I’m sorry to be cryptic, but the details simply aren’t mine to give, nor would I give them this soon, even if they were. It’s just that someone precious died, and it wasn’t time, and it wasn’t okay, and it won’t ever, ever be. Hearts all over the place are just busted up like you can’t believe because you can’t believe how these things can happen and then they happen and you’ve got busted hearts everywhere.
This post is a request.
Do not delay. Tell the family member, the friend, the lover, the spouse, the pet you love that you love them – today. Make a better choice with a behavior today. We fall short. We are cursed with our own humanity. But all around there are acts of love and kindness and you just have to try to be a part of that. Be a part of that. In the short term or the long, hopefully both.
We cannot lose sight of that. We don’t have that kind of time.
I’ll miss seeing you at the table, sweetheart. I love you.
Portrait of Jeanna Bauck by Bertha Wegmann, 1881. Image: Wikipedia.
To my surprise, two of my best friends in the whole world have grown the slightest touch of gray hair. When I realized it, the strangest thing happened: these girls got like, nine zillion times more beautiful than they were already. Straight up.
The first friend is almost exactly my age; we’re three days apart. Her gray caught my eye when we were sitting in the sun. She was telling me about the breakup that began that day and that has been so ruinous in her life for some months, now. We were at the Art Institute’s coffee cafe, out on the patio. I was listening and holding her hand. I saw the gray when she blew her nose. I thought, “Holy crap. That is life. That is what life looks like. It’s gorgeous because…it’s real.”
My other friend is several years younger than me but in my same decade. Her gray is lighter – so light I wasn’t 100% sure it was actually there at first, but now I’m 99% sure it is. I was at my sewing machine and looked over at her across the table. I saw the gray and I thought, “If that’s what gray hair looks like, I’m looking forward to it.”
Because sometimes I get sad about aging. It’s because my birthday is on Saturday,* probably, and I’m weird about birthdays. They’re my favorite day because I love being alive and they are my least-favorite day because I love being alive and now I’m closer to not being alive. Happy Birthday to me!!
My grandmother Dorothy went prematurely gray in her thirties and she looked so great. My mom has never dyed her hair and that’s pretty cool, especially when you consider she’s a person in the public eye. People do not like the people on their TV to change. Mom’s hair is silver and gorgeous.
But I vaguely thought I’d dye my hair when the gray started to grow in. Hair is fashion for me. It’s an accessory. I love to change my hair, as folks who have watched me on TV/online have seen over the years. I’ve figured – though I haven’t spent hours thinking about it because I haven’t found any gray yet – that when the time came, yeah, I’d probably dye it. No big whoop.
But then I see Friend #1 and Friend #2 talking, laughing, crying, creating art, being brilliant, being funny, telling me stories, making me laugh, teaching me, learning stuff themselves, and being really, really good friends with these first gray hairs on their heads and I think: “Oh, man… I wanna look like that.”
*It’s true: My birthday is Saturday, August 6th. I am going to shamelessly ask for a birthday present, too. From everyone. I gotta lotta nerve, don’t I? Don’t worry: It won’t cost you a dime. Actually, I think it will be fun. Stay tuned.
I have a question about etiquette. Is the following statement TRUE or FALSE?
It is appropriate to ask someone, after appraising their clothes,
“Oh my god, aren’t you hot in that?”
Personally, I think it’s false; that is, I feel it is notappropriate to ask someone, even if they are wearing a snowsuit in June, if they are “hot in that.” I think it would be similarly strange if I was wearing a floral-printed dress and someone said, “Why did you get a dress with flowers on it?” Not only is the question a touch on the pointless side, it’s hostile. I mean, back off, man: I like floral, cable-knit, floor-length dresses. What’s it to you?
Also, if there are lots of people around and the question is said loudly, it means everyone in earshot is guaranteed to whip around and look to see what heavy, thick, sweat-inducing garment the freak’s got on, which then forces that person to explain herself not just to the person who has asked the rather insensitive question, but everyone else in the room. Everyone else in the room is sure to be wearing a sundress or a sleeveless shirt or a slingshot or whatever.
This is all personal, of course. Whatever you take umbridge with, you’ve got baggage about that thing, guaranteed. And I’ve got baggage around the “Aren’t you hot in that??” question.
I’ve never been comfortable in shorts or sleeveless tops. It’s stupid, it’s silly, I know, I know: but I’m insecure about my freakishly pale skin and my inability to achieve Madonna-like limbs. Yoga, pushups, squats, light weight-training; my DNA is not and will never be programmed for “ripped.” I can’t get past “pancake” unless I flex in this very specific way and you can’t go around flexed like that all the time or even longer than a few seconds. So I accentuate the positive (my neckline! my waist!) and minimize the negatives by wearing pants, not miniskirts, and tops with sleeves. I might drape a jacket or sweater over my shoulders.
Which, yes, sometimes means I’m a tad warmer than you. But when you ask – and of course, dear, I know you don’t mean any harm – it’s so awkward for me. If I say no, I’d probably be lying, and that’s never good. If I say yes, then I’ll be forced to take off my sweater and we now know I don’t want to. If I tell you the truth, that “Yes, I’m hot but I have a terrible body image and this sweater is allowing me to feel more confident as I move through the world today,” you’re gonna think I’m weirder than you do already and it’s Monday, man. I can’t start that far behind the starting line so early in the week.
It’s not that this happened recently. It hasn’t. But I wore a blazer over my shoulders yesterday because my top was sleeveless. The sun was shining and my shoulders were pretty warm back there. But I promise: I’m an adult. If I’m hot, I’ll figure it out. You don’t have to manage my body temperature. I love you!
The avocado. Image: U.S. Department of Agriculture Pomological Watercolor Collection. Rare and Special Collections, National Agricultural Library (via Wikipedia.)
I’m passing by the avocados. But wait: I need avocados. I reach my hand over the display to grab a couple and I’m kinda going at this on a diagonal because I want to try and get out of the way of the woman coming from the other direction. She can’t get through until I move.
I make a face like, “Eek, sorry, just a sec,” and the woman says, “You’re fine!”
But then she just stayed there, watching me. It was a lot of pressure. Because you can’t just grab two avocados. You have to select avocados. You have to make sure they’ve ripened to your liking. Me, I like to buy one avocado that is quite firm because it’ll stay good in the fridge for awhile. The other one needs to be soft so I can eat it now, but not too soft so it goes bad before I put it on my dal tadka or whatnot. I’m one person. I can’t eat all these avocados right away. I need to stage my avocados and I’ve done this enough to know to stick to protocol.
How do I find these specific avocados? I squeeze ’em.
So this woman is standing there, not going around me, and I’m squeezing avocados with my thumb and forefinger. Squeeze, squeeze. Nope. Hm. Squeeze, squeeze. But this is weird because she’s watching me. And then, because I apparently cannot let there be a moment of silence ever, I say, “Squeezin’ the avocados!” and my tone is sing-songy and chipper, like I’m saying, “Just doin’ the chores!” to a neighbor because I realize as I’m saying it that “Squeezin’ the avocados” sounds like a euphemism for something and that is not good.
I didn’t stop there. Oh, no.
Because yes, yes indeed, saying, “Squeezin’ the avocados!” as I molested the avocados did sound super creepy, so in .05 seconds I decide to push further into this “I’m just a friendly neighbor at the store! Doin’ the shoppin’!” so I say, “Must be Saturday mornin’!”
Squeezin’ the avocados, must be Saturday mornin. That sentence came out of my mouth. I have never picked avocados faster in my life after that. I still don’t know what I ended up with.
By the time I got to the dairy case, I realized it wasn’t morning at all. It was half-past noon.
Somewhere in Chicago, a woman is shaking her head at her husband and unpacking groceries. She’s telling him how living in a city is really getting to her.
I smell funny cigarettes. Photo: Phil G. via Wikipedia.
As I walked through the Lollapalooza throngs today – remember, there are tens of thousands of extra people in town for this – I wanted to swing my totebag around and yell, “I live here! I’m not like you!”
These people aren’t bad or wrong for wanting to spend hundreds of dollars to drink tepid beer outside in a crowd of sweaty people as loud music makes it impossible to talk and the only bathrooms are foul port-o-johns. It’s just that it’s my turf, you see, and I’m not used to gaggles of undergraduate girls wearing fringe vests and diadems being in my way when I’m headed to the bank. (It’s amazing: the Navajo Jezebel look is still all the rage! Kate Moss wore a poncho to Coachella in 2003 and it’s been floppy hats and hemp purses ever since.)
Crowded and crazy as is it, the people-watching is primo. As I muscled my way up Michigan Avenue, I considered…
…the parents of a just-graduated son who has been planning for months to come to Lollapalooza with his blokes. (There’s something about packs of young dudes, headed to a concert, in shorts, concealing cans of Foster beer that makes them “blokes.”) The parents’ fingernail count as of Sunday night: zero.
…the here-today-gone-tomorrow economy of this thing, e.g., people selling bottles of water on the corner, pedi-cab drivers, face-painters, etc.
…the VIP rooms for the bands and how tonight, someone who won a contest, maybe, will meet their hero.
…the Grateful Dead-style painted booze-cruise bus that made a hard left off Washington. That’s someone’s business model – and they’re probably doing pretty well.
…the panhandler guys in my neighborhood. Do they hate Lollapalooza or look forward to it?
…the girl from Lombard, IL who spent two hours making her hair look effortlessly tousled. It began pouring rain around 5:00 p.m. today; I pictured her furious about this, lashing out at her friend, “Becky, I am seriously not interested in your drama with Trevor right now. Everything sucks!”
…the weeks of planning the cops have to do to deal with all this.
…the ER doctors on call. They’ve been briefed it’s Lollapalooza weekend for sure.
That last thought lingers. I’ve heard so many sirens today. Oh, you guys. Please drink the water you bought from the guy on the corner. Please watch your stuff. I hope this weekend is the best weekend of your life thus far – and it can’t be that way if you have to head up to Northwestern.
