Women's Work

School Days

"School" is a little red brick, one-room building, hard wooden benches, chalk, and the sound of chalk squeaking against a blackboard. Clapping out erasers is a coveted job – why was that so? I think we were all Tom-Sawyered.

Bells sound, telling you when to start and when to end your day, a long day of being told what to do. I could listen, I could obey, although sometimes the things I was told to do, like "eat your green peas," and (on Halloween) "take off your angel wings" made me want to cry. Who made up these rules, and why?

The best consolation for the years of tedium were friends—especially the chosen few, the Awesome Foursome, as we called ourselves, or "AF" in the language of passed-during-class notes. Dana, of the red hair, expressively – flare of the nostril, sneer of the lip, tilt of the eyebrow – able to express her otherwise ineffable disdain (not that she didn't try to put it into words). Michelle, dark-haired, loud, always quick with the comeback, especially for those smart-alecky, "aren't-we-so-great" boys. And Emily, poofy blond hair, vampire-pale skin, and wit so sharp you cut your knees on it, going down. We were filled with scorn, but also curiosity, fun, laughter, something burning bright, where you could warm your hands on a cool night, eating brownies up on the roof, under the stars, bitching about school.

Beach Reading

I don't really think of my reading as having "seasons" – winter, spring, summer, fall – but that said, summer is the time for "going to the beach," which is code for "reading a book at the beach." I don't look for a particular kind of book to read there, although almost any kind of nonfiction is out. I can only concentrate so much while hot, lying in the blinding bright light, and covered in salt. So the American Planning Association's suggestion that The High Cost of Free Parking made great beach reading went out the window (where, I think, it belonged). NPR has a whole webpage dedicated to summer reading, if you're interested. Here are three of my beach-worthy books:

In Pursuit of the Green Lion by Judith Merkle Riley. In medieval England, a midwife must go abroad to France to search for her husband, being held captive without ransom by a sadistic French noble. She's accompanied by her friend, also a midwife, and her husband, an alchemist. That gives you a very bare bones synopsis – it's much more lovely and magical than my two sentences. It's the second of three in a series – A Vision of Light and The Water-Devil are the other two. (Thanks to Martha Ann for introducing me to them!)

    "It was in the Year of Our Lord 1358, in the summertime, just two days before the Feast of Saint Barnabas, that a Voice spoke out of heaven into the ear of my understanding.

    'Margaret,' said the Voice, 'just what are you doing there?'"

Dream When You're Feeling Blue by Elizabeth Berg. About three sisters during WWII, two with beaux fighting overseas. I like that this is a story of American women during WWII, and it reminds me of stories my grandmother used to tell, of her and her sister, after my grandfather had left for the Pacific. (Thanks, Emily, for recommending this book to me!)

    "It was Kitty's turn to sleep with her head at the end of the bed. She didn't mind; she preferred it, actually. She liked the mild disorientation that came from that position, and she liked the relative sense of privacy—her sisters' feet in her face, yes, but not their eyes, not their ears, nor the close, damp sounds of their breathing. And at the foot of the bed she was safe from Louise, who often yanked mercilessly at people's hair in her sleep."

The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles. I love the complexity of this novel. It seems inspired by Thomas Hardy* but thoroughly modern – especially the ending.

    "An easterly is the most disagreeable wind in Lyme Bay—Lyme Bay being that largest bite from the underside of England's outstretched southwestern leg—and a person of curiosity could at once have deduced several strong probabilities about the pair who began to walk down the quay at Lyme Regis, the small but ancient eponym of the inbite, one incisively sharp and blustery morning in the late March of 1867."

 

*Not in a Jude the Obscure bad way, Em. J

Wendy the Witch

Miss Wendy was a witch. And not a good witch, either. Good witches are beautiful, usually wear white or palest pink, and are quite taken with body glitter and small white kittens. Bad witches are, well, ugly. They love toads, toadstools, and slime. People say they have forked tongues, or tongues like knives, or that they will give you a "tongue-lashing," but this is metaphorical, rather than actual.

Wendy was a bad witch, the baddest of the bad – cross-eyed, gimpy, with a tongue she wielded like a samurai sword, expertly, with deadly force. But somehow Wendy got it into her head that being a bad witch, especially the baddest of the bad witches, was, well, not good. So she cast a spell, as any witch can do. And the spell was to make her seem like a good witch. Like the best of the good witches. Her hair, once raven black and as fine as a spider web, turned yellow, long, and thick. She exchanged her black cape and pointed black shoes for white tulle and white ballet flats. And her tongue – her glorious, finely-chiseled tongue – she cut out. Not literally, but figuratively. The spell she cast coated her throat with molasses-thick, honey-sweet words. Where once she croaked, now she cooed. Where once she spoke her mind, now she only spoke what would please.

Wendy became the Best of the Good Witches. Good witches everywhere told her how they admired the change, how much better it was to be a good witch than a bad. For a while, she believed them. She liked how they praised her, how she felt as though she belonged among all these white and pale pink witches, sparkling tiaras in their thick, fair hair. But she found, after a while, to her very great surprise, that she wasn't happy. She missed black. She missed smelly things, like dirt, and henbane. She missed toads, and cackling, and she started to hate having to be pretty all the time. But most of all, she missed her tongue. She couldn't even speak her unhappiness, because it would upset her newfound friends, and this the spell would not let her do. So she did what any able witch, good or bad, could do – she uncast her spell.

Now Wendy is again the best of the bad. Her tongue has severed many an oversized ego from an inflated sense of self-worth. She plays in the dirt, has bad teeth, bad breath, and a wicked sense of humor. Best of all, she is happy. That's what every witch deserves.

Beefs from a Vegetarian

"If you must complain in public, either be outrageous, or amusing." –Tallulah Bankhead

Top three:

Airport security. I am not a terrorist. I do not believe my fellow passengers are terrorists. I do believe you are wasting my time.

I was recently at an airport, where the security personnel actually got up, walked away from their posts, and let people walk into the security lines for screening without having their IDs or boarding passes checked. Yet then I had to wait in line to get "puffed" by a big box of a machine, presumably to make sure I was not covered in bomb detritus, perhaps also left over in the shoes I had to take off or the sweater I was made to remove. (It was a sweater! What exactly was I supposed to be hiding in there, besides goose flesh?)

Being part of the "team" at work. What this means is that you are expected to do whatever they ask you to do, but really not meant to expect anything in return. So that when they cut your hours and your pay and your benefits, you are somehow supposed to be part of the "team" (rah! rah!), until they decide you are no longer part of the team, in which case, oh by the way, you're not going to get paid out for any of your PTO, and we are not actually going to say to anyone still part of the "team" that we let (insert name here) go, because to utter your name will become taboo, punishable by ostracism and shame.

My mortgage company. I think I should be allowed to tell them, I'm sorry, but you are all being a**holes and d***heads and I don't want to work with you anymore. Isn't it your job to keep track of my escrow and flood insurance? Is it my fault you can't find the documents I sent you, and why do you insist on telling me I sent them to the wrong place when I CLEARLY ONLY SENT THEM WHERE YOU TOLD ME TO SEND THEM? WHY WOULD I SEND THEM THERE IF I KNEW YOU WEREN'T GOING TO RECEIVE THEM? WHAT KIND OF F***ING IDIOT DO YOU F***ING THINK I AM??? Can I please speak with someone who knows what the f*** they are talking about? Do you have any of those people who work there? Thank you!

Love is a Song

Love is the song someone taught you, that you sing because they taught you to sing it, that you sing to remind you of them.

Love is the song you can't get out of your head, no matter how hard you try. Sometimes, you don't try so hard.

Love is the song you can't listen to any more, because it reminds you of that time, that place, and how incredibly stupid you were.

Love is the song, that when it comes on the radio, in your car, and you're driving along, alone, that you turn way up to sing along with.

Love is the song that makes you think about your life, about whether your life is what you think that it is.

Love is the song you could never get sick of.

Love is the song you thought you could never get sick of. Until, one day, you did.

Love is a samba, a salsa, a rag – music that makes your hips sway. O la la.

Love is music, "… music heard so deeply/ That it is not heard at all, but you are the music/ While the music lasts." (T.S. Eliot)

Love is the song that you're learning to play. It's hard, it's over your level, and you're fighting through it – the fingering, the tempo, those damn grace notes. But you keep practicing. Worst thing is – it's a duet. And you're both just learning to play it. And your tempos don't match. And your elbows keep hitting. And what the hell was that flourish he just added in? You didn't practice that. But as much as it's hard work, it's also fun. You couldn't imagine not playing this song, with him. Sometimes, you'd be willing to wager, the song that you're playing even sounds good.

A Few of My Favorite Things

I had a neighbor growing up, who lived on something like 20 acres, all of it having been citrus groves, and some of it left in citrus. We used to climb up in the orange trees, all dirty and sandy, and pick the oranges, the juice gumming up our fingers as we ate them, and spit the seeds down to the ground. There's no polite way to eat an orange, really, unless you're one of those who cut them up and turn them into juice (and if you are, you are a Heathen). I have a very clear memory of climbing the trees – orange trees aren't very tall, but they're tall if you're 3 or 4 – and sitting up in them, feeling quite Queen of the World. That's favorite food memory number 1.

I just remembered, this evening, for no good reason, only perhaps it reminded me because I was eating peas, eating shepherd's pie when I was in England, at a tavern built in the 1500s. English food was not entirely to my liking (especially the coffee, weak and milky), but I liked feeling as British as eating shepherd's pie in a tavern from the 1500s could make me feel. Especially since we were in Lacock, where they had filmed the BBC version of Pride & Prejudice (the one with Colin Firth).* I was Elizabeth Bennett, only, unfortunately, in jeans, and Mr Darcy was a very, very good-looking Brazilian tourist on the same tour, only in an unfortunate yellow slicker.

A recent delicious food memory was eating Greek mezze (I would call these little dishes tapas) in Washington D.C. at Zaytinya. The culture that gave us tzatziki is tops in my book – yogurt, plus cucumber, garlic, and lemon! I would never have thought of it, but it's brilliant (sorry, a bit of the Brit coming out). They served excellent fresh-baked pita – I didn't know fresh-baked pita has that "poof" to it, making it look as contented and fat as Santa's stomach. And we got broccoli rabe, which is one of my favorites. I like things that are bitter, for whatever reason – any kind of greens, Guinness, coffee. We also ate at a very chichi restaurant in Georgetown (this one I won't name, since I didn't like it), where our dinner cost about what my plane ticket had cost, but I dubbed it Food for the Bored. There was no other reason behind cauliflower mousse served in an egg shell, quail egg, duck served rare (so vile I couldn't eat it all, even at the exorbitant price), and other stuff that I don't like to mention.

I wish I could say I am an excellent chef, but, alas, I am not. I make things that are edible, don't get me wrong, and I'm always trying new things, I'm just not very good at it. I'm not fast, is what I've decided, so that meals that are supposed to take, say, 30 minutes, for me take an hour and a half. It's the chopping that gets me. Chopping an onion on the Food network takes approximately 15 seconds. In this Paula's kitchen, it takes 5 minutes. My favorite cookbooks are from Deborah Madison – Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone & Vegetarian Suppers are the two that I have, and everything I make out of them is delicious.

I've debated which recipe to share with you , and I think I'll go with our recipe for Christmas pie. The pie is not for teetotalers, as the name will tell you. My mother makes it every year at Christmas, because if you ate it any more often you would be a fat lush. A word to the wise: if you cut the recipe in half, it will be a little soupy. Enjoy!

 

BLACK RUSSIAN PIE

(filling for two 9" pie crusts, plus 6 tarts)

**** does not cut in half well ****

6 egg yolks

1 scant C sugar

1 tbsp gelatin

½ C vodka

2 C heavy cream

½ C Kahlua

Chocolate crumb crusts

Whipped cream for garnish

Shaved chocolate for garnish

1. Beat the egg yolks with the scant cup of sugar until thick and lemon-colored.
2. Soak the gelatin in the vodka. First heat a small pan, then add vodka, then gelatin. Stir over hot water until thoroughly dissolved. Make sure the vodka does not become too hot or boil. Gradually add to the egg mixture, stirring.
3. Whip the cream until stiff and fold into the egg mixture. Put the bowl with the mixture into a large container filled with cracked ice. Flavor with Kahlua – gradually add the Kahlua, stirring (folding) thoroughly after each addition. Continue folding the mixture over the cracked ice until it begins to set (20-30 minutes; may not take that long). Turn into pie shells and chill until firm.
4. Garnish with whipped cream and shaved chocolate.

 

*In case you wanted to know, the latest Harry Potter film, Half-Blood Prince, was filmed in Lacock also.

A Carol

Celebration – the word swings as I say it, as if it were the peal of a bell. The first part is metallic, tinny, the bell struck, and the last, the weight of the note, the heaviness of the bell as it sways.

From the rooftop terrace of the house I lived in, once upon a time, in Spain, you could see at least six bell towers – church towers, but once mosque towers, when the south of Spain was ruled by Moors. The churches had been mosques, the mosques had been churches, the churches had been Roman temples. Religion, as old as the stones and the columns, layered together like the notes of a song. Bells remind me of those bell towers, bells chiming from every part of the city, no longer calling you to prayer, but still calling.

When we celebrate, we give thanks, don't we? Thanks for what we have, what we've been given. Mostly for the gifts we feel we don't deserve, did nothing to merit, have a hard time believing were blessings for us, for always, for keeps.

I collect nativities – okay, collect, I have three. One traditional, expected, Mary in blue, three kings, a shepherd, a camel. One is unexpected, hand-painted, South American (I guess Peru, but I don't know, I bought it secondhand), and the characters nut brown instead of lily white, lots of little sheep, and Mary has a crown of stars. The third is tacky, but I still love it – it's plastic, it lights up, and it sits out in my lawn. Ah, America, I hear you singing, and you are singing about decorating your house with lights for Christmas, hallelujah. I collect them because I love the story of Jesus' birth. The flight from Herod, the stay in the manger, the guiding star in the heavens, the arrival of the three Magi. I know it so well, I feel as though I can smell the animals who shared the shelter, hear the baby's newborn cry, hear the kings whispering.

A story is a calling, in a way, a thing that calls you back to where you've been before, or to a new place, when you didn't know you were going. Or maybe you did, but you didn't believe it.

The peal of the bells would reverberate, echo from the buildings, a multitude of ringing, carrying strong voices singing out over the city, a celebration, for always, for keeps.

What I Wanted

This isn't what I wanted, I keep thinking, and that makes me mad. It isn't very Zen of me, I know, but then, I was raised a Catholic, and no one ever told me whining or dissatisfaction would keep me out of heaven. What is it that I wanted? That's a harder question to answer, harder than just complaining about what you have. I shouldn't complain, I know that, so don't even start in on me. I have a job, which is more than a lot of people in my line of work in my part of the world have these days, and it's even a well-paying job, and my boss even likes me, so, yes, I know, shut up already.

But I don't want to shut up. This isn't what I wanted, I keep thinking, and I mean it.

I'm having issues with my job lately, which happens, pretty much every two years for me, which will one day look bad on my resume, as if I were a serial job-dater, afraid of commitment, always wanting more, never content with what I have, unable to be satisfied. Maybe that's true – I tell myself (as do serial daters, I'm told) that it's just that my standards are too high, and I can't be satisfied with something less than, not Perfect, but at least Perfect for Me.

This mantra of discontent started about six months ago, six months of trying to remember what I wanted, when I started out. I wanted to understand development, comprehensively, entitlement to sales: urban form, transportation, high-rise construction, elevators, why people walk instead of drive, public space, the environment, drainage, water quality, pollution, environmental justice, landfills, and more—everything! Everything I can fit inside my head before I die. Instead I understand only my small portion of development: politics and bureaucracy. And the politics is small-town politics, politics of weakness and greed, not policy. And bureaucracy deserves every poniard ever stuck in its direction. I've learned a little, along the way, but ever so little. I feel like even to see it, I have to sweep up the bits into a pile with both my hands, and hold my breath. Even the smallest gust makes it look like nothing. This isn't what I wanted, I keep thinking, and that makes me mad.

What did I want? I have a couple of sayings that I mean, and even if they're clichés, I still mean them. One is that we only get to do this once, as far as anybody knows. Even if you think you'll get reincarnated, this, this you, this moment, this only happens once. So why waste it? That's what I feel like I'm doing, wasting curiosity and energy and learning on things I don't care about, learning how to fill out the form to get it accepted, which regulation in which subsection is the one that applies, whether the agency is likely to approve your request.

It occurs to me that what I wanted to be was an urban planner, because that sounded comprehensive, as if I could become a master mind who understands civilization itself. Instead, I became a planner, and when I tell people what I do, I have to explain, no, not a wedding planner, a different kind of planner. A bureaucratic kind. Sounds boring? Yes, yes it is.

This isn't what I wanted, and that makes me mad.

Ginger Pye

One summer, my sister and I went to stay with my (maternal) grandparents in Massachusetts. It was strange to have the grandparents all to ourselves, with no intervening parent. That was the summer I was glad that my sister was the favorite – she had to clip my grandfather's ear hair, ha ha! on her. My grandmother made me cheese toast when I wanted a snack, slice of American on a piece of white bread, in the toaster oven. (She didn't cook well.) We helped our grandfather pick corn from his vegetable garden, and sat on the side porch to shuck it. We walked to the playground – a novelty, you couldn't walk anywhere (without risking death) from our house.

That was also the summer my grandmother took me to the library and picked out books for me. This was very strange to me – my mother had never picked out a book for me. Okay, maybe she had picked out Green Eggs and Ham, but that was it. She had gotten me a library card when I was six, and I could check out whatever I wanted. She had a few radical ideas, and this was one of them. My grandmother Did Not Approve of this radical idea. So she took me to the library and picked out books for me. One of them was Ginger Pye. It starts out:

"Would Gracie-the-cat be jealous if the Pyes got another pet—a dog? That was what Jerry Pye wanted to know and what he was dreaming about as he sat with Rachel, his sister, on their little upstairs veranda. Gracie had belonged to the family for eleven years. This was longer than Rachel, aged nine, or even Jerry, aged ten, had. She had been a wedding present to Mama, and she was known in the neighborhood as "the New York Cat." Jerry was trying to imagine what Gracie's feelings would be if the Pyes did get another pet—a dog."

I didn't think I would like this book, but, of course, I did. I loved reading it in my mother's old room, which had, romantically enough, a window seat. You could sit and look down at the grape arbor in the side yard, or out into the branches of the hickory, or, you could sit and read a book about Ginger Pye. I think it must have been a book my grandmother had once picked out for my mother. Published in 1951, set in 1924, in a way, it was as much about my grandmother's childhood as my mother's. It was set up north, in times far past, and was as strange and lyrical to me as any science fiction or poetry. I felt as though my grandmother were telling me something by choosing this book for me, and while at first it felt like, "I don't trust your judgment," in the end it felt like something kinder, and filled with more love. It felt more as if she were trying to give me a little bit of understanding, of who she was, and what she wanted for me.

Sometimes understanding doesn't come easily in families, when it comes at all, and sometimes it is only a very small quantity, small enough to be contained in one small memory, or the pages of a book.

An Introduction

I think it says a lot about me that if I had to pick a superpower, it would be invisibility. No leaping, bounding, flying for me. The ability to observe, unobserved, would be peaceful. In high school I had a long grey cape, with an oversized hood. It was wonderful for hiding in, sitting in the back of class, face mostly obscured. I could pretend, like a child hiding his face under a blanket, that no one could see me.

So to ask me to describe my personality, and introduce myself, is a little like asking the Invisible Man about his taste in clothes. "Subtle," he might say. I'm thirty, married (three and a half years, newlyweds, if I'm still counting years by halves), no children. I have a Career, which generally speaking I'm happy with, though lately I've found myself thinking, whatever did I want one of those for? I hear my bosses talk about how little time they have, how little time for anything other than work, and I realize this is not a temporary thing, this having no time to clean my toilet, or pay my bills, or cook a proper meal. The Big Boss works so much, and thinks about work so much, he's incapable of small talk. At a company picnic, he tried banal chit-chat with my husband and myself, but within thirty seconds he had mentioned his divorce; in another thirty, he was off, talking to one of the engineers about how off-shore oil drilling might open up some business for us. It made me feel tired, like something warm and heavy was sitting on my chest, licking my eyes. I think it might have been controlled panic. Is this what lies ahead? I thought. I can't do that. If that's what I have to become, to be successful in my Career, oh no. Too bad for me.

I live in south Florida, way south, by choice. People who aren't from Florida think it sounds like paradise, but let me tell you something about Florida: It's hot. Let me tell you something else about Florida: It rains. A lot. South Florida used to be swamp, and as someone once said to me: The land remembers. It's October the 6^th as I write this, 90 degrees. Looks like rain.

Of course there are things I like about Florida, and the home I've made here, like the pair of osprey that live nearby, and come, calling, in the morning. Like the flock of white ibis that flew down into the street as I stood in the front yard. I'll even give thanks for the gopher tortoise who's made a burrow under the slab for the pool equipment, although I'm not sure what he's doing to my plumbing.

So that's who I am – at least a little part of who I am – right now.