Tonight, my sister Rebecca, and Jack, her boyfriend of several years, got engaged. He got on one knee at Grand Central Station here in New York City and opened the ring box. When Rebecca was a kid, she and Mom visited NYC and when they went into Grand Central, my sister burst into tears at the beauty of it. Jack knew that story; now my sister’s got two great “I cried in Grand Central” stories to tell. When Jack asked her, she said, famously:
“Are you doing this right now? Are you doing this? Are you doing this right now?”
Congratulations, turtledoves. This is just the beginning.
From German Vogue, “bag lady fashion.” I realize this is pretty awful.
New York City has a population of 8.3 million, give or take that .3 million at any given time. Ninety-nine percent of these people wear clothes when they leave the house. In New York City, fashion can get pretty interesting, because if you’re a person who has a deep need to be seen and/or counted, one of the only avenues you have in a city this big is to wear yourself on the outside.
This morning, I woke up extremely late (after 9am) and needed coffee desperately. Here’s what I wore to schlep down to the nearest coffeeshop here in the East Village:
extremely oversized white Brooks Brothers shirt I slept in
jeans
burgandy jacquard jacket (tailored)
heels
And then there was my hair. I’m blonde these days, for one thing. Yesterday morning, I took a shower and realized I had no brush or comb, so my hair dried into a frizzed, knotty shrubbery on my head, which I braided into two braids and wrapped around my head. That worked out pretty well, actually, but I took out the braids last night. I woke up several hours ago with that familiar knotty shrubbery, only now it was kinked, too. I tied my shrubbery into two low, poofy pigtails, popped some blusher on my cheeks and went out the door.
In the East Village, it all worked.
Did I look slightly like the crazed homeless woman who lives between Avenue A and B on 12th? Well…no, actually. I looked like that crazed homeless woman’s slightly glamorous kid sister. I got my coffee and no one blinked an eye; I even caught a be-suited fellow looking at me, though that could’ve been a result of the shrubbery.
Coffee temperature = perfect. Morning in New York City = so far, so good.
I wrote a poem for my friend Billy years ago. It goes like this:
In New York,
I think of you;
When I am,
I always do.
To tell the tale of this poem, however, we must leave New York for a moment and return to Chicago. When I moved to the city in 2001, I found a decent studio apartment for an unheard-of $420/mo. A year into my life there, Billy called to say he was moving to Chicago too. I felt like I had won the lottery. I was really lonely. Bill and I had met in college and instantly liked each other a lot. He was a tousled musician, I was… Well, it’s up to him to describe a junior co-ed me. But we bonded on enough occasions to become bonafide friends.
When he was on his way here, I nabbed him a unit in my building, so we were sort of like roommates except I didn’t have to wash his dishes, which was for the best. And so it was in the early 2000s, Billy and I were the best of friends during some tough times. We were both struggling to carve out lives in Chicago and we clung to each other. We never dated. We were just…Mary and Bill. He wrote songs. I wrote poems. We both worked nights: he worked the desk at a mental health facility on the west side; I worked coat check at a couple nightclubs downtown. We were simply there for each other, and even though he’d disappear for awhile or I would, we always came back together just in time.
Today, Billy is in a rock band that is doing very, very well. It was always so clear that that was exactly what he would do with his life. We always knew. And I always knew that it wouldn’t be long before I was making a living doing what I loved — and we were right about that, too. By 2005, I was a full-time freelancer, writing and performing; no waitressing or coat-checking needed.
So why is the poem about New York?
Because some of the best memories I have of New York City involve Billy. It hasn’t happened in a long time, but for years of our lives, even before that important time in Chicago, we would frequently end up in New York at the same time. And we’d connect and have an adventure, some bacchanalian night that ended up with him driving me in his red car to wherever I was staying. Sometimes we’d make out. Sometimes we wouldn’t. But there was always love, always creativity, inspiration, and learning.
One night, in Times Square, we were walking around. It started to rain. Billy was a few paces ahead of me. Suddenly, he turned around and grabbed me by the face and kissed me full on the mouth. He pulled back from me and smiled this huge smile and said,
“This the first night of the rest of our lives, baby.”
And we walked into the blur of Times Square, into the city, into the night. I’m pretty sure we were holding hands.
In New York,
I think of you;
When I am,
I always do.
I sing of the furry earmuff,
Each side of my head a cream puff;
When it comes to headgear
For winter each year,
A smartly picked headband’s enough.
For who really wants a dumb hat?
They serve only to make your hair flat;
You step in the door,
And your friends, as before,
Say, “You can’t go ’round looking like that.”
But the earmuff, on the contrary,
Will spare every Tom, Dick, and Mary
From coming un-coiffed
And their loves will say, soft,
“Darling, you’re looking so very.”
Now, earmuffs feels slightly rodential —
Yes, there’s more than a little potential
To feel like a mouse
When you leave the house,
(In the city or somewhere provincial.)
But the point is protection from ice —
In winter, you must not play dice —
The need of the day
Is to keep cold at bay,
And muffs on the ears are quite nice.
“Rick, this is Mary. Mary, Rick. Oh, and there’s Dave! Dave, this is Mary, and this is Rick. You see Gina or Rob? I think they’re here. Mary, Gina and Rob are friends of Rick’s. They’re here from Cincinnati — Rob is hilarious! Who wants shots?!”
I live within spittin’ distance of Chicago’s legendary downtown Hilton hotel. The Beaux-Arts-style building takes up a whole city block; there are over 1,500 rooms! It has some neat history, too: every U.S. president since 1927 has stayed there, and someone recently told me that when the riots broke out during the 1968 Democratic National Convention, so much tear gas was used by police on the protestors in Grant Park that the gas made its way inside the Hilton, where Hubert Humphrey was taking a shower. Sorry, dude.
The sky-high lobbies inside are gorgeous, especially this time of year; the whole place is festooned with pine bunting and poinsettias and twinkly lights aglow. There’s a towering Christmas tree inside the main entrance, too. Yesterday, I saw a kid nearly fall over backward while he looked up at it.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I’ve been working over there during the day. I’ve found an even better spot: downstairs, in front of the lounge fireplace. I go over each day and the first thing I do, the very first thing, is go to the hotel event screen. This is the big screen near the bank of elevators that tells what conventions are being held that day at the Hilton. (Though there are two hotels in the city with more rooms, nobody has more meeting or event space than my Hilton.) Nothing but nothing entertains me more than looking at a list of what people congregate to talk about. Here’s who’s meeting at the Hilton this week:
E & J Gallo Winery
Customer Supply Chain Connection, University of Chicago
The Mid-American Competing Band Directors Association (MACBDA)
Thompson Holiday Event
I love it! I love to think about a band director literally bumping into a wine salesperson in the long line at the interior Starbucks. She spills her latte on him, he’s nice about it, they laugh about holiday craziness and bam! They fall in love. Years later, at a party, they recount the tale to their friend Julie. And now, a short play.
The Hilton Made Me Love You
A play by Mary Fons (c) 2013
(A party.)
SUE: Darling, why don’t you tell it?
CHARLES: Tell what?
SUE: How we met. Julie wants to know.
JULIE: Tell, tell!
CHARLES: (beaming at SUE.) Well… We were in Chicago.
JULIE: I love Chicago!
CHARLES: We do too, don’t we darling?
SUE: Oh, Charles! CHARLES: I was there for Gallo. Sue was there for MACBDA, if you can believe it.
SUE: Back when I was still a band director! Isn’t it incredible?
JULIE: I’m so glad you moved into aeronautics.
SUE: Me too. Go on, sweetheart.
CHARLES: We were in line at the Starbucks and Sue bumped into me. She spilled her entire latte all over my shoes. It was an absolute disaster.
SUE: (swatting him.) It wasn’t the whole latte!
CHARLES: It was an entire latte.
SUE: Oh, you!
CHARLES: We got to talking. Sue actually got on her knees to wipe the milk off my shoes and we started laughing… Honey, that was the first day of the rest of my life.
SUE: (with a wink.) Room 1423?
JULIE: (gasps.) You didn’t!
CHARLES: Thirty years later, you’re still the girl of my dreams.
SUE: Charles, you’re my hero.
A Jewish friend of mine told me that if you do a charitable act…you kinda aren’t allowed to talk about it. Obviously, an office charity fundraiser requires group knowledge; a marathoner gets pledges; a wife will need to know about a sizable gift her husband wants to give this year, etc. That’s all fine. The point my friend made is that if you do something nice and go around crowing about it, it can all but cancel out your good deed. Your gesture toward your fellow man becomes about you and this great thing youdid. “Suboptimal,” my friend said, and I agreed.
So in telling you the story I’m about to tell you, I am taking a risk. But it’s a story about a quilt, so I gotta. I also want to tell you about Alameda* and what happened to her this week. By doing that, perhaps her ball of grief will dislodge in some cosmic way and allow her to rest.
Alameda works in the receiving room in my building. It is a depressing, windowless box in the back hallway. She’s been there about four months, I’d guess; she came on when the management changed. Alameda is from Mexico. She’s around twenty-four, I’d guess, and smart. She’s funny, too, and upbeat, even in that dank, horrible room, and we chat whenever I’m picking something up or shipping something out; Alameda and I have become friends, because there’s a lot of shipping in my life.
Yesterday, I picked up a package. Alameda came from around the desk to take it and she looked awful. “Puffy” didn’t describe her eyes; they were red-rimmed, swollen, spent.
“Oh my,” I said, quietly, because there were other people behind me. “Are you okay? Have you been crying, Alma?” She nodded. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” she said, and smiled a “thanks for asking” sort of smile. I gave her a furrowed brow and a pat on her arm and I left.
Later that afternoon, I had to drop something off for UPS. I went in and no one else was there. Without being terribly nosy, I made the attempt to talk to her if she wanted to talk.
“Bad day?”
“Yeah.”
“Can I ask what’s wrong? You don’t have to… If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s totally cool.”
Alameda paused. “My brother died yesterday.”
I clapped my hand over my mouth. I asked her if it was an accident. It was not. Her brother killed himself. The entire family was at his house for Sunday dinner. Alma’s brother went downstairs and hung himself in his room. She said they “heard something” and didn’t think anything of it, kept eating dinner. He had been very depressed, she said. He was working three jobs, he wasn’t a citizen, he had a bad breakup, he was scared and anxious all the time. And he ended it on Sunday, right there in the house, while his two-year-old daughter sat in her booster seat eating mashed peas.
When she told me all this, I was too shocked to burst into tears, though it’s so awful, I wondered why I didn’t. The truth is, I cry less than I used to. When she said that his fondest wish was to join the Navy, get a pilot’s license, and fly, that’s when the tears burbled up for both of us.
“The potential,” I said.
“Yeah,” she said, and put her hand over her face.
It was hard to leave her. As soon as I did, I knew I wanted to do something for her for the holiday. But what? I called my sister Nan and asked for her sage advice. She didn’t disappoint.
“What do I do for this girl?” I asked Nan. “What do I give her?”
Nan paused. “Well, I reckon you should give her a quilt.”
I slapped my forehead, which hurt a lot because I was outside in the Chicago icebox. “Of course,” I said. “Of course.”
“People in crisis, they get quilts,” she said. “Think about the Red Cross. Floods, tornados, family crises — it’s quilts that bring people comfort.”
So I’m going to give Alameda a quilt from my collection. I’m not sure exactly which one, but I have an idea. And I’ll put a label on the back and I’ll put it into a big box, wrap it up pretty, and stick an enormous, obnoxious bow on it.
The Swing,” by John-Honore Fragonard, 1767. Notice happy fellow downstage left. He’s there for the view, I’m guessing.
Yesterday I swung on a swing. I swang. I love to swang almost as much as I love to ice skate. “Swang” is not a word according to my spellcheck, which is going nuts. But I think it should be a word, so take that, spellcheck.
In the afternoon, I went with my friend Sonja and her little boy to see Redmoon Theater’s Winter Pageant, an annual show heavy on glowy tableaus, light on coherence. No matter; the kids love it. As is customary for Redmoon, when the show is over, the audience is invited to hang out, touch the actors (!) and explore the set. It’s cool. They had rigged up several swings on loooong chains in the huge warehouse that serves as their performance space. My 5-year-old comrade took to them at once. The middle swing was a two-seater so at his request, Aunt May-May hopped on with him. He calls me “Aunt May-May.” I call him lots of loving things, e.g., “Squirt,” “Captain Bunker,” etc.
Sonja gave us a push. We kicked our legs. We sailed over the theater seats, whooshing back, then plunging headlong into space. I looked over at his tow-head and said, “Hold on tight, Babycakes.”
The last time I was on a swing I was home in Iowa. My mother and I had had words and this happens so rarely, I was quite upset. When our conversation had reached a fevered pitch, I tersely excused myself, put on my sneakers, and literally took off running. I ran to the city park, trying to calm down and expend (destroy) my unpleasant energy. Halfway through the park loop I spied the swings up on the hill. I turned on my heel and jogged up to them. Man, did I ever swing. I went so high on the swingset that the chains went slack at the top; this harshed my mellow a bit — I like my skull and would like to keep it from splashing onto park district gravel. I pulled back and settled into a blissful rhythm. I probably swang for a half hour, letting the wind rush past my ears on the back push, feeling my heart in my chest when I cut through the air to go forward.
An object in motion tends to stay in motion. A kid on a swing tends to want to stay there all night. A fight with a parent is usually over something important. Dusk in Iowa in June is heartbreakingly beautiful. Theater is relevant, but only to some people.
“The Chess Players” Lucas van Leyden, 1508. (The chick is winning.)
I cannot stay in my home when the second phase of the renovation begins and so I am leaving on a jet plane. I will go to Miami, then Las Vegas, then Iowa, then New York City, in that order, and you’re coming with me.
First, I should say that the bathroom looks incredible and it’s not even finished. The Greek key tile inlay is exquisite and now that it’s done, the rest of the bathroom will go quickly, but this means that the kitchen is about to be dismantled with sledgehammers and picks and slathered with dry wall and plaster and wet tile goo and mortar and sweat. The dust produced by the bathroom work over these weeks has threatened to choke me dead or drive me insane for the simple reason that my house has become impossible to clean. A visible layer of powdered wall daily sifts itself down upon my books, my tables, my quilts (!) and no amount of dusting, wiping, swabbing, etc., ameliorates the situation for more than a matter of hours. The kitchen is twice the size of the bathroom and the thought of doubling my already sisyphean dusting attempts creates in my brain uncomfortable, hula hoop-like gyrations. I work from home, for heaven’s sake. There is no escape here. So I will leave.
Signs point to Miami for New Year’s, which I’m excited for; I’ve never been and wanna see the art. I’ll be in Las Vegas for just a few days in mid-January, randomly; I actually have a a mild affinity for Vegas — all those feathers! Then I think I should head over to Iowa and work in the magazine office for a spell; good for the job, good for the team, good for the parental units who live in town, as well. And then, if a few things fall into place, I’ll be off to New York City, where I’ll stay with my older sister and eat lots of chickpea crust pizza in the East Village and visit my favorite resale shops that sell used Balenciaga at 80% off 60% off. Only in New York can you get an exquisite Dries Van Noten, bias-cut, asymmetrical cape-coat-pantaloon, used, for $85 bucks. Combien j’aime la mode…
So. You wanna go?
You’ll see Miami through my virgin eyes. You’ll see Vegas through a filter of someone who’s a) been there before and b) never gambles. You’ll see Iowa; glorious, quotidian Iowa where there are only feathers on the birds, thereby giving us more opportunity for reflection and rest (a good thing after Miami and Vegas to be sure.) And then New York City, the huge, glittering onyx in Earth’s fancy cocktail ring.* Oh, it will all be a gas and I do so love to see new things and write it all down. We’ll have fun, you and me, and when I come home, the bathroom and kitchen will be done.
I have some packing to do.
*In fact, I am headed to New York on the 20th of this month, as well. The Fons Family is having Christmas in NYC this year, so if you read this blog regularly, you’ll get plenty of New York stories over the holiday; this may come in handy if you’re stuck in Boise and need something sensational to read.
a bet
money from a slot machine
a raffle
BINGO
favor with the king
These are all good things to win and I have won maybe two of them. When I was very young, I also won a prize from a pack of gum. Now, this wasn’t some lame Tootsie Roll Pop prize from a Tootsie Roll Pop star. Remember those? If you got an Indian* shooting a star on your Tootsie Roll Pop wrapper, you could take the wrapper to the dimestore and get a FREE Tootsie Roll Pop. This wasn’t that long ago, even though it sounds way too good to be true; this happened right there in my small town in Iowa in the early 1990s. (I promise you: the next time I’m back home, I’ll take a starred Tootsie Roll Pop wrapper to the counter and let you know here on the blog if it still works.)
So.
It was a sunny afternoon. I was knee-high to a cornstalk. My sister Hannah and I were playing in the living room of our family’s country home. There was this huge picture window that looked out onto the orchard and I remember being afraid of the boxelder bug that was making its slow path up to the top. Somehow, gloriously, I had scored an entire pack of HubbaBubba bubble gum and I was working my way through the stack, making every piece count. I chewed one soft pink wad until it was dead and then went for the next. I unwrapped the hot pink wrapping on the gum carefully, probably because I wanted to make a dress for my finger out of it later.
Then it happened. Tearing away more paper, I saw that one of the individually-wrapped cubes of gum was wrapped in a different color of paper.
“MARY!” my sister Hannah screamed. She practically took flight, so fast she was in moving from her spot on the couch to where I was on the carpet. She tackled me, gaping, wide-eyed at the pack in my paw. “MARY, YOU WON!”
It said it right there: “YOU WON!!! YOU WON!!! YOU WON!!! YOU WON!!!” again and again, printed round and round in teeny-tiny little hot pink letters on a white gum wrapper. Dumbly, I examined it. I won? What did that mean? Luck was not a concept I grasped at that point in my life, to say nothing of fate or providence — I was just excited because my sister was. She patiently explained to me that I was going to get a toy just because I had the pack of gum with the special wrapper and I think that was exactly the moment I did understand the concept of luck. File under, “Paradise, lost.”
My prize was the coolest. I was given the chance choose between a He-Man action figure and a She-Ra action figure. I didn’t get to choose the specific doll, but I could call gender. I firmly selected the She-Ra doll and about a year later I received my Hubba Bubba spoils. I got a Catra doll. Catra was a member of — wait for it — “The Evil Horde,” the fearsome (or just “fierce” — heyy!) pack of villains in Mattel’s She-Ra: Princess of Power series. Would I have rather had She-Ra? Yes. Would I have settled for Castaspella, Spinnarella, or Sweet Bee? Don’t remind me! But Catra would do; she was the most powerful of all the Evil Horde and she was free, after all. That’s the second best part of winning something: first comes the surprise, then comes the free stuff.
When I think about childlike wonder this time of year, I think of winning a She-Ra doll in a pack of Hubba Bubba bubble gum. I guess it’s because I felt like there was magic in the world that would find me, or that there were forces beyond me that were waiting to grant favors to kids who were good. The best news ever is that we’re all good and the force is with us already. And yeah, I know I just mixed my sci-fi action figure catch phrases, but I don’t think Yoda minds. He didn’t sign with Hubba Bubba.
The objects in my home that get handled the most would probably be, in order: house keys, tea tray, journal, little red radio. That last is my Tivoli SongBook (why, even the name is melodious!) and I hook it up to my computer to amplify the podcasts, music, and YouTube videos of the IQ2 debates I watch while I sew patchwork. If I could carry my tea and open my door with my Tivoli radio I would. (Replacing the journal would be tough.)
The Tivoli Songbook really is book-sized, if that book is the Penguin Classics edition of Great Expectations — and a satisfying thickness it is. The radio comes in several colors; mine is tomato red. There’s a tiny screen that glows a luminous ice blue when the radio is on and I appreciate the generous length of the antenna even though it doesn’t still doesn’t help me get reception in my condo. The SongBook gets loud, too, which is good for those moments when you need to bust out and dance like a maniac to the latest Lady Gaga record while you brush your teeth.
All of these qualities would be enough to to make my little red radio lovable, but I have another potent reason: I have gravely mishandled my SongBook and it still loves me.
I have dropped that thing a hundred times if I’ve dropped it once. I have plugged it into bum outlets and wiggled the cord like I was loosening a tooth; when I move papers too hastily it hits the wood table slap! flat on its back; the tip of the antenna snapped off; and when the Gaga is turned up way loud, the speaker threatens to blow out but never does. The wee radio keeps going. Sometimes I have to make a fist and bang it on the top to get it to work, but even that makes me happy: I feel like a soldier in WWI, smacking my radio receiver in the trenches: “Tivoli, this is Fons, do you copy??”
The Tivoli company didn’t pay me to write this post, by the way. They certainly could, though I doubt most companies are in the business of finding free publicity and then retroactively paying for it. Still, I recommend the SongBook this year as an excellent Christmas gift for someone you love. It runs about $200 and that’s not exactly cheap, but I guarantee pleasure for years (of abuse) to come.
Being a good friend is not easy; sometimes you have to deliver bad news.
My best friend sat me down the other day and gave me a bit of a talking to. This person loves me a great deal and his decision to tell me the unadorned truth about what he was seeing with me lately was born out of compassion and care; of this I am certain. Some people like to boss folks around, some folks delight in others’ pain; this is never the case with him. He read me because he cares.
He pointed out that I have boundary issues. I rarely set them and when I do, I dismantle them with almost comedic haste. I say yes when I should say no to another project, another class, another date, another lunch of chocolate and coffee when I swore I’d eat a salad; another coat. Wait, what? Mm. I have a thing with coats like some girls have a thing with shoes. I say yes because I can handle it and most of the time, I can. But my candle burns at both ends and lately I’ve been going after the middle. It’s a perfectly good middle!
Oh, I thrashed. I argued. I justified. But he was right. What do we do when we’re given the truth, however lovingly it’s delivered? We can’t change everything in a day and it’s foolish to think so, foolish to make some New Year’s resolution style proclamation. The words “Starting today, I…” are dangerous, useless. The only way to do something about what’s broken is to take action — or maybe just an ax — to them. We mustn’t just make a resolution because talk isn’t cheap; it’s expensive. It costs you. Change happens in deed only.
I went some time without a best friend. It just shook out that way after college. My ex-husband was my bestie for many years, but that’s hardly true now. Having a BFF today is worth its weight in gold even though friendship isn’t something we can weight. We can feel it, though, and in the feeling we can see its shape.
When we saw the Christmas trees lined up at Whole Foods yesterday, my younger sister Rebecca went for it. Her No. 1 impulse — her immediate desire — was to dive into the middle of the free-range, organic, mini-pine forest and smile like that.
Admirable things about my sister:
1. she is a full-time film industry professional working outside of Hollywood
2. she is one half of the coolest couple in Chicago (yes, I do wanna make a bet)
3. she is side-splittingly funny
4. she be pretty n’schtuff
When she jumped into the holiday forest, she made that eight-year-old kid smile and I half-laughed, half-barked, “Wait! Oh, lord, wait!” and went for my phone to take her picture. My sister Rebecca can make my heart ache with joy like no one else. What can I say? She’s my kid sister. I look at her with the wonder of a child who gets a new sibling, even though we’re both in our thirties, now. We are both in our thirties now. Talk about wonder.
I’m on the Quilty set today, filming the latest season. Rebecca is the producer of the show. Over lunch, I asked her what she was thinking when she jumped in the trees.
“They were just asking to be jumped into,” she said. “There was this perfect entrance. And I mean, the smell.” She blinked her eyes, considered again her motivations, and said with finality: “I had to jump in. It was Christmas in there.”
Why, why did I feel that wearing red, dinner plate-sized Sally Jessy Raphael glasses was the right choice? I was in fifth grade and my glasses were three years on and I remember the day in second grade when I had to get them; there was wonderment that my body needed help. I suppose I hadn’t felt that way since I was a baby who needed milk and I didn’t remember being a baby needing milk. I got my first pair of glasses (a little girl in glasses!) and they were clear frames until I moved to red. Big red.
Several years ago, I returned to the glasses style of my youth — the clear frame.
Gone were the stylish black Chanel frames I so tried to rock. They just look bitchy. I am a nerd. I am a word nerd, a spy from The Land of Dork. I’m fooling everyone unless I fool no one at all, which happens regularly. And so the black frames, the cat-eye look, this is folly. I am the proud owner of big, thick, clear plastic frames now and I feel happy when I wear them. It’s like I’m saying to myself as a kid, “You are killing me. You are so outre right now. But I adore you. Somewhere in that child brain is a deep need for fashion and I suppose those terrible glasses are your little fashion trumpet. I might as well tell you: I have a pair, too. Blow, child. Blow ye fashion trumpet.”
The clear glasses above are from a company called Miltzen. Andy Warhol wore that exact style for most of his life (until he moved to red in his later years.) The truth is, my clear plastic frames are bent and nearly busted at this point and it’s time to update. I’ll be going with these. They’re slightly less socially inexcusable.
Not that I care. Not that I’ve ever cared that much.
I stood in a well-ventilated clapboard chamber, totally nude, while a gal named Heather worked me over with an airbrushing machine. I got a spray tan yesterday.
I’m hardly the first person to point out that a body paint job is a ludicrous concept, a frivolous, vain expenditure. That’s fair, but it’s something else, too, I realized today: Getting a spray tan transgresses deeply grooved boundaries of the public and the private, and I believe this has value.
It’s is the same transgression that occurs when I go for a bikini wax. Every time I’m in these situations, when I’m nakey in a tiny room with another person who is fully clothed, I think about these things. Why is being naked in the name of grooming okay while most of us will go to great lengths to cover up in the gym locker room? Weird.
This is an observation, not a complaint. I’m not suggesting we all run around naked and start dismantling body taboos. (I think we’re all in okay with most folks keeping their pants in place). But I do think these “intricate rituals,” as artist Barbara Kruger put it once, help us remember that we don’t have a body; we are a body.
What is it to be seen? What is it to be still, with your back to a stranger, without a stitch of clothing on? It’s certainly not comfortable. For some people, it’s their worst nightmare.
Ah, but the spray tan girl. She’ll make it better. Mine was chatting about her upcoming wedding.
“I really wanted a gold gown but no one would let me do it! It’s crazy how people just tell you no! The dress place was like, ‘You look like you’re going to prom. You look like you’re on Dancing With the Stars.’ And I was like, ‘Crap, you’re right.’ So I got a dress with lace but I’m getting gold shoes and my fiancee and I are going to Italy for the honeymoon but not yet, so we’re thinking a long weekend in Lake Geneva…”
It was a stream of small talk and we had very little eye contact from the start, especially when my gal knelt down for my lower half. I turned when she said, “Okay hon, turn,” and I made the namaste-like gesture so she could get my sides properly. We acted like there was nothing wrong or odd whatsoever that I was nekkid as a j-bird, as they say. Well, except for my shower cap.
I can’t believe I just told you about the shower cap. Perhaps that’s the thing to feel ashamed about?
I once ate something so delicious, I burst out laughing.
It happened in Paris; so many glorious moments do. Was I twenty? Was I blonde? I think I was twenty and blonde and I was in Paris on the back-end of a trip to Provence to visit fabric manufacturers with a murder of quilters.*
I entered a cafe on that end-of-June day. It was any cafe, every cafe. The sun was setting over Paris; Paris, that jewel-encrusted dot on Planet Earth. I was full of Paris but my stomach was rumbling and I remembered what Hemingway said in A Moveable Feast: “…thepictures do look better when you are hungry.” Sure they did, and I was ravenous. I ordered a large chicken (prepared) and ate with gusto, the only person in the cafe actually having dinner. Parisians seem to eat nothing — and they eat late. But I didn’t care; I had sacrificed real shoe leather exploring the city that day. I had earned my supper.
I also earned my dessert.
The snooty waiter — straight out of central casting — handed me the dessert menu. Rhubarb soup. That was on the menu, rhubarb soup! I had not had rhubarb soup. Growing up in a town of 5,000 people in rural Iowa, you don’t get many opportunities for these sorts of things.
The soup came chilled in a shallow, wide-lipped ceramic bowl. There was maybe three-quarters of a cup of this impossibly delicate, translucent pink wash. Floating on top were slivered strawberries and a few green springs, which I determined to be mint.
“Et voila,” said the waiter, and he sashayed away. I took my spoon and dipped it into that cold little lake, swiped a touch of the cream on the top, and delivered the spoonful into my mouth.
Float. Moment.
It was like drinking water that had made love to a strawberry bush. It was like sucking a peach. It was like having a crush on a boy.
I burst out laughing. “This is so good! Oh, it’s so good! Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god.”
And I just sat back and laughed. I was like Sarah in the Old Testament, except that she was a really long way from Paris. It was absurd, this bowl of chilled rhubarb soup. I had never eaten anything like that in my life and to be honest, I haven’t since. I’ve had some fine food in my day: ’tis no small praise to say it was the most marvelous thing I’ve ever put in my mouth.
Turns out this is a Norwegian dish? My internet research tells me so. It’s called rabarbrasuppe and the recipe is as simple as can be. My people are Norwegian on my father’s side. We’re fierce Vikings to be sure, but I like to think of my Thors and Vals sitting around slurping rabarbrasuppe between battles, holding onto their horned helmets as they laugh out loud at impossible things: death, losing a battle, and chilled rhubarb soup.
*The most compelling choice for a group of quilters is not a gaggle or a flock (what are we, peahens?) but a murder, as in a murder of crows. We’d get a little more street cred.
I don’t have any children. But I have written a book. Because of this book, I feel I understand a thing or two about parentage and stewardship, about hard work and real fear.
Let’s break down the [MOTHER] is to [AUTHOR] as [CHILD] is to [BOOK] analogy:
CHILD: A moment of conception must occur (i.e., orgasm.)
BOOK: A moment of conception must occur (i.e., great idea.)
CHILD: Blastocyst = cluster of cells formed early in mammal development
BOOK: Outline = cluster of ideas formed early in manuscript development
CHILD: The expectant mother may experience extreme tiredness, mood swings, carpal tunnel syndrome, nipple tenderness.
BOOK: Expectant author may also experience all of the above. WELL SHE CAN, OKAY??
CHILD: Needs a name.
BOOK: Needs a name that will sell.
CHILD: Though each woman’s labor varies, nearly all experience degrees of severe pain in labor and delivery.
BOOK: Author labor varies, but nearly all experience degrees of severe pain throughout the editing process and delivery of manuscript.
CHILD: May arrive diseased and malformed through no direct fault of the mother.
BOOK: Totally on you.
Let us leave the analogy, then, and let me tell you about the book coming out this spring from C&T Publishing. This is not the official book blurb, this is just me, PaperGirl, talking to you.
I wrote Make + Love Quilts: Scrap Quilts for the 21st Century is my book to delight readers, artists, and quilters. There are patterns for twelve original bed-sized scrap quilts, designed by me. There is instruction that takes you through the quiltmaking process, start to finish. There are tips and advice for creating good patchwork and a good life. There are quotes on love from all kinds of folks from Nietzsche to Montaigne to Marilyn Monroe. There is stunning photography of the quilts (gorgeous style shots as well as front and back flat shots of each), the fabric used, and the Quilt Charms I had engraved and stitched on the back.
The art direction is killer. When I was on a phone meeting with the book team in California, I reached for the sky: I told them to “make this book the most beautiful book you have ever made. Ever.” I promised them I’d do my part — and they held up their end of the bargain, I assure you. The book is more beautiful than I even imagined it would be. I’ve cried several times and I haven’t even seen a bound galley copy, yet.
*See below for rather long but heartwarming/deer chilling caption.
I broke my usual rule to opt out of Black Friday shopping. I broke my rule because it was a matter of survival. I bought $50.04 worth of hunter orange today to protect my kith and kin.
Up here on the Island, we are at the height of deer hunting season. This means dozens of people are in the woods with guns at any hour of the day, prowling around for animals to shoot. As everyone in this house is an animal and most of the Island is woods, the past few days have been ever-so-slightly tense — and it ain’t because we’ve been playing 6 hours of Yahtzee every day. Mom spoke to the sheriff at the general store last week and the conversation centered around one main idea: this week, if you leave your house without dressing in head-to-toe hunter orange, you’re probably going to get shot.
When Mom reported this, many pairs of eyebrows were raised. We’ve been on the Island at all times of the year for decades and we’ve never been on such high alert. Apparently, there are way more people hunting this year than ever and apparently, my family has been taking our lives in our hands for years, taking out the garbage, walking to the car, opening a window, etc., in normal-people clothes.
Last night, everyone at the house under 40 went out to Nelsen’s for carousing. Nelsen’s Hall is the ale house on Main Road where you can get a bucket of Maker’s Mark for three dollars. We shot pool, we played songs on the juke, we laughed till our sides hurt, and we made sure to check with some locals on the whole hunter orange thing. We simply didn’t believe the sheriff that it was that dangerous outside.
We asked the bartender first. She was beautiful; pleasantly plump, with the creamy skin one can only achieve by being fed cheese curds from infancy. She looked at us all blankly.
“Why do you want to be outside? It’s winter.”
We didn’t end up asking anyone else.
Today, I stopped by the mercantile and I bought fifty bucks worth of neon orange stuff: a vest, a sweatshirt, some duct tape, two hats, and a kerchief that was so stiff you could use it as a bone saw in a pinch. Better safe than shot, I say.
Ah, I forgot: I bought something else, too.
Kristina and I stopped by Fisk’s restaurant to inquire about the fish dinner tonight and we spied two freshly baked pies cooling on a shelf. Pumpkin! They were clearly not on offer for sale, but we asked if we could buy a whole one, anyway. Sure, they said, twelve bucks. We forked over the cash and promised to bring back the pie tin when the pie was gone. That means I actually spend $62.04 on Black Friday, but for survival and pie, I shall make exceptions.
*Blaze Orange is a photographic coffee table book full of timeless images of the Whitetail Deer gun hunting season in Wisconsin. Wisconsin deer hunting is all about family. Families raise their children safely into the sport of hunting which is filled with traditions. Wisconsin’s Whitetail Deer gun season is 9 days long and requires hunters to wear Blaze Orange for safety. The season in closely monitored by the Wisconsin DNR. The DNR expects more than 600,000 hunters, about 10% of the state’s population, to take to the Wisconsin woods and fields next weekend. Wisconsin deer hunting runs deep with heritage for many Wisconsinites as the deer season here has an almost cult-like following.
Of all the pictures I found, this one captures the light right now the best. Swan Lake book cover, Prague 1970. Illustrated by Ludmila Jiřincová.
I am watching swans.
We’re here at the Island cottage to enjoy Thanksgiving. We call our place Sunrise Cottage because it’s on the easternmost side of the island and the house is all window on its east side, so when the sun comes up over Lake Michigan, the house is bathed in gold and white palomino sparkles. There is pecan pie on the counter this morning, there is a turkey brining in the dining room, but it has been snowing through the night; there is no sun.
There is instead a steely, ice crystal sky that blends with Lake Michigan at the horizon so that the whole world is just a big bowl of winter. And I am looking out at all of it from the sun porch, swaddled in jammies and a robe, a down comforter and two quilts piled on me. I’m a soldier this holiday: I took the couch on the porch so that the friends who joined us this year could have their own bedrooms. My seemingly selfless act is really not, though. Even if I have to wear two pairs of socks out here, this is the best room in the house.
I woke up pre-dawn and made a pot of coffee. As I was drinking it, looking out, the world began to lighten and I sat up in my nest. There were huge white birds out on the water, swimming between the ice floes that had formed already. Were they…? No. They were geese. Surely. They couldn’t be… Mom had gotten up by then and was in the next room, but there are many people still asleep in this house. I called, softly:
“Mama?”
“Yes?” she called back, also softly.
“Mama, do we have swans?”
“Yes.” Mom padded onto the porch. “Are they out there?” I nodded and pointed, and we looked out at the white-gray world, at a pair of the devastatingly elegant birds floating along, languidly inserting and re-inserting their necks into the freezing water. Breakfast comes to Door County.
“They look like ice,” I whispered.
“They look like pillowcases,” Mom whispered back.
This Thanksgiving, my family is up here in a snow globe. We’ve got love, victuals, a collectively wicked sense of humor, liquor, and freaking swans. I’m happy. It is my fondest wish that you feel happy today, too.
WWII propaganda poster by Fougasse; ironic appropriation by me.
“Why’s it called ‘PaperGirl,’ grandma?”
“Sit on my knee, child, and I’ll tell you.”
“Can I have a another cooky first? You tell long stories.”
“Here. Anything else?”
“No.”
“Good. Okay, then, PaperGirl. Well, once upon a time, long ago, I wrote a poem.”
“What was it called?”
“I’m getting to it. It was called ‘The Paper Poem,’ and it was an extended metaphor about the nature of existence being fragile like paper, but beautiful, too, like paper is beautiful.”
“What’s paper?”
“Before your time.”
“Oh. Your poem sounds cool, grandma.”
“I liked it. Other people liked it, too, and I performed it in many places all over the country.”
“Like in Bismark?”
“No, never actually in Bismark, I don’t think. Maybe. It was a long time ago. Anyway, there’s a verse where I say ‘I will be your paper girl,’ and that’s where ‘PaperGirl’ comes from.”
“What’s the verse?”
“You want to hear the whole verse?”
“Is it long?”
“No, it’s not long. It’s the second-to-last verse of the poem and it goes like this:
But if you are a paper doll, too, then I shall know you on sight,
And if you are with me, come with me tonight; I will match up our bodies
by the tears in our arms —
We will form paper barricades against matchstick harm;
I will make paper love to you for as long as I can in this shreddable world;
I will be your paper girl.
“That’s nice, grandma.”
“Thanks.”
“And you named your blog that because of that poem?”
“Yes. And PaperGirl is the name of my LLC, too. And that small island I bought. And the Beaux Arts building you like so much in Paris. And my foundation in Dubai and all the vineyards in Spain. Everything in my empire, it’s all under the PaperGirl umbrella.”
There are a handful of moments in my life that could be described as “smooth.” When playing Trivial Pursuit once, I was asked, “Who was the Duke of Flatbush?” and without missing a beat I replied, “Levi Strauss?” My sister actually shot Mountain Dew out her nose. And in Las Vegas once, I winked at a man before he shot dice at the craps table and he won an enormous pile of money. These are the moments we cling to when we realize we’ve had a shred of Kleenex hanging out our nose for the better part of the afternoon.
Well, I was real smooth last night. With a celebrity.
I was walking to dinner with Yuri. We were on Michigan Avenue and turned onto Ohio, where I noticed the banners for Eataly. Eataly is chef Mario Batali’s death star, an enormous, multi-level Italian restaurant/marketplace that first opened in New York City. At Eataly, you can have a fishbowl-size glass of wine, buy imported salami, sit down to dinner, and then be rolled out the door by attractive young people in chic aprons who will give you a cannoli for the road. And we’re getting an Eataly here, on Ohio and Michigan, and ours will actually be bigger than New York’s, coming in at 63,000 square feet to Union Square’s runty 50,000. Doors open next week.
Yuri and I were arm-in-arm (it was freezing) and I see the Eataly banners; as we pass the first bank of papered-up windows, I see standing under the entrance a man I recognize to be Joe Bastianich. I recognize him because Joe Bastianich is famous. He owns vineyards and produces fine wines; he is one of three celebrity judges on popular television program Master Chef; and he’s a restauranteur titan who aside from having his own 3- and 4-star joints scattered ’round the globe, works closely with chefs — such as Mario Batali of Eataly. Joe Bastianich was standing under the eaves of his new restaurant, presumably waiting to meet someone. Maybe his wife, maybe his buddy, maybe God. He’s a very important guy.
I see him, he sees me see him. With nary a pause in my gait (and without breaking from Yuri), I glance up at the Eataly banner above us and go, “How’s it goin’ in there?” And Joe Bastianch looks a little surprised, like maybe he should know me, and he goes, “It’s good.” He looked at me again, closer, but he can’t place me.
I was like, so cool at that moment I felt I could speak for the entire city of Chicago, so as I pass him, like over my shoulder, I go, “We’re looking forward to it.”
“Me, too,” says Joe Bastianich, and Yuri and I just keep on a’walkin.
“That was a famous man,” I said with a tiny little bunny hop, allowing myself to finally geek out. Being smooth with a celebrity is tough for one simple reason: broad exposure in television, print, and film makes a human being seem like an alien life-form that can eternally replicate itself. We would all act a little weird around a replicating alien if we met one, so that’s why it’s weird to see Madonna hailing a taxi, or Igor Stravinsky eating at Jimmy John’s. Or Joe Bastianich checking his text messages on Ohio Street.
Mr. Bastianich, you don’t know me. And I am not nearly as cool as I may have appeared last night. But Chicago is looking forward to Eataly and I can speak for the city when I say welcome, sir.*
Cin-cin.
*Mary Fons may be reached for gift cards, exclusive wine tastings, and general VIP treatment at Eataly via the contact form on this website. Thank you. — The Management
It’s time for a dispatch from everyone’s favorite fake, one-topic photo journal, The Pendennis Observer. If you missed the mission of The Pendennis Observer or would like a refresher before you see pictures of my sock monkey, please visit the first post here.
Of course, if your clicker is tired, you don’t have to go anywhere. All you need to know is that Pendennis is my monkey, I’m too old to still have him “in play” in my home/bed, I love him, and I never, ever pose him. I leave the monkey where he lay and I frequently take his picture because he is exquisite. A little funny, a little tragic, Pendennis and his gestures are life itself.
A few recent discoveries:
“Wilt thou be gone? It is not yet near day. It was the nightingale, and not the lark/That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear. Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate tree. Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.”High kick.Another Tuesday morning, another existential crisis.
Watershed House is a 100-square-foot writer’s retreat located in Wren, Oregon designed by architect, Erin Moore of FLOAT Architectural Research and Design. Erin built this small studio for her mother who is a noted nature writer.
I read Virginia Woolf for the first time a few months ago. Can you believe I never read any Virginia Woolf until a few months ago? If you’ve never read any, it’s time. She’s pretty good.
I selected two pieces: a short essay entitled On Being Sick and the surprisingly slender A Room of One’s Own. Did you know that A Room of One’s Own is a speech? Well, it’s an essay she wrote with material from lectures she gave at Cambridge back in the 1920s, but to me, that makes it kind of a speech and therefore awesomely immediate. Both texts were packed with stunning, thought-provoking, clever, frequently charming prose. Virginia had the gift, man. In On Being Ill, she describes people who fall sick for long stretches thusly:
“We raise our feet even an inch above the ground on another, we cease to be soldiers in the army of the upright; we become deserters. They march to battle. We float with the sticks on the stream; helter-skelter with the dead leaves on the lawn…”
“The armies of the upright”?! Just head-slappingly good. But when I read Room, I learned something that truly blew my mind.
The phrase “a room of one’s own” is deployed with enough regularity that few native-born English speakers would go, “Whuh?” if someone dropped it into conversation. Your friend Stu might say, for example, “You know, I just need a couple weeks to chill. Do some journaling, cook, rest. Like, in a little cabin in the woods or something. A room of one’s own, you know?” And you would know what Stu is saying. He craves privacy and meditation time. He needs space and time, to turn off the cell phone and the email. A room of Stu’s own.
Some of us will know that Woolf’s concept of “a room of one’s own” was shared within the context of speaking about women — specifically, women writers. Her point is that women who want to write need space, few distractions; they need their independence.
Well.
That’s not the whole quote, folks. Virginia Woolf didn’t say that a woman who wants to write needs “a room of one’s own,” no she did not. This is what she said:
“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”
Money and a room! Money and a room of her own. Do you realize how freaking important that is to what she’s saying? It changes everything! Having a dumb room is going to work for about two seconds unless you’ve got some scratch. Where is this room? Floating in space? No! It’s in a building! With heat and water to pay for, I’d wager! And how ‘ya gonna eat, child?? You need bread! Butter! Chocolate eclairs! How can you write anything of consequence if you’re starving and how can you write anything of consequence with pizzaz if you can’t buy yourself a damned eclair every once in awhile? Good grief! Virginia got it — she knew where the bakery was.
So re-learn the Woolf quote. It’s not just that a woman writer must have space. She has to have means, as well, and that idea raises curtains in the brain to let in magnificent, dazzling light. Money and a room of one’s own. Zowie.
Bonus quote expose: I recently came across this famous piece from Thomas Jefferson, which you will surely recognize: “What country before ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion? …The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
You know that one. But there’s another line. That’s not the whole quote. Check it:
“What country before ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion? …The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”
One of the cleverest jokes I know — is it a joke? only a bon mot? — is this one:
Man: Excuse me, Miss, but how do you get to Carnegie Hall?
Woman: Practice.
I thought of it because I was in New York not terribly long ago and I went with a friend to The Carnegie Club. The Carnegie Club is about as New York as it gets. Well, it’s as New York as New York gets if you’re talking about old, moneyed New York. Graffiti on a fire hydrant and a broken toilet out on the street is pretty New York, too. But conjure in your mind 1950’s jazz clubs with dark, lacquered wood and diamonds around the necks of swan-necked women. That’s the New York I mean when I say the Carnegie Club.
Danny Freedman’s write up of the club in New York magazine is dead on, so rather than spend an hour getting my own description just right, check it:
“An air of vintage class pervades this sprawling midtown cigar bar… Yellow wallpaper and hand-carved wooden bookcases stuffed with worn hardbacks give the club’s main level and large lofted hideaway the feel of an Ivy League alumni club. The crowd of men (many of them balding and dressed in jacket and tie) and some younger women (in skirts or cocktail dresses) buzz from upholstered sofa chairs and couches to the long bar. With 20 or so cigars in a glass-enclosed humidor, even non-smokers may experience a whiff of nostalgia for the days of indoor smoking as they watch how the club’s lighting catches swirls of smoke just right.”
My friend was one of the balding fellows and I was the younger woman in a cocktail dress. I have come to realize that you cannot have too many little black dresses, ladies. It’s impossible: every black dress is unique and special in its own way, sorta like us humans. My black tube dress? Too sexy for the Carnegie Club, even with a jacket. My jersey Celine with the most incredible sleeves with the impossibly gorgeous slit at the wrists? Not the one; plus, too cold for a short dress like that. But my Carven wraparound with the wool lower half and the silk upper half? Poifect! With the black high heels (bows on the toes) and the earrings and the handbag? Ooh, mama! Light ’em, boys, and peel me a grape.
And so they did and so it was that I sank into old New York that night and let the cigar smoke curl and swirl like Freedman said it would. I was buzzed and cozy in a world of cedar and tobacco and fire. Ice, too, incidentally; I had my scotch on the rocks.
I’m considering spending a month or so in New York City at my sister’s place when the renovation begins in my kitchen. I’m not sure I’ll be able to live in my house when that starts. My fridge will be what’s left of my living room. I will have to fashion a hotplate staging area for my tea in the morning. There will be more dust and I am already sneezing and coughing. All that or my amazing sister, NYC out the front door, and a good old-fashioned change of scenery? Not a difficult decision. I can work from anywhere, really.
I won’t go to the Carnegie Club every night, promise. Just Wednesdays.
Last night, I was a living, breathing road-dog cliche: I came home from a long/awesome day of work, closed the door to my hotel room, washed my hair, put on a moisturizing face mask, wrapped myself up in a towel, and got into bed with a chocolate bar and the mighty remote control. I’m glad the Tulsa Hampton Inn provides notepaper and a pen on the nightstand; as it turned out, I would need them, too.
I landed on QVC. A few years ago, this company hired genius marketing people who elevated the concept of shopping on TV from one of total lameness to one of at least partial coolness. Could it be? I remember article after article (read: press release after press release) about how HSN and QVC were attracting A-list celebrities and everyone from Fancy McPants to ChiChi McGee were doing product on television. Liza Minnelli did a line of clothes for one of the networks; I know because I bought two pieces. Off the TV! Good lord! It was an isolated event, though; my items were costume pieces for my Liza-centric one-woman show in 2011. I hadn’t looked in on the world of television shopping since then, so I thought I’d check the scene.
QVC, I salute you. I was thoroughly entertained for the duration of my face mask. I’m not being sarcastic! It was great.
I watched host Lisa Robertson present/sell a collection of Dooney & Bourke handbags. As I watched, my jaw dropped open. (Well, my lips parted; the mask was getting really hard.) I grabbed the pen and paper and wrote down some of the sentences that came out of Lisa Robertson’s mouth. She was mesmerizing; she could talk for ten minutes about absolutely nothing. Words were coming. Zero new information was being dispensed. Everything you needed to know about each handbag was learned in the first fifteen seconds of seeing it — but not if Lisa had anything to do with it. And she kept repeating the word “crossbody” over and over again, inserting it into every possible place it would fit. I’ll bet you a million bucks that the hosts/producers zero in on a single word in any presentation to use again and again, like a mantra or a password because it’s soothing, hypnotizing. The word could be “phytonutrient” or “sleek” or “soothing.” Last night, it was “crossbody.”
“Love this crossbody bag. The strap, crossbody, is amazing, this amazing crossbody bag is one you will love forever. You will have this for years. Leather, Florentine. Strap, crossbody. This beautiful leather crossbody bag — wow.”
It got better, though. She actually said these things. These are verbatim sentences.
“Are you shorter? You want a bag that won’t overwhelm you. You don’t want to be overwhelmed by your handbag. This is your bag.”
“You’re saying, ‘I don’t want to fight with my bag. I want a bag and I don’t want to fight with it.’ This is that bag.”
“Crossbody.”
“These pockets in the front, they go all the way down. Absolutely.”
“We make these zippers very easy. These zippers are not going to bite you.”
“This is Florentine leather. Very European leather.”
Glorious. And she kept spanking the bags! She’d do a little rub-n-spank, rub-n-spank and finger the front, finger the findings and the hardware. Very sexual, really, almost erotic. So it was all a lot of fun and I fell asleep watching it. When I woke up twenty minutes later, my face was a cement slab and this morning it looks AMAZING.
The physical suffering for several months was greater than anything I had felt in four years of the fallout from my ulcerative colitis and multiple (botched) surgeries. The pain began to have a shape, a personality. Its tyranny was beyond belief, so bad I would giggle, sometimes, in the midst of an attack. One night I actually turned on the voice memo recorder on my phone when I was spluttering and screaming to have proof later that it was as bad as I thought it was; the most incredible thing about pain that bad is that you don’t remember how bad it was when you’re out of it, usually. This is a blessing, because you might start looking for the nearest set of train tracks if you thought it would happen again.
All that and ensuing hospital trips, lonesomeness. I have loved ones and friends aplenty, but I was stuck in a weird silence, longing for a different sort of hug in so many dark nights of cold snow.
And then an acute, Stage IV existential crisis slammed itself into my chest, which sounds sorta funny except that those aren’t, really. What is the purpose of life? Why does it have to be so beautiful and then end? How come I’m getting older? What happens when someone in my family dies? Why does my body have to hurt like this? What is the meaning of this? I’ve heard people joke about having an existential crisis, but I actually caught one last year and trust: they are no laughing matter. I would cast about each day, numb, going through the motions of work (glorious life-raft) and at night would try to sew, try to take a walk and let the cold sting my cheeks into roses. I felt the blues, the mean reds, and yellow bile in my throat, pretty much all the time. Primary colors.
But then something happened and I turned the corner.
I was walking down State St. one evening, wide-eyed and gaunt. I hadn’t been able to eat for awhile because it hurt to eat and it hurt to digest and it hurt to poop. I was a shell. There was still snow on the ground from the last storm. I went into a designer discount place that contains buried treasure if you’re willing to look. I was not interested in shopping that night; I was interested in not shuffling down State St. as the Ghost of Christmas Future. So I went in.
Up the escalator to the second floor. I floated around for awhile and got sadder. It was so depressing, all those lifeless corpses of clothes, all those clearance tags. And then, snapping through the hangers on the rack in the very back, I saw something remarkable. It was a dress. A white dress by Celine, my favoritest designer ever. It looked like paper. It was like a paper doll dress. It had a Peter Pan collar; it looked like a candy-striper’s dress without the stripes. And it was filthy. It had been marked down from $2,200 to $1,500 to $1,200 to $800 to $425 to $225 to $80 ($80!) and it showed every month of mark downs, every try-on, every grubby hand of every shopper in the store. That poor, poor, beautiful dress. I seized it and looked at the tag. A French 40. My size.
I raced down the stairs with it. I paid. The clerk shoved it in the bag and I hurried home as fast as I could. I felt strange and knew what I had to do. I had rescued the dress from the floor of the store and its fate: certain destruction. It was bound for the mill of damaged-out apparel, destined to become true paper, which is what they do with useless clothes, turn them into paper. I had rescued it and now I had to restore it, nurse the nurse dress back to health. My own vulnerability seemed tied to the dress; my health in the balance, too.
A garment so fine, even made from cotton like it was, cannot be put into the wash. In fact, the beat up tag even advised to take it to not just any dry cleaner but to give it “the highest quality of professional garment treatment.” I came into the house and took off my boots. I took the gentlest detergent I own from the laundry shelf. I ran cold water in the bathtub. I swished and swished and made a gentle, cool, soapy bath. I lay the dress in the water. It floated on the top and then slowly sunk down. I knelt at the tub. And I cleaned it. Like I was washing a baby bird, I tenderly rubbed the dress on itself, took a never-used soft toothbrush and flicked the dirt off. I rinsed that thing nine times, probably. I got it spotless. It was white as the newly fallen snow. I opened the window and hung the dress on a wide hanger on a jerry-rigged stand so it would touch nothing. It dried through the night, retaining its paper doll shape.
Then I made a small rack of lamb chops rubbed with rosemary and devoured each chop like I had been starving for a week. Not too far off. I got into bed and sank into sleep and that night, I didn’t wake up in a panic.
In the morning, I felt better. A lot better. I put the dress on. I pulled thick tights and boots on and wrapped myself up in a sweater; the dress is a summer dress and for it to work in winter, I needed accoutrements. I was warm. I braided my hair and went out into the world and I swear, the sun was shining.
