Icebreaker

ice•break•er (noun) a ship specially built for breaking navigable passages through ice

The other night I stubbed my toe so hard that I almost threw up. I’m certain the neighbors heard me screaming. Little Chick was eager to be a hero (not to mention escape her homework) so she raced to the kitchen to find something in the freezer that would ease my pain. She returned not with a paper towel filled with icecubes, not a useful bag of frozen peas, but with a hard plastic carton of cookie dough that has been in our freezer since December of 2003.

Yet another causality of divorce neglect. The cookie dough was from a fundraiser at Little Chick’s preschool. My ex-husband handled the order forms and when the damn cookie dough finally arrived I was in such personal turmoil that delivering it to everyone was pretty low on my list. I just never got around to it and I still feel terrible. My freezer is like this evil little time machine. When I see that cookie dough I travel right back to that unhappy era and it chills me to the bone.

Every so often I still have moments where I just freeze up with guilt. Or anger. Like when I have to fill out a form that asks for a person to contact In Case of Emergency. I am continually stumped by this one. I don’t have a husband. My parents live in Tennessee. Can you just list a friend willy-nilly? Is there a protocol for that? Shouldn’t I ask them first, like you’d ask a trustee for your will or a godparent? Is it impolite to offer their name and phone number without their knowledge?

A few years ago I heard about this I.C.E. campaign (In Case of Emergency) that advises you to put an emergency contact number in your mobile phone under ‘ICE’ so first responders can notify them if necessary. This totally threw me for a loop. It’s such a great program but once again, whose number should I use? I still go back and forth. Some days I feel impenetrable and cheeky so I will scour the internet to find the phone number for Britney Spears’ law firm. They’ve got experience in a crisis, right? Or I will put in the number for Domino’s Pizza. I often turn to them when I am stressed and they are usually there in 30 minutes or less. Sometimes I feel like I am co-parenting with my ex pretty well so I will list him. But most of the time it’s my mother, although I feel guilty that her name comes up under ICE. Plus she doesn’t know how to check voicemails on her mobile phone.

You see my dilemma.

When I was first separated I was literally obsessed with this emergency contact problem. It really bothered me that there was no longer a designated person whose J-O-B was to be my very own I-C-E. I remember talking about it with my then-husband. We had just decided to get divorced a few days earlier and we were sort of navigating through some of the logistics in a weird, numb conversation. Nothing was getting solved, I’m pretty sure we were both in shock. The conversation ended abruptly when he suggested it was time to take off my wedding ring.

I felt like I had stubbed my toe so hard that I was about to vomit. My ring? I loved that ring. It was my own beautiful icy little diamond. Suddenly my heart had brain freeze while my brain was pounding against my skull with regular and violent palpitations.

I had to get out of there. I couldn’t handle any more of this so I decided to take Little Chick to a movie.

Thank God for movie theaters. When things got really, really bad, I could still look like a good mom by taking Little Chick to the latest kiddo flick, when really it was just a chance to sit in the dark and not speak to anyone. The Nanny Diaries 2 got the job done as I recall. I calmed down a little and Little Chick was blissfully entertained. After the movie we were debating whether or not to get some ice cream as I pulled out of the movie theater parking lot. That’s when a 16-year old first-time driver sped through a stop sign and nailed the side of our car. Hard.

It all happened in hideous slow motion. My Jeep spun around 180 degrees and then flipped. I was screaming Little Chick’s name frantically as we went over. I ended up with my face in a heap of broken glass which strangely looked like piles of beautiful crystals. I twisted my head around to see Little Chick dangling upside-down by her seat belt. She assured me she was okay but was completely freaked out because I was covered in blood.

The ‘first responders’ were some people getting ice cream nearby. We were extremely lucky that one was an off-duty police officer who carefully extracted Little Chick from the car. It took a little longer but eventually he was able to help me out of what was left of the back window. It was all so surreal. Sitting on a curb with total strangers. Looking at my topsy-turvy car, a wrangled mess. All my things spewed out across the pavement. I think I remember a nice woman giving Little Chick a stuffed animal. The police started to arrive. And people kept asking if they could call my husband.

I literally did not know what to say.

Did I have one? Technically he was still my husband. I still had a ring on my finger, although it was covered in blood. Should I tell them the truth? Should I tell them that I had no one to call. That my life was more of a topsy-turvy wrangled mess than that heap of metal sitting in the road.

Of course I pulled myself together and gave someone his number. And of course he showed up immediately and took us to the emergency room. The three of us went in there as a family, one of our last performances as a trio before the band broke up.

Amazingly, Little Chick walked away without a scratch. I was basically okay as well, all things considered. But I had cut my elbow pretty badly and my left arm was a mess. They picked out glass and asphalt. Everything seemed like it was going to be fine but then I sensed Doogie Howser and his entourage were having a little chit chat outside my curtain. Sure enough they needed to ‘discuss’ something with us. Apparently my hand was swollen quite badly and my ring was limiting circulation to my fingers. They needed to cut off my wedding ring.

My then-husband glanced at me quickly and then gave them the nod of approval to saw away. I don’t know why, but I falsely expected the emergency room to have some high-tech piece of laser machinery expressly designed to remove exquisite diamond jewelry with the utmost precision. Instead they returned with a crude, medieval device that looked like it came from the shelves of Home Depot. This couldn’t be happening. For heaven’s sake, we registered at Home Depot when we got engaged! I thought about how silly I must have looked as a young, sweet little bride-to-be, all dressed up to go register at Home Depot with my fiance. So how did we get here? In an emergency room with someone who looked about fifteen years old sawing the blood diamond off my inflated hand. I’m not even convinced the med student knew how to work the damn thing. It hurt! But he just grinded and grinded and grinded away until eventually he broke through that ice once and for all.

Lawyers were a mere formality after that.

But thank heavens for Time because it heals all wounds, right? Little Chick refused to go to that theater for quite awhile but eventually returned because she wanted to see Ice Age 2: The Meltdown and it was only playing at that theater at the specific time we needed to see it. So technically it was a Time Slot that healed that scar. For myself, I just try very hard not to think about that day.

But I stubbed my toe and Little Chick hurled that frozen tub of cookie dough back into my life. And it led me here. I have to say, this is the first blogpost that has me crying. Tears dripping into my keyboard as I type away. Drip, drip, drip. I feel like an ice sculpture that is finally starting to melt, long after the band has quit playing and long after all the wedding guests have gone home.

I suppose the façade of strength, much like pain itself, has to thaw out one layer at a time. I’m not exactly sure which layer I’m on in this game of emotional strip poker, but I am certain it’s time to clean out my freezer. Time to break through the ice and discover what might spring up in its place.