Women's Work

I'm sorry you're such a prick.

I'm sure it's happened to you.  An acquaintance, co-worker, neighbor, or friend (although in this case, probably not for long) tells you about something bad that has befallen them.  They were ill, their cat ran away, their grandmother died, or some other unfortunate turn of events.  And you, because you are a nice, caring person, say, "I'm sorry."

You say this because you ARE sorry.  You regret that this thing has happened to them.  You sympathize with them for their loss.  You wish that things had been different.  Depending on the event, you may offer them chicken soup, a hug, or to keep them in your prayers.

And then they say it.  They say, "Oh, it's not your fault."

And then you take a step back -- nay, you are literally taken aback.  For you had not realized, that by the simple act of expressing your condolences, you were assuming putative responsibility for someone else's misfortune.  It had never even occurred to you.  You rack your memory, trying to recall if you had sneezed on their doorknob, lured their cat out with tuna and Pounce, or run over their grandmother in your Impala.  You find that you are, as you suspected, innocent of these activities.  So why is this person casually absolving you of all guilt?

When, I ask you, did "I'm sorry," become an expression only of guilt, never of sympathy?  Surely the person to whom the condolences are being offered can fill in the appropriate blank and tell the difference between "I'm sorry for your loss," and "I'm sorry that I caused this to happen."  Surely? 

Apparently not.  The next time this happens to you, might I suggest revving up your Impala? 

I'm sorry, Grandma, but you'd better watch out.

an acceptable level of ecstasy

As life would have it, I spent the months of October to March in something of a fog.  I was trying out a new medication, I had a sinus infection for three months running, and it was winter, something which makes the blue meanies all that much harder to deal with.  Although I had some very nice days in those months, all centering around visits with family and friends, everything just felt harder.  I didn't want to do anything remotely stressful or try anything new.  I took unpaid leave from my job, and I didn't want to read, see, taste, hear, or touch anything that wasn't already intimately familiar.

Lately, however, I've been creeping back.  Maybe even more than creeping.  The latest medication actually does seem to be catching on.  I've gone to three new movies, read some new books, and been talked into taking excursions into the city.  I'm back at work, taking it one day at a time.  And spring is here, finally.  It feels like it might even be spring in my life again as well as just outside in nature. 

This month's topic is love.  I am embedded in the love of, and my adoration for my parents, my husband, my family, my friends, and my pets, with special gratitude towards my doctors and my therapist (especially my therapist).  But I think that today I want to share a list of my other loves -- the things that kept me going through the dark days, and that make me that much more grateful to be basking in the light.

50 of the things I love

1. Duke's mayonnaise
2. air conditioning
3. Dame Judi Dench
4. red nail polish
5. house museums
6. carousels
7. fireworks 
8. a well-organized room
9. the top of the Chrysler building
10. Outback Steakhouse
11. evening gowns
12. manatees
13. rose perfume
14. Lipton pasta
15. glitter.  pink.  pink glitter.  glittery pink things.
16. a stack of blank notebook paper with a sharpened pencil next to it
17. a pale yellow china bowl
18. fairy lights
19. a screen porch
20. cats in sunbeams
21. Lyle Lovett's voice
22. sweet tea
23. stew beef
24. Scarecrow and Mrs. King
25. cream eye shadow
26. babies
27. peacock feathers
28. Chanel No. 5
29. black clothes
30. Texas wildflowers
31. Morris's Disappearing Bag
32. Simon Baker
33. the first bite of Haagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream
34. swing sets
35. king-size beds
36. really big jewels
37. I and the Village
38. lemons
39. steak
40. pigs
41. elephants
42. Gone with the Wind and the memory of the first time I read it
43. the smell of old paperbacks
44. Cats
45. Spanish moss
46. Land O' Lakes Monterey Jack cheese
47. greyhounds in the grass
48. roses, gardenias, orange blossoms, birds of paradise, and hibiscus -- childhood flowers
49. cotton sheets
50. "they were delicious / so sweet / and so cold" -- W.C. Williams

Ten things I've learned since graduating from college.

If you have enough clean sheets and blankets, then the cats are less likely to do foul things in your bed, and if they do, you will care less than you would otherwise.

It is okay for grown, happily married women to still get crushes on movie stars that make them squeal like a pre-teen reading Tiger Beat.  Repeatedly. 

If the very thought of doing something makes you want to vomit, die, or become a homeless person living under the tracks in Penn Station to avoid it, then it is probably not worth doing, even if you already paid a lot of money to do it.  It is okay to change your mind, and to change it more than once. 

A watched pot will boil eventually, but a watched pot of boiling pasta will never, ever reach the right consistency.

Guilt is a seriously overrated emotion.  Remembering this won't keep you from feeling guilty, but it might take the edge off. 

People who care if you dusted the knickknacks should not be invited back unless it is completely unavoidable.

Stuffed animals are comforting for adults, too.

If what you want to say might hurt someone's feelings, and you can avoid saying it, then do so.

Every so often, it's good to try things you thought you didn't like just to see if your palate has changed. 

Liver is still yucky.

in the sweet by and by

Last Christmas, my husband gave me a sewing machine. (It was a request on my part, not a "Happy Valentine's Day, here's your iron," type of thing.)  I've done a few practice stitches on it, but nothing much else so far.  My mother taught me to sew when I was a child, and I made some stuffed teddies and bunnies and a patchwork pillow.  I helped her sew some seams on an outfit or two.  But I've never made my own clothes before. 

My paternal grandmother, Ruth,  was a great seamstress.  She made most of her own clothes, including a gorgeous floral dress out of quilted fabric that she wore to my parents' wedding.  My father remembers her laying out patterns on the kitchen table, where, instead of pinning the fabric to the cloth, she weighed the pattern down with silverware while cutting it out.  It probably stemmed less from a dislike of pinholes than from the lack of time experienced by a widow with a small boy, a full-time job as a nurse, and a household to run.  The fact that she could sew the fabric without it slipping apart is further testimony of her capabilities.

Ruth died before I was born.  When he first saw me, her brother Allen greated me with the words, "Hello, Little Ruth."  The resemblance has continued.  Except for my eyes, which are purely from my mother's side, I look precisely like Ruth.  I have a picture of her when she was a teenager.  I displayed it in college dorm room, and my friends and those of my roommates were always asking, "Where did you go to get that old-fashioned photo taken?" 

This weekend I purchased fabric and a pattern to make my first piece of clothing.  The fabric is royal blue charmeuse and the dress will be a sleeveless sheath.  I'm hoping to use it for fancy occasions, but the most immediate use will be for Halloween.  With red sequined horns, I'm going as The Devil in a Blue Dress. 

My parents say that Ruth would be very pleased to see her only granddaughter sew.  Neither of her daughters do or are inclined.  My father has actually sewn a stuffed rabbit for my mother, but I'll be the first of her family in two generations to cut out a dress.  I'm a little nervous about the process, but I'll have my mother on the phone if I need her.  Hopefully, I'll also have the assistance of Ruth, sending down some angel dust to help her granddaughter complete one of her own favorite earthly endeavors.

Witness

My mother made me go see Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade with her and my father when it came out. I was in the 6th grade, and I did NOT want to go. I had been tormented in earlier grades by classmates who had seen Temple of Doom and then recounted the dinner scenes over the cafeteria table. Well, I went, and then I developed my first full-on movie star crush. I just could NOT get enough of Harrison Ford. But there were some movies my mother wouldn't let me see, and Witness was one of them. She said she loved it, that it was a wonderful movie, but that it was too old for me to see yet.

Flash forward to about a year later. I had just come out of surgery, a biopsy on my leg that was supposed to leave a scar a scant inch long and deep. Instead, it was six inches long and cut all the way to the bone, and would give me a fair amount of trouble for the next few years. I was laying on the sofa, all groggy, waiting on my father to come back from the video store. He finally caim, and he was carrying three posters: one for Gone with the Wind, one for License to Kill, and one for Dead Poets Society. He also had two movies he had bought off the used table: The Living Daylights and Witness. I assumed that the latter was for my mother, but she told me it was for me. She watched it with me that night and told me everything that would be scary before it happened, so that I wouldn't get any more stressed than I already was. This is all one of my sweetest memories.

I watched that movie once a week for a year, and I still love it best, even though now I watch it about once a year and there are other things that are more immediate to me. I watched it with a friend in grad school, and she thought the music was icky because it was on the synthesizer. I saw her point, but to me, "Building the Barn" is still one of the prettiest pieces of music out there. After the wedding party walked down the aisle, all sixteen of them, Martin and his parents walked out to it, too. And so did I, in between my Mama and Papa, because it's one of the things that really makes me up as the person I am today.

E.T.A.:  http://www.imeem.com/people/H34jY0/music/lbA49S5r/maurice_jarre_building_the_barn/

Aunt Nettie's Chicken Casserole

Yes, yes, we're all supposed to be healthy and and conscious of nutrition and avoid too much butter and salt and processed foods.  And anything with the word "casserole" in the title isn't a particularly good candidate.  (Go on.  'Fess up.  You love that broccoli casserole with oodles of cheese and buttery breadcrumbs on top.)  But with fall approaching, don't you find your soul craving something warm and substantial and, well, BUTTERY? 

Then try this.  It's my (Great) Aunt Nettie's chicken casserole.  If it looks a little labor intensive, don't worry, I'll give you a couple of short-cuts after the recipe.

Aunt Nettie's Chicken Casserole

• 1 large fryer (that's a chicken, Laura)
• 1 package egg noodles (the short, broad kind)
• 1 8-oz. package sour cream
• 1 can cream of mushroom soup
• 1 can cream of chicken soup
• 1 stick melted butter
• 5 or 6 slices bread (white)

Cook chicken till tender and remove from broth. Cook noodles in broth until tender. Remove chicken from bone and cut in small pieces. Mix chicken, noodles, soups and sour cream. Salt and pepper to taste. Put in casserole and crumble bread on top. Pour butter over bread crumbs. Bake at 350 degrees until brown.

NOW.  A rotisserie chicken will save you the work of boiling that fryer.  And a box of organic chicken broth will be lovely for boiling the noodles.  But you don't want to use boxed breadcrumbs or packaged croutons, and you don't want to use whole wheat bread.  (Pepperidge Farm makes a nice white bread that isn't wonder-bread-y.) Trust me, the combination of white bread and butter, cooked till crispy on top, is sublime.  And, needless to say, if I catch you using margerine in this, I'm gonna come over with my frying pan and give you a good framming.

Enjoy!

Fictional eating

The great Laurie Colwin once wrote, "One of the delights of life is eating with friends; second to that is talking about eating.  And, for an unsurpassed double whammy, there is talking about eating while you are eating with friends."  I couldn't agree more, but I have to add my own particular pleasure, which is reading about eating. 

When I say this, I don't mean cookbooks, although heaven knows I have plenty of those.  As I mentioned earlier, I collect community and Junior League cookbooks, and let me tell you, there is no better place to find delicious dips and a slew of cheese balls than in the community cookbooks of the deep south.  "Health" has no place in a cookbook devised for a church fund-raiser.  What I'm talking about is eating in fiction.  Fictional eating, if you will, although it's definitely real enough to the characters in question. 

One of the first food passages I remember loving is from Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.  It sounded so good that it made living in a tenement sound like fun.  It wasn't until much later that I realized that it was essentially a starvation diet with little nutritional value, but the meals still sound good to me.  Here's some of it.

The Nolans practically lived on that stale bread, and what amazing things Katie could make from it!  She'd take a loaf of stale bread, pour boiling water over it, work it up into a paste, flavor it with salt, pepper, thyme, minced onion and an egg (if eggs were cheap), and bake it in the oven.  When it was good and brown, she made a sauce from half a cup of ketchup, two cups of boiling water, seasoning, a dash of strong coffee, thickened it with flour and poured it over the baked stuff.  It was good, hot, tasty and staying.  What was left over, was sliced thin the next day and fried in hot bacon fat. 

Saturday supper was a red letter meal.  The Nolans had fried meat!  A loaf of stale bread was made into pulp with hot water and mixed with a dime's worth of chopped meat into which an onion had been cleavered.  Salt and a penny's worth of minced parsley were added for flavor.  This was made up into little balls, fried and served with hot ketchup.  These balls had a name, fricadellen, which was a great joke with Francie and Neeley.

They lived mostly on these things made from stale bread, and condensed milk and coffee, onions, potatoes, and always the penny's worth of something bought at the last minute, added for fillip.

Descriptions of grand meals have never really interested me.  I'm not a grand meals kind of girl.  I like descriptions of traditional Southern cuisine and fine regional cooking.  Laura Ingalls Wilder's description of the food storage techniques in Little House in the Big Woods was an early favorite that I've cherished for years.  It's not just the classics, either.  John Grisham's The Last Juror describes a meal of vegetables out of a Southern garden that is as authentic as anything Edna Lewis ever made.  Rosamunde Pilcher's Coming Home describes several weekend lunches at a manor house in Cornwall that make my mouth water.  And the mere mention of cooking "a macaroni cheese" as happens in more than one of her books usually prompts that exact dinner later in the week, if not the same day.   

For you see, there's a danger to fictional eating.  It often inspires actual eating on the part of the reader.  (Or this reader, at least.)  I'm highly open to suggestion, and all it takes is a mention.  There's a passage in Elizabeth Peters' mystery Summer of the Dragon where the main character refrains from taking part in a discussion at a party because she is hoping no one notices that she has eaten all the cheese.  It's only supermarket cheddar, but, as she says, "I really do love cheese."  So do I.  When I read the book as a teenager, and every time since, the party scene has sent me scurrying for the fridge and the supermarket monterrey jack. 

All I have to do is think about the scene in Maeve Binchy's Circle of Friends where Eve brings in a plate "heaped with bacon and floury potatoes in a white sauce" and I've got the bacon in the microwave and am thinking very hard about scalloped potatoes. 

I've got near total recall on my favorite scenes of fictional eating.  Sometimes, a snack or a meal will cause me to get out the book in question so that I can enjoy the passage while I partake of the food I'm enjoying.  Recently, I found the best sour pickles in the world at our local farmers market.  I got home and immediately curled up with Betty Smith again for a little repast with Francie and her pickle. 

There were times though, especially towards the end of a long cold dark winter, when, no matter how hungry Francie was, nothing tasted good.  That was big pickle time.  She'd take a penny and go down to a store on Moore Street that had nothing in it but fat Jew pickles floating around in a heavy spiced brine.  ... Eventually a fine fat pickle, greenish yellow and hard at the ends was fished out and laid on a scrap of brown paper.  ... The pickle lasted all day.  Francie sucked and nibbled on it.  She didn't exactly eat it.  She just HAD it.  When they had just bread and potatoes too many times at home, Francie's thoughts went to dripping sour pickles.  She didn't know why, but after a day of the pickle, bread and potatoes tasted god again.  Yes, pickle day was something to look forward to. 

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to help my husband prepare lunch.  We're having scalloped potatoes.  And later, for a snack, there will probably be some bacon or some pickles, or both.  I'm not pregnant.  I've just been reading. 

I am not mad.

I am mentally ill.  There is probably no condition that is more potentially embarrassing to announce, with the exception of the clap.  Unlike the clap, I didn't do anything fun to get it.  And unlike the clap, there is no cure.  There are treatments, but no permanent solutions.  There is also probably no condition that scares people more when they hear about it, with the exception of AIDS.  Without diminishing the horrors of that disease, I'd wager that at this particular date, most people in this country are more educated about AIDS than they are about mental illness.  Most of them aren't scared that people with AIDS will do something to hurt them.  Say mentally ill and people picture Sybil or Ted Kaczinsky ; multiple personalities and psychotic tendencies. 

I am obsessive-compulsive and suffer from anxiety disorder and panic disorder.  I was recently diagnosed with bi-polar disorder, and I have experienced severe, extended depression.  In all cases, the diagnoses were a relief.  I wasn't crazy; I was ill.  There was something that could be done to help me, and people I could talk to who would understand.  To get to these diagnoses I have put myself through a great deal of needless waiting and agonizing, come across some true quacks in the mental health field, and hidden my fears from everyone who is close to me.  It has been a relief, in many ways, to "come out." 

I once read a statement in an article about '"what you can do to change the world."  The authors said that people should announce what they were ashamed of, what they were afraid of, what they were keeping hidden.  They said that change only occurs when things are normalized into society by repetition and familiarity.  That if women hadn't said they wanted to vote and to work outside the home, that if people hadn't protested for peace during wartime, that if homosexuals hadn't come out of the closet, none of these things would be seen as acceptable and normal situations.  This is one of the reasons I now try to be open about my illnesses.  I don't tell everyone I meet, and fortunately I don't wear the evidence on my skin.  But I have told my friends, much of my family, and several people I work with.

Mental illness is as personal and private as any other health concern, but there should be no stigma attached.  One of my doctors told me, "If you broke your arm you'd get help, wouldn't you?"  She was right.  So much of the pain is internal and difficult to describe, but it would be unbearable without the shoulders and arms and ears of others.  I feel now that honesty about my illnesses is something I owe to myself.  It wins me aid when I am suffering, understanding when I am experiencing side effects from my medication, and accommodation at work on the days when the world is just too overwhelming.   And to my great good fortunate, no one that I have told has treated me with anything but love.  I believe I also owe this honesty to others in my condition, in the hopes that it will foster more education and less intolerance.   

There's a group of people out there who, in an effort to "reclaim" mental illness, have dubbed themselves "mad."  Many of them fore-go their medication or any medical help, claiming they have been "labeled" by a biased establishment.  I am not a part of this group.  Not only do I feel it does nothing to destigmatize the condition, but it leaves me doubting if these people are as sane as they think they are -- or as ill as they claim to be.  While I admire their honesty, using a word like "mad" serves only to stoke the fear of others.  Mental illness is not a lovable quirk, a fashion, or a lifestyle choice.  But it's not the most horrible thing in the world, either.  There's a place, between the pejorative and the celebratory, between the fear and the flippancy, for all of us to live in the best peace we can find.   

Riding the Controversial Hobby-Horse

When we selected "hobbies" as this month's topic, I had no idea it would be so stir up so many mixed feelings!  In fact, we were trying to select a slightly "softer" topic rather than diving right into "motherhood" or "feminism" or "health."  With over half the entries posted, we've got a very divided group of women.  To wit, from the posts and the comments:

"I've never got the whole idea of "collecting" - it all gets wound up in my head with "stuff", and I've never managed to separate the two in my head."  "I never thought about myself as having hobbies - things I like to do, want to do , must do - but not hobbies."   "...if an obsession can be called a hobby....."  "I think of hobbies as being productive, consuming, even if the product is unnecessary, so answering "reading" always made me feel a bit like a hobby slacker.  A hobbyist, I thought, was a numismatist or someone with books of pristine stamps....."  "After spending most of my life referring to writing as a hobby, I can now say that it is my profession."  "First of all, in my mind, “hobby” applies only to things people did in the Fifties: stamp collecting, model airplane building, bird watching. But the bigger problem is that, to me, a hobby ... is a pursuit that is all consuming. Of spare time and money. A continual thing, persistent."  "What I've learned from so many of you lately is that I probably need to change my definition of hobby."  "My hobbies really brighten my life."

These observations are in addition to posts where the hobbies listed can barely be contained in a single list.

I wonder if part of what establishes our multitude of reactions to the topic is not only an issue of semantics but one of guilt?  It's my opinion that, as women, we often feel like the things that bring us joy can only be justified if they fit into some greater context, serve some larger purpose, or produce something of use.  Joy for its own sake -- for OUR own sake -- isn't very high up on our list of priorities. 

I just read an outstanding book by Faulkner Fox: Dispatches from a Not-So-Perfect Life or How I Learned to Love the House, the Man, the Child.   You can take a look at it on Amazon.  While Fox obviously focuses a great deal on motherhood, she also spends lots of time discussing feminine guilt, societal expectations for white middle class women, and how taking time for ourselves and our passions is seen as a selfish thing -- most often by our very own selves.  I found Fox's words resonating, disturbing, sometimes irritating and sometimes funny.  I may have had no trouble listing my hobbies, but I realized that the number of things I feel guilty about is higher than I had ever acknowledged. 

Is guilt a priority pastime?  I sure don't want to call it a hobby.

What hobbies?

Jackie says I have more hobbies than Anyone She Knows.  Let’s see:  I cross stitch, I collage, I read, I write, I blog, I’m writing a book – although that feels more like a calling than a hobby.  I decorate my house, I watch movies and blog about them (sometimes, but always on Oscar night).  I talk on the phone a goodly amount.  I fart around on the internet.  I collect things:  blue bottles, vintage orange blossom china and non-tacky Florida souvenirs, community cookbooks, peacocks, Dicken’s Coaching Stages china, the Emily pattern by Lenox, statuettes of major female religious figures, disposable chopsticks from Asian restaurants I eat at. I’ve been accused of collecting jewelry.  I’m interested in fashion and theatre and have a lot of books about that.  I have a website about the author Laurie Colwin.  I have enough Christmas ornaments for someone twice my age (thanks, Martha Ann.)  I like pigs and greyhounds and things that are pink and candles and perfume bottles, particularly Chanel No. 5.  I got a tattoo last year and want at least two more.  I don’t garden but I like to look at pictures of gardens.  I have a small collection of books on roses which I’d like to get into reading about.  I’d also like to read more about perfume.  I love to read about autograph collecting.  I read the same 100 novels over and over.  In fact, I own more books than I’ll probably ever read, but I like to buy more – frequently.  I own everything Lyle Lovett has ever recorded and go to his concerts whenever I can.  I go to museums.  I bowled for the first time recently, and now I want to have my own shoes and a pink ball that says “Killer Queen.”  I shop, which I obviously love.  I collect elephants and stuffed animals and bowls and pitchers and paperweights and postcards.  I go to the theatre when I can afford it.  I’ve recently started snapping up Mardi Gras beads.  I like things that are shiny and those old-fashioned looking Halloween cats.  I adore children's plastic groceries.  Vintage advertisements appeal to me.  I have many, many magnets.  I’m starting to sew again for the first time since I was a child.  I think I’m going to learn to quilt.  I’d like to get some handwriting manuals, particularly on copperplate and librarians’ hand.  I am, to put it mildly, an Acquirer.  Which leads me to another hobby – organization.  I read books on it and clip articles out of magazines about it.  I find it calming to read about and to implement.  After all, it’s the only way to handle all that acquisition.  It didn’t seem like that many hobbies until I got started.  Maybe Jackie was right?