The Lavender Scented Armpits of Phillip's Mother in Fiji

The cool waters off the coast of Fiji lap at my knees as I survey the wreck. The sun is at its peak, threatening me with heat of its mid-day fury, but my skin remains cool to the touch. A slight breeze tickles my nose with tropical scents carried from the island, and I imagine a beautiful tan island maiden fresh from a waterfall shower meeting me on the beach, coconut drink in one hand, a fresh pineapple in the other.

I am shipwrecked and alone, but a firm confidence in my ability to stay clean, fresh, and alive settles over me. I smell so good…

“Waddya think, Phillip, is this the one your mother was asking for?”

The sudden appearance to my left of a lady wearing a plain purple pocket tee-shirt tucked into whitewashed hip-hugging jeans hitched up to her sagging bosoms jolts me back to the deodorant aisle of the local Walmart.

“What flavor does it say on the label?” Her shopping companion, apparently named Phillip, asks.

Flavor? She doesn’t eat deodorant, this mother of yours, does she?

I look to my right; Phillip is wearing a timeworn fly-fishing excursion tee-shirt, jeans that are far too short for his canoe-bowed legs, and a striped train conductor’s hat that has seen a lot of rail.

“Lavender.” Comes the reply.

“That’s the one she likes; it reminds her of springtime,” Phillip states by way of duty and explanation, without a hint of nostalgia.

I put the stick of Fiji scented deodorant on the shelf and take a step back so I can keep an interested eye on Phillip and his shopping companion while at the same time trying to choose a new deodorant.

Deodorant has always been a part of my life. The spicy odor of a colonial clipper ship on a hard tack likely entered my nose on the wind of my very first breath, as my father leaned in under the heat lamps and welcomed me into this world. That old and spicy wooden scent led me through childhood as I followed my father around, trying my best to mimic his manliness.

No wonder then, that when I began to offend my family with the pungent odor of my budding puberty and was asked to take measures, I chose the same reliable spicy scent for my own armpits. While my friends guarded theirs with the right choice for young and active teenagers, I did my best to smell like a weathered sailor fresh from a whaling trip.

Why is Phillip looking at disposable razors and shave cream? His beard is full and bushy…maybe his lavender-loving mother shaves her upper lip…

As a teenager I used deodorant in excess, hoping to smell fresh, clean, and romantically appealing to any member of the fairer sex that happened to cross my path within breathing distance. It didn’t work; my eager deodorant application seemed to have the opposite effect, chasing girls away like mosquitos from a pool of DDT.

I owned a single pair of Levi’s jeans in high school, and that was a problem, because I felt that no other pair of pants could better hide my scrawny white legs. Wearing them five days a week was admittedly gross, but wear them five days a week I did. In today’s world dingy denim seems to demonstrate a willful indifference to etiquette that wins hearts, but thirty years ago it demonstrated a careless aversion to popularity that won solitude and insecurity. I had on more than one occasion tried to sneak them into a secret wash cycle on their own, but my mother guarded her laundry machines with unmatched vigilance and getting caught with my hand in her detergent had proven to be punishable by angry and humiliating lectures. I took to showering in my jeans whenever they got really bad, but they never dried fast enough in the humid Connecticut climate to wear the next day without chaffing. I spent many days trying to walk casually from my locker to my next class as though my inner thighs weren’t greenhorn-in-the-saddle raw and painfully swollen.

On one particular morning, facing a day in dark brown corduroys, I employed deodorant to my cause, applying it liberally to the fabric of my dirty jeans. I was hoping the powerful anti-bacterial ingredients and sea-going smell would mask the odors that my hormonal and junk-food consuming teenage body emitted into my pants on a daily basis. I didn’t think about my body’s metabolic warmth, and the fact that it would soon melt the deodorant into a greasy film, darkening the denim and making it appear as though I had emptied a full bladder into my beloved Levi’s. It didn’t smell like I’d pissed my pants, but I did walk the halls of peer pressure with an extra measure of self-loathing that day, followed around by an eye-tearing potpourri cloud formed by the blending odors of strong chemical clean and slowly developing puberty.

Why are there so many choices, and why are they so poorly named? Legend? What the hell does legend smell like? Urban? Commanding man? Dark Temptation? Who named these? Will they make me take a manhood test at the register before they’ll let me buy any of these? Will I have to demonstrate hand-to-hand combat skills or build a fence without using tools? Will I have to break-dance, grab my crotch, and spit on the floor?

As young children we rode many summers in the back of whichever van Dad happened to be driving at the time, making our way across the country to visit relatives we hardly knew for a few unforgettable days of genetically obligated awkward interaction. The summer sun stared down at us through any window our mother hadn’t coated with aluminum foil, doing his damned best to burn and broil us where we lay reading, napping, or playing. On one such trip I watched my older sister, who was physically mature enough to use deodorant, coat the backs of her knees with it, presumably to stop them from sweating. A few days later, under the assumption that the practice was something only women did for some feminine reason or another, I snuck into the bathroom and applied some of that same stick to the backs of my own knees. The initial cooling sensation gave way to an oily patina, which was soon followed by a dry chemical film that smelled like my sister and took a few frantic moments spent with soap and warm water to remove. I firmly believed that had my father discovered me there in the bathroom, the backs of my knees coated in feminine product, he would have spanked me silly and committed me to hard, manual, masculine labor in order to chase any interest in behaving like a girl from within me.

What the hell is oud wood? Is that a misprint, did they mean old wood? Who wants to smell like old wood dipped in dark vanilla?

I dry-shaved my armpits one year at summer camp, probably on a dare, but definitely under circumstances better left forgotten. The following morning I rubbed deodorant into that smooth, freshly scraped skin, and my screams woke the entire camp and anyone else within a four-mile radius. It was that same year that I retired the old standby deodorant with the clipper ship label and called up a new and modern scent made for a younger generation of upcoming men. At the time I wasn’t aware that there were stark differences between deodorant and antiperspirant, and so I didn’t know that I had begun clogging my pores each morning, stuffing metal and other chemicals into them with reckless and ignorant abandon.

Why are women allowed to smell like actual things? Coconut, Citrus, Flowers, these are things I can get my head and nose around. Wait, Macaroon scented? Isn’t that a kind of cookie? Hey, I want to smell like a cookie, why can’t they have chocolate chip deodorant for men? Or brownies, yeah brownies would be good.

Several years ago I decided that when I was in my sixties, I wanted to be able to remember not only my name and address, but my wife’s as well. I didn’t want my kids to feel they had to sew “If Found Call…” labels into my clothes, or tattoo my personal details onto my forearms. In the hope of preventing that from happening, I started using a more natural, less harsh, metal-free, and non pore-clogging version of underarm protection. As my armpit pores began to perform their normal sweating function once again after years of disuse, I hoped that no one would notice and then mention that I smelled different, and prayed that no one would notice and then say that I smelled worse. Self conscious, I walked around sniffing myself every few minutes, pulling at my layers of clothes and wondering if anyone would go home and thank their spouse for not smelling like the odiferous man they had been mis-fortuned enough to stand next to on the street that day.

Oh, deodorant, you are so much like prayer to me: on mornings that I remember to, I spin your dial, lift my arms, and coat my pits with your protective glaze, all the while wondering if your power over my bad odor will last the day.

And so passed several years of my life, with my insecurities reminding me to keep my arms pinned to my sides as much as possible and my brain reminding me that I was sacrificing olfactory confidence for its future sake. It didn’t help that I lived in New Hampshire, where the humidity in summer turns the best smelling armpits into cesspools filled with sweaty bacterial sludge.

The move to a drier climate in Utah helped, at least it did until a few weeks ago, when I must have hit some sort of man-o-pausal milestone. I suddenly couldn’t go ten minutes without wanting a shower and a clean shirt. I began sweating like I surely will on judgment day, and wondered if perhaps God had suddenly felt the need for a running start to his opening arguments against me.

I am tired of smelling like a sweaty patch of lemon grass that has been watered with the drippings squeezed from a Guatemalan factory worker’s tee shirt.

Phillip and his companion wander off down the aisle and out of sight. I am alone to face the many choices before me. I begin to wonder if there are deodorant sommeliers, experts on which brands and scents best fit with certain personalities or clothes. I picture a man dressed to the nines standing in the deodorant section of Walmart, his hair greased and parted tightly over his scalp, a pencil moustache under his long and upturned nose. Would anyone dare ask such a man for underarm advice?

A mother pushes her cart into the aisle. She crosses in front of me with a polite smile, delaying my decision for a moment longer. Her cart is loaded to the rim with food, and a happy baby drools in the seat. Three or four, or is it five kids follow behind her in a long line of chatty happiness. I watch as the woman reaches up and without breaking stride grabs a stick of deodorant, presumably for her husband, who has apparently summited Everest. She keeps on walking, her genetic train following close behind, and I am alone again.

Screw it; I’m going to Fiji.

Anger Management

Dear Jared,

It’s been seven years since you killed yourself. This past year has been emotionally tougher for me than the past few, and I have struggled with keeping my own life, so deciding how to mark this seventh anniversary has proven more than a bit difficult. I have spent hours staring at blank paper with tears in my eyes and heavy blood in my heart, sitting in the library, at the cabin, in bed, and in parking lots, wondering what I could possibly write that would make sense of everything I feel, persuade others to get help before they abandon all hope, and relieve some small measure of the mighty grief and pressing guilt that plague me to this day.

I considered writing a piece on the things I have learned over the past seven years about suicide and its impact on survivors, but everything I wrote sounded selfish and insensitive. For a few days I considered recounting my own emotional struggles over the past several months, but again, selfish and insensitive, with a touch of melodrama. I thought I’d write a short story about searching the shallow waters of the Lamprey river for your James Dean watch, the one that fell off your wrist during one of our canoeing adventures, but I found myself lost and alone in a canoe made for two, riding a tidal river of memories and paddling without success against a thick and salty current of regret.

I was told in therapy a long time ago that I would one day be angry with you, and that only then would I be finished mourning your loss and be able to move on with my life. A week or so ago I fell apart and wondered if that time had come. I spent some time alone in the woods, recklessly chopping down tall trees, shooting invisible targets with Grandpa Bond’s shotgun, and driving higher and higher into the thinning air on roads and trails that were not meant for careless drivers.

But I’m not angry with you, not yet. Maybe it would close some doors if I were, but for now they remain open, and I suppose that I am glad, because inside those rooms I can sit and visit the rawest of my emotions, the ones that remind me I am alive. In recent weeks I have caught myself seeking sensory overloads. Standing naked and sweating in the hot sun, banging my head against my fist, and staying awake until my head hurts have provided stark reminders of what it is to be alive, and a strange, cooling relief from everything burning inside of me.

Don’t fret and worry yourself over my situation, however; these frantic moments are few and far between. I have Elizabeth and the kids, and with them in my life I remain a fair distance away from that dark line, the one that you stepped over, the one that you crossed and kept walking away from until you were lost into a place from which you couldn’t make your way back. If only you had found someone like Elizabeth, someone to cling to, someone who you couldn’t bear to leave behind…

So, the kids are good…

Caleb is determined to write professionally, and that makes me smile. It helps that he is blessed with talent, more than I ever possessed at his age. He will improve with time, experience, and practice, and the world will know his name for it. He talks about you a lot, telling me what he remembers about you, and stories about my life after you died, but from his perspective. Caleb inherited so many of your mannerisms and ways of thought that I sometimes have to gulp at the air around me when I see you in him. I don’t think he minds when I call him by your name, a mistake I have made often, because he loves you, and because he know that his resemblance to you is that strong.

Hannah is a can of gas thrown on a gas-fueled fire, with gas raining down on it from a gas cloud above; she can’t stop, she won’t stop, and the world better stay out of her way. She won’t be completely happy until she is eating fruit and doing yoga in Bali, and I hope to someday visit her there and try my hand at both. A couple of weeks ago I shaved her head (at her request), and she looks beautiful. Being an independent teenager, she doesn’t allow much physical contact, and the time spent with my hands on her head and my fingers tangled in her long hair was like water to a withered sprig. She is so much like me that I feel a heavy guilt to think that I may have cursed her future, but I know that she will do better than I ever will at life.

Solomon is my sea anchor, stabilizing my worn and swaying vessel in white-capped stormy seas. The kid makes me laugh and pulls my lips into a wide smile on even the darkest days. He has a quick wit to accompany his scampy charm, and is loved by anyone who gets to know him, except for his school principal, for whom the boy has little if any respect. Solomon has smooth criminal moves fueled by a confidence that I would kill for, and yet he lacks any hint of pride or malice in his heart. He draws, he writes, he dances, he loves, and he jokes, all of them well, and I can’t wait for the world stage to throw wide its curtains for his one man show. Fortunately for me, he has made a conscious decision to stay young for the time being.

Elizabeth misses you. She is soft and quiet about you, holding her Jared moments close to her chest. I often wonder what my life would have been like had I embraced you without conditions from the moment I met you, the way she did. I admit to being guilty of stealing the limelight when it comes to grief over your loss, but she has never once accused me of being selfish in my emotional hijackings. She is patient with me, believes in me, and has permanently hitched her wagon to my sad, stubborn, aimless and weather-beaten mule, expecting a sudden strengthening of muscle followed by a frightening burst of speed towards the starting line of success. Her confidence in me fuels my greatest fear, which is that I will let her down.

As for the world, it marches on in your absence. Technology is outpacing thought, greed has all but broken the spine of necessity, and discussion is losing ground to contention. I love so much about this world and all it offers, but a greater and greater part of me wishes I had long ago followed my teenage dream of heading into the Alaskan wilderness to homestead. I hope that I have succeeded in teaching the kids (and in the process remind myself) that in the end, no amount of wealth, gadgets, knowledge, faith, or possessions will be counted when it comes time to determine whether you were a good person or bad.

I wish you were here to see the happier moments and share in the bouts of laughter when they come, because on most days they outnumber the sad. But you aren’t, so I will do my best to live well until we meet again. Fortunately, I am blessed to have a small but able crew that is willing to push me forward through the storms and the darkness. I will be forever sorry that I could not, that I did not, that I would not, do the same for you. It is my great regret, and I cannot truly make amends for it. Perhaps the best thing I can do is to find some measure of anger towards you in this life, so that our next time around can be as sweet, fun, loving, and thrilling as the first one should have been.

Tonight I will spend some time up in the mountains, hoping to see the bear that has taken to visiting the cabin in search of something sweet to eat. I spent a few nights up there alone this week, and I watched him the other evening as he lumbered through the green. I felt no fear as he came closer to me, only a reverent thrill at seeing him in his wild habitat. Free from any other care but that of achieving the happiness that would come from filling his belly, his innocence reminded me of your simple and sensitive desire to be nothing more than happy, filled with love from others.

This letter has been a bit heavy, and I don’t know how to end it, other than to say that I wish things were different. I wish I was writing you about our upcoming road trip through the southwest, and how we are going to chase tumbleweeds, climb colored mountains, and meet weirdos in strange and beautiful places.

But things are not different, and they never will be.

You know what? That kinda makes me angry…

Frog and Toad are Friends

This is not a eulogy. (Thank God.)

One of my favorite series of books as a child was the “Frog and Toad” series by Arnold Lobel. The tales of the two amphibious friends that couldn’t have been more different from each other hold a special place in my memories of childhood. The one tall and calm and capable, the other short and intense and unsure, the two balanced each other out, making for good times and a lasting friendship.

In one of their adventures, Frog and Toad read a book about knights in shining armor fighting dragons. The pair begins to wonder if they are as brave as the knights in the book. They look in a mirror and decide that they do indeed look brave, but they decide to climb a nearby mountain together as proof. Along the trail to bravery, they escape a deadly avalanche, avoid being eaten by a snake, and are forced to flee from a hungry hawk. In the end they run home and hide, deciding that they are both brave enough just as they are.

I am not skilled with a hammer. When using a screwdriver, my tongue sticks out in concentration, and in my head I hear the chanting rhyme righty-tighty, lefty-loosey repeated over and over until the task is complete. I’ve never cut a straight line through a piece of wood, I can’t unclog a toilet without soaking myself in poo-water, and the only finish work I am good at is not an appropriate topic for open discussion. The closest I can get to being a handy type of man is bending over and showing some butt-crack.

In addition to being little better than useless when it comes to fixing things, I am not at all brave, sure, or tough. Yes, I shoot guns, I can start a fire with one match, and at the age of forty-one I ran a marathon with very little training (okay, no training, because I was lazy), but I lost a lot of fights as a kid, snakes still bring out the little girl in me, and the only car chase I’ve ever been involved in was when some local teenagers wouldn’t stop harassing us with toilet paper and window peeping.

I won’t ever win any type of manly award. My beard refuses to grow past a patchy stubble, I don’t like wearing clothes for more than an eight hour stretch, and I shower three to four times a day. Just walking into a Banana Republic makes me horny, I know all the words (and some sweet dance moves) to “Party in the USA” by Miley Cyrus, and I wear my emotions like a day-glow-yellow turtleneck. I’m not gay, but there is a lot of drama queen in me.

Also worthy of note is the fact that I’ve never been given a cool nickname. My nieces and nephews used to call me “Bruiser,” but that was probably because they saw me trip over a shadow and cry at the resulting black and blue marks. The name didn’t stick long enough to count anyway.

I am not sure if all of the above makes me Frog or Toad, but it does make me in need of a good friend, a friend that will balance my shortcomings and find strength in my weakness.

Enter Captain Rob.

To start, he has a great nickname (no one will ever call me Captain).

Captain Rob can swing a hammer with precision and purpose, he cuts a straight line every time, and his tongue stays hidden inside his mouth whenever he’s doing any of the many great and powerful things that great and powerful men can do. He plays a convincing pirate, can pilot anything on wheels or water, and grows a real beard faster than I can turn a corner running.

Rob is everything that I am not and more. He is also a lot of what I aspire to be but will never become.

When Rob is around, I am at my bravest, coolest, and most capable. In his company I’ve steered a big boat (well, it was big for me), climbed a couple of mountains, and been chased by a hurricane. I’ve been twenty fathoms under the sea, played with seals in the whitecaps around the Isles of Shoals, and squealed with delight through my scuba mask as I’ve witnessed the rippling colors of a squid in the dark and frigid water on a winter night. I’ve driven a convertible down to Key West, sped across a frozen lake on a snowmobile, and been to more than one Guster concert. Together we’ve camped on a lighthouse island, crossed over to the wrong side of the tracks in the middle of the night, and spent the night with the Swedish Ladies Hiking Team atop Mount Chocurua in the White Mountains.

But…While in The Captain’s company, I’ve hammered dimples into a lot of wood, thrown up a gut full of banana milk and chocolate donuts into the sea, unwittingly walked through the middle of a transvestite gathering in a hotel bar, and proven myself useless on more than one manly project. I’ve wounded myself with power tools, grimaced and whined at the burden of hard labor, tripped over extension cords, and handed over the wrong wrench on more than one occasion.

Although I have felt inadequate in the presence of many men, around Rob I don’t feel any sort of need to measure up. Instead, I feel a distinct and pleasant need to be myself. Our relationship grew strong not because we share interests, talents, and experience, but rather because of our differences in what we bring to the table of friendship. Rob makes it comfortable for me to be me, a favor that I try to return. Even when he calls me “Sally,” I hear an amused affection in Rob’s voice.

For all his muscles and grit, Rob is, on the inside, stuffed with cotton candy. I once watched him sit patiently for well over an hour as my young daughter carefully painted each of his nails in bright shades of pink and purple, coated his face with cheeky blush, and filled his hair with clips and ribbons. He has carried each of my sleeping children in his arms, and shouldered them while trick or treating on more than one Halloween night (dressed each time as a pirate, of course). He has played their games, traded jokes and tickles with them, and spoiled them with unexpected presents and sweets. He will forever be their favorite captain.

Rob’s heart is bigger than his chest. At the lowest point of my life, when I felt that I couldn’t go on in the wake of my brother’s death, Rob spent hours at my side. Much of that time was spent installing the wood flooring that Elizabeth and I had ambitiously purchased without much thought to its installation. His craftsmanship was indeed an appreciated service, but the humble hours spent together on our back deck one day after lunch was a godsend for Elizabeth and me. Rob listened quietly as we poured our grief, confusion, and despair at his feet. After taking it all in, he shared his own heartbreaking experience, the sudden loss of his brother Ricky years earlier. With a wounded voice, he shared all that he had felt and learned from a moment in time that will never leave him. Covered in sawdust and tears, Rob bore our burden with us, and mourned with us as we mourned. I loved him even more for that.

Knowing Rob like I do, he would shake off my sincere expression of love, appreciation, and praise as nothing more than the sensitive fabrication of his dear friend “Sally.”

And that is Rob to anyone that knows him. He is a man without guile that carries within him a bare-chested spirit, because he has a habit of giving the shirt off his back to someone in need.

Earlier this week, my good friend Captain Rob posted a photo of the tugboat on which he serves as first mate. The caption read “Outbound from Cape May northbound. Hope this thing makes it!” I have seen Rob post photos from his floating office many times over the past few years, but this one gave me a few moments of pause. I know that Rob is a capable, brave, and experienced seaman, one that doesn’t throw such comments about without cause. The business of my day eventually pushed the foreboding feeling to a dark corner of my mind, and in time it was forgotten.

Two days later, at an ungodly hour, an incoming text vibrated me out of a deep sleep. Pulled from the darkness of dreams into the bright light of technology (and without my glasses), I could barely make out the sender’s name. It had come from Neil, a good friend to both Rob and myself.

Why would Neil text me at this hour? My birthday has come and gone. It isn’t Christmas, and there is nothing special about today.

Rob.

I dropped the phone and rolled back into the warm cocoon of blankets, unwilling to don my glasses and read the message that was sure to be bad news about Captain Rob. I stared into the darkness, listening to Elizabeth breathing softly beside me. My phone rested a million miles away on the nightstand as I tried not to envision a world without my dear friend living in it.

How would I ever be brave again?

Many minutes and a very hot shower later, I summoned the dregs of my courage and picked up my phone to read Neil’s text.

Rob’s tug sank in a storm off the coast of Rhode Island. Rob and the crew had no time to pull on their emergency suits, only life vests.

My knees buckled; I fell back and sat on the edge of the tub, bile rising within my throat.

They were rescued by a fishing boat. (Hey Neil, next time start with the good news.)

My head felt light with relief, and a smile spread its way across my face. Rob’s phone was most likely at the bottom of the ocean, but I called and left him a voicemail anyway, wanting him to eventually share in the joy I was feeling to know that he was alive.

Thanks to a wise and wonderful wife, I was soon on a plane heading east to surprise my friend with an unannounced crashing of his “Man Overboard” party. It was an absolute adrenaline rush, to throw my arms around my dear friend and tell him that I love him. To see him standing before me, dressed in the lifejacket that had kept him afloat, laughing, smiling, and living, struck me as a blessing from heaven, one that filled me with happiness to bursting.

Rob told me the harrowing tale of the sinking, and how within a span of just a few minutes he and the crew went from marveling at the pounding waves to swimming for their lives in them, wondering if rescue would arrive.

Later, during a quiet moment together, I asked the bravest man I know, “Were you scared?”

“You know Matt, I’ve never been more scared in my life,” Rob answered in a serious, my-life-course-has-been-forever-altered tone.

And in that moment, I decided that Rob and I are brave enough just as we are.

Love you Toad. (Or am I Toad?)