On weeding

By Stella on Saturday 4 April 2015 at 00:00;

I weeded the herb garden this afternoon. Some of it because I couldn’t tell the verbena from the weeds. Dead brown twigs sticking out of the ground with some green stuff lying around it. I love verbena tea. So you’re right. I should know what it looks like. I do in the summer, not in the spring when all I have to go by are the brown twigs and tiny green things. My husband said, “Squeeze the leaf and smell it.”

Sounds like a good test. For friendship. For life. You have friends galore when you’re the life of the party, when everything you touch turns to gold, when you rub elbows with those in power. When the bottom drops out and you’re a nobody, who’s there? Squeeze the leaf and smell it.

It’s funny that it’s pressure that shows what something is made of. I don’t like pressure or pain. Who does? I try to be thankful. No matter what. I don’t succeed often. Sometimes I say “Thank you” through gritted teeth. I’d call that discipline. You can call it whatever you like. All I know is when I try to find at least one thing to be thankful for, I have a glimmer of hope.

A few years ago, our 17-year-old son slammed the door and walked out. My husband and I didn’t know what to do. He left to scour our son’s usual haunts. Should I go, too? What if our son comes back? Shouldn’t he find someone home? Thank you we’re together in this, even when my husband came home and shook his head.

I was desperate. Pictures of what could happen to our son flashed through my mind: lying in a ditch, beaten up, left for dead. Isn’t it terrible that your imagination is at its most fertile in moments like these? You really come up with the worst case scenarios! He didn’t come home that night but he smsd to tell us he would be staying with a friend. He’s safe! Thank you!

My dad died of cancer. Thank you, he’s no longer in pain.

Is that a cop out? I don’t know. Are there really things we can’t say thank you for? I’m not saying we should say thank you for rape, pedophilia, suicide, murder and all the ills of the world. We should fight for justice; we should seek to better the lives of others. But let’s not stop helping because we’ve been hurt too much, disappointed too many times, betrayed once too often.

What I am saying is that when I am squeezed, I hope you smell verbena.

On laundry

By Stella on Friday 3 April 2015 at 00:00;

Why am I writing about laundry? Because it’s something I do regularly and redeeming it, making it meaningful,  is something I’d like to happen. Bottom line: I’d like to like what I do.

I like the smell of the clothes when they come out of the wash. I use a natural detergent that makes them smell of just plain clean and nothing else. When I open the washing machine door and get that first whiff, it is satisfying. Things that were smelly, greasy, dirty and stained are transformed. Yes, they’re the same old clothes, socks, underwear and T-shirts but they get new life. I’m the same old me but at each birthday, I am given a new year.

I like the jumble of colors the clothes make. It’s like your child’s first colored drawing. “This is a house, Mommy, and can you see the tree beside it? And that’s you! And this is the garden. See all the pink roses and red carnations?” And you nod and smile and hug her close, seeing only brown and green and a stick with a round black head and pinks and reds. The colors have run together but its’ beautiful!

I like the colors but I do not like the jumble. Like when I pull the leg of my son’s jeans out and find it’s caught In the sleeve of my husband’s long-sleeved shirt which is caught in my dress! I used to tug and pull, but no more. You’ve got to gently extricate the outermost twist to get to the main knot. We get entangled in beautiful things. A bonus, sometimes we even say, it is a must. Until it becomes a headache, a heartache. A burden and the knot gets tighter and tighter.

I like shaking the clothes out, seeing the creases disappear, well some of them anyway. I think, “Great! Maybe I won’t have to iron this one.” I put a grey, faded, shapeless sweatshirt with 2 buttons lacking against my nose and remember the first time I put it on. It didn’t look so old then and I think it still had all its buttons. 25 years ago, my then young husband would come home, take off his work clothes, put on a t-shirt and jeans and the “Grand Méchant Look” sweatshirt.  Until he came home one day and I was wearing it! He smiled, took me in his arms and held me there. For a long while. I’ve been wearing it to this day. It’s like my second skin.

Memories are in the wash. Thank God they don’t run off with the dirty water. They come back with a new zing. The sweatshirt may be as faded as a cataract-covered eye but the heart still beats to that smile, that cherished embrace.

On beauty

By Stella on Thursday 2 April 2015 at 00:00;

It’s my friend’s birthday today. She is, hmm let me think, 6 years older than me. That makes her 63. I can still remember her at 18, a tall slim beauty. A photographer wanted her as a model. She said no. She could have been a ramp model, too. There weren’t many, if any, talent scouts in our provincial city in the 1970s. I wonder if there are any now. She had always been beautiful, in my eyes at least. Heads turned where she went. She was always in style or even avant-garde. Once, her fingernails were painted 5 different colors, each one had a horizontal layer of green, then white, then blue, then pink, then fuschia. She could carry off things like that. She wore bright flowery gowns, yes, long gowns, cotton yes, but long gowns to college. Thick make-up: pre-foundation, foundation, blush-on, powder, eyes-shadow, mascara, the works! On others it looked cheap or contrived. Not on her.

Her hair was always in the latest style. I remember the layered look which framed her face to perfection. She could get away with anything. Because she was beautiful. Men, because well, they were men. Women, because she intimidated them. Not because she was unkind but because she was beautiful. There is this awe, this wonder, this deep down wish to be like her and somehow catering to her made one beautiful, too. Or at least shared in her beauty. Even if it were for a moment. So doors opened for her, literally. And she got the best service at hotels where receptionists ran to do her bidding; at the beauty parlor, where the hairdresser considered it a privilege to cut and style her hair and the manicurist and pedicurist took the tiniest hint of a cuticle from each finger and toe; at restaurants where the best table always managed to be free when she swept through their doors.

Boyfriends, she wrapped around her little finger. One didn’t want her to cut her layered shoulder-length hair. He came to pick her up onet day and you could see the nape of her neck. She had cut her hair short. He was speechless, then furious, then resigned. A rueful smile, a shake of the head. And with that, she took it off, the wig of short hair, and shook the pins out of her hair. Well, not quite like in the movies, because she had asked the hairdresser to do it for her and she had been very careful to pin up her long hair in little flat curls. Her laugh rang out as he came after her, all smiles.

Only one man did not run after her. Gave her a hard time. Seemed at first impervious to her charms. Although he would fly to our provincial city for a weekend and watch a movie with her, take her out to dinner, then go back home to his place. Within six months they were married. And he never went to a single movie with her again. Forty years down the road, she plays bridge; he plays polo. They share the same house. And that’s all they share.

page 2 of 2 -