Today on Easter Sunday, I watched my two adult children, Lexi and Dylan, prepare a lovely meal for our family. I wandered in-and-out of the kitchen, working through my mundane chores, as they prattled on about nothing and everything, and prepped the asparagus and deviled the eggs and God knows what else to get the meal ready and on the table.

Lex, now thirty, Dylan not far behind at twenty-three… happily sharing the space together and if any outsider had stumbled onto the scene, they would have believed that these two peas in a pod always got along… just splendidly.

Yes, to unsuspecting eyes… all would seem well in the proverbial “sibling” kitchen… but they would be wrong. Very wrong. Because if they had been standing with me in the kitchen just several short months ago… they would have seen Lexi licking the candy and known… that appearances can be deceiving.

It was Halloween, the only traditional holiday I seem to like these days… and we had bought a ton of candy.

I had grown-up following in my mom’s footsteps and buying two types of candy: the good candy; Snickers, Three Musketeers, Butterfingers, the upper echelon of chocolate treats which my mom gave to her “favorite” trick-or-treaters, or children who’s costumes amused her, or a child who was charismatic enough to win her over therefore… receiving a coveted A-list treat. And… the other candy: the bag of mixed mini-tootsie rolls and lollipops that she gave to high-schoolers she felt were too old to be begging candy off of neighbors or, as back-up candy on particularly busy Halloweens when she rather stay up and give each child at least ONE tootsie roll, instead of having to concede defeat and turn off the porch light.

It was a candy code I had learned and mastered.

It was a candy code we lived by.

And if we had EXTRA candy after Halloween… my brothers and I of course always fought over the “good” bowl of candy… fought to the point of fist-a-cuffs and beyond. Blood would be spilled and it was well worth it.

Believe it or not, I never realized that Lex and Dylan had any arguments over the candy. Their fighting was so tame compared to the scenes me and my brothers created that I really didn’t notice it.

My two off-spring had never picked up a knife and threatened to stab a sibling over a Baby Ruth.

My two precious lambs had never tried to drown each other in the pool in hopes of stealing a sibiling’s pillowcase full of Halloween spoils.

No… I had not witnessed this type of brutality… but what I found last Halloween was that their war was much more strategic… diabolical in design.

It was the day after the big event. It was a lucky year for the siblings. Halloween had fallen on a week night and so we had been left with two full bowls: one of A-list candy and one of B-list candy.

I figured my kids were too old to really care if candy was sitting around the house so I made a mental note to take both bowls of candy to school and give them to my 11th graders as a fun surprise. But when I woke that morning, I found the A-list bowl was gone… and the pathetic B-list bowl was left behind.

I imagine I made a face at this moment. I thought of what my Juniors would think if I showed up with a bowl of B-list candy. I would be the “cheap” teacher… the one who didn’t go “all out” for her students… the one that skimped on trick-or-treaters and next thing you know… I would be the old lady who gave out demerits for wearing flip flops and referrals for cussing. No…  that wasn’t going to be me. So, I left the B-list candy behind and went to school empty-handed.

I forgot about the candy until I was back home in the afternoon but, as soon as I walked in and saw the pathetic group of tootsie rolls sitting in the bowl on the counter, my inner child became incensed and wanted to know just WHO in the HELL had taken all of the A-list candy?

I went upstairs and checked the children’s bedrooms: no tell-tale wrappers strewn across the beds… no bowl stashed beneath. They were clean.

I went back downstairs and looked around the living room: nothing. No sign of the chocolate.

I dug through every cupboard in the kitchen thinking their grandma, Nana, had hidden it. She was a known candy hoarder but… once again… nothing.

I grabbed my keys and headed out the back door. There was one room I hadn’t checked… the recording studio where Dylan practiced his drums and worked on his music. Maybe the candy was hidden there.

I put the key in the lock, jimmied the door a bit, gave it a push, then opened it wide to find an almost empty candy bowl on the floor and candy wrappers strewn everywhere.

“Dylan.” I whispered in an accusatory rasp. “You little bastard.”

I grabbed what was left of the candy and brought it back in the house.

When Dylan arrived home later that afternoon I read him the riot act for eating the candy.

“What does it matter?” he shouted back. “Why do you care if I ate the candy? Did you want it?”

“Yes,” I shouted. “Yes, I did! I wanted to take it to my students.”

Dylan pointed at the bowl of tootsie rolls and pops. “Well take that,” he said. “There’s a full bowl of candy right there.”

I snatched the bowl from the kitchen bar and held it up to his face. “I can’t take this candy,” I screeched. “This is the cheap candy. I don’t want my kids thinking I’m the cheap teacher that gives out bad Halloween candy.”

“Well, exactly,” Dylan said. “That’s why I took the other bowl and ate it. I’m not gonna eat the secondary candy when I can eat the good ones.”

I had to fight not to smile.

It was a real struggle.

I knew he was right.

I totally understood his logic.

But as most parents know… there is a time when you just cannot back down and this was one of those times.

I gave him my most vicious mother glance and said, “Go outside now. And don’t you dare eat any more of this candy.”

He sauntered off. His big pom of curly hair bouncing about as he tried to walk away without a smirk.

I leaned over the bowl of candy and sighed.

I knew I would have done the same thing.

I knew years ago I HAD done the same thing.

But it didn’t calm me down in the least.

I walked away from the candy and went to lie down on the bed.

Several days went by without event.

The A-list candy: just sitting on the bar.

No one touching it.

No one.

Not Dylan of course… but Nana and Lexi didn’t touch it either.

I started to wonder if something was going on each time I walked past it.

I examined it: It looked like the same amount of pieces were in there since the day I had scolded Dylan.

So, I finally asked Lex.

“Oh, I ate a couple,” she said. “But Dylan is the one that really wants it,” she dug through the bowl looking for a favorite . “But he told me you wouldn’t allow him to have anymore. Can you believe him?” she picked up a candy, unwrapped it and popped it in her mouth.

“I mean, he ate almost the whole bowl.” She swallowed the candy she had and went to unwrap another one. “The WHOLE bowl,” she repeated as she popped the second one in her mouth. “What a little asshole.  I didn’t even really want any this year. But he was being such a jerk, it made me want to take them all. Do you know that he actually took the whole bowl out into the recording studio, locked the door and wouldn’t share it with me?”

“Yes,” I said. “That’s why I wouldn’t let him have any more.”

“Yeah,” Lex said. “That’s what I thought. You know, he comes in here every day and if he sees me touching it… he gets all bent out of shape and says that I’m leaving my germs all over the candy… and that no one wants to pick a piece of candy that’s been touched by a bunch of germy people but in particular, me with my germy hands.”

And just then… I watched as Lex’s face registered some brilliant diabolical idea. It was fascinating to watch. It was just a moment… a brief second…. and before I could stop her, she snatched all of the remaining candy bars up out of the bowl and licked the entire package of each and everyone of them with a dramatic flair. Yes: Each and EVERYONE.

I watched as her tongue circled the wrappers and left a thick film of saliva from end-to-end. It was absolutely disgusting.

Then, I watched as she sat each one back in the bowl, walked to the fridge and grabbed some apple juice, and then wandered off to her bedroom as if I hadn’t been watching at all.

I stood there… stunned… wondering why I had never thought to do something so insidious when I was at war with my brothers over the Halloween candy. I guess that’s the difference between fighting at seven and fighting at thirty: more brain power.

Just then, Dylan walked in the back door and when he saw me standing by the candy bowl, came over and stood across from me as he eyed the leftover Halloween treats.

“May I have one of these now?” He asked sweetly.

I pushed the bowl towards him. “Yes, of course, go ahead.”

I watched as he fingered through the selection before making his choice.

“Lex was touching all of these,” he said with disgust. “I told her no one wants candy with her germs all over it.”

Then he ripped open the end of a Snicker’s bar with his teeth and began to eat it.

I tried not to smile.

“What?” he said.

I shook my head as if to say no.

“What, Mom?” he said again.

“Nothing,” I said. “Take them all.”

He looked at me suspiciously. “Did you do something to this candy?” He asked.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “I’m your mother.”

He picked up the bowl and headed out to the recording studio. “Good,” he said. “Cause I don’t want Lexi getting her germs on any of it. I’m taking it back out with me so she can’t touch it.”

I heard the back door slam and then a quiet little laugh come from the top of the stairs.

I craned my neck and looked up the stairwell to see Lex, lying on the floor, just as she had done as a small child, head pressed against the carpet, giggling with glee.

“YES!” she said as she held her fist up with triumphant joy before sliding back into her bedroom, shutting the door, and disappearing from my view.

When my children were growing up, Thanksgiving morning signified the beginning of the BIG CHRISTMAS PUSH.

Why? Well, because it was this particular morning that our local newspaper would arrive wrapped heavy with all of the holiday catalogs and weighing more than our Thanksgiving turkey.

Lexi Lou and Dylan would run for the ads, wooly zip-up footed pajamas on, Crayola markers in hand, fighting over particular pages as they rushed forward to lay on the living room floor and circle their holiday fantasy toys to their hearts’ content.

I didn’t think much about it… seemed normal to me.

I can’t tell you how many times I ran the SEARS catalog ragged marking page-after-page of needed Barbie doll swag and G.I. Joe’s before strategically placing it on top of my parent’s reading pile by the upstair’s toilet ensuring that it would be considered often and seriously.

But the year SPICE WORLD came out… something happened that changed this mundane yearly routine into a homophobic episode for my husband, Joe.

Dylan, who was in 2nd grade at the time, had grown-up with a houseful of women.

We loved to put him in dresses, paint his toe nails, tie bows in his hair and by the time he was 7, Lexi Lou and I felt, we had created a pretty solid little “metrosexual.”

(note image below)

Joe, had tolerated these acts over the years, and though he had never exhibited homophobic tendencies when out with our numerous gay friends, something seemed to “snap” when it came to his own son.

“You better not make him gay,” he said to me on several occasions.

“I can’t make him GAY, Joe,” I said, full of exasperation and annoyed that my “liberal”  husband sounded so much like some poor man’s version of Rush Limbaugh. “And what’s the matter with you?” I snapped. “You’ve always supported Gay rights? Have you lost your mind?”

He inhaled a long drag off his smoke and blew it in my face. “I support the rights of everyone to be gay except my son” and then he walked away to go pout in the garage.

I knew, deep down, that if Dylan were gay, Joe would come around and would accept it, but I could also see the man that had grown-up with a father who had given him shit about his long hair and tight leather pants and that there was a whole other “meta-story” going on in this continuous conversation.

And so the sins of the father are repeated on the son, I thought to myself, before I went to find Dylan to see if he might let me paint his toe nails for awhile.

It wasn’t more than five minutes later that Joe came to find me.

He stomped through the backdoor, stomped through the kitchen, grabbed my arm by the front door and dragged me into the hallway.

“What now?” I asked.

“Did you see this,” Joe snarled. “Did you see what Dylan circled in the Christmas catalog.”

I had seen a lot of the circles actually. I mean the kids had a good hundred or so toys in their “Must Have for Christmas” rotation.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Joe.”

He held up his fist to reveal a mostly crumpled Christmas ad with one large circle on it.

“Look!” he said as he slapped it against my chest. “Look at what your son circled.”

Oh Jesus, I thought, he just said “your” son. I always knew it was bad if Joe said “your son” instead of “my son.”

I walked over to the bed and pressed the crumpled pages gently against the spread and flattened them once again and there… in all its glory was a large picture of a POSH SPICE doll… circled for all the world to see.

I looked back at Joe, completely clueless.

“So?” I said.

“You did it,” Joe said. “My son’s gay. My son is totally gay. I hope you’re fucking happy.”

He grabbed the catalog page off the bed, crumpled it into a ball, threw it to the floor and stomped out of the room.

He was halfway down the hall before he shouted, “And if you buy him that fucking doll, I’m not gonna be here on Christmas morning!”

My calm exterior did not betray the intense fire that had just been ignited.

He had thrown down the gauntlet.

He had drawn a line in the sand.

Tell me I can’t buy my son a fucking doll you homophobic bastard… I wanted to scream. I’ll buy him a God damn rainbow shirt that says, EXTREMELY QUEER and a pair of ass-less chaps, fucker!

But instead, I kicked the bedroom door shut behind him and readied myself to go brave the crowds the next morning, buy Dylan his POSH SPICE doll, wrap it and place it under the tree, on Christmas day, as a gift from Santa: who, I wanted to bring to Joe’s attention, looked pretty gay in his leather boots, red fur suit, and his beautiful bearded “bear” appearance.

Over the course of the next few weeks, Joe assumed, due to my uncommon silence, that he had won the battle, and I was pleased that he had underestimated my vengeance for once. It made it all the easier to gloat Christmas morning, as I sat watching him smugly enjoy Dylan open his “gender specific” Legos and G.I. Joe’s and Lexi open her “gender specific” Barbies and My Little Ponies.

I couldn’t wait to rock his “gender specific” world.

We were down to the last two presents.

I handed Lexi her box and Dylan his.

Lexi unwrapped her’s first: it was a new water polo ball.

Joe loved that Lexi was “athletic” so… he didn’t think anything about it but then… something in his eye twitched and he looked towards the box in Dylan’s hands.

I smiled a cruel smile as my son ripped open his gift and squealed with girlish delight at his new prized possession: a POSH SPICE DOLL.

Joe folded.

I actually watched the manhood melt away from his big furry frame.

Defeated.

He tried to smile as Lexi ran out to throw her ball in the pool and Dylan ran to his room to play with his doll.

“Don’t you ever tell me I can’t buy my son a doll again,” I said with steely determination.

Joe eye-balled me but didn’t speak.

He got up quietly from the chair and went out into the backyard to smoke and watch Lex play.

It was about thirty minutes later, as I was cooking breakfast, that I realized Dylan was still in his room. I leaned back from cooking our Christmas scrambled eggs and craned my neck to get a better look.

Bedroom door still closed.

Pretty quiet.

“Joe!” I shouted from the kitchen.

Joe walked in from the back and grabbed a piece of crisp bacon from the plate on the bar.

“Could you go check on Dylan?” I asked. “He’s been in his room this whole time.”

Joe looked concerned, worried that his son wasn’t enjoying his Christmas, as he padded off down the hall to quietly check on Dylan.

I went back to the eggs when I was suddenly startled by the loudest cry of joy I had ever heard on Christmas morning: it did not come from a child. It came from my husband.

I dropped my spoon and stared down the hallway at Joe.

He was doing some weird little dance and I could hear Dylan shouting from the bedroom, “STOP IT DAD! GO AWAY!”

Suddenly, Dylan’s door slammed in Joe’s face and Joe rushed towards me, his face inches from mine, as he whispered, “I win. Do you hear me? I win…” and then grabbed a biscuit and bounced off into the living room.

I turned the heat down on the stove and walked quietly to Dylan’s room to see what the hell Joe was so happy about.

I opened the door slowly and there found my son enjoying his POSH SPICE doll.

Her white undies and high heels were strewn across the rug, her black skin-tight dress was hanging from the nightstand.

He had Posh completely naked and propped up on his lap as they watched SPICE WORLD together.

God damn it, I thought, the little bastard’s straight.

I closed the door and walked back to the kitchen.

I could see Joe in the living room, playing his guitar, shit-eating grin on his face, smug as can be, singing a stupid little song and laughing at me every few moments.

He couldn’t have been more proud of Dylan if he had graduated “high honors” from M.I.T. or had won a Grammy for Artist-of-the-Year.

I stewed in the moment… hating that I had to concede defeat… when suddenly I felt a small arm wrap around my waist.

“I love my doll, Mom,” Dylan said with a big hug. “I love her so much. Thank you for telling Santa to get her for me.”

I reached down, my anger melted by the gentleness of my little man, as I hugged him hard and kissed the top of his head. “I love you,” I whispered noting his camouflage jammies and his red painted toe nails. “I love you just as you are” I said.

Dylan smiled, as he ran over to love on his dad.

I watched as my two furry “bears” played with Dylan’s new doll and bonded over their mutual attraction to the “hotness” of POSH SPICE.

I was not perfect in my marriage.

(As this story will soon prove)

But often times… Joe is blamed for the complete demise of our relationship and I’d like to go on the record as saying: I was at fault too.

Those of you who knew Joe and I as a couple would probably remember us as: passionate… tempestuous… or the crueler of you… dysfunctional.

We definitely ran the gambit of emotions, from love to hate, and often fought our way through our relationship but, always found our way back to happiness through a mutual love of laughter. And so… Joe would tell jokes and act out vivid stories, after one of his many benders, when he hoped to melt my anger and get back in my good graces and I… would prank him with practical jokes: My only way of “getting even” with him without really… “getting even.”

By the time we had been together for several years Joe had already fallen victim to many a prank:

The time I told him if he put a hair clip on his nose it wouldn’t really hurt, demonstrating on my own nose, but not really clipping it tight, as I watched Joe mimic me, the claw like mechanism biting into his fleshy skin as he screamed in horror, cried out in pain, and tears ran down his distorted face.

Or the time I pretended I was an alien, just after he had finished watching Communion and Fire in the Sky, giggling with glee as I heard him claw in the darkness at the hall door, moaning in horror, as he tried to escape from the creature that he somehow imagined was behind him, horrifying in it’s unknown image, as he remained unable to unlock the door in the dark.

And Joe, though not always a “good sport” would always accept this form of comically cruel punishment as a consequence for his behavior.

He knew what he put me through.

Everyone knew what he put me through.

And so… this is how our story went.

It was mid-winter.

Joe had been on quite a run: fresh off tour… cocky in away that comes from being fawned over on the road… and coming down from two months of excessive partying.

T.S.O.L. had been on Mtv when they hit New York and I had noted in the interview that Joe had chosen not to wear his wedding ring, later telling me that “It looked better for the band if he appeared single.”

But his big-headed attitude… his flippant reply… had stayed firmly stuck in my craw for weeks and I knew… if a situation arose at home where I could make him pay for this mistake that didn’t involve a bat, a knife, or a gun… I would.

I would in spades.

So… I waited.

Waited patiently.

And one day… the moment came.

I was in the house when I noticed Joe standing out in the backyard.

He was having a smoke: Marlboro Gold dangling from his lips… old flannel shirt loose against his tall frame, ripped up jeans that were tattooed with a Sharpie, his black steel-toed Chippewa knee-high engineer boots kicking at the cement, his hair long and ratted… basically… a version of a biker devil hanging out by my pool.

I watched as he put his cigarette in his mouth and clamped it between his teeth, holding it steady to smoke, as he reached for the long-handled pool brush and began cleaning the deep end of the pool.

I knew then it was time… time to make him pay… and so… I opened the sliding glass door slowly… inch-by-inch…. making sure that no noise would betray my motives… as I finally slipped through the small opening of the door and tip-toed towards him.

The sun was my ally that day… my shadow unwilling to betray me… as I crept forward… barefoot… sly…. like a cat focused on prey… everything else fading away as my vision tunneled and my mark grew larger in my sights.

He didn’t have time to react.

He felt my hands slam hard against his back…

He heard my guttural scream of revenge… the power of a woman scorned echoing across the neighborhood… and was already mid-deep in ice cold pool water, on his way down to the bottom of the basin, before I even heard an “Oh fuck…” escape his lips.

I jumped with joy… a small girlish jump into the air as if I had just won a hopscotch contest or was pleased after a first date with a boy I really liked.

I turned away from the water and skipped towards the slider… dancing my way into the living room… big smile on my face… sated in my childish joy and waited for Joe to respond.

Waited…

Waited…

Waited…

It was then that I registered something was wrong.

I turned and looked towards the pool; barely a ripple… no Joe.

I felt my right eyebrow arch and my lip curl.

Ah ha! I thought to myself, I know your game.

And so I stood facing the deep end with my arms firmly crossed upon my chest.

Waiting him out.

Sure he had turned the prank on me.

But several seconds passed by and Joe did not emerge from the pool.

I felt myself grow twitchy.

I could hold my ground but this just didn’t feel right.

I hated giving in… but I would have to concede defeat… so I rushed to the edge of the pool and looked to the bottom.

Joe was there alright.

Pinned down by the drain.

His arms waving, his mouth screaming a silent “OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.”

He looked like one of those inflatable air dancers you see in front of used car lots: arms waving wildly skyward… body bending in a snap happy rhythm from side-to-side. A living marionette screaming for me to pull the strings as giant bubbles of air rocketed up towards me to break quietly on the surface.

It was then I realized that I had miscalculated my prank terribly.

I had not taken the time to scientifically calculate: more mass… given distance… dexterity and drag.

JESUS, my brain shouted at me: He was wearing knee-high steel-toed motorcycle boots you IDIOT!

Boots that could each easily hold a 5-gallon container of pool water.

Boots that could weigh a man down as if he were an over-sized submerged paper-weight on a concrete desk.

My mind flashed to scenes from The Godfather, Goodfellas, and numerous other gangster genre clips before I fell to the ground and grabbed at the pool pole that now leaned against the edge of the deep-end and thrust it forward towards Joe, who had been unable to reach it; too far from his grasp.

He snatched for it and I saw his white knuckles press tightly against the silver metal. I watched as he used it for leverage… pulling his legs up out of his boots and breaking quickly to the surface where he gasped for breath and clawed his way to the edge.

Unable to speak.

Unable to move.

His head resting on his arms, his lips blue, as he drew in great draughts of air and tried to regain his strength.

I didn’t move.

I was terrified.

Though I hadn’t planned to drowned him… I thought in my moment of anger I would enjoy watching Joe be taken to “the edge” but it wasn’t how I imagined it at all… how it always played so “funny” in the movies.

I waited… my face close to his…. waited as I watched for his eyes to connect with mine and forgive me for my own unforgivable act… and soon… his breathing slowed… his head turned towards me and his eyes focused on mine.

“I…” he panted.

“Yes?” I said, now touching his arm with tenderness… waiting for it…

“hate you…” he said as he climbed out of the pool and crawled towards the sliding door.

“Joe,” I stammered. “I didn’t mean to…”

“Hate… you,” he repeated as he stripped naked in front of me, a furry Yeti, angry and wet making his way through the house.

“HATE YOU!” he screamed as he passed the kitchen and stomped through the back hall where he then doubled back to our second slider by the side of the house and pressed his naked ass against the glass… his only means of vindication… before a hot shower… would set things right.

I didn’t follow him… I let him have the last word and the last obscene gesture.

I sat on the porch steps and waited for the shower to stop… Joe to dress… and hoped with all my heart he’d come back out for another smoke.

I was still looking at the pool… the scene of my most recent crime, when I heard the side slider open and then felt Joe sit down beside me and light up a smoke.

“Fucker,” he said as he took in a deep hit and blew the smoke out up into the air before kissing the top of my head.

I said nothing… everything between us had already been said.

We loved each other… despite it all and so I nuzzled in next to him… my head down… overwhelmed by all of his wrongs, overcome by all of mine and promised that I would never prank Joe again.