"The Heart of the Matter"

By Jerry Zezima

Love means never having to say you’re sorry for not doing the laundry.

For the first time in 43 years of marriage, I have been washing clothes. I’ve also been performing tasks I did before but am now doing more frequently, like loading the dishwasher, vacuuming the house, cleaning the bathrooms, going grocery shopping and playing chauffeur.

There’s a good reason for this uncharacteristic usefulness: My wife, Sue, recently had a heart attack.

She’s recovering slowly but well. She gets tired easily, especially after watching me fold the clothes I just took out of the dryer and pile them on the bench in the family room. And she will be the first to say that this life-changing event came as a shock — though not, in retrospect, as a surprise.

“The warning signs were there for months,” Sue admitted. “I chose to ignore them.”

She’s not unlike a lot of people who shrug off chest discomfort as stress or indigestion (in our house, I’m the cause of both). This is especially true of men and women of a certain age (in Sue’s case, 68) who acknowledge that they’re no longer spring chickens but don’t think they are old enough to have a heart attack.

Sue also wasn’t a good candidate for cardiac problems because she’s slim, she exercises daily, she eats healthily, and she doesn’t have either high blood pressure or high cholesterol.

But she does have a family history of heart issues. And that, even without the warning signs, should have been a warning sign.

The attack happened the day after Thanksgiving, at our daughter Lauren’s house. It was late morning and Sue and I were preparing to go home after what our granddaughters Chloe and Lilly called “a double sleepover” (we spent Wednesday and Thursday nights there).

I loaded the car while Sue was in the bathroom. Right after I came back in, she emerged ashen-faced and said she had just vomited. She sat down and said she was having chest pains that radiated to her back. She also felt dizzy.

Lauren, who is on the ball with everything, said Sue needed to go to the hospital. I concurred. I probably should have called an ambulance, but the hospital was close by, so I drove Sue to the emergency room.

Her EKG was normal, but her blood work showed an elevated enzyme level, a sure sign of a heart attack.

Sue was rushed into surgery. Two hours later, Dr. Andrew Persits came out and told me that Sue had an attack during the procedure.

“I did an angiogram,” he said. “Two or three spots in her left anterior descending artery were 70 to 80 percent blocked, so I put in three stents. Her right side was 40 to 50 percent blocked, but that can be managed with medication.”

Sue stayed in the hospital for two nights and was released on Sunday morning.

Dr. Persits and all the other doctors, nurses and technicians who attended to Sue at Peconic Bay Medical Center in Riverhead, New York, were wonderful. In fact, they were lifesavers — wintergreen, the best kind.

When Sue got home, it was my turn to attend to her. Even for a writer, words can’t adequately express the depth of my love for her. That’s why I was happy to be the caregiver for someone whose care and giving have made her the backbone of our family.

Which brings me to the laundry.

“I appreciate that you’re doing it,” said Sue, who had to show me how to use the washer and dryer. “But you think you do it the best. You hadn’t done it for 43 years, but now that you’ve been doing it for a week, you think you’re the King of Laundry.”

“I do a pretty good job,” I said immodestly. “And I haven’t flooded the house.”

“Even though you know how to do the laundry, you don’t know how to put it away,” Sue responded. “You just let it pile up. It’s clean, but it’s in piles.”

She did have kind words for my ability to do other household chores.

“You do clean the bathrooms. And you vacuum nicely. It gets me off the hook,” Sue said. “You also do a good job with the dishes. I can tell because you have dishpan hands.”

Before dinner, I set the table. And I clear it off afterward. But if it were left to me to prepare meals, we both would starve.

“You don’t cook,” Sue reminded me. “You don’t know how to turn on the oven and you don’t turn the stove off.”

That’s not entirely true because, by Sue’s admission, I do make scrambled eggs. I also heat up leftover pizza in the oven. And I can operate the microwave.

“At least I haven’t burned the house down,” I said in my own feeble defense.

Sue said she’s grateful that I chauffeur her around, mainly to go to doctor’s appointments and to run errands. Because she’s not yet ready to get behind the wheel, I am the designated driver — even though I don’t have a chauffeur’s cap.

“You’ve been very good about it,” Sue said sweetly. “But,” she added, “I don’t like going to the grocery store with you. You’re always 10 paces behind me. Then you wander off somewhere. And you put stuff in the cart that we don’t need.”

“We always need beer,” I countered.

Sue smiled, took one of my dishpan hands and said, “Thank you for taking such good care of me.”

“It’s my pleasure,” I responded with a kiss.

“I know being a caregiver isn’t easy,” she said. 

“It’s easier than being a patient,” I said.

“I’m getting better every day,” Sue said. “Some days I get tired, but overall, I’m doing all right. I just never thought this would happen to me.”

“Once you start cardio rehab, you’ll be back to normal,” I assured her. “And I did buy that pillbox for you.”

“You mean the old lady pillbox,” Sue said with a smile. “I went from not taking anything to taking five pills a day.”

“Am I a pill?” I asked.

Sue smiled again and said, “No. You’re good medicine.”

We both laughed because laughter is the best medicine — and the cheapest.

“Now if you will excuse me,” I said, “I have to do another load of laundry.”

Copyright 2021 by Jerry Zezima

"Chime and Chime Again"

By Jerry Zezima

Since it’s my job to ferret out problems, most of which I cause myself, I am obligated to report that my neighborhood is on high alert for a missing ferret.

That’s the latest urgent message I have received from the company that operates the doorbell camera I recently purchased. It’s especially unnerving considering that: (a) we don’t have a doorbell and (b) the camera doesn’t work.

But that hasn’t stopped me from being inundated by daily alerts about Peeping Toms and weaselly critters that have been spotted near my house.

(For the record, ferrets aren’t spotted, although some of them are striped. Stripes are what the Peeping Toms should be wearing. And a few of the reportedly missing cats that prowl my backyard are, I am sure, peeping toms.)

At any rate, this is alarming because the alarm company also sends me home security alerts so often that I now live in a constant state of home insecurity.

Then there’s the neighborhood group that bombards me with emails about nefarious doings on my street.

I would become a shut-in except I’d keep receiving alerts about a motion being detected in the living room or a window being open in the kitchen.

It’s a good thing the world can’t see what goes on in the bathroom.

I wasn’t about to tell a technician named Vinny, who came over to fix the alarm system.

“If you really want to feel safe, get a wireless camera,” he advised. “You can install it yourself. A monkey could do it.”

“Where can I rent one?” I asked.

“A camera?” Vinny said.

“No,” I answered. “A monkey.”

The next day, I went to a home improvement store and spoke with Tool Master Mike, who also is a camera guru.

“This is the kind you need,” he said, handing me a small box containing an indoor-outdoor camera, batteries, a charger and instructions that not even a monkey could understand.

“Will the camera pick up suspicious activity?” I wanted to know.

“Yes,” Mike replied. “And suspicious characters.”

“Like me?” I wondered.

“Could be,” said Mike. “It also will detect dogs, bushes, leaves and anything else that moves around. After a while, you will know if it’s suspicious.”

I took the camera home and instantly regretted not hiring an orangutan to put it up. The house’s brick facade wasn’t as much of an impediment as the fact that the stupid thing failed to function.

Technically, it operates fine, but since I decided to put it on a windowsill inside, it couldn’t send moving images of what was going on outside.

I walked out the front door and waved to the camera, which miraculously didn’t break when I flashed a dumb grin, but I might as well have been Claude Rains, who not only starred in the original screen version of “The Invisible Man” but also, for the time being, is dead.

Back inside, any movement in the living room set off a series of chimes that were so annoying, so relentless, so absolutely maddening that I wanted to smash the camera with a crowbar.

A friendly technician said over the phone that the camera couldn’t pick up movement outside because the front window has two panes.

At that point, I had two pains — one in my head, the other in my neck.

“Put the camera outside and it will work,” the technician said.

Fortunately, a great handyman named Andy, who was doing a job at the house with our equally great contractor, Anthony, put up a shelf on the window frame outside. When the guys return, they’ll secure the security camera.

Then the chimes will start again. And all those other alerts will continue.

That’s why I am on the lookout for a missing ferret. I hope it doesn’t turn up in the bathroom.

Copyright 2021 by Jerry Zezima

"That's Using Your Shed"

By Jerry Zezima

If I had a sledgehammer, I’d sledgehammer in the morning, I’d sledgehammer in the evening, all over my land.

I won’t sing the rest of it because: (a) the neighbors would call the cops and (b) I don’t have a sledgehammer.

But I got to wield one when a crew of strong-armed guys came over to dismantle our old shed and put up a new one, where I keep all kinds of tools except — you guessed it — a screwdriver.

No, I mean a sledgehammer. I keep screwdrivers in the liquor cabinet.

Actually, I have gotten rid of so many tools, which are useless in my clumsy hands anyway, that I don’t know why I even have a shed.

I used to have a lawn mower, a snow blower and a power washer, but since I don’t cut the grass, clear the driveway or wash the house anymore, I dumped them on younger, more competent homeowners.

The rest of the shed was taken up by patio furniture, gardening supplies and kiddie pools.

Tools included two rakes, a spade, a hoe, a trowel, a shovel, a pair of hedge clippers and something that resembled a scythe. Whenever I used it to cut weeds, which grew back the next day, I looked like the Grim Geezer.

I also kept a hammock in the loft, but it was eaten by mice (the hammock, not the loft, though that was probably next).

In fact, the shed was in such deplorable condition that if I had sneezed on it, the whole rickety structure would have collapsed in a pile of kindling. So my wife, Sue, and I decided to buy a new one.

We went to a place called Wood Kingdom and bought a shed made of, yes, wood. Unfortunately, it came unassembled.

“I am the least handy man in America,” I told Maureen Schnapp, the owner. “I won’t have to put it together myself, will I?”

“No,” said Maureen, adding that the various parts — floor, walls, doors, roof, etc. — are made by an Amish company in Ohio.

“Will they deliver the materials by horse and buggy and have a shed-raising in my backyard?” I wondered.

“They’re too busy for that,” Maureen said. “They will get the parts to us. Then we’ll send our guys over to tear down your old shed, cart it away and put up the new one.”

The guys were Jorge, 46, the supervisor, and his assistants, Juan, 40, and Jose, 36.

When I saw Jose whacking the walls of the empty old shed with a sledgehammer, I walked up to him — being careful not to get hit in the head, in which case I’d have to buy the company a new sledgehammer — and asked, “May I try?”

“Sure,” Jose replied. “But don’t hurt yourself.”

I grabbed the handle, lifted the sledgehammer with a jerk (me) and almost ruptured a vital organ.

“How much does this thing weigh?” I inquired.

“About 40 pounds,” Jose answered. “It’s heavy.”

“I’m old, but I’m strong,” I assured him. “I keep in shape by bench-pressing six-packs.”

Jose instructed me to stand inside the shed and hit the bottom of the Dutch roof, just above the top of the wall.

I reared back and slammed the metal hammerhead against the wood.

Nothing.

“Try it again,” Jose said.

I did. Still nothing. On my third swing, the wood began to crack.

“Nice,” said Jose. “Keep going.”

By this time, I was flailing away like one of the Property Brothers. I kept it up until the bottom of the roof had become separated from the wall. I also took a whack at one of the doors. I was amazed, not just at my terrific performance, but at the fact that I didn’t go into cardiac arrest.

“You did a good job,” said Jorge, who told me that he has a shed at home. “I keep tools in it. I also have the kids’ pools. You can always use a shed. It’s better than leaving stuff outside.”

Thanks to the great work he, Jose and Juan did, I don’t have to leave stuff outside.

Now all my tools are inside a brand-new shed. I may even buy a sledgehammer. The Property Brothers will be impressed.

Copyright 2021 by Jerry Zezima

"Pillow Talk"

By Jerry Zezima

I am not a man to rest on my laurels, mainly because I don’t have any. But I am a guy who can’t help but rest on a burgeoning collection of popular items that are taking over not only the American home, but possibly the planet itself:

Pillows.

You can’t go into any room in my house — except the bathroom, which could use something comfortable to sit on — without plopping on a packed pile of perfectly puffy pillows.

Thanks to my wife, Sue, the domestic diva here at the Zezimanse, there are, at last count, 33 pillows scattered about the premises.

A recent inventory revealed these startling numbers:

Seven on the bed in the master bedroom.

Six on the bed in another bedroom.

Two on the bed in a third bedroom.

Eight on the couch in the living room.

Two on a chair in the living room.

Six on the couch in the family room.

One on a chair in the family room.

One on another chair in the family room.

Grand total: 33 pillows.

There isn’t a flat surface in the entire place — with the exception of my head — that isn’t littered with pillows.

“Pillows make a house a home,” Sue explained.

“If we had any more pillows,” I said, “we’d need a second house to accommodate them all.”

But it turns out that Sue and I don’t have to apply for another mortgage because our good friends Hank and Angela Richert have even more pillows than we do.

“We’re up to 55,” Angela told me over the phone.

“Hold on,” Hank added. “I have to get a pillow off my head.”

In what could become the Pillow Podcast, or an HGTV show called “Pillow Pals,” we gave each other a FaceTime tour of our respective houses.

The first stop in Hank and Angela’s beautiful home, which Sue and I haven’t seen in person, was the master bedroom.

“We have eight pillows on the bed,” Angela said.

“They breed like rabbits,” Hank noted.

“Well,” I pointed out, “they do spend a lot of time in bed.”

“I’m still trying to train Hank to put them on the bed the right way,” Angela said. “I made them to match the valances. The pillows have to be going the same way as the pattern on the valance. Hank puts them on the bed the wrong way.”

“It’s a pain when you go to bed at night because you have to take all the pillows off the bed,” Hank said. “The question is: Where do you put them?”

“Baskets,” Angela answered.

“We husbands will end up being basket cases,” I said.

“We already are,” said Hank.

“It’s not just having pillows,” Angela said. “It’s how you dress your pillows. I have pillows dressed by season: spring, summer, fall and winter. There also are holiday pillows for Thanksgiving and Christmas. And pillows with messages like, ‘Nothing is more wonderful than family.’ It’s my mission to educate guys on pillow etiquette.”

“I hope there’s not a test,” Hank said. “I’d flunk for sure.”

“Hank refuses to fall in line,” Angela said. “It’s his way of protesting the pillows.”

I must say that all the pillows in Hank and Angela’s house are lovely, including those in the guest room.

“When you and Sue come to visit, that’s where you’ll stay,” said Angela. “You can relax on the pillows.”

“You can have some of ours, too,” Hank said.

“This is what happens when you’re retired,” said Angela. “You get to argue about pillows.”

There was no arguing that the Richerts have the Zezimas beat for pure pillow proficiency.

“This is our bed,” I said while showing it on my phone camera. “We have only seven pillows.”

“You’re falling down on the job,” Hank said.

“At least I’ll land on a pillow,” I responded.

The rest of the tour wasn’t nearly as impressive as what I saw at Hank and Angela’s house, which is a veritable pillow palace.

“You guys are the champs,” I acknowledged.

“Thanks,” said Hank. “But all this pillow talk is putting me to sleep.”

Copyright 2021 by Jerry Zezima

"Skate Expectations"

By Jerry Zezima

Because I have always thought that a double axel is something in my car and that ice is best used in cocktails, I’ve never been a big fan of figure skating.

But now I can’t get enough of it, especially after taking a lesson from two of the best figures in skating.

I refer to my granddaughters Chloe and Lilly, who had never skated before but managed to show me how to glide, slide and land on my hide.

I hadn’t been on ice skates since the Ice Age, which I am old enough to remember. That’s why I was hoping to put on a mammoth performance for Chloe and Lilly, who begged me to take them skating when my wife, Sue, and I were at an event sponsored by the Southold Mothers’ Club, of which the girls’ mother, Lauren, who also is our younger daughter, is a member.

While Lauren, a talented photographer, was on a photo shoot at the farm where the festivities were taking place, Sue and I watched Chloe, 8, and Lilly, 5, who spent most of the afternoon outside with their friends, sipping hot chocolate and frolicking in bouncy houses — though not, of course, simultaneously.

As the day was winding down, the girls asked to go to the outdoor ice rink.

Sue said it was time to leave, so the girls turned to their old soft touch.

“Please, Poppie?” they pleaded.

Two minutes later, we were lacing on skates.

“This is the first time I have ever been ice skating!” Chloe told the attendant.

“Me, too!” Lilly chimed in.

“And you, sir?” the attendant asked me.

“I used to skate back in the day,” I replied. “Unfortunately, the day was Nov. 5, 1969.”

“It’s like riding a bike,” he said.

“That means I won’t forget how to fall on my keister,” I assured him.

The rink wasn’t quite like the one in Rockefeller Center, chiefly because it didn’t have real ice.

“It’s some sort of plastic that looks and feels like ice,” the attendant explained. “But these are real ice skates.”

The only one not wearing them was Sue, who was given a pair of foot covers that resembled shower caps and went over her sneakers.

As soon as I hit the ice, or whatever it was, the ice, or whatever it was, hit me.

Down I went. Luckily, I didn’t land on my head, which would have broken the rink. Instead, I had to take the humiliation sitting down.

When I struggled to my feet, Chloe said, “Hold my hand, Poppie.”

Lilly came over and held my other hand.

“We won’t let you fall again,” she promised.

The novices were giving the old-timer a lesson.

“Let’s do a figure 8,” I suggested.

“What’s that?” Chloe asked.

When I explained the basic ice skating move, Lilly said, “We can do two figure 8s.”

“That would be a figure 16,” said Chloe, who, unlike her grandfather, is a whiz at math.

Pushing my luck, I tried to do a camel spin, which sounds like a smelly form of desert transportation, and did a perfectly executed belly flop.

“Poppie, you need more practice,” Chloe said sympathetically while helping me up.

As a hockey fan, I imagined I was lifting the Stanley Cup — with assistance from the girls, of course.

Then, because I somehow managed remain vertical, I recalled sportscaster Al Michaels’ famous call when the United States shocked the Soviet Union in the 1980 Winter Olympics: “Do you believe in miracles? Yes!”

The girls and I spent the rest of the session performing moves that would have impressed Olympic judges if they had been members of the mothers’ club.

I even danced with one of the plastic penguins that were supposed to aid shaky skaters like yours truly.

Finally, it was time to go.

“You did OK, Poppie,” Chloe said as we took off our skates.

“For an old guy,” Lilly added.

“Thank you, girls,” I said. “I had fun, but my knees are a little sore.”

“Maybe,” Chloe said, “you should put some ice on them.”

Copyright 2021 by Jerry Zezima

"Hold the Phone, It's the Cops"

By Jerry Zezima

The call came in at 1:54 p.m.

“We are at the location,” I reported. “Request backup.”

“Who is this?” the police dispatcher asked.

It was me, plainclothes officer Jerry Zezima, star of the new real-life cop show “CSI: Columnist Stakeout Idiocy.”

The premiere episode began a few nights before when my partner, Sue Zezima, who also happens to be my wife, lost her cellphone.

Thanks to some brilliant detective work, for which I must modestly take credit, it was determined that the item in question was stolen at the gym, where Sue had gone for the kind of rigorous training that not only cops must go through but also wives who routinely battle cumbersome vacuum cleaners, heavy soup pots and, worst of all, lazy husbands.

After calling the service provider to disable the phone, which contained such valuable information as shopping coupons and photos of our grandchildren, we traced it to an address about half an hour away.

Our next move was to go to our local police precinct and report the theft.

“We put a trace on the phone,” Sue told the desk sergeant.

“Where is it?” he asked.

When Sue gave him the location, the cop said, “Oh, shoot.”

Except he didn’t say “shoot.”

“That’s a rough neighborhood,” he informed us.

“What should we do?” I asked.

“Go to the location,” the desk sergeant said.

“I thought you said it was a rough neighborhood,” I stammered.

“It is,” he replied. “Go there, park down the street from the address and call us. We’ll send a car.”

“Will there be any cops in the car?” I wondered.

“Yes,” the sergeant assured me. “Good luck.”

The next day, Sue and I got ready for our first stakeout.

I wore black, the preferred color of those in special operations. I just hoped I wouldn’t need a special operation for gunshot wounds. I also wore shades, which didn’t help much because it was raining.

Sue wore a gray hoodie.

“You’re a girl in the hood,” I said.

“And you’re impossible,” she responded.

“Copy that,” I said before starting the motor of our unmarked vehicle. “Let’s roll.”

We drove to the location, parked a block away and called the cops. Half an hour later, a car showed up. Officers Gallagher and O’Leary got out and walked over. I rolled down the window.

“What’s going on?” Officer Gallagher inquired.

“We’re here to nab a perpetrator,” I responded.

“Huh?” Officer O’Leary said.

I explained the situation.

“It’s our first stakeout,” I said. “We’re rookies.”

“I can see that,” said Officer Gallagher.

“This is my partner,” I told the cops, pointing to Sue.

“And it was your phone that was stolen?” Officer O’Leary asked.

“Yes,” Sue replied. “It’s red.”

“You were at the gym, right?” Officer O’Leary said.

“Yes,” said Sue. “I was in a hurry to get home because I didn’t want to miss ‘Chicago Fire.’ ”

“Of course,” I added with a wink, “our favorite is ‘Chicago P.D.’ ”

“Of course,” Officer O’Leary said.

“We’re going to the address to check things out,” Officer Gallagher said. “You stay here.”

“10-4,” I said.

The officers got back in their squad car, drove down the street and parked in front of the house where the alleged thief resided. They knocked on the door, but I couldn’t see what was happening.

“I hope they crack the case,” I told Sue.

We waited for about 15 minutes. Finally, the cops drove back to our car.

“Did you get the phone?” I asked.

“No,” Officer Gallagher answered. “A nice couple lives there. They seemed like normal people. But we did scare the pants off them. The man even called his son, who wasn’t home. The son said, ‘Why would I go out of town to steal a phone?’ There wasn’t much more we could do.”

“I guess this is now a cold case,” I said.

“I guess so,” said Officer O’Leary, who handed us a report.

“I’ll call your precinct and put in a good word for you,” I said. “Maybe you’ll get a promotion to sergeant or admiral or something.”

“Thanks,” said Officer Gallagher, adding that he and Officer O’Leary see cases like ours every day.

“How come you don’t have your own cop show?” I asked.

“It would be pretty boring,” Officer Gallagher said.

With that, the men in blue drove away. Sue and I did the same.

The first and last episode of “CSI: Columnist Stakeout Idiocy” had come to an end.

“At least,” I said with a shrug, “I didn’t get arrested for impersonating an officer.”

Copyright 2021 by Jerry Zezima