aroe vela

  adversity: that which doesn't kill me postpones the inevitable

(Title taken from a poster by despair.com, which publishes posters perfectly suited to the faulty vision lifestyle. Please don't sue me, despair.com. See? Credits!)

My roommate emailed me last night with the notice that Bob, our apartment manager, would be coming by between 9 and 10 am with a crew to replace our shower door.

It's a pity I never took a picture of the old shower door, which had the look of the old mariner after a hard night with Mister Guiness. My roommate and I used to speculate that the last inhabitant of the apartment smoked cigars during his showers, which would have explained the heavy layer of dark yellow tar-like stains that indelibly coated the glass. A thick crack across one corner swallowed mildew like it was candy, giving it a sanctuary no amount of scrubbing could dislodge. The entire door listed drunkenly, making it a Herculean act to close it; you could often hear a series of BANG! BANG! BANG! coming from the bathroom as the bather of the moment would attempt to coax the thing shut.

Then there was that malicious streak it had, which would prompt it to pop open when you were harmlessly sitting on the toilet. If it did so slowly and creakily, you were suddenly visited with the appalling thought that there was someone in the shower, listening to you pee. If it did so suddenly and violently, you were left with a bright, deep red mark across the forehead where the metal edge had managed to catch you.

And then, of course, you were left with the unenviable position of trying to close the door while finishing your operations on the toilet. whiz BANG! whiz BANG! tinkle BANG! "DAMMIT!" whiz BANG! BANG! BANG!

Needless to say, I was grateful to hear that our manager was going to replace the thing. I even made a note. "Get up at 8," I wrote on the little post-it that serves as my appointment calendar. "Take shower. Shower door, 9 am."

At 8:10, right around the time I was rolling out of bed, the doorbell rang. I swore straight through my sprint down the hall and to the front door, where I flung the thing open with an offended violence.

My building manager was waiting outside with a pair of burly men, solid, earthy specimens that could easily have broken my head and yet looked instantly embarrassed upon seeing my Tweeties. Pajamas, that is.

"Ungh," I welcomed, and dove back into my bedroom while they tromped about my apartment to inspect my shower.

A small gap in their work while they went to get the new door served me in good stead. I did my early morning affairs, such as they were, brushing my teeth and washing my face (and other things, though not showering) while the Guy, chivvied out of bed, stood sentry-duty outside the door. "Don't you want to lock it?" he called from the hallway, sleepily.

"DON'T MOVE!" I ordered. Who knew; at any minute the shower door repairmen could come trooping back, and find out what embarrassment really was.

They did come trooping back, but only after I'd finished my, er, business. Since traffic is usually bad this early in the morning, the Guy and I sat around in the living room for the next half hour or so, listening to the growing consternation in my bathroom.

First, my old shower door was borne off. I waved it good-bye. Nerts to you, you piece of crap. Then the new shower door was brought in. I missed that part of the operation.

Then the muttering started.

Shower Man 1: mutter mutter mutter "...too big."

Shower Man 2: mutter.

Shower Man 2 tromped outside and disappeared. Clanging erupted in my bathroom. Shower Man 2 returned a few minutes later and disappeared into the bathroom again. Clang clang.

Shower Man 1: "No, man. It's too big."

Shower Man 2: "You sure?"

Shower Man 1: "Just look at it."

Shower Man 2: mutter mutter.

Shower Man 2 trotted outside again, and about ten minutes later, the building manager reappeared at my doorway. Shower Man 2 padded along behind him, his face peering over his shoulder. The building manager, it appeared, was to serve the twin roles of translator and buffer.

He grinned at us -- I do so like my building manager -- and went into my bathroom. Three big men, in my little pink bathroom. His voice is always loud.

Shower Man 2: mutter mutter mutter mutter "CLANG!" mutter.

Shower Man 1: "It's too big."

Shower Man 2: mutter.

Shower Man 1: "No, that one's too small."

Building Manager: "It's too big?"

Shower Man 1: "We could go back and get another one, I guess."

Building Manager: "And that one won't be too big?"

Shower Man 2: mutter mutter.

Building Manager: "Sure. I think we need to get a shower door that isn't too big."

Shower Man 1: "Or too small."

Shower Man 2: mutter.

Shower Man 1: "No, man, I'm telling you. It's too big."

Obviously, the pink tile was having a debilitating effect on the big manly brains. I went to work without my shower, abnormally aware of every foul scent that came my way. Dear God. Did that come from my pores?

***

Back to Wednesday.

Once the first shock had worn off, I was absolutely possessed with the idea that above all, I must not let my coworkers know. Why I came to this decision is anybody's guess; I've rarely been accused of working with a full set of name-brand brains. Whatever abhorrance of publicity motivated me to conceal my news hardly meshed with my subsequent post. This was rather like a streaker not wanting to have a prostate exam because he doesn't want to show a complete stranger his private parts.

All in all, I thought, I dealt with it rather well. My mood, it is true, wasn't quite as chirpy as it had been when I'd dashed into work, but it wasn't as though I was a salty-teared mess on the cube floor. And still, as intelligence slowly (and reluctantly) seeped back in through my ears, I was obsessed with the need to keep my situation private.

I thought everybody should be able to look at my face and see 'SICK PERSON!' stamped across my forehead and yet, get this, nobody did. It was written in invisible ink, laid down by invisible pixie people. As far as anyone was concerned, Yuhri was having a Female Day, and it was probably safest not to get too near her. My coworkers were mostly married men; they knew the score. I was both relieved and seriously, seriously annoyed by this. I felt like Tweety Bird might, if he'd been popped into a cage to test the gas fumes in mine shafts. Sure, he might still be cuddly and yellow and more than a little big-headed, not to mention awfully articulate for a canary, but Imminent Doom might be waiting around the corner and what the fuck was up with that?

It could have been so much worse. I should have been far more grateful than I was. It shows how amazingly childish people -- sorry, I -- can be that I forgot that.

Of course, after a while, there was the sudden panic. My mother was diagnosed with the same thing six years ago, so I certainly know better; still, my uncooperative brain fixated on a sudden thought. "Oh my God," it yelped. "What if my foot falls off?"

The abject, grovelling terror hit an hour after the phone call, at which point I leaped onto the web and began an insane search for the worst case outcomes I could find. If my eyeballs were going to shrivel up, my uterus was going to fall out, and my toes were going to turn black and explode, I wanted to know about it in advance. I knew perfectly well how poorly I handled surprise; I needed to be prepared, so if my right ear suddenly turned a lime green color and fell into some stranger's plate at a party, I could calmly pick it out, shake it off, and tuck it into my purse with a charming laugh and witty, "Well, I guess you really were able to talk my ear off."

Irritatingly enough, all the informational web sites I could find were uniformly upbeat and encouraging. The words "coma" and "death" were hidden between phrases like "just need a little motivation" and "education is power" and "lifestyle change that will ultimately leave you feeling better and stronger."

I read these cheering, encouraging pages chock full of valuable information about my illness and how to keep it under control, and how I could still lead a full and fascinating life, and to my absolute dismay, discovered I was starting to cry.

The entire day was full of syllogisms. Having broken the news to the Guy, I brushed off his concern with a flippant comment, then was offended that he accepted my indifference at face value. I refused to let my coworkers know what was going on, but was aggrieved that they didn't drown me in sympathy and send me home for the day.

Around noon, too irritated to postpone the inevitable, I scooped up my cell phone and headed for the car. There, in relative privacy, I called my mother.

The minute I heard her voice, I started to sob. There's something about mothers that can instantly reduce you to the status of toddler. I was surprised by how desperately I'd wanted to curl into a little ball and wallow in my misery. So much for being a grown-up.

***

That's enough of that. Navel-gazing is such an undignified occupation. There's always so much lint there. Better to just watch for slugs.

How about ending on a high note?

***

My mother is a great comfort to me. Flamingo made a request a while ago to hear more mother stories. "They crack me up," she told me. "Your mother's great."

A few days ago, Mom called me at work in the middle of the day.

"Harro!" she greeted, sounding quite thrilled at the whole experience of using the phone. "Am I carr you at work?"

"It's 2:30, Mom," I said cautiously. My mother's understanding of the 9-to-5 lifestyle is limited to noticing that lots of her students have parents that want to schedule lessons before 9 and after 5. "Work doesn't end until six."

"You are busy?"

I had a stack of URGENT! ANSWER NOW! items piled up on my computer. "Yes," I said, feeling obscurely moved to be apologetic about working when my mother wanted to talk to me. For that matter, I was feeling irrationally certain that hearing I was busy at work, my place of employment that supplied me with a bimonthly paycheck, would cause my mother to hang up and call me back later.

How little I understand the maternal mind.

"Do you know aroe vela?" she asked.

'Aroe vela'? Even my lifetime of translating Japenglish failed me for a few moments. "A-wha?"

"Aroe vela. You using for ther burns, like ther sunburn when you are in California."

Part of the trick to understanding my mother is to automatically insert the correct letter, 'r' or 'l' in the appropriate slot. Sometimes, this is easy; the ear hears what it expects to hear, and so obvious phrases like 'California' and 'sunburn' magically transform themselves into sense from the actual auditory input of 'Cariforunia' and 'sunubalunu.'

But 'aroe vela'? Shit. "Aroe vela," I said experimentally, rolling the word around in my mouth to see if any of it would taste familiar. "Aroe vela. Aloe... Aloe vera!"

"Yes," said Mom, happily. "Aroe vela."

"I know what it is," I said cautiously.

"You are having ther aroe vela plant?"

The head of one of my Chinese coworkers popped over my cubicle wall, looking hopeful. He wanted to talk to me. I waved at him desperately: call me for an emergency! Yell fire! Apparently, sign language doesn't translate into Chinese. He waved back, looking pleased at the attention. "No," I admitted. "I don't have an aroe vela plant."

Then, despite knowing better, I couldn't help but add a weary, "Why? Should I have an aro--aloe vera plant?"

Mother was sad. "Oh, toooo baaaaad." Mom likes that phrase. It's one of the few colloquialisms she is absolutely confident of, and she rolls it out across an octave or so, snapping her fingers as accompaniment like a slightly maddened Blues Brother. "I seeing on NHK, they did a program, right now very popurar in Japan."

"The plant?" I waved at my coworker again. For God's sake, man!

He looked puzzled, but waved amiably back. Strange Japanese coworker. Must accomodate their peculiar Imperial behaviors.

"You take ther leaf of ther aroe vela, and they chop it up into pieces, and then put in fleezer. And then you eat when they are being flozen."

Freezer. Frozen. Eat what? "Ew," I said reflexively.

"NHK says, it is very good for you," Mom insisted brightly. "It is making you very skinny."

Very skinny. Very skinny? "Are you saying I'm fat?" I asked, because I always ask, and because my mother always has a different answer, and because I was having an irresponsible urge to prolong the conversation with my strange, quixotic little mother.

"A rittow bit round," was Mom's answer this time. "So cute, like ther baby, hah hah! Except you are not baby anymore."

Definitely it was time to end the conversation.

"Thanks, Mom," I said politely. "I should really go..."

"Aroe vela!" she shrieked joyfully into the phone. "It is very popurar in Japan!"

Posted by yhirata at November 15, 2002 11:12 PM