Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe - Bucking Bronco (aka Mother’s Day) - Sam’s Underwear & Harrison Ford’s Toes

Episode Date: May 10, 2024

“It started like a sprint. One moment you were standing still, and the next you were running as fast as you could.” Hold on tight! On today’s show, in time for Mother’s Day, two Vinyl Cafe stories about motherhood. And Jess shares a backstory about her own experiences – cue the bucking bronco! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From the Apostrophe Podcast Network. Hello, I'm Jess Milton and this is Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe. Welcome. I don't know what's been going on with my family for the past eight months or so, but it has felt very chaotic. And I know, I know there are some of you listening, maybe most of you listening, who will say, that's life, especially life with young kids. But this year, life has felt, well, even more lifelike than usual. You know that safety warning on car mirrors? Objects in the mirror may be closer than they appear. objects in the mirror may be closer than they appear. That's what life has felt like to me lately.

It's like my field of view is off. Things were always coming out of nowhere and sideswiping me. It started back in September with the first day of school. Should have seen that one coming. And I did. Eloise started kindergarten in September and we were ready for it. Or we thought we were. But I guess I wasn't as ready as I thought I was. Eloise feels things deeply. It's what makes her magic to me. Her ability to feel things and as a result, see things that other people can't. It's her superpower. It's also her kryptonite. She felt this change

deeply, and that meant the rest of us did too. It was a tough transition, but she got used to it, and we did too. And after we got used to it, we got sick. If you have school-age kids, or have before, you know exactly what I'm talking about. It happens every fall. We got walloped. Flu. Cold. Gastro. All the usuals. But some of the unusuals, too. For instance, I got an eye infection so bad that I had to ice my eyes multiple times a day just to keep them from swelling shut. And then, after the season of sickness, it was the season of celebrations. Two birthdays,

two birthday parties, and Halloween, all within a two-week period. There's basically two weeks from October 20th to November 2nd, where the only thing my family eats is sugar. Bedtime is fantastic. Then a couple of weeks later, our school board went on strike, and our schools were closed right up until Christmas. So yeah, it's been chaotic. But it's not just me. It's not just our family. Every parent I know has had a year like ours. I have no idea what's going on. But I do know this. I'm not the only one who's felt overwhelmed this year. Every parent I know had a difficult fall and a lot of people I know have had a difficult couple of seasons. Life has, thank goodness,

settled down a bit for our family since the fall. Those objects in the mirror are easier for me to keep an eye on. They still come, but they don't seem to be coming out of nowhere anymore. I've had time to catch my breath and to wonder, what the heck was that? And what can I do to make sure it doesn't happen next year? It's one of the things I talk often about with my friend, Emily. Em is one of my closest friends. She's a new friend. Our friendship's only a few years old, but it bloomed early, fed by the fervent fertilizer of COVID lockdowns.

Em moved in around the corner from me in 2021. We started doing yoga together that fall. We live out in the country, so the drive into the city would take at least half an hour. The car rides were the best part of yoga. I was slow to reintegrate into the world after lockdown. Going to yoga with Em was the very first thing I did. We were masked up and socially distanced from others, but we were so open with each other.

We talked about everything, aging parents, young kids, marriage, health. Those car rides reminded me of how much I missed human connection and closeness. But within a few weeks of starting this new friendship, this new connection, COVID resurfaced and the world shut down again. Instead of letting it get us down though, Em and I decided to turn my garage into our yoga studio. And we started meeting out in the garage every morning at 515. We drink coffee, we do yoga, and we talk. And we've added strength training too, to make sure we stay strong as we hit middle age. We've been doing it for three years now. Every single weekday. single weekday. It is such a great way to start the day. Friendship, support, stretching, and strength.

It's rare for us to skip a day, and I really miss it when we don't do it. My day just isn't the same. So that's Em. Our morning routine is the foundation of my day, and I am so grateful for her friendship. It's gotten me through some tough times over the last few years. Em, like me, had a chaotic fall. Sickness, school strike, stress. Objects in the mirror were closer than they appeared for her, too. Somewhere during all this chaos in the fall, Em started sending me GIFs by text. Now, for those of you who don't know what GIFs are, let me start by saying, I don't really either. I actually had to look up how to pronounce that word. It's G-I-F. Some people say GIFs.

Some people say GIFs. Some people say GIFs. I don't say it because I don't really know what they are and I don't really use them. I am not a GIF person. I am a millennial, barely, but I'm not very millennial in this way. I still text like an old person. Like, I use full sentences. I use punctuation. I don't use gifs. I don't go quite as far as my dad who sometimes signs off from his own texts. You know what I mean? Like, okay, talk to you next week, love dad. But on the spectrum of texters, I am way closer to the sign off love dad end of the spectrum than I am to the millennial group chat gif end of the spectrum. Em's group chat gif game is 10 out of 10. So here's what happened this fall. I'd send Em

a chaos update text, something like, I was just brushing Annabelle's teeth before school, and she vomited with the electric toothbrush running. And Em would reply with a hilarious gif. There were so many exchanges like this in the fall. Me reporting some disaster. Birthday. Party. Canceled. Both kids have pink eye. As the weeks went on and the chaos continued,

all her gifts became the same thing. A cowboy riding a bucking bronco, holding on for dear life. That became her response to every single one of my problems and my response to hers, riding the Bronco. It became our language, our quiet acknowledgement that life can be rough sometimes, but we were, both of us, holding on for dear life. Not necessarily enjoying the ride, but celebrating the fact that we were still holding on, still able to ride, refusing to let that horse buck us off. A little reminder that things might feel out of control. No, that things might be out of control, but we were still doing it. And we weren't doing it alone.

doing it. And we weren't doing it alone. This has been the greatest gift of motherhood for me. It's not so much that I've decided to give up control. It's that I've had no choice but to give up control. Having young kids is a rodeo. And sometimes rodeos are fun and exciting and full of games. And other times they feel chaotic and, let's face it, scary. But what can you do except hang on and ride? You can't tame that horse mid-ride. You just have to ride it. You have to let it tame you. You have to hang on. It's been an incredible lesson, and one that's been taught to me by my children, yes, but mostly by other mothers. My mom isn't around anymore, but I'm surrounded by loving, supportive, hilarious women who give me strength and make me laugh, who remind me that I'm never really alone and that everything is better when you can find the humor in it. Today on the show, we have two stories that I hope will do the same thing for you.

Two stories that I hope will remind the mothers listening they're not the only ones riding this Bronco. That it might be crazy, but it's also crazy hilarious. Let's start with this one. This is Sam's Underwear. Morley's birthday is several weeks past now. This is Sam's underwear. she walks into the room. It's a small green binder with the word recipe stuck to the cover. It's written in Sam's handwriting. All the pages in the binder are blank except for the very first one. On that one Sam has written, we will fill every page. It is the best present Morley has ever received. The inspiration for the present began on a chilly Saturday afternoon last spring.

A gray, windy day with bits of gritty snow speckling the sky. The kind of Saturday to stay put, to hunker down, to revel in laziness. There was nothing that was going to drag Morley from the comforts of her couch that Saturday. It was 2.30 in the afternoon and Morley was still in her pajamas. She was savoring this unusual turn of events until she noticed that Sam was in his pajamas too. Why are you still in your pajamas, said Morley. Because I can't get dressed, said Sam. He said this with a look of great suffering.

Sam, said Morley, what's the problem? I don't have any underwear, he said. And that's when Morley rolled her eyes. Morley exasperated, rolled her eyes at her son and said, with less patience than she would have liked, Sam, you have a whole drawer stuffed full of underwear. And then Sam rolled his eyes and he picked up his comic and he said, they're all too small.

Morley put down her coffee and she stared at her son. She sensed that this was one of those moments when her parental ship, the ship that had been sailing along pleasantly, sailing smoothly and with enough speed to make her think that it was on course, she suspected that this was one of those moments when her parental ship, because of its inattentive and likely incompetent captain, was about to bear down hard on the shoals. All of it, she asked incredulously, all of your underwear is too small? Except for the gray ones, said Sam, and they're in the wash.

It took a moment for this to sink in. Morley was trying to remember if she'd seen any of Sam's underwear go through the laundry lately. She was trying to remember if she'd folded any of Sam's underwear in the last few weeks, if she'd carried any upstairs and put it away, she was trying to remember, and she was drawing a blank, and it was scaring her. One pair, she said again. How have you been managing with one pair? Sam didn't look up.

Sam just mumbled, I've been improvising. And so the afternoon ended. Morley got up and she brushed her hair and teeth and threw on her clothes. In her imagination, a concerned child care worker was shaking her head and peering at her poor pajama-clad son. shaking her head and peering at her poor pajama-clad son. Exactly how many months did you go with one pair of underwear? Just as she was stepping out the door, Dave stepped in. Hey, he said, where are you going? Morley was standing on the stoop, peering out at the wet snow. Morley didn't feel like going anywhere.

Underwear shopping, she said. Oh, great, said Dave. Could you buy me some, too? But not the kind you got last time, the other ones. Morley had no idea what he was talking about. She had no idea what kind of underwear she had bought him the last time. She slammed the door behind her instead of asking questions. She went to the bay, to the boys' department first, and she loaded up with underwear for Sam.

Then she headed to menswear for Dave. She chose several pairs of cotton boxers, a few knit boxers, a package of white briefs, and then, more out of spite than anything else, a pair of clingy knit ones that looked like spandex bicycle shorts. It occurred to her that she could stop by the women's department to get underwear for herself and Stephanie. And then it occurred to her that that was the last thing her daughter would want. Stephanie was happy for Morley to pay for things, but not to pick them out. And that's when it struck Morley that Sam would soon

stop needing her to shop for him too. Soon Sam would ask her to stop picking out his clothes and soon he would stop wanting her to do anything for him. If all went well, he'd need her less and less. He'd slip further and further out of her orbit and into one that was wholly his own, a trajectory she would glimpse when she was permitted from a distance. Motherhood. Motherhood, it seemed immorally, was a poorly planned journey. It started like a sprint. One moment you were standing still, and the next you were running as fast as you could. The cries of a tiny baby like the bang of a starter pistol in your ears.

You were racing to the crib and with the stroller. You were darting from high chair to grocery store, from laundry to bath time, and then you were tearing off to kindergarten class and swimming class and music class. You were packing lunches and cooking dinners and taking temperatures and kissing scraped knees. You were baking birthday

cakes and helping with homework and hosting playdates. You were running, running, running, always with too little time and not enough sleep. And then it wasn't a sprint anymore. It was a marathon. And one day you woke up to find that you were, surprisingly enough, in pretty good shape. And just as you were catching your breath, just as you were hitting your stride, just as you were getting in the zone, someone said, hey, what are you doing? I don't want that sandwich. And you stop, a limp peanut butter and banana sandwich dangling from your hand. And you stare at them in amazement, not sure who they are and why they'd be saying this to you.

Until you realize to your shock that they are your child and that you have been benched. You're still a mother, but you're not in the race anymore. You're watching from the stands. You're a spectator. This is what Morley was thinking as she picked up the spandex underwear for Dave, which is why just 10 minutes later, Katie Singh, 17 years old and working her very first shift in the department store, found Morley sobbing in front of the men's underwear display. This was not something they'd covered on training day. Katie found her supervisor and told him about the weeping woman. Oh, for heaven's sake, he said, putting down an inventory list.

Not again. A week later, on another Saturday, Morley was getting ready to head out to the stores again to return the spandex underwear. She hadn't even given them to Dave, not out of kindness, out of instinct. Just before she gave them to him, it occurred to her that Dave might like them.

As she gathered her house keys and purse, Morley looked over at Sam, who was, once again, sitting on the couch reading a comic. She'd been trying all week to think of something fun that she and Sam might do together on the weekend. It occurred to her as she stood by the door with her keys in her hand that she'd been thinking too hard. All she wanted to do was spend some time with her son. Sam said, Morley, All she wanted to do was spend some time with her son. Sam said, Morley, why don't you come shopping with me?

We'll get you some new jeans. Sam said, I don't know. It'll be fun, said Morley. We'll have lunch after. Get hot chocolate. So the two of them headed downtown. They went to the bay. They returned the underwear. And then they headed to the bay. They returned the underwear.

And then they headed to the boys' department. Fifteen minutes later, Morley was having second thoughts about shopping with her son. She tried to find jeans Sam would like, but each pair she held up was greeted with a scowl or a shrug. When she insisted that he try some on, Sam threw his head back with such force that she thought he might have hurt himself. Katie Singh was at her post at the change room door. It was her second shift. She cringed when she saw the weeping lady again. when she saw the weeping lady again. I'm sorry, ma'am, she said nervously.

This is the men's change room. You can't go in. She pointed at Sam. He has to go in alone. So she sighed and sat down on a chair outside the change room doors. As she did, the strap of her purse caught on the arm of the chair and its contents flew across the floor in front of her.

Morley sat there and watched her favorite lipstick roll under a rack of housecoats. She had just begun to squeeze herself under the rack, reaching about, patting the ground in the dark, looking for her lipstick, when Sam came out the change room door. When he didn't see his mom, Sam paused near the chairs where he thought she'd be waiting. Then he remembered what his mother had always told him about getting lost. He was to go to the nearest checkout and wait there. Sam headed to the cashier. He sat down on the floor with his back against the wall to wait. Morley's fingers eventually curled around the familiar tube of lipstick and she crawled out from under the rack. She sat back down in the chair with her purse securely in her lap. Five minutes passed. Sam should have come out by now. Another five

minutes. What was going on in there? This was getting ridiculous. Was he reading in there? Had he fallen asleep? Morley decided that she had waited long enough. She got up and headed for the hallway of change rooms. She called for Sam. When he didn't reply, Morley peered into the first room. It was empty, and she was getting worried. She headed down the corridor, flinging doors open. Katie Singh a step behind. Morley was looking for Sam. Unfortunately, that's not who she found.

There's nothing like a woman breaking through a change room door and slamming into an anxious half-dressed stranger to liven up a Saturday afternoon. Morley burst in the man who wasn't Sam, made a desperate grab at the pants swimming around his ankles, and then he toppled onto the floor. There was a commotion. Sam heard the commotion and headed over. So did the department supervisor.

He looked at the man, at the frenzied woman scrambling down the corridor, at the sobbing Katie Singh, and he sighed. For heaven's sake, he said, not again. Ten minutes later, Morley and Sam were in the car driving home. Sam had cheered up considerably. Hey, said Sam, that was fun. We should shop more often. Then he said, what about lunch? Morley had forgotten all about lunch. Mortifying embarrassment tends to have that effect on her appetite.

Right, said Morley, and she peered down the road looking for some beacon of kid-friendly dining. What do you feel like, she said. Burgers? Pizza? Oh, said Sam, I was thinking sushi might be nice. Morley glanced over at her son. Sushi, said Morley. I didn't know you liked sushi. Yeah, said Sam. Yeah, said Morley. Well, I'm developing a taste for it, said Sam.

Really, said Morley. Well, I'm hoping to develop a taste for it, said Sam. Really, said Morley. Well, I'm hoping to develop a taste for it. Sam was quiet for a few seconds. Then he said, Mr. Harmon said I'd like it. Harmon's Fine Foods. When were you talking to Mr. Harmon, asked Morley. Last week, said Sam. After school.

You go into Harmon's after school? Not always, said Sam, after school. You go into Harmon's after school? Not always, said Sam. But last week he had oysters from Malpac. She was trying to park the car. She was looking over her shoulder and at her son. At the same time, it was hard to concentrate on both things. I tried one, said Sam, of the oysters. There was a little Japanese place across the street from where they parked. They went in and they sat together at the counter and they

watched the chef mold the sushi rice with his hand. They watched as he sliced a block of red tuna with his sharp blade. Sam was fascinated when he took a bamboo mat and a sheet of seaweed and rolled the seaweed around a cylinder of rice and cucumber. When their food was ready, Sam stared at the small green plate in front of him. He picked up a piece of the tuna. My first sushi, he said. He was beaming. He took a tentative bite, and then he turned to his mother. His mouth was still full. I don't think it's cooked enough for me. Morley showed him how to pour soy sauce into his little side dish and stir a bit of the green wasabi paste into the soy. Try dipping it first, she said.

Okay, said Sam. When they were finished, she said, what do you think? I think, said Sam, I think I like the avocado fish the best. They were walking down the street, the spring sun warming their faces. They were heading for Harmon's. Hello, Sam, said Mr. Harmon. Hello, Mr. Harmon, said Sam. This is my mother. I want to show her the pasta. Morley followed her son past the bins of perfectly arranged, perfect fruit. Past the bins of perfectly arranged, perfect vegetables. Down a narrow wooden aisle of perfectly arranged tin cans. Right to the back of the store to a cooler filled with little packages of exotic pasta.

Squid ink pasta with blue cheese. Acorn squash pasta with garlic chicken. She didn't notice that Mr. Harmon was standing behind them. We have a pasta class on Saturday afternoons next month, said Mr. Harmon. I've been telling him he should come. And now they were back on the street, back in the sun. they were back on the street, back in the sun. And Morley said, do you want to take that class? And Sam said, I couldn't. It's all grownups. And Morley said, I could come. And Sam said, would you tell people that you made me go? And Morley said, I could do that. And that's when she noticed they were holding hands. She hadn't noticed when they'd started.

She did notice, however, when they began swinging their arms back and forth, just the way they used to when Sam was a toddler. forth, just the way they used to when Sam was a toddler. She was smiling softly, smiling and swinging her arm. It was true, the race was almost over. Apparently she still had a while left to run. that was Sam's underwear we recorded that story at the Thousand Islands Playhouse in Gananoque back in 2007 I love that bit about motherhood being a poorly planned journey this part it started like a sprint One moment you were standing still and the next you were running as fast as you could. The cries of a tiny baby like the bang of a starter pistol in your ears. You were racing to the crib and with the stroller. You were darting from high

chair to grocery store, from laundry to bath time, and then you were tearing off to kindergarten class and swimming class and music class. You were packing lunches and cooking dinners and taking temperatures and kissing scraped knees. You were baking birthday cakes and helping with homework and hosting playdates. You were running, running, running, always with too little time and not enough sleep.

And then it wasn't a sprint anymore. It was a marathon. And one day you woke up to find that you were, surprisingly enough, in pretty good shape. And just as you were catching your breath, just as you were hitting your stride, just as you were getting in the zone, someone said, hey, what are you doing? I don't want that sandwich. It's so true.

Motherhood is exactly like that for me. Over and over and over again. Just when I feel like I've got it, just when I feel like I finally understand how to do something right, the game changes. Here's an example. Last year, my kids started playing soccer. It was our first time doing soccer, and it always takes me a while to get these things figured out. You know, I have to figure out what we need. Like, before we start, I feel proud of myself because I show up on time with two kids with two sets of cleats and two sets of shin guards. I'm on it. But then I realize my kids are the only kids that don't have socks

that cover their shin guards. So that next week, I scrambled, trying to find the right pair of socks that fit. Ideally, socks without seams, because Eloise is super sensitive to seams. So I'm trying to source seamless socks that are tall enough to cover shin guards. I'm texting other parents. I'm checking online. But will they arrive in time? No? All right. I'm driving into the city between meetings to try to find some store that sells seamless soccer socks tall enough to cover shin guards. Got them. So next week, week two,

I have the cleats, I have the shin guards, and I have the socks that are tall enough to cover their shin guards. But then that week at soccer, it's hot and they run out of water. So I make a note to pack two water bottles for the next class. And the week after that, I realize I really should pack a snack because the kids are starving after soccer and I'm not sure they can make it home and wait until dinner. I think our soccer was eight weeks long, and I finally got it dialed by week six, which means I had two lovely weeks where I knew what I was doing. And then we started swimming lessons. We're going to take a short break now, but we'll be back in a couple of minutes with another story about motherhood. So hang on to that saddle. We'll be right back. Time for our second story now. This one is from way back, like so far back, Stuart is talking about Tamagotchi toys. Remember those? This is Stuart from a concert recorded at Glenn Gould Studio in September

1997. This is the story we call Harrison Ford's Toes. It was on a Thursday early in the month when the snow had just begun. The Dave came downstairs for breakfast one morning and he said, you know where my blue sweater is? Morley hates questions like that. She had a dim memory of folding sweaters and sealing them in a cardboard box, but she had no memory of what she had done with that box. And this was dangerous territory. If she said anything that implied the sweater might have passed through her hands while April passed through May,

Morley would be opening herself up to all sorts of liabilities. If she couldn't produce the sweater, she was liable to be labeled a sweater thief. If, on the other hand, she was to deny all responsibility, she'd be denying her image of herself as a wife and a homemaker and a mother. In her heart, Morley wanted to be able to produce the blue sweater. She expected it of herself. That's what wives do. They pull blue sweaters out of cardboard boxes.

Just the way fly fishermen pull trout out of mountain streams. When it came to finding lost clothes, however, Morley was more a trawler than a trowder. She stood in the kitchen holding a box of cereal and a plastic bag of milk and imagined the impending search, saw herself moving through the house like one of those draggers that scour the ocean floor for scallops, as likely as not leaving just as much carnage behind her. Don't ask me about sweaters at breakfast, she snapped. It was the only thing she could think of saying. That night after supper, Morley headed into the basement with a cup of coffee and a heavy heart. She started down there instead of up in the attic because the basement fit her

mood. It was dark and damp and as far from God as she could get without leaving the house. As she opened the basement door and stared into the gloom, Morley had a dim notion that this was right, a feeling that maybe she was heading in the right direction. When she got there, she put her coffee on the washing machine and she stared at the pile of boxes along the basement wall. The boxes piled on top of each other. That one, she thought, shrugging. The box was sealed with masking tape. She pulled the tape loose and it caught in her fingers and she rolled it into a ball and the ball stuck to her pants. And she shook the ball loose and it stuck to her slipper.

And she stepped on it with the other foot and it stuck there. And she said a word that women don't normally say on CBC Radio. And then she kicked it free and bent down and opened the carton. Baby clothes. How had the box of baby clothes got to the top of the pile? It wasn't a good sign. The boxes were out of sequence. The next box she opened was full of old magazines. The one after that was a box of pants she hadn't worn in years. She was about to close the pant box when something caught her eye. There was something stuck down the side of the box. She reached in and pulled out a package, a package about the size of an apple,

wrapped in green and red paper with a little card that said, Merry Christmas, Sam. Love, Margaret. Morley had no idea what it might be. She sat down on a pile of boxes and she reached for her coffee. She took a sip and then she opened the present. It was a palm-sized disc with a video screen, a miniature electronic game. It was the Tamagotchi Dave's mother Margaret had sent from Cape Breton two Christmases ago. Morley remembered now, remembered the frustrating hours she had spent

that Christmas day searching for the Tamagotchi when it didn't turn up under the tree. She hadn't wanted to give it to Sam, but she hadn't deliberately misplaced it. Funny, she thought, what the mind does. Margaret had sent the Tamagotchi early that December. I had to lie to get it, she said proudly on the telephone. It's the last Tamagotchi in Cape Breton. Now, you might remember what a big deal Tamagotchis were that Christmas, such a big deal that they were hard to come by. Margaret had phoned all over Cape Breton looking for one of these things, and when she found a department store with one left, she had convinced the clerk to put it aside, to hold it for her.

Now, they didn't normally do that, said the clerk, but in a moment of inspired improvisation, Margaret had appealed to the clerk's goodwill. She had told him that her grandson was very, very sick, critically sick, and he had agreed to put the last Tamagotchi away for her. Now, Morley didn't feel comfortable with that kind of lie, and when it arrived in Margaret's Christmas package in early December, Morley worried that the Tamagotchi might be jinxed. It would be tempting fate, she thought, to give Sam something that had been bought like that. God might have been watching Margaret. And if he was a god of retribution, Sam could be struck down with some horrible biblical disease.

Morley imagined pathogens sweeping along the Trans-Canada Highway towards her house, probably in a load of Cape Breton lobsters. She agonized about this for days, how much easier she thought one afternoon if she'd been born Catholic instead of Presbyterian. If she'd been born Catholic, she could have gone to confession, preferably in a church where they didn't know her. And she could have asked the priest where on the scale of mortal sins lying to store clerks ranked. But Morley wasn't Catholic, and she couldn't talk to a priest. All she could do was talk to herself and knowing

in her heart that this awful little computer chip was a death sentence, Morley had hidden it in the box of pants and without intending to had forgotten where she'd put it. She sat on her pile of boxes in the basement and she stared at the little toy and then she did something that she suspected the priest would have told her was wrong. She ripped the plastic bubble off the cardboard backing and let the game fall into her hand. The screen was blank. There were two buttons underneath it. She pressed one, nothing happened, and then she pressed the other. Still nothing happened. She picked up the cardboard packaging that she'd dropped onto the floor. There were no instructions written on it, not even in Taiwanese. She looked at the toy again, and she pressed both buttons,

and two things happened simultaneously. A little egg bounced abruptly onto the Tamagotchi screen, and Dave appeared. When Morley saw her husband walking across the basement, she slipped the Tamagotchi into her pocket. Maybe if she had already found the blue sweater, she would have shared this discovery with him, but she hadn't. And he didn't need to know about it, or not now anyway. He didn't need to know that she was the one who had lost the present that his mother had sent Sam two Christmases ago. If she could lose track of a toy, she could, by definition, lose track of a sweater.

So she slipped the Tamagotchi into her pocket and she looked around for cover, for something that might explain what she was doing sitting on a cardboard box in her basement. The only thing around was the box of magazines she had opened. So she picked a magazine out of the box, which happened to be a People magazine, and which happened to have a picture of the actor Harrison Ford on the cover. It was a casual photograph. Ford was sitting on a porch outside. Maybe it was at his home. He was wearing jeans and a black T-shirt and nothing on his feet.

His feet were the closest thing to the camera. Morley was staring at the picture of Harrison Ford when Dave sat down beside her. Look at his toes, she said, handing him the magazine. Dave looked at the picture earnestly. They're perfect, said Morley. I think he has pedicures. She wasn't thinking straight. She was upset about the sweater. She was preoccupied with the Tamagotchi, or she wouldn't have said it, about his toes being perfect.

Knowing that just as there are things that men can say among themselves in locker rooms, things that are all right to say when the only thing they're wearing is a jockstrap and the only people listening are other men, so too there are things that can be said among women which should not, in the interest of long and happy marriages, be said at home. She took the magazine away and threw it back in the box. Come on, she said, let's go upstairs. It was an hour later when they were watching the news that Dave, without taking his eyes off the television, said, you're attracted to Harrison Ford's toes.

But Morley sighed, that's not what I meant, she said. I said, I think he has pedicures. You said they were perfect toes, said Dave. They are perfect toes, said Morley. That's the point. I don't know men who have pedicures. If you're not attracted to Harrison Ford's toes, then why are we talking about them, said Dave. Because, said Morley, and she was being very careful here, she was not going to have a fight about Harrison Ford's toes. But because, said Morley, I've never heard of a man who has pedicures. And then she said, I think I'd leave you if you started to have pedicures. Dave frowned. Well, said Morley, I'd be awfully suspicious. Later when she was getting undressed for bed Morley remembered the Tamagotchi in her pocket and she took it out and she slipped it into her purse she had disposed

of it the next day at work. They lay in bed that night beside each other but not together the lights were off and the two of them were lying on their backs both of them staring at the ceiling both of them absorbed in their own thoughts. And then just as Morley was slipping away, Dave propped himself up on an elbow and looked down on her and said, remember, remember when I killed the snake last summer? Morley grunted softly and turned toward her husband. At the cottage, he said, when I killed that snake? Morley nodded. toward her husband at the cottage, he said, when I killed that snake. Morley nodded, and Dave said, Harrison Ford is afraid of snakes, you know. Morley raised her head, what, she said.

Dave said, it's like a phobia. He'd be chewing on his toes if there was a snake in that picture on the cover of people magazine Morley dropped her head down on the pillow Dave she said that's Indiana Jones who's afraid of snakes she forgot about the Tamagotchi until the next day at lunchtime she was standing in line in a cafeteria waiting to pay for her lunch, and she reached into her purse looking for her wallet, and she pulled out the Tamagotchi instead. The egg that she had produced by pushing the two buttons in the basement was rocking back and forth on the screen, and as she watched it, it started to rock faster and faster, and then right before her eyes, right there in the cafeteria line, it hatched. Suddenly, instead of the lifeless egg, there was a little creature pacing back and forth across the screen.

Morley was amazed by what had happened. She stood in front of the cash register, staring at the screen in her hand. The egg had hatched into a little animated chicken. The man in the line behind her said, excuse me, and pushed by her. And the little chicken looked out at Morley and chirped. And the most unexpected thing happened. Morley was hit by a wave of maternal instinct. happened. Morley was hit by a wave of maternal instinct. She was 46 years old. Her youngest child was seven, and she had just given birth in a cafeteria. Before she had a bite of her sandwich, chicken salad,

she spent 15 minutes sitting at her table in the cafeteria playing with her baby. It took her five minutes of trial and error to figure out which buttons to press to feed it, and then a few more minutes to figure out how to clean its cage. And when she finally put the Tamagotchi down, she felt simultaneously proud and ashamed of herself. She stuffed it back in her purse, ate her sandwich, and went back to work. Twice that afternoon, she pulled it out and fed it. Caring for it at home was more complicated. Excuse me, she said when it began to chirp while she was washing the dishes.

She went to the bathroom and locked the door and pulled the toy out of her pocket and pressed the buttons. She knew this was ridiculous, but she wasn't about to let a chicken starve to death in her house. 20 minutes later, while she was straightening out the pile of shoes by the front door, the Tamagotchi chirped again. She frowned as she headed back to the bathroom. Are you okay, said Dave, who was walking out as she was walking in. Morley put the Tamagotchi in her t-shirt drawer when she got to bed, and when it started to chirp, Dave looked up, puzzled. Morley said, it's a stopwatch

I brought from work, and she hopped over to the dresser and she picked up her tamagotchi and took it to the bathroom and looked at the chicken and said you can't be serious I just fed you Dave was too preoccupied to notice what was going on. As soon as Morley ran to the bathroom, Dave had lifted the sheets and stared at his feet. He was still wearing his socks. He glanced towards the bathroom and then he reached down and he pulled one of the socks off and his toenails glistened under the covers. They looked beautiful.

As good as Harrison Ford's toes. Better. Because David had a pedicure that afternoon. When he heard the toilet flush, he pulled his sock back on and he rolled over. It wasn't that he was threatened by Harrison Ford's toes. He knew Morley wasn't going to leave him because some movie star had prettier feet than he did. He was more curious than anything. It had never occurred to him that a man could have his nails done.

It seemed like a waste of money to pay someone to cut your nails. If God had wanted me to have pedicures, thought Dave, why would he have given me teeth? But the more he stared at the picture of Harrison Ford's feet, he had, you see, brought the magazine upstairs and had hidden it under a pile of papers by his bed so he could study it more carefully. And the more he looked at the picture and the more he compared Harrison Ford's feet to his feet, he had to admit that even when it came to toes,

Harrison Ford was Hollywood and he was Hamilton. And when he woke up the next morning and was standing in the bathroom brushing his teeth and he looked down at his ugly feet, he knew then and there just as Betty Friedan had cleared the way for women to walk proudly out of their kitchens and into the workplace, Harrison Ford had just made it possible for him to have a pedicure. He just had to make sure it wasn't at some neighborhood place where he might be recognized. When Dave got to work, he hauled out the yellow pages. The woman at the first place said, I don't know if we do, men. No one's ever asked. There was no confusion at the second store. men. No one's ever asked. There was no confusion at the second store. We do men's hands, but not their feet, said the receptionist. And then she added mysteriously, we don't wax men either.

I don't understand it either. I don't understand it either. Now, Morley had always said that having her feet done was the best. Once when she had said that, Dave had said, better than a massage? And Morley had said, way better, better than anything. Because he didn't tell Morley that he went for a pedicure, Dave was not able to ask her how allowing someone to work on the soles of your feet with power tools could possibly be thought of in the same context as massage. The very idea that his wife could enjoy this cast her in a new and worrying light.

If this thought Dave, what else? But he didn't tell her about the pedicure, couldn't tell her. Not because his feet looked bad, but because they looked so damn good. They were the best looking part of him. Dave didn't know they'd put nail polish on his toes. His toes looked like they'd been verithaned and startlingly different than any other part of his body.

So Dave was wearing socks in bed. And when he wanted to check his feet, which was something he felt compelled to do often because they looked so damn good, he'd go into the bathroom and lock the door and take his socks off and stare at them. Once he took the People magazine in there and put it on the floor and put his feet beside Harrison Ford's, and he thought he didn't come out so bad.

Maybe not Hollywood, but not Hamilton either. And all the time Dave was doing this, sneaking in and out of the bathroom with a nail file to do maintenance or to have a quick peek, Morley was sneaking in and out of the same room to feed the Tamagotchi. This was going on for a week.

Both of them too preoccupied with their own secret to notice the others. Only Stephanie, who needed the bathroom more than either of them, seemed to be bothered by it. What is going on, she said one night, while Morley scooted in as Dave slipped out. The first time Morley answered that question, it was to a woman she'd never met. It was on a Friday night, and she was grocery shopping, and she was feeding the Tamagotchi as she moved down the cereal aisle. So she had her head down and wasn't paying attention,

and she knocked into the woman coming the other way, and they smiled at each other. And Morley ruefully held up the Tamagotchi, and she said, it's my son's alien chicken. Let's see, said the woman. As Morley held the toy out in the palm of her hand, the chicken started to chirp. Don't worry, said the woman.

It requires less attention when it grows up. It was a true moment of motherhood. It was the next evening that Stephanie came downstairs wearing Dave's blue sweater. Morley stared at her. Where did you get that, she demanded. It was in my drawer, said Stephanie defensively. That night as they lay in bed, Morley reached out for Dave and said, do you remember last Christmas when I couldn't find the present your mother sent Sam? And she got out of bed and opened her t-shirt drawer and she picked out the Tamagotchi and she handed it to Dave. She showed him how she fed it and how she cleaned it and how she played with it and then as they sat there in their bed the toy started to beep. What else does it do asked Dave handing it back.

It beeps said Morley pushing the buttons expertly and then it dies. She fiddled with the buttons for a few moments and then carried it back to the bureau and she came back to bed and she snuggled up to Dave and the Tamagotchi started beeping from the drawer and Morley said I gotta go and get it. I'm not going to be able to sleep if I think that thing's going to die tonight and she flipped on the light and she started to get out of bed and Dave held out his arm and said, I'll get it. And he got it and he held it out and he smiled and he said, what sort of trauma? He asked, what sort of trauma do you think it would be for a mother to find out that their husband had murdered her baby?

And Morley said, no, don't do that. Even Harrison Ford wouldn't do that, even in a movie. And Dave said, what? Morley was looking at his feet. Smiling. The Tamagotchi lasted almost two more weeks. When it died, Morley took it outside and buried it in the backyard beside the guinea pig. Thank you very much. That was Harrison Ford's Toes. We played that today in honor of motherhood. In case you missed it, we have a special album dedicated to everyone's favorite Vinyl Café mom.

It's called To Morally With Love. Three stories all about morally. You can find it online at VinylCafé.com Alright, that's it for today, but we'll be back here next week with two more Dave and Morley stories, including a Cape Breton story about the man who punched trees. There were three

of them there that afternoon, and they all saw it. Billy Mitchell, Gordy Beeman, and Dave. You could ask any of them, they'd tell you exactly the same thing. Gabriel Dubois wound up, punched the tree, and the tree exploded. With his bare fist, said Sam.

With his bare fist, said Dave. Now, Billy, Gordy, and Dave, none of them said a word. They just stared with their mouths hanging open while he walked away. When he was out of sight, Billy Mitchell said, Did you see that? What had happened was not only impossible, it was beyond belief. The tree actually exploded. Gabriel Dubois hit the tree and there was a sound like a whoosh,

and then a puff of smoke or something, and the tree was gone. It vanished into thin air. It was like a movie, said Dave. Sam said, and it was a big tree. It was a huge tree, said Dave, a huge tree. Sam said, and it was a big tree. It was a huge tree, said Dave, a huge tree. They went over to see it, like they were sneaking up on an animal that might have been dead, but also might have been alive. Which is to say they were careful going up to it.

And when they got there, it was gone, said Dave. There was nothing left of it. Nothing, said Dave. There was nothing left of it. Nothing, said Sam. There was a pile of soda, said Dave, and bark, like a hollow tube of bark, like the skin. Of course, you know what happens then. Uh-uh, said Sam. Well, the only question was, who was going to go first? We pulled straws, said Dave. Billy won. Won, said Sam. Well, said Dave, I don't know. They pulled straws, said Dave. Billy won. Won, said Sam. Well, said Dave, I don't know. They pulled straws and Billy got the short one. And they found a birch that looked the same size. It looked exactly the same. And Billy took off his shirt and he wrapped it around his fist. He was a pretty determined kid, said Dave.

You got to give him that. What happened, said Sam? He broke his knuckles in four places, said Dave. That's how they learned about yellow birches. That's next week on the podcast. I hope you'll join us. That's next week on the podcast. I hope you'll join us. Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe is part of the Apostrophe Podcast Network. The recording engineer is someone who, I kid you not, feels like a mother to me sometimes. So much love and so much support. Greg DeCloot. Theme music is by Danny Michelle, and the show is produced by Louise Curtis, Greg DeCloot, and me, Jess Milton. Let's meet again next week. Until then, so long for now.