Something Old, Something New

My latest New Thing is transforming. Literally. Last year, a friend invited me to Transformed Treasures, a luncheon and auction to benefit Salvation Army’s shelter and treatment programs. But it wasn’t just any old auction.

Artists sign up to be admitted to Salvation Army thrift shops with vouchers to purchase items, items that they’ll transform into treasures. Oh, the imagination on display at that auction! I saw a dog kennel transformed into a child’s reading nook, everything in the world transformed into beautiful lamps. You’d marvel at the artistry evident in an item – and then look at the “before” photos and be amazed.

Yes, I’ve fixed up an old chest of drawers with a great paint job, but these things at the auction were now Art. Useful art or decorative art, but really spectacular. So, of course, I wanted to try my hand at it.

On the appointed day, we all descended on the Salvation Army thrift shop with our vouchers. Some people picked up items to bring home and wait for inspiration, but my creativity needed some focus; I didn’t want to RE-clutter my house. Other people had discarded their clutter, and I was going to bring it home?

Then I discovered a batch of brown, metal, alphabet letters with broken light bulbs. I’d seen them at Michaels; they look sort of rusty even when new, and I’m not quite sure what people do with them. Ah, but the ampersand! If I weren’t looking at a tiny toy motorcycle, would it have occurred to me to think “racetrack”? That ampersand just shouted, “I could be a racetrack.”

And the rainbow-striped strap – wouldn’t that make the rusty brown prettier? Could it all be mounted on that cutting board over there? What about the little desktop toy aquarium with the magnetic wand for swishing the fish around – could that magnetic wand be a light pole? I was on my way.

With coupons in hand, I haunted Michaels for supplies for the transformation. I’d need metal paint. Oh, a black foam sheet could cover the bottom, making it smooth for the track surface. How about some little trees for landscaping?

As things took shape, I checked out NASCAR sites, painted signs for the track. The magnetic wand became the checkered flag post. When Tim and I discovered cart racing in the Valley, we managed to win points in the arcade; those were redeemed for race cars. The result:

I’m so excited! The Transformed Treasures luncheon and auction isn’t until May 6, but tickets are already on sale. I’ll be glad if someone decides a transformed racetrack is just what they need, but now that I understand the process, I want to see the other re-creations. For a recycling fanatic like myself, it’s inspirational (not to mention, a creative solution to clutter).

But then a bigger thought occurs: If an old, rusty ampersand can find new life as a rainbow racetrack, what else is awaiting “new life”? What else is possible?

Stumbling down Memory Lane

Somehow the subject of traveling to Russia came up in conversation with a friend. “Tim and I went in 1990,” I said, “when friends of ours were living in Moscow. We went on diplomatic visas, so we weren’t part of an organized tour. In fact, we went on our own to Leningrad by train, and …”

And I froze. Suddenly, big questions consumed me: How did we get around Leningrad? We don’t speak Russian. We met a guy and went home with him; how did we meet him? How did we get to the Hermitage? How did we even get off the train?

This is a Giant Memory Chasm, the place where things you know are isolated by a vast unknown of things you can’t remember. It’s like a bad DVD with a glitch that suddenly jumps from scene 5 to scene 7. You try backing up, but it skips again and again. If you’re lucky, you might catch an intermediate blip of action, but mostly it’s all a big mystery.

What I did remember was a box downstairs with “1990 Corsica/USSR Trip” written on the side. I pulled it out, and Tim and I pored through it. Tim remembered some things: a Finnish hotel. I remembered Peter the Great’s palace (But how did we get there?!?) There were lots of receipts and flyers, but all in Russian. Fortunately, I had a little calendar book that I’d written notes in: “Find Intourist, get directions to sign up for tour.” I found the little note from our tour guide who took us home: Grigory! A guide to the palace refreshed that memory, but the rest is very, very dim.

There was a note about going on a river trip to the Bay of Joy, but I figured that was on the Moscow end. Suddenly, a light bulb went off: I recalled going down a river, looking out at the shore where houses were. That’s where that was! A glimmer of that memory had endured, but I thought it must have happened in Berlin with my sister – but we weren’t on a boat there. So that memory – uprooted without context or location – now had a location! (if it really is the right memory…) It wasn’t my sister; it was my friend, Susan. The houses were dachas.

Oh, the elation when random bits of memory assemble themselves into something recognizable!

Photographs, diaries, little calendar notes all help refresh the memories, and when I find the USSR photos, that’ll probably help a lot. But sometimes the evidence just establishes how bad the memory is. While browsing the photo albums, I came across a picture of me in Pinnacles National Monument, a place I’d recently considered visiting for the first time. I would swear I have never been to Pinnacles National Monument, but there it is:

Sometimes I feel as if unmoored memories are some sort of crime, like incorrect addition or a poorly constructed house. Then I try to think of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who said, “I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.”

We are the product of our memories; creating them is what made us. Remembering them is a bonus; forgetting them, a glitch. An annoying, disturbing, frustrating one, but maybe a glitch just the same.

Where have all our mothers gone?

I have Stacy on my mind. We met when our two different junior highs merged into our one high school. By the time we graduated and I got my driver’s license, my car knew how to drive to Stacy’s house. The summer after our freshman year in college, we were both back on Long Island. Stacy invited me to ride horses with her, but I went to the beach instead. She fell off a horse and broke her collarbone; I dislocated my shoulder body-surfing. Neither of us could work, so we had another summer together.

Stacy became a New York executive; I moved to Alaska. We’d get together when I visited my mother or for high school reunions, and she and her husband came out to kayak in Prince William Sound. When I began my month in Manhattan last year, Stacy was with me when I first entered my rented apartment. She gave it the stamp of approval; now I could relax in the Big City.

Stacy once wrote me one of the most precious notes I’ve ever received. It was after a visit:

“…whenever we get together … it is as though we’ve seen each other everyday for the last 30 years! Yes, our bathing suits are bigger and the subjects of conversation have changed…, but we always go right to the heart of the matter with the knowledge that thoughts shared are always safe, feelings are treated with care, and we still laugh like a couple of teenagers! So beyond the trees that have grown, the neighborhoods that have changed and all the things we have each experienced over the last three decades, there is this indestructible, invisible bond, like a tap root that stretches for miles and miles through time and space….”

I was traveling to visit Stacy in Maryland – where she’s retired with horses – when I had to turn back to see my mother before she died.

Why is Stacy on my mind? Because last week, her mother died.

I can see Mrs. Frank so clearly in my mind. The way she would throw back her head, squint her eyes, and say something about “you girls.” I can picture myself in their living room. I spent a lot of time at that house, with that mother.

About a year ago, when my mother’s memory was mostly gone, Stacy drove over to pick me up for a visit. I told my mother, described who Stacy was.

“I know who Stacy is!” she interjected. She raced out to the car and hugged Stacy hello with clear and unfogged memory. My mother knew Stacy.

I walked past the telephone yesterday, thinking I’d call my mother to let her know Mrs. Frank had died. Moments like that happen. Continue to happen.

We’re losing our mothers! And so we in our Third Thirds – we motherless children – turn to the ones who knew our mothers, too. That “indestructible, invisible bond” that Stacy wrote about – that “tap root” that connects us – it included our mothers.

Stacy must feel the same thing. Yesterday, I received another note from her, coaxing me to visit her place in Maryland. She wants “to sit and reminisce about our Moms together.”

So do I.

Unglued and Unstuck -- Take 2

I’m going to London. For a month. Solo. I leave in three weeks.

Aieeeeee!

After my month in Manhattan, I decided I’d make that a regular event, but I wanted to add newness to it. What other place could boast enough culture to keep me busy for a month? London!

So I went on VRBO, and an apartment magically appeared. When I checked with friends of mine to see if I’d be near them, they said my neighbors were William and Kate. Yes, I checked the map: I’m across the street from Kensington Palace.

Four years ago, when Sophie was at Oxford for a semester, she and I did the London tourism thing: the Tower of London, the British Museum, Greenwich. So this time, I do the immersion-live-as-a-resident thing. I went online and found a whole bunch of excitements: a play with David Tennant (my Dr. Who, swoon…), Slow Art Day at the National Gallery (“Join a small group in a closed-off room and be guided towards a deeper connection with a painting.”), and the Robots exhibit at the Science Museum with a play Last Supper – of robots! And then, of course, I found things like “16 Incredible Library Bars in London.”

But now it’s 4 a.m., and I’m buzzing because:

• The phone thing. I have an old phone of Tim’s that I had to “unlock.” When I get to London, I have to go into a phone store and get a local number, a plan, and a SIM card. Everyone says this is “easy.”


• I think we must have the right electricity adaptor somewhere in the house.

• I want to catch an author program for Cityread London, and they’re at libraries all over: Camden, Stratford, Westminster, Kingston, Ilford, Bexley, Bromley, Slough, and Reading. And then it hit me: I have absolutely no geographic understanding of London. I can’t tell boonies from next neighborhood over.

So, yes, on one level I know I will conquer all these things, and I will appreciate the adventure. But right now, they’re swimming around in my head. How do I phone the apartment owner to meet me at the apartment if I don’t have a phone?!? At Jamaica Station in New York, I borrow a phone from a stranger when I know which train I’ll be on (since there are no pay phones anymore). Sophie says people will think I’ll steal their phone, and British people will think I’m suspicious. Gene in London says: “if you try to start up a conversation with a stranger you will be assumed to be mentally unwell. One does not DO that in London.” Uh, oh, I DO that all the time!

And then it hit me: my month in New York was like re-entering a culture where I fit in. I could swim in familiar waters. Strangers talked to each other all the time. I knew where Penn Station was, that Battery Park was there, and Central Park there, even without ever having lived there.

So this is a BIGGER adventure.

I don’t recall thinking like this before living in Costa Rica for a summer. Why is that? Because it was a homestay so I had someone to ask? Because I was traveling with littler-girl Sophie and had to be the Mom? Because I knew it was going to be Foreign-with-a-capital-F and took it slowly (not with a calendar already swimming with entries)? Because Central American culture works for me?

Because no one had phones and SIM cards to deal with?!?

These are 4 a.m. thoughts. I have to remember that when I first planned my trip to Manhattan, I called the blog post Unglued and Unstuck. So I’m unsticking and getting unglued again.

Time to go back to bed.

But first: What should I see and do in London? What’s on your list? What discoveries have you made that I shouldn’t miss? (Still relishing the recommendation to visit Macy’s wooden escalator in New York….)

Spelling and Grammar and Punctuation – Oh, my!

It started when I was very young. Sometime during dinner, someone would make a grammatical error in speaking, and it was corrected. My mother would then say, “Speak good English, and good English will speak for you.” It always happened this way – without exception.

My mother was full of proverbs, but the grammar one was about creating a first impression, putting forward our best selves. It stuck. Four siblings continue to monitor the grammar (and punctuation) of the world. By monitor, I do NOT mean correcting people! I mean quietly noting the offending tense or case or number disagreement and letting its disturbance pass through our systems.

If we’re occupying the role of editor, yes, we make the correction. If something is being published, it needs to be correct. And that’s probably how grammarians find each other. Maybe you’re in charge of editing a document and you make a change. Someone speaks up and says, “I was debating whether it would fall into the objective or subjective case, but …,” and you glow all over because you’ve found a kindred spirit.

Abbe and I found each other because we both insert the comma in our emails: “Hi, Abbe.” After a while, you start passing grammar questions back and forth to each other. Eventually one of the kindred spirits sent me this video, Vigilante Copy Editor. This is the story of a sculpture garden with placards describing the art – but the placards have lots of grammar mistakes. A rogue grammarian corrected them with a Sharpie. Was he or she being an asshole … or someone restoring the dignity of the art after the poor wording on the descriptive placards?

I walked by a white board in an elementary school with the science word of the day: “spongue.” It killed me. Children would learn the wrong spelling! So I crept up and secretly erased the offending “u.”

We former philosophy students enjoy exploring the narrow boundaries between behaviors: what’s acceptable? What’s reprehensible? Grammar problem as moral issue.

A while back, I discovered a whole new literary genre: humorous grammar and punctuation books by copy editors. Eats, Shoots & Leaves was my first, but then I loved Between You and Me. Now I’m reading Yes, I Could Care Less: How to Be a Language Snob Without Being a Jerk. Sometimes I laugh out loud. Sometimes I cringe because I’ve discovered an inadvertent mistake I’d been making. (A real grammar nutcase enjoys a cringe as much as a laugh.) And now I’ve discovered that there are wars among “descriptivists” who say grammar is what people say, “prescriptivists” who say grammar has rules, and assorted “purists,” “sticklers,” and “bullies.”

So there I was, writing my blog post about Stealth De-cluttering. Right there in the third sentence, I faced a grammar dilemma:

“I tried to find the owner, waited for him or her to call, but they never did.”

Oh, the problem! Owner is singular, so if I’m going to be gender-neutral, I have to say “him or her.” But two “him or hers” in a row?!? “I tried to find the owner, waited for him or her to call, but he or she never did.” That’s a mess!

I took the high risk alternative: I opted for the “singular they.” Since English doesn’t have a gender-neutral singular pronoun, I’d heard talk of this “singular they.” I debated including an asterisk so my vigilant grammarian friends would know I wasn’t making a stupid error in number agreement, but I thought that would just call attention to it.

Minutes later – minutes later! – Abbe sent me this: “The singular ‘they’ has been declared Word of the Year.” Immediately, I went back online and added my asterisk.

Meanwhile, the family grammarians have weighed in. My brother pointed out that I’d just needed some more thinking ahead to steer clear of the difficult words: “waited for him or her to call, but no one ever did.” Yes, yes, yes! That would have done it!

I could go back, delete the asterisk, change the wording, fix the whole mess. But where would the story be in that? The story of dilemma and conflict, decision-making and revelation – the grit of a good grammar saga.

Heroes or Goats?

Like a lot of us, I was watching the Oscars Sunday night. I saw the Great Mistake in the announcement of the winner for Best Picture, and while it was just one moment, it set me down a winding, philosophical path.

NOT, as one commenter put it, “Don’t let the 80-year-olds do it anymore.” In my sympathetic Third Third, I think, “That could have been me,” and I cringe at the jump in people’s minds to feebleness. I felt bad for Warren Beatty; the whole thing did made him look feeble and confused. He had a reason to be confused (so he passed the problem to Faye Dunaway).

My friend Steve focused on something else: he marveled at the graciousness on display:

“The mistake was acknowledged immediately and openly and the response was all so adult, so gracious, so harmonious. … Our news has been so dominated by three-year old tantrums lately, that this is a wonderful relief, and we should all be glad for the error, just to see how decent people behave.”

But my friend Marie had a different take:

“So, if Warren Beatty knew something was wrong, why didn’t he say something? At that moment, he had the opportunity to correct a mistake but didn’t. … Let’s promote taking responsibility where we can. When you see something or feel that something doesn’t feel right, say something.”

That reminded me of an interview I read a long time ago with Philip Zimbardo, the Stanford professor famous for the prison experiment where the “guards” ran amok with their newfound power. He was trying to account for the one person out of 100 who does the right thing.

Zimbardo was once sitting in the front row of a presentation when he noticed the speaker having difficulty, so he interrupted – just before the speaker collapsed. As he puts it:

“Essentially, it’s shame and guilt: you have to live with the guilt of not doing what you should have done vs. the shame of doing the wrong thing. All my life I’ve done things to make people laugh at me, and playing the fool means when the time comes I don’t care if people laugh.”

“…when the time comes, I don’t care if people laugh.” I disagree that you have to “play the fool” to prepare for this, but you do have to prepare yourself. Maybe as pre-teens, we’re too caught up in the fear of ridicule, the pressure of the peer group; but we’re in our Third Thirds now. Are we willing to risk embarrassment? We live in a world of “see something, say something” – are we ready? Can we all do it?

Sometimes I think I was born with a big mouth. Friends might have a hard time thinking of me as “reticent.” Yet I have uncomfortable memories of the times I balked, times I imagined all the eye-rolling I’d get for making a fuss, and so I abdicated. Like Charlie Brown, “I could have been the hero ... instead I’m the goat.”

It comes back to what Marie talked about, taking responsibility and speaking up. Zimbardo calls them “everyday heroes,” the ones who move from passivity to action. We can’t know how we’ll react in an emergency, in confusion, when faced with injustice. We can’t know if we’ll be gracious when a mistake is made.

I’m sure Warren Beatty is kicking himself. We can all take that as a cautionary tale and hope we’re ready when our test comes. But we can’t lose sight of heroes when they do emerge; the La La Land heroes took the microphone and volunteered their congratulations to Moonlight. Yes, they were adult and kind and generous.

I’m practicing my “see something, say something” muscle, right along with my squats.

Diagnosis of a Clutter Relapse

I’ve relapsed.

The symptoms are obvious: stuff is sitting in the middle of my floor. Stuff has taken over my lovely, uncluttered and well-organized space. How’d it get there? Where’d it all come from? What is it?

Projects
    Some are in process, so their junk has legitimate ownership of the floor. One has been completed and can get put away. One is income taxes and will soon get put away. A few others are between start and … decision-making. Somehow they ran aground, lost momentum, needed further processing. They’re in a holding pattern.

They need triage: Abandon and toss? Do the next identifiable step? Wait for illumination?

You see the problem, of course. It’s that “wait for illumination” phase. Projects are like that.

But if I apply the Marie Kondo rule – “keep only what sparks joy” – then I must admit, some projects just don’t do it. I’m not joyful about their state of incompletion, and I’m not sure I’ll be joyful about their completion either. It’s time to be relentless. My computer has a Force Quit option; I have to Force Finish or Force Quit.

Accumulation
    This is easier. I have acquired – yet again – potentially useful things in great quantity. The plastic containers that hold Costco mushrooms are PERFECT for mixing paste and assorted solutions for projects. I can’t bring myself to throw them away. I have a dozen of them. Okay, they’re all going to be donated or recycled tomorrow. I won’t even tell you what else fits in this category.

The pile of stuff I couldn’t figure out what to do with a year ago

• The cacao bean roaster I bought in Ecuador because it was incredibly cheap, lovely terra cotta, and was from our chocolate-making class. I do not roast cacao beans.

• The brass samovar from my mother’s house that is terribly tarnished and needs to be shined before I decide what to do with it. This would count as an incomplete project except that I know ahead of time that I won’t know what to do with it once it’s done because it is sentiment vs. I-will-never-want-to-keep-something-that-requires-polishing.

• The audio cassettes that I decided to keep because I still have a cassette player, but when the stereo got its new receiver, the cassette player developed a bad buzz but I didn’t test it until the Geek Squad guy had left and now I’m not sure what to do with it. This is a perfect example of a project running aground. It becomes so convoluted you give up … but the debris still remains.

This category may ultimately resolve itself because its persistence over time is making all of them Weights. They steadily leak Joy. I will probably rejoice when they get off my desk. If I don’t have to look at them, I may forget that I ever owned them. I have to grit my teeth and deal with them.

Paper
    There are three kinds of paper on my desk:

• Things to look at but not yet looked at


• Things to do with but not yet done with


• Things I don’t know what to do with

I rip bits out of magazines: links to look at, podcasts to check, interesting tidbits I want to remember or pass on. They hang out for a while; mostly until I can’t remember why I clipped them.

Right now, most of the papers on my desk have to do with finances. Post-election, I know I have to do something, so I’ve been looking at statements, reading reports, collecting articles. But, like the audio cassette player, I have reached the limits of my personal knowledge and expertise. I simply don’t know what to do.

What I do know: how much I loved my clean, empty-ish space

What I need to do: reclaim it

looking at it! Grit teeth, Force Finish or Force Quit, give away, remove, recycle.

Relentlessly. Ferociously! Joyously, maybe?

(I’ll let you know how it goes.)