EXIT ONLY by TERRY MAROTTA

Some things about this season I KNOW I won’t miss. Couldn’t think straight the whole time. Made mistake after mistake:

So Joy to the world y’all. Now where did I put that that EGG NOG?

JUST IN CASE you were running out of gift ideas there’s a camera for blind people. Maybe this seems funny when you think about the of young Billy Johnson’s visit to his blind dentist but it’s a real thing, even listed in Time Magazine as a nice gift idea for the holidays: “The photographer holds the camera up to his or her forehead and a Braille-like screen on the back makes a raised image of whatever the lens sees,” Time says to which I say WHY NOT? We need all the creative gift-giving we can muster with the malls all getting converted to giant roller skating rinks because nobody’s in them.

Anyway who doesn’t love a gift that just takes you as it finds you this way? That doesn’t for once assume you’re a whiz at jigsaw puzzles, or force you to pore over 45 minutes of instructions just so you can play some super-hard game of strategy especially designed to lower your self esteem?

I received the perfect present two years ago when one my kids gave me this kit so that the National Geographic Society and I could map the genes of all of humanity. Imagine! ME and the National Geographic Society! I would LEARN who my forbears really were – and after of a lifetime of mocking the stuck-up English ancestors on David’s side might find out that instead of being all Irish as my own family so ceaselessly asserted, I am actually part English! Or else maybe a Hapsburg! Or a descendant of Cleopatra, which would explain the bangs!

‘Course when someone hands me something while saying the words ‘kit’ and ’swab’ I make it a policy to run in the other direction – which is why the oldest of my kids did it for me after I’d let an entire year go by. She tore open the kit, strode over to me, said, “Mum: Open your mouth,” and sent what she collected from the inside of my cheek to the Geographic Project Lab, which, within three short months came the stunning news that

(1) I’m related to every single person Europe and Africa; and
2) I’m a girl.

So say “Ahhhh!” everyone. Then brush the snow off your car and head for the mall I mean the big old rink. Cue the canned organ music and EV’rybody skate!

Blind Girl, Usin’ the Touch Sight Special

Well that was dumb: I knew I’d made a mistake when I found out two of my dearest friends were practically drawing straws to see which one would call to find out if David really left me. Then I got a note from a guy I haven’t seen in 15 years who said he was sorry to read that my husband and I were having problems.

That’s what you get for making jokes about marriage!

David and I have been together since he was the only guy in a crewcut and every other young male in the western hemisphere had hair like Jesus of Nazareth. He was purposely out of it fashion-wise and I think that’s why I fell for him.

Today I can’t TELL you all the ways he helps me, picks up after me, holds his tongue when I spill things, lose things, break things but instead let me copy here what I said about him in one of my books. I’ll just say for background that he had no money at all in college, not a nickel. I didn’t either. He was fatherless. So was I. He came from a houseful of many brothers and I came from a houseful of old folks and this meant that both of us were used to having lots of people around. When, at age 29, I was whining about whether or not I could manage to have any MORE babies after that first baby with all the WORK babies entailed and on and on he quietly said he had just kind of hoped to fill up all those spaces around the Christmas tree.

We filled ‘em all right.There are eight young people out there whom we have loved, fed, taught to drive, helped with the security deposit for that first apartment and lain awake nights worrying over.

Now on to what I said in that second book of mine, back when David and I were just ‘kids’ in our 40s and our sweet youngest boy Michael was a 12-year-old away at summer camp. This chapter has another name in the book but in my mind it’s always been “Hop on Pop” And it goes like this:

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I don’t write much about the father of my children.

I used to – jokey pieces, mostly – in which I revealed my own petty nature, enviously describing the way he was permitted to sleep late Saturdays by the same small children who wouldn’t leave me alone for three minutes together. Him they treated like a combination lounge chair and entertainment center, watching cartoons in our bed while balancing bits of toast on the shelf of his sleeping flank, leaning against his broad and gently-breathing back.

It was after describing such a scene that a man came up to my husband. “You’re David Marotta!” he said with mystified look. “I don’t know how you stand it!” He meant being the subject of intimate revelation. He meant being described in the paper.

Well, I had no wish to embarrass my husband, so after that I pretty much stopped writing about him. But he has always been there in the background.

He was there the time a strange woman approached and began attacking me for a light piece I once wrote about Christmas cards filled with endless bragging. That lady went after me like a pit-bull. I tried everything I could think of to win back her good opinion.

David saw how rattled I was. “You should just say, ‘Look, it’s my job. It’s what I write; it’s not who I am.’” Ah, but what I write IS who I am, which is why it means so much to me that the papers I write for print my address. I have learned so much over the years from my readers’ reactions.

One thing I have learned is how much folks prize certain qualities in their fellow citizens.

This husband of mine owned one suit when we got married, bought for his Middle School graduation. He was a scholarship kid, and has always identified with those who by virtue of birth or circumstance found themselves excluded from the great American bazaar of getting and spending.

He never boasts. You can hardly get him to tell where he went to school or what his work is. Before his last college reunion, I had a terrible time getting him to fill out the class questionnaire. I finally said “I’ll read the questions and write down your responses.”

It asked for your special achievements.

“Leave it blank,” he said. “Or else put ‘My family’”

It asked if you’d served on the Board of Directors of any companies.

He does. “You do!” I said.

“Leave it blank.”

He doesn’t care if the world thinks him successful. It just doesn’t matter to him.

What does matter to him, what he has saved the best of himself for, are those same untidy children who lean on him still. He plays golf, but mostly with clients. He never plays on the weekend. I asked him yesterday how many suits he has now. “One,” he said. “One that I can wear.” I like that. I can’t say how much I like that.

This year, for the first time, one of our kids is spending all eight weeks at a summer camp. On Visiting Day, we noticed that most of the other campers are New Yorkers, with parents in fancy cars. At one point, we found ourselves at the basketball court where a lone father in Louis Vuitton loafers and a Versace shirt was shooting baskets.

David had on shorts and his Dr. Seuss T-shirt with “Hop on Pop” stenciled on the front. I knew he wanted to shoot with our son, but was holding back, not wishing to interrupt this well-dressed dad.

“Go on out there!” I whispered. “He’s just some cardiologist!”

He laughed. He knew what I meant.

I meant. Some rich guy in fancy clothes? Some rich guy is no match at all for a man with just one suit.

Now these little stories will embarrass him, I know. But he said it himself: It’s my job.

Last Sunday I bought the Christmas tree and dragged it onto the porch by myself. I was mad at Old Dave I’m not sure why and thought THIS’ll show him. I’ll buy the tree alone. In 11 degree weather. With winds gusting to 40 mph.

All it did of course was bring frostbite to my ears and further injury to my crooked little spine when, once home, I cut the ropes that held it to my car roof, tugged it free and then tried to catch it. Boom! I went, right down on the ground under the 8-foot thing, but since playing martyr gives you super-human strength I toiled on, dragging it by its hair clear up the front steps and onto the porch.

He did help me put it up – minus the lights and ornaments of course because Come ON! I’m watchin’ the GAME here! – but now he’s gone all week on business.

Luckily, I have this nice fake lights-attached tree that I’ve just now pulled from its cardboard coffin and set up in the kitchen.

All I really want for Christmas this year by the way is to get rid of the old kitchen window which is etched with these chemical stains like permanent frost-blossoms so you can’t even SEE out it practically. All I want is a nice new little window to look out at the world from.

Because I am a saint and he is a bastard. A Sudoku-doing, crossword-puzzle-addicted, sports junkie bastard but still, he should really come home now. Even the cats miss him, and all this time they thought he was a piece of furniture- but wait! What’s that noise coming from out back? You don’t suppose he’s been hiding in the garage all this time to get away from me!

Da-a-a-ave?? Come in now Dave! This kitchen tree is so pretty we don’t even HAVE to decorate the real one. I’ll cook and you can just go on drowning in newsprint in front of your games – and the cats can sit on you, same as always.:-)

we all miss you. look, even the cats are crying!

This holiday stuff has us all nuts. The nightly news says people are shoplifting to beat the band and now even the guys behind the counter are punching out the very stick-up artists who come to rob them. So I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised to see what they’ve done at my supermarket.

There. I feel better. Happy Drooltide y’all. I’ll try to write again tomorrow, just let me find my holiday headband.

You know you got fat when your rings, your bikini undies AND ALL YOUR BRAS are suddenly too tight. You know it when you look at yourself in the mirror from the back and think “Michelin Man.”

Failing that, I’m off to Weight Watcher to liberate this poor girl (She’s under here somewhere!)