The Feminist Grandma

Simply Christmas

For over thirty years, we have celebrated Christmas at my house with visiting family and friends.  I love it, but at Christmas my control freak - a bit over-developed from parenting - goes manic.  I have to be in charge of everything, and everything has to be right. Like many cooks, I want control of my own kitchen.  But my need for control extends beyond that, and I can fuss and worry through the weeks leading up to Christmas, and the few days of house-guests, as if comfort, joy and world peace were all up to me.  

worldpeacebefore2021.com

             
The schedule might change from year to year depending on everybody’s arrival time, but generally we decorate the tree on Christmas Eve.  Christmas dinner is either Christmas Eve, or the day after Christmas. With Doris and Luli’s help I prepare a big feast, and gather family and friends around the table. Late breakfast on Christmas morning is followed by a morning of oohing and aahing over opening presents, with single malt, aquavit, Calvados or other delicious sipping drink, Luli’s dundee cake, Don’s famous cookies, and whatever chocolates turn up in the gifting.  The afternoon is for lying around, playing with new toys, reading new books, and a long walk.  No need to prepare a feast after the morning orgy - we go to our beloved Chinese restaurant for Christmas supper.

Christmas dinner: turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, gravy, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, a green veg and salad, and three pies topped with whipped cream. Don and Doris contribute plenty of wine.

tasteofhome.com
 

Breakfast?  When I think of Christmas breakfast I drift into Italian, though I don’t speak the language - abondanza, mangiare, que piacere - and gesture con brio like an orchestra conductor. A feast of scrambled eggs and sausage, fresh grapefruit, home-squeezed orange juice, herbed mushrooms, bagels and lox, homemade muffins or coffee cake, a plate of fresh pineapple and strawberries, tomato salad, accompanied by coffee and of course, sipping liquor.
 
This year everything changed.  Luli, my kitchen co-conspirator and conciliatrix, visited in October instead of making her annual Christmas trek.  And at the last minute Joe had a essential meeting scheduled in South Africa.  He would be gone for two weeks, returning December 22nd. All of a sudden I was on my own for Christmas preparations and Amanda’s Christmas break. I was NOT a happy camper. I’ve done children and Christmas alone and with a partner, and the latter is way better.

The first challenge was to gussy up Amanda’s Christmas break.  Girls Place does wonderful programs  for the school holidays, with lots of expeditions. link   My friend Mary Anne and her daughter Ariel took her to the Little Match Girl ballet. But I wanted us to have special treats together.  We went to the Hippodrome’s annual production of The Christmas Carol - I’d waited till she was ten because it’s scary - and went clothes-shopping. Alas, Amanda redirected her anger with absent Grandpa to available Grandma, so she was kind of a Scrooge-ette during these treats. 

Hippodrome's Christmas Carol. Aaron E. Daye/The Gainesville Sun

I had other cool ideas for fun, but she got the horrible bronchial thing that’s been going around Gainesville.  Meanwhile my own rage simmered and became the blues, accompanied by shame that I was struggling so without Joe.

I had planned to buy the Christmas tree with Amanda, but she was so sick we had to postpone it.   Six days before Christmas there were no trees anywhere. At Lowe’s they were taking down their big white tent and said they had no trees left.  But I saw five in the corner, and bought the least miserable one.  Many bare branches, many brown needles.  After a few days in the living room, poisoned by Amanda’s scorn and disappointment, it looked even worse.  I put it out on the deck, and bought a fake tree.  Apparently you have to spend an awful lot to get a nice one; at $70, this one was very straggly.  I threw up my hands and decided Joe would have to deal with it when he got home. 

The Tree of Despair

My son wasn’t coming.  Leah couldn’t make it from New Orleans because her car was iffy. No friends were available for Christmas dinner. With the group so small, no Luli to help, and Joe only here at the last minute, I decided that I would simplify.  We’d lighten up the food and add more walks.  Don and Doris come from Connecticut and crave walks in our lovely winter weather.

The first change was to lighten up the food.  Five Cornish game hens marinated in olive oil, lemon, and rosemary as they thawed. I sauteed beautiful green chard with bright red stems in olive oil and garlic, while  Doris was happily in charge of cooking up the brown rice with red peppers and onions.  I’d planned a plate of tomato salad - Don and Doris annually rave over our Florida tomatoes - but to my dismay my tomato grower stayed home from the Saturday Farmers’ Market.  So in the end the main course was reduced from eight dishes to three.

No wrestling still frozen giblets out of a turkey. No guess work on timing - four, four and a half, five hours till the turkey is done? - and last minute gravy-making. Game hens take barely an hour, pan juices are no trouble at all, and the gluttonous girl in me is as thrilled as Amanda at having a whole bird to myself.  Dessert remained excessive, but preparation was easy.  Not my two pies - pumpkin seasoned with tangerine zest, pecan with dark rum or maple - and Luli’s winter fruit and berry pie.  But Mrs. Smith’s frozen apple pie, though a bit heavy on the cinnamon, was perfectly fine, and her cherry pie was bliss.

Breakfast would be grapefruit, eggs and sausages.  Though for days I waffled (waffles? no, too much) over whether I shouldn’t at least make my low-fat blueberry coffee cake, I held fast to simplicity, and asked Joe to buy a pecan coffee ring at Publix.  We had coffee and Amarula - a cream liqueur made from the berries of the marula tree, which grows in the miombo woodlands of Southern Africa.  Every one loved it but me, and Amanda loved the label about the majestic elephants who feast on the marula fruit.  I stuck to Calvados.

 

Next, I let go of gift-control. When Joe was a child, he and his four brothers each found a laundry basket of presents under the tree, and tore into them all at once.   When I was a child, we distributed all the gifts and then, starting with the youngest (always me), we opened them.  Over the years I experimented with various approaches to accommodate Doris’ desire for the oohing and aahing and sharing and thanks, and Joe’s increasingly itchy need to be done with the interminable ritual, which went on for hours. This year I asked him to consult with Doris and devise a plan. They did.  Amanda distributed the gifts and we opened them one by one, Joe too generous and kind and fond of Doris to deprive her, and probably pleased  that I’d let go of one more thing.  It didn’t hurt that with fewer people, there were fewer gifts, and of course he had the Amarula. 

Don got pajamas

Joe got super-soakers

Doris got a hat and scarf

I couldn’t entirely squelch my Mom-in-Charge, so I turned her attention from food and ritual to planning great walks. 

On Christmas Eve, we took a picnic to Kanapaha Botanical Gardens.   The weather was lovely, warm and overcast. We walked the labyrinth, Amanda leaping over the low hedges and startling the lizards.  Then we took the long walk to the herb garden, sink holes, bamboo grove, lake, hummingbird garden, cactus garden and finally to the broad porch of Summer House, where we rocked and ate our picnic.  

Kanapaha's Victoria waterlilies. thegreentree.net

Joe had stayed behind to rest after his trip from Capetown.  While resting, he solved the Christmas tree problem.  He returned the costly, scraggly tree to Lowe’s, shook down and brought inside the brown and balding fir, found its best angle, and wrapped the lights inside, close to the trunk, where they illuminated rather than hid the ornaments.  Like every Christmas tree, it was our loveliest ever.

On Christmas day, after opening presents, I wanted a chance for Amanda try out her new skateboard, the gift she’d been yearning for.  The Gainesville-Hawthorne Rails to Trails was just the ticket - paved, and perfect for walkers, bikers, scooters. The trail to Hawthorne is hilly and curvy, so we took the route past Evergreen Cemetery and she began to master balancing, turning, and stopping. 

Finally, there was the obligatory trip to the Alachua Sink on Paynes Prairie.   Everyone was out in force for the post-Christmas walk: Gainesville natives, visiting families, turkey vultures, limpkins, moorhens, herons of all types, egrets and of course, the alligators, seeking the afternoon sun after a chilly morning.  They were huge and numerous. Amanda bet we’d see 25, Joe bet more than. Joe won. 

This was such a happy, non-frenzied Christmas.  I missed some of the abondanza.  But the only missing elements I’d restore are Luli, Joe's daughter Leah, and my son Eric.  Maybe I am finally learning to let go. 

 

My new motto: Put it down; someone else will pick it up.

  Or not.

A Big To-Do About To Do's

 

I have been operating under a ridiculous delusion, and now I’ve had a revelation. I will share it with you, but I suspect everyone but me has always known it.

I love lists: shopping lists, lists of people invited to a party, but especially To Do lists. The lists are like a scaffolding around my thoughts, which are always under construction.  

At busy times I live in a cloud of non-specific anxiety as To Do’s float and sink in my consciousness.  If I catch them and write them on a list, the anxiety melts away, almost as if they’ve already been accomplished.  

 I have To Do lists all over the house, written on receipts, the back of envelopes, the margins of my writing notebook. The little scraps of paper often disappear into my purse or my car, but I know they exist, and can usually find them when I wonder what I’m supposed to be doing.  Still, when Amanda discovered “sticky notes” on the computer I was delighted - here was a list that would never stray.  More than that, it would be an electronic nudge, nagging me every time I went to the computer.  Oh, what wonders I would accomplish! 

I happily made a list organized into categories.  I deleted and added diligently for several weeks.  And then the list, which pops up every time I turn on my computer, became just part of the wallpaper, and I didn’t see it anymore.  It lost its power. The five items remaining on it date from last summer, and I’ve returned to the scraps of paper.

ancient sticky note

 

There are two kinds of people: listmakers and Everybody Else.  Perhaps the Everybody Elses have excellent memories, and whenever they think of another task it pops into place on a list in their mind. Maybe some of them truly live in the moment, and everything they do is spontaneous.  But I have virtually no memory, and my thoughts wander here and there.  And if I always acted spontaneously, my house would be littered with broken crockery and cookie crumbs, as I have a hot temper and a huge appetite.

 

Maybe some of the Everybody Elses don't feel compelled to accomplish anything.  There is something very appealing about the concept of highly spiritually evolved people who can simply Be rather than Do, people who can be still in every part of themselves.  But whenever I have decided to take up meditation, I have always put ‘meditate’ on my To Do list.

I feel a lovely sense of satisfaction when I cross an item off a list. There’s nothing wrong with that.  But all these years, as lists littered my life, I have been thinking that when I had crossed off every item I would be through.  All my jobs would be completed, every obligation met.  I had never noticed that as I cross off one task, two pop up in its place, like Hydra heads or air potatoes. Last week the lightbulb went off, and now I realize that I will die with unfinished To Do lists.  Life is an endless succession of things To Do.   

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Next post: December 7 (omg, it CAN'T be almost December)

 

Slob: What Will People Think?

For forty-seven years, since I began living on my own, I have struggled to be a person who kept a tidy house.  For forty-seven years I have failed, and now I give up.  I don’t rob banks, wage war, or sneer at poor people, but I am a person who keeps a messy house, and that’s just the way it is.

Although I love tidy spaces and beautiful places, the real reason for my long struggle was What Will People Think. I don’t want people to think I’m a slob.

When my son was young and I was pretty young myself, family used to come down to Jacksonville to spend Thanksgiving with us.  I welcomed house guests because it forced me to clean up.  Before they arrived, I would tidy and clean to the best of my ability.  But one fatal year I thought, ‘To hell with it,’ and my one incentive for a thorough cleaning was gone. 

I’m much older now.  My son is grown, and now it’s me, Joe, and Amanda.  For several years a small, shabby house on five beautiful acres of land was available across the creek from our neighborhood.  Joe had recurring fantasies of buying the land, fixing up or tearing down the house, and having a lovely, welcoming home with huge old camellias and azaleas, surrounded by woods and a creek at the bottom. 

But Joe and I have different decision-making styles.  He is deliberate (or dithering) and I am decisive (or rash).  The idea of building or rebuilding a house together filled me with horror.  There are approximately ten zillion decisions involved in remodeling, and I imagined years of discussing faucets and soffits.

   

Every few months Joe would bring up his dream again, and I would argue against it.  The argument about our decision-making styles was unsuccessful (and provocative).  The argument about the huge project we were already undertaking (Amanda) did not prevail.  But one night I asked him to look around the front room where we were sitting together on the sofa, which is redolent of dog.  I pointed out the television, which rested on several defunct stereo receivers and tape decks and was garnished with a towel. The wicker chair he had proudly purchased at a garage sale for $2.00, now Ouzel’s scratching post. Trisket’s cardboard carton of old bones.

 

 

And that was just the front room.  I suggested that perhaps we are not the kind of people who live and entertain graciously in a beautiful home, like so many of our friends.  Our decision-making styles are different, but our housekeeping is similar: sloppy.

Do I care?  I like tidy.  I like it when the yard, a collection of what you could euphemistically call ground covers, is mowed, when the wildflower (aka weed) bed is edged. 

 

GROUNDCOVER

 

I love the sense of peace when the clutter is in tidy piles.  But I don’t notice the piles that remain for months or even years.   I’m capable of thoughtful, intentional decor.  It’s just that things wander, land, and become invisible. For instance, look at this photo of our mantelpiece.

 

From the left we have a handcrafted baobab tree, a gift from Amanda’s adoption party, with a couple of matchbooks at its feet.  Next, a box of thank you notes with an empty plastic bag tastefully stuffed behind it.  The groovy silver plastic  thing used to turn, making constantly shifting geometric patterns.  The piece that broke off is barely visible next to it.  Next, a lovely whiskered cat made by Amanda, three candles from our long-abandoned evening moment-of-silence ritual, and a collection of elephants and Buddhas.  Above it all is a Christmas ornament made by Amanda when she was three, which hung for years above the door but recently graduated to the chimney. 

Even as I write this I wonder about publishing it.  I am appalled that I have not outgrown worrying what other people think.  I don’t really believe in all the oughts and shoulds I’ve absorbed over the years, but they still nag at me.  The pictures in the women’s magazines haunt me.

 

I’m sure I’ll continue with occasional clutter-busting projects.In a previous confession regarding clutter I hopefully asked, "Is it possible that at sixty-four I have finally conquered clutter?"       click 

Now I’m sixty-five, and the answer is no. But from now on,  I’m no longer pretending to myself or anyone else that I’m a tidy person.  I am a person with shoes in the middle of the living room floor, Bandaids in the middle of the kitchen table.  And though it makes me uneasy to write it, I’m going to practice saying, "So what?" until I can really mean it.

The views expressed in this piece are solely those of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views of her nearest and very dearest, Typepad.com, or the World Wide Web.

 

 

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Next post: November 9

 

 

Curmudgeoning, or Going with the Floe

“So, do you have big plans for the weekend?”
A nineteen-year-old cashier at Publix asked me the question as she tallied up my vegetables. I had never seen her before.  I was taken aback.
“Uh, I’m a pretty private person,” hoping she would get my meaning

IMAGE FROM ENVIROMOM.COM

 The bag boy chimed in.  I'd never seen him either.
"Oh, I can tell she’s the kind that goes with the flow, aren’t you ma’am?”
“Well, as I said, I’m a pretty private person.”     
I walked out stunned, and all the way home I thought of what I coulda shoulda said.

'I’m having a triple bypass.'  

'I'm planning to assassinate [any one of various political candidates].' That one would lead to complications.
'I'm going to eat potatoes, broccoli and carrots and curl up with People magazine.' (Yes, I bought People. Gabby Douglas was on the cover.  I’m embarrassed to admit they can also get me with Michelle Obama or the British Royal Family.)

GABRIELLE DOUGLAS ON UNEVEN BARS AT 2012 LONDON OLYMPICS

Apart from the intrusiveness of the question, it poses another problem.  My memory isn’t so good, and besides, I’m apt to be wool-gathering as I wait for my groceries.  When yanked back and forced to think about my weekend, it’s quite a struggle.  ‘What am I doing this weekend? Let’s see. There’s riding lessons, and Girls Place volleyball try-outs.  I thought we’d go to church. Wasn’t there something else?  I thought there was something else. Hope I wrote it down.’

NOT AT GIRLS PLACE: DANIELLE SCOTT-BARR - 2012 LONDON OLYMPICS

When I answer the phone and it's my step-daughter  she says, “Hi Liz, what’s up.” And I’m stumped.  I suppose there’s a stock reply to this, but I don’t know what it is, so I scramble to compose a status report. “Oh, I’m just sitting on the couch and staring.” “Nothing much, just about to do laundry.” The boring bleakness of my report brings me down.

I’m used to “How do you do?”  “How are you?”  I know that the response is “Fine, thank you,” though it feels odd and dishonest to say it when I’m in trouble. I think maybe young people felt that traditional greeting had lost all meaning, and they wanted to be friendlier, so they came up with this. 

My sister Luli tells me that at her grocery store the clerks are required to ask, “How has your day been going so far?”  They clearly do it grudgingly.  She went to the manager and complained that it was NOT a good idea, and he told her glumly that the directive came from higher up.

I’m on Twitter because a literary agent recommended it, but I’m hopelessly out of date. I’m not interested in the private life of total strangers (except the royal family) and I don’t want total strangers inquiring into mine.

THE ROYAL FAMILY -  AM I BEHIND THE TIMES?

Manners differ, not only across cultures, but across generations.  And manners are artificial.  Within broad bounds, polite is whatever contemporary culture says it is.  If enough people no longer return phone calls, those of us who leave voice mails must just learn to text.  If the new standard greeting is going to be 'Do you have plans for the weekend?' or 'How’s your day going so far?' I suppose I’ll have to learn the standard and meaningless response.
 
Still, I’m allowed to grumble to my sister and friends about the astonishing rudeness of the younger generation.  And once you start doing that, you are well on your way to curmudgeonhood, a status I confess I find appealing. 

I suspect the Inuit people don’t really put their aging parents on an ice floe to drift off and die.  But if I am hopelessly and happily out of date, it may be time for me to go with the floe.

 

IMAGE FROM COLLECTIONSCANADA.GC.CA

 

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Privacy

Discreet. I like that word. In my mind I still partly live in my mother's world of short white gloves, hats and stockings, a world which was starting to crumble just as I was old enough to enter it.

I used to be very averse to exposing my private life to the world.  That has changed since I began blogging, and I’m not sure why.  For a long time I was embarrassed to let anyone know what I was really thinking.  The Voice of The Fathers was VERY strong in me, condemning a lot of what I did and thought, and I’ve always half-agreed with them. Of course it wasn’t The Fathers, it was my father.

ME AND MY FATHER, 1987

Now I write posts about fuck-me shoes and crude adolescent behavior on trains. I’m no longer embarrassed by my body - I''ve posted pictures of myself exercising in my underpants, and in a wetsuit like a fat black sausage. Below you’ll see me happily lumpy in a bathing suit.  At 65 I believe I’ve earned my lumps.
   
A friend tells me that to write memoir effectively you must be fearless. But I am not fearless.  I may seem to be baring my soul, or at least my past and my thighs, but I don’t write about my deepest sorrows or biggest regrets.  I don’t write about the thoughts and deeds I’m most ashamed of, not for lack of material, but precisely because I am ashamed.
 
I am more careful now about other people’s privacy than about my own.  When I write about friends or family I usually clear the piece with them. None of them has ever objected to anything I say, probably because I am still bound by ‘If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.’

I am particularly concerned about Amanda’s privacy. I keep her worries, fears, and misdemeanors to myself. I avoid writing much detail about her life, except the sunny innocuous parts. 

I recently posted two pictures of Amanda as a toddler; you couldn't connect them to the nine-year-old she is now. I am leery of putting up contemporary pictures. I also have an ill-informed fear of the internet, and what might happen to a photo of her there, as though a stranger would track her down and harm her.  I know there are real dangers to children on the internet, but I suspect the ones I fear are not real.  Still, the Grandma in me yearns to share with the world the adorableness of this child.  So at the end of this post I’ve put up a few more baby pictures.

In fiction I have always felt obliged to make up characters.  I feel I'm cheating if I merely disguise someone I know. After I finished my third novel I wondered whether I would be a better writer if I were willing to go deeper inside myself.  I created a character based on me, though the scenes and details were imaginary.  But I found I loathed her.

I would not venture to defend any of these opinions, nor apply them to the work of other writers.  Indeed, I don’t believe they rise to the level of opinion; instead, they remain in the warm, murky waters of feeling.  They are mine, and I share them with you without any attempt to persuade.

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 I'M GOING ON VACATION. NEXT POST: AUGUST 31.

 

 

S.I.F.

Babysitters are hard to find, but on Wednesday night Joe and I finally have a real date, all by ourselves, while my friend Nancy takes care of Amanda.  We have dinner at a little Italian café in Macintosh, and sit long over our wine. On the way home I say, “Shit. I forgot.”  I forgot to pick up Amanda’s bike at school; she rides the bus to Girls’ Place after school so I bring her bike home each day.  Joe takes me home, switches to my car, with the bike rack, and drives off.

After he leaves: Shit. I forgot the eggs.  (Let’s save space and minimize vulgarity. click From now on it’s S.I.F.)  I boil ten dozen eggs every Wednesday night for the Thursday HOME Van run. click  Okay. I’ll buy the eggs tomorrow on my way to school, where I shelve books in the library, and boil them before going to HOME Van Central to make cheese sandwiches.

In the morning I look for my car key; Joe took it off the key ring to get the bike.  I grab the car key and the key ring and head to the store, buy the eggs, and go on to the school. 
                      

At the school I stash my purse under the seat, grab my keys and lock the car, and go inside to do the shelving.  But they’ve already started setting up next week’s Book Fair, so most of the shelves are inaccessible; all I can do are the biographies. Great. I finish the job and head to the car, glad that the time pressure is eased.  I have to be at HOME Van Central by 10, and it takes about an hour to boil, chill, and pack up the eggs.

At the car I discover what you probably already knew. S.I.F., and locked the car key in the car.  There it is on the console, laughing at me.
              
S.I.F. my phone.  I could use the phone in the school office, but my Triple A card is in my wallet, in my purse, locked in the car.  I’ll have to go home and use Joe’s.

It’s only about 3/4 of a mile to the house, so I have a nice walk in the cool early morning, thinking I’ll start the eggs cooking, call Triple A, then ride my bike back to the school and wait by my car for rescue.

S.I.F.  The eggs are in the car.  I’ll do the eggs in the afternoon, after I’m finished with sandwiches, and drive back to HOME Van Central by 3, when Bill and Mike pack the supper bags.  Then I’ll have an hour and a half to kill downtown before the van run.  I can go to the library and get San Francisco guidebooks; Amanda and I are going to California for spring break to visit my son and two nephews.

DOWNTOWN LIBRARY

S.I.F. to charge my phone; it’s down to one bar. Joe wakes up and tells me there is a spare set of keys on the sideboard - I thought I had returned them to my neighbor Kate. (I borrowed them back from her the last time I locked myself out of the house.)  I don't think my current car key is on that ring, but it’s worth a shot. Joe offers to drive me to the school, but I’m all set to go, and I figure the bike ride will unfrazzle my nerves.

At the school I try the key - no good.  I call Triple A.  Though I tell the dispatcher my phone may die at any minute, she is required to take me through all the questions.

I load my bike and Amanda’s bike onto the car, and sit on a rock to wait. It’s less than half an hour, and I get a good start on writing this post.

S.I.F. hasn't really ruined my day.  True, I lost my leisurely afternoon, and I will probably get a letter from Triple A threatening to raise my rates if I make another service call.  But I had a nice time at the library looking for guidebooks, and got a new novel by Bharati Mukerjee.  Joe met me downtown for Mochi, the addictive self-serve frozen yoghurt.  I had half an hour drinking an iced coffee and reading my new book at Maude’s (across the street from, and way better than, Starbucks.) And I found a topic for my blog. click  

 

     
MAUDE'S

I AM VERY EXCITED SO I'M PUTTING IT ALL IN CAPS: READ MY FIRST PUBLISHED STORY AT CLICK HERE

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My Small White Room

I have desired to go where springs not fail
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail
And a few lilies blow

And I have asked to be where no storms come
Where the green swell is in the havens dumb
And out of the swing of the sea
                    Gerard Manley Hopkins - Heaven-Haven: A Nun Takes the Veil

This is one of the few poems I have memorized and retained  - I learned it as a teenager.  It is a fantasy of cloistered life, and probably unlike any cloister inhabited by real people, though a vow of silence could certainly reduce the hail and storms.  In my mind I often visit this poem.
 

Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cloisters Collection

My dream is solitude in a small white room, empty but for a single bed with a white candlewick spread, a nightstand with a lamp and a book, and a table with a bud vase holding a single rose.  And my real life?  Crazy with clutter and people.

After my brief first marriage I had always lived alone with my son.  When he was 14, Iris, who had a two-year-old, suggested we join forces.  We bought a house together, and shared expenses, chores, and lots of tea and laughter as the boys tore around the house. 

After a couple of years, though, Iris got married.  I bought her share of the house, and then advertised for roomers so that I could pay the mortgage.  A succession of young men moved in and stayed with us briefly. 

I only remember a few.  A Nigerian man and an Africaaner, both grad students, shared our house. They did not like each other, though they had something in common - they ran up huge phone bills and then balked at paying.  After they moved on, a musician moved in.  He was a short, chubby man who practiced his bassoon in the living room.  The other roomer thought he was gay, and complained to me about sharing the bathroom because he feared he would catch AIDS. 

Finally we found two roomers who felt like family.  We got along so well that we decided to share meals.  I cooked dinner; they bought the food and, with Eric, cleaned the kitchen.  I’ve always loved cooking for people who like to eat - now I had three hungry and very appreciative young men.  I particularly remember a chocolate layer cake that lasted only one night.                    

Rick was a massage student.  He set up his table at home and practiced on me on Sunday nights. Claudio was a Brazilian who was getting his doctorate in coastal engineering.  I would find him pacing in the living room early in the morning, playing Bach at high volume on the stereo, as he wrestled with his thesis.  Then one morning he burst into the kitchen and announced that he had figured out turbulence in breaking waves.  He was ecstatic.

Rick graduated from massage school and joined his fiancé in Colorado.  Claudio got his degree and returned to Rio.  Then Eric finished high school and left home. 

Eric’s teenage years had been rough on both of us. His absence wasn’t  a case of out of sight, out of mind - I thought of him a lot. But he thrived on risk and extreme physical exertion, and it was so much easier to hear about his various adventures and misadventures from a distance.
.
Now I felt my life opening in front of me, a clear, empty space, and I was exhilarated.  It was little things: I didn’t have to tell anyone where I was going or when I would be back, and when I returned, everything was just where I had left it - no wandering scissors.  And it was the big thing: now I could write.  I’d always found that my wool-gathering faculty, so necessary for writing, was fully occupied with work and child.

Lambtown 2008 (Dixon, CA) by WonderMike. Flickr via Sprixi. CC by license
GATHERED WOOL

Living alone, I completed my first novel, and got a good start on a second.  Though a boyfriend moved in, he was very quiet and self-sufficient, and didn't take up a lot of physical or psychic space.

Meantime I volunteered as a guardian ad litem, advocating for children who had been taken from their parents for abuse or neglect.  But after watching two children move from foster home to foster home, I had no choice - I took them in myself.  The boyfriend moved out.  The children and I struggled together for almost two years, while I worked and tried to maintain some semblance of a social life.  I put the writing  on hold.       
               
Eventually the children left, and I briefly lived alone, until Joe moved in.  We married, and  Amanda came to live with us for a couple of long stretches before it became permanent.

I have friends who live alone. I admire their independence, and envy their control over their time and space.  I also admire foster parents who have three, four, five children at a time, and always have room in their houses and hearts for one more.  I would love to be so open-hearted, so welcoming.

I think we all have a dream of greener grass.  The farmer yearns for the city, the city girl for bucolic bliss.  We visit our dream for solace, but if we are lucky enough to have had choices and made the right ones, maybe we are living the life that suits us.
 

                    

    

 

NEXT WEEK: THE MUUMUUS MEET THE MANATEES

Did you choose your life or did your life choose you?  If that's TOO NOSEY, I'd love to hear from you anyway.  Click "comments" below.

 

 

 

Country of the Old

"People expect old men to die,
They do not really mourn old men.
Old men are different. People look
At them with eyes that wonder when...
People watch with unshocked eyes;
But old men know when an old man dies.”
                                     Ogden Nash - Old Men

 

Donald Hall has an essay in the January 23, 2012 issue of the New Yorker about the strange country of old age.  At 83, he is no longer able to do much of what he loves, including write poetry. He spends his days looking out the window at birds and trees and weather, on the New Hampshire farm that has been in his family for generations, and writing about what he sees.  It is a beautiful piece, tinged with humor, love, anger, and acceptance. 

.“...[O]ld age is a ceremony of losses, which is on the whole preferable to dying at forty-seven [as his wife did] or fifty-two [his father].  When I lament and darken over my diminishments, I accomplish nothing.  It’s better to sit at the window all day, pleased to watch birds, barns, and flowers.  It is a pleasure to write about what I do.”
                        
He says he has lost the gift of poetry, but his prose is enviable. His view out the window is illuminated by memories.  He hasn’t lost the eye for detail, the wit of metaphor, the ear for assonance and alliteration.  Hummingbirds “enter the horns of hollyhocks, gobble some sweet, and zig off to zag back again for another lick.”  Through the seasons “...the flowers erupt and subside.”

HUMMINGBIRDS AND HOLLYHOCKS by STEPHEN A. ASCOUGH click

My mother died when I was twenty-three, and I’ve always treasured friendships with older women.  I have several friends in their eighties. None of them are sitting by the window yet.  But one swears she will not.  She hopes to find a way out before she loses her ability to get around.  Another has given up doctors as an aggravation.  She refuses to spend her remaining time sitting in waiting rooms and being treated like a worthless piece of meat. 

Old age is not so bad when you consider the alternative, said Maurice Chevalier.  Some old people I know do consider the alternative, and think it preferable to the inexorable progress of loss, diminishment, dependency.

I think what I fear most about old age is loneliness.  I am not yet at an age where the obituaries usually bring news of my friends.  My father was 98 when he died.  He was the last of his generation, and all the friends of his childhood and youth were gone.

The Muu Muu Mamas focus on fun and frivolity, fortified by wine, but we also count on each other in times of need and trouble. click  Though we are all under seventy,  I can’t help myself; I wonder how we will age.  Hall says, “...However much we think we know what will happen, antiquity remains an unknown, unanticipated galaxy.  It is alien, and old people are a separate form of life....”

It would be easy to let go of old friends as their quick wit slows, or they become garrulous bores.  Hall believes that kindness to the old is always condescending. He is already in that alien land, and there’s no telling how I’ll feel if I get there, but I think he’s wrong. We began our lives dependent, and if we hang around long enough, we’ll need help again.  I hope my friends and I will shore each other up when we are failing, and feel no pride nor shame in it.
                  

IMAGE BY AMY_LEDERER AT PHOTOBUCKET.COM

I think of old age as a hard part of life that I wouldn’t want to miss. As I become more needy, maybe some of my arrogance will fall away, and I will learn humility.   Maybe I will gain deeper understanding as I move from loss to loss.  Acceptance is not a sprint, but a lifelong marathon.  

My view may be too rosy.  At 64 I’ve had my troubles.  Sometimes I’ve responded with anger, whining, and paralysis, sometimes soldiered on.  I’m not confident that I have found the appropriate mix of howling, whimpering, and stiff upper lip.  Donald Hall, sitting at the window looking out, loving the world as he prepares to leave it, encourages me.

  

IMAGE BY RENTON PIRATE AT PHOTOBUCKET.COM

 
"An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress..."
                William Butler Yeats - Sailing to Byzantium
                   

Donald Hall is still singing. 
           

 

NOTE: I had thought I could link to this article, but it is only available to subscribers.  If you're not a New Yorker subscriber, it's worth a trip to the library to read it, or you can go to this link to access the whole issue for $5.99. click

 

NEXT WEEK: FOOD DOG

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The No Bird

 When I was employed at a little legal think tank, I spent a lot of time on causes dear to my heart: welfare rights, abortion rights, indigent health care. Most of my companions in these causes were volunteers, who had to follow their fervor outside of whatever job they were paid to do.  But at my job, which was largely self-defined, I was encouraged to engage with the community, and even had a secretary to help me with it!  So people were always asking me to do things - go to meetings, chair committees, give speeches.

For years, I was The Girl Who Can’t Say No.  And like most yes-sayers, I got in over my head, floundering to avoid drowning, dropping balls, mixing metaphors. Then one day I had a vision*** of a strange bird sitting on my shoulder.  It turned out to be the No Bird.  Since then, whenever anyone asks me to take on a project, the No Bird asks three questions. “Is it worthwhile?  Do you have time? Do you want to do it?”  Unless I can say yes to all three, I’m required to say No. This is harder than it sounds.

THE NO BIRD

First, worthiness is hard to assess.  Doing a kindness is always worthwhile. Fun is always worthwhile. Speaking truth to power is a moral imperative, and therefore usually worthwhile, though efficacy must sometimes enter into the equation, and one must beware of the self-aggrandizing tendency.

Time is elastic. If you want something done, ask a busy woman. Even if she consults her calendar for other commitments, she probably hasn't scheduled down time: time to lie in a hammock, drink a cup of tea, sit and stare.  And as she considers the request, she'll probably ignore family obligations and general maintenance.  So she's likely to say yes, and down time and all the rest get squeezed out. 

“Do you want to?” can also be a tricky question.  They like me, they like me. They’ll be angry if I say no.  I’m the best (or only!) one who can do it.  All these lead me to think, well yes, I kind of want to. But if the thought of it fills me with dread and depression, if my throat tightens and I want to hide under the bed - that’s a pretty sure sign that I don’t. 

Sometimes I overrule the No Bird. When worthwhile really means essential, and I’m truly the only one who can do it, we argue quite fiercely, and eventually the No Bird has to shut up.  (You can see that her beak is a little the worse for wear.)  But by and large my silly bird has been very helpful, and I haven’t joined a committee in years.

 

 *** Inspiration always comes to me in pictures. A house collapsing into a sinkhole, an infant left by a dumpster, a man standing in shadows at the edge of the woods - these sudden images generated my three novels.

 

NEXT WEEK:  The Twelve Days of Houseguests

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I Got Shoes

I don’t understand the passion for purses, but the passion for shoes? - I get it.  I used to mash my feet into spiky toes, pound my soles walking on spiky heels.  Three inches was as high as you could go back then, unless you shopped in specialty costume stores. Now heels are up to five inches. I see women in these tottery-high heels everywhere, and my toes hurt.  I see a young woman in platform shoes and fear for her ankles.

High heels screw up your feet, your legs, and your back.  They hurt us and hobble us.  Why do we wear them?  Because our self-images are still shaped by fashion and media. Along with thin and young, we think sexy means that look you get in high heels - long curving calves, buttocks and breasts pushed out. Feminism has only taken us so far, and when we’re on the prowl we’re still willing to suffer to look sexy.

OUCH

I always loved shoes, and have lots of shoe-memories.  As a toddler I had to wear ugly brown oxfords instead of Mary Janes.  In elementary school, I wore saddle shoes, in junior high I wore loafers and flats, and then it was boarding school and back to saddle shoes again. When our dog chewed on Luli’s flats my mother had the cobbler turn them into peep toes. I was jealous; my mother wore open toed pumps and they were very fashionable.We dressed up flats and pumps with clip-on bows and brooches.  I held color chips against my fuschia dance dress so the white satin pumps could be dyed to match. 

When I was fourteen I took the train alone into New York City. I wore slate-gray high heels with pointy toes.  It was my first time navigating the city on my own, and I strutted down Madison Avenue until my heel went into a grating and broke off.  It was white plastic with a spike inside.  I fitted the spike back into the hole, and limped the rest of the way to my appointment.

My first sexy boots were knee-high fake patent leather, and made my feet smell terrible.  I sprinkled talcum powder inside.  When I pulled them off my stockings were covered with powder and I left little white footprints on my first lover's carpet.  The idea that my feet could smell?  Mortifying.

I bought black patent leather sandals with spike heels and an ankle strap.  That was when I first heard “fuck-me shoes,” from a lover who liked fantasy sex, but was otherwise annoying.

RUDE SHOES (KIRIAKI BY NINE WEST)

I was close to forty when comfort trumped style.  After that, it was light weight hiking boots in winter, thick-soled sandals for summer and Naturalizer pumps with one- inch chunky heels in many shades for teaching or dress-up.  I didn’t stop wishing I could wear snazzy shoes, but the pain was persuasive. 
   
A couple of years after I got my new knees, my left arch collapsed.  My ankle was pulled out of alignment, swelled up like a balloon, and left me limping. I tried ice, braces, arch supports, cortisone shots.  The podiatrist finally gave up and sent me to a specialist, whose custom-made orthotic inserts fixed the problem. There’s only one catch - the inserts are very expensive and are made to fit one particular shoe.  So I wear the same shoe style all the time, with fancy dress and jeans. Old lady shoes are acceptable anywhere. They come in black, buff, and white. Until recently I had one worn out, knockabout pair, one kept-clean pair for dress, and one buff pair for variety.                      

I can’t go barefoot anymore - as soon as I get up in the morning I put on my shoes.  I miss my bedroom slippers in the winter, and sandals in the summer.  My feet are imprisoned except when I’m sleeping.  But foot freedom is  a small loss.  Now I can dance again, and even hike up hills.

                       

Still, every time I go to Zappo’s, where I buy my shoes, I linger over the “women’s heels” pages.  One pair promises to “capture your prey with a memorable message of seduction” They even have a brand called Promiscuous (WHAT is the world coming to!)  I yearn a while, and then I order another pair of Brooks Addiction Walkers. 

Then one day as I was whining to Luli about my shoes, she suggested I paint them.  Immediately I googled shoe paint, found a site with instructions, and ordered about $30 worth of supplies - 8 colors, leather cleaner, and an acrylic finish. Iris and Amanda and I had a happy morning painting, and since then Amanda and I have painted my two remaining pairs.  

 

AMANDA'S CREATIONS

PAINTING SHOES

 
THE FG COLLECTION

I’m amused by how my shoes cheer me up.  Every time I look down and see them peeking from my pants I smile.  It’s not all good.  I don’t have any shoes left for somber or formal occasions, and I know if I buy another black pair, the temptation will be too great. (I’m dying for zebra stripes.)   But dress codes for funerals have seemingly disappeared, and I’ll never be invited to the White House.  I'm glad to have shoes that say, "I am still here.” 

 

NEXT WEEK: An Infidel in Church: The Church Search, Part II

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