Forgiveness

There is really no place like an old school DC suburban swim club early on a soon to be hot and humid Saturday morning in June. It's one of those things. IYKYK. 

It's 8:06 and I'm stationed at my team rep post: two chairs, a nice round table, and an umbrella for shade. For the uninitiated, team rep is the greatest job at a summer swim meet. It's a job that I earned through a combination of years of on-deck service and friendship with the meet manager. I'm going to hold on to this job until I retire from summer swimming next year. 

Once the meet starts, I will be busy watching races, making notes on results and disqualifications, and cheering of course, because that is another team rep perk. We get to cheer. Right now, though, I am just watching warmups, listening to music, and drinking hot tea in the dewy cool of a June early morning in the DMV. It's a pretty good life. 

*****

That was yesterday. Yesterday was a lovely day, mostly. I haven’t felt free for most of the summer so far, mostly for reasons having to do with my own psyche and not to do with any external obligations. But I felt free yesterday, like the rest of the beautiful summer Saturday that stretched before me was just one of many days of summer freedom ahead. 

And then it all went to hell in a handbasket of course, with the eruption of unexpected and unnecessary drama and controversy and my foolish decision to insert myself into it. I usually avoid all drama, almost to a fault, but I seem to be doing lots of things that I don’t normally do. It’s all OK now, I guess. I just still don’t feel right. I was rude to someone, and I yelled at someone else who probably deserved to be yelled at but people shouldn’t always get what they deserve. I’m glad that I myself don’t always get what I deserve. I was going to avoid Mass this morning because I didn’t want to hear the fall-of-Roe v. Wade cheerleading from the pulpit, but I think I need to do penance. 

*****

So I did go to Mass, and it was not terrible. Our pastor surprised me by focusing his homily on the day’s Gospel, and not saying one word about abortion. The church was half-empty, which is not typical. I don’t know if people were avoiding church because they were afraid of running into protestors (not even one), or not in the mood to hear the kind of pro-life triumphalism that I had been dreading. But it was fine. 

It was fine, but I didn’t feel any better. I felt worse and worse all day. I emailed a letter of apology to one person (to whom I had already spoken) and went to speak to the other person involved, who was not around. And when I couldn’t apologize to that second person and didn’t hear anything back from the first person, I felt worse and worse. My stomach was in knots and I was on the verge of tears all afternoon. Today, I worked in the office but thankfully, everyone else I work with was either on vacation or teleworking because I could not stop crying. Also thankfully, I had two presentations to revise, and a tri-fold pamphlet to redesign, and that was absorbing enough to distract me. But not enough to distract me completely. The first person finally responded to my email after almost a day. I guess we’re fine now. I still need to apologize to the other person. And I guess that will be fine too. 

*****

It’s Tuesday now, a telework day for me. Telework days allow me to start early and end early or start early and take a housework break and end late or to start later (when we don’t have our morning meeting) and end later so I can write in the morning, or any combination of the three. And telework days allow me to avoid people, which is why I should not telework for more than two days a week because given the chance I will hide from almost all people, almost all the time. 

I went to swim last night, and the first person was there in the pool, teaching her usual weekly water aerobics class. She either didn’t see me or just didn’t acknowledge me because she was busy teaching, which is perfectly fine. And I didn’t acknowledge her because she was busy teaching, and because I didn’t want her to feel obligated to invite me to join the class. Plus I really hate water aerobics. I swam my laps, timing my exit to make sure that I didn’t run into any of the water aerobics people on my way out, and I came home and felt sad again, but not so much as earlier. 

And that is where I am now, and I guess that is where I’ll be for a bit, and I guess that’s fine. I lost my temper and treated other people rudely and I don’t think I’m supposed to feel so great, maybe not for a while. I can’t apologize to the first person again. I apologized twice and it’s up to her to accept or reject my apology, to forgive or not to forgive. It’s out of my hands. Maybe when I apologize to the other person, I’ll feel normal again. Maybe I won’t. Maybe the person who causes the injury should feel the pain for longer than the person injured. Maybe I just have to spend a lot more time trying to be a better person. That’s going to suck. 

Saturday morning was just such a nearly perfect morning. It seems ages ago now. 

Nothing to see here

The thing is, you guys don’t follow the Internet the way I do. That is my big takeaway from today’s J6 hearing; that and checking off my insurrectionist Members of Congress pardon request bingo card (surprised that Boebert and Cawthorn weren’t on the list but I got the rest–just like Oscar night). 

As much as I am absorbed in the hearings (and I am completely absorbed in the hearings), I’m also consumed with anxiety and dread. I never realized how much of my identity is entwined with the idea of being American, but it is. If America no longer exists, I don’t know who I am anymore, and I don’t know who my friends and family are anymore, either. My son wants to visit Texas A&M as a possible college to attend. I don’t want him to go there, not just because it’s so far away from Maryland (it is too far away from Maryland) but because I think that civil war is a real and looming threat, and I don’t want my son on the wrong side of the frontier when it happens. 

I’m really not kidding. 

*****

Well that was yesterday, before shit got real, meaning really real with today’s Roe v. Wade decision. My husband and all of my Catholic friends are texting me, thinking that I must be so happy about this decision and I suppose I would be if I thought for one second that it had anything to do at all with respect for the sanctity of human life but it doesn’t. 

In a pro-life country, 19 children in Texas would be enjoying their summer vacations right now. Or maybe they’d be suffering and complaining through summer school. Or maybe they’d be a little bored. But they’d be alive. 

I don’t wish any harm on any of the Justices, nor on any of the Republican leadership. But it occurs to me, as I read of security concerns arising from the reaction to this decision, that they should all receive exactly the same protection that they would afford to public schoolchildren. Armed teachers should be dispatched to the homes of Justices Kavanaugh, Barrett, Roberts, Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch. House Members and Senators who feel threatened should be offered the same protection. The timing couldn’t be better, really. Local school districts are on vacation for the summer, and teachers might welcome the chance to earn extra income. Recruit some teachers, issue handguns and assault rifles, train the teachers thoroughly (an hour or so should be sufficient) and dispatch them to the homes of our distinguished public servants to stand guard against all enemies and invaders. Everyone will feel much safer, I’m sure. Good guys with guns and all that. 

But let's not be ridiculous, K? There’s nothing to worry about. They won’t re-institute a poll tax, or take voting rights away from women and minorities. They definitely won’t overturn Brown v. Board of Education or Loving v. Virginia or Griswold v. Connecticut. No reason to get all worked up. No reason to be hysterical about all this. It’ll all be fine. 

Writing about reading about writing

I’m not reading as much as I used to, or usually do. I’ve usually finished about 20 books by this time of year; instead, I’ve barely finished a dozen. I don’t know why. I don’t have any less time than I usually do, except for the commute. I just can’t concentrate. I’m very easily distracted. 

I started writing about some of this year’s books. That’s taking forever, too. I publish my book list later and later every year and at this rate, I’ll be lucky to finish this year’s book notes in 2023. That’s fine; it’s not like I’m on deadline. 

I'll eventually get around to reading more, and writing more (to be perfectly fair, though, I write all the livelong day: I just don't do it here). Right now I am just about to finish Jessica Mitford's Poison Penmanship, a collection of her famous muckraking journalism, with commentary by the author. Yes, she basically wrote a book about her own writing. Only a Mitford gets away with that. It's very meta, and quite brilliant. 

Jessica was the subversive, rebellious, Communist Mitford and her writing (especially the writing about the writing) makes it clear that she never stopped sticking it to the man; not for one second. She went after an odd assortment of targets: the funeral business (most famously), the segregated South, fancy spas, the university where she briefly taught, a pretentious NY restaurant that overcharged her for a meal – it's quite a range. 

Side note about the restaurant, a now defunct establishment called The Sign of the Dove: The incident that Mitford writes about happened in the mid 70s and the whole idea of a trendy restaurant with a twee name oppressing its patrons reminded me of the famous line in “When Harry Met Sally” about the undue influence of restaurants on NY culture: "Restaurants are to people in the 80s what theater was to people in the 60s." Of course, Nora Ephron wrote that line and it turns out that Nora was the New York magazine editor who commissioned Mitford's piece on The Sign of the Dove. This surprised me not one bit. Nora would have hated that kind of overhyped restaurant and of COURSE, she also knew Jessica Mitford. She knew everyone. 

*****

I finished Poison Penmanship about ten days ago, and started on what I thought would be a very quick read, Merrill Markoe’s Cool, Calm, and Contentious (I think the title doesn’t have the serial comma, but I find myself unable to type a series of three or more items without that comma). I love Merrill Markoe. I still have a paperback copy of How to be Hap- Hap- Happy Like Me, her 1995 book of humorous essays about her crazy dogs, her jerk boyfriends (including the very thinly disguised David Letterman), and my favorite, her philosophy on health and beauty. In the essay “My Year of Health and Beauty for You,” Merrill explains how every woman can achieve the smooth otherworldly glow of a Vogue supermodel (supermodel culture was at its very peak in 1995) through the simplest of means: a better gene pool. “Next time you are born,” Merrill wrote, “try to get better parents.” Revolutionary advice, that. On the topic of hairstyling, Merrill writes that she once wasted hours of valuable time attempting to style her hair, lamenting her failure to achieve the optimum combination of length, shine, volume, texture, and color, all while appearing to have made no effort at all (another peak 1995 value–look perfect but also look as though you didn’t try). Reflecting on that wasted time and effort, she suggests that readers look at pictures of themselves at age 2, and just stick with the hairstyle they had as toddlers. 

Yes it was funny but I promise you that I followed that advice. I never permed my hair again after that. I got rid of my curling iron AND my flat iron. I started cutting my fairly long hair to shorter or medium lengths ranging from mid-neck to just below the shoulders. I embraced the use of headbands and barrettes and clips (and ponytails when my hair got long again), and I started leaving my house with wet hair all the time, not just when I was on vacation. To paraphrase Merrill, I looked at my two-year-old self with my thick, very slightly wavy, very slightly wiry, plain brown hair with its weird bends and cowlicks, and I decided to CHOOSE thick, very slightly wavy, very slightly wiry, plain brown hair with weird bends and cowlicks as my hairstyle. And although every so often, I try to style my hair a bit and embrace a more polished look, the “me at age two” look is the one that I have stuck with more or less for the last almost 30 years. 

But I was writing about a completely different book, was I not? That right there was some meta insight into why it takes me ten days to read a book that most people read in an afternoon. I myself used to read that kind of book in an afternoon. I can’t even write a simple paragraph about a book without a meandering turn through an entirely different book. And can I tell you that I stopped writing this paragraph mid-sentence to go and fold laundry? Well, I did. Adult ADD, as I keep telling everyone, is real. 

Anyway, back to Merrill’s book. The one that I’m reading now, that is, not the one that I read 27 years ago. The essays are funny, of course, because Merrill Markoe is very funny, but they are very serious, too. Her advice on how to spot a malignant narcissist is spot-on, and obviously very timely what with the last six years or so. And her account of her rape by a stranger who broke into her apartment when she was in college was heartbreaking and upsetting and horribly familiar. It’s different for everyone, of course, except that it’s also exactly the same. Just like adult ADD, PTSD is also real. And just like with the ADD thing, I know this the hard way. 

*****

It’s Wednesday night now, and I’m home waiting for someone other than me to make a call on our Wednesday night swim meet, which is about 80 percent likely to be cancelled (thunderstorms) and 100 percent likely to start late if it proceeds at all. I wouldn’t mind an evening off, but I do love Wednesday night meets. 

Anyway, I’m almost finished with Merrill, and I’ll probably read more Mitfords next. Jessica’s Hons and Rebels is next up in my queue. This too should be a quick read, but I’m beginning to think that there might no longer be any such thing for me. I can’t stop checking Twitter and NPR and MSNBC and the Washington Post to see what new outrage the J6 committee will reveal. My attention span is similar to that of a gnat, and it’s all Trump’s fault. 

21

21 years ago today, at 3:30 or so in the afternoon, I was in a delivery room at Shady Grove Adventist Hospital, waiting to give birth to my first child. Well, “waiting” might not be the right word. Maybe “trying” would be better. 

He was a big baby (10 pounds, 3 ounces when he finally made his appearance) and he was in no hurry. He’s never been one to rush. He came out on his own time, about three hours later, with Dido’s “Thank You” playing on the piped-in music system. It really was the best day of my life. Nothing else had ever come close, nor has anything since, except for the equally great day three years later when my second son came. 

My son wanted a “low-key, chill” birthday, and so that’s what we gave him. We hung out at home for a bit after the morning swim meet, then went to the pool, where 21 and I swam laps. He dove in when I was halfway down the lane, and blew past me easily, then did a slow flip turn and came back, forcing me to pick up my pace so he didn’t lap me. I out-touched him just in time and he just kept going. I was the only person trying in that race. 

Later, we had dinner picked up from his favorite takeout, along with Oreo cake purchased earlier at the Laurel Amish market. We watched hockey and my husband and son clinked their beer bottles together, a first legal drink for the now 21-year-old. It was an altogether lovely day and the first day of what I hope and pray will be a long and happy adult life for my beloved first child. 

J6

It was so much worse than we thought. That is all I can think of as I watch the previously unreleased video of the attack on the Capitol. I haven’t been so firmly glued to a TV set since Game 5 of the 2018 Stanley Cup Finals. That was absolutely riveting. Sadly, I know that there are many people who will refuse to watch or listen to any of this testimony; and I know that there are more people who will watch or listen and refuse to be convinced. Rather, I think that they’ll claim to remain unconvinced. I think–rather, I hope–that there must be many former Trump supporters who know the truth now, but they’re afraid to admit that they know. No one likes to admit that they were wrong, especially if they were monstrously wrong in a very public way, and I hope that people will be kind enough to allow people to admit their mistake in supporting Trump, without recriminations or mockery. Well, without too many recriminations or too much mockery. 

But the hardcore supporters remain, and they’re more dug in than ever. They still support this man who danced a happy little dance at a gun worshiper convention days after the mass shooting that killed 19 children. If they didn’t turn their back on Trump after that little performance, they are pretty much willing to follow him to hell at this point. 

*****

It’s Tuesday now. The Monday hearings took place during the work day, so I was able to listen a little bit, but I had a lot of work to do and couldn’t give the broadcast my full attention. I’m very interested to learn which Republican members of Congress, other than Rep. Scott Perry, pre-emptively asked for pardons. Because innocent people don’t ask for pardons before they’re even charged with a crime, or at least that’s how it seems to me. 

What I’m not interested in is giving Mike Pence one single shred of credit for doing the right thing on January 6, 2021. He did the right thing because he couldn’t figure out how to get away with doing the wrong thing. And even if that wasn’t true, but it is, he still enabled Donald Trump for four-plus years. He knew who Trump was. They all knew who he was and no one more so than Bill Barr, who might be trying to salvage what remains of his reputation OR who might be trying to help Donald Trump make a credible insanity plea. Both Pence and Barr (and McConnell and McCarthy and the rest of them) knew that Donald Trump was a lying, thieving, grifting traitor and they stood aside and did nothing about it because Trump was a conduit to power for them. I only hope that they feel one tiny bit of the shame that they have all earned. But they probably don’t. 

*****

It’s Wednesday now, and I had been looking forward to Day 3, now postponed until next week. Instead, I’m watching the evening news coverage of Rep. Loudermilk’s “tour group,” including the scary Hitler-hair dude who took photos of architectural features and historical artifacts such as security cameras and stairways and underground tunnels and passageways. Was the Capitol building not closed to tourists altogether in January 2021, because of COVID? I think it was. And I think that if Rep. Loudermilk really didn’t know the people who appear in this appalling video, then he would not have denied actually leading this little group through the building when initially questioned, rather than now acknowledging that he did in fact lead the group but claiming that they’re just a bunch of randos from his district, no one special, no one he’s ever met before. 

I don’t know, Congressman. That doesn’t sound right to me. I just don’t know. 

*****

It’s Thursday now. I listened to the hearings from my desk for a little bit, but I had some meetings and some deadlines and I missed most of the live testimony. I caught up later, and I’m now even less impressed with Mike Pence’s actions than I was before. And I wasn’t impressed at all before. The thing is, despite claims from his staff members (and why didn’t he testify himself, btw) that his “first instinct” was to stand up for democracy and the rule of law, that was not his first instinct at all. His first instinct was to wait it all out. His first instinct was to call Dan Quayle (not the FBI) and ask if there was any way that he could pacify and indulge Donald Trump, and still remain within the law. His first instinct was to figure out how to avoid a sedition rap yet still remain a viable candidate for future office. His first instinct was self-preservation. In his way, he’s worse than the trumped-up trumpity trumpster lunatics like MTG and the rest of those nuts. At least they’re coming from a place of integrity. At least they believe their own lies. 

*****

But you know what? I’m still glad that the mob didn’t get to Pence. Because they absolutely 100 percent would have killed him. 

*****

This week kind of reminds me of the days immediately following January 6 or September 11. Everyone was glued to their radios or TVs or (now) their phones, not knowing if the worst was over or if the attacks would continue in some form. Now I’m obsessively checking the news, anticipating the next revelation. Who’s coming forward with some new bombshell? Who’s going to spill some hot tea all over the place? Maybe it’ll be Ginni Thomas, who claims to be “eager” to cooperate. Let’s see if she’s just as eager to raise her right hand, place her left hand on the Bible that she claims to love, and swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Because under oath is the only way I want to hear any words coming out of any of their mouths. 

*****

My younger son, who is 17, is finishing up his junior year in the IB program at Rockville High School. Unlike his older brother, he is non-political. He cares about his family and friends and his schoolwork and sports (as both a participant and a fan). He loves movies and (to a lesser extent) music. He doesn’t care at all about current events or partisan politics or public policy; and up until yesterday, I think he was heartily sick of me and my J6 obsession. Then last night, he told me that he learned about the Beer Hall Putsch in his history class. “I get why January 6 is such a big deal now.” 

A big deal indeed. And if there are no consequences, the Reichstag fire is next. 

700 meters and counting

It was raining this morning; not steadily and not too hard–just on and off drizzle. And it was cool; not cold, but pearly gray and cool, nice for April but cold for June. But it’s June and Saturday morning in June is swim meet time. 

I checked my phone–a couple of emails from a coach, and an email from a new parent wondering why she hadn’t received any notification that the meet was canceled. Lol. I broke the news that swim meets proceed rain or shine unless it thunders and there was no thunder. 

This morning was time trials and we didn’t have enough officials, so I had to do three jobs: referee, starter, and stroke/turn judge. It was hectic, I tell you. Hectic. The light rain continued, stopping for a few minutes here or there. I was under an umbrella for the starts but I had to run back and forth to confer with stroke and turn judges and adjudicate disqualifications. That’s what officials do, see. Armed with a whistle and a clipboard, we confer and we adjudicate. 

Later, a friend and I went for sushi. We’ve been trying to coordinate this lunch date for literally months. Her sons are my younger son’s oldest friends. The boys were in preschool together and don’t remember a time when they didn’t know each other. We talked about our jobs (hers is much crazier than mine because she works for Congress), our household routines, our reading habits, and our vacation plans for this summer. We talked about trying to stop being mindlessly busy for five minutes. We talked about “just being human,” as my friend put it. It was lovely to sit with a friend, just being human together. 

After lunch, we picked up groceries at the nearby Safeway because let’s not get carried away with the just being human thing. We have shit to do. We finished our shopping and parted ways, she to return home to work for a bit and me to return home to write the weekly swim team email, and change the beds and just generally clean up and organize and ready myself for the coming week. At 7:30, I thought about swimming, despite the unseasonably cool temperature, overcast sky, and freezing cold water. I couldn’t stop thinking about swimming so I put on my suit, grabbed a towel, and drove to the pool, where the young lifeguard at the front desk, another friend of my child and child of another friend, advised me to avoid the water. “Not a good idea, Mrs. P,” he said, shaking his head. I laughed. 

“Almost everything I do starts out as a bad idea,” I said. “But you might be right. I’ll see.” 

The water was almost, but not quite, as cold as I imagined. Gray skies with no sunshine leaves the pool water looking rather dank. I find that I like it that way. Not nearly as much as I like it when the water is warm and blue and sparkling in the sun, but swimming is swimming and I’ll take it in almost any conditions. Still, I found that I could only tolerate about 500 meters, and I practically ran to the shower, where I stood under the hot water and felt the chill leave my body. 

It was awesome. 

Yesterday (Sunday) was bright and sunny and as is often the case, the water felt colder on the warm sunny afternoon than it did on the cool dank evening. I pushed myself to 600 meters, and was still cold, so I finally got out, blue and shivering. 

Still awesome. 

Now it’s Monday evening, not quite 6. It’s always hard to transition from the weekend routine to the much more rigid and hectic weekday routine but once Monday is over, the rest of the week is pretty easy. It helps when you like your job as much as I like my job. I love my job. 

But I don’t love my job as much as I love that lap lane on a hot day and it’s hot today, legitimately summer humid almost-blazing hot. I’m going to finish some housework, post this bilge, which is about nothing except how much I love summer, and then I’m going to swim. The temperature reached the low 90s today, so the water has to be a tiny bit warmer. I’m trying for 700 meters. 

The prairie dogs on Main Street howl

I was going to swim tonight. Earlier today, I thought that I might have to work late, and then I didn’t.  So I drove home in the sultry early June sunshine, just imagining the first plunge into the cold water (yes, the water is cold again) and then the quiet and cool of the lap lane for 600 meters or so. 

The thunder started just a few minutes after I walked in the door. Thankfully, I hadn’t changed yet. I was a little disappointed but then I thought about all the things I could accomplish with the extra hour that I’d save by not going to the pool. 

I started folding laundry and paying bills and prepping dinner and watching the news. Yes, all four things at once. Then Senator John Thune showed up on a news broadcast, helpfully explaining that his North Dakota constituents need AR-15s to shoot prairie dogs and other pests. “What?” I thought.  “How big is a fucking prairie dog? Are they armed? Do they shoot back?”  South Dakota, I thought--who knew that it was so dangerous there, what with Tony the Prairie Dog Montana brandishing an assault rifle and screaming "Take a look at my little friend" to some poor innocent landowner of the Plains. And so I made this: 

Yes, I know. That took 15 minutes. In 15 minutes, I could have crossed off a whole bunch of to-do list items. On the other hand, I literally cried laughing when I was making this, and that’s 15 minutes well spent. No one laughs at my jokes like I do.  

Forecast tomorrow: Sunny, low 80s. It should be a good swimming day. 

Memorial

It’s Saturday of Memorial Day Weekend and for the first time, I feel like I actually DO have problems that even summer can’t solve. I’m not looking forward to summer the way I normally do. I’m not exactly dreading it but I’m not looking forward to it either. I kind of miss winter and if you know me you know that this is completely uncharacteristic and counter to all of my most dearly held beliefs and principles. 

Do you know how far gone I am? I almost hyphenated “dearly held.” A hyphen after an -ly adverb. Who am I? What is happening?

*****

It’s Sunday now. Yesterday was a more pleasant day than I expected it would be. It was sunshiny and bright after days of gloom. The sun and the warm temperatures are starting to dry things out a bit and it’s not so swampy anymore. That’s what it was like last week - swampy. I woke up early and walked in the slight chill of the early morning. Later in the morning, it was pleasant to be home with the sunlight streaming in through the windows, just writing and cleaning up and doing laundry and paying bills and catching up on life. 

And the pool opened yesterday, too. I didn’t feel like going, oddly enough, because I always feel like going. I also know that you don’t hyphenate an -ly adverb to form a compound modifier, but apparently, things change and I’m a different person altogether now. Still, after a morning and early afternoon of housekeeping and errands, I was hot and it seemed like it would have been a shame to miss the first day of the season, so I put on a suit, packed my pool bag, and rolled up to the pool.. 

My neighborhood pool is one of my favorite places on earth. During the winter, I think that it’s just the water that I miss, the water and the sunshine. But it's more than that. It's the roses and the sunflowers in the flower beds at the entrance. It's the makeshift lending library filled with paperbacks and magazines and picture books. It's the sweet teenage lifeguards at the front desk, all of them either my children or their friends. It's the old-fashioned pool house with its high wood framed windows for ventilation and its rustic summer camp-like showers. It's my neighbors and their families lounging on the blue and white striped deck chairs. And yes, it's the water and the sunshine, together. 

I breathed in the smell of roses and lilac and honeysuckle and lovely chlorine, found an empty chair next to a friend, and just like that, it was summer. But it still wasn't quite right. The pool deck was a riot of happy children, demanding the end of despised adult swim. They seemed unaware of the adults watching them, beaming at their beautiful faces. They probably wondered why no one was yelling at them to stop running and stop playing with the foot showers and stop making so much noise. Children can do anything they want right now. 

The water was cold but pristine, clear and sparking, free of leaves and debris and cicada carcasses.  I couldn't swim as fast or as far as I usually do but I'll get my speed and endurance back as the summer goes on. 

I swam on Sunday and Monday too. On Monday, I ran into my lovely elderly Russian neighbors, with whom I have been sharing swim lanes for 17 years. I said hello and waved as I always do, and they seemed happily surprised that I was still friendly toward them. I don't know them very well but I think they are Soviet-era Russian immigrants. In any event, they’ve been here for a very long time. They didn’t invade Ukraine. Putin isn’t their fault. 

It’s quite hot now, so the water is warming up a little bit every day. And just as it gets to be exactly the right temperature, the weather will change, and the water will get cold again. It’s OK. I’m not going to complain about cold water. 

In fact, I’m not going to complain about anything. I’m sad all the time and summer doesn’t feel like summer except during those precious few minutes that I’m in the water, and it doesn’t feel like anything will ever be right again. Maybe that’s OK too. Maybe nothing should ever feel right again. Maybe 19 children tore a hole in the universe when they succumbed to the gunfire last week and nothing will ever repair that hole until we are willing to do anything, give up anything at all, to make sure that nothing like that will ever happen again. Maybe I should stay out of the water and the sunshine and spend the long hot summer indoors, doing penance for a world that moves on when children die so violently. How can we move on? 

Gardening

I thought I’d try this thing where I work on one thing at a time, and stick with it until it’s finished, rather than writing a few paragraphs of one thing and then a few paragraphs of another and sometimes leaving something for so long that I forget what I was even thinking about when I started writing it and then having to discard it altogether. Because I hate when that happens. But I might never finish the other thing I’m writing now. I just read the page that I wrote and I find that I don’t care enough about it to try to finish it. That happens sometimes too. 

It’s the middle of May here in Maryland and unlike the last two Mays, it’s actually warm, though we have had a ton of rain. My neighborhood is a riot of growth. Even the houses with the lawns that tend to be perfectly manicured and the gardens that are generally well-tended are looking a little straggly right now. And my house looks very straggly. No one has had time to cut the grass for over a week and as for the garden? It’s a mess, and it’s likely to stay that way for a bit. I’m not a gardener. Sometimes I wish I was but I hate dirt too much to go around digging in it.  

I am a neat person, but I'm not a fanatic. I'm not a germaphobe. I do hate to touch anything sticky or slimy (especially the latter) but that's not why I hate dirt. Or soil, really. It's soil that I hate. Soil reminds me that I am alienated from nature. It reminds me that I'm a creature of modern life, totally dependent on technology and man-made infrastructure. It reminds me that if I were to be dropped into the wilderness with nothing but my own wits, I'd be a goner. 

So I hate dirt, and its smug little face sneering at me and laughing at my incompetence. I don't need to grow anything. If I need food I will buy it at the grocery store. If I need any flowers that don't already grow in my garden, I will go to a florist. Or I will look at my neighbors' lovely gardens. I don't need you, dirt. 

But still, I watch people who garden and I envy them a bit. I envy their beautiful gardens but even more than their gardens, I envy their competence. It must be nice to be so connected to the earth that you know exactly what to do to make things grow. Where do you dig the holes, I always think. Should you look for a sunny spot, or is shade better? I mean, I can look around and see where it’s sunny or shady, but am I supposed to know exactly where the sun will shine on each corner of my garden at any given time of day? I’ve lived here for 17 years, but I couldn’t tell you what corner of my property is sunny at 10 am or 4 pm. I’m not that observant. I don’t know when to water things, or how much, or if I even should water things. It rains quite a lot here, after all. Maybe that’s all the water the plants need. 

Of course, I know that all of this information is available for the asking. I can buy potted plants or seeds, and read the instructions. I can walk around the house and make notes on sunny and shady spots at various times of day. I can do a little bit of internet research to find out what kind of soil we have around here. But I probably won’t do any of that. If I’m going to work 40-plus hours a week, do three different volunteer jobs, keep a clean house, read books, grocery shop for my old lady (I own her now; I know this) and still have time to sit around writing about how little time I have, then there’s no time for gardening. 

*****

Pretty often, I think about something that happened in the past, and I look at my notes or my calendar or this blog, and I find that the thing that I’m remembering happened exactly one year or two years or five years in the past. The weather and the position of the sun relative to the earth and the smell of certain flowers or certain leaves about to shed and turn themselves into mulch, or a soft balminess (or an icy sharpness depending on the season) in the air all conspire to remind me. 

Hey, maybe I’m more connected to nature than I thought. 

It was just shy of one year ago that I wrote about walking around my neighborhood on the first summer-hot evening of the year, just as an enormous brood of 17-year cicadas emerged from its underground lair. Those cicadas took over our lives for about three or four weeks, and then they were gone, and I mean GONE, just as quickly as they came, leaving me wondering, did that even happen? Did I really just live the last few weeks of my life in a swirling cyclone of flying insects? Did I really just swim laps in a pool that was nothing more than a fucking cicada Viking funeral? 

This is apropos of nothing other than gratitude of the “at least” variety. This year is very different from last year; better in some ways and worse in others. Last year I didn’t have to worry about gas prices (and not only because I never drove anywhere) but this year, at least, I don’t have to worry about stepping on a cluster of dead or dying cicadas. And I don’t have to see them again for another 16 years. I’ll be old by then. 

So I started this by resolving to write only one thing at a time, and then I had a few other ideas that I really can’t work into this little post, so now I have even more drafts in progress than I had before. I’m not going to worry about that anymore.  And shall I tell you what else I’m not going to worry about anymore? Gardening. The inside of the house is neat and clean and I can’t bother myself about the state of the flower beds and the length and quality of the grass. And of course I still hate dirt. 

Beautiful with Mud

When I was 10 or so, I found a stack of hardback Reader's Digest best-of anthologies on a bookcase in my granddad's basement. I asked my granddad if I could borrow one, and he said "Take em all. Have at it, kiddo." And I did. I spent the next week of that long hot summer utterly engrossed in Reader's Digest. 

The anthologies (I think he gave me three volumes) contained quite the mixed bag of short stories, journalistic feature stories, opinion pieces, and essays, humorous and otherwise. I think I read the books cover to cover, because that is what I do, but I don’t remember many specifics. I remember a feature story about the U.S. Military Academy at West Point; its history, the admissions process, the rigor of West Point’s life and curriculum. I remember a quote: “They give you a million dollar education for free, but they shove it down your throat, nickel by nickel.” I don’t think women were even admitted to West Point at the time that I read this article, so I never imagined myself trying to measure up to those exacting standards.

I do however, remember resolving never to hitchhike or to pick up a hitchhiker after reading a hair-raising story about hitchhiking. Apparently, the roads of the United States in the middle of the 20th century were plagued with murderous hitchhikers who killed their drivers and homicidal drivers who picked up hitchhikers and murdered them in particularly horrible ways. There was also an article about Alfred Hitchcock. I don’t remember much about that article, except that I learned what a McGuffin is. MacGuffin? Six of one, half dozen of the other. Tomayto, to-mah-to. Whatever. 

One Readers’ Digest anthology volume was also my first and last exposure to Max Shulman’s Dobie Gillis short stories. To an 11-year-old inner city Catholic school girl in 1976, girl-crazy middle-class 1950s suburban teenage boy Dobie Gillis and his beatnik friend Maynard G. Krebs were no more relatable than space aliens. I didn’t like science fiction, and I didn’t like Dobie Gillis. 

Then as now, I was willing to read just about anything, and you never know when you’ll come across some interesting bit of information that will later come in quite handy. Those Readers’ Digest books might be one of the reasons why you always want me on your trivia team. But even the stories that were interesting or well-written enough to be enjoyable reading regardless of subject matter did not really speak directly to me. At that time (much like the present day lol), stories written by and about women were women’s stories, while stories written by and about men were just stories, presumed to be of interest to all. I understood this, and so I had no expectation that my grandfather’s books would contain anything written just for me. And then I stumbled across "How Beautiful With Mud," Hildegarde Dolson's hilarious essay about a beauty treatment gone terribly wrong. 

Even then, I knew there was something not quite right about Alfred Hitchcock, and I could not have cared less about Dobie Gillis and Maynard G. Krebs and their unrequited love for cheerleaders and prom queens. And of course, I knew I wasn’t going to West Point, so I didn’t really need to read all about the appointment and admissions process and the brutal first year program of hazing and discipline. But a teenage girl obsessed with a beauty product? Now that was compelling reading. 

At 11, I was trying to still be the little girl I'd been just a year earlier, the little girl who was never going to fuss over her hair, never going to carry a purse, and definitely never going to put anything on her face other than soap followed by water. But deep in my heart of hearts, I knew that I wasn't that girl anymore. I didn’t like makeup yet (and other than lipstick, I never really would) but I liked nail polish and hair accessories and cute clothes. I even liked handbags, a little bit. And 11 or so is when my skin first started to break out, so I was very very very much interested in miracle skin potions and unguents and salves and serums. I was (and sadly, I remain) 100 percent susceptible to claims of miraculous results. I’m always willing to hand over my money in exchange for the promise of clear and soft and glowing skin in a bottle or a jar or a tube. 

I can't find the essay online anywhere, nor can I find Dolson's book We Shook the Family Tree, where “How Beautiful With Mud” was first published. But as I remember the story, young Hildegarde, age 14 or 15, found a magic beauty clay product at her neighborhood drugstore; and then she spent weeks earning and saving enough money to buy the product, which she was sure would leave her glowing, radiant, and utterly transformed. 

After many weeks of babysitting and odd jobs that paid a dime here and a quarter there (the story takes place during the Depression, I think), Hildegarde had scraped together the $4.95 price of the magic beauty clay, the name of which I cannot remember, although I am quite sure that the product name did contain the word “magic.” She laced up her saddle shoes, jumped on her bicycle, raced to the drugstore, and handed over her hard-earned cash for the longed-for jar of rare, mineral-infused, purifying mud and she raced back home to plaster her adolescent face with it. 

The results, as Ms. Dolson wrote, were not as expected. When she tried to wash off the magic beauty clay with gentle splashes of lukewarm water, as instructed, she found that the water was no match for the clay, which had apparently hardened to form a cement-like casing on her poor face. She scrubbed with hotter water and a washcloth, to no avail. She waited for the stuff to dry again, and then tried chipping at it with something–a screwdriver, maybe. Finally, after an hour of chipping and scrubbing, Hildegarde had a face that was free of dirt, oil, makeup residue, and several layers of skin. Rather than a softly pink clear glowing complexion, the magic beauty clay had left her with angry fiery red raw inflamed skin, abraded in some places from the scrubbing, and in no way beautiful. The inflammation took several days to calm down and heal, during which time Hildegard forswore all further beauty schemes and plans. 

*****

I’m sure that Elon Musk is going to ruin Twitter even more than it’s already ruined that is but I do still enjoy a good Twitter thread. A few weeks ago, I came across a thread dedicated to drugstore beauty products of the 1980s. A few people on this thread went off-topic, sharing memories of 80s clothes, movies, and music as if any of those topics need any further discussion or examination on social media or anywhere else in the discourse. People like this are why we can’t have nice things. Most people, however, understood the assignment, as they say on the Internet. They stayed on topic. People remembered all kinds of beauty and grooming products of that era; everything from staggeringly expensive (even by today’s standards) creams and potions (we’d call them serums today, I suppose) kept behind elegant glass counters at John Wanamaker and Bonwit Teller to your everyday garden-variety Cover Girl and Noxzema products. About Noxzema, I could write a whole thread myself, but I will spare you. For now.  

The thread began to specialize a bit as more and more people posted about two items: Ten O Six Lotion by Bonne Bell and Aapri apricot scrub. These two products were insanely popular in the 80s (I myself used both of them when I was in high school) despite their absolutely dreadful effects on a person’s skin. The Ten O Six was probably almost all alcohol. It stung like crazy when you applied it with your cotton ball, and it dried your face out, leaving it with the texture of a piece of typing paper. Aapri scrub was a paste made of some kind of viscous stuff mixed with roughly ground apricot pits. I never actually drew blood when I scrubbed my face with Aapri, but several of the women on this thread claimed to have done so and I have no reason to doubt them. Aapri was abrasive, to say the least. 

All of us who commented and replied to comments on this very funny thread agreed that we now have no idea why it was considered good or necessary to strip the top layer of skin off our faces every day, several times a day, but it was. The idea that aggressive face scrubbing followed by application of stinging astringent was effective and beneficial was common knowledge and received wisdom among magazine-reading young girls in 1982 or so. As the discussion narrowed from the general landscape of cosmetic products in the 1980s to the very specific memories associated with these two products, people asked one question over and over again, the same question that Hildegard Dolson asked herself as she surveyed the disastrous results of her magic beauty clay experiment: Why did I do this? Why DO I do this? 

*****

I do wish I could read the essay again. I’m sure that if I dig around the corners of the internet a bit, I can find it, but I try to avoid digging around the corners of the internet. You never know what you’re going to find that you might not want to find. Some things, once seen, cannot be unseen. Talking to you, Congressman. Thank God that Twitter warned me not to watch that video and thank God that I was wise enough to heed that warning, because I've heard some things. 

Anyway I don’t know if Hildegarde Dolson stayed true to her vow never to attempt any beautifying schemes again. I myself have had more than one bad run-in with groundbreaking miracle products that did more harm than good but I’ve never given up. I’ve never sworn off on new beauty treatments.  

As far as appearance goes, a person gets what she gets and then does her best. No one gets a second shot at the genetic lottery. But hope springs eternal, doesn’t it? And that is why we all know the reason why we keep trying these crazy schemes. That’s why Hildegarde Dolson handed over her babysitting money in exchange for a literal jar of mud. That’s why there are lengthy Twitter threads wherein many women recount our sufferings for the sake of beauty. There’s always the chance that there’s that one dress or that perfect haircut or that weird-sounding but no-denying-the-science-behind-it serum or treatment that will make ALL. THE. DIFFERENCE. It never hurts to try, even when it does hurt a little. 

Advice

I’m feeling so overwhelmed right now with new-girl-on-the-job anxiety coupled with annual-spring-onslaught-too-many-things-to-do panic that I thought, once again, about stopping this; this being my daily writing habit. 

Of course, I could let up a little on the compulsive housecleaning schedule. I could stop with the daily Wordle habit. I could stop scrolling Twitter. If I stopped doing all of those things then I’d have an extra hour every day. But then I’d live in squalor and my deductive reasoning skills would miss out on badly needed daily exercise, and I’d have missed the thread about Kurt Vonnegut’s letter to a bunch of high school students. 

Now I don’t have any way to verify the authenticity of the advice ascribed to Kurt Vonnegut in this possibly apocryphal letter to possibly fictional high school students. But it reads like something Kurt Vonnegut would write and so I’m going to suspend disbelief and embrace the lovely idea that Mr. Vonnegut replied to a group of high school students who wrote to famous authors seeking advice, and that he was the only author among the many to whom the students wrote to write back. 

Here was his advice: “Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow. Seriously! I mean starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives.”

That’s good advice, isn’t it? I’m in the middle of writing three or four things and at least one of those things will never see the light of day but I’ll keep going on the other things in the five to fifteen minutes per day that I can spend tapping away on my Chromebook. Thanks for the advice, Kurt Vonnegut.

Working from work

I went to work today, outside the house, for the first time in over two years, and I’m exhausted. How do people do this every day? How did I do it every day for decades, literally decades, before COVID sent us home to work in our little corners? 

Exhausting, I tell you. Because this wasn’t just my first day back, it was my first day, period. I started my new job today, and so I’m exhausted from being out all day, and I’m exhausted from filling out forms, paper and electronic, and learning log-ins for multiple different “enterprise” God help me systems, and meeting new people and trying my utmost to remember their names. 

And I also have to learn how to navigate a whole new bureaucracy. I have to learn how to get things done in a new organization, and how to negotiate my way through a brand-new hierarchy that is no more or less convoluted than the one that I just left; it’s just different. I need to figure out the chain of command. I need to identify the movers and the shakers and the people who can grease the proverbial wheels, and I have to make friends with those people. Well, I’m going to make friends with everybody because I always make friends with everybody, but you know what I mean. I didn’t mean to come across as a cynical jerk. 

*****

Day 2. It's 7:33 AM and I'm sitting in the waiting room at the Base Pass and ID Building at Naval Support Activity Bethesda, home of what was once called the Naval Hospital and is now known as Walter Reed Medical Center. My first day pass was valid for only one day and my boss is trying to get me a 30-day pass but the Navy might not go for that. If I can't get a long-term pass, then I'll have to get a visitor's badge every day until I get my CAC card. Let's hope that I don't have to do this for long, because the tiny parking lot at the visitor's building is hard to get into from the Pike, and it's even harder to get back out and into the base entry line. 

Yesterday I missed the parking lot altogether, and ended up in the base entry line. The very kind Navy Police officer allowed me to U-turn out of her line, and she stopped incoming traffic to allow me to cross three lanes and enter the parking lot. I cannot expect that level of forbearance every day. 

*****

I got my base pass in record time, and now I can just breeze through the gates with everyone else who works at NSAB. Young people in uniforms call me ma’am all day. I’ve never minded being addressed as ma’am. It’s actually quite lovely. I try to be worthy. 

So yes, now I breeze through the gates, and then I promptly get lost. Three days in a row I’ve taken a wrong turn past the sentry and gotten myself hopelessly lost. Well not hopelessly because NSAB is just not that big but it’s big enough that you can drive around for a bit before you get your bearings. Everyone tells me that it happens to everyone “at first” and that I’ll get myself oriented in no time. They don’t know me very well. I’m still having a hard time finding my way from my office to the water fountain. On a  military base spanning several thousand square acres, the scope for getting lost is almost unlimited. I’ll report back. Often, I’m sure. 

*****

I’m always happy when Friday rolls around and Fridays are even better when you work in an office rather than at home. The transition from work week to weekend is clearer. The de-escalation is palpable. Everything seems to slow down and soften a bit. 

But you know what? I love this job. I really love it. I’m working in a place that feels set apart from the world, though not in a distant or removed way. The whole place bustles with energy and purpose. My little workspace is not especially pretty but it’s quiet and private enough that I can think but not so private and quiet that I feel alone. I did useful work this week, and made a staggeringly long list of things to learn about and projects to take on. It’s all quite exciting. Bracing, really. And I made it in and out of there today without getting lost. 

Fit

For the last two years, my work clothes have consisted of leggings or yoga pants, t-shirts (long- or short-sleeved, depending on the weather), and hoodies or cardigans. But that’s about to change very soon. Tomorrow, I’m starting a new job. I’ll be in the office several days a week and I can no longer dress like I’m ready for a hard day at the gym. And I don’t want to dress like that anymore; at least not all the time. In a year (well, I know myself, so let’s say three months), I’m sure I’ll be missing my stretchy clothes that are so comfortable that I don’t even need to change into pajamas before I go to sleep (I do change, but I don’t have to) but for now, I’m happy to have a chance to dress up a bit and to look like a person who has business in the world. 

I went shopping last weekend. I walked around the stores, picking up dresses and pants and skirts. That middle-aged lady who was walking around the department store shaking her head and looking confused? Yeah, that was me. It’s not that the clothes are ugly. I like lots of the styles. Palazzo pants are back and so are my beloved mid-calf rayon skirts. If they weren’t all crazy high-waisted, I’d stockpile them. The colors are nice, too. It’s the tailoring that’s off. The cuts are weird. I pick up a garment and I can’t figure out how I’m supposed to put it on my body. I tried on some dresses and skirts and a giant blouse (there’s just no other way to describe it), tugging and adjusting the whole time; adjusting the clothes to place the seams and closures where they should be,  and adjusting my eyes to the unaccustomed new shapes and silhouettes. 

Pants are especially weird, but I did find and buy one pair (black, of course). I’m wearing these pants now and the waistband is about two inches below the lower band of my bra. Maybe that’s an exaggeration but not by much. All of the pants are like this now; all normal-looking pants on the hanger that you have to pull all the way up to your collarbone in order to see if they fit. It’s an adjustment. Fit in general is an adjustment, really. I don’t understand these clothes yet. 

*****

While it’s hard to shop for new clothes for a new environment in new and unfamiliar styles, it’s also nice to have a chance to start fresh. I don’t know anyone at the new job. I interviewed on Teams, so people saw me from the shoulders up but no one knows what kind of clothes I normally wear. I could show up in anything and people would just assume that that’s how I dress. It’s freeing, really. 

But let’s not get crazy. A slight adjustment may be in order, but it’s also best to begin as you mean to go on, so I can’t show up on the first day in a sleek corporate suit and high heels and flawless hair and makeup because I could not sustain that look, and I wouldn’t really want to. I’m going for a style that’s slightly more elevated and elegant than what I have worn in the past, but not so elevated and elegant that people would be shocked and dismayed when I eventually revert to type. And I will revert to type.