Today, as yesterday, the day before, and the day before that, I’m on hold.
It’s not a good kind of hold, where you wait for your best friend to come over, your children to visit, or your new puppy to stop chewing the furniture (it WILL happen, right???)
It’s closer to the kind of hold where toilets overflow, your husband gets stuck at the airport, and there’s no food in the house.
But it’s closest to fear, to possible loss, to an unwelcome “change in schedule” that you can’t undo.
I’m not a stranger to cancer, having worked my way through that nightmare ten years ago and I’m in no way inviting it back. But I’m dealing with a suspended moment in time, and in several days, my life will either remain cancer-free and open to (almost) endless possibilities, or … well I can’t say it. I don’t want to say it.
To be blatantly honest, cancer fucking sucks. I’ve lived it, I’ve watched friends live it, and I’ve watched friends die from it. It fucking sucks, period.
Waiting sucks too, BUT … … … it does give you time to reassess your life, and that’s no small gift. I’ll admit that I’m currently in pain from an ungodly tryst with a masochistic female doctor who felt the need to burn off every uterine particle with an 18 inch fire stick while I literally screamed in agony for 10 solid minutes until I almost lost consciousness and whom I will never, ever, ever use again, BUT … … … there is still the presence of time, the gift of awareness, the opportunity to reassess, relive, re-love, and renew. Only the timeline is missing.
In truth the timeline is always missing, and always a surprise, and always (almost) too soon.
There’s a woman sitting near me, and she’s gorgeous. Low suede boots, a forever-long black dress with tortoise shell buttons down the front, suede purse with a very long strap, and a topknot of lovely red hair. She’s chatting with another equally lovely though less bedecked woman, but I’m unaware of the words they exchange. They seem to be friends, and yet each is carrying a slightly irritated humor throughout their time together.
I’m glad I’m not with them. In just this glance, they feel Heavy. Burdened. Tired, and I feel myself coming perilously close to gulping their attitudes into my own. I’m glad when they stand and walk away in thinly veiled versions of themselves.
Thinly is an odd word, and yet so appropriate.
THinlē, adverb. In a way that creates a thin piece or layer of something; “thinly sliced potatoes.”
THinlē, adverb. With little flesh or fat on the body; “he was tall and thinly built.”
THinlē, adverb. Minimally interacting with life; “she was thinly present.” (my addition)
I love to watch. Or … I love to watch, in theory.
In reality, most people are far too heavy for me — or you — to carry around in either our brains or hearts, and this is good to remember.
Today, or maybe every day, I can’t help thinking how so much of life is about the choices we make — and those that are made for us — sometimes by our allowing and other times in spite of our kicking and screaming. I can’t help wondering how our choices combine to make us who we are. What would you have done, and who would you be, if life — in all its incarnations — had not interfered? Who would I be? Would I still make art if I had grown up like other little girls? Would I write if I hadn’t been too shy to speak? Would I have danced if I had been good at kickball? Would I be a mosaicist if drawing came naturally to me? Am I a laundry list of second choices, or was I blind to a deeper truth for too many years?
Have my choices been internal or external? Of me, despite me, or not me at all? And the choices I make for 2023, now that I’m old(er) and (wise)er, will my choices be more on target, or have I learned to settle? Will I wish for more of the same because my life is blessed, or does my spirit still long to blaze a trail?
I’ve never been called spontaneous, and I’m tickled pink to love what I love. I’m happy to eat the same cereal every morning, wear the same leggings, and walk the same well worn streets (of Rome, preferably).
But in the minutiae of life, I confess that I have a special affection for the unexpected — the tarnish on the bling, the twisted touching skirts with the sublime. Our time on earth is so very much not a one-note dance, and I love the barely-noticed reminders of LIFE where we seldom think to look. And so it’s a no-brainer that I will select at least a bit of the everyday to tell my story through mosaic.
And of course here’s the thing: I like to think that my choices in art, as my choices in life, are intensely deliberate. But 90% of the time it’s the deliberate choices that I end up tossing into the bin, and the seemingly random finds that grab my heart. It’s almost as if my presence on this earth is not only arbitrary, but completely unnecessary — as if the “I” that I so carefully cultivate is no more than a worker bee robot for someone else’s fresher ideas, clearer vision, spot-on choices.
And so I end 2022 much the same as I started it — working, dreaming, becoming, creating, loving, encouraging, choosing — and wondering how much of my life has to do with me, and how much of it could have been the guy down the street.
But I’m learning one thing: in the end, it probably doesn’t matter. Maybe being the vehicle is a cool enough ride.
Sure, they melt in your mouth. Sure, every layer is laced with butter. Sure, it’s really, really, really GOOD butter. Sure, it’s a three-day process with 27 layers. But no matter how delicious the authentic Parisian croissant may be (and trust me, it is), you might be surprised at how much more — so much more — there is to do in Paris.
Why does a long, dark rain in North Carolina make me feel like I might as well take a pass on the day — lolling about in a giant white cotton sleep shirt, sipping tea, and considering dreams in the grayness passing by my window just a bit too slowly. Is this punishment for a day wasted last week? A gift of possibility following too many days of work? A Dream Machine that fell out of that last cloud and into my lap? Let’s go with Dream Machine. Today I’ve decided to do something rather impractical and guaranteed to cure the blahs.
Don’t laugh, but I’m going to plan my dream day.
I’ll wake with the sunrise (again, no laughing) in Paris, stretching like a cat who hasn’t yet caught a whiff of the mouse, rustle around for some French yogurt, and sip a cup of tea at my windowsill facing Rue du Pré aux Clercs. After a quick shower, I’ll stroll over to Rue de Raspail, a delightful market so crammed with gorgeous edibles that you could walk through and fill your basket blindfolded and still return home with with the makings of a fabulously fresh, flavorful and delicately presented feast. But let’s pass on the blindfold because you’ll want to see it all, including the French babies. French babies rock. The jury’s split on French dogs.
Veggies grabbed and stashed in my flat, I’m off across the Seine to the Right Bank in search of the Marais Dance School, nestled into the upper floors of a 17th century building on a delightful square. And co-ed changing rooms, because of course it’s France and the bodies are beautiful and no one feels the need to hide them. Since my toes last eased into ballet slippers a few decades ago, I’ll choose the beginner class and have at it with the gusto of a spring robin, hitting every plié, relevé, and glissé with a smile on my face bigger than my wealth of accrued blisters. Who cares about blisters?
I’ll still leave feeling as if I’ve conquered the world — in Paris — wearing tights — Ka-Ching!.
I’ll be hyped, heady and ready for Act 2, and the walk to my next adventure feels great. Here I’m trading movement for a more tactile eroticism — clay. My tutor, a graduate in both fine arts and Beaux-Arts, will take the reins and delightfully overwhelm me with more types of clay than I ever knew existed. That’s a good thing, right? I’ve tried clay in the past, with rather grisly results, but this time, right????? Because it’s Paris! I work it like nobody’s business, but at the end of the day, I still suck at clay (and that’s okay). I’ve met new friends, laughed more than most, and shaken off a lot of new-student anxiety. I’m calling it a win.
After a couple of hours strolling The Seine and my favorite Gothic gorgeousness Sainte-Chapelle, and my hunger for all things French points me back toward the Left Bank. No one has ever tacked a Best Cook Ever sign to my forehead, but neither am I the worst, and surely a late afternoon dedicated to faire la cuisine is just what I need, crave, hunger for. Drooling with lust, I haul it over to LeFoodist, where I’ll learn to make the most perfect, most exquisite, most shockingly life-changing baguette known to woman. But first I need an address and, no surprise, it’s smack between two of my favorite Paris haunts, Île Saint Louis and Le Jardin du Luxembourg — a very good sign indeed.
How does it go?
Okay, so it turns out that a true French croissant is no easy roll in the hay, but it really does change your life, not only because it’s a previously un-imagined wonder, but because it’s literally possible to make it yourself … if you really love baking, layering, experimenting, buttering, perfect measurements, and starting over. All part of the fun, right? When you’re in Paris, absolutely.
My imaginary day is one I’ll visit again and again when I’m feeling a little dreamy. Every moment teaches. Every moment inspires. And no matter the magnificence of my French experiences, the best of them will always, always, include the croissant.
———-
Disclaimer: The locations listed are accurate and currently operating as of this post and are well-respected businesses I look forward to visiting. At this writing, I haven’t yet had the pleasure, so no, they’re not yet legitimate recommendations. Emphasis on Yet. But I can promise you I’m headed that way.
Portrait of the French novelist Marcel Proust. 1890s (Photo by Mondadori via Getty Images)
You know how when you’re gone for a time, and possibly only for a week, and still you come home to the place you’ve known forever but then for a moment, that brief flash, you can’t immediately locate even the possessions that you use most often and that have been been kept in the same place for years (!!!)?
At first it’s a little disorienting and maybe fleetingly irritating, but in the end, isn’t it really pretty cool to know that only a few days of new input can shift your view, your rote, your same-old so quickly and so completely as to momentarily obliterate even what you know best?
It all comes back of course. But suppose we make the conscious decision not to rush back to what we know, but instead to embrace the shake-up and simply reinvent, quite spontaneously? I’m not talking drastic life changes, but where’s the harm in trying on a new hat now and then?
I’m quick to claim that I’m very much my own person — who I am is who I am, and re-invention seems — well, why? But the truth is that, like most of us, I’ve reinvented many, many times — often quite spontaneously and totally without prior consideration. Each time it was a seamless transition to a place I was meant to be.
I found a good hearing aid and started having conversations. With people. A lot. I was 49, and after 49 years of smiling and trying to fit into various boxes, I was suddenly and rather effortlessly a part of the world. I walked past a trashed little space on a good street with a “for rent” sign and immediately knew it was waiting for me to reinvent as an art studio. I had no experience setting up or running an art studio, but it worked and I did it with joy for 13 years. On a whim. I just knew.
We all know. We don’t all act.
Marcel Proust (otherwise known as Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust) wrote a monumental seven volume novel over a period of 14 years with the distinction of having written the longest novel in the world. If you’re wondering, it’s À la Recherche du Temps Perdu (In Search of Lost Time), filled with a whopping 1,267,069 words and twice as robust as War and Peace. But maybe that’s to be expected in a man with six flowery names, the first of which is Valentin. Considered one of the most influential writers of the 20th century, I’m not about to question his judgement.
But I wonder … did he plan this abrupt life alteration, or did it just appear to him and he grabbed it?
I’m beginning to believe that the life we meticulously plan is rarely our true life. I’m beginning to believe that we don’t give ourselves enough credit — we don’t aspire past what we consider our limits; we don’t reach as far as our arms were meant to. We barely know ourselves.
So take the trip, physically or metaphorically but preferably alone, and see where it leads you. Pretty sure you’ll be surprised. And you’ll be home. (Maybe in Paris)
It’s a cloudy, drizzly Sunday, and there are 30 people in the check-out line at Barnes and Noble. There are 12 in the cafe/caffeine line. I head for the second, mostly because I perused (and occasionally bought) everything in the first line a few weeks ago.
One of those heavy gray days with crows flying about, and the sky so wet that dribbles of moisture keep sliding down the sides of me like a cold bath. It’s dreary, and no one looks quite normal as they hunch this way or that trying to ward off discomfort.
The young girl across from me sits in the cafe section by way of the cash register section, and the belongings that cover her small table and quite a bit of the floor include giftwrap (a roll of gold and a roll of white with gold stars), a furry stuffed cat (orange), a science kit on Climate Control, nine record albums whose titles are sadly just beyond my view, a black purse, Monopoly (with Hello Kitty gracing the box), and two hefty hardcover books. The girl is midway through an even heftier paperback. I like her.
Every person in the cafe is wearing black on at least half of their body, with the exception of one girl wearing pajamas.
I got here just before the crowd. I get here every day just before the crowd, no matter what time I arrive. I’m lucky that way. I love bookstores, probably because they’re filled with minimally comfortable humans making their way in a world that generally includes few and excludes many, most of whom love to read.
I used to read. I pulled back when so many novels suddenly became harder to handle, and indeed happy books seem not to be in style these days. There were decades when I could handle the murders and loss, mostly because there was always a happy enough ending, and of course the good girl or good guy in charge of it all always saved the day. Now just as often, the good guy dies. Realism, they call it. It’s the third Saturday before Christmas. I’m in no mood for murders. Or much realism, for that matter. When I started writing, I devoured books until they began to hurt — when books came too close to reality.
So now I write. Growing up, I had no use for fiction and was all about truth and evolution, or as close as you can get from a carefully selected book chosen at least partially because you liked the cover. I still tiptoe around fiction a bit, but I love the process and the character creation. Those girls live with me always.
I envy the girl with the hefty book and the orange cat. I miss the days when I could read a slightly disturbing book, find the silver lining, and move on with a bit of new understanding enlightening my brain.
I’m not sure why I call this “cleaning day” when in fact it’s been 9.2 days of non-stop rip-everything-from-the-closets-the-kitchen-and-any-room-in-my-way-and-strew-it-all-over-the-bed (step 1), sort it (step 2), wash everything in the house (step 3), sort it again because my priority list has changed (step 4), fold the giveaways (dear god, please let there be many) (step 5), hang the keepers (step 6), repeat.
Yeah I’m a keeper kinda girl. I get attached to stuff, and not only the stuff but the memories that tag along. If there’s any sentiment attached, I’m keeping it. I understand that stuff is just stuff, but is it really? Because I have a really long memory.
And now, quite surprisingly, the day has come when it seems I really DON’T need that, and instead I have a sudden gasping urge to throw it all out, and by that I mean carefully consider each piece (can I wriggle into it?), judge the need (gasp), and evaluate the style (just because I wore it with glee in the 70’s doesn’t necessarily mean it’s still swoon-worthy (but of course it is)).
And then there’s the rest of the process. Clothes are one thing — the kitchen is another. Let’s just say there’s no real personal attachment to mixing bowls and platters. If it’s living in my kitchen, it’s not only easier to toss psychologically, but physically. I can cram five dresses into the space reserved for one, but a can’t really smush metal racks together.
But of course even in the kitchen, the place farthest away from my lifelong love affairs, there are must-keeps. Even if I stopped cooking at least a decade ago, I can’t toss the potato masher that my grandmother used throughout her entire life, which was long, or the blue tray that my mom pulled out so often that it’s frayed at every age, the wooden trivet that my dad hand-carved, my son’s inherited porcelain baby dish complete with a water reservoir to keep his pureed sweat potato at just the right temperature, or my daughter’s delightfully hand-scribbled notes to let me know each feeling that passed through her days youthful.
And so it goes. We buy, we use, we become attached. We fall in love with things because they’re so much more than things. They are our lives kept in drawers and used for a lifetime.
Women are a sentimental brood, and I consider it one of our best features.
This one I kept. I have no idea what it is, but it will always hang in my kitchen. Imperfection = beauty.
Last night we walked across the quiet street in the almost-dark and settled onto the dock to watch the mullets jump. I can promise you with all my heart, fingers, and toes that these are words I’ve never said before, and also that even as a beach girl, I have no clue what a mullet looks like. I DO know that they’re out in force in the dark, twisting and flashing across the night, sometimes solo and other times in groups large enough to turn every head on the docks.
Or in some cases, gigantic splashes from a passing school that wants to show off their sass and leap all at once in a shimmery flicker.
I don’t know. There’s something rather Deliverance-y about this story, but totally without the pig parts. Lots of stars, lots of dark, lots of magical splashing, lots of howling laughter.
And then I stepped a bit to one side and there — standing in mud up to his ankles with a look of quiet, intense focus and surrounded by a bevy of laughing, midnight beauties, I suddenly saw him — a huge blue heron just standing there waiting to pounce.
As far as I could tell, he never did manage to grab a late dinner, and as we walked away, he was suddenly nowhere to be found. But we shared a moment in the night, even though I’m not sure he enjoyed it as much as we did.
I can tell you this, though — we’ll be back.
Addendum: We did return — same dock, same night filled with stars — and not a single mullet, not a single splash, not a single heron.
Yes, I’m “home” — wriggling my toes into the warm, soft sand, rejoicing as each wave curls and arcs and reaches and throws herself, once again, onto the land. Watching the legs, whether long and stick-like or almost invisible, of miscellaneous creatures that call both land and sea “home.” We are each one of them in mysterious ways, don’t you think?
But mostly, I’m a total captive to the wind. No city air can compete with the endless and ever-present breeze that brings her bounty across the sea and takes me whole.
I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Pawleys is one of our staples at Wild Hair Adventures (girl trips!), and I have no doubt that our significant others would be surprised to get a peak at what we do. We create, we talk about the things that we’ve discovered in life, we cook, we eat, we dance (sometimes wildly), we watch the seemingly endless motion of swaying sea oats sending down their roots to stabilize the land, and we take lots and lots and lots of pictures. Yesterday I watched cranes catching fish with their big scoopy bills, seiners casting nets again and again and again, and night fishermen settled into the dark in peace and solitude.
But mostly, we breathe. We breathe the salt air. We breathe roadside flowers. We breathe the marsh grasses. We breathe the colors of sunsets. We breathe in time and love and space, and it fills us with everything good in life.
I think I was born with sand between my toes, and it has nourished me well.
I’m not a clean freak. Never have been and never will be, because there’s way too much to grab and enjoy in this life. But some little switch flipped itself in the past couple of weeks and all hell has broken loose. I can’t stop cleaning.
So far I’ve emptied, considered, purged or kept with a stronger hand that I ever thought possible. I’ve gone through everything that comes under the heading of “what happens when you inherit from both sides of the family, their spouses, their parents, their children, their children’s children, nieces, nephews, visitors, and a dog or two. Kidding about the dog, but we now have a GoodSized GoodWill pile, all of which I washed today.
Sterling candle snuffer well over a foot long, statuette of a cherub riding a dolphin, miniscule ashtrays, a lovely blue cut-glass boat headed by a cherub and two oars she could never handle on her own, a globulous set of pewter cream and sugar servers that appear to be posing as five inch tomatoes (and still have decades, and I mean DECADES, of sugar inside them, a sterling bed warmer (honestly, how old could that be???), and 175ish sterling baby spoons marked with happy slogans from travels around the world. Yes, you read this correctly. It’s interesting learning the guts and bones of your families, isn’t it?
And then I cleaned out the no-man’s land under the sink and found all kinds of treasure, which I tossed anyway, mostly because it comes under the heading of Very Old. I did however, keep a dried up tub of Wrights Silver Polish, which I was able to re-hydrate, primarily because I used to date Mr. Wright, who was not at all dried up at the time.
In the happiness category, I came across an old dress which had once been floor-length with a looong ruffle at the bottom. I had (some decades ago) whacked it off a bit below the knee and placed pins for hemming and then tucked it away for another day, which was apparently this day. I’m not quite sure how I got that side zipper closed, but I did, and I proudly wore the dress for most of today, AND soon I’ll be raising it up to well-above-the-knee level and flaunting it. You gotta make cleaning fun, right?
And then I decided to tackle the 12 sheets of 2” thick PINK insulation foam that I had leftover and which has graced our living room for the past year. Sigh. I did well for the first 10 sheets, but then my ankle (also known as styrofoam-snapper) rebelled just as Vernon walked in the door to hear my scream. It’s not broken, but now it’s looking at me with that I’M DONE FOR TODAY kinda look. And yeah, maybe I am.
Pam Goode Writes 