Anne M. Plant is a recent widow with two young daughters, 13 and 8, who traded their E! entourage lifestyle in Los Angeles for stability and structure in a provincial town on the Virginian peninsula. Now here's the true unfolding story of how Anne's sister and Army officer brother-in-law opened up their home. The Virginian family has three children of their own; a girl, 13, a boy who's 10 and Baby Binkles. She is one. Taking in Anne and her two makes eight! The blending together of these two families is Operation Brady Bunch and it's high adventure.
My niece and my eight year old daughter, Poosie, have joined the neighborhood swim team, the Falcons. The Falcons? Who names a swim team the Falcons? Maybe I should take a closer look at the outstanding Virginia public school system I've heard so much about. If you're not going to call your swim team the Piranhas or the Sharks and you insist on a fowl, then at the very least, consider the Loons. They're aquatic.
Anyway, today I brought the swimmers to their first official Falcon swim team practice. Ms MySpace, my thirteen year old, came along to check out the scene. She was not buying in, she was just looking. There is no way she is getting up at 8:30am every day for swim practice nor is she going to voluntarily wear a one piece swimsuit. Poosie, however, pops out of bed with a smile and is simply adorable in her swim cap! I can once again see the bald, round headed toddler she was not so long ago. Hairless, it is easy to see that the baby fat has not quite yet left her face. All too soon she will be text messaging in a language I either don't understand or at times approve of. Hooray! I have her for a little while longer! I cannot wait to take her back each day just to look at her baby face again and again.
Once at the pool we met the swim team coordinator. She is a happy, woodsy woman, the likes of which I often met during my summer camping days in Minnesota. She is early 40's, with thick wavy hair, is unselfconsciously graying, wears no make-up, has great skin, a pleasant smile and unshaved legs. I asked Ms. MySpace what she thought of her. At first Ms. MySpace was too stunned to speak, but at last she answered "I don't know, I was too busy looking at her mink coat". I am concerned my daughter may be traumatized. This is a big transition for her.
Reluctantly, I left Poosie in the pool and headed to the parking lot, looking for the mini-van- which is NOT MINE! NOT MINE! It's my sister's and OK, I admit, it's comfortable, practical and even has decent pick up. Still, I ashamedly confess I am just vain enough to never want to own one. I will suffer with the poor rear visibility and Queen Mary turn radius of my old Land Rover. I cannot believe how many mini vans there are here. The phenomenon is very much like the monotonous queues of Mercedes on Santa Monica Boulevard. Less "flashy", but the same clone concept. Everyone is using the same decision making criteria. One car is de rigueur in this town and it has captain's chairs and pop up, easy access sliding side panel doors.
Each minivan I passed was decorated with the same booster club magnets and political stickers. "Go Falcons".... "Support Our Troops" ... "Semper Fi" ... "Bush Cheney '04" ... "Peace" ... Peace? Someone has the peace symbol??? I drew a little closer. The traditional upside down "Y" shape of the peace symbol was formed by the wings of a B-52 and under the flowery font of the word PEACE was the tagline: "The old fashioned way". Considering this uniform row of soldiering mini-vans, I was getting a little concerned about my new community despite my political sympathies, as General Patton said, "Where everyone is thinking alike, no one is thinking at all."
Just as it was occurring to me that I may have moved to Stepford, I came across a faded Volvo wagon with a protesting "End the War!" sticker in purple. Cued by the accompanying Brandeis window tag, I suspect the lone voice in these woods may have belonged to the only Jewish man I've met so far. I have a visceral sense of solidarity with him, undoubtedly this is pure transference of respect for and good feelings shared with my Jewish friends in Los Angeles. (I pray I do not forget the many words of Yiddish I learned from them, making me a curious little shiksa in a world of gansa machers.) Surely my sentimental sense of kinship would be rejected by this Jewish Virginian as I am obviously not a member of the tribe and I am a conservative, a near interloper even on this host site.
Anyway, after taking note of the inverse political compositions of Virginia versus California, and before I could get to my sister's "vehicle", I met a man, a nice man. He introduced himself by proudly sharing the names of his three little mermaids who were also on the swim team. He was wearing a green dinosaur speckled necktie with a stethoscope slung over the back of his neck. He was pleasant and kind. He mentioned he had met my sister and knew I was coming. Politely, via a tragic, sympathetic smile he communicated that he knew I was a recent widow with two daughters who had sought refuge in the arms of family in Virginia. Though there was no "tension" between us and he truly was just being kind, all I could think of was one hilarious scene in the movie, Baby Boom. The movie is about a self-absorbed yuppie played by Diane Keaton, who suddenly finds herself the guardian of an infant. She decides to make a go of it by leaving New York City, shedding her all-about-me lifestyle, and moving to an old house in a small town in Vermont. The going is none too easy. In the scene that flashes in my mind, Diane Keaton meets the local veterinarian one snowy night while stranded by the roadside with a flat tire. The tire is the last straw in a series of disasters. After fixing her tire, they engage in a brief introductory interchange. He is mild mannered and very polite. Suddenly, she uncontrollably begins to blurt out all the stresses of her new situation, breathlessly and frantically concluding her rambling rant with ".... and I haven't had sex for over a year!" The comic irony of saying such a truthful thing to this genteel Virginia pediatrician produced an inner smile that was truly hard to suppress.