You’re not going out like that, are you?

To say that I am not exactly on the cutting edge of fashion would be fairly generous, I think.  For the most part, fashion strikes me as scary, confusing, and stupid – politics, too, and for that reason I do my best to avoid both.  The only item of clothing that I’ve ever bought ahead of the popularity curve was this pair of shoes, because I needed closed-toed footwear for a lab course I was taking, and I thought they were cute.  (They were cute, and only a half-size too small – a fact that was woefully unapparent in the store, but made itself known to the tune of four separate blisters the first time I actually wore them.  We suffer to be beautiful.)  

The vast majority of other items in my wardrobe were purchased a year or more after their particular style first hit the stores; it’s usual that I need to get used to seeing a look before I’ll consider wearing it, and some things (think shrugs) I refuse to buy even if I like them, because it’s obvious how stupid they’ll look once the fad ends – and I will wear something I like until it falls off my body in shreds, I don’t care how last year it is. 

Don’t get me wrong; I like clothes very much, and I love to shop.  But my body is kind of a caricature of itself; I have the upper half of a six-foot-two runway model and the lower half of a 5-foot-nothing garbage man, and finding clothes that fit can be challenging.  Summer shopping is easier and more gratifying than winter shopping, because below-the-knee skirts hide all my municipal waste-collector attributes, while tank tops and fitted tees allow for long thin arms and neck.  Add a good push-up bra and we’re set. 

The big problem is the timing:  you have to shop for summer while it’s still technically winter, and vice versa.  It’s a pretty simple matter to walk into a store in, say, September, and step out of your flip-flops and shorts to try on a pair of corduroy pants; it’s another thing altogether to go shopping in March, and have to take off your coat, scarf, knee-boots, over-the-knee socks, and that pair of cords you bought last September, to try on a pair of shorts (or try to, since the ultra-low waist barely makes it over your ample ass…) 

And in the end you can’t really gauge how you look anyway, between the cruel and unusual glare of the overhead lights, the funhouse (now with 75% less fun!) dressing room mirrors, and the fact that it turns out you couldn’t be bothered to take off those socks after all, so you’re standing there with your garbageman butt barely covered by the biggest joke the Paris catwalk ever played on the female asscrack, while the item that was meant to be shorts is ending somewhere below your knees and damn those short femurs anyway, and the rest of your legs are covered in green-and-orange striped socks, because who really thought you’d be taking off those boots after you left the house – and the overall effect is kind of like if you stuck legs on a gourd and sent it off to clown college. 

I think I’m just going to start showing up for work wearing a sandwich board and those cute little shoes.

 

call it a lesson in how not to leave yourself open…

Eva:  Billy, what does my face look like?

Me:  A cat’s ass!

April, come she will…

In particularly self-centered moments (23 hours of the day, give or take) I like to imagine that March was created just for me – the universe’s annual lesson in patience and flexibility.  March, and its orbital counterpart, September, have always been my least-favorite months, challenging my anticipation of the new season, the new weather.  March does it to me particularly, and year after year I have found myself feeling out of place, trying to hurry through it.

Last Wednesday it was beautiful winter:  it was in the twenties and snowed all day – fluffy, ridiculously fake department store-looking snowflakes that flashed like diamonds as they fell, even as the sun set in the distance.  Two days ago, I sweated as I hunched over the beehive, the sun bright and the temperature pushing toward eighty, the yard smelling of spring mud.  Today, the hive sits under an inch of snow, with more predicted to fall overnight.  Sunday will be in the fifties.

I’ve always felt some strange mental disconnect when faced with such changeability; it goes against my nature, which in many ways is a stubborn, plodding thing – goal in mind, path decided.  One step forward, two steps back (maybe a little spin off to the side and a backflip for good measure) feels like a waste of energy, and all too often I end up stomping my feet, screaming and pointing, insisting that we go this way, at this speed… and frustration builds on frustration, while March saunters along according to its own whim anyway.

This year, I find myself trying to stand less rigidly, and be led.  This is a month of abundant beauty, which I suddenly feel inclined to seek.   Maybe it’s a sign of growing older, or quieter; whatever the cause, today I met the crocuses poking through the snow with less of my usual exasperation, and something more like wonder.

The kids’ school is having its annual Book Fair this week.  I remember the excitement associated with that (we had the bookmobile) and I remember the absolute, uncomplicated joy that accompanied being handed a few dollars and permission to Buy A Book.  Hell, I’m 32 and it still makes me happy.  I don’t actually remember any of the books I bought, but I suspect that my daughter will always look back on the one she brought home earlier this week – and which she brought back to exchange today. 

She climbed into the car after school on Monday carrying a large, thin paperback in a yellow plastic ShopRite bag.  She held it up proudly and bade me to wonder at its glory, which I did.  Her brother, whose class had not yet had their turn at the fair, was duly impressed. 

“What book did you get?” he asked. 

“It’s called Scuttle’s Big Wish,” she told him, in that tone of six-year-old voice that indicates great and powerful information has been revealed.   

“What’s it about?” 

“I haven’t read it yet,” she said, “but I know it’s about a mouse.”   

And with that, the subject was closed; in our house, Evie’s adoration of mice and rats is as much a given as air, or gravity, and a brand-new book about mice – from the exalted Book Fair, no less – was all we needed to know.  This book was special. 

Afternoon passed into evening, through homework and dinner and orchestra rehearsal and bedtime.  Sitting on the couch later, Bill turned to me and asked if I knew about Evie’s book.   

“I know it’s about a mouse,” I said.   

 He produced it from somewhere in the pile of papers and assorted trash that finds its home on our couch, and held it up.  “It made her very sad,” he said, leafing through the wide, boldly-illustrated pages.   

“Why, what happened?” 

He explained that it was the rodentine  version of King Midas – everything the mouse touched turned to cheese.  “And see,” he said, pointing to one of the pictures, “Scuttle lives in the wall here, and the bird in the cage over there is his friend…”  He flipped further into the book, and then opened to a page showing the bird, turned to cheese with his wings spread as if preparing to embrace his mouse-friend, and the mouse, tears streaming down his horrified face.  Scuttle was MISERABLE! shouted the text.  “She cried and cried,” Bill said, “even after we read to the end, when everything turns back to normal and the bird is okay.”   

I remember Bill becoming greatly distressed a month or two ago over a news story he’d read, about a father who had accidentally run over his child, who had – unbeknownst to the father – been hiding in a curbside pile of leaves.  In trying to articulate what so upset him about this story (beyond the obvious,) Bill talked about how the father must have felt, right at that moment when he realized what he’d done.  And while a children’s fiction book may not be tragic on the same level as that news item, to a six-year-old, it surely cuts as deeply. 

I suppose I tend toward hardassery in my parenting, but some things are just too sad – this book included.  I understand the point of the King Midas story, and someday Evie will, too.  She might even have learned the lesson from Scuttle, had it not been presented in such a gut-wrenching way; King Midas is something her head would’ve explained to her, but the look of sheer, unrelenting despair on the mouse’s face was something her stomach and throat told her, before her brain ever knew what happened.  That she should have felt that sucker-punch sickness, should have faced that moment of oh my god what have I done! horror (something so heavy that even her father broke down under the weight of it) makes my own stomach hurt.  It’s a lesson of its own kind, I suppose, but not one that any first-grader really needs to learn, and not through the betrayal of her prized Book Fair purchase.   

I sat down with her the next morning.  “Daddy said you were upset when you read your new book,” I began.  She nodded and looked at her hands.  “Even though at the end, he gets to wish everything back the way it was?”  Nod.  “I thought maybe, if you wanted, we could ask your teacher if you could trade it for another book.”  She shook her head no, but her face didn’t look convinced.  “Okay, well, you don’t have to.  But I’ll write a note for you, just in case you change your mind.” 

That evening, I noticed the note still sitting where I’d left it.   “Did you decide to keep the book?”  I asked her.   

“No, I took it back,” she replied.

“But you didn’t bring the note I wrote for you.” 

“I didn’t need it.  I told Ms. Egan myself, and she said I could go to the Book Fair tomorrow and get a new one.”  I was about to tell her I was proud of her for not needing my help, for taking charge of her own well-being, but before I could speak she smiled brightly and continued, “I’m going to choose one that makes me happy.  Still about rodents, though.” 

I’ll hand it to the kid, she still may not understand the lesson of King Midas, but she’s becoming an expert in self-reliance and resilience – and given what she’ll likely face over the course of her life, that may be far more valuable.

 

If I were managing to keep a Hive Journal, like I should be, the most recent entry would read something like this:

14 Mar 07 – unexpected sun, breezy, 70+.  yellow crocuses in bloom, also some maples (yesterday? today?) bees active, lots of pollen coming in.  full spring inspection on Iris – ~5 frames bees, top box, east side.   3-4 full frames honey remaining, top box.  eggs on at least one frame, small amount of open brood, small amount of capped.  no new mold.  bees calm.  reversed boxes (bottom almost deserted, some granulated sugar in cells.)  pulled fully-drawn frame 5 from bottom box to store, replaced with mostly-drawn extra from last year.  cleaned bottom board – lots of granulated sugar, dead bees, pollen, mites (level?  doesn’t seem bad for oxalic drip?) replaced all, removed entrance reducer, removed sugar from inner cover.  cleaned bee yard. 

March will probably only offer me this one day to get into the hive, but it’ll tide me over; winter is long when you tend hives, and spring never seems to arrive soon enough (I haven’t even reached my first anniversary with these bees, but I learned that lesson quickly.  Building woodenware keeps your hands busy enough, but all you think about is how soon you’ll get to pop open some boxes and actually use it.) 

I love being a beekeeper – both for the keeping of bees and for the being of something.  I do other things, too; I work and play the cello and sometimes I draw or crochet things.  But when pressed for words, I do not call myself a molecular biologist or a cellist or an artist – I say that I do molecular biology, or I take cello lessons, or I make sweaters.  It may sound like a small, nitpicky difference, but there is an untruth in those identifications that I would have to purposefully overlook. 

I say that I am a beekeeper, though.  Perhaps there is some level of arrogance in that, since I am still new to the art and will be a one-hive operation for at least another month (and that hive, despite looking really good yesterday, could still die between now and true spring.)  But perhaps there isn’t; from the beginning I have felt an ease and comfort in this activity that I don’t feel in anything else, even things I’ve done for years.  My knowledge is incomplete, my experience limited, but I work without anxiety and I feel good about my decisions.  Even when the work is hard, it’s a joy.  And there’s more than a little to be said for finally feeling entitled to identify myself as something.

Starting a new blog after five years at my old one has proven to be much more daunting a proposition than I’d expected, and not just because WordPress is only slightly easier to figure out than, say, the space shuttle.  I’ve been staring into the empty post editor for weeks now, trying to create some kind of segue to bridge the gap between my comfortable-but-worn blog, and this vast new empty space. 

I was telling a friend that I think there’s a tendency to get stuck in other people’s ideas of who we are, to play the roles assigned to us even if we’ve outgrown them, or if they never suited us to begin with.  People preferred the jagged, wildly discontented person I was when I started blogging, and they began to mistake my self-deprecation as an invitation to be overly familiar. 

There developed an expectation of ranting misery and bumbling awkward chaos, but my inclination to meet those expectations waned, owing partly to the fact that whatever truth exists in those things, it’s only a part of myself – and not a part I feel so much like focusing on these days – and partly to the fact that I have a few people who understood as much without being told, and without being disappointed or confused.  And the less they needed to be told, the more I wanted to tell them.

Trying to haul myself over the edge of my rut and express it to a wider audience has been somewhat of a challenge.  I’m rising to it slowly, I suppose, but there’s no rush, either, is there?

And it’s been a long December and there’s reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last

I have always enjoyed that song, despite not feeling any particular connection to it; December, regardless of circumstance, is a month of quiet or not-so-quiet joy and reminders of what’s important.

If there’s a long month – and there was this year - it’s January; after the decorations come down and the wrapping paper is carted away, What’s Important becomes paying the creditors – the reminders of which all seem to carry words like “overdue notice.”

January was the month when I emptied my piggy bank of its tattoo-and-language-course savings, and deposited it in the grownup bank, to pay for things like electricity.  It was the month when I transferred thousands of dollars from our ever-dwindling savings account just to cover the mortgage.  It saw my brave face, held in place for months by the sheer force of my desire to protect my already desperately-stressed husband from my own panic, finally crumble into hitching, nearly-frantic tears.

But things change, always by degrees, and February was not the same as January, and March is different yet.  In a fit of optimism I dipped into the pile of charity solicitations that have been languishing at the bottom of my bill pile for months now; What’s Important isn’t so hard to remember in March. 

Next month, we’re going to the cherry blossom festival.  It’s just a weekend away from home, but it’ll be the first vacation we’ve had in awhile, and two nights’ hotel accommodations represents a big change in the status quo.   Reason to believe, indeed.