Greed

In the last six weeks this is what I have had:

--Z’s love
--a negative result on a test for lymphoma
--a trip to Alaska with Z
--a trip to the Oregon coast with Z
--five weeks in Seattle with Z
--a week in Indiana with Z at my love nest/Scottie dog house
--a stimulus check from George W. Bush

This is what I’m feeling today on the occasion of Z’s departure: greed. I’ve had everything I could want, but I want more.

Recipe from a Domestic Goddess

For years I have watched my mother cook big portions of Midwestern meals with annoyance. She is not one of those women who enjoys time spent in the kitchen or who delights in feeding the masses. I’m fairly certain when she thinks about the Adam and Eve story it is not just the pain of childbirth that Eve is cursed with for canoodling with that serpent, but also the agony of the kitchen.

Mom is a good cook but she would rather be reading. I don’t blame her. At a wedding shower several years ago, the guests were given an index card and were instructed to write down their favorite recipe to give to the bride. Mine was for the World’s Best Cheeseburger. 1. Get in car. 2. Drive to McDonald’s. 3. Order Cheeseburger. 4. Pay 5. Serve in wrapper. Seriously, why slave away in a kitchen for hours when there are fine dining establishments and a grocer’s freezer full of delectable meals?

And so it happens that I am 41 and I do not know how to cook. Even macaroni is problematic. The water shows no sign of boiling, so I start reading my book, and the next thing I know the water has boiled over or if I remembered to pour the macaroni in, it has burned to the bottom of the pan. I scramble eggs at the highest possible temperature because I see no reason not to treat the stove like the microwave. It could be because I’m absent-minded, but I prefer to think of it as my own silent, feminist protest. For awhile I really wanted that T-shirt with the 1950s woman on it that said, Don’t assume I cook.

So, I have mixed emotions about the fact that I cooked my first ever pot roast for Z this week. While he was at work I marched myself down to the market with my Baggu bags like a real, environmentally conscience gourmet, and I bought a hunk of meat that was too big for two people, some carrots, some potatoes, some Lipton soup, some Kerry Gold butter (because potatoes without Irish butter are a sin), and a bottle of red “Mad Housewife” wine. I came back to the flat where I discovered that roast comes from an actual, bloody, dead animal, which was a shock to my system. Also, I discovered that Z did not have a lovely Faberware roast pan like Moms, but instead a 2 quart Pyrex baking dish meant for cheesecakes and casseroles instead of roasting. I could not find his paring knife (end table with last night’s peach), so had to peel the potatoes and carrots with a giant blade meant for chopping vegetables Benny Hana style. I imagined Z coming home at 6:00 only to find me in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor because I’d sliced open my carotid artery. (I brought the portable phone into the kitchen just in case I needed to call 911 with the stub of what might be left of my dialing finger.) I arranged the potatoes artfully and popped the thing in the oven, praying for the best, expecting the worst.

My sense of accomplishment for what my mother assures me “is not rocket science” caused me some stress. I felt good about being a ‘real’ woman, about surprising Z with an actual (hopefully edible) meal when he came in from his hard day at work. I took a shower while the pot roasted and had phrases from 1950s marriage manuals for women going through my head about always making sure when your husband arrives home that you are “fresh” and have brushed your hair and have wiped the children’s faces and instructed them to play quietly while Daddy unwinds and while you, the good housewife, listen and do not bother him with your petty frustrations of the day out of respect for the hard day he has had, working to provide for you and the children. And then I felt really annoyed with myself for falling into the cooking trap that I have so carefully avoided for over four decades. Even more annoyed that it had pleased me more than a little to have finally done something like a “normal” woman for once in my life.

But then the pot roast started smelling good and Z was coming home soon and I forgot about my feminist ideals. Despite cooking an hour longer than it needed to while Z distracted me upon his arrival, the roast came out tender and juicy and just the right amount of doneness.

It’s a slippery slope now. If he starts expecting big meals awaiting him when he comes home from work, I’ll have no one but myself to blame.

Yesterday I heard on NPR that the Irish writer Nuala O’Faolain died Friday at 68 of lung cancer, and my first thought was, “Why didn’t she tell me that she was was sick?!” This was followed quickly with the realization that though I did have a very brief conversation with her in 2005 during the Aspen Summer Words Writers’ Conference, I don’t actually know her. Then I did the next logical thing, which was burst into tears.

Terri Gross played a 2001 interview with her and I cried a bit harder. I’m not sure what it is about her writing that makes readers (some readers; this reader) feel that they not only know her but are good friends, but I suspect it has to do with the honest, unvarnished way she dishes up servings from her life. Hearing her responses on Fresh Air made me feel as if I’d just gotten a phone call from a friend, and so of course that made me cry a little harder.

Other authors I have adored have died, and though I might have a moment of sadness, I generally do not feel compelled to go into a period of mourning or a desire to send the family a floral tribute. But there was something about Nuala that made this feel like MY loss.

Possibly, my reaction is simply because her books are rich and smart and talk about a country that feels like my own home though it is not, and it is sad to know there will be no more of her words. It could be a sadness that so many of her “issues” appear to have gone unresolved. On a personal level, the fact that most of the attendees at Summer Words fell a little in love with her intelligence, wicked wit, and warmth. She did have a way of making you feel you’d known her your whole life, so perhaps that is why I was momentarily annoyed with her for not phoning to say she had terminal lung cancer so I could prepare myself and take her some chicken soup.

I have been drawn again and again to My Dream of You, her novel about a writer at middle age who, while researching a court case during the Famine, discovers more about herself, her country, women of her culture, and humanity than she does about the case’s outcome. The central mystery she tries to solve (aside from the one she is researching), is how a middle aged woman without a husband and, more importantly, without children, defines her purpose. During the Fresh Air interview, she speaks candidly about this, and how what all humans want is some sense of why they were put on this earth. She says to Terri Gross, What am I for?

For most people, the simplest answer (though there may be other answers as well) involves propagating the species, catapulting their own genetics a little further into the future, so in the face of personal annihilation, there is the hope that some little cluster of genes directly connected to them will see the next decade, the next century, etc. And also, there is the day-to-day sense of purpose. If a person has a baby that needs feeding or a five year old who needs reminding not to play in the street or a sixteen year old with a hand out for gas money, there is purpose. It may not be inventing a light bulb (or discovering a cure for the lung cancer), but you have contributed something that should last beyond you. This is a persistent theme in O’Faolain's writing, and even in the interview she gave on RTE just a few weeks before her death she comes back to the issue of what she has NOT done with her life, of who will mourn her, of who will not.

This is, I think, why I briefly considered wearing black today. In a world where women have stronger and more often heard voices than possibly any other time in history, there are not enough voices like this one. I could easily go to a bookstore and find books written by young women wondering about love and what sort of lives they might create for themselves, I can easily find authors who will tell a glamorous Sex and the City version of what it is to be single in their mid-30s. There are more than enough books about what it is to be a mother, both the frustrations and joys at all the different stages. But to find a woman towards the end of middle-age speaking candidly about choices and circumstances she made that affect her daily? It’s hard to come by. And it’s going to be even harder now that one of those few voices have been silenced.

Addendum

Z, ZiMa, and I are in Minnesota, where we met up so she could see the places Z haunted as an undergrad and graduate student, as well as meet his friends. She still seems lovely, still seems to like me, but when we are alone in our room, Z says something like, “I’m afraid I’ve discovered something that will add to your mortification.” It seems the ancient suitcase I loaned ZiMa when hers fell apart, and which Z has used to cart his belongings to Minnesota, had its own secrets. Z can’t be sure if his mother discovered them or not, but in its recesses were some maxi pads, one unwrapped (!) tampon, and two colored condoms that expired in 1999. It’s bad enough that Z knows about the latter items, but his mother! Oh, woe is me.

Z might have kept this information to himself to save me the embarrassment. Obviously, I have no need of expired condoms or unwrapped tampons or pads that were made back when they had the thickness of futons for Barbie dolls. He can’t help himself though. Last year he accidentally read an email from my mother that said something about the two of us together, and the knowledge that he had read it embarrassed me so severely I had to hide myself under my coat as we walked down Madison Avenue in Seattle. It delighted him to see me acting like a schoolgirl, and I know in sharing this information he is just hoping for a repeat performance.

The wages of sin are sometimes paid on the installment plan.

A Hope for Small Mercies

I have a friend whose mother-in-law once judged her harshly for using plastic hangers. Another was called into question for using pre-peeled baby carrots instead of real (dirty) ones. A third friend’s mother-in-law may have hired a private investigator to spy on her, though there is no real way to know. Is it any wonder that I’m a nervous wreck about ZiMa’s recent arrival and all the ways I’m sure she’s going to decide I’m unworthy of her youngest son?

She seemed lovely enough when she got off the plane. She’s very pleasant and happy and kind, and I can see how such a person might have a created someone as excellent as Z. She even seemed like she might sort of like me. But right now she is in my house, sleeping in my Heavenly Bed (she needed a step stool to get into it—frivolous) and so I worry.

Hopefully she is sleeping and not rifling through my drawers where she will no doubt find further evidence proving that this girl is not fabulous enough for her boy, though she probably needn’t open a single drawer. It could be the ratty underpants (slovenliness), a ridiculous number of rings (greed and vanity), a too dusty Bible (general sinfulness), the art hanging on the walls (possible blasphemy), a not well hidden copy of Sex Tips from a Gay Guy to a Straight Girl (sexual immorality), my journals from 1989 through 2006 (all of the above sins plus some others). Who knows what she could uncover. I like to think the appreciation that Z and ZiMa have for Law and Order has more to do with justice being served than mysteries being solved, in which case my secrets are safe. I am of the other school, which explains why, possibly, Z’s drawers were once ransacked when I was trying to unlock the secrets of his heart. With luck, this will not be a karma moment, a do unto others moment where I get paid back for past misdeeds.

I find Al Capone’s epitaph on my lips: My Jesus, mercy.

Every Silver Lining....

There is some sort of Midwestern superstition afflicting me that makes it difficult to enjoy things until I’ve run thru a catalog of all the ways either the thing will be a disappointment, will cause its own set of problems in an each action has an equal and opposite reaction kind of way, or will fall through. I used to think it was some genetic problem of mine but my doctor told me once that he had to learn how to interpret feedback he’d get from his Midwestern patients because they’d never admit to feeling good. Instead, they’d say, “Not too bad today.” He attributed it to farmer superstitions—that a farmer never wants to crow too loudly about how well the crops are doing or how favorable the weather has been because it could all change.

So yesterday when I found out I’d been accepted into a low-residency MFA program it took me awhile to circle around all the potential problems (where will the money come from? how will I juggle my job and this program? how many days of summer love will I lose? what if it wrecks my writing?) before I could venture into a celebratory mood. Every silver lining has a cloud, threatening thunderstorms, has been my motto since birth.

I didn’t realize I was happy until yesterday. Even the sun was shining. One of my students wrote an assessment note on his paper that said it was clear I loved my job and that made the class interesting. (A for him.) M was thrilled when I bequeathed her my little magnetic “Mr. Right” with changeable messages. (My favorie: It’s not your fault; it’s mine. M’s favorite: You look thinner. Have you lost weight?) My own real-life Mr. Right does not need magnets, and I am lucky in that. Even when a postcard I had up about the repealing the Global Gag Order was ripped in two and thrown on the floor by my office door, I felt a certain amount of glee as I taped it together and then taped it to the Bill of Rights so if someone wants to make a political statement with my door flair, they’ll have to shred a document they typically like to cling to when writing tedious papers about gun control. Also, it was the first day since I got the news that Z wasn’t being considered for a job at my school that I’ve released the bitterness and hate.

(Well, most of it. I still reserve the right to glare occasionally at those I hold responsible for this injustice. And if any of them asks after him, I will definitely snort loudly and turn my head.)

Anyhow, that’s the news. I’m still having moments of fear—the first manuscript is due in just over a month and suddenly I feel as if I’ve forgotten how to write—but I think maybe I’ll chose to live in optimism on this one, and not wait for failure and abject misery to rain down.

A Mile in Her Moccasins

By the end of the first day of the conference my new Dansko Professional clogs are scuffed beyond recognition and I’m annoyed. I should be grateful that I found a conference geographically close to Z that work would pay for, but all I can focus on are the angry-looking scuffs across both toes and the fact that I do not want to be listening to anymore motivational speaking about writing, but would rather be back at the gorgeous little almost-beach-front carriage house that Z and I have rented for three nights while I’m at the Whidbey Island Writers Conference. He is back there in relaxi-pants, sitting on the balcony, watching the revelry of Coupeland’s Penn Cove Mussel Festival, and I am stuck with a chirpy woman who pulls plastic swords and giant eyeglasses from a bag and commands me to be a brave and observant conference goer.

I attend conferences alone. I like this. Not being there with friends and colleagues gives me the freedom to be the bad student I am at heart. For instance, on the first day of the conference, I answered work emails while editors and agents talked about what they do and don’t like. I listened to them, but some I had already rejected as having pinched faces or liking only cookbooks, which meant during their talks I was free to do work I should have done before I ever got on the plane headed for the Pacific Northwest. I realize this is the faulty logic my students use when they text during lectures they’ve already decided are beneath them, and it’s probably going to bring a heap of bad karma on my head.

The conference is nice. I’ve been to Aspen’s Summer Words a few times, and since that is the Sundance Film Festival of writing conferences, I am perhaps a bit too judgmental of this one. For instance, I feel mildly annoyed that day one is in a church and that the pastor speaks and that his music minister comes out with a guitar to lead a sing. I’m not anti-church, but I do have a tendency to get mentally oppositional when I’m inside of one. Also, I’m put off by one of two featured speakers, a story teller in a long, multi-colored coat and white gloves, who tells a long story about a grandfather and a grandson and fishing net. I’m bored and lost and feel cynical because I’m a writer but storytellers always seem like they need way more attention than any human person should need.

I’m also critical of the motivational speaker they’ve brought in with a big bag of props to encourage us to be better conference attendees. Also, the older man with braids all over his head. And the woman in the strange teapot-shaped hat. Who ARE these people? Also, what am I supposed to do with the very thin directions I’ve received to the afternoon “chat house,” which is in someone’s actual home—and I imagine it will be a small home with lots of cats and soup-whiff. Would it be wrong to escape so early into a conference that my university has paid for me to attend? Could I maybe justify the positive spin my writing and teaching will take if I get to spend more time with Z? I think about how he stood on the balcony, waving me off this morning, and I just want to be with him. This is not a professional attitude.

I find it mysterious and comforting that despite my aloneness at any conference, I am never alone for long. Somebody, usually someone who is more socially gregarious than I am, finds me after the first session—almost as if we already had an arranged appointment—and then I spend the rest of the day with them, hearing their stories. Frequently, they are people who need an empty vessel to pour their own stories into. Other times, they end up being friends. On the first day when I sit down alone in the cafeteria, I think, “Well, I wonder when she’ll be here.” She has no first name, but I know she’ll come. Sure enough, within two minutes a woman in her thirties and what can only be described as pirate boots, sits down and starts talking. I like her instantly and am happy later when she acts as my navigator to the “chat house” where various writers visit us and chat.

I need a navigator. The house is, apparently located in the back of beyond. Pirate Girl and I drive and drive and drive, and as we drive we speculate about what kind of house we’ve been sent to. At first, we think a bungalow near town, but then the further out we go into the pines, we assume a cabin. And then we turn into a subdivision reminiscent of The Brady Bunch and our romantic hopes are dashed. Between direction announcements, Pirate Girl tells me the story of her life. It’s an interesting one and actually does involve life on sea-going vessels as a ship’s cook. I have no doubt that the book she was pitching at the conference will get picked up and we’ll all be talking about it next year. She and I drive some more and see Tsunami Zone warning signs and finally, our destination: a gorgeous, expensive-looking house with two walls of windows overlooking Puget Sound, a mere three feet away from the house. The waves crash.

We kick off our shoes at the door, and settle in to listen. Erik Larson, the author of one of my favorite non-fiction books—Devil in the White City, is the keynote speaker at this chat house. He is funny and humble and inspiring. He has a house on Whidbey Island, I like the way his jeans and cotton shirt make it seem like he’s just popped in to hang out with us and be friends.

The authors who follow him are fine—one offers depressing information about our prospects of being able to make a living from writing, and another is a resident hippy who has gorgeous illustrated journals and who is living out of the back of her truck. I’m sure they are both lovely people, but the views compete for my attention, the sofa I am sitting on is that kind you get enveloped in, and I’m beginning to champ at the bit to get back to Z. When we are released, Pirate Girl and I cram our feet into our footwear, hop into the car, and follow the Tsunami Escape Route signs to higher ground. We say goodbye when I drop her at her car and promise to meet up the next day, though I’m fairly certain we’ll never see each other again. She is newly pregnant and tired and the temptations of Z coupled with my own rebellious streak will likely mean the few sessions we do attend the next day will not be at the same time. We don’t exchange last names or email, so unless Oprah picks her book and it does become a bestseller, I have no hope of ever talking to Pirate Girl again.

I return to Z and we stroll around the town, have a drink in a bar that promises a clientele of crusty fishermen, and then we go back to our carriage house and play a card game. Z is used to living without electricity and the distractions of the internet or television. I, on the other hand, have to warm to our low-tech evening. I’ve been plugged in too long.

At some point between the chat house and going to bed, I come to a horrible realization: the shoes on my feet do not belong to me. They are black. They are Danskos. They are the correct size. But they wobble the wrong way. My feet slip in them more than they should. Also, there is no way my new pair of shoes could be so scuffed and worn.

I’m horrified. There is something so inherently personal about shoes that I am as icked out as if I’d accidentally come home in someone else’s underpants. I begin to obsess about how I can get my pristine new shoes back and then my thoughts turn dark and I harbor paranoid thoughts about the person who stole my shoes. My money is on the woman living in the truck. Clearly her shoes have been on her feet for a decade and the temptations of a new pair were too much to resist. I even, momentarily, blame Pirate Girl for distracting me at a crucial shoe-collecting moment from my own footwear because of my fascination with her boots. This is irrational. I was likely the culprit. I live in a land where no one wears comfortable Danish shoes, and I probably jammed my feet into the first pair of Danskos available.

Z tries to console me. They are just shoes. Nobody is going to keep a pair of shoes that are not their own, he says. I can collect mine the next day. Somehow, his words soothe me.

Only the next day, no one has returned my shoes. Because Z had me convinced, I’ve worn the offending clogs so sure am I that I can make an easy trade at the reception desk. I have even imagined the laughter I will share with the other person as we slip out of each other’s shoes and into our own. Instead, I feel a little dirty as I sit in someone else's shoes, dejectedly listening to Christopher Vogler’s talk on the writer and the hero’s journey. Suddenly, I begin to wonder what journey my shoes are now on. Somehow, it is this idea—my shoes not as things but as entities with a their own life—that suddenly makes this mishap okay. In fact, I start to suspect the shoes are going to be living a more interesting life than I could ever have given them. I even kind of hope they are living with the woman in the truck.