The First Day of the Rest of My Life

When I finished the green tea, I ate half a box of chocolates. They were so much better.

  Boutique Magazine

  A Life Coach Tells You How to Live It

  By Madeline O’Shea

  Pap Smears

  On Friday I got my pap smear.

  To say that I don’t like getting pap smears is like saying I don’t like hanging upside down from my heels in an underground dungeon in Saudi Arabia being whipped because my hair showed in public. Not to equate the two, but you get the gist.

  There are a myriad of reasons for my almost pathological distaste for this particular medical infringement, but I do it, anyway.

  Why? For my health.

  In my doctor’s office, I slip into the blue and white cotton sheath thing. The back opens so my bottom is out and about, wriggling on its own, my boobs unfettered by a bra. I read the gossip magazines while perched up on that brown padded table, something I never do, because it is a waste of time and because the women look eerily, intimidatingly perfect. They are not perfect. Anyone with an army of professionally trained stylists, the exact lighting, and a Photoshop crew can look wowza, trust me on this one. Still. The magazine women make other women feel ugly.

  My doctor looks a bit like a crane. He is a benevolent crane, tall and lanky, with eyes like a giraffe, if a giraffe had blue eyes. Dr. Crane ambles in on spindly legs and we chitchat, but it is not long before he is asking me to lie back, spread ’em, and put my feet in cold, silver stirrups. One day those stirrups will come to life and grab the feet of many a startled woman, I kid you not.

  “You’re going to have to slide to the edge of the table,” Dr. Crane says, and he laughs. I imagine his crane wings spreading out behind him.

  “No.” I am lying down, but I don’t yet feel like hanging my bare butt over the edge of a table so my lotus flower can be explored with cold, metal salad tongs and pokey things.

  He laughs. “Come on, Madeline, this won’t hurt.” He snaps on gloves.

  I am sweating.

  The nurse and the doctor wriggle me on down. The nurse has muscles.

  “Let’s put your feet in the stirrups now, Madeline,” Dr. Crane says, like a cheerleader. “You can do it!”

  “Let’s stab forks into my body first,” I tell him. “That sounds more relaxing.”

  He laughs, he lifts my knees, I bring them down, he brings them up and puts my heels in the stirrups. I squeeze my knees together, tight, like a clamp. A vagina clamp.

  Dr. Crane laughs. Then he and the smiling nurse start using the pap language. “Pass me the spatula,” he says cheerily, joking about the speculum.

  The spatula? I think of something that flips pancakes.

  He asks for some other tool, too. It sounds like he’s asking for an Inserter. He shows me this groovy long thing that is going to do the job. He’s so excited about his new vaginal toy. It is plasticky and definitely doesn’t belong in me. Maybe you. But not me. I slam my knees shut again.

  “I don’t think I need a pap,” I tell him, and try to get up.

  Dr. Crane thinks I’m so funny! “Aw, come on, now, it’s not so bad!”

  The nurse smiles and pushes me down again.

  “If someone wanted to look up your thingie with a spatula, you wouldn’t like it, either, buddy.”

  Dr. Crane laughs again.

  My knees are shaking. I stare up at the ceiling. Please tell me why doctors have not gotten smart enough to create a “woman’s ceiling,” where there are pictures of Jimmy Smits, so that you can gaze at him when a doctor is using a spatula and salad tongs on your lotus flower. Surely this would be more relaxing than counting ceiling holes?

  “I need Jimmy Smits,” I whisper.

  Dr. Crane laughs.

  “Me too!” the chipper nurse chips out.

  “No, I’m serious. I need Jimmy Smits.”

  “I’ll warm things up!” Dr. Crane says, still so cheerful even though he spends much of his day peering up women’s woo-woos. “No one wants them cold! No one wants anything icy there!”

  The salad tongs do their job, up and up, until I think they’ll poke out my nose.

  The doctor is using a miniflashlight to peer up my lotus flower. “It looks splendid in there!”

  For heaven’s sakes.

  Next it is time for test-tube-like things and cotton swabs and, drum roll, my favorite: The pelvic exam! Think: Gloves!

  You might wonder what my pap smear has to do with my telling you how to get your act together. Ladies, your health is your business. Your health is your top priority. If you’re not healthy everything falls apart: Your body, your mental outlook, your attitude, your job, your marriage, your relationship with kids and family. Your sex life. Save your sex life at all costs.

  So, from me, the meanest life coach in the world, get your “health-act” together. Get you together. You can’t plan for your future, focus on a promotion, get creative ideas, or start a new business if your health is in shambles. Exercise that bod. Eat healthy stuff. Get your pap smear.

  And if you can get Jimmy Smits to come with you and hang from the ceiling while smiling, all the better. If not, bring a picture of his face and hold it above your head when the doctor is using a flashlight and a pancake flipper on your lotus flower.

  “I’m alone. I’m always alone.”

  I nodded my head at A’isha Heinbrenner and tried to ignore the sad rain streaming down the windows of my office. Darn the rain. It was hiding my view and I like to be able to see far out. It makes me feel less trapped, which helps me breathe like a normal human. “And are you lonely, or are you okay with being alone?”

  Her brow furrowed. “I’ve recently divorced my husband after thirty years, my five kids are all over the States working or going to college, my sister and I are estranged, my brother is in Alaska. I’m alone. I’m fifty-two and I’m alone.”

  She stared at me. She was sort of frumpy. Worn out. Probably wanted to lose twenty pounds. Her hair was short, a dull color, lots of gray. No makeup.

  “Are you lonely?”

  “Sometimes I think I should be lonely because I’m alone, right?”

  “No, not necessarily.”

  “It’s been a curious time.”

  “How?”

  “I have spent the last thirty years taking care of people. My husband, my kids, my parents as they were dying, my father-in-law. I worked ten hours a day as a high school teacher. Now I’m retired and I have a pension. All those years of teaching with the low salary earned me a pension. Every month, the check comes. The house is mine, and paid off, so I put it in savings.”

  “How do you feel with your family all over the place, the estrangement with your sister?”

  “The truth is my sister always caused me stress. She has personal problems, constantly, of her own making. She’s been married four times, one husband worse than the others; she’s had affairs, traumas, health issues—she’s exhausting. She hasn’t talked to me in six months, and it’s been a relaxing time for me. I had no idea how strung up I was on her problems.”

  “What about your kids?”

  “I love my kids. But I’m worn out. Raising five kids isn’t easy.”

  “And your ex? How do you feel about him?”

  She thought. “I wasn’t in love with him the last twenty-three years of our marriage. He was an alcoholic. He’d come home, have dinner, and drink until he passed out. He was a benign drunk, but it’s tough to be in love with a man when there’s a whiskey bottle between you. There’s no truth with whiskey. We were together. I had accepted that he would never change. I accepted I was in a marriage by myself. I made myself happy, content, built a life for myself without him.”

  “So you accepted the emptiness. You accepted the aloneness. You dealt with it. But your acceptance was another form of dying. You accepted that you would never have enough, and it corroded you.”

  “Yes. It did.” She nodded her head. “I was corroded. Surviving. On my own.”

  “Let’s continue working o
n your Individual Life-Force plan. What do you want to be doing in six months, a year, five years? What are you going to do to bring out your life force, your reason for being, your reason for not only living but for thriving, for lusting after life?”

  A’isha thought for a long time. I like silences between my clients and me. It gives their brains time to work.

  “I want to find myself.”

  “That sounds like a plan.”

  “I want to find out who A’isha is, on her own.”

  “Excellent. How will you do that?”

  Another silence.

  “I don’t know. What do you think, Madeline?”

  “I think you should travel, by yourself, internationally.”

  She thought again. More silence, and she nodded. Her eyes lit up, a wee bit of that dullness, the dullness we all get when life disappoints way too much, receding.

  “I think you’re right.”

  “Absolutely I’m right. You need change. Drastic, utter change.”

  “Tell me what country I should go to first.”

  “Scotland. I like the way they talk.”

  A’isha’s brow furrowed again. We had ourselves another silence. She sat up straight, blinked a few times, as if coming out of a trance, or as if she was coming out of a marriage that had slung the lust for life clean out of her body and through a window. “All right. It’s Scotland.” She smiled, tentatively.

  “Three weeks.”

  “Three weeks it is.” She inhaled, the inhale was shaky, but I dare say that light was growing in her eyes.

  “You’ll be uncomfortable at first, A’isha, nervous. Accept it. Be okay with it. Make reservations, one week in each of three new places. Book beautiful places to stay. Bring books, notebooks, colored pencils. Imagine. Dream. Hike. Think. Paint. Explore.”

  We sat in our silence again. “I think I’m off to Scotland.”

  “A’isha, you didn’t answer my question. You kept saying that you’re alone all the time. Are you lonely?”

  We had one more silence. I love reflective people. She rolled her shoulders, like she was throwing something off of them, perhaps a past that had had no A’isha in it. “You know, Madeline, I’m not. I’m not lonely at all. It’s bothered me that I’m not lonely, because I thought that I should be. But I’m not. Alone means I’m with myself. Alone means I answer to myself, I do what I want for, literally, the first time in my life. Alone means that I can think what I want. It means I’m not burdened with the constancy of doing things for others. It means that I don’t have to manage my husband, his moods, his thoughtlessness, the trap of marriage. I felt like I was always deflecting the hurts he casually threw my way through neglect, through not wanting to know the real me, through not helping me. That’s exhausting, you know, being in a relationship that you constantly have to protect your heart from. It’s numbing.”

  “It is, indeed.”

  “So, Madeline, no, I’m not lonely, I am alone. And it is, absolutely, positively”—she smiled wider here—“fantastic.”

  I winked at her. “Send me a postcard. When you get back we’ll plan some more.”

  “I’ll send you a kilt.”

  “You do that.”

  “I’m going to Scotland.” There was wonder in her voice. “Maybe I’ll go to Faerie Glen and make a wish.”

  “Make several wishes.”

  “Maybe I’ll drink some Scotch whiskey.”

  “Save the bottle as a souvenir.”

  “Maybe I’ll listen to Scottish music.”

  “Buy a CD, it’ll bring back the memories.”

  She called me from the airport three days later. “You didn’t think I’d do it, did you?”

  I told her the truth. “I knew you would. And I knew you’d leave soon, before you chickened out.”

  She laughed. “You know the inside of my freedom-seeking mind, don’t you? See ya, Madeline, and thanks.”

  “See ya, A’isha, and you’re welcome.”

  I couldn’t believe what Ramon had done to my yard already. Brick steps climbed from the sidewalk to the front door, in a sort of zigzag fashion, a rock wall was halfway built along the front, and he’d laid sod so I had green where beige and brown used to be.

  I walked around, in awe, before fumbling in my purse for my keys.

  As soon as I walked in, I instantly felt like I was in a gigantic, cold, ultramodern tomb.

  I so don’t like my house.

  I dropped my purse and my briefcase, tossed my keys to the freaky black metal statue with the octagonal head, and dumped myself into a stiff, modern leather chair that was completely unlike my dad’s comfy, poufy leather chair.

  Why did I feel so cold in my own home?

  Why did I feel like a visitor?

  Why did I feel like I had to be quiet here, as if I couldn’t talk, or move?

  Why did I feel like I couldn’t breathe in my own home? Why did I feel like I had to hide, as if I was an imposter, a fake, an interloper, a burglar, even?

  Why is that?

  And, if I feel this way, why am I still here?

  “Greetings, Madeline.”

  “Hi, Georgie.” I’d been in the office since six in the morning. I moved one client folder over, replaced it with another, clicked on my e-mail, and decided the forty new e-mails and twenty-three phone calls that had come in that morning could wait. I had already talked to Janika Jeffs, the head honcho organizing the Rock Your Womanhood conference. “Can’t wait, Madeline, we can’t wait to hear your closing night speech! I’m rockin’, I’m rockin’ already!”

  “Aurora King is here,” Georgie said over the phone.

  “I’ll bet she’s wearing the yellow fairy dress today.”

  “Yes, she is,” Georgie said. “How did you know? Wait. You have unrealized psychic abilities, don’t you? I knew you were in touch with your inner self. Anyhow, Aurora says her spirit is light and flowing on a stream of goodwill.”

  “Superb. Her tiara in place?”

  “Tilted perfectly. She wears the tiara to remind herself that she is a princess. What, Aurora? She wants me to tell you that she feels some black around the edges of your aura. What, Aurora ? She says she sees red. She says it’s mysterious blood. What? She sees a fire. A ball of fire. By that same tree with the branches that criss and cross. What else, Aurora? A heavily armed airport and a senator who has to resign.”

  “I’m wearing a black suit and black heels. I think my underwear has red trim. Tell her that’s what she’s seeing. There are skyscraping-sized trees in Portland. I looked at a plane today. I don’t know about the senator. You know I think politicians are drivel slobber.” I continued to shift papers. Where was my draft for my speech? I’d been working on that in the wee hours....

  “I don’t think she is talking about your boring black heels.”

  I was not offended. “Did you say boring black heels?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  I heard Stanley bark.

  “I have offered to go shopping with you, Madeline, so we can touch your fashionista, wake her up.”

  “My inner fashionista died a long time ago.” Yep, the fashionista died in a shack. “Plus, I wear suits because I’m a professional.”

  “You wear suits because you are not in touch with the creative side of your spirit. You are unwilling to release her into a welcoming spectrum world.”

  I didn’t know what a welcoming spectrum world was. I would ask later. “There’s no inner spirit in me that wants a release.”

  “Yes, there is. You have to meditate to bring her out, coax some color and flavor into your wardrobe to reflect the complexity of the spirit.”

  “I’ll try to get the spirit out tonight. Maybe she’ll attack my frumpiness. Send Aurora King in and tell her not to throw glitter at me again.”

  “Don’t throw glitter at Madeline,” I heard Georgie say before she disconnected.

  I opened my door to Aurora King and closed my eyes when I saw her hand swing up.

 
She threw yellow glitter at me.

  Two days later I was still picking it out of my hair.

  Corky Goshofsky was next up.

  “You are not succeeding because you are blaming everyone else for your failures,” I said, twirling a pen in my fingers.

  “What?” Corky’s voice sounded like a machete on sandpaper. Ugh. She rearranged her significant, interesting bottom on one of my chairs.

  This is an odd thing to say, but Corky has a butt that has a life of its own. When she walks, one cheek goes up, wiggles at the top like piled-up Jell-O, then sags while the next cheek does the up, wiggle, and Jell-O thing.

  “You are not succeeding because you are blaming everyone else for your failures.” I wanted to eat a burrito for lunch. Extra cheese and avocado.

  Corky glared at me, crossing her arms. “People are always talking behind my back. No one gives me a break. When I work in groups I can’t help it if I get frustrated with slow people. I speak up when I have an opinion, and they don’t want to hear it, even though they know they’re wrong and I’m right.”

  “Your personality is also a huge barrier to your success.”

  “What do you mean by that?” The words came out like verbal bullets. Pow, pow, pow.