Midwest

We’re going to Cleveland this weekend, for a wedding. I’m hard-pressed to be excited about a trip anywhere right now. Nothing against Cleveland but we’re going to go there, stay overnight, go to the wedding, stay one more night, and get the hell out first thing on Sunday morning. I don’t need to Google anything about Cleveland other than the best land route out of town. No offense, Cleveland. It's not you. It's me. 

*****

It's Friday afternoon now and we're on our way. Our original plan was to fly, but I couldn't find reasonable nonstop fares and with two college tuitions, a new water heater, and a very expensive recent overseas trip, $1000 airfare to Cleveland and back was not in the budget. 

Yeah I know I sound like an old lady. That's because I am. I turned 58 last week and let me tell you that any 58 year olds out here identifying as "middle aged" are kidding themselves. The women in my family live a long time but not 116 years. 

And I feel like an old lady too. A few days ago, I slipped and fell down in the parking lot at work landing hard on my hands and knees. Thankfully I didn't break anything but I'm still sore. I expect to break a hip any day now. But not today. Today it's a beautiful sunny early fall Friday afternoon. We're just past the I270 northbound early rush hour traffic, with nothing but open road all the way to Ohio. You can't feel old when you're on a road trip

*****

Ohio is a five-hour drive from the DC suburbs of Maryland, give or take. It's not that far. But as soon as you cross the Pennsylvania - Ohio line, you see signs that say things like Great Lakes and Mississippi River Watershed, and you know that you're out of your zone. Ohio is definitely of the Midwest. It's flat and open, industrialized, gritty in some places and fancy in others. We attended a wedding in Berea, a charming town with a strong Polish flavor. I hadn't heard a polka played at a wedding in many years, but they played three. They all sounded the same. 

What I danced to:

• Miley Cyrus’s “Party in the USA”

• Usher's "Yeah"

• Nicki Minaj's "Starships"

• "Cupid Shuffle"

• Sister Sledge’s "We Are Family"

• Justin Timberlake’s “Can’t Stop the Feeling”

• All Pitbull because you can't sit down when Mr. Worldwide is singing

What I didn't dance to:

• Slow country

• The chicken dance

• Polkas 

*****

The drive to Cleveland was pleasant and easy, and it was lovely to fall into a comfortable hotel bed after a very long day. The hotel was fine - clean, simple, everything we needed and nothing we didn’t. It even had a pool, and we got to swim on Saturday morning, since the wedding was not until 1. The wedding was beautiful, and the reception was a blast. Even the clean-up was fun. Yes, we cleaned up afterward. The reception was held in a parish Knights of Columbus hall, like every wedding I ever attended in my working-class Catholic youth, and that’s how it works - you rent the hall for a very nominal fee, you hire your own DJ or band, you bring in your own food and liquor and decorations, and you clean it all up at the end. Technically, the guests can just walk out and leave the hosts to take care of the clean-up, but that is not how it’s done. That is not cricket. Everybody lends a hand with the clean-up. 

The dishes were rented and needed only to be collected and stacked for pick-up - we didn’t have to wash them. We gathered trash, stacked dishes, removed tablecloths and chair covers, and were out of there in 30 minutes. The young people then held an after party in the hotel. They kindly invited their elders, but it was after midnight, and I had already turned into a pumpkin. After party. These kids, I tell you. Crazy. 

*****

Have you ever had food poisoning? Well, I have, and it’s no way to end a weekend. No, it wasn’t the wedding food, thank goodness. That would have been bad. I ate one thing this weekend - a turkey sandwich - that my husband hadn’t eaten - and I paid for it dearly. I didn’t think it was possible to vomit that much. And vomiting wasn’t all I did. 

The illness ran its course very quickly. I woke up on Sunday morning feeling vaguely unwell. Within an hour, I had gone from vaguely unwell to very very sick. Within another hour, the sickness had passed, leaving me pale and weak and exhausted but otherwise OK. Barely OK, but OK. My husband drove us home while I alternated between waking and sleep, wrapped in a blanket in the shotgun seat. I felt vaguely guilty that he had to drive the entire way home in the rain, but I couldn’t have driven even if I wanted to. And he would have driven anyway. 

*****

And you know, that was still an 8/10 weekend. Food-borne pathogen encounters are an automatic two-point deduction, but 8/10 is solid. I’d do eighty percent of that weekend over again, no questions asked. 

Bag packing

If you’re old enough to remember grunge and if you watched “Friends” when it was still the most popular show on prime-time TV - in fact, if you even know what prime-time TV is - then you might remember the ‘zine. Short for magazines, ‘zines were underground, homemade publications, sometimes produced on the earliest desktop publishing software, and sometimes just typed on a typewriter, and then photocopied and sold or handed out to anyone who would take one. People made ‘zines for all kinds of reasons. Activists made ‘zines to share news or political content. Amateur writers self-published their work in the form of ‘zines. Humorists, artists, photographers, poets, weirdos - anyone could make a zine with pretty much no equipment. ‘Zine producers were bloggers for the Stone Age. 

Two friends of a friend of mine produced a ‘zine pretty regularly. I don’t remember what it was called, nor do I remember the two women’s names, but I do remember that they were both librarians, and that they were a bit older than me. They both had young children, and they sometimes wrote about their children and about their lives as the mothers of toddlers. Those children probably have children of their own now. 

I never actually met these women, and I never had my own copy of the ‘zine. My friend shared it with me when the two authors published it, which happened maybe three times over the course of two years. They were full-time working mothers of very young children and so they didn’t have much time to write, let alone type, photocopy, and distribute their small publication. But they did the best they could, because they had something to say. They had a distinctive voice - funny and sardonic but not mean. Silly but not precious. Passionate about the rights of women, especially working women, but not “strident” or “militant” or whatever adjective people like to use to ridicule anything even remotely feminist. My friend and I were big fans of their work. 

*****

Other than cat videos, handbag videos are my hands-down favorite thing on the whole internet. “Pack the cafe bag with us,” reads the caption for the Tom Bihn Instagram video, and they reeled me right in. I watched that video three times, rapt all the way through. I cannot get enough of handbag packing videos. 

And it’s not just social media ads - there is a whole YouTube subgenre in which people pack and unpack their handbags, tote bags, and backpacks. I love them all. The commercial videos tend to begin with a pristine brand-new empty bag, and you watch as a disembodied pair of well-manicured hands packs the bag with a wallet, phone, water bottle, book, notebook, pens and pencils, makeup, sunscreen, keys, and every other imaginable random accessory that a person might need or want to carry. These are fun to watch because everything is new and clean and pretty and elegant, and what’s better than a perfect bag with perfect accessories?

The homemade YouTube videos, though, are even better. In those videos, a woman unpacks a bag and shows us what she carries every day in her Longchamps Le Pliage or her Prada backpack.. Sometimes, the bag is new, and the person in the video is showing the audience how much it can hold, and how well - pockets and other organizational features, ergonomics, etc. These are usually sponsored videos in which a handbag company pays an influencer to share her impressions of their bags. But sometimes, people just record videos of themselves, taking everything out of their bag, whatever it looks like, and showing those things to us one at a time, without filters - a Fendi wallet and some balled-up used Kleenex; an elegant leather notebook and a Bic 4-color pen, a few hairpins and a few old receipts, a half-eaten granola bar, some gum - everything and anything that a person takes with them when they leave the house and all of the other things that they accumulate along the way. It’s not all stylish or beautiful but it’s all interesting and revealing. 

*****

It was that Tom Bihn video that made me remember my favorite ‘90s ‘zine; specifically, the “purse dump” issue in which the authors and a small group of their friends emptied their purses and wrote about the contents of each other’s bags. Each participant agreed to empty their purses exactly as they were, and to allow others to freely examine the contents and write about everything. As a reader, of course, I did not have any way to verify the claim that the purse dump descriptions were complete and accurate and unfiltered, but I also didn’t have any reason to believe otherwise. It didn’t matter, though, because it was excellent reading, far better than anything I’d encountered in Vogue or Allure or even my then-beloved Vanity Fair. What could be better than reading a detailed (and hilarious) commentary on the things that a person carries around with her, the things without which she doesn’t leave the house? 

I saw myself in some of the contents of these women’s handbags - lipstick, of course! I don’t carry other makeup but I always carry lipstick.  Two pens, because what if your first pen runs out of ink? Hmm? What then? Bandaids, because if you work in an office, you’re going to get paper cuts. A book - sometimes two books - because you can read on the subway. A snack - but not water. People didn’t carry water bottles around back then. 

But I also found inspiration. A pebble or shell from the beach - what a great thing to carry around! A good luck charm - of course! I should also have a good luck charm! Sugar packets and wet naps swiped from restaurants, and sealed in ziploc bags - I immediately resolved to swipe sugar packets and wet naps from every diner and restaurant in the greater Philadelphia area, so that I could also carry around ziploc bags of these very very useful things. 

Fast forwarding 30 or so years, I find the same I-feel-seen recognition and the same inspiration in purse contents videos, commercial or otherwise. I still carry lipstick and band-aids and a shell or two. I don’t really carry sugar packets or wet naps unless I’m traveling. I always have a pen and usually I have two pens. I carry several hair clips and hair ties, and an extra set of contact lenses. My purse always contains a little plastic tube that itself contains Tylenol, ibuprofen and a few Benadryl tablets. I have a tiny LeSportsac zipper case on a keyring, which contains my earbuds (always with me) and a quarter for the shopping carts at Aldi. I didn’t used to need sunglasses, but now I never leave the house without them. I carry my Kindle with me if there’s even the slightest chance that I’ll have five or more minutes of waiting time or downtime. The inspiration comes in not so much what to carry as in how to carry it, how to make ordinary utilitarian items look pretty so that rummaging through my purse is a joy. 

*****

And of course I bought the stupid Tom Bihn bag, too. This was not my fault. That bag chased me all over the internet for weeks until I finally caved. That is some effective advertising because I didn’t even like the bag when I first saw it. But it grew on me. I started imagining myself packing it just as the person in the video did, and after a few more viewings, I found that I couldn’t stop thinking about this bag and how it would fulfill a very specific need. I haven’t had a utilitarian nylon crossbody bag for a long time and it just felt like it was time to revisit that style and that aesthetic. I’m very happy with it so far, and it will be perfect for my upcoming road trip to Cleveland. That’s what a bag is for, of course - to make you feel prepared when you’re out in the world. Maybe I’ll write a whole post just about the contents of that bag. Videos are not my thing. 

Damn the torpedoes, bring on the (vile) PSL

My drafts folder is stuffed right now; stuffed, I tell you. I pulled out a draft and started to polish it a bit, thinking that I’d finish and publish it. But it’s missing something. So I’ll write instead about Labor Day weekend, which it is right now as of about 20 minutes ago (it’s 5:20 on Friday afternoon). Did I ever mention that I hate LDW? Well, I do. LDW is the end of summer and the beginning of pumpkin spice latte and stupid NFL football and the downward slide toward winter. LDW can go fuck itself. 

I wouldn’t normally be cooking on the Friday of LDW, but I am. I’m making a nice Nicoise salad, with salmon rather than tuna. I cooked the potatoes, and blanched the green beans, and broiled some salmon, and cut up some tomatoes. Now I just have to assemble the whole thing. I also cooked a take and bake pizza for any members of the household who don’t want salad. I even cut up some fruit. It should be a nice summer dinner, suitable for our people-coming-and-going summer routine. 

*****

It turned out to be a rather nice evening. I sat at the pool for a bit with some friends. Both the water and the air were early autumn cold. I wore a hoodie and draped a towel across my legs and we watched as a handful of kids inched their way into the icy water. When even kids aren’t jumping right in, you know that the water is cold. When even I am sitting in a deck chair rather than swimming laps, then you know that the water is cold. It was Baltic, I tell you. Baltic. 

And my son came home for the weekend, which was lovely. He arrived at 11 PM or so, and then I stayed up watching TV for a bit with my husband and both boys - only until midnight, but it was nice going to bed knowing that the rest of the family were just a few rooms away. It’s Saturday morning now, and I’ll make breakfast for anyone who’s awake in the next few minutes. You have to get up early in the morning if you want breakfast around here. It’s not a restaurant, know what I mean? 

*****

Saturday of LDW was kind of an ideal summer weekend day, making summer’s imminent end even sadder than it usually is. That is the most pitiful glass-half-empty-and-quickly-draining sentence, but that’s where my head is right now. All I do around here is keep it real. 

It took an act of will to immerse my entire body in the still-very-chilly water but with the temperature quite a bit warmer than it had been on Friday and the mid-afternoon sun sparkling on the water’s surface, the chill felt refreshing. I never really warmed up even after a solid lap swim at a pretty brisk (for me) pace, but I didn’t mind. The deck was warm and sunny and it was lovely to sit there after the cold swim, wrapped in a towel and watching as others approached the water, slowly and gingerly. Good luck with that, I thought, as the sun dried my hair and the feeling returned to my extremities. 

*****

Saturday of LDW feels like the first day of a little vacation. Sunday of LDW feels like the beginning of the end, and I’m very sad this morning. I should probably do something about the fact that I am crying every day, often more than once a day, but I probably won’t. I’ll probably just ignore this mental health crisis until it goes away, exactly as I do with every other thing that’s wrong with me, real or imagined. 

*****

It’s Monday now, Labor Day itself. I went to a party of sorts last night. A fellow Rockville swim mom, whose son was one of the four seniors on Rockville’s state championship squad, invited a bunch of women to her house for drinks and snacks. All of the guests had just recently sent a child off to college - some are younger mothers whose oldest children just graduated from high school, and some are older mothers sending their last children off. 

Going to a party, even a low-key, come-as-you-are party, was really the last thing I wanted to do, but I went because I like the hostess very much and because I should get out of the house more. And it was a lovely evening, and I’m glad I went. I had one drink that I didn’t finish, because my night driving is bad enough without adding alcohol to the mix, but the rest of the group, who all live within walking distance, were throwing back Moscow Mules and Dark and Stormys with abandon. I was one of the few completely sober people in that crowd, and it was OK. It was nice to be with people who understand. 

*****

The nice thing about having your kid home for the weekend is that he’s home for the weekend. But the bad thing of course is that he has to return to school and then you have to endure the separation again. It’s Tuesday now and LDW passed as quickly as it always does. It’s like a little mini summer in itself; long anticipated (by the people who actually like Labor Day weekend) and then over in a flash.

We spent most of the day at the pool. Labor Day is amateur night - everyone in the neighborhood shows up. Even if they haven’t made a single appearance at the pool all season long, people consider the summer wasted if they haven’t been to the pool at least once. It was the usual crazy Labor Day scene; pizza lunches and potluck dinners in the pavilion, frantic games of beaver and Marco Polo and knockout and sharks and minnows and water polo; balls flying through the air left and right. The lane ropes were gone by 6:30, and the pool was just a big open tub of splashing kids wringing out the last bit of summer fun. At 7:45 PM, there were at least 75 people in the water, and more people just kept jumping in ahead of the last whistle of the night and of the season. At 8 o’clock, seeing the head lifeguard about to blow the whistle, the children begged “Please? Just a few minutes?” And the head lifeguard, a grown-up pool kid himself, gave them 15 more minutes. Spontaneous applause - for a great summer and a kindhearted lifeguard - broke out when the whistle finally blew. It was dark at 8:15, and no matter what the meteorological calendar says, the summer was over.