Nov 23, 2012
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.
I'd love to hear from you! Do you make lists? Click "comments," below.
Next post: December 7 (omg, it CAN'T be almost December)
Oct 25, 2012
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.
Sep 28, 2012
“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
Jul 27, 2012
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.
Apr 5, 2012
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
Mar 9, 2012
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.
