The Healing Powers of Grease

Last night I arrived home at about 8:45 p.m. I had pulled into the driveway of our lovely little cottage, where two pink scooters were parked. My heart warmed a few degrees at the sight of them as I climbed out of my car and locked it up. I gathered up the scooters and carried one in each hand as I made my way down the narrow sidewalk along our garage.

As I approached the back yard, I took in the sights: a 15x20 plank deck with railing on the left and far edges, a beautiful outdoor table with a stripey umbrella and bestrewn with toys, a tidy shed protected by a stone bulldog statue (a gift left us by the previous owners who were McKinley Bulldog fans), a deep back yard containing a horseshoe pitch and ending in a line of trees bursting with green and life thanks to recent rain.

As I rounded the corner to enter the garage from the back door, I heard Doc and the girls chit-chatting congenially. They had just returned from the neighbor's house, accurately anticipating a thunderstorm in the very near future. Our neighbor is suddenly a hit with the local kids. He is an artistic landscaper whose latest inspired project is building a tiki bar in his back yard complete with posts, ropes, and tiki shack all surrounded by five tons of white sand. At present, only the decking is built. The sand resembels a graceful sand pit on a golf course; it's round, but not a perfect circle. All the kids who live close by are having a ball digging in that sand.

I set the scooters down under the awning and thought better of it on account of the rain. I picked them back up and carried them into the garage for safe-keeping. The girls began talking to me as if I hadn't been gone all day. They were so excited to have met some new kids and were even more excited about the sand. But they were tired, and said so.

"Let's go in the house and watch cartoons," I said.

"Can we go in the basement?" Riley asked.

"That's probably the place to be during a storm," I said, thinking out loud.

"I'm so scared!" Lucy said, "I want a blankey!"

"How about we go into Mommy and Daddy's room and snuggle up on the comfy bed?" I countered. The basement is nice, but I could feel my inner sheep dog stirring; I needed all my pups and my mate all in one place, all piled together. That's not very easy to do in the finished part of the basement. We have a TV and two soft, brown recliners. Nice for playing video games but not the snuggle-fest I was looking for.

"OK," both girls agreed.

"Are you coming?" I asked as I turned to Doc who was still in the garage.

"I'm right behind you," he said.

We all made our way through the kitchen, past the living room and down the L-shaped hallway to our large and cozy bedroom. I immediately began to get undressed and put on some jammies.

"You girls need to get out of those sandy clothes before you get near my bed," Doc said, determined to impose order on chaos.

"Naked time!" I yelled.

"Yay!" the girls shouted, "Naked time!"

Doc got the girls undressed as I walked into my walk in closet and found a pair of pink jammies. By the time I was dressed, the girls were undressed.

"I want some jammies!" Lucy demanded.

"OK, let's go find some."

Lucy and I walked back down the hall and entered her room, the first door on the left. I walked over to her tall, maple dresser and opened the top drawer. I found her a t-shirt which reads "My Mother Wears Combat Boots" and some red and blue, plaid flannel pants. She happily cooperated as I pulled the t-shirt over her head and the pants over her chubby little legs.

"Come on," I encouraged, "Let's go back to Mommy's room."

Lucy stopped in front of her crib and pointed. "Blankey?"

I looked into her crib. Her fuzzy blue blanket, a no-sew fleece blanket that my cousin Rachel helped my Grandpa make after he had his stroke and needed to work with his hands in order to regain his coordination, was missing.

"Where's your blankey?" I asked.

"I don't know..." she said, sadly.

"It's in the kitchen," Doc said loudly from the other room.

"Let's go find it, peanut."

"OK," she said.

We walked back through the living room and into the kitchen. It wasn't there. I continued on down to the basement, there are many blankets down there. I found a fuzzy blanket, but not the blankey. I walked back up the stairs and draped the blanket over Lucy's shoulders. As we turned to go back through the kitchent, we about ran into Doc and Riley.

"Her blanket is in the garage," he recalled.

I turned around and went into the garage. I found it lying on the bar stool. Our garage is the new Lodge. It was so clean and freshly painted we decided, rather than trying to squeeze a vehicle and all our tools in there, it would be better just to make it a cozy place to hang out. It's only a single-car garage and we have the shed for all the tools and lawn mower. Doc has done a marvelous job making it all lodgey. He even let me hang a Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince promotional poster out there. I looked around at the memorabilia of our lives together and started feeling the strain of the day melt.

Riley took the fuzzy blue blanket as Lucy was pre-occupied with the fuzzy red blanket, which was bigger. We made our way back to our bedroom and piled on the bed. Nickelodeon was done playing cartoons for the day, so I grabbed the remote and searched the interactive guide. I love digital cable. As I scrolled through, I happened to see an old favorite of mine in the list on ABC Family. And without asking anyone, I hit the select button and we joined the movie Grease about a half an hour into it.

With all my loves around me we settled in to watch the singing and dancing. Riley was more captivated by the movie than I expected. She even chided me for singing along.

"Stop singing, Mommy," she complained, "I can't hear the movie."

I complied for a while. But I couldn't help talking along with my favorite snippets of dialogue.

"Where'd you steal that bumper?" one of the T-birds asked.

"From your mother." Two other T-Birds replied in unison.

*****

"What's that?" Jan, a Pink Lady, asks as she watches Cha-Cha pull something out of her blouse to give to Scorpion for luck before the race at Thunder Road.

"A lock of hair....from her chest!" Marty saucily replies.

*****

I could probably do the whole movie verbatim and on-command. I saw it for the first time when I was nine years old. I went with my parents to see it at the theater and was so enthralled, we all stayed to watch the very next showing. I've watched that movie so many times and acted out the singing and dancing parts with my friends so many times. I did get burned out on it for a while. In fact, it's probably been 15 years since I've seen it. I was surprised by how much I remembered; I even sang along with "Beauty School Drop Out," a more obscure song from the soundtrack.

By the time the movie was over, Riley had fallen asleep. Doc carried Lucy off to bed, who kept saying "Good night, Sister," to Riley, expecting a response.

"Good night, baby," I said, "Sister's asleep."

"Good night, Sister...Good night, Sister...Good night, Sister..." Lucy sang as she and Doc exited down the hall.

Moments later Doc came back in and carried Riley to bed. We went out to the lodge and sat at our teak bar.

"I can't believe how much better I feel," I said, suddenly realizing that I didn't feel tense, or sad, or angry; I just felt comfortable and light.

"I knew you needed to watch that movie," Doc said, "You needed some fun."

"You're right," I said.

I do love that movie.