Carbon Dating : Part 5

Ditched by Dr. Right: And Other Distress Signals from the Edge of Polite Society
by Elizabeth Warner

(Page 5 of 6)

The den reminds me of one thing and one thing only: nature programs. National Geographic. Wild Kingdom. Jacques Cousteau. And that Public Television programming mitzvah, Nova. I think these shows embodied a certain American ideology that my parents were happy to imbue us with. For one thing, they represented triumph from the get-go, beginning as they always did with powerful and heavily orchestrated theme music that invariably reeked of victory over adversity. Then there was the voice-over, taking us through the seasons. The gentle tone, ever assuring us that despite the ravages of winter, all will thaw and spring will come.

And when spring - naturally characterized by the feminine pronoun - does appear, her accompanying image on the screen was usually time-lapsed footage of a flower opening, with water trickling soothingly in the background. Then, to further describe the newness of spring, came a shot of four or five clumsy but alarmingly cute cubs - of canine or feline variety - roughhousing, with the gentle reminder that soon enough any one of these frisky little fellas would be large enough to systematically annihilate a small family of unwitting tourists, if provoked and hungry. Leaving nary a blood-soaked ligament.

But what always stood out for me with these shows was a kind of morality. Or its agonizing absence. Because about two thirds of the way through each program, a young wildebeest would get brutally mauled by a group of roving (and presumably delinquent) hyenas. Or a pair of cheetahs would take out an enfeebled gazelle. And I would watch this carnage in mute horror. And the question that always sprang to my lips was why.

"Why? WHY? Mother!?" I had demanded as a child. "Why doesn't the cameraman step in and save that baby/older doomed animal if they can film it? Why? Why?"

And Mother would always put down her needlepoint and look at me before saying,

"Because that's nature's way, Lambchop. That's nature's way."

And I just know that privately she had to be wondering the same thing. And that her response to me was just some kind of antidote to the existential void. And then she'd invariably look at the big wall clock behind me and say:

"Okay, Miss Pink. Isn't it time for Betty White's Party?"

Betty White's Party was our family expression for bedtime. An expression that, I realized some eleven years later on a particularly disastrous date, was not a universally recognized term.

As I retired upstairs that night, Mother pointed out that tomorrow would yield banner opportunities to move on or at least to forget. Soon I wouldn't even remember any old Clark R. M. Jerk anyway.

"You know, Lambchop, that thing was never meant to be. You've got to let him go. You know what they say about a caged bird singing? When you let him go and he'll come back if he was meant to, but he can't know till he sings and flies, right?"

"I think I know what you mean." Then she told me that I should just get busy at the office, where there appeared to be less doom. Of that she was certain.

"You've got to keep the accent on the right syl-LA-ble, dearie. Why don't you just throw yourself into your work? You know, where you don't ever have to worry about forming close personal relationships?" She smiled, adding, "Oh, and here you go. I couldn't resist."

She presented me with a wrapped Lanz nightie. Which made fifteen this decade alone. A great woolly gown to keep the chilliest, burliest lumberjack toasty and impervious to nuclear winter for several unpleasant centuries.

"Thanks, Ma. You're right." I kissed her.

"God bless," she said as I ankled up the stairs.

I considered Mom's work-immersion advice. I remembered that my boss's boss had recently remarked that I'd have been considered quite attractive during the Middle Ages. And that it was just a good thing I had hair, what with my features and all.

Nor was I really certain that my mother understood exactly what it was that I did for a living. In the same way that men she knows who were in the war who did anything connected to planes are automatically "fighter pilots" (with whom she will discuss Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo until sunrise). This is exactly why I wasn't sure she knew what it was I did. And while I do not believe she thinks I am a fighter pilot, she has never once focused on the fact that the endless sweepstakes and renewal notices she gets in the mail were probably authored by her youngest child. I'm pretty sure Mother thought that since I worked for a magazine empire, and since I wrote for a living, I must actually have been a journalist.

Copyright © 2005 by Elizabeth Warner.

About the Author

Elizabeth Warner is a writer and actress whose one-woman show, The Wandering Eye, premiered at HBO's Aspen Comedy Festival. She has read her work on NPR and written for several network game shows, and particularly keen viewers can spot her in a few films. Elizabeth lives in Los Angeles but, no fool, maintains a home in New York as well.