What happened was … actually she wasn’t sure what happened.
She was making her usual strawberry yogurt shake, which she could do in her sleep. She scooped the French vanilla yogurt into the blender, added a few fresh strawberries and then the frozen ones.
She went to place the lid on the blender, but noticed that the top had a gaping hole. The rounded plastic gizmo that belongs in the gaping hole wasn’t there. She looked in the obvious spots: sink, dish drain, counter, under the counter.
She asked her husband. No, he hadn’t seen it. She then cast suspicion on the dozing cat, curled up in a puddle of sunshine below the kitchen window, ignoring the uproar. She knew, from experience, that if he had discovered a rounded thingy, he’d have patted and putted it into obscurity.
“If the cat got it,” her husband said, “you’ll never find it,” as if she didn’t know that already. Secrets the cat wasn’t about to divulge.
“Just use your hand,” her husband, the builder, suggested. So she did as advised. She placed the insufficient lid back on the blender, covered the hole with her hand and turned the machine on puree. Then, she watched as the blender’s contents began to gurgle and froth, gaining elevation and force until erupting to splatter her hand, the counter below and the wall behind.
Thoughtfully, she pressed off. She’d find an alternative for lunch. However, her husband, undeterred by a simple one-shot failure, pressed on. He’d use his larger hand and add a Saran wrap shield. So once again the blender went to work. This time it made a significant grating and grinding noise, a sound way too vigorous for a few frozen strawberries.
“I think I’ve found the missing top,” her husband announced. And sure enough when they poured out the yogurt shake, they discovered, in its mix, the minced, diced and pureed plastic. The cat smirked in self-satisfied innocence.
“You win,” her husband said.
“I do,” she agreed.
Win? Not so long ago it seems (some of you readers out there might also remember) she had reported on the “non compos mentis” award invented by her younger brother. The prize, a beverage of your choice, was awarded for the single best stupidity of the month. So brother and sister saved up their stupid stories. They rounded them off with descriptive prose. They prepared to make their pitch.
She had won twice, right off.
The first time was when she put her contact lenses in the wrong eye and thought she was going blind. In a panic, she had run to the doctor, who quickly solved the problem by reversing the lenses.
She won a second time for once again putting her lenses in the wrong eye, and once again thinking she was going blind, making her bee-line to the optometrist.
Both times, her brother declared her the winner hands down. However, he soon cornered the prize. There was the time he headed off to Canada, got to the border and realized he had forgotten his passport, then drove four hours home only to discover that he had the passport all along. Even her sensible husband was motivated to compete.
Of course when their grown children began to contribute, they were told, “Wait. Just wait until you’re older.” Anyway, the children’s submissions were dismissed as hardly on a par with their own.
In that way, they had proudly divulged their shameful experiences in order to vie for commendation. Her brother turned the tables on chemo brain, on aging faculties with predictable glitches and on those moments of mind-less-ness to make the bads, the goods. He alone could do that, render his particular, unrelenting assault on life’s adversities with bare-knuckled swipes sprinkled with humor and irony. Until he had finally caved in to illness and a point of no return. He had reached that border and couldn’t find his passport. His will to survive had been stamped with an expiration date, perhaps the final stroke to his boundless spirit.
So now they memorialize her brother with this tradition. Every time, they laugh at some messed up appointments (her husband) or a pulverized mechanical bit (her), he’s there. He’s delivering one of them his non compos mentis award where mistakes become achievements and the bads become the goods.
“Do I get my wine?” she asks her husband, pointing to the pulverized blender lid, envisioning her brother’s nod of affirmation and hearing his cherished and ingenious belly-tumble of laughter.
“You got it sis,” she hears. “You really got it this time.”
Ruth Charney lives in Greenfield.