All I Can Say

How to shower: women vs. men

Yes, this is pretty much how it is.

#89: Screening

Last night instead of sitting down with my family to eat dinner, I went out and had a facial. This was an excellent alternative to dinner, even though it was dark and cold when I left the house, and I was tired and really would rather have just stayed at home. But it’s always the case when I feel this way that I have enriching experiences. And the facial was relaxing, soothing, and nurturing for my skin, which lately has been looking and feeling like the skin of someone much, much older than me. I was renewed when I came home, and sat on the couch with JH for some wine and quality time.

Today I have to go to a health screening, which really annoys me. At first I thought it was just the inconvenience of it that was bothering me, but it’s more than that. Every time we change our life insurance in any way, they want blood. It feels so invasive. Today’s screening is through JH’s employer, and the idea is that the health insurer will give us a better rate if we are healthy. They too will want blood, and will gather all sorts of other nosy, personal information about me.

On the one hand, as far as I know I am healthy, and so I’d like to be rewarded for that, but I don’t like the fact that so many different entities have done this same “screening” on me, starting with my own doctor, every damn year. I’ve had my blood drawn so many times in the past few years, and who really knows what they do with it, what sorts of tests they run, and in what ways they use and share this data? I hate to feel so powerless. I don’t even have anything to worry about, but for all the people who aren’t healthy, this system must seem like cruel manipulation. If you don’t line up like cattle and submit to their testing, you pay. You pay substantially.

Moo.

#88: Loose threads

If you’re here, it’s because you are a loyal reader, and for that I love you. I’ve neglected you. Writing for me is like picking at threads. Some that you pull at turn out to be tiny tidbits of fleeting interest that don’t ultimately go anywhere. Others unravel into something more significant, more true, and it's those threads I am always trying to get my hands on in my writing here. Lately, though, it’s been sluggish. I've been sluggish. I am feeling generally unclear in my thinking. And irritable. At the moment, I find the most mundane things — like a line at the bank, or dull scissors — irritating beyond reason.

I have to say that this feels seasonal (and possibly hormonal). It’s the time of year when I’m at the end of my rope, when winter has finally sapped the best of me. My body shuts down by 7:30 each night, which really cuts into my time to write, read, or engage meaningfully with my family. It seems impossible, but it’s true: I feel the constant pressure of being short on time.

Last week was school vacation, and we spent it skiing with some excellent friends at Saddleback Mountain, in Rangeley, Maine. We fell in love with this sleepy resort because it’s a throwback to earlier times. N and G learned how to ride the T-bar (there are two at Saddleback). I hadn’t seen one in 20 years because most ski resorts have replaced all their lift equipment with high-speed quads that zoom you (together with hundreds of other skiers and snowboarders) up the mountainside. But T-bars are a lovely way to get up.

All is quiet, peaceful and protected as you steadily ascend the mountain, your skis gliding through the tracks in the snow. Every now and then the T-bar’s mechanism jing-jangles musically as it passes through the rollers of the support columns, an utterly pleasing sound.

Alpine skiing may be nordic skiing's yahoo cousin, but it's actually a fairly nature-oriented sport. It gets you outside and up into the mountains at a time of year when what you instinctively want to be doing is sitting still and keeping warm inside. It pulls you out of your thermo-neutral environment into the fresh air and sunshine — sometimes into biting winds, snow showers and frigid temperatures. But you dress for this. With helmets, goggles and balaclavas covering every possible inch of skin, skiers are ready for anything, if totally unrecognizable these days.

When I was growing up my father would drop a carload of kids off at the local “mountain” at 9:00 in the morning and return for us around 5:00 — every winter weekend, Saturday and Sunday. We wore down coats, mittens and snow pants without the benefit of Gortex, ski hats on our heads (maybe) and that was it. A lot of kids (the toughies) would ski in tight jeans, jean jackets with a hoodie underneath, and flawlessly feathered hair (both girls and boys) frozen stiff by cold and/or hairspray. These were the same kids who smoked cigarettes in the lift lines, drank out of flasks on the chair lifts, but spent most of their time hanging out in the ski lodge, posing, scoping and hooking up.

Then, a couple years later, the trend was skin tight stretch pants with colorful racing stripes down the leg, and short little jackets that didn’t interfere with the curves of the lower body. Skiing has fortunately gotten over itself, as far as fashion goes. It’s all about safety, comfort and warmth now — at least in Rangeley, Maine. Although I was confronted with more long-johned butts than I care to recall of snowboarders whose pants were poised to slither to their knees at any moment.

So after a week among good friends out in the fresh, frigid air, and now with school back on, and a weekend in Chicago with my high school friends coming up, you’d think I would be in a better mood. I have no reason for my malaise, but it’s hovering over me all the same.

Maybe after some iron rich beets for dinner tonight, I'll feel better tomorrow…

The Courtship of Eddie's Father

I had a HUGE crush on Eddie.

Remember the show?

#87: Skeeved

The spring issue of Travel + Leisure features an article that I think is supposed to be health helpful, but in fact makes me never want to set foot in another hotel room again.

You know how you know something, but you don’t allow yourself to know it in a conscious way? The cleanliness of hotel rooms is one of these blindspots for me. We are talking petri dish squalor.

You see those reassuring carts in hotel hallways, holding neat rows of little shampoo and conditioner bottles, and candy-sized soaps individually wrapped in paper, and the tiny sewing kits. And then inside the cart are the crisp, folded sheets, and stacks of towels and bathmats. A door is ajar nearby, and you always peer in to see if the room is bigger, or better in some way than yours. And you see the maids stepping around the bed to tuck in clean sheets, wiping and vacuuming. Or they’re in the bathroom with that fetid mop that merely smears the bacteria all over the floor.

And what do they use to wipe the sink and tub? I’ve always suspected it’s the same rag used to wipe the toilets — if they even wipe the toilets. Who knows? Maybe all they do is fold the edge of the toilet paper into that neat little triangle and call it good. Do they swap in a clean rag after each room? I sincerely doubt they do, and according to this article, sinks typically harbor more bacteria than toilet seats.

And the floor? Every bit as foul as you would imagine — if you were to let yourself imagine it, that is. Twenty- thousand dust mites can inhabit one square foot of carpet, and athlete’s foot fungus can live on floors for up to three months. Think of the parade of bare feet that have traversed the carpet in any given hotel room. Think of the accidents, the spills and body fluids — undetectable to the naked eye, but festering there all the same.

Shall we move onto the bed? Sure, you’re savvy enough to strip the vile coverlet off, as well as the accent pillows that do not get washed, ever. But you also have to worry about bedbugs, once eradicated in this country and now an epidemic in hotels in all price ranges. Here’s a question: What brought them back? These are little bloodsucking pests about the size of an apple seed. They infest mattresses, and the cracks and crevices of the bedframe. They bite into your flesh while you sleep. That is, if you are able to ward off thoughts of all the nastiness around you long enough to get to sleep.

All these revolting viruses, germs and critters like bedbugs, lice and crabs are not being eliminated by the hotel cleaning staff who — let’s be honest — couldn’t give a rat’s. They’re just part of the bargain. And now that I know about them in a way I’ve never ventured to know before, I shudder to think of my children as babies, cozy and cradled in what we called a “nest,” made of the bedspread arranged on the floors of many a hotel room. Nest indeed. I’m horrified to picture their sweet and pure little bodies bathing in hotel bathtubs where the last guest very likely peed — or worse.

This information reaches me just in time for our February vacation at a ski condo, which must rate among the lowest in the cleanliness category. Then in a couple of weeks, I will meet up with my high school friends in Chicago, where, yes, we will be staying in a hotel. I’ll bring my Lysol wipes, if I can get them on the plane, and try not to be utterly neurotic. But it seems unlikely that I’ll actually ever sleep in a hotel room again.

#86: Writing about not being able to write

Writing is going nowhere today. My problem is my lack of mental and emotional clarity. My family, beloved and beautiful, is around, waiting out the Nor’easter that’s been pummeling us since early this morning. I did manage to duck out for an hour to work out before the roads got too bad, but otherwise I’ve been home all day with the kids, who’ve been in and out of the house with their friends. G needs me to help secure his coatsleeves over his mittens. N calls me to ask if she and her friend can have popcorn and hot chocolate. JH calls out intermittently from his office down the hall, and then comes in to talk strategy for having our lemon of a washing machine replaced.

Usually when I write I have been steeping in an idea for a day or so — I’m a slow producer — but I'm discovering that’s impossible for me to do with other people around. Writing is a truly solitary pursuit. So I wonder, do I have the right kind of life for this? I suppose as long as there are such things as “school” and “the office” I do.

Dinner is cooking in the oven: brisket, which I’ve never made before, but it certainly smells good (frozen crabcakes for N). And later there will be chocolate cake from scratch that my mother, who didn’t really do dessert, would bake on special occasions. It is Valentine's Day, after all.

It’s 4:00 in the afternoon, but it feels hours and hours later. I think we’ll eat early and end the day early, and hope that, tomorrow, routines will be restored.

#85: "Love gets better with time"

JH and I have a tradition on Valentine’s Day of seeking out the most hideous and excessively sentimental card we can find for each other. It’s a contest, and though I’m sure he would dispute this, I usually win.

I didn’t want to leave this ritual to the last minute, so today I stood in the Hallmark store poring over the thousands of cards arranged like shingles on the racks. My eyes are always riveted to the glimmer of raised gold lettering. Flocked cards are worth extra points. Tassles, feathers, faux leather or pearlescent finishes, even googly eyes, have all won me over in the past. But then when I get reading the messages, I quite literally start to feel nauseous after about five minutes, and I know I have to make my choice quickly and get the hell out of there. Hallmark’s overwhelming peach/cinnamon/cranberry candle scent doesn’t help with the nausea, either.

The card I chose today might not feature all of the bells and whistles we’ve seen in the past, but it makes up for that with scale: this year’s card is the size of your average menu.

You’re My Forever Valentine
“LOVE GETS BETTER WITH TIME”

I’m not sure what the thought was behind adding the quotation marks, but it gets even “better” inside:

Love that has deepened and lasted…
Is a love that is truly sublime.
For no love that is new
Is as strong or as true
As a love that’s been tested by time.
Love that has grown even richer
Through everything life has to give
Is love at its best
That survives every test
And gets better each day that you live.

It goes on and on and on…

Who writes this stuff? I once knew someone who worked for a major greeting card company as a writer, but I think his beat was humor. Maybe he was writing this kind of thing, though, and he found it as funny as JH and I do. In a stomach-curdling kind of way.

We started this card competition after we got married. That first year we were focused on buying a house and we had plenty of things to spend our money on without any help from FTD, Godiva or DeBeers. Then on our anniversary it just seemed like us to make it a tradition. It takes the pressure off of these two annual occasions that might otherwise compel us to go out to the mall and buy cliché gifts for each other. 

The fact is, we don’t do gifts all that well. Not in the usual sense, anyway. I always have a hard time coming up with something for JH that has the right spirit attached to it, or any spirit at all, for that matter. Things you buy in stores just don’t feel like authentic gifts. JH will come home once in a while with flowers for me out of the blue. He’ll offer to cook dinner, or he’ll close the door to our room in the morning behind him and let me sleep in. It’s these small, everyday acts — sincere and uncalculated — that exemplify what it means to give.

And when JH comes through the door at the end of the day and the house is warm and bright and dinner is aromatic and imminent, that’s a gift I’m giving him. Lately, when I write something about our life or our kids that captures a moment and preserves it for us, that also feels like a gift.

It’s not that we’re anti-materialism, because I tell you, we have plenty of trappings. I just don’t feel the love in buying the expected gift. I don’t want to give that kind of gift, and I don’t want to receive it, either. Unless of course it’s expensive jewelry. But, honestly, I’d be happy with someone just making the dinner.

My kind of place

#84: My mother's gift

It was my mother who taught me, by example, how to let go. She lived her life open handed, and allowed things to slip through her fingers without any compulsion to grab onto them. She lost a father and two husbands before she was thirty-five, and let each one of them go. When we sold our island after my father died, and later the house that his parents had built, she let those go, too. And as she acquired things, it was her habit to purge what she no longer needed at pretty much the same rate. Despite her capacity for living a joyful life, there was also, always, a profound sense of loss about her.

Once I came home from school and found her stretched out on the sofa. She wore tartan plaid pants and a cream colored turtleneck. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and she had her glasses on, oversized tortoise shell frames that magnified her dark eyebrows and lashes. She had fallen asleep reading, and her hands were folded lightly across her chest, resting on top of her book. Her mouth was turned down into a gentle frown. I stood by her feet, watching her, wanting and not wanting to wake her up. 

As I was growing up and negotiating my independence, I would ask for her permission to spend the night at a friend’s house, or to go on some excursion with my friends, and then later on, if I could take her car. My mother always answered me with the same weary resignation: “I guess,” she would sigh, as though I was asking for something that was costing her dearly.

But when it was time, she encouraged me to enroll in a college that was five hours away. And after graduation, she was the one who investigated a way for me to get my green card so that I could live and work in the United States, and be with my friends from college. I moved to Boston, ten hours away by car, and she visited me only once in three years. She said that she was happy after the visit to be able to picture me in my apartment, to have seen where I worked, and to visualize my new life. But she seemed unable to accompany me in any way; she only knew how to let me go, because that was how she survived.

It was my mother’s gift to me to let me go, and I know now that it did cost her dearly. There’s an inexorable sorrow within a mother’s love. We nurture growth, and growth leads our children out into the world, away from us.

#83: The Getchell house

Shortly after JH and I got married, we bought our first house. It wasn’t the house we were looking for, but it was the house we wanted — and it seemed to want us, too. It was advertised as a “Victorian cottage,” built sometime in the late 1800s as a summer residence. Luckily, it had never been divested of its original details like wide-plank pine floors, unpainted beadboard and stained glass windows. It had survived all those years intact, a little jewel.

The neighborhood was a loosely organized seaside association, with a common area and private beach and docks. Originally, the land had been parceled out into tent sites, and the lots were all tiny and non-conforming. We had very little yard to speak of, but there were large pine trees bordering our property that provided some privacy, and gave the second and third floors the feeling of being up in a treehouse.

The neighbors were a close-knit community going back generations, and some had lived on the street since they were children. When we started to meet our new neighbors we learned that, although we had bought it from more recent owners, our house was still known as “the Getchell house.” It was clear that even though we held the title and paid the mortgage and taxes, we were merely custodians of the Getchell house — a role that amused us at first, but that grew on us, and one we ultimately took quite seriously.

The Getchells were an elderly couple, and we were told they had lived on the first floor of the tiny house — essentially a single room — and operated an antiques business on the upper two floors. Around Christmastime they would invite the neighborhood children in and allow them to choose a small item to give to their parents for Christmas. All night, every night, the windows on the first floor would flicker reassuringly with blue light from their TV. In time we were told of the awful car accident that had killed them both instantly as they traveled up the interstate and crashed into a guardrail. That was the way to die, JH and I agreed: in old age, quick and together.

Always, I could feel their warmth in that house, as though they welcomed us there and offered us good fortune. Both our children were conceived and brought home to the Getchell house. I know that in our whole lives, the best things we will ever accomplish happened there.

When someone mentioned that they had seen the old Getchells Antiques sign at an antique shop a few towns away, we found the place and bought the sign, ridiculously overpriced at $200. I couldn't wait to get it home, and sat in the car next to JH with the sign resting in my lap. It was a small wooden sign, painted white with black lettering and a black border. It was simple and perfect, and we threaded a thick cream-colored ribbon through the eyescrews at the top, tied a floppy bow, and hung it proudly on the wall.

When we were ready to move on, the house seemed willing to let us go, and we sold it ourselves in three weeks. We made sure the new owners agreed to these unwritten covenants: that the sign continue to hang in the house; and that the sign must remain with the house if they should sell it. So we assume, although it's changed hands twice since then, that the sign hangs there still. In the Getchell house.