My Nest Isn't Empty, It Just Has More Closet Space: The Amazing Adventures of an Ordinary Woman Read Online Free PDF Page B

soul.”
    “Ma, Frank still has his soul. He’s not dead yet.”
    “I know that,” she said, irritably. “They share the same soul.”
    “Ma, that’s crazy.”
    “Sorry, but I know, I can tell. Remember the earthquake?”
    This shuts me up, temporarily. It’s matter of public record that Mother Mary was the only person in Miami to feel an earthquake that took place in Tampa, and the South Florida newspapers even dubbed her Earthquake Mary. Ever since then, she thinks she’s Al Roker, but supernatural.
    She said, “It’s the same soul. Absolutely.”
    “Ma, just because they have the same birthday doesn’t mean they have the same soul.”
    “Hmph. What do you know about birthdays?”
    She was referring to something I’ll never live down, which happened to me over twenty years ago, when Daughter Francesca was three years old. I had taken her in a stroller into an optician’s shop in town, and a man walked through the door, pointed directly at Francesca, and said: “Her birthday is February 6.”
    I was astounded. “How do you know?”
    “I just do.”
    I went home that day and called my mother. “Ma, some guy just guessed that Francesca’s birthday is February 6! Isn’t that amazing?”
    “No.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because her birthday is February 7.”
    I blinked. “It is?”
    “Yes, dummy.”
    Look, I have no idea how it happened, but for the first three years of Francesca’s life, I celebrated her birthday on the wrong day.
    Sue me.
    Maybe it’s because I was in labor for 349,484 hours, so the exact day she was born seemed like a technicality. And since then, it was just she and I celebrating a day earlier, with nobody around to know better.
    So now I can never say anything about birthdays, ever.
    But at least I know where everybody’s soul should be.
    And their washer-dryers, too.

Focused
    I’m trying to understand why I have six different pairs of eyeglasses. I’m only one woman, with two nearsighted eyes.
    I realized this odd state of affairs when I decided that I would finally replace my glasses, which were crooked because I had put them on the bedside table one night and didn’t reach far enough, so they fell to the floor. I was too tired to pick them up and figured I’d get them in the morning, which I did.
    With my foot.
    I specialize in ruining glasses. I sit on them, drop them face-down, set thick books on them, and put them in the case wrong, snapping off a stem. Freud would say I don’t like wearing glasses.
    Guy’s a genius.
    Anyway I wore my broken glasses for a week, but I got tired of looking drunk, so I bought a new pair. We won’t talk about how much they cost, because now you need a second mortgage to buy glasses, which is why I never throw any away, but that’s not my point.
    My point is that now I own a new pair of normal glasses, a pair of ancient prescription sunglasses I use for the beach and yard work, a pair of semi-ancient prescription sunglasses I use for driving and everything else, a pair of non-prescription sunglasses, and a pair of wacky zany kooky reading glasses, which is either the mark of a true eccentric or a middle-aged woman.
    Or both.
    My wacky zany kooky readers look like spin art on the board-walk, in fuchsia and turquoise with weird swirls of gold. I’ve found that even the most conservative woman will wear wacky zany kooky readers. In fact, the more conservative the woman, the wackier the readers. Secretly, I think we’re all sending the same message, which is:
    I’m not dead yet.
    I’m letting my freak flag fly.
    Also you’re not the boss of me.
    Yay, us!
    Anyway, to stay on point, how can I have so many glasses? Every time I go anywhere, my purse is full of glasses cases. And the craziest part?
    I also have contacts.
    I got contacts in the sixth grade, after somebody told me, “Men don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses.”
    Ouch.
    Back then, contact lenses were made of actual glass, so you had to get used to them by wearing them