Silver Lining #2

As we sit around in that halfway state of not-a-pandemic/still-a-pandemic, I still have about a zillion negatives, and they clearly outweigh the positives for both the world and the sufferers, BUT I can stretch myself to actually put a word to one more silver lining.

Theater.

Did I actually write that? Did I actually put the death of live theater in a positive column?

Yes, because theater didn’t die. It transformed. Which is not saying that I don’t miss live theater – I do! – but I discovered a new way to enjoy it: Livestreamed or On Demand or Archived or however else theaters figured out how to get it to audiences.

Right away, by April 2020, I was watching London theater at home with National Theatre at Home and PBS Great Performances. By July, everyone was watching Hamilton on their TVs. And by October, I was watching theater from Los Angeles, from Oregon, and even from Isabella Rossellini’s farm on Long Island. Sometimes at crazy hours to catch a London livestream.

But I missed other people. Other people as in “let’s go see a play, let’s go out afterwards.” As in spontaneous applause, ovations, reactions. Now I know that I was missing “collective effervescence” (by the same guy who taught us about “languishing”).

So, in a rare Covid moment of energy and initiative, I emailed a few friends to watch theater with me. We’d be no more than seven – to save us from Zoom overlaps and interruptions – and talk for no more than an hour – to save us from Zoom fatigue. We’d watch a play in our own living rooms, but we’d talk about it afterwards on Zoom (with my sister hosting).

We started with Phyllida Lloyd’s The Tempest, and it blew our minds: all women – in prison! – even filmed with GoPros so we were there, on stage! From St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn – how had I missed them during my months in New York?

In the beginning, theaters were focusing on one-actor plays: easier to film, less Covid issues. So we saw some terrific one-person shows. Mary was so enthralled with Sara Porkalob’s Dragon Mama that she wants to search her out in Seattle.  And all of us think Anne O’Riordan’s performance in Irish Rep’s Ghosting topped the charts. We’re still talking about it.

We didn’t forget Shakespeare either. We saw two Julius Caesars: one all-women (from Phyllida Lloyd again) and one with standard casts. Marla thought a play about the ravages of testosterone needed men, I thought having all women emphasized the relationships, and we discovered Riki had taken courses in Shakespeare.

Fat Ham was Hamlet with a Black cast at a backyard BBQ; the play-within-a-play was a game of charades! But then the PBS Romeo and Juliet left me thinking: I hadn’t remembered Juliet’s mother being so caustic. When I checked the actual play – and Mimi is usually the one with those on hand – I discovered that by giving Lord Capulet’s lines to Lady Capulet, it really brought forth a whole new mother/daughter tension.

Sherri took notes … and changed the way I watched theater. I used to watch, enjoy, wonder about, talk about for a bit, and that was it. But once I started really watching, knowing I’d have to discuss, knowing I’d have to remember who was who and who did what, my appreciation grew. Chris says the whole experience opened her eyes to theater. We all loved The Approach, but we all had to watch it twice because it was so … meaty. And the three women, in discussing their play afterwards, said the intimacy of their conversations was actually more profound with a camera instead of having to project to a 500-person audience. How interesting!

So many different approaches to audiences, too! Every Brilliant Thing gave his audience parts, had them participating with his lists. And The Last 5 Years was a love affair in song: he started with meeting her and she started with their break-up, and their scenes moved chronologically either backwards or forwards. How creative; how heartbreaking!

The big question: What’s the difference between theater and a movie if the theater is filmed? Is it confinement to a stage, a set? We’re not sure – still debating – so I guess we have to keep watching. So far, we’ve seen 22 performances together, and I’ve watched another 34 on my own. Theater did not die during Covid!

We’re now meeting in person – all vaccinated – for our discussions. Not everyone knew each other beforehand, but now we do, and our connection helped me through darker months. Yes, we’re eager for the return of live theater; but I’m so grateful to the actors, the companies, the playwrights, and the techs who tackled a whole new medium and kept their art alive. Some days, they kept me alive, too.

Art vs De-cluttering: A Play in Three Acts

The Setting
I save art supplies. Not only paints and brushes, inks and pastels, pencils and papers, fabric and yarn; but things that could possibly turn into art. Pieces of bark, sticks, wire, metal. Old scraps of rubber, plastic, sponges, things with texture. Mesh net that once held onions or cheese or whatever. Bins of this sort of stuff.

The key phrase is “could possibly turn into art.” Anything can possibly turn into art. Anything can also turn into clutter. Junk. But junk can turn into art.

You see the problem here? Quilters nicely call their hoard of fabric their “stash.” That’s because fabric looks like fabric. My sticks and bark and scraps look like junk.

Backstory
Way back when, I bought Crab Cake Minis at Costco. It was an experiment. Then Covid-19 happened and what was I going to do with 36 crab cake minis and no guests? So they sat in the freezer until Sophie visited and I thought, “only chance to get rid of the crab cake minis,” so we ate them.

They came in a distinctive plastic shell, sort of like Costco apples, but mini. It was a sheet of little half-globes, each holding a tiny crab cake. The angel on my shoulder looked lovingly and imaginatively at that sheet, dreaming of how it might print a pattern or turn into something else.

But the devil on the other shoulder shouted, “No more junk! You have bubble wrap and other plastic textures. Just junk! Throw it out!” Which I did.

Art Inspiration (the Motivating Action)
My assignment from the Anchorage Museum’s Book Arts class is to make an accordion book of one of my collections. I’d already done something with my pressed leaves, something else with my tiny rocks. This time, I looked at my collection of flying women, the ones gathered around my computer as my muses. I would paint a sort-of-somewhat 3-D image of each doll and give her a page.

And there’s one of my Marilee Dupree dolls dancing over me, sitting on a globe. 

A globe that would be perfectly represented by a Crab Cake Mini half-globe!

[Brief episode of foul language]

Shopping Expedition #1
Costco has apparently moved on from Crab Cake Minis to Mini Tacos and Mini Quiches and Spanakopita. No more Crab Cake Minis.

Supporting Cast: The Friends
I turn to my Thursday Morning Women and my Friday Morning Women. They have lots of ideas, but it comes down to the packages that Ferrero Rocher chocolates come in. I’ve never heard of Ferrero Rocher chocolates, but I Google it, and Target has them.

Shopping Expedition #2
Target has them, but while the plastic packaging holds individual little chocolates, it has flat bottoms. No little half-globes. But while I am at Target, Friday Morning Judith has been on a thrift shop expedition of her own and has brought a plastic egg carrying case to my doorstep. It’s hard, too hard.

Supporting Cast: The Family
Obviously, I’m getting pretty boring by now, talking about little half-globes. My sister Allison, who lives in Germany, knows international chocolate. She’s also an incurable researcher, so during our Sibling Zoom, her head disappeared. We all know what that means, so the rest of us started yelling, “Stop it, Allison! Stop researching!”

But the flurry of emails couldn’t be interrupted: for a German chocolate named Toffiffee. Followed by an email for Toffifay, the name in the U.S. Followed by the directions to a Walgreens that sells it in Fairbanks. Followed by the directions to the Walgreens on my corner!

Shopping Expedition #3
Success!

Applause

The Encore
One of the other dolls hangs from the ceiling on a parasol.

Aha, there were those paper cocktail parasols Sophie got a long time ago for a birthday party. There were some left over that I’d saved for years. ... But I’d finally de-cluttered them, too.

[Another brief episode of foul language]

What’s to be done? I obviously can’t live in a house filled with all the infinite possibilities of junk-to-art. Right now, my art space is getting overwhelmed with projects-in-process. It’s driving me a little crazy, crazy enough to do some serious de-cluttering … and repeat this show in a few months.

Ah, but Judith to the rescue again: she has a stash of little cocktail parasols! So now I’ve reduced Judith’s clutter while she saved me from my over-eager de-cluttering error. Such a win-win!

The Challenges of Art

This is a gratitude blog. Two weeks ago, I was abysmally [my word] grieving Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death and the potential end of the world. I was a blob of despair…, yet hours later, I managed to sit at my computer with a burst of creative energy. What sparked it?

My Bricolage art challenge group. Bricolage means “something created from a variety of available things.” Five of us meet regularly to draw another creative challenge from our Ziploc bag of challenges.

Jinnie convened us and then moved to Idaho, but we’re still here. So first, I’m grateful to Jinnie for getting us together, for reintroducing me to Art as Play.

We used to meet indoors, but when Covid-19 happened, we had to come up with something else. We brought our chairs to the huge lawn in front of the closed universities and spread ourselves out very far apart. We were so happy! It was our first chance to see faces and bodies in real life.

We’ve become a little nervous about the weather going bad on us, but last week, it didn’t rain, and we’re determined. We’re checking out overhangs.

The challenge this time was “weaving.” Jane (who shared her art with photographs) wove gold-flecked paper and embroidery thread through paper. Pam wove yarn into the Y of a branch and covered the branch in yarn. Betty made a frame of four branches with jute and wove in natural items – feathers, flowers, even a wasp’s nest. I made two branch pieces; the big one is now on the living room wall. This is the little one.

Usually, Cathy is there, but she couldn’t make it this time. Both Cathy and Betty know about materials. I may have ideas, but I don’t know what kind of paint, what kind of coating, what kind of ink, etc etc. They are my go-to resources. But hints come from everyone. Pam kept her weaving tight by using a fork to squeeze her rows together – a fork! That would have made my weaving much easier! Now I know.

In my very first blog post, I asked myself, “How do I re-insert creativity into my life?” I’ve taken art classes, but it’s been the Bricolage group that has consistently kept me thinking and percolating over my creative choices. The challenges stew in my head till they take shape.

When confronted with the “playing cards” challenge, I turned it into painting a card on a rock and a whole book of face card characters and their royal scandals. When the challenge was “postcard,” it turned into a transparent, multi-layered postcard to the poet, Billy Collins. “Tea bags” became Happy Uterus Tea. “Paper dolls” is a continuing project as my protesting Barbara still has lots and lots to protest.

Jinnie reintroduced me to Art as Play, but I still cling to Art as Project: I visualize an idea or concept before I create something. And then I have to figure out how to make it difficult challenging.

So when the challenge was “envelopes,” I decided I would learn how to do curved piece quilting.

There have been a few duds. “Upcycling” occurred when our house was overflowing with brown paper bags from curbside grocery pickups. I happened to be at the Recycling Center when two guys were unloading cartons. They discovered the cartons were filled with packing material they didn’t know what to do with. “I’ll take it,” I said, “for an art project.”

So now I had brown paper bags and packing material. I read that you could make faux leather by wetting the bags, crumpling them up, then ironing them and varnishing them. If I stuffed them with packing material, I’d have trivets! Or, as the group dubbed them, “cow pies.” Fortunately, I got rid of all that packing material by standing outside the UPS Store and offering it for free. I’m still loaded with paper bags….

I really like the cards I made for “ravens,” but “leaves” is a project I haven’t let go. I keep making pressed, dried leaf notecards. Now’s the perfect time to collect more leaves.

“Plastic” meant a stained glass window for our bathroom. It’s colored plastic bags glue-sticked onto clear plastic. I’d wanted to do that ever since I took a workshop during one of my months in New York City, but it would have sat in the “someday” pile of ideas if it weren’t for my Bricolage group.

I often suffer from some creative paralysis, creative lethargy. I’m an in-the-mood creator, not a disciplined one. But if any creative juices flow, it’s usually sparked by a current challenge picked out of a Ziploc bag. The new one: “wire or metal.” I’ve had an unrealized metal idea since high school. Maybe now?

I am so very thankful that I am part of a warm, supportive circle of artists who inspire, challenge, and educate me. That’s why this is a gratitude blog.

How do you open your mail?

How do you open your mail?

This is a loaded question. Answering this question will prove to be an insight into how you’re dealing with Covid-19: are you current on every little bit of virus news? Are you fastidious in your virus avoidance? Have you become a little bit crazy?

I used to just go out to the mailbox, retrieve my mail, bring it into the house, open envelopes with a letter opener, and recycle the envelope and junk mail.

But that was Before.

My siblings and I have been Zooming regularly. Massachusetts, San Francisco, Berlin, and Anchorage are a lot better connected now. (In Germany, they call hoarding “hamstering.”) We share news blips and hints that usually send one or another of us into a tailspin. Like this...

My brother said, “We have post-it notes on the table downstairs near the garage door: Monday, Tuesday, each day. Mail is put next to that day’s post-it, and we have to wait four days until we can open it. I’m staring longingly at my New Yorker right now.”

Oh, no! We’re not supposed to open our mail?!? Our mail is carrying virus?!?

So I read up on it. Apparently, Covid-19 can last on paper products and cardboard for 24 hours. And someone saw a mailman with … bare hands! So now, we retrieve the mail with gloves and leave it outside on the front doorstep for a day.

About the same time, while I was still in quarantine because I’d returned from out-of-state, I was desperate for books. The library had closed with my holds inside, and I could only catch a couple books before Title Wave bookstore closed. So I put out a call for books.

Betsey came by with a book. I told her through the window to just leave it outside on the doorstep. It was a paperback and needed 24 hours to de-viralize. Connie came by with jig saw puzzles. Mary came by with a great assortment of books and spotted the jigsaw puzzles; could she borrow a couple?

“Sure, they’ve been out 24 hours. They’re cardboard and they’re safe now. I’ll put you in the jigsaw puzzle rotation.”

Then Julie came by with a book and Judiths came by with more jigsaw puzzles. (There are two Judiths in the jigsaw puzzle rotation.) I had to stage them so the de-viralized books and puzzles wouldn’t touch the newly-deposited books and puzzles. And yes, I wipe down the hard cover books with wipes. Things were piling up.

My front doorstep is a Trading Post. I manage it from behind glass.

Meanwhile, I had not received my primary ballot and couldn’t download the one from the Internet because our printer is on the fritz. So Connie (a different Connie, not jigsaw-puzzle-Connie) printed the ballot and Diane delivered it to the front door while I was out skiing. She texted, “You have a bunch of stuff on your doorstep! People left books etc.”

I explained this was all very deliberate, that they were awaiting decontamination. The difficulty was that she’d put the ballot in a plastic bag – which can hold the virus for nine days – so was the paper ballot still free after 24 hours or did I have to get it out of the plastic bag first?

These are the Big Questions of life right now.

I’m the same person who doesn’t understand the people who seem to be disinfecting their house A LOT. Tim and I are the only ones here, we rarely go out, but we wash our hands as soon as we enter the house; so why would we have to sanitize our surfaces every day? We’re the only ones touching our doorknobs.

But this just means we’re all going a little bit nuts in our very own personal ways. For me, it’s mail, books, and jigsaw puzzles. For you, it may be doorknobs.

Or laundry. Or someone petting your dog. Or faucets. Or groceries.

Uh, oh – groceries – that’s another one of mine. Lots of ways to go a little bit nuts here.

Back to School (Reunion Version)

I drive onto the university grounds, following the signs for the parking lots on the grassy fields. The first lot, the closest one, says “50+.” Oh, whoa, I think, I can’t park there. That’s for the old people.

Wait a second: I’m here for my 45th reunion. Next time, I’ll be in the 50+!

Nothing like a reunion weekend to bring up the issues of time, aging, memory, way back when, and what next. The place you lived for four years and whizzed around on your bicycle in your sleep is now so full of new buildings – and even a whole new quad – that you are hopelessly lost and disoriented enough to feel disconnected from your own history.

And the class book is filled with so many people you never met that you wonder, Did I really go here? Or did I just inhabit some little insignificant corner?

Nothing like a college campus to generate an identity crisis.

Cindy says, “I worked for Congresswoman Bella Abzug the summer after you.”

“You did? That’s amazing! Why didn’t I know that?”

“Barbara, we know that. We’ve known that. We’ve talked about that.”

Candy is in the photo the night Bella came to dinner. “Candy, I didn’t remember you lived in that house.” “Barbara, you were there???”

The question of identity is time-sensitive. We were who we were once, and some part of us lingers and endures, but what if it’s a part we can’t remember?

Well, then, you still have a great time meeting new people. They have all come back because something interesting beckons, some learning, some exploration, some mystique. I meet Jan (whom I never knew) walking from the parking lot, Ann in a long conversation over lunch, the two aerospace engineers as we discussed the 737 MAX.

And then, there are The Friends. We met freshman year, and we endure. Dennis in from London, Debbie from D.C., Bob from Mill Valley, May and Bet from Oakland. Gayle from Las Vegas, Joy and Jeff from southern California. Neil hurt his hip, so he and Lee Ann can’t make it. Even Jon makes his appearance! We are like Shangri-La: we reopen every five years and we know we’ll always be there. Until, we don’t, and then we’ll miss them each year, like we miss Sally for the first time for always.

There is a class on climate change, a class taught by an ambassador to Russia, a computer musician who built a laptop orchestra, a class on poverty-stricken cities that can no longer even provide 9-1-1. I love all this learning, engaging, access to great thinkers!

But in a class participation session on post-retirement, everyone else seems to have found their rhythm while I’m still … experimenting. I tell them how, in search of something I could repair that wasn’t getting fixed, I couldn’t even get the goose poop cleaned up from a park! I’m looking for my legacy, and it’s elusive. “I’m Barbara, and I waste time.” Everyone laughs.

Afterwards, I hear from LOTS of people: they relate! What a surprise! We are all – always – feeling our way. That’s it. We are all – always – just feeling our way.

Meanwhile, I’m reading Kurt Vonnegut’s Timequake. He writes:

Still and all, why bother [writing]? Here’s my answer: Many people need desperately to receive this message: “I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people don’t care about them. You are not alone.”

We are all – always – just feeling our way! We are not alone.

One of the classes is “Cultivating Calm: Spiritual Practices for a Healthy, Whole Life.” How could I resist? She talks to us about The Tree of Contemplative Practices, and I didn’t know storytelling counted! And volunteering! And marches! So instead of focusing on how I don’t have the patience to meditate, I can see the benefits of what I am doing.

But this is what she says. She says the best thing she can help a student do is to get that student to wrestle with this question: “Who am I and who do I seek to become for the sake of the world?”

That question never ends! That is my question forever. It was my first identity crisis, and it will be my last, and wrestling with it is the point.

I have gone back to college, and I have learned something.

Aha!

Discard Remorse

Yes, my de-cluttering went too far. I went back into the recycling bin and pulled stuff out.

It was the letters. No, not just the letters – it was the memories reflected in the letters.

I’ve talked about the easy stages of de-cluttering: the broken, the junk, the never-used.  When I first started this blog, I was big into tossing. I was just off clearing out my mother’s house and fifty years of accumulation. Dealing with too much stuff has led to more tossing.

But in this latest binge, I uncovered two shoeboxes of letters from 1985 (when I moved to Alaska) till 1993 or so. (I think that’s when email took over and letter exchange diminished drastically.) I spent hours going through those letters, loving every minute of my trip down memory lane. And then I put them in the recycling bin.

I thought, “If I haven’t looked at them in 25+ years, by the next time I look at them, I’ll have dementia and won’t know who any of these people are.” I was thinking of my mother. When she was 84, she took great pleasure in letters from her cousin written when he was overseas during World War II. But by the time she was 91, things like that were distressing because she didn’t remember a lot of it.

But that night, I emailed my friend Janet and quoted a bit from a letter she’d written me. It brought back a flood of memories, and Janet replied right away to my email, saying that she’d loved it, too. We both sat, a thousand miles away, grateful for our history together. How could that happen if I’d thrown them all away?

When I was eight years old, we moved from New Jersey to Long Island. My friend Karen and I were devoted pen pals, as she moved on to Illinois. We met up again once in Colorado when we were in our 20s. I’ve tried finding her since then without luck. But spurred on by these letters, I tried again that night and found her online! We’re emailing again!

My friend Rodney died in 2008, and I loved reading every letter he’d written. But this time, I saw that I’d always appeared in his holiday letters:

“As I have for all Thanksgivings since my friend Barbara moved to Alaska (she always invited a bunch of friends over to eat and I got to make and take sweet potato pie), I went to Lake Tahoe.”

I thought of Rodney and his sweet potato pie, and I missed him. I hadn’t realized he didn’t have Thanksgiving dinners any more. I wished I could spend one more Thanksgiving with him.

I didn’t realize my friend Sharon – who I’ll see in a couple weeks – was by far my most prolific correspondent, and we shared a lot. But then I read of a disagreement we’d had, how she was upset with me, how we processed that out. I don’t even remember it, but I see how we worked it out, how our friendship continued, how it survived and thrived.

And then there are the letters from my mother. Most of my mother’s correspondence were notes, quick typing while she was at work, sending on some package or information and adding in a note. But then there was this:

“I’m reading Marilyn French’s “Her Mother’s Daughter.” If you haven’t read it yet, it’s a “must”! Explains – no, doesn’t explain, just makes me aware of all my frustrations over the years, yours, too – and how we see things so-o-o-o differently – and then just getting older makes certain realizations clearer – She’s not ‘easy’ reading – but she’s certainly thought provoking – READ IT! Particularly pg. 290-295. Interesting.”

I’m sure when I received that in 1988, I read it and put it aside while I was busy with work and life. But not in 2018. In 2018, I was blown away at this window into my mother. I immediately put the book on hold at the library and am working my way to page 290. When I get there, I’ll wish I could talk with my mother about it.

The greeting cards are still in recycling, as are the letters from acquaintances I already can’t remember. But the letters from friends, from family, they’re back in a special box.

There’s such a thing as premature de-cluttering. I’d written before that “while you’re still remembering and laughing, this is not the time to toss,” and Betsey commented “I think I’d keep it forever.” Forever it is.

Contentment Lurks

Let me introduce myself. A therapist once told me I was an Enneagram 4. She said 4s look at a room and say it would be beautiful with a chair over in that corner, and that’s absolutely true as 4s add creativity, but 4s tend to focus on what’s missing. That’s all I know about enneagrams and 4s. I also know I’m a Pisces/Aries cusp, for whatever that’s worth. I also know I’m bipolar. And it’s dark outside.

So mostly, I live in a world of lots of unlimited possibilities that feel impossible. I collide with things and events, try inadequately, do them wrong, and mostly don’t fit. I can find my way into a profound depression at the drop of a hat and spend most of my time working my way out of one. With tiny bursts of elation in between. My glass is often half empty … unless it’s overflowing.

But every now and then,

once in a while,

just occasionally,

simple contentment settles in me.

Sophie, the adult daughter, was in town. She’d raved about a book, and I put a hold on it at the library. When it came in, she said, “Let’s go to the library, get the book. Now.” We did. It’s a 700-page book! (Who reads a 700 page book?!? Oh, no. Another insurmountable chore...)

We came home. She went into the living room.

I did laundry.

“Where are you?”

“I’m putting things away.”

“Where are you now?”

“Just washing up.”

“Where are you NOW??? Come into the living room and read with me.”

I did.

“What page are you on? Don’t you like it?”

I did! We sat in the living room and read.

The next day we had friends over. We had LOTS of friends over. (4ish Barbara said, “Oh, no, there won’t be enough food.” Judith, my role model who looks at life through the prism of abundance, said, “There’ll be enough food. Friends will bring.” Judith is a miracle of non-4.)

Long after our friends left and Tim and I were putting away LOTS of food, the twenty-somethings were still playing and laughing in the living room. Laughter rocked the house. Sophie turned to us and said, “This was a great party!” It was. I am part of a community, and that community was in our house (even though I wasn’t a very good hostess because I was distracted a lot of the time).

That night, I couldn’t sleep. Sophie had gone out and hadn’t come home. I worried. I thought of that nightmare that always peeks around the corner.

In the morning, she said she’d gotten in earlier. I hadn’t heard her.

Tim and I took her to the airport. She’s off to her own New Year’s Eve party. We’ll see her in March.

I lay down on the couch. The couch that Deena had noticed at the party and said it must be heaven to lie on that couch and read. It is my spot. I pulled out the book. (I’m on page 300 now.)

I looked around at the living room and didn’t see the plants that need trimming, the old videos that need culling, the pillow that needs repair. I didn’t fret that I should be exercising or out in the air, that I hadn’t written or painted in a while.

I looked at my living room, and it looked like home. A home with scraggly plants, old videos, and a torn pillow. (And although I thought about all the refugees without homes, I didn’t WORRY about them right then and there.)

I let contentment in.

I lay there – with that book – in the right place for me in that moment. The universe was good, I was in it, and I fit.

Tomorrow I won’t fit, but today, I remember that I did.

Happy New Year.

Boobs in Boob Land

It takes a lot to leave me speechless and startled, sort of stumbling through the Looking Glass. It started with the hospital gown hanging outside on the front door, but it was ALL THE PINK that proved overwhelming. I had entered Boob Land. No, I had entered Boob Land!

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and many of us are very, very aware of breasts because we’re very, very aware of cancer. In our Third Thirds, the numbers in “the club” just seem to be growing every month, October or not. This time, cancer visited my friend, Barb. Hopefully, it was just a visit and the unwelcome guest won’t be returning.

More than a month ago, Barb sent out “save the date” invitations for her end-of-radiation party. I put it on my calendar. I thought all the women would come, we’d eat, drink wine, talk.

I never expected to be throwing orange ping pong balls into bras.

It’s like Barb had completely redone her home in Breast Décor. There were pink boob-type decorations everywhere, pink boas, posters. Pink socks as party favors. Pumpkins with breasts and nipples.

I didn’t expect Barb to be greeting us in her hospital gown with boas either.

And now the pièce de résistance: the reminder to get your mammogram – squeeze those marzipan breasts between graham cracker plates. Use your imagination, that plateful was a real eye-popper.

It’s a relief to celebrate someone who discovered her cancer so early that her prognosis is good. It’s a joy to celebrate the strength, the resilience, and the courage this cancer requires of women. And it’s a total treat to spend an evening laughing with women who are funny, talented, and happy to be alive. So happy to be alive.

Book Club vs a Bad Book

My book club is happy for a lot of reasons, but what distinguishes us is we talk about the books. Yes, we learn what’s going on with our lives. Yes, we do things together. Yes, we eat food, drink wine, and share recipes. BUT we talk about the books, and we’ve been doing that for more than 20 years.

As soon as the book for the following month is decided upon, we used to race each other to reserve the book at the library. Over the years, that’s proven a problem: if we read the book too far in advance, we forget a lot of it by the time book club meets. (We’ve spent many book club evenings talking about “what’s-her-name” or “was-that-before-that-happened-or-after.”) Billy Collins, in his poem “Forgetfulness,” writes:

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of

So we have to time finishing the book so we’re still fresh with it when we meet. But that has its own problems: what if the book is long or tedious and we run out of time? What if everyone else has the library book and it’s not available? So we play this little dance of balancing memory against opportunity. The dance just gets trickier with time.

Over the years, there have been many books we’ve all loved: Bel Canto, Seabiscuit, A Gentleman in Moscow. There are books someone didn’t like while someone else loved it. Book club is the perfect place where discussion actually changes our opinions. There are books no one liked, but there were no books everyone hated.

Until The Echo Maker.

The Echo Maker was unanimously and universally hated. It was long, repetitive, and tedious. The characters were unreal, unsympathetic, and boring. Characters repeated themselves endlessly, so that finishing the book was torture. What may have been an interesting exploration of self and the perception of self was positively excruciating. Only the sand hill cranes came off well.

Am I not being clear enough about this?

Astonishingly, the discussion was terrific. It’s amazing how hating something really enhances the memory! We remembered every hated detail. We knew names, we knew characters, we knew every ludicrous, plodding plot iteration.

One of our more recent experiments was to come to book club with a sentence from the book that impressed us. Mary offered her sentence: Karin, the sister in the book, is thinking back to a time with a former lover:

“Two years ago that month, she’d lain with this man in the pouring rain, naked in the sloppy riverbanks, licking his armpits like a kitten.” (page 329)

Do you see what I mean? Who, who, who would ever find that plausible? What kind of woman licks muddy armpits during sex in the rain? Could you finish an entire book like this?

During the course of our energetic discussion lampooning of the book, I related another hairy armpit story. A friend of mine had worked summers at A&W Root Beer. There were big vats of root beer with some sort of stirring contraption at the bottom. When it became jammed, they had to use a special tool to realign it. The manager got fed up with jimmying it, rolled up his sleeve, and stuck his arm to the bottom of the vat. It was a hot summer day, and his armpits were sweaty. When he pulled his arm out, root beer dripped from his armpit hairs.

I told you, we talk about the book.

Of Tea and Adirondack Chairs

About the tea thing. About why Happy Uterus Tea would even show up on my radar.

Tea is a symbol.

Tea is the Adirondack chair of my life. The Adirondack chair figured in an essay I read once years ago: a woman bought Adirondack chairs because she had visions of pouring lemonade, setting the glass on the wide arms, relaxing and enjoying life. I have that same fantasy, but in mine, I’m sitting and drinking tea.

The woman in the essay got rid of her Adirondack chairs years later, because she’d never sat in them.

I may not have Adirondack chairs, but I have a lot of tea paraphernalia. I have beautiful teacups, I have teaspoons, tea party place cards. I even have a penguin in a tuxedo who lifts the tea bag out of the cup after three minutes have passed.

My daughter and I had tea parties. She collected tiny tea sets. Lots of them. I’ve moved her tiny tea set collection several times during room relocations, carpet removal, carpet replacement. I know her tiny tea sets intimately. Much of the tea paraphernalia we collected together.

The beautiful teacups were a gift many years ago from a friend. I let them sit in the cabinet for years because they were the “good” teacups. They were waiting for special occasions while we drank regular, no-special-occasion tea from no-special-occasion mugs. Those teacups waited a long time … till I learned in my Third Third that life was meant to be enjoyed now and waiting is a misguided gamble.

The tea vision involves having women friends over to drink tea with me (and my teacups and my teaspoons and my penguin). That meant I needed a large enough teapot to fill many cups of tea. I searched and searched for one for years, and finally found one at a crafts fair in Massachusetts. It’s beautiful.

It’s the teapot I made the tea cozy for, the “tea yurt.”

And then I went to London, where people sit down with their tea no matter what. On Masterpiece, the characters are always offering each other tea for distress and trauma, illness and worry, and it works! In London, I tasted tea at Twinings and bought the most delicious Ginger and Sicilian Lemon “silky bag infusions” at Fortnum & Mason.

So this is what tea is: it’s a vision of a life of friends, of conversation, of quiet, of appreciation for now. Of special moments, of finding calm, of a daughter’s enchantment, of sharing in another culture. Of finding something beautiful, creating something new, of trying out new tastes.

In my Third Third, tea is way more than just worrying about all the peeing afterwards and whether I’m near a restroom. And what to do because everyone else drinks coffee.

This is the bigger Third Third question: Do I actually sit down and drink tea? Do I actually let myself enter that tea drinking mental space? (sigh…) I’m more like the woman in the essay not drinking lemonade in her Adirondack chair.

My Third Third is always a work in progress….

The Purpose of Laundry

My friend, Judith, walked the Camino last summer, and she’s doing it again this summer. One Friday morning, Judith said she had a favor to ask me.

I perked up. Being asked to do a favor is a gift. Suddenly you feel of use, connected, capable. Someone feels secure enough in your friendship to ask something of you and you can DO SOMETHING for them.

“My Camino shirt – the one I wore every day – has a stain. I want to wear it again this time, but I can’t with that stain,” she said.

“I can do this! Laundry, a stain – I am a master launderer! I get out stains! I can rescue your shirt!” I practically leaped over the table in eagerness.

Indescribable joy flooded me. Just that morning, I’d been struggling through my Third Third search for Purpose, my relentless but unsuccessful quest for the Overarching Theme that would leave me feeling satisfied with my contribution to the world.

Now I had a Mission: clean Judith’s shirt!

My mother taught me how to do laundry in a very specific way. When I went off to college and discovered kids who just threw their whole load of laundry into the machine, I was appalled. My mother taught me to separate my load into three batches: whites; coloreds that take cold water because they’re nice; and dark coloreds that take hot water because they’re dirtier and tougher. Whites take bleach plus powdered detergent; coloreds take All plus Wisk on the collars and stains.

Over the years, I have modified somewhat. Last year, Wisk was discontinued. (Thankfully, my mother was no longer aware of this.) I added OxiClean to the stain-removal procedures, as well as Ivory bar soap. (After washing my face once with Ivory soap and having raw skin for weeks, I decided it was tough enough for laundry. It’s also the only thing that gets acrylic paint out of brushes and palettes.)

I rubbed Judith’s stain with Ivory and put it to soak in OxiClean. It looked gone, but I rubbed more Ivory soap on it, rinsed it, congratulated myself, and hung it up to dry. Oh, no! The stain was still there! This would take more work. After repeating all the steps, I used my specially-designated laundry toothbrush for the Ivory soap rubbing. I put my Wisk-replacement on it, and put it in the laundry.

Victory!

Tomorrow I will worry again about my Overarching Theme and Purpose; but today I added a little bit to the world’s happiness quotient and can let satisfaction seep in.

Someone Else's Adventure

In your Third Third, the idea of relocation gets bandied about. Maybe you want to be nearer family, maybe nearer health care facilities, maybe you just want an exciting change. You look for good spots, but maybe you decide you really like the spot you’re in after all.

The danger of all this relocation talk is that someone else may take you up on it. Someone else may decide to relocate. And if that someone else is a good friend, suddenly your good spot at home is changed. It’s missing that good friend.

Jinnie moved to Idaho.

Jinnie and I go back to my Second Third, but that was sort of peripheral. We just cruised by each other’s lives. It wasn’t till my first venture into Third Thirdism (?) – taking a fiber arts class together – that we moved into each other’s lives. The class led to playing art in each other’s houses which led to my introduction to all sorts of new materials and ideas which led to monthly art group meetings which led to movies and double dates and playing games. She introduced me to unbelievable hot chocolate and glow-in-the-dark 3-D miniature golf.

And now she went and moved to Idaho.

Compared to Jinnie, my art is cautious. I think and think about it, grapple with how to get my ideas to take shape. While I may have interesting ideas, without experience I’m weak on execution. Jinnie throws everything she has at the paper. She has jars and bottles and tubes of things that she experiments with, tries, plays with. While she’s on layer #6, I’m still planning my first brush-to-paper. So, of course, she ends up with art while I end up with … plans.

When I learned the word bricolage in New York – “something created from a variety of available things” – we adopted it for the monthly meetings Jinnie organized. We put ideas into a jar, and we draw one out monthly. One month: things made from corks. Another month: things beginning with a poem or quote. This month: paper dolls.

And now she went and moved to Idaho.

Jinnie lived near enough I could bicycle to her house. We’re from different decades, religions, health concerns, and political awareness; but all those things were topics for discussion, not topics for dissension.

When I went to London, Jinnie thought I was brave, but I was just doing my usual quest for new-ness. She’s leaving family, home, friends for the challenge of new opportunities. She is doing a big, brave, leap into New-ness. I returned to discover her house was sold, the date set, and the airplane ticket purchased. Once the packing had overtaken her house, she was “Done!” And yes, I’m jealous of her big, bold, adventure.

The bricolage group is continuing, and Jinnie and I are starting some sort of long-distance simplicity challenge she came up with, so I know she’s not “lost.”

Alaska is a place where people move in and out, but if you’ve lived here a long time, your friends have, too. Our kids grew up here. We talk about the difficulty in relocating, in leaving lifelong friends behind. But Jinnie taught me that you can make a friend three years ago and they could become Good Friends. That the friends of our Third Thirds are special because they are the friends of our new creativity, our new interests.

I wish her only to grow where she’s now planted … but I still wish that didn’t leave a hole in my garden.