There’s a fresh PaperGirl post coming later today, but for now, know that the latest episode of Quilt Your Heart Out is up on the site! Mom and I give quilting and life advice and speak to Ann Rehbein, Executive Director of Quilts of Valor.
She reads a letter from a veteran who was awarded a quilt. You will need kleenex.
Quilt Your Heart Out,
Mar
Not so long ago, I walked past a cheese shop on Lake Street (this was in Chicago) and something caught my eye. Was Jersey Blue on sale? Was my eye drawn to a crunchy breadstick tree or a jar of free-range quince jam? No. I saw a baby hanging comically in a sling and had to investigate. I decided if I found a wheel of $20/lb. cheddar cheese in the process, well, that was fine.
I watched it at it as it hung there, totally powerless and adorable while Mom browsed the bins. As I marveled inconspicuously — I did get this single picture, unseen — I was plunged into a line of existential questions that I know the baby would have answered if it could have.
Existential Cheese Baby, what do you see? Do you see the array of cheeses or do you just see shades of yellow? Can you identify yellow, yet? Do you realize that if I had to try and explain to you what color is, it would take me so long to make any sense of it you’d have a beard by the time I was done? Oh, you’re a girl baby. Sorry.
Do you know purveyors of cheese used to be called cheesemongers? No, I don’t know why they’re not called that anymore. Things change, Existential Cheese Baby, and they keep on changing. Why, not so long ago, I was your age and my entire life was before me. That’s what I thought, but who knows? My entire life might be behind me because I could walk out of here and get hit by a bike messenger. You don’t think that would be enough to kill me? Have you seen those guys? I don’t think you know what you’re talking about.
What are you good at? You don’t even know! You don’t even know what your interests are, much less if you’re good at any of them. You could be good at sports or arithmetic or spelling or capoeira but we won’t know for years! And your parents might not give a rip what you’re interested in and push you to do something you hate because they wanted to do that when they were young. Then whose life are you living, Existential Cheese Baby?? Life is absurd and confusing and then you end up in a cheese shop at thirty-six, staring at babies, only later to write about it publicly while slumped in a chair in Iowa wearing a pair of socks you borrowed from your philosophy professor boyfriend who technically lives in Germany.
Your mother appears to be wearing fringed hotpants. I thought you should know.
Claus came over from Chicago for a visit while I’m here. Aside from the interest he has in seeing where I grew up, it’s objectively great for him to see a quaint Midwestern village. It would be the same for me if I were in Germany; I’d probably travel miles to see a “real life” German village. I’ve shown him the theater; we went to see some covered bridges; we’ve eaten several meals at the local Northside Cafe; we checked out the high school football field.
And this afternoon, we took a drive into the countryside. But it wasn’t just any old Sunday drive; we drove seven miles south-ish and west-ish of town to the farm where I grew up.
Lord Almighty, all our old pains. So precious, so deep, so white-knuckled. Our most blinding pains are woven into us and the older we get, the older the pain gets and don’t you dare pull that thread. It’s the first tragedy of my life, leaving that farm, and the story of it — mythic, epic, now — has been squatting on my heart ever since, despite hours of therapy, true love, art. Despite travels to Chicago, New York City, Washington, DC, to the far reaches of the galaxy, to Florida. I’d love to say it was different, that I’m resolved and actualized and enlightened by age if nothing else, but I see that farm and it all comes back. Blah, blah, blah.
I was little. My sisters were little. My mom and dad were getting divorced. My sisters and I got on the school bus one day. We never went back to the farm. We didn’t know we wouldn’t go back, we just never did. We never slept in our beds again. We never saw our toy box again. We didn’t say goodbye to our cats. We were country kids, then we were not. Cry me a river. Amazon.
Why go out there? I don’t know. One may select from a variety of Sunday afternoon activities and ghost-hunting is an activity one may choose to select when you’re me, in Winterset. It’s all out there, just seven miles out, south-ish and west-ish of this particular and particularly quaint Midwestern village. The acreage looks a lot different from when I was eight, but it’s the same. It is exactly, exactly the same and I would know because I know every inch of that place.
There’s a long drive to the property from the road. It’s not possible to get to the house without making a big production of it: you don’t visit my farm by accident. I don’t know the people who live there, so Claus and just parked the car on the road. That was for the best. I wouldn’t be able to handle touching the yard, the doorknobs. I just know I couldn’t. Squinting at things from far away was plenty.
Claus took pictures of the landscape and of me. Of all the pictures he took, there’s one that truly works. It’s a closeup of me. I’m wearing my Iowa Hawkeyes hooded sweatshirt. The wind is blowing my hair around and I’ve got one hand up to hold it back. My nails are lacquered red because I got a manicure for TV taping tomorrow. The sun is glinting off the gold baby ring I never take off. I’m squinting because the sun is behind the camera. I look every day of my thirty-six years. I’m not smiling. But I’m not crying. The farm is behind me, blurry.
*There’s more about all that right here.
You’ve been very patient. I’m proud of you. You can get a cookie and come back. Are you back? Okay.
I always figured courtroom weddings took place with a judge behind the bench, looking over his spectacles, saying something like, “By the power vested in me by the State of Iowa, I pronounce you husband and wife. Congratulations, I hope you have a pleasant day.” Maybe there would even be a gavel swing, maybe even a “Next.” But that wasn’t what it was like at all. Mr. Hanson, the magistrate, came to the center of the room and said, “Okay, you ready to get started?” Everyone straightened up and the bride and groom went to stand near Mr. Hanson.
“Would you like to say anything to each other before we get started?” he asked them. He had papers in his hands. The bride and groom looked at each other, smiling, nervous. They shrugged and the girl half-asked, half-said, “Well… Let’s do this.” Mr. Hanson went into the script and at the beginning, I zeroed in on the couple. I felt all the, “This is the beginning of their lives together!” and “Love is amazing!” feelings one feels at a wedding. But I wasn’t full on wedding-crying, yet.
That happened when I looked around at the family. They showed up. It was a Wednesday afternoon. People took off from work. They put on their Sunday best. The younger girls were taking pictures; Mom seemed to be filming the whole thing on her phone. It was a family. It was a family doing what families are supposed to do, even if they don’t like it all the time: they show up. They may think you’ve lost your mind, they may not understand you a lot of the time, but they love you, and even if you’re the black sheep this year, they’re gonna take off work and get to the courthouse. I think it’s because we all know — or certainly should consider — that we’ll be the black sheep in the family sooner or later. We’d better be nice; we’re gonna need it.
When that family sentiment hit, that’s when I got the warm wedding tears and stabbed at my eyes with the sleeve of my Iowa Hawkeyes sweatshirt. I made every effort to be silent with my emotions, but one of the rough guys (uncle? brother?) caught me. I saw him turn to his wife or girlfriend and jab his thumb back at me and whisper, “She’s frickin’ cryin!”
The ceremony was done when Mr. Hanson said, “You can kiss the bride.” It was like any other wedding in that regard. I didn’t stay a moment past the end. I clapped, quietly, and smiled at the group. I caught the bride’s eye and whispered, “Congratulations!!” And then I left. This was most definitely not about me, even though if I had stayed two minutes longer I’ll bet you I would’ve gotten an invite to the bar.
Best wedding I ever crashed. Only wedding I’ve ever crashed, actually, and I did it on accident. It took a special blend of circumstances for that to happen. I like that kind of thing.
Read yesterday’s post first if you haven’t already!
This family had no money for a wedding. Appearances aren’t always what they seem. But if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a wedding at 2pm on a Wednesday at a courthouse. This wasn’t ironic for them, getting hitched at the county building; it wasn’t something they were doing on a lark, either. This was their wedding. Not everyone can afford lightning bugs in Mason jars strung from weeping willow trees in Seattle, Pinterest. This was it.
When I popped my head in, everyone looked at me. They were the only people in the courtroom. There was Grandpa with a long white beard; a few gals in their twenties, presumably sisters or sisters-in-law; a boy of two running around with a bunny toy; an aunt and uncle; and a big, dinner bell-ringin’ mother unit who narrowed her eyes when she saw me. I gave an “I am not the enemy” wave to Mom and tried to look mild as I hung near the door. I was not there to gawk or judge: I was just excited to observe, but I know that “observing” can look a lot like “staring at people like they’re zoo animals,” which is not okay. There was no mistaking a measure of self-consciousness in the room when we — two outsiders — appeared. But I was full of smiles and was already tearing up, so it quickly became clear I was not a threat, I was not mocking anyone. I was just some weird woman who said to no one in particular, “I’m sorry! I just love weddings!”*
The bride looked amazing. Her skin was creamy ivory. Her hair hung down her back in loose curls; she definitely got a trip to the salon out of this. Her lipstick was a deep, rich red. She held a tiny bouquet. And, just as Mom had said, this girl was puh-reg-nant. That baby was practically a ring bearer. And yes, her white dress — lovely against her pale skin — was short. Too short, really, for a gal that far along, but what do I know? Maybe that was the nicest-looking dress she could buy or borrow. Her groom wore a ballcap. He did not take it off.
I flapped at the bride and said, “Congratulations! I’m so happy for you! Yay! You look amazing! It’s so great!” She laughed and beamed and said thank you. Everyone was milling around; I figured it was because the wedding was done and they were waiting for papers from the office. I was about to go when one of the sisters came near. I asked how the ceremony went, if it was nice.
“It hasn’t happened, yet,” she said. The bride heard her say it and then the bride said to me:
“We’re doing it right now! You can stay if you want.”
At that moment, Mr. Hanson (I went to high school with him, too) came in to begin the process; there was no time to freak out. I just clasped my hands to my breast and mouthed, “Really??” and the bride mouthed back, “Yes!” so I sat in the farthest away pew and tried to be the most normal, weird wedding guest on the planet.
And… Guess what? I have to break this story up into three parts. I know! I wasn’t planning on it, but the end of the story can’t be told properly if it’s squeezed into a paragraph and if I write much more than that, this post will be too long. This is really a consideration, you know, the length of PaperGirl posts. Too short, there’s no point; too long, people get fatigued. It’s a fine line and it’s up to me to watch it, so this is me watching it.
Tomorrow, the conclusion of the story. The moral will be inside of it, like puddin’ in a longjohn. And if you can’t stand it and need to read other stuff I wrote about weddings, you can click this and you might enjoy a click on this, both of which will take you to pieces of the story of my younger sister Rebecca’s magic wedding last May.
*Tiffany was a good wing man; she made me look legit. (Remember: I was in sweatpants and had gym hair.)
My mom had to go to the Winterset courthouse today to get something for her taxes. Our house is exactly two blocks from the courthouse; we’re as close as you can get to the town square without actually being on it. I was writing at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee when Mom came back.
“I got my documents,” Mom said, taking off her winter coat. “I was in the hall on the third floor and this guy — real tattooed, rough-looking guy — was lost. I asked, ‘Can I help you find something?’ and he said, ‘Yeah, I’m lookin’ for where you get married and where the bathrooms are at.'”
I coughed on my coffee. “He was getting married? Seriously? At the courthouse just now?”
“There was a whole wedding party,” Mom said. “The girl was very pregnant, dressed in this short, short white dress. The guys were all tough guys, tattoos. I think the mother of one of the couple was there. It was very interesting.” I shook my head. That was so awesome. A shotgun wedding at my very own courthouse. I was sorry I hadn’t seen it myself. I began to ask Mom every question I could think of because it would be a great story for this blog.
“Well, why don’t you just run over there right now? They’re probably still there; I only left two minutes ago.”
Incredibly, I was ready to run at that exact moment: my sweats and sneakers were still on from my morning workout. I scrambled out of my chair and took off, blazing down the alley, the courthouse dead in front of me. It’s a total beeline over there. I pushed through the heavy oak doors and zoomed up the two flights of stone stairs to the third floor. I looked this way and that, following hallways, peeking in doors. Come on, come on.
The girl working at the desk in the last office I peeked into turned out to be Tiffany, a girl from my high school. We recognized each other at once; it was a happy, if rushed reunion. I told her, breathlessly — I looked like a post-workout maniac — that my mom said there was a wedding and did she know where they do that stuff, the weddings at the courthouse? Tiffany did (she’s the office manager) and said it would probably be the courtroom. I followed her down the stairs and we were quickly right at the door to the courtroom. There was the wedding party, just as my mother had described them.
Tomorrow, the rest of the story, lovingly told, will include:
– how I was invited to stay for the ceremony and did
– a more detailed description of the bride and the groom
– musings on love (duh)
– how I cried like a dweeb (duh)
Until then, enjoy the canapes.
My mom and Mark were in D.C. and got to go to the recently reopened Renwick Gallery. The Renwick is part of the Smithsonian galaxy of museums and it was closed the whole time I was in DC. Also closed the whole time I was in D.C.: the frozen yogurt place across from the zoo!
The above sculpture is made from thread. That’s right. All that color is cotton thread strung and twisted with laser precision from the floor to the ceiling in a room in Washington, D.C. The rainbow is there right now, even as I lay back in my bed in a small town in Iowa with a little bit of a headache that I hope isn’t a sign of something worse. Being an adult means continually thinking, consciously or subconsciously, of worst-case scenarios.
It’s dark in the Renwick right now; the museum has been closed for hours. Maybe there’s some light coming through the windows; headlights and streetlights are probably giving light off. In a city, it never gets completely dark. The office buildings above the gallery surely have a few people still in them, working and eating Thai takeout and turning lights on. And that means that some of the threads that make up Plexus A1 are illuminated, however dimly, in that room, right now.
When Mom was telling me about the D.C. trip, my chest felt tight.
How strange: I lived there. I know where the Renwick is. I want to see the thread. If I could get a flight, I could be there by 2am. I know what train stop to take from the airport. I know how the streets work. I could casually ask my mom before I snuck out what floor the thread sculpture was on and when I got to the gallery, I could climb up and peer into the windows. I’d see what I could see of the rainbow in the dark.
After a long time — I’d be there a long time — I’d climb down and there would be only one thing to do. I’d have to get back to the airport. Because I don’t have a home there, even though I’m pretty sure I used to.
You have questions. I have answers.
Q: Is that you?
A: Yes, it’s me. In the orange. And that’s my younger sister, Rebecca, in the bee outfit.
Q: Wow. When was that taken?
A: A long time ago.
Q: I meant, like, how old are you guys there?
A: I don’t know. I think that was fifth grade for me, second for Rebecca. I don’t know. The neon orange is burning holes in my retinas and also in my memory. And I can never tell how old kids are, even when the kids are me and my sister, looking directly at me through time and space.
Q: What was this for?
A: It’s a family portrait.
Q: That’s really intense, Mary.
A: I was joking! It’s a picture for a dance recital! Look, hurry up; I have to keep this post short because yesterday’s was extra long.
Q: Is the point of those tights to make you look tan?
A: I… I don’t know.
Q: Your sister is crazy adorable. Is the front of her outfit… Is it plastic?
A: I don’t know, probably.
Q: Did you guys save the costumes and the headbands and stuff and wear them after the recital?
A: For literally years.
Q: Did you like dance class?
A: I never understood that dance did not necessarily involve toe shoes. That’s what I was in it for from the start. I was continually disappointed when they were not distributed. I quit after a while because there kept not being toe shoes. No one ever really explained that you have to work up to that.
Q: Was it an artistic choice, do you think, on the part of the photographer, to cut off the wicker hole on the right side?
A: Let’s all believe it was.
I landed myself in the ER while I was in Lincoln. I didn’t know whether I’d tell the tale, but I will, because it’s dramatic and it gives me another opportunity to thank the folks who took care of me. If you’re icked out by the female anatomy, you can skip this one. The post has to be a bit longer than usual to tell the full story, but it pays off, I promise. If you keep reading, you’ll get to the following sentence: “The president of the International Quilt Study Center & Museum was holding my hair so that I could barf in her kitchen sink.”
When I let the Study Center president know I would be able to attend the opening reception for Blue Echoes, Leslie insisted I be her houseguest that night. It’s a three-hour drive from Lincoln to Winterset; it would be silly to try and drive home so late. I accepted at once and packed a toothbrush. Sleepover with the prez? Awesome.
At the party, I felt a twinge. I know a person for whom English is a second language who calls a woman’s period her “days.” As in, “I’m sorry you’re feeling unwell; are you having your days?” I love that (so German!) and have adopted it. So yes, at the party, I began to have my days. Great.
As the evening progressed, I got progressively more interested in being horizontal and putting something warm on my abdomen. My days aren’t usually too rough; I have mild cramps, some irritability — but I have had some corkers in my day. That night in Leslie’s lovely guest bedroom, my number was up, or so I thought. I slept all of four hours, waking from pain so intense I moaned. It felt like my uterus was being wrung out like a wet beach towel. It felt like a Doc Marten boot was stepping on my reproductive organs and grinding around for effect. It felt like that time I was on an airplane and projectile vomited then passed out because a cyst on my ovaries decided to burst at 35,000 feet.
You don’t have to be at 35,000 feet for a cyst on your ovary to burst. Ask me how I know.
I had planned on leaving for Iowa around 8am that day. After I barfed in the bathroom, I texted Leslie from the bedroom that I was quite ill and would have to stay in bed for just a bit longer, if she didn’t mind. And would she, maybe, quite possibly, please bring the warm Bed Buddy thing she offered last night? She didn’t mind, she brought the Bed Buddy, and I told her how bad it was. I didn’t need to tell her; I looked pretty bad. I also told her that 1) my GI doctor told me last week I need two bags of iron as soon as I can get them and b) I have a not-small ovarian cyst on my right ovary. “If things were to get, you know, worse,” I said, “That’s relevant information.” This did not feel like cramps, even bad ones.
Leslie nodded and told me St. Eve’s Hospital was just down the road if we needed to go there. She brought me the family barf bowl (it’s a really good one), and told me she’d check on me in fifteen minutes. My body was getting weaker and weaker, and I remembered what it was like when my hemogoblins once went down to four out of the standard fourteen. I did not want that to happen again and there was a lot of blood presently checking out of Chez Fons. I texted Leslie that we needed to take our field trip.
I couldn’t stand upright to get to the car, and on the way, I threw up so hard in Leslie’s kitchen sink for a good two minutes. That hurt. Leslie was holding my hair. The president of the International Quilt Study Center & Museum was holding my hair so that I could barf in her kitchen sink. I told her, in between heaves — and she will confirm this — that this was a funny way of bonding with a new board member. Don’t some presidents take their board members on retreats? She thought that was funny but also suggested that we leave soon.
We did. They were all great. I got good pain meds, an IV, and an ultrasound. There was a whole bunch of fluid behind my ovary and guess what? No cyst. The smoking gun, ladies and gentlemen! I felt markedly better as the day went on, but I stayed at Leslie’s house that night and didn’t leave till the next morning. I am still sore and my days remain. I’ll have to get my iron infusion tomorrow; it can’t wait much longer. I’m basically translucent right now.
Leslie, thank you, and your family, for everything. You can come to my house and barf in my kitchen sink anytime.
This post is a placeholder.
It is a placeholder for a post that I have been working on for almost two hours, now. Sometimes I bang out a post on the ol’ PG in no time; other posts take longer, some take much longer. But this one is killing me and it’s time to sleep. There are different moving parts in it, you see, and I’m afraid I’m more myopic than usual about the subject matter, so it’s best to tap out for now.
It’s about love. You’ll have it later this week.
I arrived in Iowa yesterday. My episodes of the TV show start taping on the 13th, but I’ve come early and am going to stay a day or so after we’re done. This is so I can watch spring come to small town Iowa and so Mom and I can sew. We work together in various quilt capacities, true, but we rarely have time to simply sew together. So we’ll do that when she gets back from a trip to DC.
Today, though, I am not in Winterset. I came to Lincoln, Nebraska so that I could attend the opening reception for a jaw-dropping exhibit at the International Quilt Study Center & Museum. The exhibit, Blue Echoes, features the work of Japanese studio quilter Shizuko Kuroha. I drove three hours to the museum, then I went around the world.
Around Christmastime, I was invited to join the board of the Study Center. I fell off my chair. Then I said yes. Then I told my loved ones. Then I wanted to shout it from the rafters but never did, because that’s not behavior becoming a board member of anything except The National Board of United Rafter Shouters.
There’s more to come about the Study Center and what it’s like to be on the board of something. I’ve never done it before. But the people I met tonight, the canapes I consumed, the ideas I had, the quilts I saw, the hands I shook, this all bodes well. While I was washing my hands in the ladies’ room, I thought of other boards it would be fun to serve on:
The Board of the Beard Association
The Board of Boar’s Head Meats Corporation
…and how much fun would it be to be the chairman of the board of the International Chair Board.
I wrote recently in my column about public speaking and how I’m used to it. In the middle of writing that piece, I got sidetracked for hours by two eternal questions. Well, they’re eternal to me; I’m not sure the rest of the world is bothering with them, but maybe the world should. And if the world meditates on my questions and comes up with something, I would appreciate if the world provided those answers. I have other questions, too, but the world can start here:
1. If a performer presents to an audience, this is making theater. If the performer presents to no one, is theater still made?
2. Does my identity as a performer run so deep that if I were shipwrecked on an island, would I write and perform plays for the squirrels?
My answer to the first question remains, after many years: “I don’t know; go ask Peter Brook.” The answer to the second question is “Yes.”
Were I shipwrecked on a remote desert island, I would without question look for a way to build a little stage in the shade. I would memorize my lines — lines I couldn’t even write down because there is no paper on remote desert islands from what I understand — and I would rehearse hours each day. I would gather split coconuts, which could be used for costume purposes. Were I to choose to produce a puppet show, these coconuts could make excellent boats. I could perhaps train a squirrel to come in on cue for a little comic relief during one of my real downers. “Just eat a nut or something!” I’d yell, and he would never, ever, ever do it. Which would be funny.
Yes, the love for getting up and being on the performance side of that ancient line in the sand runs deep. I wouldn’t change it if I could.
I don’t actively make theater these days. I miss the Neo-Futurists all the time. And how about that: the first sentence of this paragraph has led to a third question: If a person who makes theater isn’t presently making theater, is she still a maker of theater?
Discuss.
This photo was taken last night around 9:30pm at the Harrison red line el stop. It could be the best picture I’ve ever taken. As I’ve said, city living is the only kind of living for me, not the least because of things like this. A peanut butter and jelly sandwich on the recycle bin, just hanging out, is a welcome, funny surprise.
I meant to post this last night on my Instagram feed. If you like this picture, you may like the other pictures I share on that site. I have abandoned Twitter entirely, but Instagram continues to work for me and I enjoy it very much.
To celebrate Easter, Claus and I took a bike ride to the lakefront.
We rode for some time, then needed a snack. Since Claus had not seen Navy Pier yet, we steered our bikes that way. I was happy to see that Navy Pier has gotten at least a partial facelift since I was last there. There are many more food options and there was a mini-Tiffany glass exhibit courtesy of Chicago’s Driehaus family, a family that has an entire museum in the Gold Coast dedicated solely to exhibiting their Tiffany glass pieces. The Driehaus family probably owns Navy Pier, so maybe the exhibit today is there because they needed extra storage. Either way, it was great.
On the way home, we got caught in the cold wind and rain that hit around 5pm. That was hard, riding home in that. We arrived in soaked jeans. My hair was plastered to my head and my glasses were pointless. Now hungry for actual dinner, Claus and I decided to take time only to get dry and then go back out for a hamburger; we also decided to take umbrellas.
Claus put his jeans over a chair and dried them with my hairdryer. I came over and sat by him while he did it. It was funny: to get the legs dry he put the nose of the hairdryer into the cuff and the air blew up the leg like there was a real leg in there.
The German looked over at me and said, “Mary, your hair is still very wet.” And he turned the blowdryer on my hair. He used his fingers to ruffle it the way you do when you dry someone’s hair, tousling it this way and that. The warm air blew all over my head and it was bliss to feel it on my neck, blowing just under my collar.
Then something strange happened. Suddenly, my eyes teared up. And my chest hurt.
I realized it that what he was doing was what my mother — even my father, if we go back further — did when I was a little kid. The sense memory hit me like a truck. The warm air on my neck, the large hand on my head, and the feeling of being helped in getting warm after being cold from playing outside. Though people touch our heads and blow-dry our hair in a salon, there is none of this connection there. Night and day.
I turned to Claus and I swear my lip trembled as I said, “That feels really good. Can you keep doing it?” He was a little surprised and said of course he could and was I okay?
Mostly okay.
I heard a podcast the other day (it wasn’t this one, which is a good one, too) about how lame it is that we show only our most-attractive selves on social media. Not a new observation, but I realized how guilty I am of doing that here.
I try to keep it real. I’ll share about a divorce dream. I’ll tell you when nostalgia puts me deep into a funk. I’ll share the story about the rats. But for the most part, I present myself as a benevolent, observant, insatiably curious blogger who might take a seven-year-old out on the town for her birthday or write a shame-on-you-letter to the CTA. I love, I love. Love me.
But you don’t get the mud. Why would I share it when I get to pick? On balance, I’m not a bad guy and that is actually true, but I have behaved horribly in my life in both word and deed and judging by the argument Claus and I had recently, I have yet to see the light. I was being so awful. Constantly interrupting him, yelling, just mean as a cat. To get me to snap out of it, Claus grabbed my shoulder at one point and said, “Mary! Stop!” [Editor’s Note: In no way, shape, or form was this a threatening moment in which I felt unsafe. It was a stop-sign, “Earth to Mary” gesture, nothing more.]
And he was right to do it. I was a seething brat just then. Though Evil Mary situations don’t occur often, they do occur, and I don’t race to my laptop to blog about them. Let’s see what else I can come clean about in the name of making sure you don’t think I’m so great.
– I betrayed a friend’s trust and hurt her when I shared with someone that she called me too much. I’m pretty sure it got back to her because she doesn’t call me anymore. I miss her and I’m not sure how to fix it.
– We’re not supposed to do AirBNB in my building but I have had two AirBNB people in my place in the past two months. I’m not doing it anymore (being an AirBNB host is not for me) and the building’s rule is there to keep people from using their homes as full-time AirBNB hotel rooms. Still, I broke the rules and in this case, that’s the same as lying.
– I was the victim of a fraudulent PayPal transaction in December. In the appeal I sent on Friday to Citibank (they denied my initial claim), I included in the packet many pages of hard evidence that show, from start to finish how a paper company straight up stole $426.05 from me. Every shred of that evidence is legit, but I omitted a printout of the email I sent them in February when I called them bad, bad, bad names. It was life-destroying. And I didn’t include it.
– Epic fights and tensions with my sisters. That’s probably the worst thing.
I don’t know. Other stuff. Stuff not okay to share in public* and plenty that’s just boring, disappointing, garden-variety lame human behavior (e.g., flipping someone off in traffic, cancelling plans because you’re sick but you’re not, etc.). As I live and breathe, I try to be a stand-up guy. I am an observant, insatiably curious blogger. But you can’t think I just float along because I don’t. I capsize. I abandon ship. I lose true north. I overextend metaphors of the nautical kind. Overboard!
I’m not after a “we’re all human” rallying cry. It just became important to say that I want this blog to be a quality place to be on the Internet but that doesn’t mean that the person who writes it is pure quality from dawn to dusk. There’s no profile picture that shows what it’s like to have a drug-addicted son. You don’t Instagram a picture of a second-warning collection notice. You don’t post that you’re about to cheat on your taxes. It feels way better to present the perfect and we all do this now.
*The above stuff was hard enough. By the way, I’ve never done time.
To Whom It May Concern:
I don’t write complaint letters often; life is full of annoyances and disappointments, too many to get terribly worked up about. But from time to time something occurs that demands attention from an entity or person who might be able to do something about it, so I’m writing you. Every detail of this occurrence happened precisely as I will detail it here.
Heading north on the #36 Broadway bus yesterday, I witnessed deplorable behavior from one of your drivers. The time of the incident was 4:05pm; the bus number was 1893. I didn’t ask for the driver’s name when I got off the bus.
A frail, blind man with a thick Balkan accent (he looked to be in his seventies) boarded the bus around Foster. His English was poor. When he got on the bus, he tried to fold his white cane and find his Ventra card and politely made room for others to enter the bus while he struggled to do both of those things. The bus advanced from the stop and the man asked the driver, “Does bus go to Touhy?”
Your driver would not answer his question. Not turning to actually look at the man when he finally responded, he stated, “This bus ends at Clark and Devon.”
This was not an answer to the man’s question, so he asked again. I could see the man was also hard of hearing, adding another barrier to understanding whether or not in fact the bus would reach Touhy — and I knew it would not. Your driver continued to stare straight ahead and answered with great annoyance, “This bus ends at Clark and Devon.” The blind man leaned closer. “Touhy?”
Your driver then spat out, “You need to get up out of my face, old man! This bus ends at Clark and Devon! Now move back.”
I realize the driver was at that moment driving a city bus. I understand how it might’ve been frustrating to have to repeat himself multiple times. I have no doubt that driving a bus for the CTA is not an easy job. But there is no excuse for treating anyone so poorly when they’re asking for help. When the person needing help is an ailing, elderly, foreign, blind person, this kind of behavior is disgraceful.
Aside from a couple years when I had a car, I’ve been an almost daily user of the CTA for fifteen years. Anyone who has used public transit that long has seen some stuff. But what I saw yesterday was the worst interaction I’ve witnessed between an employee and a passenger.
Please speak to your driver. Chicagoans trust our train and bus operators to be safe and to help us if we need help. If they treat us in a hostile manner, if they behave half as abysmally as your man did yesterday, our transit system fails. We need it too much to let that happen, which is why I’ve written to you today.
With Regards,
Mary Fons
*Letter sent to CTA customer service via online form. Also, I did get up and sit next to the man and repeated a couple times, “No Touhy. Devon only.” He got it eventually and nodded his head at me.
THE SHOWER GAME
a short play by Mary Fons
(c) 2016
MARY 1 AND MARY 2 are sitting on a couch. MARY 1 looks at the time on her cell phone: 11:00pm. She sighs and lets the cell phone drop from her hand.
MARY 1: I need a shower so bad.
MARY 2: So go shower.
MARY 1: I’ll do it in the morning.
MARY 2: No, you should shower tonight.
MARY 1: It’s fine. I’ll do it in the morning.
MARY 2: You will sleep so much better if you shower right now.
MARY 1: (Dispirited.) I don’t want to be wet.
MARY 2: Look, you need a shower. You’re getting into a clean bed. You’re gonna get into a clean bed dirty?
MARY 1: I’m not dirty.
MARY 2: What do you call two days with no shower?
MARY 1: I call it “need a shower.” I’m not Pigpen. I’m not like, leaving dirt everywhere.
MARY 2: There.
MARY 1: What?
MARY 2: You admitted it. I said, “What do you call two days with no shower?” and you said, “I call it ‘need a shower'” and that means you agree you need a shower. Now go shower.
(MARY 1 slides off the couch in a mock display of severe fatigue.)
MARY 2: Knock it off. (She throws a bottle of shampoo and a towel at MARY 1. Blackout.)
END OF PLAY
*Readers may be interested in what happened here, speaking of night showers. — The Director
When you spend significant quality time with someone from another country — a country that lies on the other side of an absolutely enormous body of water — there is an invisible clock in the relationship and the clock doesn’t leave you be. It’s there when you have have tea in the morning together. It’s there when you’re trying to get under one umbrella. It’s there when you have an argument about…I can’t remember what it was about, but the clock was there.
What happens when the research project ends? What’s the visa status, again? What’s gonna happen next? More specifically, what’s gonna happen with this German philosophy professor I have come to care about quite a bit when Germany calls?
I don’t know. Plans have changed a few times and they’ll change again and again as we both sort out what’s going on with work, life, the two of us. I’ve said before that I’m frequently surprised that I’m an adult and let me tell you: nothing makes you feel more like an adult (or a character in a Woody Allen movie) than rescheduling flights to Europe.
While I bide my time, I’ve been making German food. Like spaetzle, which was a lot of work and mostly worth it. I said to Claus, “I made spaetzle!” and I said it like an Iowan girl would: “I made shh-PAYT-zul!” He looked at me like, “You are so acutely American but I like you very much in spite of this fact.” He then corrected me in an attractive way, pronouncing spaetzle properly and my name like it’s French:
“Marie, no. It is ‘shh-PET-zluh.”
Shhpetzluh.
I have entered into a relationship with a seamstress.
Right now, even as I write, Barb The Good could be in her workshop pinning pattern pieces and slicing through my fabric with heavy steel shears. I see scraps and paper and bits of feather and fur all over her floor. I see a bird in an ornate birdcage for some reason.
Barb and I met in Washington state about a month ago and got to talking. She makes clothes, I design fabric. One of the patterns in the McCall’s-produced Mary Fons pattern line of garments and bags* is a dress that I am ashamed to say I do not yet possess and Barb said she’d make it for me.
NOTE: Don’t take me not having my own dress yet as a vote of no confidence in the pattern, which I assure you is fabulous. The task just kept getting pushed down for reasons that are dull and involve words like “email” and “invoicing” and “figuring out AirBNB.”
I’ve always wanted to have a seamstress of my very own. I want a Bentley, too, but I want a personal seamstress more. Do you realize a person can just go to a place that sells patterns and buy a Vogue pattern for a few bucks and go home and make a dress that was in Vogue? Not all designers sell their designs to pattern companies (Calvin Klein, yes, Alexander McQueen, no) but I’ve seen many Vogue patterns and many of them are great, especially if you pull from the 1980s and early 1990s patterns because everything is cool when it happened thirty years ago, including Hammer pants. I’m 100% serious as long as you don’t go completely insane with the fabric choice.
It’s funny to think about having a “serious relationship” with a seamstress, but maybe it’s not so far from the truth. When a person measures your body cross, back, front, around, etc., you skip some of the early chit-chat needed to get a relationship going. I mean, Barb has my wrist circumference: we can move onto talking about sibling rivalries immediately. She’s got my bust size — my actual bust size — so it’s like, tell me about your worst breakup ever, Barb. We’re close, is what I’m saying.
Barb has the fabric, she has the pattern, she has the measurements. I guess I’ll have my dress within a few weeks and yes, Barb’s done work for people who could not be in the same room with her for fittings. I’ve seen her portfolio and I feel good about this.
When I realized that the second half of the word “seamstress” is “stress,” I told Barb there was no stress allowed in this project. She promised she wouldn’t stress out and I promise to post a picture when I get my dress and am sure I have the proper shoes to go with it. Tim Gunn, who I met a couple years ago, would be proud.
*Available at your LQS and online retailers like Missouri Star Quilt Co.
Before I tell you more about Saturday, it’s very important that you know about Lilly’s best friend.
Lilly’s best friend is Aubrey. Aubrey has this thing about purple cats. She has a shirt with a purple cat. She talks about purple cats. And in art class, if the teacher tells the class to draw a tree, for example, Aubrey will draw a tree…with a purple cat underneath it. Aside from being cute and almost suspiciously well-mannered, Lilly has excellent taste in friends.
I joined the girls at their hotel room and when I opened the door, I saw what I was dealing with. Miss Lilly had on a sequined St. Patrick’s Day ballcap, a drapey, pink tunic thing over a t-shirt, jeans, and cowboy boots. In other words, she looked amazing. And Gramma Rita was not to be outdone. Her multi-colored dress with a bit of personal tailoring and “Franken-sewing,” as she described it, coordinated with her toenail polish: one toe blue, one yellow, and so on.
We got lattes, not at the Starbucks across the street, but at the nearby Julius Meinl, a killer Viennese coffee joint. This was my first moment of pride yesterday: 9 out of 10 tourists ain’t gonna know about Julius Meinl. Twenty minutes in, and I was already earning my tour guide stripes.
When we got to the Art Institute, I used the Fons family membership card to fly us past the lines for the Van Gogh exhibit. We saw the Chagall window and then found our way down to the miniatures collection. If you take kids to the Art Institute, make a beeline for the miniatures gallery. Lilly loved it, and so she should: think fully-detailed Downton Abbey sets inside boxes smaller than a breadbox. Unreal.
And how do you suppose high tea was? Lilly and Rita and I inhaled a lot of small, caloric food items while sitting in a burgundy leather booth with cloth napkins on our laps. Rita and I had kir royales and before the tall tea trays came, we played a few rounds of Bananagrams, or something that resembled Bananagrams. All I know is that I spelled the word “sitar” and Lilly spelled “fart.” (That didn’t actually happen but don’t you wish it had? Rita, tell Lilly I said that if you think she’ll laugh.)
I think Lilly enjoyed the last activity most: visiting my condo. I remember how cool it was to see how other people lived when I was that age. It was like, “You put cereal in tupperware?” and “You guys have a trampoline???” and “What’s a waterbed?” Lilly looked around my home with great interest. Then Claus came in and everyone met each other. I asked Rita as I walked her out, didn’t she think Claus was handsome? She said that though she has wanted to see a picture since I mentioned him almost a year ago, I’d better not post his picture or someone will try to steal him. He was looking particularly fetching in a black turtleneck yesterday. Perhaps she’s right.
Thank you, Lilly and Rita, for allowing me to share part of the Chicago birthday trip. Many happy returns, ladies. Use lots of hand sanitizer when you get home.
Last night, when I laid out the itinerary for Lilly’s Big Day Out, I said something funny. I said we would do our last scheduled activity, “if Lilly [wasn’t] too tired out.” The thing about seven-year-olds is that they are rarely tired out; the thing about thirty-six-year-olds is that we often are. Tired out by work, family, or the crushing weight of our own existence, whatever it is, it’s enough to lie back on the fainting couch for awhile and promise to write all about Lilly’s Big Day Out tomorrow.
That’s the last picture I took today: Lilly headed down into the subway for her first-ever ride on a city train. In a sparkly St. Patrick’s Day ballcap, of course.
I’ve shared stories about PaperGirl readers doing beautiful work in the world, like making me monkeys and sending me candy pumpkins. And just before Christmas, while I was working in Florida, I finally got to meet friends I’ve had for almost a decade but had never met. PaperGirl doesn’t just yeild daily writing practice and a place for me to sort things out, it yeilds special relationships.
Rita is quilter, a writer, and a longtime PG reader. Rita is also a grandmother. She is Lilly’s grandmother. Rita wrote to me a couple months ago — we’ve never met — that she wanted to surprise Lilly with a trip to Chicago for her seventh birthday. (How is it possible to have an age that is a single digit?) Rita emailed because she knew I’d have some great insider tips. Totally.
I was delighted to serve as a tour director to the best of my ability, but then something wonderful happened: I saw that I’d actually be home when the girls came to town. I asked Rita if I could personally escort them around for a few hours on Saturday. The answer was “Yeah!!” and so it is that tomorrow, I get to hang out with Rita and Miss Lilly Herself. The following plan has been Gramma Approved:
12pm — Meet the girls at their hotel on Michigan Ave.
12-12:15pm — Ride the #3 bus down Michigan Ave. This is a specifically planned activity because both Rita and Lilly are very excited about sampling Chicago public transit. I can make that happen.
12:30-2pm — Free tickets to the Art Institute! I’m excited to present Lilly with her very own ticket. I know a guy, so I have passes for all of us.
2-2:30pm — Bum around on the steps of the Art Institute, check out the El train on Wabash a block away, take lots of pictures, work up an appetite.
2:30-3:30 — High tea at nearby Russian Tea Time! You know the whole fancy tea party game little girls like to play? The white glove, cucumber sandwiches thing? It’s mimicking something called “high tea” (I’ll do a post on that later, it’s an interesting topic) and I’m taking Rita and Lilly to one of the best spots in the city for it. The last time I had high tea it was intense and emotional. I think “intense” and “emotional” won’t play into it tomorrow, probably. Just fun and maybe funny.
3:30-4pm — If Lilly’s not tuckered out, we’ll all walk the couple blocks from the Institute/Tea Time to my condo. Lilly can see how a city girl lives and I can show Rita some quilts. (Note to self: get pantyhose off the shower rod, make bed, wipe counter.) The view from the top of my building is fantastic, too: all Lake Michigan and skyline, baby.
Lilly doesn’t know she’s getting a surrogate auntie for her birthday. I’m so excited!
I do not think marriage is a bad thing. Not only do I not think that, what a stupid thing it would be to say, to say that marriage is unequivocally bad. Some marriages are bad, some are never bad, some are bad sometimes and get better, some are great and will become bad, and sometimes — most of the time, I hear — they fluctuate between good, sorta or acutely bad, mundane, and ultimately great even if it takes awhile.
Last night I had a dream I was to remarry my ex-husband, but I decided, in secret, as I looked for my dress in a U-Haul storage facility that I couldn’t do it. It was less about him and more about me, which is frequently the case in an identity crisis.
As I’ve mentioned before, one of the top five google searches people do on me is “mary fons husband” followed closely by “mary fons divorce.” I get fan letters from prison, so I wonder if “mary fons husband” is searched by hopeful guys with just a few months left inside. It’s probably just run-of-the-mill curiosity though; in early episodes on TV I wore a ring and at one point, I did not. What happened?
Speaking about my brief marriage is unwise for a number of reasons, but it happened nonetheless; it’s my life and I can tell if I want to. But I don’t want to, usually, and there are/were two people involved, one of which has not decided to put his life into words in public.
I understand my ex-husband remarried and will soon have kids. It used to be that you heard news like that from the next village over, and at least a few days late. Well, the Internet you use is your village; the Internet I use is my village and now we hear or collect news from all the villages down the road whenever we please. I wasn’t looking for that news (honestly) but there it was, shared with me by Facebook, the town crier, the gossip, the one who travels far and wide and brings back all the stuff we probably don’t need to know and usually don’t want to know.
In my dream, I realized I didn’t have to marry again — not to him, but at all, ever, if I don’t want to — and that was the first time in the dream I didn’t feel scared.
My neighborhood is the South Loop (that’s the bottom of the Loop Loop) but I’m a block over from Printer’s Row. Printer’s Row is a short stretch of Dearborn St. that many years ago was the heart of the Chicago robust publishing and printing industry.
Not much is left of that era; most everything is pretty condo buildings and storefront business and restaurants — but there is Sandmeyer’s Books. It’s a snuggly, warm bookshop and though I have promised myself that I cannot, shall not buy any more books until I read all the books I have, I should go give Sandmeyer’s Books some money because I don’t want it to go away. I’ll go there tomorrow and let you know what I buy.
Claus and I passed by the bookshop today and smiled when we saw the most adorable child in the Milky Way. She was maybe four. Cute little cap with blonde hair poking out. Nice warm jacket. And she had a book in a Sandmeyer’s Bookstore bag clutched to her chest. I was enchanted. Kids with books, man; they could steal my purse and I’d tell them to go have fun and be careful. In a very friendly-not-weird way, I stopped and said “Well, hello there! Did you get a book today?”
The girl looked up at me with big blue eyes. Her nanny said, “She found a ten-dollar bill on the street.”
If I found ten bucks on the street, I would freak out. I said to the little girl that that was really cool and very lucky. And she wanted a book, eh? Her nanny nodded and told me the little girl was going to give the rest of the money to her mommy and daddy. Yeah, right.
“And what book did you get little Miss?” I asked.
Her nanny helped produce the book. It was Home for a Bunny, a Big Little Golden Book by Margaret Wise Brown. A favorite of mine as a child and for my sisters, too. I told the little girl she had made a excellent choice. Claus and I waved goodbye and headed home, past old Dearborn Station, which was a passenger train hub from 1885 to 1971. Many, many people arrived in Chicago through that station; plenty of them bought their first book in this city.
I was on the No. 3 bus that runs on Michigan Ave., heading south. The bus was full, so I had moved to the front; my stop was coming up and I didn’t want to have to throw elbows to get out.. In close proximity to me was the silver-haired bus driver, this really tall black dude with a pick in his afro, a tiny Asian woman of about sixty, and another white chick like me, who never looked up from her phone a single time and she got on when I did, way up at Chicago Ave.
Our bus got stopped in traffic. There was construction and a couple busses ahead of us, so we had a long wait at the curb at Lake Street. This brief party found ourselves looking out of the bus onto the sidewalk at our right. There were people walking along on the sidewalk, as usual; we hardly saw the scaffolding criss-crossing our view of the sidewalk because that scaffolding has been on that block for nine thousand years. (Maybe they’re just building scaffolding.) And then we all saw a couple boys of about thirteen or so running around chasing a big group of pigeons. The boys were clearly brothers; you could tell by their likeness and how a woman nearby was yelling, “John! Jake! Get back here! Where’s your father?”
The boys were tossing parts of their sandwich bread to the birds and some of the bread landed right outside the bus door. The bus driver shook his head. I jumped back, even though the door was closed, and went, “Eee!” The Asian lady clicked her tongue and gave the boys a fabulously disapproving look, which they will unfortunately never see. Longtime city dwellers know that pigeons are dirty and annoying, that they spread disease and are capable of pooping on your head. My bus friends and I — being the wizened, hard Chicagoans we are — knew this and watched from our place of wisdom.
“Pigeons,” said the bus driver. “Just rats with wings. Those kids are in from out of town.”
The boys were running directly into the swarm of pigeons that had heard Subway sandwiches were being served at Michigan and Lake. One of the boys tried to pick up one of the birds.
“That ain’t even right,” said the guy with the pick.
We all looked at the sidewalk scene, at the people, the birds, the metal, the concrete, and I felt for the 20 millionth time in my life a comforting certainty: I belong in a city.