Feb 15, 2013
I’ve become accustomed to having a partner parent. But, as I explained in my previous post, Joe went to Capetown for two weeks just before Christmas. With him gone, I fretted and fumed. Amanda was too much for me, and it felt as though all the tough parts of parenting were mine.
prodigalthought.net
I brooded and sulked, and thought about our lives together, and finally I decided that I wanted Joe to take over supervising homework, the job I hate most. Amanda hates homework too, and she puts a lot more effort into avoiding it than doing it. Every week, her teacher and I would email back and forth, looking for strategies to make it work. School problems were taking all my creative energy. They caused tension between me and Amanda. And I never knew what I ought to be doing, how much I should be involved. I never got it right. Even in a rare session when she tried to be amiable, I couldn’t explain math to her. “Grandma, I don’t want to be rude, and I’m really listening, but I don’t understand anything you’re saying.”
After Joe returned, the house was full of holiday and guests, and I couldn’t find a time to bring it up. He was grading papers when he could fit it in, not a good time to ask him to take over more work. For days I silently argued with him, and rehearsed different ways of presenting the proposal. ‘It’s making me miserable.’ ‘I’ve been in charge since 2nd grade – won’t you do it for the rest of 4th grade and see if things improve?’ ‘I’m not doing it anymore, you’re in charge.’ I expected him to refuse; I prepared for a fight.
gloryofmarriage.com
Our guests went out to dinner; we sat by the fire. He told me his troubles, most of them due to me. I listened the best I could, and finally told him what I’d been thinking. Without a pause, before I could give reasons and explanations, he said, “I’ll take over homework.” I was flabbergasted.
365daysofvocab.wordpress.com
Amanda went back to school January 7. Joe met with her teacher, and told her he’s taking over. Now he picks Amanda up every evening at Girls Place and she does her half hour of reading while I get dinner ready. After dinner she does math and other assignments, while he keeps her company. He is exceptionally patient, and a great explainer. Sometimes she balks. Sometimes he yells. But they both stick with it, and homework time is half as stormy and twice as productive as it was when I was doing it.
Joe is gradually overcoming her resistance. The other night while I did her hair she demanded that he write math problems for her on her whiteboard. After she did about six, he wrote an A+ on her whiteboard, with a nicely-drawn medal.
The change has affected her schoolwork, and her school behavior, but it’s done much more. The nightly work together has brought them closer. He’s taking over more – I sit back and bite my tongue as he tells her not to take more food than she can eat, to get her jacket, to wait for instructions before she tries to fix something. He’s much better at this than I am; he doesn’t take it personally when she misbehaves, just calmly corrects her, imposes the consequences, and moves on.
Amanda and I are getting along much better too. I have fewer things to bug her about. Watching Joe as a father is making me a better mother – I try to ease up on her, and don’t let indignation interfere with problem-solving.
A tiny piece of me is jealous of Joe’s skill and success. A huge piece of me is teary-eyed grateful. All my other family chores are lighter because they’re not weighed down by resentment. I’m the cook, and Joe has long been in charge of doing dishes and cleaning the kitchen. But when our usual routine of Joe and Amanda cleaning up after dinner was interfering with homework, I told him I’d take it over.
I was surprised by how much tension this relieved. I used to have sour thoughts: Why doesn’t ‘dishes’ include iron skillets? Is he ever going to empty the dishwasher? Now I get the kitchen as clean as I want it, when I want it. Apparently he hated cleaning the kitchen every night almost as much as I hated homework. So he is equally grateful to me.
School is going better, Joe and Amanda are closer, Amanda and I have more sunshine, and the house is bubbling with love. But for me, the best is what this has done for my writer-self. My creator, problem-solver, ruminator are now free for my writing. I’ve had an explosion of energy in my work. In three weeks I’ve come up with nine topics for the blog and written two posts. I’ve researched and submitted queries to two agents. Most exciting, the novel I’ve wrestled with for four fucking years suddenly came clear; I intend to finish a plan by the end of April, and a first draft by January 2014.
I am elated, exhilirated, and endlessly grateful to Joe. Sometimes after Amanda goes to bed we lie on the couch and listen to music. Last night I looked at him and thought, “It’s amazing that I’m married to this man.” We will have our private celebrations, but I think he deserves a public hooray from the heart. Happy Valentine’s Day to my dear husband Joe.
agoodtimewithwine.com
Jan 31, 2013
Our Martin Luther King holiday weekend was filled with the sounds of “We Shall Overcome.” Three men sang it in church, accompanying themselves with guitars and trumpet. At the birthday rally at the Bo Diddly Community Plaza, we all joined hands and sang it together. I turned around and was thrilled to see Amanda holding hands with her two friends, and singing out.
Lamont Wallace speaks at rally; singing the song. Erica Brough.The Gainesville Sun
I have always thought of We Shall Overcome as a gospel song, but it never mentions God or Jesus. According to Wikipedia, it was a union protest song derived from a gospel song, and part of its tune is from the spiritual, No More Auction Block for Me. It shares with gospel the expression of faith, and like gospel it offers the solace and encouragement of a candle in the darkness.
I was 17 the first time I heard the song: January, 1965, my first semester at the University of Michigan, an all-night teach-in against the war in Vietnam. What 17-year-old, new to college, wouldn’t welcome the chance to stay out all night?
There were informative workshops, with maps and pointers, in small seminar rooms. I went to a couple, but mostly I joined the crowds of students milling around outside in the cold. At midnight we stood in a big circle on the Diag, holding lighted candles and singing We Shall Overcome.
Candles on the Diag, this time for Mumbai. ur.umich.edu
In high school I had longed to join the freedom riders on the buses going south, though I was probably secretly glad my parents would never allow it. The teach-in was my first taste of protest, and it fed my inchoate longing to make a better world. I only dabbled in those days – a few protests in Ann Arbor and Detroit, the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago – but the spirit caught me.
A freedom ride. blackpast.org
In my 60’s I’m still a child of the 60’s, though the media claims we’ve all moved on. My watchword is “Light a candle AND curse the darkness.” I haven’t lost an ounce of idealism, and most people I care about haven’t either. I know a whole bunch of gray-haired, wrinkled-y people who feed the homeless, carry peace signs, act for social justice and speak truth to power.
minnpost.com
Amanda first heard “We Shall Overcome” a couple of months before, when we watched Eyes on the Prize. She had come home from school angry. “Why do they always have to talk about Black people and slaves and all those bad things that happened to them?” I had the sense that beyond Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks, she had heard nothing of the Black heros and achievers. I stammered something about Dr. Charles Drew and blood banks, Benjamin Banneker and the design of Washington D.C., but I especially wanted her to know of the many thousands of people who were the Civil Rights Movement. So I bought Eyes on the Prize from PBS.
zazzle.com aaregistry.com
I should have screened it myself first. I had forgotten that it included the graphic image of Emmitt Till’s body, the pictures of the strange fruit hanging from southern lynching trees. But most of the first hour was about courage and strength and organizing. Our conversations since then, as well as her frequent singing of Keep Your Eyes on the Prize, reassure me that the movie, though strong medicine, was helpful to her.
After we came home from the rally and march, I told Amanda that many of the old people she saw there had been part of the Civil Rights Movement she learned about in the movie. They had marched, sat in at lunch counters, been the first black kids at all-white schools, gone to jail for the cause. And she said, “This might be wrong to say, but they were lucky. I wish I could have been there and seen how it was. I wish I could be part of it.”
Arlington, VA sit-in. crmvet.org
She has the idealism of so many children, the fierce desire to help, to do something that matters. When Joe can’t be home to watch her on Thursday nights, she rides the HOME Van with me. click click She’s happy as long as she gets to distribute candles and batteries, and she connects with polite friendliness to everyone she encounters.
I assured her the struggle is not over. There’s still plenty of work to be done, plenty of justice yet to be achieved. Who knows what Amanda will become – I can see her as a comedian, a child-care worker, a track star. I will be delighted if she grows up to be competent, kind and reasonably happy, with a life full of challenges and joys. And just maybe she will join the community of those who work for justice.
Jan 18, 2013
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.
Dec 7, 2012
People of my political ilk were pretty thrilled, or at least relieved, by the outcome of the last election.
Brooks Kraft / Corbis for TIME
All of us lefties had complaints about the first four years of Barack Obama, but we also spoke of his administration’s many unheralded accomplishments. Here’s one you likely never heard of: the No More Homeless Vets initiative, announced in 2009 by Eric Sinsheki, Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). click
In this initiative, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) provides rental vouchers, and the VA provides outreach and case management, as well as other services to support people once they are housed. This program is for people with serious mental illness, physical disability or substance abuse history. According to the VA, “Veterans with the most vulnerability are excellent candidates for this program.”
source:nursing322sp10.wordpress.com/homeless-veterans/
I am a veteran, not of the armed forces, but of forty years of studying, navigating, advocating in, and being subject to government poverty programs. So when I see the words “job training, employment assistance, mental health services, housing assistance,” I am not impressed. I know that all these programs can suffer from eligibility hurdles, peculiar rules, inept staff, and most of all, severe resource limits that let them serve only a small percentage of the people who need them. And they are targeted at people who are the hardest to help. After childhoods of appalling abuse, adulthoods of self-destructive behavior, and for combat veterans, a government-sponsored season in hell, some people will never be what we choose to call self-sufficient.**
Season in Hell
source:mindprod.com/politics/iraqwarpix.html
But last year the VA announced that the number of homeless veterans had been reduced 12% from 2010 to 2011. Since 2009 the VA-HUD program had successfully housed 33,597 Veterans in permanent, supportive housing, providing case managers and access to VA health care.
Of course they’re tooting their own horn. The VA blog contains plenty of complaints from veterans who still aren’t getting what they need from the system. click I have no way of evaluating the program on a large scale. But I have seen it succeed here in Gainesville, one person at a time.
For me this initiative is personified by the outreach workers who accompany the Home Van on our weekly campsite rounds. Many homeless vets are discouraged by bureaucracy and especially suspicious of the VA – they will not seek out services. So the VA workers go to the woods to find them. The workers find out what the veterans need – documents, legal assistance, health care, drug treatment, vocational certification – you name it – and come back week after week to move the cases along.
One by one, every month or so, one of the men or women living in the woods tells us, “I’ve got an apartment. I’m moving in next week.” John*** and Deena, both vets, have lived in a tent in the woods at least as long as the HOME Van has been going out. John is reserved, Deena more open. She always had a hug for me when I gave her socks; I’d say ‘How’s it going?’ and she’d shrug and smile. When she told me they were moving into an apartment, my first thought was ‘Oh no, we won’t see you anymore.’
Mad Mack is a scrawny old vet, a Led Zeppelin fan, who’s been housed for two years. He comes by the HOME Van many evenings just to see his old friends. I’m sure his case manager knows he smokes reefer – he makes no attempt to hide it.
Felipe is a blustering, obnoxious guy, eager to tell anyone who’ll listen why he’s better than ‘those bums.’ Last week he told us he’s about to move into an apartment. I was thrilled, as I had been for all the others. If The Feminist Grandma’s affection were key to being housed, there would be an awful lot more people on the street.
The VA has chosen the right way to help homeless veterans. They work one on one, encourage and nag, help navigate the mazes of different agencies, until finally the veteran has housing. Then they help with the many challenges in transitioning from camping in the woods to living inside.
The HOME Van at home
The HOME Van has long experience with this approach. Our volunteers have helped a few people find housing, and then shored them up in various ways – dealing with bureaucracy, taking them to medical appointments, even managing their money. Though we have way less money than the federal government, we have the advantage of being ruled by our hearts rather than regulations. click
The VA Secretary says, “No one who has served this nation as a veteran should ever be living on the street.” But I hope the No More Homeless Vets initiative will be a model, and we will extend these services to the homeless people who are veterans not of the military, but of a thousand hardships most of us can’t imagine. Some will continue habits that middle-class people simultaneously frown on and indulge in.
source: kushmagazine.com
But stoned or sober, employed or not, anyone is better off living inside, and the whole community is better off when nobody has to live in the woods.
source: The Gainesville Sun
** None of us is self-sufficient. We depend on family, friends, and an endless array of public benefits: roads, airports, police, libraries, schools, emergency response – that’s just off the top of my head, early in the morning.
*** All names are fake, of course.
Nov 9, 2012
I recently read an astonishing email, a bride’s instructions to the ten women she was inviting to be bridesmaids. They included requirements that the women clear their calendars from February through August, respond to bride’s emails and calls within a day, and attend all three wedding events, in Vail, Vegas, and New York. click
I was horrified and amused, and was thinking fondly of our own wedding, when I suddenly realized that it was October 9, our thirteenth anniversary. (To be honest, I did have to look inside my wedding ring, where the date is inscribed, to be certain. I can never remember whether it’s the 8th or the 9th)
Our wedding was a modest, do-it-yourself affair. We rented the Boltin Center, a city-owned community center. When I booked it, the only hitch was that they were planning to paint and refurbish it, and hadn’t scheduled the work yet. What would we do if we made all our plans only to lose our location?
It is the only time I have ever engaged in municipal corruption. A close friend was high in city government. He assured me that he would see to it that the painting happened after the wedding. If we had asked him to expedite the work, that might have posed a problem, but delaying it wouldn’t trouble Buildings and Grounds at all.
The Boltin Center
When we made our guest list, I was struck by the size of Joe’s family. His list was huge: his daughter, four parents, three brothers and a sister-in-law, nephews, and dozens of aunts, uncles and cousins. Both my parents and all but two of my aunts and uncles were dead; I was unconnected to my cousins. I did have my son, my two brothers and their wives, my sister, and the seven nieces and nephews. It made me sad, and also made me fear being swallowed up by The Jacksons.
Planning the food was not too hard, though it was our biggest expense. A friend was a caterer, and she prepared a lovely lunch buffet of salmon, an elaborate rice pilaf, and a green salad. We served no liquor, as Joe didn’t drink, we saw no need for it, and we are both cheapskates.
Our wedding cake was the best I have ever had. Joe’s cousin Stephanie had her own cake business. She made us a three-tiered yellow cake with French raspberry buttercream, made with butter and eggs, not the nasty grocery store stuff. We topped it with my sister Luli’s Sculpy figures of Joe and me dancing together. She swears they are anatomically correct, but the clothes are sewed on so we couldn’t check.
Stephanie brought the cake layers and the frozen frosting down from Boston on the plane. The night before the wedding she and Joe’s brother Adam carefully thawed the buttercream with her hair dryer, and she assembled and decorated the cake.
I had no desire, at 51, to be married in white, looking like a big fluffy marshmallow. Instead I wanted a pretty red party dress with a swirly skirt. I looked through pattern books until I found just the one, with a fitted bodice, scoop neckline, and full gathered skirt. I had a hard time finding the fabric at JoAnn’s, but the Christmas prints were in, and I found a bright red gingham with tiny darker red pointsettia leaves.
My friend Nancy offered to make it, and I spent the night at her house in Orlando. When it was basted together and I tried it on, I couldn’t breathe. “I never knew you had such big boobs,” Nancy said. We fixed it by opening the bodice and making a triangular insert, with ornamental buttons down each side. I had planned to wear dressy flats with my party dress. But two days before the wedding I broke my toe, so I was stuck with white adhesive tape and sandals.
There were two bridesmaids – Joe's daughter Leah, 13, and my daughter Rebecca, 17. It never occurred to me that they should wear matching dresses or coordinated colors. Rebecca and I went shopping. I steered her away as best I could from the teen trollop look, and we bought a lovely black knit minidress with red and white trim.
Leah’s mother took her shopping. I believe she bought a cream and mauve floor-length dress; however, I never saw it. On our wedding morning, Naomi, Joe’s mother, called and asked if there was a Target in Gainesville. Leah had left her dress in Tampa. I didn’t envy Naomi. Leah was at the self-loathing stage, and shopping with her could not have been fun. But they succeeded, and bought a black dress with blue flowers.
I look at the pictures now and laugh. Rebecca’s dress barely covers the essentials. Leah is thoroughly swaddled. And I am gloriously decked out in my silver hair and the perfect party dress I dreamed of when I was twelve. I had no idea till I saw the pictures that my concept of pretty hadn’t changed since 1959.
A few days before the wedding Joe and I had the requisite prenuptial quarrel, when he told me he planned to go down to the Boltin Center the morning of the wedding to supervise the placement of the chairs. We were expecting about 100 guests, which made quite a tight fit. Joe had drawn a detailed diagram on graph paper for my friend Iris, who was in charge of setting up the room, but he felt he needed to be there to supervise. I had intended a quiet morning at home, just the two of us, to get in the mood for the wedding.
“I don’t need you to manage my mood.”
“Iris doesn’t need you interfering. We delegated this to her, and she’s very competent.”
“We just have different meanings of ‘delegate.’ To you it means just hand it over; to me it means you supervise the job.”
Now you just know I had to go look it up in our big fat dictionary to confirm that I was right. I hope and believe I didn’t race back to him with the definition. We fumed in separate rooms, and later Joe agreed to the quiet morning together.
Setting up without supervision
The night before the wedding our friends Mary Anne and Larry had a family gathering for us in Mary Anne’s beautiful garden. My nephew Ben grilled burgers and dogs, and we hired a shucker to deal with two bushels of oysters. Mary Anne and my sister Luli made side dishes.
Luli, Mary Anne and Larry prepare the feast
Luli was in heaven – I believe she ate three dozen oysters. Joe’s large family mingled with my small family, and there was food and love and happiness to spare.
Joe and I had our quiet morning together, interrupted only by Naomi’s call at 9, and then the doorbell at 10. His friend Jaleel had driven all night from D.C., and arrived to find it was too early to check into his motel, where he had hoped to take a nap before the wedding. We gave him fresh-squeezed orange juice and led him to the guest bedroom.
Joe, Leah, Rebecca and I drove to the hall and waited downstairs. And waited. Joe went to find out what was holding things up. It turned out Stephanie was rebuilding the cake, which was to be displayed in the back of the hall. The Florida heat had softened the frosting and the top two layers were sliding off. I don’t know how she did it, but she hid any repairs with fresh raspberries. Luli, who has been a food professional most of her life, was awed by Steph’s aplomb.
Steph repairs the cake
Finally Adam came to tell us everything was ready. The girls walked down the aisle, carrying flowers from a friend’s garden, followed by me and Joe. Patti, a dear friend who’s a notary, waited for us, and my oldest brother Don stood at the front playing the wedding march on his harmonica. I saw him, and our families in the front row, and friends from all over, and blubbered all the way down the aisle. I sniffle now as I think of it.
We exchanged slightly modified old-fashioned vows (losing ‘obey,’ adding ‘come what may’) and each read a poem, one solemn, one silly.
Download Wedding poems
And then we were married, and the fun began. The band got everybody dancing by putting them in a circle and teaching them the cajun two step.
Everybody ate but me – I was too wrought up. We ran the gauntlet of blessings and soap bubbles, and went off for two happy days at the beach, accompanied by the top tier of the wedding cake.
I love going to the weddings of people I care about. I love the gathering of family and friends, and of course the dancing and eating. If it is over the top I share my catty thoughts only with sister Luli, who is intimately acquainted with the nastier aspects of my nature.
The point of a wedding is to make a public commitment, shared with and supported by the people you love. I prefer a wedding to be a celebration, not a spectacle. To each her own, but I’m sorry when I hear it conceived as an entertainment extravaganza starring the bride. It can be a lovely occasion, but it’s the least important part of the long adventure of marriage.
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.
