The first thing I did this morning, after getting my little pug her breakfast, was check on my basil plant. It was out on the balcony, and last night, its leaves had been shriveled, drooped in the surprising humidity of an early June day. Defeated: that’s what it had looked like, although it’s possible I’d been projecting my own emotions. Yesterday afternoon on the train home from work, the temperature had hovered at 95 and the air conditioning had been broken. Shirts that had been crisp and white on the morning commute clung to armpits, shoulders, stomachs, backs—places that should never have so much attention drawn to them. Men and women who had gone confidently into work in the morning were, in the afternoon, avoiding eye contact, aware of every drip of sweat coming off their reddened foreheads. Buttons were undone as far as propriety allowed. Suit jackets were shed and would’ve been thrown from the train windows, if they opened, which of course they don’t, and we were all thinking dramatically of what it would feel like to grab that emergency fire axe and take out our overheated aggression on the windows. Some tried to read the paper or play a game on their phone, but no distraction could scale that wall of heat. I watched one woman wipe down her iPhone screen several times; her sweaty finger as she played Candy Crush kept leaving trails, and she eventually gave up, thinking, like everyone else on the train, “Oh, what’s the use?” I’d made it home to the air conditioning yesterday afternoon and stepped out on the balcony to check on my plants. And there was my sad little basil plant, looking every bit like every commuter on the westbound 4:15 train. “Oh, what’s the use?” its deflated leaves asked. “If I can’t make it through a June day, how will I ever survive July?” Filling the watering can at the kitchen sink, I thought again of what I could make with the basil, if only I could keep it alive. Caprese salad with those grape tomatoes that taste nothing like the big, tough, bland supermarket tomatoes we all now think of as a tomato. Zucchini crostini with burrata. I’d chiffonade the basil, slicing it into very thin strips I could sprinkle over the sautéed zucchini and that creamy, mild but memorable cheese. Wouldn’t it be delicious, a just-right summer taste, with grilled peaches and vanilla ice cream? And there must be a cocktail I could make, one to call my signature summer 2016 drink—perhaps a gimlet?
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I bought my little basil plant at the farmers’ market last Saturday. It had been early—8 in the morning—and I will admit to feeling smug superiority for beating the crowds by being a natural early bird. Later in the morning, around 10 or so, the aisles of the market are always packed with strollers and people trawling for free samples of just-shelled sweet peas. Inevitably, there is a girl pushing her cruiser bike—the kind with wide handlebars and brakes that you use by pedaling backwards, as if it were a child’s bike—next to the stand selling microgreens. She always pauses, considering if she really would like to spend $10 for very tiny scraps of arugula, just enough to make a salad for a fairy or a woodland creature. While she imagines the very small dinner party she could build around these microgreens, traffic stops behind her, unable to get past her handlebars. Deciding against the microgreens, she slowly moves onto the raw honey stand, and by the time she leaves the market, she will have nothing in her basket but a single sunflower and an iced latte. Which she bought at Starbucks on her way to the market. Every summer, just once, I make the mistake of agreeing to meet a friend, someone who is not a natural early bird, at the market later in the day. And every summer, as I watch the bicycle girl examine honeycomb as if she’s actually going to buy it, I am filled, all the way down to my toenails, with an urge to tell her to get over herself, something I wish someone had told me when I was 22—and at the very least, to get out of the way of the eggplant I’m trying to reach. But at 8 in the morning, the aisles are always clear, the eggplant easily accessible, and last Saturday, I’d smiled at every vendor and every other early bird: We were going to get the proverbial worm. I’d come away from the farmers’ market with:
Rhubarb that would become a crumble to celebrate the first day of summer
Shelled sweet peas that would be sautéed in a little butter and a lot of garlic, then tossed on top of pasta carbonara
Pain au chocolat, made by a French nun whose life I always wonder about. How did you end up here, in middle America? Do you speak French in your convent? Do you ever go home to Auvers-sur-Oise or Castelnaudary or wherever you’re from? But I have yet to work up the courage to ask. The most I have done is to throw a “Merci et bonne journee” to her in a small, timid voice, hoping she’ll hear my accent and lead us into conversation.
And the little basil plant.
On the way home from the market, I’d stopped at the Pet Supplies Plus. Even in just the few minutes it took to buy dog food, the inside of my car began to boil, the sun already so hot at 8:30 that when I opened the car door, waves of sticky heat emerged, practically tangible. And there, just as strong as the heat, had been the smell of basil. In the heat of the car, the basil had preened. Feeling the sun on its leaves, it had burst forth with the smell of summer, of evenings in the garden, of southern France or southern Italy or some other sun-soaked world where people eat dinner on terraces overlooking vineyards. That smell of basil was a day spent reading in a hammock, fresh-pressed olive oil, a bike ride along the sea, a morning where you don’t have to wake up to an alarm, and dangling your feet in the teal coolness of a pool. Standing in the asphalt parking lot of Pet Supplies Plus, suburban traffic of SUVs and minivans crawling past on their way to some soccer game, I wanted everything that little basil plant was offering. I wanted to drink up the world, which I was certain would taste of basil and gin.
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I brought home that basil plant and found the sunniest spot for it out on the balcony. I told my little pug to not eat it. I watered it and I admired it. And then yesterday the humidity got the best of it, as it does to so many of us. Last night, I sprinkled water from above so it was like a cool rain shower. I told it not to worry, that it could still recover, but inside I was thinking: What a waste of a farmers’ market purchase. And I was thinking: Why can’t I keep anything alive? And I was thinking: I probably shouldn’t have imbued this little basil plant with all my hopes for the summer, which are defeated and shriveled now, too. And I was thinking: That’s kind of a dramatic turn to take; it’s just a plant. The first thing I did this morning was check on it—and it has sprung back to life. I’m once again ready to drink up the world, which will definitely, certainly taste of basil.
Billy Collins wrote: "...the poets are at their windows." And so I looked out the window and wrote what I saw.
The couple crossing the street is hot. Everyone is hot, to tell the truth, but they look especially hot. He is balding and just starting to cross that line into overweight. These facts are emphasized by two things: The top of his head is glaring red (he ignores that he is balding, an admission of becoming his father, by never wearing a hat or putting on sunscreen), and his blue buttondown strains at the seams. Even more unseemly, there are sweat spots under his arms, down his back, where his shirt is tucked into his black pants.
But as he turns to catch his wife's hand, they smile and the world cools around them. They are here together, forgetting for just the few moments it takes to cross the street that niggling sense that life hasn't turned out how they planned.
This is the large sign that is currently flashing away at the train crossing closest to my house. It brings up many questions for me, including: If just the right lane is closed, why is the entire crossing blocked off? Wouldn't it be so much simpler to say on the sign: "Road Closed Until Late Fall"?
I tried, I have to admit, walking over that crossing yesterday morning. In my defense, it is where I cross to get to the train station on my way to work every morning, and I am nothing if not a creature of habit. At 6:04 every morning for the last two years, I have been crossing the tracks right there, and yesterday my body turned before the rest of me—or at least the important thinking part of me—took in the fact that the road around the tracks was ripped up.
While I realize that I could simply step over each of the rails, I am forever haunted by that scene in Fried Green Tomatoes when Chris O'Donnell gets his foot caught by the railroad ties and thank the good Lord you don't actually see him get hit by the train. I know I don't wear lace-up boots like he does, but still: I am a large proponent of railroad safety.
So it looks like from now until late fall I will be walking down the Prairie Path to cross at Main, and it's actually that idea of "late fall" that stopped me short when I saw the flashing sign.
Late fall.
Every year in August, I stop being able to imagine other seasons.
The grass this year is turning brown and prickly; aside from a few bursts of storms, it hasn't rained in weeks.
The sun blisters and burns daily, sending us all inside to hide in the air conditioning.
Even the idea of sitting on the porch with a sweating glass of lemonade sound impossible: There is too much sweat involved in that image.
The daylilies are nothing but opportunities to dead-head, and I snap off the shriveled petals every chance I get. There is a certain satisfaction to that akin to sweeping off your porch or vacuuming under the bed; you are, in all cases, doing a clean sweep.
Late fall.
I try to bring up images of rainy Saturdays, and I try to remember biting winds promising a season of eating soup and baking bread. I think of sweaters and hoodies and scarves.
But in August all I can see is the summer days stretching before me, as if they are all I've ever known and ever will know. It's summer, and won't it always be summer?
No.
One day it will be late fall again, and I will be able to cross the tracks where I always do.
Every Wednesday is breakfast burrito day at my company, and I wonder what it says about us that this is a Big Deal every week.
"Breakfast burrito day!" one woman sing-songs to me every Wednesday morning.
For awhile, I had a recurring meeting at 8:30 on Wednesday—just the time many of us typically take our morning break and head into the cafeteria for that burrito. Occasionally the meeting would be cancelled for one reason or another, and you'd hear murmured around the office, "Oh, good: I don't like anything interfering with my burrito day!"
I know why this is a Big Deal for me: because I love routine. I love knowing that on Wednesdays, I'll have a burrito for breakfast. It's reliably good and consistently there, so especially at a time when so much feels up in the air—
Will Congress be able to accomplish something this term? Why do planes keep disappearing? What's with that attack on a satirical magazine in Paris? (Nous sommes tous Charlie.)
—with all that up in the air, I love knowing for sure a little thing about my life: that the breakfast burrito is delicious.
I am on the train and thinking about talking to someone else on the train. (That sounds like the teasing beginning to a game of Twenty Questions: Guess who I am thinking of!)
I'm considering breaking the commuter code of silence because I heard a story on NPR this morning that public transit commuters who talk to other commuters are happier than those who sit in their safe, self-contained world, reading or looking at their smartphones. If NPR reported it, it must be true (and witty and intelligent), so like a good acolyte, I'm doing what they told me to.
(You can read this story for yourself here. My favorite part is where they say that "even for introverts, silence is leaving you sadder." I'm tempted to take that as a challenge: I will not be sadder by not having to talk to other people, just watch me.)
I've been riding the same train for a year-and-a-half—the same car, even. We are creatures of habit: Just as in school when we're allowed to choose our own seat every day and we, after only a few classes, gravitate toward the same seat with territorial fervor, commuters stick with the car and the seat that they know.
Why do we so easily and willingly—gratefully, almost—slip into routine in these small, quotidian ways? I think we are made to find order, and we take joy in ordering the same coffee from the same person. We like sitting down in "our" seat and seeing familiar faces around us. The world is unpredictable, but we make small choices every day to make it feel ever-so-slightly more predictable.
Part of the predictability of my commute is that no one talks. There's a man who works the crossword every day, and behind him is a guy who immediately falls asleep after settling in to his seat. How does he do this? I want to know how restful that sleep is and if he every considered going to bed earlier to avoid the need to sleep more in such a very public place. But it's hard to ask him questions, seeing as he's sleeping, so I'm stuck with my wonderings.
Usually there's an older couple sitting in front of me. They're in their 60s: the man gray-haired and bearded and the woman with a rich blonde that I'm sure is dyed but it looks so natural. Her hair is styled, every day, as if she were Hayley Mills in that show Good Morning, Miss Bliss. Do you know what I'm talking about? It was the precursor to Saved by the Bell, and if you're still a little bit lost (or would like a trip down memory lane), here's a picture of Miss Bliss:
Over the last year-and-a-half, I have invented an entire life for this couple. He's often typing away at what is clearly a scientific abstract, so I made him an epidemiologist at Northwestern, working determinedly in his lab to find the cure for everything. I imagine him travelling around the world to medical conferences to report his findings in PowerPoint talks that are standing room only. His work is that crucial, and his presentations are that engaging.
She's often reading—The New Yorker or a novel—and I believe she's a librarian and is known for her knack of recommending just the perfect book for someone, even if it's in a genre they wouldn't normally read. You can tell her one book you like, one movie you've seen recently, and how you feel about one current even she asks about, and before you're even done answering, you'll receive a book title on one of those little pieces of scrap paper the library has everywhere. A handpicked book: It's practically magical.
When this couple, several months back, spent their train rides looking at decorating websites and discussing in low tones how hardwood is a must because it's so classic and inviting (when there are plush rugs especially, she added), I invented for them a second home in Paris. Their pied a terre is their retirement dream, a goal they've both kept in mind through hours and hours in the lab and in the stacks.
And now it was finally coming true! I was so happy for them, even though I'd never technically spoken to them, but then, two weeks before Thanksgiving, my train friends disappeared.
At first I thought that perhaps they had taken an early Thanksgiving holiday. I'm sure they have children to visit in New York City (of course they enjoy the theatre and all the restaurants) or Napa Valley or Tuscany (apparently I think their children really like wine). But then they didn't come back after Thanksgiving, and now it's been almost a whole week after the rest of my silent commuter friends have returned.
Where are you? I ask their seat every day. I worry about my train friends I don't even know, and now I realize that if I were one of those happy commuters who talked—instead of consuming book after book—I would know, and I wouldn't be so sad as I look at their empty seat.
To console myself, I'm going to believe that they have escaped to that pied a terre in Paris. They're planning on spending the holidays in France because there's just something so right and charming about seeing the City of Lights in twinkle lights. When they come back in January, I'll be sure to ask them how it was.
Sometimes, it's the smallest moments that keep us smiling throughout the day.
Take Friday, for example. It was barely past 6am, and I was on my way to the train, heading to work for one more day. I was prepared for the small talk I knew awaited me at work: discussions of weekend plans, the beautiful weather, and how thankful we all were that it was Friday.
And it was a beautiful day out. This time of year—as we creep ever closer to the longest day of the year—the sun is starting to come up at 4:30 when I get up. By 6 when I leave, the world is glittering and fresh. Leaving home on a day like that, you remember what it was like to be a kid revelling in the beginning of a long summer. So much is possible.
Just outside the door, I ran into my upstairs neighbor, who was coming back from her morning walk. {We are a building of early risers, it seems.}
Jackie smiled at me and said, "So pretty today!"
I quickly said the requisite thank you and smiled back. I did feel pretty and had in fact put together a new outfit just that morning. A blazer was involved, but so was a stripey shirt I got in France 10 years ago and always makes me feel like I should be sailing.
Jackie paused, just ever so slightly before she said, "I meant the weather, but you also look nice today."
I laughed, oh, how I laughed at that, as I continued on my walk to the train. That is the small moment that kept me smiling throughout the rest of the day. Blazer and pretty new outfit aside, that comment alone kept me from taking myself too seriously that day.
I know you probably don't care about this {How could you? You're plants.}, but 2014 is my year of paring down. By limiting how much I do and schedule, I'm trying to slow down my life, a thing I very much need in this busy world.
You may not know this {again, because you're plants and the world you interact with is a constant one of soil, sun, and water}, but our world has become increasingly frantic, disjointed, and harried.
This is proven by our 24-hour news cycle that jolts us from story to story in 30-second chunks: Are we unable to focus now?
Our disjointed world is proven by a new syntax that is developing because Internet. That was it, by the way—the new way of speaking that chops out words and snappily contains these sardonic concepts. Even Hemingway himself—he the great papa of shortened, punchy prose—would look verbose and flowery in this world of fragments and odd punctuation. All. The. Time. {Why so many periods? Why such a need for emphasis and full stops? Is our new punctuation trying to tell us that we need to take more pauses?}
Our frantic world is proven by our hyperbole that pairs so well with that new way of talking and writing. Every experience, interaction, meal, vacation, weekend, video, song, Facebook post is so. Over. The. Top.
Because clicks.
Because likes.
Because feeling popular.
We toss around phrases like "the most amazing ever," and why is that? Is it because we are ever looking for that emotional high, that smooth, easy, enviable life promised us by movies and Hallmark commercials? Are we tricked into describing everything as better than best because we're frightened of appearing boring, let alone being bored?
And think about this: If that pizza you just ate is "amazingly awesome," what phrase will you use when you see the red rocks of Utah on a perfectly blue sky day? Or when you feel the ocean rush in around your calves as you look out at the sunrise and think about how deep and wide that ocean is? What will you say when your baby smiles at you the first time?
What words do we have left when our language is so bulked up with superlatives?
Beyond diminishing those big experiences, this hyperbole can also make our small moments seem just that: Small. Unworthy. Not enough. If we're always looking for the next best, will we overlook that moment sitting on the balcony in the summer twilight as the fireflies are blinking—little stars here on earth—as the cicadas are singing?
And we're back to the balcony, dear plants, which is where you come in—or more correctly, where you are.
You're probably confused as to why I just went off on a rant about syntax and the Internet {when you were expecting a nice welcome letter, maybe}, but it all does relate to you.
Every summer since I moved in to my condo six years ago, I have tried to grow bright, cheerful flowers on my balcony. Some years have been moderately successful, but most years have involved brown leaves, flowers that don't thrive, and much disappointment.
I go into the season dreaming contentedly of being surrounded by color and life as I do the Saturday morning crossword and drink French press coffee. It may just be a balcony, but I believe every year that I can make it feel like an English garden: Structured but inviting, tended but with just a touch of wild.
Then July comes, and I'm sorry to tell you, my plants, but I kill you. I have killed your cousins or best friends or whoever, despite my best intentions and hard work and desire to be a good gardener.
This might seem really meta, but here's a letter I wrote to my flowers a few years ago {a letter within a letter!}. You can hear my disappointment and bewilderment, as well as my realization that even if you oh-so-fervently desire something, it might not come to pass. I might not be a good gardener, and I need to accept this.
So here we are in the year of paring down, and I'm applying it even to my balcony foliage. Look around you: There are no flowering plants among you, you ferns and succulents. When I went plant shopping this year—Monday night after work, a night when it looked like it was just about to rain and then it never did—I looked only for tags that said "Easy Care!" or "Low Maintenance!"
I'm writing you now, green plants, to say that—no pressure—but you're part of my slowing down plan. In our frantic, disjointed, harried world, I'm trying to create space that is low-pressure, calming, and doesn't demand much. When I sit out on my balcony, I don't want to see something I should be trying harder to manage and take care of; instead, I want to admire verdant life as I sit with a glass of wine.
In summary, PLEASE don't die on me, my dear plants. I will give you water, and I've put you where you can see the sun. I'll tend you as best I can, which is all any of us can ask.
Now let's all relax, slow down, and have a non-dead plant summer, one where I sit surrounded by your green life. If you'd like, I'd even read to you from books that resound with the beauty of our language, ones that echo with true things, so that we can remember that our world wasn't always too busy to take the time to express a good idea slowly.
In terms of joy office supplies can bring, a new pen is second only to a new notebook. And oh, the thrill in a day that brings both a new pen and a new notebook: I would burst with the writing possibilities, if that were possible.
The new pen that I got today has that smooth, roller-ball ink flow that makes everything you write look important. The first time I put it to paper, my hand practically twitched with a desire to create something that would last generations.
And yet what I was writing was my to-do list for the day, and it was full of words and phrases that wouldn't make sense to anyone outside my company, let alone someone ages and ages hence. What I was writing with this new pen would just end up crossed off and thrown in the recycling bin at the end of the day, but I'm telling you, it was the boldness of the ink that made me want to switch to writing poetry or a letter to a long-lost friend. In the scratching of the pen on paper, I could almost hear a story beginning.
Why is it that things—and having the right thing to do a task—makes us feel like we are better able to do that task? I've thought of this before: What is it about having the right pen that puts me in the mood for writing?
Why do I feel like it has to be a certain kind of notebook, with a certain kind of line, before I can settle in to a writing mood?
This is all bordering dangerously on a self-judgmental tirade about how I use excuses for not writing. That's not where I intend to head.
I'm more aimed at this idea: I am what Laurie Colwin calls a "domestic sensualist," someone who drinks in the beauty of everyday objects and realizes that a pen, just an ordinary pen, can hold so much more than ink. These objects that we surround ourselves with can tell stories about the most normal, uneventful days of our lives, and that is why getting a new pen, one that writes so smoothly, can feel so momentous. It is a thing of beauty and possibility that we can touch every day.
That is also why I set the table for even weeknight meals with my grandparents' wedding china {a Noritake pattern with a pink rose and gold leaf} and why I use a demitasse spoon and a white cup and saucer for my morning coffee, even though it's just me and even though I'm in a hurry. Living with and using pretty, meaningful objects brings delight to even the dullest of days, and it helps me remember to look for beauty on those days when nothing seems to shine.
The new pen I got is just an object; it is just a utilitarian thing that I can use to craft my to-do list and write notes to myself. But it also creates a daring, bold line that seems to want to declare something, write something, live something.
Even though it's just a pen, it can remind me of this: Sometimes, we do the most mundane, routine things with the most mundane, routine objects—and we are flooded with joy at the mere ordinary beauty of it all.
It is February again tomorrow, that least favorite month of mine, and I'm attempting once again to force it to be enjoyable with a February Fun list: 28 small things in 28 days that will bring a little delight to every one of those days.
I am not unaware of the fact that 28 days is the typical length of an addiction-breaking cycle. Perhaps I am trying to break the winter doldrums, not that I'm addicted to doldrums. But this is the rut time of winter, and you either need to break out of it—or it will break you.
For this year, I modified previous years' February Fun lists based on some brainstorming session with friends. {That's another thing about this Fun: Everyone is invited to participate, but some of the days are pretty specific to me. Run 10 miles, for example. If that doesn't sound fun to you, I won't make you do it, shouting at you the whole time like a maniacal drill sergeant: "Are you having fun now?!??"}
Other people came up with ideas like: go to a movie, go to a new place for brunch, go to the Art Institute.
Meanwhile, I came up with ideas like: buy a new book, make sure all your pictures are up to date, bake brioche, clean out your closet {and donate what you don't need anymore}, and buy new underwear.
Broadly speaking, I'd say that other people have fun ideas of things to do together, while all I want to do is be alone with my food, books, and organizational tendencies.
In an effort to "grow as a person," though, I've incorporated some of those non-solitude activities {a less awkward way to say that: social activities, although that does sound like I'm on a cruise and the purser has planned fun things for us on the Lido Deck}.
Here's to a fun-filled February. Please report back and tell me, on a scale of 1 to 28, how fun your February was.
2014 February Fun
retreat far, far away (and off the grid): I'm going on a partially silent retreat with my church. Doesn't quiet sound fun?
wear fun earrings
buy a new CD
find a Zooniverse project to work on: I read about this in the Tribune the other day. You can help! With science! Just by using your computer! Look at the projects—I'm most intrigued by the one to help catalog soldiers' diaries from World War I.
make something out of my new Downton Abbey cookbook: Or since you probably don't have this same cookbook, you can just make a new recipe.
schedule coffee with a friend {or dinner or whatever—basically, schedule quality time with someone. Good friends don't count—this need to be someone you don't see much.}
buy flowers
bake brioche
clean out your clothes and donate the ones you don't need anymore
re-organize your books {or whatever else you want to organize}
read a short story
buy new underwear
eat dark chocolate {good for the brain, you know}
write a postcard to Java: I read about this in Oprah while I was at the gym one day. To help students in Java learn English, you can send them a postcard telling them a little bit about who you are and where you come from. If you include your address, they may even write you back. Learn more about it.
go to a movie
write to your nieces and nephews, if applicable: Otherwise, just write a card to someone, anyone.
bake for your neighbors {or a friend}
re-read a favorite childhood book
write a poem
host a craft night {or go to one, preferably the one I'm hosting}
school spirit day: Remember back in high school when you got to have different Spirit Days, such as Wear Your Pajamas to School Day or 70s Day? We don't get Spirit Days in the Grown-up World, so I'm declaring a personal Spirit Day. For me, this means I could wear something purple and gray in support of my high school team, the Grayhounds—Fight, Purple! Fight, Gray! Fight, fight today! Yes, I still remember my cheerleading chants.}
Glen Ellyn Style with friends: I'm sure you have no idea what this is, but all it means is "hang out with your friends in downtown Glen Ellyn and wander through a bunch of shops. Getting coffee is also a good idea."
run 10 miles
make something out of my new Simply in Season cookbook: I'm sure you're thrilled that I've gotten two new cookbooks just before this February Fun began.
go to Starbucks and pay for a random person's stuff
paint your nails
be a wine-o {or just have a glass of wine}
make hot cocoa. Like real hot cocoa, not Swiss Miss
It was one of those to-do list Saturdays—a day when I had scribbled a few thoughts for the day down on a little piece of paper with a very bold THINGS TO DO printed at the top. Maybe it was the boldness of that declaration or the bright sunniness of the day {January sun makes Midwesterners feel that they could take on the world}, but the more things I crossed off the list, the more things I added to it. My little piece of paper was covered front to back, and it was only 10:45.
Sitting in the parking lot at Target, I crossed off such exciting accomplishments as:
Buy kitchen towels
Get a haircut {actually, this one is for-real exciting, not sarcastic exciting: scalp massage and someone to tell you you look pretty. That is one perfect way to spend from 9 to 10 on a Saturday morning.}
Go to the dry cleaners
And then I realized that if I wanted to accomplish what was next on the list—run at the gym—I would need to add something to the list: Eat.
To-do lists, as a side note, should always include what you think of as obvious tasks. Then you get the benefit of crossing yet another thing off {you're so accomplished!}, plus you don't forget to make time for obvious things, like food.
I know, considering how much I talk about food, you're probably surprised that I would ever forget about it, but there were kitchen towels to buy and baseboards to be dusted; I can really lose myself in the face of a promising day of productivity.
Food. Yes. I needed some of that so that I could go burn it off on the treadmill. I added "Eat" to the list, and went to what I saw as the least bad of my options in the area: Einstein's Bagels.
Now, I'm not saying a thing against Einstein's. I'm just saying that given the option, I will always imagine myself in a local, quaint cafe, one that has a soupcon of France in it, and one where I could read an Elizabeth Gaskell novel in a paisley armchair or write things where soupcon seems like a natural word to use.
That dream cafe was nowhere near me, probably because it is a dream, and I do enjoy a good bagel sandwich. I was sure that the atmosphere at Einstein's—breezy brunch—would match well with the book I'd brought to read {no Elizabeth Gaskell; it was the biography of PL Travers, the woman who wrote Mary Poppins}, and besides, I was just using it as a means to crossing something else off my to-do list.
I sat at a corner table next to a group of older people—like, in their 70s or 80s old—who had pushed together 4 little tables to make one big table.
I immediately began making up stories about them, mostly involving how they'd been friends since elementary school and how they'd been meeting up for brunch for the past 25 years and how they'd just decided to try this Einstein's the other month because who doesn't like a good bagel?
But my stories were no match for their actual conversation, which went like this:
Older Guy Who Looks like Jack Lemmon: Does anyone here understand hashtags? I know they're used on Twitter and Facebook, but why?
Another Guy, Who Is Wearing a Sweatshirt from the Grand Canyon, One that He Probably Bought in 1983: I can't figure out if they're used to say something you want to draw attention to, but you don't want to come right out and say it. You look at some of them, they're practically secret messages, all those run together letters.
A Woman in a Sweater Vest: I think they're fine on Twitter—yes, I tweet—but what I don't understand is when they're used in conversation. As in: "Hashtag, I like this coffee."
Jack Lemmon: Hashtag, I do, too. And hashtag, free refills.
Sweater Vest: See? We could just communicate on Twitter right now in our hashtags! Maybe this is a sign that computers are taking over the world and language is breaking down.
[Much laughter, which isn't the normal response when pondering the effect of computers and social media on our language. Then again, these people were old, so I thought that if they could chortle at that, maybe the rest of us shouldn't be so worried about it.]
Grand Canyon: Well, I just have to say: "Hashtag, I don't understand hashtags."
And then, throughout the rest of their conversation, they would randomly insert hashtags.
"Hashtag, going to be cold on Monday."
"Hashtag, I'm going to get some more coffee. Does anyone need anything?"
"Hashtag, I still can't believe you tweet. What do you have to say?"
This is wonderful, I thought to myself, all thoughts of reading about Mary Poppins pushed aside. I want to join in their conversation with something witty, but I'm scared I would blurt out, "Hashtag, I love you all." Or worse: they might ask me to explain hashtags because I'm young, and I don't want to admit to them that I never use them. Hashtag, not cool.
I lingered in that Einstein's for longer than I needed to, just to see what else those old people would say. They discussed Syria {no hashtag silliness there}, the Grammys, movies they would like to see, and what they're reading.
As I left, I thought 2 things:
Please, dear Lord, let me be that in-the-know when I'm their age.
I'm totally adding "eavesdrop" to my to-do list and crossing it off.
It was the moment when I realized that I'd had my workout pants on backwards the entire time I'd been at the Y that I thought: Well, that's about enough for today.
I'd spent 31 minutes biking furiously on a stationary bicycle, although "furiously" is the wrong word for it. While I biked, I read Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, about her grief in the year after she lost her husband very suddenly to a heart attack, so I suppose you could say I was biking "grievously," a misused word here, but one that makes me smile with the word play of it.
And now inevitably, I'm thinking and writing in the voice of Joan Didion, one of those writers I admire so much that I've written about her before. She has this chopped but lyrical style, a way of conveying so much emotion in these scattered phrases {and really, isn't that what all writers are going for?}.
She writes:
Life changes fast.
Life changes in the instant.
You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.
and
In time of trouble, I had been trained since childhood, read, learn, work it up, go to the literature. Information was control. Given that grief remained the most general of afflictions its literature seemed remarkably spare. There was the journal of CS Lewis kept after the death of his wife, A Grief Observed. There was the occasional passage in one or another novel [...]. There were, in classical ballets, the moments when one or another abandoned lover tries to find and resurrect one or another loved one, the blued light, the white tutus, the pas de deux with the loved one that foreshadows the final return to the dead: la danse des ombres, the dance of the shades. There were certain poems, in fact many poems. [...] The poems and the dances of the sades seemed the most exact to me.
It's in Joan Didion's repetition of phrases that I could get lost—that I did get lost, pedaling as if her grief depended on it, as if my grief depended on it. By the time I finished those minutes on the stationary bicycle, I had gone 8.21 miles, and my legs ached.
Read this book, and you will hear echoes throughout of that "Life changes fast" idea.
Read this book, and you will want to absorb grief literature right along with Joan Didion, sinking into poems by Auden and ee cummings, wrapping yourself in words by others who have found a way to write about something we all feel but can so rarely describe.
Read this book, and you will start to think in Joan Didion's voice {if you are lucky}, and so even when you have a realization about how your workout pants are on backwards, it will be in her clipped but soaring take on life.
You'll hear it in your head, and you'll laugh at how you summed up that moment. You'll think then: Thank the Lord for this ordinary moment, this ordinary reason to smile because life changes fast, life changes in the instant.
Upstairs from me, a sweet retired couple lives, and on March 1, the man, Hal, declared to me: "My winter ends today."
We were standing outside, having met on the sidewalk—me coming in from my morning walk with the little pug, and he heading out to his volunteer position as the crossing guard for the local elementary school.
The first time Hal told me that he was a crossing guard, I wanted to ask him if he got to wear the reflective belt—the one that loops over your shoulder and then wraps around your waist. I remember that from my crossing guard days at Grimes Elementary, and I also remember always getting it twisted, which rather limited its reflective abilities.
I didn't ask him that but assumed he was the lucky guy who gets to hold up the stop sign and wave at the cars as they drive by.
On March 1, Hal, on his way to be a crossing guard, had on a stocking cap, wool mittens, and a parka, and yet he declared to me: "My winter ends today."
He went on to explain, "See, Kamiah, I say every year that winter is over on March 1, even if it doesn't really happen until later in the month. But I like to believe that spring comes earlier, so I just say that winter is over."
He's told me that several times since then, and I can tell he tells a lot of people that. It gets him a laugh, and there is a practiced patter to how he says it. "So I just say that winter is over," he always concludes, and then he laughs, a quick ha-ha, at his own joke, as he zips up his parka.
I find these kinds of conversations comforting in their predictability. When it comes down to it, we all have something to say about the weather, and the very fact that on March 25, I woke up to flurries is indeed something to comment on.
The sky is falling, and we are all waiting for spring. Real spring, I mean, not the kind that comes just on the calendar or when an old man declares he's had enough of this Midwestern cold and gray.
I hope I see Hal tonight on my walk with little pug. I want to tell him that this morning, I saw a crocus pushing up through the earth, dotted with snow, but there all the same. Winter is ending. It really is.
Last weekend in Seattle, I couldn't stop looking at the water. It's what always happens when I get near the ocean, perhaps because of my landlocked Midwestern sensibilities. Even though I grew up on the Mississippi {or, more correctly, on the river bluff above it: I was not Huckleberry Finn, floating down the Muddy Mississippi and hoping for a better life around the bend} and therefore saw water every day, it simply is not the same as seeing so much blue stretch in front of you.
From my parents' house, I could see Illinois and more farmfields...with a ribbon of a brown river in the foreground. And though I knew that that river fed the farmfields and had inspired stories and songs, it was also just the thing I saw every morning when I ate breakfast.
But the ocean...
I drove to my bed & breakfast in the dark and so it wasn't until the next morning on my run that I saw the water. The town I was staying in, Port Gamble, was tiny and had about four main streets, one of which was called NE Walker St. Of course I interpreted that as a sign that I was in the right place.
I had to make about seven loops around the town, running up and down every street over and over, in order to get in my 31 minutes. {Several years ago, I decided that the minimum time I could run would be my age. This plan will, at some point, backfire, but for right now, it's working well.}
On my fourth lap past the espresso stand {this is the Seattle-area, after all}, the woman working waved at me and laughed.
I stopped by afterwards and said, in that way that lone travelers have, too much too quickly, as if I was concerned that this espresso woman would be the only person I'd talk to all day: "I live in Illinois, so I'm really excited to be able to run outside and not have to worry about slipping on the snow and ice. Look at me! I'm in shorts! I also can't stop looking at the water and smell that! It smells so fresh and clean here, like industry and inspiration are just waiting for you. But the water: Do you ever get used to seeing it?"
More than anything--more than the babbling and the talking of my shorts--that last line betrayed me as a foreigner. I suppose it would be like someone asking me, "But the Mississippi: Do you ever get used to seeing it?"
And of course I did. It was just there with barges going up and down it every day.
Sometimes it smelled like rotting fish.
The Mississippi mud can hide clams that slice your toe before you even know you've stepped on anything.
When we read Huck Finn our sophomore year of high school, no one once stopped a discussion to say, "But did you ever think that this river that seems so mythical and magical is literally two miles from this classroom with no windows?"
The Mississippi was just there, just like for that espresso woman in Port Gamble, the Hood Canal is just there. It's amazing what we can get used to.
But I'm still convinced that I would never get used to seeing so much water every day. I would never get used to breathing in deeply and feeling like I was taking in life itself, which I suppose I do every day anyway, but it's hard to remember that when you're in the suburbs of Chicago. Whoever you are and wherever you live, I think we all need a Port Gamble-like place to escape to when our normal lives and normal view start to feel like drudge and sludge.
We need to see something else for a few days, and then, most importantly, come back to where we started and say: Here is good, too.
What is it about being away that makes you see the beauty of here? I don't know, but I'm willing to spend years figuring that out. It means, after all, more trips to more Port Gambles.
West to the sunset and straight on until yesterday.
Looking out from the 11th floor of this hotel—once the fanciest in St. Louis—it is not hard to think of yesterday.
Imagine here on the top floor ballroom, a society wedding in 1922. The smoke would be thick but that view west to the rest of Missouri and the rest of America would still be, besides the bride, the view of the day.
Or imagine the World's Fair in Forest Park, just across the street.
Meet me in St. Louis, Louis! Meet me at the Fair! How can you not think of Judy Garland singing about streetcars and heartstrings and merry little Christmases when you're in St. Louis?
When the Fair came to town, people who'd never been outside the middle of American could feel, not that they lived in the middle of nowhere, but that they lived in the middle of it all. The world had come to them, and they could stroll past it at their leisure.
No, it is not hard to think of yesterday up here, probably because the orange suffusing the view gives it all a nostalgic tint: That orange is the color equivalent of Judy Garland's voice.
Day is dying in the west; Heaven is touching earth with rest—but before it goes, there is one final blaze, as if to shout: remember me.
Then the shout fades to a whisper and we're all left staring at the memory of color and light.
My friends Brenda, Beth, and I used to play a musicals games on gchat every day: one of us would change our status to a line from a musical {the more esoteric the line, the better: if you want to use Annie, it wouldn't be a very fun game if you posted "The sun'll come out tomorrow!"}, and then the other two, when they figured it out, would post another line from the same show.
It's the kind of game three friends who met in a class on musical theatre would play, and it's especially good if the three of you all work desk jobs now but still wish for that musical magic in your life.
Days at a desk can start to feel repetitive, like an homage to that Bill Murray movie Groundhog Day, and you start to think that your life isn't all that exciting, no matter how much you like your job.
This is where musicals come in. {Actually, if I try even a little smidge, I can get musicals into most conversations.}
Brenda, Beth, and I share a love for Into the Woods, a Stephen Sondheim show about the "ever after" in fairy tales: How did it work out for Cinderella? What about Jack and the Beanstalk? And Little Red Riding Hood: She's a spunky little thing, but what about after she has her run-in with the wolf?
One of my favorite songs from the show is "Moments in the Woods"—this song that talks straight to that longing we all, I think, sometimes get hit with: something thrilling has just happened, and you wish: Couldn't life always be like this?
Couldn't my life always be trips to glamorous places?
Couldn't every meal be French?
Couldn't I wake up every morning rested, no matter how late I stayed up reading?
Couldn't I always feel like I was being twirled around in a ballroom while wearing a pretty dress?
Couldn't my life be made up of highlights?
The Baker's Wife sings about just that thought in "Moments in the Woods." The Prince has just found her in the woods, and he kissed her! Her, the Baker's Wife! The lady who's usually covered in flour and trying to buck up her husband!
She's astounded at how just the Prince's kiss made her feel like a different person—but she knows that that kiss and that moment are not real life. You can't build a life on a kiss in the woods.
Real life is out of the woods, with her husband, working together to build a better life. That thing that happened in the woods—well, that was just a moment.
She sings:
Just a moment,
One peculiar passing moment—
Must it all be either less or more,
Either plain or grand?
Is it always "or"?
Is it never "and"?
That's what woods are for:
For those moments in the woods.
Oh, if life were made of moments,
Even now and then a bad one!
But if life were only moments,
Then you'd never know you had one.
[...]
Let the moment go!
Don't forget it for a moment, though.
Just remembering you've had an "and"
When you're back to "or"
Makes the "or" mean more
Than it did before.
Now I understand—
And it's time to leave the woods.
That part about how if life were only moments—these highlights {and lowlights} in the woods, away from our day-to-day joys {and struggles}—then we'd never be able to appreciate moments when they came along: That's the part that has stuck with me for years, the part that flits into my head every now and again when I'm sitting at my desk.
The day may be dull or frustrating, but it's my day, and I can appreciate its normalcy precisely because I also have days that are whirlwind curly-cues of joy.
Thank goodness for those moments in the woods.
Watch "Moments in the Woods" for yourself and see if you don't feel the same way I do. Ooh, you should tell me if you don't, and then we can talk on and on about musicals. I would love that.
"Learn to enjoy the little things—there are so many of them."
My Kids Thot-a-Day calendar told me this yesterday, and it's been sitting with me, as the simplest things often do.
I don't think, if I may be so self-congratulatory, that I need to learn this lesson. Little things and the enjoyment of them are a specialty of mine, but sometimes I forget that, as I often do with the simplest things.
You know how it is: a work project, say, doesn't go quite right, and you can feel frustration, annoyance, and tiredness rising up in you. What had been a small, peaceful stream, a babbling brook, is suddenly under a flash flood warning because somewhere far away from you, it rained.
This flood is out of your control, and you can start to feel out of control yourself {because, well, you are—not in control, that is}.
All that rises, a rushing river of Big Things, and your quiet glade of Little Pleasures is destroyed.
Like a character from Little House on the Prairie or from Little Women or from some other diminutive book, you had plans of simply reading by the stream all day. You were going to bring a picnic, but now—now, argh and grrr and other guttural utterances of frustration and disappointment.
Then, hiding in the trees, perhaps, in the glade—high up out of reach of the flood—is a bird with this reminder: Learn to enjoy the little things—there are so many of them.
A flood will dissipate. A frustration will become less acute. A tiredness will be sated.
And then, I'm sorry to say, they will come again. But in the midst of flood, frustration, and tiredness, there are always so many little things to enjoy.
Such as {my own little list for the moment}:
how my Little Pug curls up in front of the space heater whenever I turn it on. She sits so close I do worry that she'll burn up her fur, but she seems content and cozy for the moment.
Christmas lights
walks in the strangely balmy December weather
stovetop popcorn with melted butter
really, anything with butter
reading in bed
giving a friend a homemade present and having her squeal in delight
So many little things to enjoy.
It sounds trite, I know—like something more fitting come out of Marmee March's mouth than my own. But right now, on this almost-the-longest-day-of-the-year early morning, it sounds right coming out of my pen.
And now I have to ask: what are the little things you enjoy?
It has been a week of—no, a month of—to-do lists and tasks.
The checkmark mentality has so overtaken me that even when I try to write easy, light emails—the kind where you say, "Hi, dear friend, I miss you. When can we see each other? Please say it's soon."—I want to write it in bullet points.
I would so love to see you soon, and here are some times I have available:
Saturday morning at 9:30
Sunday before church
next Monday night from 7:30 to 8:30
And I was thinking that we could:
take a walk {weather dependent}
drink coffee
drink hot cocoa
drink coffee and hot cocoa together {and maybe put some sort of alcohol in it because that's just the kind of day/week/month it's been, the kind where you want all your desires in one cup}
But none of that sounds very friendly, does it? It sounds like I'm trying to cram my friends into my planner, squeeze them down to size, and then check them off my list.
Of course that's not what I mean, but I cannot seem to make my brain stop its to-do list format.
Until.
Until I remember that poetry always does it.
Poetry always brings me back from the edge where I thought, just for a second, that if I could just get everything down on paper, it'd be all right. If I could just categorize it all under headings and subheadings and especially if arrows were involved—well, then, it would all work out.
Poetry, though, is what reminds me that not everything has to be structured and not everything will work out as I want it to when I make my to-do list in the morning.
Poetry is what reminds me that it's all right—it's more than all right—even when nothing works out as I thought it would.
So today I found a poem about Christmas carols and Christmas decorations. It's about how even in the midst of all this shiny, happy holiday stuff, we still need to do the chores; we still need to take the garbage out and shovel the walk.
You can get bogged down in those details of life {at any time of year, you can get bogged down}, or you can choose to see the glint of beauty in the blend of the chaos, the chores, the normalcy, the lights.
And for right now, reading this poem and writing down a few words about it, my mind has stopped its to-do list. That's all I wanted.
December
Gary Johnson
A little girl is singing for the faithful to come ye
Joyful and triumphant, a song she loves,
And also the partridge in a pear tree
And the golden rings and the turtle doves.
In the dark streets, red lights and green and blue
Where the faithful live, some joyful, some troubled,
Enduring the cold and also the flu,
Taking the garbage out and keeping the sidewalk shoveled.
Not much triumph going on here—and yet
There is much we do not understand.
And my hopes and fears are met
In this small singer holding onto my hand.
Onward we go, faithfully, into the dark
And are there angels singing overhead? Hark.
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