CAPS

for sale

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CAPS FOR SALE

by Esphyr Slobodkina

Caps for Sale is an enduring parable from a visionary artist.

Monkey see. Monkey do.

PS. I’ve looked at this book a thousand times without realizing the original art is collage! So. Cool.

MOTHERHOOD

by Caps for Sale

I wake up nose to nose with my toddler.

“Good morning, sweetheart.”

(Big stretch)

“Good morning, mommy.”

“Don’t kiss me.”

and she kisses me.

“Kiss me.”

so I kiss her.

She scrunches, “Mommy, you smell like garlic.”

angry. Not because I care but

because she’s right.

Not because brushing my teeth will make a difference. That’s hilarious.

That’s a fantasy!

You want me to take an old toothbrush to a dormitory toilet bowl?

Dude, the cleaning I need is so deep.

And I need a tool so powerful that it could disrupt the frozen ground beneath a compost waste bin ignored all summer.

A Kalashnikov filled with Dr. Bronner’s? No.

Something that could scour a garage filled with another family’s memories topped with petrified mice being swept into a junk haul truck costing you $1,000 you don’t have. Something that could scrub the stains off the concrete.

Like a flamethrower of bleach. Yeah.

A balloon filled with Bon Ami nerve gas!

Something that would burn off the mold on a burp-cloth floating idol in a bucket of stagnant water for months. Years. Stained with neglect festering up the sleeve.

A red clay sauna from the rocks of Sedona.

I need to soak in a mixture so powerful.

Maybe some kind of tea brewed over centuries heated by the lava inside our ancient planet.

I need…

Layers of skin scrubbed in the back room of a Los Angeles Korean spa. Me, naked on an ironing board in a locker room, getting 2nd-degree burns from an abrasive polish and then doused in buckets, and buckets, and buckets, of milk.

The cleansing I need is so powerful it might require a bath of sound waves.

Yes!

Bowls ringing the muck off.

Or maybe the quiet.

…

I’m an ignored neck fold collecting schmegma. A counter top of salmonella festering next to mucky bowls from a failed recipe three nights ago. The bacteria laugh and the ants march on my face. I am the star of a parade of mucus and puss.

Cat puke-stained forty-year-old rugs.

SOMEONE GET THIS GIRL AN AK-47 OF DEAD SEA MUD

…

My two-year-old is right. I need an overhaul of my nonexistent routine. I need to floss, rinse, and pick my way back to myself. Take care of myself-care.

My daughter can smell I need me. We are connected her and I.

and I respect myself enough to hear her.

Because, even if I don’t know how to care about my-self right now, at the very least, if she sees me trying she might. Riight?

MOMS GET SICK TOO, BREW

by Caps for Sale

This is a ritual not a recipe.

The result is meant to be like a sip-able version of the popular immunity shots juice companies sell.

Typically, I make this brew at the first sign of discomfort or if someone else is sick and I know it’s only a matter of time. While I’m sick, I keep this pot of brew on my stove and reheat it multiple times a day.

If it’s one of those horrible chest cold / head flu body ache situations, I might drink 5 cups of this a day and eat saltines, and that’s what I call self-care.

I was writing this down for some women I care for (here’s to you Amber and Sasha) but I figured I can care for anyone reading this and then you can care for yourself too with a

BATCH OF BREW FOR YOU

First, be sick or on the verge or know you will be sick at some point soon.

Then, bring a pot of water (16 cups) to a rolling boil, then turn off heat.

Now add: