pom-poms. Some were perky. Some, clad in lace-trimmed petals, looked crisp and Victorian. Others seemed a little tawdry and déclassé in their overexposed bordello-orange. A few, overshadowed by taller rivals, looked slightly defeated. Others were YELLING SO LOUDLY THEY RISKED GETTING HOARSE. Like me, above.

But one tiny rebel yelled the loudest. In a crowd of purply-and-white-striped classics with graceful, pointed crowns, a single, defiant flower stood out with a mutant yellow streak that howled: I AM HERE! I AM DIFFERENT! I AM PROUD! It was so bold, so brave, so beautiful on its scape in a stand of two-tone brethren, I felt a shiver of awe in its presence. GO, LITTLE TULIP!, I wanted to shout but didn’t, mainly because my friends were nearby, and so were lots of tulip-strolling strangers, and anyway, I’m not THAT weird. Almost. But not quite.

Then again, maybe I should have — in the spirit of rebel tulips everywhere. All of us have a brightly mutinous mutant streak somewhere within us, don’t we? It’s the bold stripe of rebellion that makes us different, letting us sing in a voice that carries beyond the chorus. I AM TULIP! HEAR ME ROAR! And while we’re at it, let’s shout this, too: THANK GOD WINTER IS FINALLY OVER.

I’ve always been a screw-up. Always always always. And when I say “screw-up” I mean NOT a malicious and narcissistic sower of evil who sets out on a path of Wrongness and pursues it single-mindedly. I mean a well-intentioned doofus (in the worst instances, dumbass) who aims not high but modestly and somehow, much of the time, misses anyway. As a kid I was always running and stumbling. I still am.  I was always forgetting things. I still do. I was always losing shit — my temper, my equilibrium, my #$%@! car keys — that all these decades later I’m still trying to find. And I was always inadvertently baffling and hurting and disappointing people, not from ill intent but all of the stumbling, the forgetting, the losing.

So it goes. I try. I screw up. I TRY. I SCREW UP. And then, just for good measure, I TRY AND SCREW UP SOME MORE.

Over time, two women helped me find peace. One was Mother Teresa, whose observation that God “does not require that we be successful — only that we be faithful” struck me as some kind of radically liberating bombshell. The other was my own Mother Jeanne. “Did you do your best?” Mama’d ask whenever I tried and failed, often when I was caked in mucous during the aftermath. That’s all she ever asked of me. That’s all that ever mattered to her. The trying.

Mama was a violinist, and, like every working musician who ever lived, she gave private lessons to a rotating assortment of students young and old. One day, on a trip to the grocery store, she also gave them buttons. I don’t remember what prompted this shopping expedition to downtown New Preston, Conn., though she was probably ferrying them to or from a recital and had routed us all into Zinick’s for a treat. For whatever reason, there we were, a few of her younger students and I, when Mama spied a basket full of little round pins with positive messages by the cash register. This was the 70s, and smiley faces were everywhere.

Mama combed through the basket and plucked out buttons for her students. I only remember one of them. It said I TRY in big white letters against a black background, and she handed it to the kid who possessed the worst tin ear in the history of Mama’s music lessons, possibly of all time. He accepted it with a smile.

I have no idea whether he went home later and wept into his “$6 Million Man” pillowcase, but for me, at least, it was a memorable and positive lesson. She hadn’t handed him a button that said NUMBER ONE, or YAY FOR ME, or I RULE AND THE REST OF YOU SUCK, HA HA HA. She wasn’t telling him he was a Jascha Heifetz mini-me waiting to happen. She was affirming his effort. She was acknowledging he’d done his best. And that’s not nothing; in fact, it’s just about everything. In this success-obsessed society, it takes courage to hit the wrong notes and keep playing. It takes faith to fall flat and get up. But there’s no other way to keep moving.

So I try. I screw up. That’s life. Amen. And to hell with the car keys, anyway.

Are you familiar with the music of Sufjan Stevens? No? Well, let me tell you something: It is beautiful and strange, deeply spiritual and just as deeply morbid. And I love it. But then, I love ALL that fun stuff. Beauty! Strangeness! Spirituality! Morbidity! Aren’t those the four classical elements? Forget fire-water-air-earth, which always struck me as insufficient, anyway. There was never any mention of chocolate.

But back to Sufjan. My kind of boy. He played the Palace on Wednesday night, cranking through the entirety of his latest album — “Carrie & Lowell,” a tribute to his late mother — plus a sampling of older music. Lots of grief and death. Lots of weird, airy poetry. All of it was beautiful, strange, spiritual and morbid, performed with a mesmerizing light show against a backdrop of projections on tall, pointed screens resembling the stained-glass windows of a cathedral.

It felt like church, only more so. People actually talk in church. For the first 45 minutes of Stevens’ performance, no one said a word. Including Stevens.

Finally, he spoke: “Thank you.” And then, for the next 10 minutes, he unleashed an exquisitely calm Soliloquy of Death itemizing his every childhood memory of a deceased person, animal or plant since age 7. He began with his 97-year-old great-grandmother — dolled up in her coffin like a “homecoming queen” with an odd, matronly air about her — and went on to include a terminally ill cactus, a rat with tumors and an aunt who died of a broken heart. It was bizarre. It was brilliant. It went on forever. At some point during this deadpan (what else would it be) litany of the dead, I started laughing uncontrollably and just couldn’t stop. I wasn’t the only one, but I was probably the loudest.

I think I may have offended the people sitting in front of me. If so, I would like to issue an apology.  Also, an explanation: When it’s not reducing me to cataracts of saline, death cracks me the fart up. Laughing at death is my way of coping with its omnipotence, its omnipresence, its ruthless unpredictability; it’s like some viciously fickle feudal lord holding sway over the bumpkins. I hate that it strikes without warning or pity. I hate that it can’t be swayed. It’s tried hard and repeatedly to ruin my life, and it’s come close. But it didn’t. It couldn’t. I wouldn’t let it. That’s the only control I have over its power: to keep living, and laughing, in spite of it.

Losing someone you love is no funny business.  No ha-ha’s anywhere in the moment that doorbell rings. Yet the absurdity of everything that follows — from the dolled-up weirdness of the embalming to all those surreal exchanges with the funeral people, the money people, the government people, the lawyer people, the people people — puts a darkly comic spin on the aftermath. Sooner rather than later, you start laughing at it all because you have no choice. And then you just keep laughing. Because, really, what the hell! Death doesn’t go away, and neither does the comedy surrounding it. May as well laugh at the damn thing.

So, yeah, I guess I guffawed a little too loudly for the prayerful atmosphere of a Sufjan concert. But I suspect Stevens himself would understand, given his familiarity with the topic and his quiet insistence in talking about it. As he observes incontestably on one of his latest songs, “We’re all gonna die.” Sure are.

So maybe, on some level, he’s laughing, too. Beautifully. Strangely. Spiritually.

Things keep breaking around the house. I want that to stop. I want the light sockets that blew out to start working again without being asked. I want the wet splotchy cluttered basement to stop being wet and splotchy and cluttered on its own. I want the rooms with scratched and stained walls to paint themselves. I want the attic to organize its crap into orderly stacks. I want the dust bunnies to vacuum themselves and the toilets to plunge themselves and the floors and stairs to sweep themselves with an army of magically autonomous mops and brooms (cue “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”!). I want all this to happen now. Yesterday. Two weeks ago. Last year.

A couple weeks back, on one of the milder Saturdays, my furnace decided to konk out. I didn’t much note its konking, being oblivious by nature. I just layered on fleece after fleece after fleece after fleece, like someone migrating across the Bering Strait, until my highly observant daughter noted that the thermostat was cranked way way way up and yet the temperature inside the house was still, like, 55 degrees. Nothing I did helped. Cranking it down and then up again did not help. Cranking it way way way upper did not help. Re-lighting the pilot did not help.

And so I left a message with the gas guy. When the gas guy called me back, he had some adorably screaming wee ones in the background, and I felt terrible to pull papa away from his babies, especially on a Saturday, but, you know, 55 degrees. He came. I took him into the wet splotchy cluttered basement and dragged a big old bin of Legos out of the way. He then proceeded to fix the furnace in about three minutes flat (fried copper coupling was the culprit), and in that flat three minutes we chatted about his kids. One of them was a 3-year-old boy.

Does your son like Legos? I asked, wiping down the box with a rag.

“Oh! He loves ’em!” said the gas guy, eyes on the furnace. “He has so many!”

Do you think he’d want these?

I popped the lid on the bin and showed him the contents: an explosion of little plastic nuggets of building nirvana. Fun to play with. Hell to step on.

The gas guy looked up. His eyes popped.

“Oh, wow. Yes. Wow. Really?”

Really.

“You sure?”

I’m sure. You’re doing me a favor. Seriously. Look at this place.

“Thank you!” he said, then finished fixing the furnace. I finished wiping down the box o’ Legos. Our jobs done, we talked a bit about payment and a bit about winter and spring and a bit more about kids. And then he picked up his tools, and I picked up the Legos, and we mounted the stairs, leaving the basement behind us. It was wet and splotchy  as ever, but a little (just a little) less cluttered. And it did that on its own. All it needed was a broken furnace and a little boy to make it happen. Magic.

man, this is one happy phone.

The nicest thing happened to me last week. I got a fraud alert on one of my credit cards! Yup! Someone I don’t know apparently used it to buy $174 worth of crap at a Walgreen’s in Manhattan last Wednesday, and I was not there to supervise, OR dole out shopping advice, OR push the cart around the aisles, OR pocket any of the merchandise afterward! It’s true! Guy didn’t even save me a packet of Orbit!

But then the sweetest young man called me to let me know I’d been swindled and assist me in canceling my card. I thanked him. Oh! I’m so glad you caught that! I so appreciate your help! I hope you have a lovely weekend! I said, as though having some nimrod downstate swipe my number was an occasion for neighborly chit-chat. And why shouldn’t it be? If we can be just two everyday people talking for a few minutes, and not Irked Bamboozled Customer and Overworked Underpaid Representative, then that makes the whole exchange just a little less onerous and more, I dunno, normal.

Such phone-bank conversations are otherwise bland and depersonalized, about as chipper and community-building as the social interaction involved with taking a whizz in a public restroom. Less. At least, when you run out of paper and whimper pathetically, there’s that miracle of actual, meaningful human contact when an anonymous hand reaches under the stall to pass you a bunch. This simple action gives me faith in humanity! It does! I am not exaggerating! YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN!

Anyhow. So I was on the phone with this sweet young man (and while we’re on the subject, my daughters are giving me grief for calling every male under the age of 40 a sweet young man, as though I have somehow lately morphed into kindly-old-biddy-dom and must peer at the Youth of Today over my cat’s-eye glasses while sucking on a tube of Dentu Creme). At the end of our friendly, fraud-related chit-chat he gave me a number to call to order a new card during the week, and I called it, and so I found myself chatting with the sweetest young woman a few days ago. She had a subcontinental accent, which of course meant yet more chit-chat when she asked if there was “anything else” she could help me with, which of course I took as an invitation to inquire about about her location.

India, it turned out. I forgot to ask which city. (HOW many years have I worked as a journalist?). But I remembered to ask her about the weather, and the dear sweet thing went on and on about typical Indian weather patterns this time of year, which apparently amount to: Some days are chilly enough to require sweater-wearing, but most days aren’t. Most days are mild enough to go outside in shirtsleeves. “But not today,” she explained. “Today the weather isn’t very good. I had to wear a sweater!”

She laughed. I laughed, too. I would love to be able to walk outside in only a sweater, I said. We’re still bundling up in parkas here in Albany! And then I laughed again! Ha ha ha! And then she laughed again! Ha ha ha! Still laughing, we said goodbye and wished each other a lovely evening. I hope she had one. I know I did, ending the day neither Irked nor Bamboozled, not even caring about the Orbit.

OK. I’m sick of politicians too wussy to come out and discuss climate change in real, reasonable, normal-person terms proclaiming “I’m not a scientist” as though this is some kind of rationale for stupidity. (Gail Collins has a fab column on this very subject righty here.)

This gambit gives the rest of us who aren’t scientists a bad name. And there are A LOT OF PEOPLE who aren’t scientists. In fact, MOST OF US AREN’T. The number of non-scientists in the world far outnumber the scientists, and here’s the thing: We are not all asshats. Most of us who aren’t scientists are actually pro-scientist and even (gasp) pro-science, and by “science” I mean such fun topics as: the planet; the cosmos; medicine; technology; all forces of nature, including the weather and plate tectonics; all life on earth, including plants, insects and animals; and human evolution.

Evolution is another one of those things that prompt certain people in the public eye to firmly state they aren’t scientists. I’m setting aside, for a moment, that specific demographic of biblical literalists who truly and devoutly believe homo sapiens sapiens was created in less time than it took me to download iOS 8, because A) I will never, ever convince them that evolution itself might have been God’s own brilliant and miraculous handiwork, a slow-cook process that bubbled with divine mutation; and B) THEY aren’t walking around saying “I’m not a scientist.” Because THEY DON’T CARE. They are so far removed from the conversation that we should ignore them entirely.

Politicians, on the other hand. They’re reachable, at least in theory. They’re motivated by what they THINK will get them elected, and if they think a significant number of non-scientists are, in fact, anti-science, then they will ape (yes! pun intended!) the anti-science stance until the rising oceans reach up and carry them away.

So this is would I would like to do. I would like to reclaim the phrase “I’m not a scientist” in the name of all who aren’t.

As in: I’m not a scientist, and I’m pro-science! Or: I’m not a scientist, and I believe the ice caps are melting!  And: I’m not a scientist, and I believe we should invest in alternative energies (go, windmills!). Or maybe: I’m not a scientist, and I believe Neanderthals had sex with early humans, probably at a rave!

And while we’re at it: I’m not a scientist, and I believe only selfish, shortsighted boobs don’t want to preserve and heal the environment!

Also: I’m not a scientist, and I want there to be a planet for my grandchildren!

And finally: I’m not a scientist, and I’M NOT STUPID!

do you see it?

Here I am at a gate in BWI, slumped and zoning alongside dozens of other slumping, zoning travelers, awaiting news on a plane that’s SUPPOSED to be leaving for Albany in 18 minutes. SUPPOSED. But we sense it will not, for it is nowhere to be seen. Rumor has it the aircraft in question is somewhere in Baltimore, hopefully within taxiing distance of the tarmac, quite possibly rolling around the streets in search of a decent taco. It’s out there, or so I’m told by what looks to be either a pilot of someone impersonating a pilot. But the the plane is sadly nowhere near our gate.

I am just about to get up and ask whassup when a chipper young announcer lays it all out for us. “The aircraft came from international waters and has to go through extra security,” she explains. “So you’ll just have to wait a few more moments, and then we’ll get you on your way.”

I think, Yippee! I’ll be heading home soon! Hurray! It’ll only be a few moments! And then I think: Wait. What? Moments? What are these “moments” of which she speaks? Aren’t they rather vague in duration? How long IS a “moment”? Potentially longer than a minute, I’m thinking. Why, moments can last hours, days, years, even! And that’s when you DON’T throw in extra airport security! Some moments have been known to go on forever, baby, and not merely in French existentialist masterworks. Moments can last and last and last.

Of course, sometimes you want them to. Certain moments I hang onto for dear life: my first memories of holding my blessed kids, my last memories of holding all who’ve died. Other moments I wish I could dump with a jab in the ribs and a flip of the bird: any and all mistakes I’ve made, fits I’ve thrown, pain I’ve felt. But as hard as I work to delete those moments, they last, too, fouling up my otherwise-empty mental spaces with a lingering fog of regret.

Occasionally, in the throes of what I know will be an absolute stinker, sometimes but not always involving air travel, I gird myself for the inevitable, thinking: Ohhhhh, crap. This here will never, ever end. I’ll be 97 with dentures rattling around my gums, and I’ll still be stuck in this one giant butthole of a moment, scrambling to get out.

On the flip side, I often try to freeze-frame a happy moment as it’s unfolding before me, trying to trap and frame some joyous blip of time before it passes. There was a moment, at a slumber party long ago, when my younger daughter popped a cd into the stereo and cranked up the volume. I remember wading through that scrum of dancing, laughing, pizza-snarfing, cola-swigging middle schoolers as Vanessa Carlton sang wistfully of summer love in her cute little pop-pixie soprano. And I remember thinking — verbally, in just about exactly these words, as though the voice of my future self had taken possession to warn me — I have to hang on to this moment! I have to make it last! Because soon it’ll be over, and she’ll grow up, and this present will be a past that I wish I’d savored. So I need to savor it NOW!

I did. I trapped and framed and savored it. And now, whenever I hear a snatch of “White Houses” on the radio, I zap myself whole through the warp of space-time to that giggling crush of overcaffeinated girls at a sleepover — and I’m there, in that living room, in that moment, re-upping my will to make it last forever.

As for the plane, it took off about 40 minutes late. If you’re counting in airport moments, that’s not even a few. A couple, maybe. One and a half. Tops.

I hate cars. I’ve said this before, and in exactly those words. I’ll say this again. That is a safe bet. Because I HATE CARS.

I even hate this new Honda I just bought, and lemme tell you, I LOVE Hondas. Toyotas, too. I love them so much that I would marry them in a group cult wedding with thousands of other Japanese-car-worshippers, all of us naked and oiled and holding hands and singing ditzy folk songs with daisies in our hair. Yes. I would do that. In fact, I already have.

But still, I HATE THIS HONDA. Two days after buying it, I had to get the roters fixed. Four days after buying it, it broke down in Manhattan — on 85th St., just east of the tunnel in Central Park! Where there’s no shoulder! With lots of batshit traffic whizzing past! Ahhhhh! — and I freaked the *BEEP* out until a AAA truck took my vee-hickle and a cab ferried me and my son to a friend’s place on the Upper West Side.

The irony: I bought this car because I needed a reliable vee-hickle on a few long drives ahead of me (italics mine), and this awesome website I found identified THIS VERY HONDA as THE most reliable year of THE most reliable model in THE most reliable body type in THE HISTORY OF CARS. Oh, hey! I innocently thought. I am one smart cookie! I am one shrewd customer! I’m buying a sturdy and dependable vee-hickle!

So on the drive down, just north of New York City, when the engine starting making a crunching noise similar to that of Ewoks stuck in a sink compactor, I told myself NO NO NO NO NO. When a dude at a rest stop heard this awful noise, came over, shook his head sadly and moaned, “Ohhhh, that’s not good,” again I told myself NO NO NO NO NO. This is a Honda!, I objected Hondas don’t do this! Especially not MY HONDA! Why, I married it just last week!

To be clear, I am NOT mad at the dealership that sold me this cursed *BEEP*-ing beast of a Honda. The folks there have been lovely, absolute paragons of decency in the business. I know they’re required by law to cover these repairs, but they’re not required to apologize profusely and express profound dismay as they arrange to haul my Honda’s ass north on a flatbed truck and then fix the thing in seemingly minutes flat. Turned out it was the A/C compressor and the serpentine belt. I have no idea what those two things are. Don’t try to explain them to me. Someday I’ll learn to fix them myself. Just not today.

Anyway, the hated Honda is back and running fine now, but I still hate cars. I still hate THIS car. If it wants my affection back, it’s gonna have to woo me with roses and Dove bars, and maybe oil itself up and hold my hand and sing a few ditzy songs in the process. The *BEEP*-er.

(http://thegraphicsfairy.com/retro-car-trouble-clip-art/)

Let. Let. Let.

I’m not good at that. I was never good at that. I’m not a Type A control freak, exactly (witness: my house), but I have a hard time abandoning myself to various and sundry Cosmic Forces, be they personal, physical, spiritual, meteorological or digestive. (The last time I ate mussels, the things gave me such gas that I could have fueled all of Albany County for National Grid.)

But I know that I should let. Most of the time, my futile stabs at control are weak and whimpering little efforts, just tacit acknowledgments that I actually control squat. I’m aware of this pathetic global impotency of mine and everybody’s, but still, I refuse to yield. I know I ought to. I don’t.

But sometimes. Sometimes the letting happens for me. Sometimes I’m led to it, firmly but gently, and it yields a peace that feels like joy.

I am not one to thump bibles. Or wag them around. Or bonk them into people’s faces with loud, spittle-spewing talk of hellfire and damnation, as I’m not a fan of either. But I do own a few in different translations, and I flip through them once a day around bedtime, keeping my spittle to myself.

I often flip to the same ol’ pages. Some of them, dog-eared and post-it-noted, feature my All-Time All-Star Bible Passages, the ones I turn to for wisdom or uplift over and over again. I John 4:7 is top of the pops, for me: “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.” I read that thing, and I think, Wowza! That’s some radically inclusive stuff right there! EVERYONE who loves? Including, you know, weirdos and atheists and apostates and and folks who adhere to other religions? And annoying boobs with bad breath? ALL of those people, not just five or six of the nicer ones, are creations and reflections of God’s love, too?

I like that bit. I turn to it of my own volition all the time. But some nights, flipping away at random, I chance across other chunks of scripture without even trying. I am not saying that God necessarily directs this bedtime bible-flipping, but neither am I saying that the Almighty has nothing to do with it ever ever ever. What I am saying is this: I open myself to the possibility of an insight, whether divinely nudged or not, each time I open the book. I open myself to this same possibility each time I open a conversation, open my mind to a new way of thinking, open my heart to a new way of loving, open a door to the outside world. Insights can show up any time, but only if I give them an entrance.

And so, more bedtimes than I can count, my fingers have accidentally or not-so-accidentally noodled their way to Acts 27:15: “When the ship was caught in it and could not face the wind, we gave way to it and let ourselves be driven along.”

That word again. Let.

Chris used to say this to me all the time. “Let, Amy! Let!” In the three-plus years since he died, I’ve often heard his laughing tenor, imploring me to give in and allow someone else to take over. Lately I’ve been happening upon that page in Acts at moments I need it — when I need to be told, again as always, that I control just shy of nothing in this tempestuous whorl of a world, and that my best bet, again as always, is to just sit back and see where the wind might take me. It’s taken me into dark coves of isolation, then blown me outward. It’s taken me into raging squalls of grief, then watered my eyes with sunshine.

Sometimes I manage to steer, but I kid myself when I think I’m navigating. Faith lies in letting the boat go; strength lies in not falling off. (As I kid I heard a story, which is probably 99.9999 percent not true, about some wacky ancestor on some crazy shoot of my mother’s family tree who got drunk and fell off the Mayflower. A fellow traveler must have fished him out, or I wouldn’t be here. This a total and irrelevant digression, but it stars a sloshed pilgrim with vertigo, and who doesn’t love those?)

Just a few nights ago, I was feeling sniffly and crotchety and foul — and wanting to control things, and not knowing how, and thrashing about for some power or knowledge or luck or miracle that could Make Things Happen To My Liking. I wasn’t in a mood to let. Let, schlet.  Not me. Bah.

In this cantankerous state I picked up the bible. I cracked it open. I randomly flopped over to that passage from Acts. Some force or finger blew me there, and I let myself be driven. Let. Let.

can you see him?

I hate cars. Do you know that? You do now. I HATE CARS.

I hate them firstly because they’re necessary (can’t live with ‘em, can’t . . . forget it), secondly because they fill up with crap, thirdly because I resent what they’ve done to our sadly dissociated American culture, fourthly because people who aren’t otherwise total dickheads behave like total dickheads behind the wheel, fifthly because they fill up with yet more crap, sixthly because most of them still require a shitload of gas and still spit out a shitload of toxins that have slow-poached the Earth to the consistency of flan, seventhly because they require constant frickin’ maintenance, eighthly because the crap-up-filling never ends, and ninthly because with or without the maintenance, THEY BREAK DOWN. At the worst times. Why, I’ve had the experience of breaking down on BOTH Thanksgiving AND Christmas, and let me tell you, it’s a blast.

Also, tenthly: people crash into you uninvited! Yes, they do! You can be the bestest driver in the world, with the fastest reflexes and the coolest disposition and 12 compound eyes ringing your head, and still, some random human can rear end you at a stoplight while all of your babies are strapped in the back.

That happened to me when my kids were small. I was driving a ridiculously old and extravagantly dorky minivan of the old Butt Ugly Variety, the kind you’d see from a distance and have to shield your eyes, so ghastly was the vision.

That was probably the reason why the driver behind me failed to see the traffic light change to red and, instead of stopping, slammed the bejeezus out of my Butt Ugly butt. Remember my fourthly, above? That people who aren’t otherwise total dickheads become thus in cars? That was me. I thus became a total dickhead of the Mad Mama subtype, pulling over and spilling out and running up to the offending driver, spitting flames and howling WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?! and MY THREE KIDS ARE IN THAT VAN! and THEY MIGHT HAVE BEEN HURT! and THEY MIGHT HAVE BEEN KILLED! AND! AND! AND! until, finally, I noticed the driver’s youth, the sweetness of her eyes and the sheets of tears spilling out of them. And suddenly I felt like all the up-filled crap on the floor of my Butt Ugly van.

Filled with regret, I stopped.

I’m sorry, I said. I shouldn’t have yelled like that. I was just scared. My children are fine. I’m sorry.

I asked her if anyone was coming to help. She nodded, still crying. Her father was on his way. When he arrived, I told him what happened and apologized to him, too. He went to her. She cried more. The crappiness of my emotions knew no bounds. Poor kid, I’d traumatized her. To this day she probably remembers me as the Batshit Dickhead Mama in the Butt Ugly minivan who tore her a new one on Central Ave. I remember myself the same way.

I hate cars.