While you're all sleeping it off....
The party (just part one!) was a huuuuuge success! Much thanks to all my buds for showing up and making a mess! And because a couple of folks asked for it, here is the text version of my chihuahua story from Beauty Dish radio. I posted this on the blog some time ago, but deleted it the same day, I don't really know why. The party continues tomorrow with a story about a girl I knew when I was a kid... and the way she drove me crazy....
Achoo Chihuahua!
Saturday morning the doctor prescribed a decongestant for my young son.
"This will take care of those sniffles," he said, one hand wrapped around a translucent neon green clipboard. "Better than that over-the-counter stuff." He handed me a slip of paper, stuck his pen in the right breast pocket of his denim shirt, left the examination room without saying goodbye.
"Rats." My boy jumped from the paper-wrapped table to the floor. "I wanted a chihuahua."
Man, I regret telling my boys about that camping road trip twenty-five years ago, the one where my parents shoved me and my four sisters into the back seat of our crappy blue station wagon and headed south, headed for our yearly torture my dad called family camping. We stopped at the same yellow roof Stuckey's for taandoh the same fish trap side road restaurants. My parents were such creatures of family habit, brought the same snack foods like fig bars and graham crackers packed in brown grocery sacks, the same pitted sytrofoam cooler filled with red apples and a squeeze bottle of mustard.
The only thing different this trip was my middle sister. We hit the Jersey state line and she hit the box of tissues always sitting between my mom and dad, hit it hard, kept blowing and hawking up mounds of snot. We threw used dripping tissues back and forth in the back seat, taunting each other, threatening sister after sister, until my dad yelled STOP IT OR I'LL PULL OVER!
My sister didn't stop sneezing. By the time we crossed the seventeen mile Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel my sister's cheeks were as red as the blood vessels filling her eyes. She blew through every tissue and the emergency roll of toilet paper my mom kept under her seat.
"Hon? We need to stop. Look at Anne's nose, it's swollen. I think it's hay fever." My mom used her fake gentle voice, the one that sounded sweet, caring, but had a secret edge. All of us in the backseat looked at each other. Uh oh. My dad hated to stop without a prior plan. He glared at my mom, and in the dimming light of the back seat his Italian profile looked solemn and sharp.
We took the next exit, right into the decadent heart of Virginia Beach, past high rise beach apartments and a million blonde booty babes. My dad passed two large drugstores, then a third. Crud, I thought. He's looking for a health food store. I was only fourteen years old, but I knew my parents followed a different code of family conduct than my friends' parents. My mom and dad liked things like bran muffins and brown rice. They gave us cod liver oil when we complained of stomach upset, and cold nights of winter flu found us with polstices of rosemary and eucaplytus herbs oozing over our chests. They took us square dancing at the town gym on Saturday nights after attending Catholic mass. One of my friends called them Old Hippies. They sure were old, but I didn't think they were cool enough to be hippies.
My dad stopped at a store called A World of Health. My mom smiled at him, patted his right hand, pointed at Anne then at me. She quickly flipped down the sun visor and applied a peach gloss to her lips and fluffed her hot-rollered 'do.
"Birdie, you're in charge. Do not unlock the car doors." My parents and sister left the rest of us in the car. I picked up the trash bag full of snot tissues and dumped them on my second sister's head.
We threw tissues at each other, laughed, tickled each other, broke out the crackers, made such a mess as the minutes turned to a half hour, then a full fourty-five minutes. By the time an hour rolled around I started panicking. What if some health nut captured them, held them hostage? I tried to see inside the storefront, but couldn't make any human shapes through the tinted glass. I made my sisters pick up the shreds of dirty tissue and the crumbs littering the seats. At an hour and a half the store opened and out walked my dad, my mom, my sister, and a chihuahua.
His name was Paco. He was an allergy chihuahua, my mom explained. He would keep Anne from hacking and draining all her body fluids on our car floor. It's the latest in natural healing! We were on the cutting edge of allergy research. Chihuahuas have natural oils in their fur that cures coughing and sneezing. My mom went on and on but I blocked most of it out, just stared at Paco and my sister's superior expression. She hugged the chihuahua tight, her long stringy hair falling into his runny eyes. Paco squirmed. He was no neutered chihuahua. My sisters and I elbowed each other and giggled as Paco humped Anne's leg. My mom didn't seem to notice. She continued her health lecture as my dad flew down the road, wanting to make camp before nightfall.
Pace slept in the sleeping bag with Anne. He peed in the tent. He peed on the tent. He ate half our family dinner rations. He didn't seem to stop Anne's sneezing, and it seemed to get worse each vacation day, and in fact, by day three Paco was sneezing, too. I stood on the hot sands of Cape Hatteras in my striped swim suit and flip flops watching Anne and Paco sneeze. The door to our tent was proped open to air out the urine smell. My dad stopped my mom mid-sentence during one of her chihuahua health lectures.
"Karen, this has to stop. This is ridiculous! It's a dog! A chihuaha! How can a dog stop allergies? It's ridiculous! Gimme that dog!" My dad lunged for Paco, Anne screamed, and the dog dropped to the sand and ran. My dad ordered us into the tent and he zipped me and my sisters inside. I heard him and my mom arguing about Paco, running from us, until the wind and waves covered their shouts.
I don't know what happened to Paco. I was too afraid to ask. All I know is my mom and dad unzipped us, let us run into salt water and wash the urine smells away. Anne coughed all night long, and the smells of departed dog and dead coastal fish kept me awake, kept me staring at the side of the tent wishing for relief or a new family altogether. The next day after we broke camp and roared through the State Park exit gates, I thought I heard Paco yipping from the ranger's guard house.
I actually called my mom this morning. Hey, remember Paco? The chihuahua? Oh God, yes, my mom said, I remember. I wanted to ask what happened, did they catch him on the beach? Did they give him to the rangers or leave him for the sharks? But something in my mom's voice made me just laugh and change the subject instead. My mom still eats bran muffins and recommends raspberry tea when I get female cramps. And I bet deep down inside, she believes in her chihuaha allergy cure.
10:15:49 PM 
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