September 24, 2009

There are three people in my life that I love; husband, daughter, son. Yet I don't always show it. My husband comes home from work and I'm not quite ready to stop what I'm doing to greet him. I know he craves some small attention; a kiss, a brief caress, eye contact. It seems so simple when I write it and yet............... Some stubborn part of me can't, won'.

My daughter is as prickly as I am. She too needs attention but it is not easy to figure out when. She also desperately needs non-attention. To be left alone kindly. She has a strong sense of personal space and cannot stand to have it violated. This has been true since middle school when her science teacher leaned over her at her desk and she had to repress a violent desire to snarl "get away from me". When she cooks she bars me from the kitchen. When she watches TV I may sit in the same room "by invitation only."

My son is even more complicated. For the first 5 years of his life he couldn't bear to be separated from me, for the next 5 years he didn't want to leave home, yet beginning around age 12 he couldn't bear the sound of my voice and preferred any of his friend's homes to his own. Now he is away at college and virtually incommunicado.

The ones we love. Why is it so difficult to show it?

September 24, 2009

There seems to be an epidemic of stink bugs hanging around my house. I never even knew what a stink bug was until earlier this summer. I actually thought they were kind of cute. (That was also my reaction when I first met a Japanese beetle. Oh what a beautiful bug! Then I saw the mess they made of my flowers) The stink bug is interesting in design. It's shield shaped and mottled and sort of solid looking. There is nothing flittery or slimy or creepy or weird about them. Then I learned their name. I haven't actually smelled one yet. Because I haven't squished one. A bug has to be really offensive or dangerous to get squished in our house. Yes, we trap 'em and carry them outside. (With the exception of dog fleas and head lice which get thoroughly doused in poison.) Fortunately as the stink bug sightings go up so do the spider sightings. I am also seeing more spider webs patrolled my mega-sized spiders. Today I almost ran through one strung between the car's side mirror and the car port wall. In the middle of this web was a large spider feeding on a stink bug. Gruesome and awesome all at the same time.

September 22, 2009

On a recent visit to my 84 year old mother I was distressed to see that she had food stains on the front of her dress. She takes pride in her appearance, dressing with an eye to color and style, carefully choosing jewelry to enhance her outfit, so I knew this was because she was unaware and not because she didn't care. Her eyesight is not as sharp nor her fingers are as nimble as in days gone by. I've also noticed that when we share a meal together food tends to stick to her lip, or a crumb will adhere to her chin for the duration of the meal. This I can point out and she can take care of it with a napkin. I wonder is this a benchmark of advancing age?

The next day I was giving my daughter a ride to work and since I had missed lunch I was munching on an apple while driving a manual shift car. It was a good apple, crisp, juicy and inevitably my hand got a little sticky and I was uncomfortably aware that I was transferring apple juice to the shift lever. When I got home I found that wasn't the only thing to get sticky. My fresh white T shirt had light yellow spots down the front. Food stains! If I pay attention when I do laundry I can probably return my white T shirt to its pristine condition. But how many shirts have I spoiled by drinking coffee or black tea while driving? Do I notice when I toss one on?

I may not be able to reverse the aging process as it softens my jawline, thickens my waistline and deprives my skin of elasticity but I can go back to eating and drinking in a civilized fashion.

I often eat lunch and breakfast by myself and I am addicted to reading. Yet it is, I have found, rather messy to eat while reading. The book has to be maintained in an open position with one hand, the newspaper if not folded very carefully tends to be too far away from the plate. As for driving while drinking coffee well who doesn't? The results are not pleasant. Butter smears, tomato sauce splashes, ice cream splodges all decorated with indelible coffee drips. It only takes one drop of coffee to convert a sexy little T to an old-lady top. So I ask myself am I dining or merely stuffing my face?

September 20, 2009

I never had to fuss about my eyebrows. Fair skinned with dirty blond/mousy brown hair my eyebrows were just there. No uni-brow to worry about. I focused on my eyelashes using mascara to draw attention to my blue eyes, my best feature or so I thought. Now, however, I have lines around my eyes, incipient eye bags and mascara just doesn't enhance the way it used to. So I turned to my eyebrows to bring my face back into focus. And found they were migrating! There are no strays to pluck. There are only strays. There are long springy black hairs shooting up and out that seem to be eyelashes emerging from the wrong place. There are little short hairs growing backwards. There is it seems, a general rebellion in the ranks as the brow hairs spread out and meander around no longer deigning to lie together in an orderly brow like fashion. What to do? I stroke on some eyebrow powder attempting to create a delicate arch. Oh dear! Now my left brow arches nicely, but the right one is stubbornly straight and thick and distinctly lower than the right. A curve on the left, a deep frown line above my nose and a dash on the right. I have created a punctuation mark on my face ~/-

I decide my face has character.

I am interesting .............and old.

September 18, 2009

Once again fashion magazines are entering my mail box. We now subscribe to three, Harper's Bazaar, Elle, Marie Claire and soon Cosmopolitan will join the list. New college graduates (like my daughter) attract all kinds of cheap subscription rates. We even get the Economist. Her Dad and I like that.

Remembering when I was in my 20's and addicted to magazines I thought it would be a nice gesture to sign up. After all the offer was $12 for 2 years. Be nice to look at the latest clothes and makeup styles again , I thought. Wrong! Boring, boring, boring. In three different magazines there wasn't one item of clothing, one gorgeous outfit that I could lust after. Am I jaded, have I just seen it all? Worse yet are the shoes. They seem to be designed as instruments of repression. Not only are the heels getting higher, they are getting thinner or disappearing altogether. So the model is balanced on a 4 inch platform sole with no heel to balance on. OK, so the latter is in a Tim Burton spread and you could argue its art and not everyday wear. I would counter with Japanese foot binding . Equally artful, but imposed on many women and hideously painful and debilitating. It just seems to me that designers are deliberately crippling women. I've watched the career women crossing the street in downtown DC in there career suits and high heels and I can tell you their feet hurt and their lower back will punish them at the end of the day.

What is the function of a blog

So I've already speculated about this, comparing personal journals to online musings. So far I've posted twice and neither of my posts has a photo or a link. Doesn't look much like a blog. Looks, reads much more like a personal essay and takes considerably more time and thought. Not like what I've just written which is more like, as my daughter so colorfully puts it, "vomiting on the page." And thus far it doesn't matter because I have precisely one reader. I could invite other people, like my friends or my family. But then I'm exposed. They get to judge me on my choice of subject and what I say. So actually it might be easier if I had readers who were completely unknown to me as if I had actually submitted my writing to a magazine or newspaper and been selected for publication . In which case there is already one level of selection. The type of publication delineates the subject matter and also draws readers who are likely to be interested.

How would anyone in the general public find this blog and why would they read it?

"I'm a very likable person."

" I'm a very likeable person." My daughter replied when I passed on a compliment from one of our neighbors. 22 years old, she is lovely to look at, generous to her friends, with a smile that can rock your world. She is capable of being delightful and charming. She is also moody, emotional, extremely self conscious and quick to take offense. Likeable? As in easy to get along with?

At her age, I too believed that I was likable and easy to get along with. Why wouldn't anyone like me? I believed that I was innocuous because I was non-confrontational, quiet and withdrawn. It took me decades to understand that quiet does not mean benign; that non-confrontational did not mean easy-going. That even though I was neither quick-witted or good with repartee, I was sharp and sarcastic and to some people frighteningly smart. Although inside I felt fearful, anxious and insecure outside I appeared arrogant, superior, and unapproachable. Ouch!

Self knowledge is good but doesn't automatically lead to change. What has changed is that I am now sensitive to the poor impression I might create. I have learned that I do get angry and that it is often evident to those around me before I recognize it in myself. I am also not unique. So when another person is scaring me, or turning me off, or rejecting me I consider the possibility that they too might be hiding fear, anxiety and insecurity.

So is my daughter correct when she calls herself likable? Definitely yes.

Does she have some things to learn about herself. Yes, again.

Doesn't everyone?

That is what living is about. Learning who we are meant to be.

My daughter says I need a blog!

I am a journal writer, not a blogger. I have a notebook in which I write sporadically. I used to write primarily when I was unhappy. I found it useful to look back and realize that whatever I was fretting about had diminished. Then as I got older I used it as a memory device. There were events, places, people that I wanted to remember. Writing them down helped me do this. I have a collection, now, of about 20 composition notebooks ( the kind with the marbleized covers) covering a span of about 30 years. When I have to travel by air, I select one at random and read it. Sometimes they make me laugh but always I get perspective. "The unexamined life is not worth living" as Socrates is supposed to have said. The last 5 journals have illlustrations, photos and clippings. Again, my daughter's influence and the advent of digital photography.

My father died 2 years ago and my mother has reached a stage in her life where her mobility is severely limited, her mental powers are sometimes fuzzy and she is becoming more child-like in her demands for emotional as well as physical support. When she decided to subsist on tea and biscuits during the day and alcohol and potato chips at night we moved her into an assisted living facility. Slowly I am beginning the task of sorting through the accumulations of a 50 year marriage. The usual photos, bibelots, tchotchkes. Hundreds of items of clothing ( my mother shopped as a hobby) many with the tags still attached. As I folded up the clothes for Goodwill it was like sifting through the layers of an archaeological dig. The layer of chenille sweaters, the next layer of shirts with shoulder pads, the collection of 1970's silk blouses, the corduroy jumpers and turtle necks. Having helped my mother pack all these clothes a few years prior I knew that she could identify each piece, and tell a story about where she bought it, who she was shopping with, and if it was a successful piece on what occasion it had been worn. My mother's life story is told in her clothes. My life story is in my notebooks. Will anyone ever read them? Indeed would I want them to? The most likely reader would be the self same daughter that prompted this blog. Would she really want to wade through a rather large collection of often undecipherable scribble? Further more wouldn't some of what I had written cause her pain? After all I had written these notebooks for my self. I used them as a vehicle to vent, to say the things that should not be said out loud. Even I don't agree with some of my conclusions when I go back later.

So maybe that is a function of a blog. A journal for public consumption.