Queens and ladies in waiting

I started writing this months ago, and then found it in my pile of unfinished drafts. I'm working on my annual book review post, so I decided to finish this so I could include it. So "last month" was actually about eight months ago. And the book club met only one other time, when I was away on vacation. I don't know if we'll resume again next year. But I will still be reading.

*****

When I was in sixth grade at St. John the Baptist parish school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, I had to write an autobiography. This was our English class's big project. Our teacher, Sister St. Bernard (yes, that was her name--don't look at me) talked about the project all the time, pronouncing every syllable of auto-bi-o-graph-eee. Because it was 1977, we wrote our autobiographies by hand, and then cut and pasted (literally, with scissors and paper and paste) individual paragraphs onto multicolored construction paper, adding photographs and drawings and scrapbook elements--birthday invitations and birth announcements and tickets. We drew the cover art with Bic Banana magic markers. The finished products were about 1/2 an inch thick, bound with those old-fashioned brass rivets that you'd poke through paper and spread open on the other side. We passed them around and read passages aloud, and displayed them at parents' night.

Q: What was better than a brand-new package of Bic Bananas?
A: Nothing

Last month, I was invited to join a book club, so I went. It was fun. I belonged to a book club about 20 years ago, when book clubs were first popular. Oprah, I guess. That book club dissolved after a few meetings, and I never joined another one, until now.

My new book club read Michelle Obama's autobiography, Becoming. It's like a professionally edited and produced and beautifully written version of our sixth-grade autobiographies, with a much more interesting subject. And that is not a criticism, just a comment on the very big difference between an autobiography and a memoir. I've read lots of memoirs, but not many autobiographies. Unlike a memoir, Becoming is a true autobiography that begins at the beginning and proceeds in an orderly fashion through the middle, winding up with the present day. It's very neat, orderly, and straightforward, much like its author.

That's not to say that there's no introspection or reflection. Michelle Obama knows herself very well, and she analyzes events and patterns in her life through the lens of her own personality traits--her drive and ambition, her need for order and control, her private and introverted nature. But she focuses much more on the facts--the things that happened, and when and how.

Michelle Obama is almost six feet tall, flawlessly beautiful and stylish, and Ivy League-educated; but to my surprise, I found that I actually have a lot in common with her. She grew up in a blue-collar city neighborhood, the daughter of working-class parents, and so did I. She spent over an hour on public transportation, morning and afternoon, every day, becoming familiar with her city during long bus rides to her magnet high school, and so did I. Like me, she craves order and control and routine, all of which she had to give up when her husband ascended to the highest level of achievement in American politics.

*****

After Becoming, I read Sally Bedell Smith's Elizabeth the Queen. Just as an autobiography is very different from a memoir, a biography is very different from an autobiography. The Queen is very unlikely to write either a memoir or an autobiography, so we have to depend on others to figure out her story and write it down. Because she is one of the most interesting people who ever lived, there is no shortage of people willing to do the job.

Sadly, I have nothing in common with Queen Elizabeth II. Few people do, not even Michelle Obama. Mrs. Obama is one of the most famous women in the world, but fame is not the same as history and noteworthiness is not the same as greatness.

*****
The Queen doesn't talk about her feelings. Michelle Obama does, and so do I, though I wish I didn't. I wish I could claim to be a person who sets aside her own personal feelings and just gets on with things. Of course, then I wouldn't have a blog, would I? Queen Elizabeth II has biographers and royal secretaries and Hello magazine writers; and there's plenty of documentation about what she does and where she goes and what she says, but almost none at all about how or what she feels. She seems to like it that way.

*****
2019: Not a good year for QEII. Lots of analysts are comparing it to her famous "Annus Horribilis" of 1992. Given the Royal Family's many failures to live up to the high standards that it has established for itself, it's easy to wonder why people (like me) continue to love and admire Her Majesty, and to believe in her commitment to a lifetime of service to others. Because no matter how many people serve her in whatever capacity from cleaning the royal residences to caring for the royal horses to managing her correspondence and her schedule and her wardrobe, there's no doubt that she also has served, sometimes at great personal cost.

A First Lady, like Michelle Obama (even like poor Melania Trump) also serves, whether she wants to or not. Unlike the Queen, though, an American First Lady always has an out. Her husband will either lose his re-election bid (hope springs eternal, but I'm afraid that we're in for a second term with Melania and her husband) or his second term will end and he'll begin his Constitutionally mandated retirement, bringing his wife with him. They're ladies in waiting, biding their time until this temporary state ends and they can resume their regular, normal lives; or whatever passes for regular and normal once you have lifetime Secret Service protection. Like Queen Elizabeth, Michelle Obama would have preferred a private life, but she rose to the occasion with admirable aplomb, served her fellow Americans for eight years, and then moved on. She was the 11th woman to fulfill that role during Queen Elizabeth's monarchy, now the longest in English history, and Her Majesty keeps on keeping on. God save the Queen.

Boxing Day and other holidays

It’s 8:30 AM on Christmas Eve. I’m the only person awake in the house, and I’m sitting on the couch watching “White Christmas,” the first picture in VistaVision, whatever that is or was. If you watch “White Christmas” just to hear Bing Crosby sing the song, then know that he sings it about three minutes into the movie, so you don’t have to wait. Bing, however, isn’t my favorite thing about “White Christmas.” Rosemary Clooney is. She was 26 when the movie was filmed. Bing Crosby, who was her love interest, was 51. Some things never change.

Last night, we watched “Elf” with my 6-year-old nephew and my 3-year-old niece. They had never seen it before. My niece chattered and played and ran around the house for most of the evening, but her brother watched the movie, laughing uproariously at the pratfalls and punches. After every slapstick moment, he would ask “Wait--was that the funniest part?” and we would tell him “Oh no--it just keeps getting funnier.” And it does. “It’s a Wonderful Life” remains my favorite-ever Christmas movie, but “Elf” is a close number two. Will Ferrell should have been nominated for an Oscar for “Elf,” and he should have won.

*****
OK, it’s almost 9 o’clock now. Bing, Rosemary, Danny, and Vera-Ellen just sang “Snow” on the train, and I need to get off the couch, get dressed, and get started. I have a holiday to make.

****
It's Christmas now, 6:30 PM, and I'm sitting in the family room again surrounded by family, presents, and far too much food. So much work and preparation for a single day that is over in a veritable minute. It's worth it, but it’s a mess up in here right now. Writing about it is easier than cleaning it up.

It’s a little later now, and we've just finished phase 1 of the cleanup operation. All of the wrapping paper is in the fireplace, and the food is mostly cleaned up and stored. Most of the dishes are clean. The floors are still dirty and every surface in the house is piled with stuff - - clean dishes and boxes and tins of cookies and treats and presents and half-empty bottles of wine. During phase 2, I'll clean the floors and figure out what to do with all of the holiday debris and detritus but for now, I'll rest again for a few minutes. If I keep looking at my screen, then I can't see the clutter.

*****
My husband and son are playing NBA 2K20 while my 6-year-old nephew watches, peppering them with questions. "Who's winning? Who's number 36? How do you shoot? Who's winning now?" My older son is half watching them, too, looking up from his book every few minutes to talk trash to his father. My sister-in-law is also reading, and my 3-year-old niece is playing with her new Elsa and Anna dolls. She wanders around the room every so often to see if she can wheedle any more cookies or chocolate out of any of us. Poor child is out of luck. Sanctions have been imposed, and we are all observing the terms of the embargo. But there's plenty of treats left, and tomorrow is another day. Christmas is almost over, but Christmas vacation is just getting started.

*****

Marsden Hartley's Berlin Abstraction at the
National Gallery's American Art 1900 - 1950
exhibit. I've always liked this painting. 

It’s December 26 now. The British are on to something. They know that December 26 is a holiday all its own. I love December 26. I love walking around DC visiting museums and drinking a soda or a coffee from a street vendor, taking pictures of the Capitol and the various Christmas trees that vie for the title of national Christmas tree and smiling at the other happy families enjoying holiday outings with their teenage children. We're in the car on our way home, where we'll watch a movie, or maybe a basketball game. Maybe we'll make popcorn. Maybe I'll take a nap. There are leftovers in the refrigerator for anyone who needs to eat. Other than leftovers, the kitchen is closed today. In a week, I'll be back at work and back to my normal industrious habits. For this week, I don't even have a to-do list. And that means that I don't have anything to do. Even the floors are clean now.

Solstice

Saturday December 21, 4:55 PM, and just a few minutes of thin winter daylight before dark. As much as I hate winter, I never get tired of the late afternoon sky in December. That's the thing. You can't have the late afternoon December sky without having late December. I think it's the winter solstice today. Isn't it? I don't know. I don't know.

We're on our way to a Christmas party. The hosts of the Christmas party that we used to go to every year decided not to hold their party any more but now we're invited to a new Christmas party, and maybe this one will become a new annual tradition. Or maybe not. The Lord giveth and He taketh away, and that includes parties. Even parties.

*****
Wait, maybe the other party is still happening and we're just not invited.

Ridiculous. Who wouldn't want us at a party? We're delightful.

*****

Five minutes later, and it's no longer afternoon at all. It's early evening, and the dark blue sky grows darker by the moment. It's clear but I still can't see the stars. We're too close to the city. But the bare trees are still almost black against the dark blue and I can still see the last of the orange light of the sunset. It's nice to be a passenger.

*****
It's Sunday now, and I was right yesterday. It was the winter solstice. Apparently many hundreds of people gathered at Stonehenge to celebrate. I think that paganism is dangerous at worst and silly at best, but I certainly share the Stonehenge congregants' enthusiasm for gradually lengthening days now that the longest night of the year is behind us.

*****
My husband and I just had one of our periodic discussions about plans and schedules. Christmas falls on the same day every year, no matter what, and yet he continues to act surprised - - astonished even - - when I tell him that we have plans for the 24th or the 26th that will preclude work. Every year.

When I remind him that he was supposed to take vacation for the Christmas to New Year interval, he manifests shock and dismay, asking me how I expect him to take all of those weeks off. And then I have to point to the nearest calendar, which shows that Christmas is on December 25 (every year) and that New Year's Day is on January 1 (every year); and that there is always, without exception, exactly one week between the two. One week. An ever-fixed mark. Sunrise, sunset, equinox, solstice, seasons changing with the scenery, and one week. We're all straight on this immutable fact now, but stick around, because I'll be writing the very same post again next year.

*****
December 23; Christmas Adam as we like to call it around her because tomorrow’s Christmas Eve and Adam came before Eve. You probably knew that. My husband cleared his schedule and I made one very last trip to the store only to remember that I am almost out of white wine. So I’ll drink red, or I’ll drink water, but I’m not entering a retail establishment again until after Christmas.

It’s late afternoon again, warmer than normal for Christmas. But what’s normal? In 2015, the temperatures reached the mid 70s on Christmas Day. This is actually my favorite kind of Christmas weather: mildly chilly, a clear but not bright blue sky, thin white sunlight, and almost no wind.

Donald Trump doesn’t understand wind, but I do. It blows, hard. See that? I’m not even a scientist.

I worked from home today. Working from home is a blessing and a curse. The curse part is because sometimes you don’t know when to stop working; and the line between life and work, such as it is, becomes so blurred as to not even exist. So I solved that problem with the out-of-sight, out-of-mind approach. Both of my work computers (because of course I have two) are sitting quietly in a blanket chest in my bedroom, where they can’t bother anyone. My work phone is in my work bag, which is in my closet, there to stay until next week. It’s time to stop working and start holidaying, because it’s two days before Christmas. It always comes at the same time, every year.

Food for the soul

A few days ago, I was looking for a recipe. I couldn't find exactly what I was looking for so I decided to experiment a bit, using the Instant Pot, to see if I could duplicate (or at least approximate) the dish I was trying to make. The thing that I made turned out OK. Not quite what I was looking for (in fact, not even really close), but pretty good on its own.

*****

What was I trying to make? I'm glad you asked that question, non-existent reader. I was trying to make a homemade version of College Inn Chicken and Noodles, a food that people over 45 or so remember with great fondness; and that people younger than 45 or so don't remember at all. 

For those of you who have never had College Inn Chicken and Noodles, it was a heat-and-serve hybrid soup-stew that came in a glass jar. Every supermarket sold College Inn Chicken and Noodles. It was one of my very favorite childhood foods. 

I hadn't thought about this food for many years, but then I had a sudden craving for it. It's no longer sold in stores, but I looked it up online, wondering if Amazon or some other online grocer might offer it. I didn't find any chicken and noodles. What I did find was an Internet rabbit hole of 70s nostalgia focused specifically on food.

If you look at old cookbooks, then you'll see very clear documentation of the changing tide of food trends through the decades. Recipes for things that people ate in the 60s and 70s (Beef Stroganoff, City Chicken, Salisbury Steak, fancy Jello molds) have pretty much vanished from modern cookbooks, except for the occasional retro/mid-century cookbook or blog, which will either modify the recipe for modern, health-conscious palates; or print it in its original form (perhaps even reproducing the Good Housekeeping layout and type style ) with "can you believe that people ate this" commentary.

And that's OK, because things change. Fashions change, tastes change. I don't even like most of the popular foods of the 70s (pimento loaf--gross), but sometimes I want to look at a street that I used to walk down as a child, or eat a soup that I used to love, just to see if they're as I remember them.

*****
I never did find the College Inn Chicken and Noodles. But I found a message board, which I won't link to because some people will post dirty stories even on a soup forum. Weirdos. Anyway,  smut notwithstanding, the message board was mostly a gathering place for comfort food nostalgia. Aside from College Inn (the most popular topic) the commenters also remembered chicken a la king and boil-in-bag sliced turkey and gravy, both of which were often served over toast. Apparently, lots of people also ate College Inn Chicken and Noodles over toast, too. I'm not sure why we never thought of this. A missed opportunity.

*****
One man wrote a several-paragraphs-long post. He grew up as the youngest of three children, with two much-older sisters who were already in high school when he started school. His school had a half-day every Wednesday and he had lunch with his mother at home on those half-days. The boy and his mother would eat bowls of College Inn or slices of frozen pizza while watching the mid-day news, followed by the mother's favorite soap opera. He wrote about how much he loved those Wednesday afternoons, and the time alone with his mother, who died of cancer when the man was in 6th grade. By then, his older sisters had grown up and moved out of the house, and his father worked until 5, so the young boy came home to an empty house every day. On Wednesday afternoons, he would heat up a jar of College Inn, turn on the news, and eat his lunch in front of the TV, watching the midday news and his mother's favorite soap opera.

I was sad for this poor little boy, so lonely for his mother that he clung to the Wednesday afternoon routine of lunch in front of a soap opera, because it made him miss her a little less.

*****
It's Friday night now, the Friday before Christmas. My older son, a college student and lifeguard at a county aquatic center, is at work; as is my husband, a police officer. My younger son, a freshman in high school, is often out with his friends on Saturdays, but he usually stays at home on Friday nights. We go out for dinner together, or we get takeout; and then we watch hockey or movies. It's become our routine, and these Friday nights are the highlight of my week.

My son is making cookie dough now. Inexplicably, he loves to make cookies. I say "inexplicable," because I hate to make cookies. But one way or another, cookies will be made this weekend because it's the weekend before Christmas and at our house, we always make cookies on the weekend before Christmas. And at Christmas, my son insists that we do what we have always done. There's no one more nostalgic than a teenager at Christmas.

I wrote most of this months ago. The "few days" that I refer to in the opening paragraph probably happened last February or March. I found it as I was digging through my piles of unfinished drafts, and it seemed appropriate for today. There are cookies in the oven and the Capitals are beating New Jersey. Merry Christmas. 

Soon and very soon

It's a Saturday in December so I must be at a high school swim meet, and here I am. I don't usually get too hot but an indoor swim center is no place for a long skirt and sweater and boots so I'm roasting. It's fine. It's character building.

I don't have a job today because I came here halfway through the meet, directly from a funeral. Hence the skirt and sweater and boots, which are not my usual swim meet attire. It's midway through the boys' 500 yard freestyle, so I have time to write as the boys finish the distance race and then the girls swim the 500. When I am the referee or starter, I have to watch this race carefully, counting laps so we know when to ring the bell, but I'm a spectator today, so I can slack a bit.

*****
I should have brought flip flops with me.

*****
It’s a few days later now; Tuesday to be exact. It’s 7 in the morning and I have to leave for work soon but we have dinner plans tonight and this is the only time that I have to write. I was trying to finish a book review of a novel that I just finished reading, but I doubt that I’ll ever finish writing the review. I read faster than I write so I won’t get to write about every book that I read this year. I don’t think it matters. Writing every day has become a compulsion-driven to-do list item that I have to check off the list no matter what, and only about a third of what I churn out as I stand in front of my computer or sit at band concerts or swim meets or in waiting rooms tapping out paragraphs on my phone will ever see the light of day. And by “light of day,” I mean this blog and I’m not sure that it’s the right term because no more than a handful of people ever read this. But it’s what I do so I’m going to keep doing it. It’s a week until Christmas Eve and I still have some shopping to do, but there’s plenty of time. There’s plenty of time.

*****
It’s Wednesday, December 18, one week until Christmas. I’m no closer to finishing my book review than I was yesterday, and I’m not going to worry about it. I’m on to the next book, and the next thing.

*****
Ha! I did finish and publish that book review, no more than 15 minutes after I wrote the preceding paragraph. There’s always a way, is what I always say. There’s always plenty of time, is what I am always telling you.

It’s Thursday December 19, and I have 20 minutes or so to change and get ready to go to a local ballet company’s performance of the Nutcracker, so naturally, I’m sitting here writing about the clock ticking. But I can get away with this, obviously, because I continue to demonstrate such outstanding time management skills. I’m a time management wizard.

I started this post only five days ago but it seems like weeks. Now it’s December 19 and it’s almost too late to do any more shopping or planning for the holiday. Whatever we haven’t accomplished or acquired by now will just not be accomplished or acquired, and that is a strangely peaceful feeling. One more day of work (well, maybe a half day on Monday) and one more trip to the grocery store (well, maybe two--three at the most) and then the preparation will be complete or as complete as it can be, and then it’s Christmas. “Celebrate the birth of the Savior”--it’s right there on my to-do list. Peace.

Asleep

I’m reading Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation and it’s a bit of a slog. I’m 83% finished, according to my Kindle, and it will take me another day or so to work my way through those last few chapters.

I think I’m too old for this book, is what it is. It’s not hard to read in the traditional sense of difficulty in a book. But it’s a hard story to bear, in which the first-person narrator, a young woman who is never named (I’m spotting a trend), spends a year trying to remain in a drug-induced sleep for as much time as possible.

The character is beautiful, rich, and alienated from everyone and everything. She is grieving the loss of her parents, but her grief isn’t recognizable as such because she didn’t know her parents very well, nor did she like them very much. And the reader doesn’t blame her for this, based on the brief interactions we have with her cold and distant father and her beautiful, selfish mother.

The character (why the unnamed characters? why?) is, I guess, an exemplar of hopelessness and disaffection among millenials, although the book is not quite contemporary (it is set in 2001). The story walks the reader through the natural outcome of extreme selfishness, especially in families.  More than anything else, it reminds me of Bret Easton Ellis--some of the angst and ennui and despair of Less than Zero and lots of the mindless materialism and social taxonomic snobbery and casual, brutal sex of American Psycho. The narrator’s endless recital of designer labels and brand names, and her constant disdainful observations about her erstwhile friend’s (friend--singular) declassee Long Island background reads like every icy cold 1980s downtown New York novel.

*****
I finally finished it. I never read book reviews, but I read a few reviews of this one because I honestly didn’t know what to make of it and I wanted a reality check. I had missed one big idea completely, which is that My Year is a satire on the millennial obsession with “self-care.” I don’t necessarily think that millennials are any more selfish and self-indulgent than any other generation. I don’t even think that they’re any more preoccupied with self-care than we were. They just talk about it more and in a more public way, because they can. Once you turn something into hashtag, it’s an easy target for satirists. And "self-care" is as good a metaphor for disaffection and despair as any other.

The more I think about My Year, the more I think that all the fuss about it might be right. It has something to say about what it means to be a person, especially what it means to be a young woman. A person like the character in this book, raised by cold and selfish parents who regard her existence as an inconvenience and an outrageous encroachment on their autonomy will naturally assume that it’s right and reasonable to put her own needs first in every circumstance, no matter what. She will naturally seek to eliminate all suffering and discomfort through drug-induced oblivion (including a fake drug, Infirmiterol--fake drug names are another literary micro-trend).

Despite a character’s tragic death, My Year of Rest and Relaxation ends on a hopeful note; and not a moment too soon. It ended just when I thought I couldn’t bear to read another word.

*****
It’s Christmas time and for my next book, I thought about re-reading Little Women or David Copperfield or Anne of Green Gables or any of a number of my favorite novels. I don’t have Ambien or nembutal or trazodone or Infirmeterol. I hibernate by re-reading books and re-watching movies. But I started something new instead. Maybe I’ll write a review.

Is Rusty still in the Navy?

It's raining and I'm sitting in the waiting room at the dentist's office, waiting to have my six-month checkup, which is six months overdue, making it an annual checkup. And I no sooner wrote that sentence than they called me in and commenced with the checking.

I don’t know anything about the history of dentistry, so I don’t know who decided that barbarity was the proper approach to tooth care. Why the scraping? Whence the blowing of the puffs of air? What in the actual hell? I have a cavity, so I have to return to get it filled. All flesh is grass.

Are teeth technically flesh? I don’t know. I don’t know.

*****
Because it’s Advent, our church is offering Confession tonight, even though it’s Tuesday and not Saturday. So I’m going to go because I need to attend to the state of my soul. There might be a little decay there, too. My son and I just made fun of a commercial in which a guy learns that he has cancer, so we’re assholes. We should be first in line at the confessional.

*****
It’s coming on Christmas and they’re cutting down trees. Every year, there’s a day when I finally start to feel the Christmas spirit, just a little bit. Today was that day. It was cold and still and the sky was clear but pale gray rather than blue. The afternoon had a Christmas-like silence. Smoke rose from the chimneys in my neighborhood, and the roofs were frosted with the remains of the tiny bit of snow that fell last night; too little to force the longed-for two-hour delay. It would have been a nice morning to stay in bed, but I didn’t mind being up before the sun.

I worked later than normal, not because I had to but because I was so absorbed in a project that I didn’t want to stop. And now I’m sitting and writing rather than menu-planning or shopping or wrapping or any of the other myriad holiday chores that remain on my list. And I know that I’ll pay for this later. But for now, I will rest in the Advent peace and silence and the evening darkness, with only the Christmas tree for light.

*****
It’s December 12, so there are just 19 days left of 2019, and I don’t think many people will miss it. Good riddance and don’t let the door hit you on the way out, nahmsayin?

I can really tell that it’s almost Christmas because my kids are watching “Christmas Vacation.” I sang along to “Mele Kalikimaka” as I cleaned up the kitchen, and my son whistled the accompaniment. We’ve been doing this number for years, so we’re good at it.

It’s a weekend of holiday parties and more shopping and planning and eating. Sadly, a friend died this week, too. His memorial service is on Saturday. He wasn’t a close friend, but his daughters swim with my sons, and his wife went to school with my husband, and they’re a lovely and wonderful family. He was a kind and funny person and a true gentleman. I hope that his family will find some comfort in their grief. I pray that he’ll rest in peace.

Fast away the old year is passing. The days are very short now, fading from bright daylight to dusk and then dark in no time, no time at all. It’s clear and cold and it smells like snow. There are 19 more days, and not one of them is promised to any of us. 

Awake

I couldn't sleep last night. I was tired, and I did sleep for a little while, but then I woke up and I couldn't fall back to sleep. 

It was 1:30. That's too early to just get up for the day. So I tried to relax. This was hard because of all the noise from the party raging downstairs, which was weird because I don't have a downstairs. The doorbell kept ringing and I heard my sister greeting the uninvited guests as they stormed into my house. "I don't even know this many people," I thought, "and why is she answering the door? She doesn't even live here." 

Eventually, the doorbell stopped ringing, and things quieted for a bit. Then the dancing started. The music was loud, and the dancers' shoes pounded and clattered on the wood floor. This was also weird, because I don't have wood floors. 

I looked at the clock. Midnight. "It's midnight on a Sunday night," I thought. "Am I the only one here who has a job? And how is it midnight now when it was 1:30 an hour ago? How is time moving backward?" 

*****

It's Monday night now, and it's very loud again. It's icy cold and the red and blue strobe lights are flashing. The knocking and clattering is the sound of skate blades on ice, and the people are all invited guests, having paid for their tickets. There's no sleeping at a Capitals game, so I know this isn't a dream. I'll sleep later. It's time to do that hockey. 

Prepare the way

Another Saturday in December, another aquatic center, and another attempt at multi-tasking. I'm timing today, and half watching the dive meet while I wait for the swim meet to begin. I wouldn't know a good dive from a bad one, but I am dutifully applauding each dive. The judges hold up their score cards the moment the divers surface. I could judge diving if I could watch an instant replay in slow motion. But for now I will stick with swimming. I know something about swimming.

I finally started my Christmas shopping yesterday, after a few nights of my usual anxiety dreams about waking up on December 24 and realizing that I had forgotten completely to shop or clean or decorate or bake or prepare in any way. Aren't you glad you're not me?

As if I'd forget to clean. Ridiculous.

*****
Remind me to look up "pike position."

*****

I love timing at swim meets. It’s such a fun job. You get to see the races, you get to cheer, and you don't have to make any decisions. I never have anxiety dreams about timing. Not so for refereeing. Heavy is the head that wears the crown. I don’t have to worry about that today, because I’m just I'm a lady in waiting.

But still. During the pre-meet briefing (yes, there’s a briefing), when the starter asks "Has anyone never timed before?" and not a single hand goes up, then maybe he doesn't need to give a 15-minute seminar covering of the stopwatch and proper recording procedures and the importance of our role as timers. And that part about the thumb being faster than the index finger? I think you made that up so you could keep talking.

*****
It’s Sunday now, and my house is in temporary disarray, as it’s decorating day. I still have a lot of Christmas shopping to do, and I have no idea what to wear for my company’s holiday party this week, but I do know what pike position is now, and that’s useful knowledge to have. The swim meet went well, even though I wasn’t the one with the clipboard and the whistle. And I’ll finish my shopping and decorating and cooking; but Christmas will happen whether I’m ready for it or not, which is actually a reassuring thought, oddly enough. We wait in hope.

Just a girl

"Looking back, it seems to me that I was clueless until I was about 50 years old."

Nora Ephron wrote that. Can you imagine? One of the most successful women of the 20th/21st century, and she claimed to have been clueless for the first two-thirds of her life. She interned in the Kennedy White House, wrote for newspapers and magazines, wrote novels, wrote and directed movies, and who even knows what else. And she thought she was clueless. Where does that leave the rest of us?

*****
I just finished reading Anna Burns’ Milkman, about which I will have much more to say. I’m just getting started here. At the beginning of Milkman, the first-person narrator explains her first encounters with a stalker named Milkman. We know that she’s 18, and that he is much older than she--probably in his mid 30s or so. She is an ordinary Belfast girl (Burns never names her character’s city, but we know that it’s Belfast in the 1970s). Milkman shows up at odd hours and places; when the girl is running, or walking along reading (one of the many quirks that places her among her neighborhood’s “beyond the pale” near-untouchables) or as she’s leaving her place of work or coming home from her evening French class. He makes her feel threatened and she begins curtailing her movements so as to avoid further harassment. She knows that he has plans for her that she wants no part of, but what’s she going to do? Report him? Complain to her family? She knows that according to the established rules of her time and place, she has no real, legitimate case against him; and she has a hard time even articulating her own feelings about the matter. "At eighteen,” she writes, “I had no proper understanding of the ways that constituted encroachment."

*****
When I was 17, a young man in my neighborhood stopped his car in the street as I was walking by. He said hello and asked me my name and said that he knew my parents. He probably did know my parents; everyone in my neighborhood did. And I knew his family, too; one of his sisters was two years ahead of me in school. He asked for my phone number and I gave it to him, like an idiot, like a 17-year-old idiot who has been taught never to offend men or to come across as stuck-up or standoffish. But of course we were also taught to be careful with ourselves, not to do or say anything that would give even the slightest impression that we would welcome any untoward behavior or inappropriate advances. It went without saying, of course, that if such inappropriate advances occurred, then it would be 100 percent our fault.

The young man (he was in his mid twenties) harassed me for a few weeks. He called me all the time, and asked what I’d been doing and who I’d been doing it with and where I’d been; and he demanded in a whiny yet vaguely threatening way to know why I didn’t seem as interested in him as he was in me. Was I frigid? Was I dating someone else? Was I a lesbian? Did I think I was so hot that I could do better than him? I stopped walking around the neighborhood for fear that he’d pull up beside me in his car, as he sometimes did. He never overtly threatened me. He never did anything to me other than to bother and embarrass me. I didn’t know why I was embarrassed but I was. I didn’t know why I felt so uncomfortable and even scared about him, but I did. I was 17, and clueless. Clueless.

A girl of 17 today, asked by a near-stranger what she’d been doing and why and where and when, would probably stand up for herself. She would think, and rightly so, that nobody outside of her own family had any right whatsoever to monitor her movements, or comment on her behavior, or insert themselves in any way into her business. But in working-class Philadelphia in the early 1980s, young girls were fair game for comment from everyone and anyone.

Adults, especially male adults, had very clear ideas for how girls should conduct themselves and how they should look, and they didn't hesitate to call out any girl who didn't measure up. But it wasn't just the men. Women tried to manage their daughters and other young girls, with kind or critical advice on dress, demeanor, deportment, to make sure we knew where the lines were, and that we stayed within them.

Maybe lines isn't the best word. Maybe circles would be better. Think of a Venn diagram.

Sluts on the left. Stuck-up prigs on the right. Click to enlarge (I hope that works). 

One of the overlapping circles is for the goody-goody girls, while the other is for the sluts. There is a very narrow tolerance, a very small pointed oval, between those two undesirable categories. That small pointed oval represents the acceptable range of behaviors for 17-year-old girls in 1982. Adults, especially men, but women too, considered it their right and their duty to make sure that we all understood how easily a girl could end up on the wrong side of the little oval and how fast she could veer to one side into prudishness and to the other side into whorishness.

I'd like to think that we resisted this very specialized form of oppression, but most of us didn't. We accepted it without much complaint. We sought approval and validation. I was a hospital volunteer when I was in high school and several retired men who worked at the hospital as security guards made sure that I knew that I met their standards for nice young girls, and that one or two of the other candystripers definitely did not meet those standards. And I smiled at their praise and never thought even once about asking them to please go and fuck themselves. I was clueless.

Let me clarify--I don’t wish that I had been the type of girl who’d tell a 70-year-old man to go fuck himself. But I do wish that I’d been the type of girl who thought about it.

*****

That wasn’t a book review at all, was it?

I never realized until recently how really clueless, how blissfully ignorant, I was for most of my life, but especially my teenage and early 20s life. At eighteen, I had no proper understanding of the ways that constitute encroachment because at eighteen, no girl does. But I get it now. The fog has lifted, and much is illuminated. Not all, but much. I know better now. It only took 50 years.

Resisting Throwaway Culture (review)

I just finished Charles Camosy’s Resisting Throwaway Culture, a well-thought-out and well-researched but not particularly well-written defense of the Consistent Life Ethic, or CLE. And when I say “just finished” I mean that I finished it ages ago, but I’m just getting around to finishing a post about it. It’s late in the year and I have a ton of half-finished (not to mention half-baked) book reviews to post, and it’s time to get cracking.

Anyway, if you don’t spend much time hanging around with Catholics, then maybe you have never heard of the CLE, which is a philosophy that recognizes the value of all human life, from conception to death; and advocates for pro-life social policies. This means not just opposition to abortion, but actual care for mothers and babies, no matter their social or legal status. Not just opposition to the death penalty but criminal justice reform so that no life is wasted in a prison system that is designed to destroy, not reform.

Camosy’s philosophy and thought are sharp and clear and true. Before I read this book, I was already convinced about the evil of abortion and torture and the death penalty and mass incarceration. But Camosy made me think a great deal more about consumerism and waste and the commercial food supply and how all of those things contribute to the disrespect for life that has come to dominate Western culture. So I agreed with just about every word of this book, but I didn't enjoy reading it at all. And I had to think for a bit to figure out why.

*****
My 18-year-old son is a freshman in college; and like most college freshmen, he has a ton of writing to do. He digs for citations and looks through his reading to find exactly the right quote to illustrate whatever point he's trying to make, and then he goes through his finished essays with a fine-tooth comb, not so much for writing quality, but to make sure that he’s addressed every requirement in the grading rubric. So many points for the correct number of sources, so many points for correctly formatted in-text citations, so many points for a proper MLA bibliography (including hanging indents); and then as what seems like an afterthought, some points for quality of writing and clarity of thought. The end result is usually a solid B piece of work that meets the requirements and answers the questions, but that isn’t much fun to read.

And therein lies my dislike of this book. It’s not the content, of course, because the author is preaching to the proverbial choir. I’m all in. It’s the presentation.

My first issue is with the CLE initialism itself. The constant references to "the CLE" make me feel like I'm reading a proposal or a Statement of Work (that's SOW to you). It's tiresome. I think it would be tiresome for anyone, but it’s especially tiresome for a person who spends her working life in the Federal alphabet soup of initialisms and acronyms, so many that entire publications are dedicated to interpreting them. I also dislike the didactic writing style, in which each argument is followed by possible objections laid out in Q&A format, with questions of a paragraph or more in length, some so sloppily written that you have to read them a second time. I lost my will to live midway through a few of those questions. Ironic, considering the subject.

Clunky writing aside, though, there's quite a bit of original thought in Resisting Throwaway Culture. If you have time for only one pro-life book this year, then read Fiorella Nash’s Abolition of Woman, a much narrower (abortion-focused), but much better written and more interesting defense of the pro-life position. But if you have time for more than one, then this one is worth reading, too.

Welcome to the working week

It's Saturday and today is a test of my determination to write every day, a test that I am passing right now, as I sit on a bench at the Germantown Indoor Swim Center. I'm a stroke and turn judge for my younger son's first high school swim meet, and I have 15 minutes or so while the dive meet wraps up and the swimmers warm up.

Last year, I had to referee all of the high school meets because the person who would have had that job, and who really likes that job, was recovering from knee surgery. I'm a competent referee but I don't like doing it. It's too center-of-attention. It's a lot of pressure. Plus, if I was the referee now, I'd be bossing the coaches and officials, monitoring the time, and generally running the show, rather than sitting and writing. I won't pretend that it's not fun to blow the whistle and bark orders, but I'm much better suited to the support role.

*****
Diving is fun to watch, but other than the really outstanding dives and the obviously egregiously bad ones, I can't tell one from another. In about a second, the judges have to decide if the dive was executed correctly, with the correct number of turns or rotations or whatever for the particular dive, and then score it for quality. Again, it's a lot of pressure. Better them than me.

Diving just concluded and warm-ups are about to begin. I'm going to try to get a picture of my son before the meet begins. Once the whistle blows, I'm on duty. I take my responsibilities seriously. Even my relatively subordinate role is an important one. I don’t have time to play.

*****
It’s Sunday now, Sunday of a very busy Thanksgiving weekend. I love Thanksgiving weekend and I’m sad that it’s almost over, but it’s only 12:30 and I still have a nice afternoon of walking (if it stops raining), movie-watching, reading, and soup-making to look forward to.

The swim meet went well. I had only one call, for a bad backstroke turn. I won’t burden you with the technical details; just know that there’s a right way and a lot of wrong ways to execute a backstroke turn, and this swimmer found several of the wrong ways during his three turns. He’ll learn. I’m not sure what might have happened in the other judges’ zones. That’s the referee’s problem. That’s above my pay grade. I never did get a picture of my son, but he has 8 more meets, so I’ll try again next week.

It’s dark and gray and cold and rainy now. The walking might have to wait for another day. I might have to proceed directly to reading and movie-watching and soup-making. There are far worse ways to spend a Sunday afternoon. It’s been a lovely weekend, and I don’t even mind going back to work. It doesn't thrill me but it won't kill me. I don’t have to work standing up, and my shoes stay dry, and I even get paid. It's all good.