Conferencing

Keith is gone to a conference for several days. This is good.

If you have a job that doesn't involve conferences, you should invent them. Not for the conferences themselves, mind you--it's astonishing how little of professional value actually occurs at the things. Other than getting to go out and have expensive food and drink lots and lots of alcohol in the company of people with similar interests or at least similar working lives. I suppose there's some value there, tho' I doubt it's really all that "professional."

But I'm thinking about the personal and familial benefits of conference-going. I'm thinking about the absolute bliss when you enter the hotel room and shut the door. And it's clean. And you are alone and you can watch any sort of tv any time you want and you can sleep in and there will be no crying child or grumpy spouse or kitchen full of dirty dishes to punish you afterwards. And you can stay out as late as you want and organize your schedule (apart from a conference duty here or there) as you want, and you can eat what and when and if you want (I suppose there are people to whom the "if" applies. . . ) . And it's all good. It restores your soul.

And meanwhile back at home--umm, that depends. When the boys were little, Keith seemed to view my conference absences as things to be endured. He'd go into boot camp mode, with a strict schedule and a checklist. I, however, I had a rather different approach. . .

Which is to say, the boys loved it when Keith left for a few days and, yes, so did I. It wasn't a matter of Keith, per se. I remember reading an article by a recently widowed woman with three young kids, and in this piece she noted, "It's amazing what counts as 'dinner' when you're the only grown-up around." That's it. Not just the dinners, tho' certainly those--we'd go out for at least one meal and for all the others we'd have TV or Movie Nights, with 'dinner' on a big blanket in the living room--but the overall freedom of being the only adult in the household. You can get away with stuff, plus there's no energy-draining resentment and repressed anger because Spouse is watching tv rather than playing with the kids or ignoring the dishes or leaving little beard hairs all over the bathroom sink. You're on your own.

So Keith would depart and the boys would immediately shift into my bed and we'd have tickly, giggly mornings, and there'd be bound to be baking of some sort, and probably a visit to the really good, really big, faraway park, the one with the stream and the great overhanging tree. I truly didn't set out to teach the boys to associate "Dad's absence" with "fun," tho' looking back, I realize that was what happened, and that was Not A Good Thing. It all comes down to Calvinist guilt, actually. I feel guilty all the time: I'm not a good enough wife, mother, neighbor, scholar, teacher, daughter, friend, etc. etc. etc. So take away the obligation to be a Good Wife for a few days, and well, I do believe the word is liberation. And what do you do when you're liberated from ordinary obligations, from the usual routine? You celebrate. You party. You go on holiday. Hence the Movie Nights and the giggly mornings and the park outings.

But of course all of it depended on the fact--the absolute, never-doubted fact--that Keith would soon be home. Because the liberation rested utterly on the temporary nature of the whole thing. I was like one of those pretend hippies at Woodstock, the college students who jumped around in their fringe vests and tie-dyed tee-shirts, and then went back to writing papers and taking exams and beefing up their resume's. Had the situation ever become permanent, freedom would have quickly transformed into anarchy (think broken glass, burning cars, blood on the doorstep, shrieks and wails and the wah-wah-wah of sirens), and the sense of liberation would have become loneliness, total and complete and devastating loneliness.

Just like life alone in a hotel room would be an absolute horror.

But for a few days, once or twice a year, it's a fine and wonderful thing.

Postscripts

Just so you know, I'm quite enjoying being an Ornamental Pillow Person . Every morning I make a new and different pillow pyramid. It's very exciting.

Maybe I need to get out more.

Or maybe I really do need to start using marijuana. No, haven't yet, despite my every intention and my discovery that you can find this stuff in some pretty surprising places. The thing is, it's illegal. And I always always always get caught when I try to do something that everyone else does all the time. I must just exude guilt. So I want to be sure that when I am caught, I can mount a really convincing defence, buttressed by all kinds of evidence showing 1) my long history of chronic headaches, and 2) my equally lengthy list of attempts to find a legal remedy. Which means acupuncture. I keep talking about trying acupuncture but, apart from the expense--fairly hefty, tho' honestly, what does weed cost these days? --

--"these days, she writes, as if back in "other days" she knew the cost of marijuana--

there is the little matter of needles. Nevertheless, needles be damned, acupuncture it will be. And then I'll be able to say, "But your honor, it's the American medical system that should be on trial, not me."

I also, despite every good intention, haven't yet killed my cat. The peeing one. Instead, I have banished her to the outdoors. Well, duh, you say. No, dear reader, not duh. Peeing kitty has no claws and so little chance of defending herself against predators and competitors. Plus she's one of those long-haired kitties, meant to decorate the living room, not live in the wild. Entire ecosystems of fleas and tics could flourish in her fur; shoot, birds could nest in there and we'd never know it. But--I've put her out, and after a few days of adjustment (punctuated by much mewing), she seems to be having a good time. Actually, she seems to have gone feral already. I know that sooner or later she'll be run over by a car or mauled by a stray dog, and I'll feel terrible, but at least she'll have had these days of unrestrained beastiness while I soak the sofas in cheap vodka. (Kitty shrink tells us it neutralizes the cat pee smell--not sure yet--I do worry about, well, flammability. Combustibility. Someone lighting a match and our alcohol-laden furniture igniting. Could make our parties a bit more interesting, I guess.)

Give this woman an Oscar

Owen is spending the semester on an internship working with a homeless advocacy non-profit (guess that should be obvious--not a lot of profit in homeless advocacy) in Washington D.C. Urban lefty that he is, he's happy.

So I'm happy. This is the awful thing about parenthood. You have sex, you conceive (or, as in the case of our second child, you shell out thousands of dollars and you adopt), you have a baby--and that's it, you're like a video game, the kid controls the joy stick. "No one else is in charge of your happiness," my first therapist told me. Or was that a line from a Disney movie? Anyway, it's totally bogus, at least once you have kids.

So Owen called the other night. We chatted for a long time. And I was the Perfect Mom. First and most important, he called; I did not call him. And second, we chatted. I did not tell him I missed him. I did not break down sobbing and admit to him that I frequently dream of him as a baby; I did not reveal that sometimes I look into his bedroom and just stand there like a maternal zombie as I remember him giggling over Harry Potter; I did not confess that the sight of roller blades or Legos can reduce me to tears. Nope, I was the total "Hey-Buddy-I-Got-My-Life-to-Live" insouciant mom--you know: "you do your thing, I do my thing, and if by chance, we find each other, it's beautiful"--oh wait, that was the poster than hung on my closet door when I was 11. The point is, I was great. I should have won an Oscar or a Grammy or a Tony or whatever award given for the most astonishing dramatic performance on a telephone.

Mac-and-Cheese

I made macaroni and cheese last night, from a new Weightwatcher's recipe. (I know, "Weightwatcher's" and "mac-and-cheese"--something of a contradiction in terms.) And I've been mired in nostalgia ever since.

Nostalgic, but not for my mom's mac-and-cheese. She never made it, weirdly enough for a 1960s Midwestern suburban housewife. And not even for college, when my roommate Marcia would eat an entire box of Kraft's Mac-and-Cheese, and say brightly, "Just 39 cents! Can you believe it?!"

No, the nostalgia focused on the small dining area of a semi-detached house on a quiet horseshoe street off the main road of a slightly gritty working-class neighborhood in Manchester. England. That's the North of England, depressed, post-industrial England, not the thatched-roof, hobbit-y, touristed South.

There, for three years in a tiny kitchen, I made macaroni and cheese from an English newspaper recipe, not out of the box, not glow-in-the-dark orange, but homemade and healthy, appealing to both adults and children. (This, of course, was before Owen, inspired by the animal rights movement, became a vegan, and before Hugh, out of deep anti-parent principles, stopped eating anything prepared by his mother or father. ) We ate together, every night.

And Keith had to leave for a meeting, every night. And the boys fought each other, every night. And I fought against--and frequently lost the battle to--depression many nights. Not exactly Andy Griffith or Leave It to Beaver.

And yet--was it the dairy? the carbs? maybe the olive oil or the whole wheat breadcrumbs?-there were these mac-and-cheese moments, just moments, yes, just little parentheses inserted in some fairly bleak paragraphs, but good moments, nonetheless, powerful parentheses, glimpses of Mayberry and Mayfield in gritty, rainy Manchester. And I miss that.

Jim who?

It's a bad sign when one finds oneself confused by tv commercials.

There's this I-Pod Nano commercial in which the camera never moves from a close-up on a woman's torso, as her hands clip her Nano here and there, while this really quite interesting song plays. Something about "I want a girl with a something something and a long, looong. . . jacket." I like the song. But what I don't know is, is it really a song? Or is it just something made up for a cool I-Pod commercial? Who's singing? Should I know this? Does everyone know this--except elderly out-of-touch folks like me? Have I become the 21st century equivalent of that person who doesn't realize that the "I can see for miles and miles and miles" on the Windex commercial is actually a Who song? or the "Our house, is a very very very fine house" on the commercial for umm, something to do with houses, is really a Crosby, Stills, and Nash song? And is the fact that I remember those commercials--which probably haven't been on for years, now that I think about it--is that fact yet one more reason for despair?

And yet--I remember returning to Chicago from six months' Ph.D. research in London. 1985. I was 25--thin, fit, sexy, definitely not elderly or out of touch. This commercial for scooters--the Vespa type, not those metal kid things--came on and there was this guy, this really horrible actor, pitching the scooter. I turned to my then-boyfriend and complained, "Geez louise, what were they thinking when they hired that guy?" And Boyfriend stared at me in amazement, shook his head, and then said in this horribly patronizing tone (which really summed up the whole relationship but let's not go there), "My dear, you have got to be the only person in this entire city who doesn't recognize Jim McMahon." "Jim who?" I replied.
[In case you, like me, are clueless: In 1985, the Chicago Bears won the Superbowl. And Jim McMahon was The Quarterback. If that explanation doesn't help, if you don't understand the significance of the Superbowl and have no idea why a quarterback is important, well, hey, let's get together and can I marry and have babies with you?]

It helps to remember that I can't remember Jim McMahon. After all, I chalk up lots of things these days to menopause and aging, and get frustrated and anxious and angry. Which is pretty dopey because a. really, there's only one alternative to growing old, and really, is that what I want? and b. actually, I've been doing or not doing most of this stuff most of my life. As Keith has frequently reminded me, if I should be afflicted with Alzheimer's, who will notice?

Ornamental Pillow People

One might think that two relatively bright, aware, sensible people, married for 20 years and thus combining their relative brightness, awareness, and sensibility, would not repeat the same mistakes over and over and over. But we do.

We ordered a bed online. We know better. We have tried assembling furniture in the past. Many times--as our household interior bears witness, replete as it is with various wonky, wobbly chairs, desks, and tabletops. We are not handy people. We are not mechanically inclined. We have no practical function whatsoever.

We are now sleeping on a mattress on the floor.

Yet this return to a kind of grad student sparseness has occurred in tandem with a leap into bourgeois luxury. We have become Ornamental Pillow People.

It wasn't intentional. Keith, for one, hates ornamental pillows. Art is fine--he has no trouble spending money on paintings or photographs. Because art has a point--you look at it, you enjoy it, you're challenged by it, whatever. But the point of a pillow is to sleep on it. An ornamental pillow? No point.

I'm more ambivalent. I've always really been rather awe-struck by people with ornamental pillows on their beds. They're like the People Who Live in Our Magazines. But I dunno. Life seems complicated enough, without having to arrange a complicated tower of pillows on the bed every morning. Plus I nap most days. That means building the pillow pyramid twice every day.

But after two decades of connubial bliss, we decided to graduate to a queen-sized bed. (I worried about the implications of this move, I'll admit. Does it mean there's a growing distance between us? Are we no longer close? Actually, it just means we're both sick of being squished by the kitty.) Anyway, a new mattress means new bedding. And on overstock.com, I found this great deal on a rather attractive "12-piece bed-in-a-bag". I'll admit, I'm not a good shopper. I didn't really pay attention. I mean, 12 pieces. I just assumed, gotta include sheets, right? Comforter = 1. Blanket = 2. Sheets and pillowcases = 6. God knows what else = 12.

But no. No sheets. No pillowcases. Instead, lots and lots of Ornamental Pillows. I feel like a miner when I go to bed now--it requires much tunneling and shoveling just to find the sheets. Keith refuses to do the pillow mining. He just inserts himself into the mass--with the result that I come into the bedroom and it's like an episode of Doctor Who: alien pillow-shaped life forms have swallowed my husband's head and are munching their way down his torso.

Still, we're trying. Why can't we be Ornamental Pillow People? We're people. We like pillows. And heck, we're largely ornamental.

"Wha-a-a-at?"

9 am on a Saturday morning. Hugh is at the computer, music blaring. He likes to listen to whatever is his current favorite song over and over and over. This morning it's THUMP--THA--THA--THA--THUMP. . . with a constant refrain of "goddamn bitch."

Can't take it anymore. Demand that he change the song.

Sullen muttering. A moment of silence. Then THA-THA-THA-THUMP-dum-dum-THA-THA-THUMP-dum-dum. . . "Fuckin' nigga!" FUCKIN' NIGGA!"

I totally lose it. "HUGH!! That's it!" I shriek. "You are going to lose computer access for the entire weekend!"

He's dumbfounded. Complete innocence. Utter confusion. "Wha-a-at? I changed the song, just like you said."

I glare at my beautiful black son. "Oh right. As if Id find 'fuckin' nigga' more acceptable than 'goddamn bitch.'"

"Well, I didn't know THAT was your problem. Besides, if you'd just listen, it's a great song-- really socially responsible."

Damn, he's good.

I actually hesitate, doubting myself, for a moment. Then I regain my footing. "Not in THIS house. I will not have that word in this house."

He sighs, deeply, heavily, burdened by the weight of this crazed old lady, this lunatic white woman who dares to be his mother.

Cruel September

According to T. S. Eliot, "April is the cruellest month."

I think he was on drugs. I've spent several Aprils in Britain. It's not a bad month, not as good as May, admittedly; May is definitely the best month of the year to be anywhere in Britain, but still, in general, April is just fine.

As opposed to September in south Louisiana. A Deep South September is like the Abu Ghraib of the calendar. Total torture. Absolute horror. It's not like it's any hotter or more humid than July or August; it's just that it's friggin' September and that it's as hot and as humid as any day in July or any August evening. September. A month that's supposed to carry those hints of fall, those autumnal glimpses, the promise of cleansing cold. Wool sweaters, plaid skirts, thick tights, boots. Pumpkins and red leaves and the smell of wood smoke. Cinnamon-spiced apple bread and hot mugs of tea.

But when it's 98 degrees in the shade with 95% humidity, well, one sticks to iced tea, even if it is September.And one learns to toss all the L.L. Bean and Eddie Bauer catalogs straight into the recycling bin. Autumn porn, I call it. All those woolen-clad models. All those down jackets and tall leather boots.

I step outside and the humidity surrounds me, squeezes me, suffocates me. It's like a Dementor, sucking out all enjoyment and energy and life. Except of course J.K. Rowling's Dementors bring with them a freezing cold; they turn all that they touch to ice. Never mind that. These are Gulf Coast dementors, partial to seafood gumbo and fried alligator, wary of hurricanes, glistening with spilled oil.

Dementors everywhere and no patronus charm. September in south Louisiana. Voldemort wins.

All's Well That Ends Well

The Daily Show is back on after a weeklong hiatus.

Thank God.

I'll admit it. I'm addicted. I need Jon Stewart. When he's not on, I'm confused and out of sorts. I feel isolated, out-of-touch, uninformed, alienated. Maybe it would be different if I lived in New York or San Francisco or Chicago. Or even New Orleans. But in Baton Rouge. . . I need my daily Daily Show fix.

I do find it somewhat troubling that the dominant voice of reason in our culture is a satirical comedian. But then I think about Shakespeare's comedies, and I figure maybe we're, well, pretty much as fucked up as we've always been. Which gives me hope.

Post-Girdlehood

I've been thinking about girdles. As one does.

Throughout most of my childhood, Mom wore a girdle for dress-up occasions, which pretty much meant weekends--Saturday night out to dinner with Dad, Sunday morning and evening to church. I was asleep when they returned late on Saturday nights so missed the de-girdling, but the Sunday process remains indelibly carved into my memory. Despite a myriad of Sunday dinner tasks demanding her attention, Mom would clomp upstairs in her high heels and she'd be hollering as she went, "I just have to get out of this girdle!" A little bit later we'd hear the shout of relief and downstairs Mom would trot as her hands massaged her stomach and hips.

I identified in many ways with my mother. She was a woman; I'd become one too. That was clear. Strangely, however, I understood implicitly and absolutely that I would never pass into the realm of girdledom. I don't recall ever thinking about it consciously, certainly not ever asking about it. I just knew: Mom and her friends wore girdles. I and my friends would not. This was A Fact.

Except it turns out that it wasn't. Isn't. Because now there are "body shapers." I thought I was living in the post-girdle world, but post-girdlehood was an illusion.

Kind of like the day of Obama's inauguration, when I thought that a majority of Americans were genuinely, truly embracing his vision of a globally aware, environmentally concerned, social democratic society. An illusion.

Guess I'd better just hike up the girdle--excuse me--body shaper. But someday, someday, change is gonna come.

The Potter and the Clay

I'm about to become a pot-smoking cat-killer.

The pot-smoking is fairly straightforward. My headaches get ever worse, which I really didn't think was possible, as they seemed pretty damned bad before. I have exhausted all the legal options and I have depleted my admittedly fairly scanty emotional and spiritual resources. That leaves medicinal marijuana.

Of course, it's not actually all that straightforward. I live in Louisiana, where pot in all its forms, medicinal or not, is illegal. And I've never smoked pot. I've never smoked anything, in fact (the result of growing up in a household of cigarette smokers--it was truly vile: one of my most vivid childhood memories is my disgust at having to wash dishes because my dad and brothers would stub out their dinnertime cigarettes on the plates. . . those crumpled butts, squished down into leftover puddles of ketchup and meatloaf grease. . . and then there was the horror of car rides in the winter, all the windows rolled up, the cigarette smoke swirling around my head like a thick woolen scarf). So, I don't know how to smoke. And I don't know how to get pot, other than to ask certain of my sons' friends, which of course I cannot do. Good lord. Can you imagine: "Hey dude, tell your mom I got a new supply in and it's really sweet"--??

But I will surmount these problems and I will score some medicinal marijuana and I will, at last, find relief from the pain. And I will live a happy and successful and productive life.

Except for the cat-killing.

I wrote in a previous post about our peeing cat. All cats pee, of course, but this one pees on the sofas and beds. Constantly. And I just can't take it anymore. I have tried everything. Really. Truly. I'm a historian. I research for a living. I have researched peeing cats. I do not believe in discarding animals because they are inconvenient, but. . . this is beyond "convenience." As Laurie, my very wise nail lady said to me on Saturday morning as she clipped away at my cuticles, "We're talking about your home here." And my home reeks of cat piss. But the cat has no claws and couldn't survive outside and is not exactly adoptable. Who wants an incontinent indoor kitty?

But if I have my cat "put down," aka killed, I will also become a liar of the worst kind. Because Cleaning Sarah, who has cleaned our house, babysat our kids, petsit our dogs and cats, and basically been a solid part of our family life for 20 years, will never speak to me again if she knows what I've done. So I will have to lie. A really Big Lie. One I will have to think about, concoct and then sustain for years to come. It will be like a Victorian novel. It will go on and on and on.

So the Scripture text in church this morning was the famous passage from Jeremiah about God sending the prophet to watch the potter at the wheel and saying, "Look, go tell Israel [or is it Judah?], you've all really fucked up and I'm going to throw you back on the wheel and start all over." (Yes, the "fucked up" is in the original Hebrew. . . OK, not really, but you know it's what God wanted to say except He/She/They knew there'd be all those kids listening in.) And I'm sitting there in the pew and I'm thinking, "Oh geez. I'm 50 and I've got a headache and do I really need to be reminded that I more and more resemble a lumpy, squishy, lopsided pile of clay?" And then there's this continual reshaping, this constantly-on-the-wheel thing, round and round and round and round. . . . I mean, no wonder I have headaches. But I gotta say, the shapes this funky cosmic Potter comes up with--well, they are surprising, to say the least. I truly never expected to be a middle-aged, weed-toking, cat-killing, cleaning-woman-deceiver. I mean, couldn't I be a nice, graceful salad bowl? Or perhaps a butter dish with pleasing lines? Or even a gravy boat?

I used to be better

Today I bought a Dyson. Vacuum cleaner, that is. Not the roller ball kind, as I couldn't justify the extra $100 just so I could zoom around corners. It's not a race car, for pete's sake.

Today I also purchased ridiculously expensive black jeans from J.Jill. And I got a pedicure and manicure.

Can you tell it's been a really bad week?

When did I become a person who indulges in Shopping Therapy? Good lord. I used to be better than this. I used to be, you know, sane.

Tax Holiday

So this Labor Day weekend is the "Second Amendment Tax Holiday" in Louisiana.

Yep. No state or local taxes on purchases of guns or gun accessories.

You couldn't make this stuff up. Tho' God knows why you'd want to.