The Purse-uit of Happiness

When I told Huck that most women have multiple purses he went all agape at me.

"It's TRUE!" I insisted.
"Well, how would that even work?!" He asked, as if I'd just described a foursome involving a house plant and a license plate, "Isn't that sort of unnecessarily complicated?"
"I don't know. I imagine they dump the contents from one bag to another and sally forth."
"But why?"
"I DON'T KNOW!"

My purses tend toward the small side, just big enough to keep my wallet from making my pants pockets look too manly and my phone from butt-dialing (although my phone has been known to cheek dial while I'm talking. Apparently a rather large smile or my cry-face can dial in someone else to the conversation, which is always what you want when you are bawling hysterically. In that moment what you want is to hear the voice of an aunt you haven't seen in a decade to suddenly interrupt your wailing on your husband's cell-shoulder with "What? Who is this? What's going on?")  I usually also try to have room for lip balm, ear plugs, head ache drugs, pens, and an impossibly small pad of paper that makes me record my thoughts-on-the-go in such abbreviated fashion as to be rendered meaningless, and/or haiku-ish: river, flow, mountains, spring, melt, time, new, always.  However, with my current appointment-heavy, waiting-room lifestyle, I find I need to bring many more amusements with me.  I tire of reading in the waiting room magazines about the Sydney Olympics and Martha Stewart's 2009 Thanksgiving feast. Facebook is great for a few small-print moments of palm-sized amusement.  But I need more: water and snacks, my big full-thought-ready journal and my books (now that I can read pretty well again).  I need several for any mood that might strike: poetry (Billy Collins Horoscopes for the Dead), spirituality (Pema Chodron's The Wisdom of No Escape because I can't escape my head injury), sudoku (in pen! for a higher stakes drama experience) and my current love which I want to marry and make babies with: Just Kids by Patti Smith.  So I've been stuffing my wallet in to a tight-squeeze purse and then dumping that in with my runaway's satchel of provisions and favorite things in a giant reusable grocery-store-branded bag.  And finally I thought: why not a real, honest-to-gosh woman-size purse?

I don't love purses the way most women seem to. They all look the same to me  (except once, I found myself accidentally on the front lines of a fad with a thrilling knock-off giraffe print purse that fancy strangers on the streets of San Francisco commented on).  Generally, I'm not keen on spending money on generic looking things. Wait. Nope. That's not true.  Last year, everyone was obliged to check out my awesome new tires which still give me a little kick every time I get in my car and I'm 100% certain they look like every other tire, except tractor, bicycle, and lawn mower.  But it's really about the performance, grip, and low road noise rather than looks with that foursome. 

To cut down on the high cost relative to the low benefit that makes up my purse ownership, I've checked out the offerings at thrift stores, but used purses apparently give me the creeps.  I can buy a great variety of used items but lingerie, socks, gloves, hats and purses, anything with a terminal insert factor, are all out of the question.  I want these things, especially purses, to be virgin.

Time for a real purse

purse-free or die

Coyote and I ended up at the mall recently and I took the opportunity to peruse the women's purse section at JCPenney, a store that I actually like (Joe Fresh and A.N.A. lines specifically) despite it's stodgy history as being the source of the most embarrassing underwear my mother every bought me as a child (as a young teen I'd specifically requested Garfield bikini briefs, as a freaked out mom of a young teen, my mother specifically heard only "Garfield belly-button covering briefs" which were ridiculous, specifically ridicule-us at slumber parties and in locker rooms).

Coyote was not happy about this wrong turn of events into the women's purse section and soon began to complain of physical ailments, chief among them: "Mom, some thing seems to be wrong with my throat."  "Hmmm?" I intoned as I shuffled around the uninspiring shelves and racks.  "I'm not gagging."  Yes, it was a problem for him that he was in the women's purse section AND he wasn't gagging.

(I inexplicably and habitually seem to describe the purse section as "women's". I have yet to see a "man's" purse section, which would make the women's purse section actually the gender neutral purse section, right?) 

I found a fine, large "hobo bag" (I looked up the terms for purses! And that is one of the weirder ones and, realistically, out of your usual hobo price range. Curiously there are no bags labeled "tramp bags", "bum bags" or even "runaway satchels"!) that settled on my shoulder like it belonged there, squatters rights and all.  And it was turquoise, which has been my color of choice lately.  I tried to sway my family to go 50's turqouise on the trim of our house, but I was out voted. They all staunchly stuck with the classic dark green, "for literary considerations," Huck said. And by that he meant Green Gables which is not even his native religion, but he was required to convert for marriage.  But I got my consolation prize: the two dining room archways. And now this purse.

The purse was too expensive for me.  If I specify the price here, I'll worry that half of my dear readers would be like: holy shit, that's WAY TOO much for a purse.  And the other half would be like: OMG, that's so embarassing, are you sure it wasn't used? Did someone throw up in it?  But those fears are irrational.  What would really happen is that half the people I know would be like: whatev's, I love you just the way you are, purse or no purse.  And the other half would be like: criticize, criticize, criticize (I don't actually know what we're talking about!) Criticize. Cricticize.

Girls and their purses: sheesh! My card from 1978

I returned later, coupon in hand, to find two left.  One was stuffed full of clothes that look like they had a close encounter with the pilfering kind.  And even that was too much prior use for my comfort.  But when the other had a production flaw, I plugged my nose and bought the tainted one, the one with the sullied reputation. And I'm inordinately happy with it. And Huck bought me a shiny turquoise necklace to match. Apparently "turquoise" is a love language.

Little Miss Adventure

To celebrate Huck's new job, which is in every possible way a profoundly better fit for him than his old one, we decided to stay at the Davenport, Spokane's stay-cation of choice. The newer building, the Tower, as it's called, is done in a safari style with taxidermied and bronze statues of African animals, complex stained-glass ceilings and walls, ornate chandeliers and a crap-ton of jungle prints.  It is a pretty stunning set up that seems a little imperial/colonial, like, if the hotel had it's druthers the whole place would be staffed with scrawny little black boys you'd call "boy." Spokane doesn't have a real connection to African themes but what it does have is a long and rich history of classism that's unusual for the Northwest. It's an old, old railroad and mining money town run by just a few families. So the African theme is a little suspect here, but beautifully executed nonetheless.

My friend, it's been so long since I saw you

The ironic thing about that 10th floor room was that it looked directly in to Huck's old office.  He was able to point out each desk, name the framed awards, and label the binders on the book shelf. 

I could've stay-cationed alone. I needed break from my life but being alone wasn't appealing to me, especially since half the crap I need a break from is my own brain, so I opted for a few hours instead of the whole shebang. All I did in my hour or two alone was watch TV, which was pretty overwhelming.  For those, like me, who live under rocks, you should know that TV shows now have multiple things going on: quotes and votes and little e-paperdolls roaming around the bottom of the screen. I am not able to handle that much stuff and I can't filter it out. I did not enjoy my time alone.

Huck and I left the kids watching the Olympics (the thing you miss when you don't have regular TV) and we trotted over to our gluten-friendly favorite, the Wild Sage. It was full but quietly humming, which meant that I could handle it. Eating out didn't used to be much of a treat since what we did at home was once better than anything we'd find out in the world. This meal was a true treat, especially in comparison to what's been going on during the head injury era ("Lots and lots of frozen pizza" - Blue.  Oh god, I hope it's been cooked...).

1:30 am the fire alarms in the hotel all went off.  And they beeped and beeped and beeped. And announced and announced and announced that we all had to evacuate the hotel.  I kinda wished the recorded announcement would have been more like the elevator.  The Tower elevator announces in a sultry and breathy voice "Going Dooown." Huck said the "on you" is implied.  I joked later that the announcement should have been like that: "I've having an eeemergencyyyy, nooooow."  Huck responded in the elevator voice, "It's so hotttt in here!"

As you may remember, I was involved in a hotel fire nearly 20 years ago.  I worked graveyard at an old old hotel in Petersburg, Alaska.  I'm not wanting to detail the whole night, but I was brave, actually, and did what I needed to do, which in the early part involved an utterly failed attempt to vacuum soot off a wedding cake where I ended up punching it full of nozzle prints.  I also evacuated all the guests which involved crawling along the top floor beneath several feet of thick, billowing black smoke, dimming lights, trying to find the one last guest who, it turned out was staying at her lover's house, just using the hotel bill as a cover.  The building collapsed, took other buildings with it. And I was left with some PTSD which has made me behave is some funny ways over the years, including but not limited to running out of an apartment naked because I awoke to the smell of smoke which turned out to be a neighbor's cigarette and nothing more, checking smoke detectors in every hotel I stayed in for years, foolishly running in to a burning building and dragging a man out, among other hilarious forms of fear.

Scandia House, December 16, 1994

As you can imagine, I was fully triggered. The idea that the place could actually be on fire was very real to me in a way that I'm not sure anyone else was experiencing as they joked and jostled in the fast moving hoard in the stairwell. I tried not to think about the fact that if I collapsed from fear, my children would be panicked and I would probably be trampled by the drunk girls giggling and stumbling down behind us. I focused more on the fact that this part of the hotel had been built in 2007, had all current fire-prevention standards, the stairwell was un-burnable cement. Around floor 4 there was intense smoke smell, but that was more cigar than anything else.  Out in 20 degrees, we waited, finally heading over to the old building's ornate lobby for warmth and chairs. Being only 10 minutes from home, we discussed just returning.  But, my god, a queen size bed at the Davenport instead of the full size at home... I just couldn't walk away from that.

We all worked hard to calm our racing hearts and eventually fell asleep in the Davenport Tower at 3:30 AM.

Yellow Willow at home at Slavin Reserve

The pool was big draw for this stay-cation.  Spokane has no indoor public pools, which I find odd.  I've lived in smaller towns with more pool (Pullman, Hello!).  The last time I'd swam was in July and I was very nervous and uncomfortable with the way the water messed with my non-existent equilibrium.  So I delicately, slowly entered.  And I felt fine, if a little cold, and I began doing laps, without the somersaults at the walls, of course. I worked hard, to the limit of my ability.  I swam fast.  I felt incredible, powerful, great in my body. It was all muscle memory (from that one year on swim team during which I was a disaster, ignored by the coach because my build is more skier/cowgirl (solid saddle padding with high trot-tolerance up top.  Seriously, at the dude ranch where I worked we were almost all built the same) than a shouldery swimmer until one day I swam a heat that so embarrassed our team that he finally taught me how to move and I finally began to improve) propelling me joyfully through the water, and my mind was happily bored. I recently tried Tai Chi and although I love the Qi Gong movements associated with it, it's over-all too complex for my mind right now.  The swimming was simple and I could do it and I felt like I could do it.  And then the kids and I played "water-bending wars." And I felt happy and amazing.

Left to right: T-Bone's ass, My ass filling the saddle, T-Bone (a goofy horse), Home Ranch, CO 1998

Huck, sidelined without his suit, got all emotional noting that I could never have done that even a few months ago. I'm getting better. It's all getting better.  And it wasn't even the end of February.

Buoyed by my success, I set a goal.  I would hike Slavin Reserve's (the spot with my favorite yellow willows and my heart aches with missing them) two miles of uneven terrain in June. I used to back pack for days on end, sometimes with a baby on my back. I SHOULD be able to do it right?  I might even join a gym with a pool! So, I enthusiastically leaned in to life.  I donned a pedometer.  The first day I did 3500 steps.  The second day 4500.  I even cross country skied (with 20 years of muscle memory) out my front door for 20 minutes. I'd skipped skiing all last winter because at this time last year my big challenge was to sit outside, upright, for 10 minutes a day.  And then... that pedometer... I'm not a competitive person. Except with myself. I ramped it up to 6500 foot steps.  And then... well let's let the pedometer tell the tale: 2000 steps. I crashed hard, so hard, into a downward spiral of exhaustion, migraine, anxiety and sleeplessness. My reset button, Cranial Sacral Therapy, got sick and had to cancel. For more than a week, on into March, I hit my head against rock bottom, day after day.  I was too out of it to be depressed.  But depressing it was.

Me in my world map jacket, 3rd from L, Ski Class, Copper River Basin, Alaska, Jan 1994

The lag time between when I can first do something and when I can consistently and routinely do that thing (like walk 1/2 mile, or swim a few laps) is something like 6 months.  The first rush of success is so thrilling and I think: I CAN DO THIS NOW!! I am AMAZING! I am BETTER! and then I can't, and I tumble back down that Sisyphus hill, crashing at the bottom.  Before this, my self-discipline and self-restraint had been a boon; my goal-orientation was a marketable skill (poorly marketed, I admit).  But this has tested it all again and again. My hobby, my goal? It must be this One thing only: healing.  And that path has a mind of it's own.  My self-restraint is applied to not having any other goals as I restrain a self  --that I barely recognize now-- to not having any other goals before Me. It's torture and it looks and feels like the exact opposite of what it is.  Laying around all day is "restraint"?! Yes, yes it is. Pacing. I learned it a year ago in speech therapy and it looks like I have to relearn it again.  Pacing. Again and again I circle back to this spot: healing is my goal, and it can only be approached as an un-goal.  Pacing. Again and again.

I took this photo: the horses let out after a long day's work of pacing themselves for the ranch guests

So, I finally took some heavy hitter pain medication and I don't know if it was the morphine-based medication or the fact that I didn't have a crushing headache, but I spent one fabulous day laying in bed, smiling, totally useless but in the best possible way, too relaxed and happy to be useful. I tried to journal, but my mind was pretty convinced that it was fine if you got most of the letters in a word, and those letters didn't need to be in any particular order for it to be, in essence, that word. I mean, I wkon tahw I nmea.  And that is way better than being too much in pain to be useful.  (Apparently, I just want to be a useful engine for Sir Topham Hatt.)  And there were no rebound headaches.  It stopped the spiral. Sleep and peace returned to me.  And then I got my Cranial Sacral Therapy and I feel a lot better.  But the pedometer is going back in my top drawer again, along with my children's baby teeth and the hat Blue sewed me when she was five, and my swim suit.

But somehow, this whole episode from fire alarms to morphine-ettes was the perfect Sarajoy-sized adventure. I am satisfied. For now.

Interior Redesign

I thought maybe I could trick myself out of this mushy spot by spreading the Benjamin Moore color  fan deck on the bathroom floor.  My bathroom is painted an entirely unflattering pastel celery that has no idea what it means to be pastel (hint: soft and complimentary).  I was worried that I looked like an 85 year old smoker/tanner/drinker and I told my friend; she thought I was nuts.  Then she visited my loo and came out of there laughing: It's the color in your bathroom! I've never looked that horrible in my life.  And also, the paint is wearing thin and chipping.  I used to have a bunch of ideas that would look adorable and flattering with the bold checkered floor tiles, but I had no money nor time, nor energy to do it these last 15 months. Maybe now was the time.  So I spread the out the fat fan deck of Benjamin Moores like a smug dealer, house always wins.  This would do it, wouldn't it? This would make me want something.  This would make me the way I was.  This would lure me out of where ever I've gone.  It was supposed to be color-yer-house porn, meant to titillate and excite me in to being me again.

I walked by it for days, stepped over it, around it.  I felt nothing. And eventually I put it away in my top drawer again, along with my ancient and long ignored marijuana pipe and the vibrator I no longer use.

How could this happen? I've always loved house colors.  It was the number one draw of home-ownership for me: no more beige, cream, and white!  I grew up in beige and cream.  As my mother explained it to my very frustrated little self: you don't want to pick too bold a color or you'll get sick of it, so you pick an inoffensive standard like beige or cream.  And so the house was a flurry of beige and cream and wood paneling, aside from the gold flowered kitchen floor linoleum and the avocado counter tops, of course.

I longed to do lots of things to that old house.  I would tape pieces of paper together and draw redesigns of the house with turrets and bay windows, specifying the colors of each room and picking out the furnishings from the JCPenney catalog.  I was really really in to houses and colors.  And the only way I could understand my mother's take on color was this: she felt it was better to start out bored to tears rather than go through the painful process of becoming bored to tears. Her idea of inoffensive colors was my idea of totally offensive. Maybe I don't have the boldest schemes or the feistiest matches, but what I like makes me feel rich and buttery in my soul. 

My head injury has made colors even more intense.  They illicit outsized emotional responses: weeping at the blue, ecstasy with fushia.  Colors, like drugs.  It was one of the first things I noticed.

Our burgundy dining room needed repainting around the time of my head injury and we were discussing a change. And then I got bonked, bonked, and bonked.  And the dining room became a very harsh place for me, the contrast with the white was too intense, the color was too overpowering.  And the whole thing needed to go, fast.  I picked up peach from the hardware store and by the time I got to the check out, I realized this would be my last trip out of my house for a while.  The harsh lights, echoing announcements, standing up... I couldn't do it any more.  I came home and settled in to my bathrobe for the next year.  For the next few weeks I painted my dining room, 5 minutes a day.  I really could not handle the red.  Huck came home from his out of town work, shook his head at my pathetic attempts and finished it off for me.

Now that I can handle most of the colors life throws at me, the urgency is gone.  And now that I could probably paint for 15-20 minutes at a go, I just don't give a shit.  Something I've loved since childhood and I don't care about it any more.

And you know what else is missing?  I don't care about my garden.  I can't bring myself to even pop open a seed catalog. I gardened a little last year, but I now view that as my body executing my brain's final wishes after it died, like fingernails and hair growing after death.  The only things calling to me are flowers. And raspberries.

It seems I could now actually be happy in what was once my worst nightmare: a beige yard-less apartment.

Manito Greenhouse

This all looks suspiciously like depression, doesn't it?  It's February and every thing sucks, so maybe it could be.  But you could give me all the anti-depressants in the world and it wouldn't make me ABLE to do any of these things in any way that wasn't totally pathetic. Or has my personality changed that much? In which case, all the anti-depressants in the world won't make me love these things I no longer love. Is my brain protecting me from unrealistic goals? to prevent desire burn-out?

Blue wanted to go to see a Steam-Punk Tempest production and Huck encouraged me to go with her (he ended up going and happily so).  But I couldn't see myself in 2.5 hours of Shakespeare.
What the worse the could happen? He said.  He wants to see me alive again, loving Shakespeare again.
I'll get exhausted is what will happen.
So you get tired. You come home. You sleep.
But no, it's not just "tired."  It's bone-crushing exhaustion.  It's panic-inducing, kill-me-now, exhaustion.  And it's always staring me in the face.  Yes, yes, I could do that, go there, try this. And then I could also dive in to a giant pool stuffed full of exhaustion-pirhanas who will tear at me, ripping flesh from my bones and I'll be devoured alive by toothy, tearing exhaustion.

And it's non-negotiable.  It's not like I can do a little of that or this, if I REALLY wanted to. I can a little more now, but the cut off point is still non-negotiable. I don't even get to negotiate with it. It seems difficult for some to understand, so let me explain: Imagine you love running marathons and your friends like running marathons with you.  And then one day you crush your leg and you can't run marathons anymore and half the people in your life get that.  But the other half are like: But you promised you would run this one with me! Why can't you just do half of it?  Maybe you could walk it? You could if you really wanted to!  You just don't like me and your being a stubborn jerk! And you say: Listen, maybe I could walk on my shattered leg for a few yards, but it won't ever get better if I keep doing that.  And some people, some parts of my own shattered brain even, will just never understand this.  

And the limitation is always there.  And it bores me and annoys me and upsets me and stifles me so that I no longer know who I am, or what I want because after every activity known to man gets pushed through the exhaustion strainer, the only thing I get in my applesauce is a few 15 minutes of chores that should've been done a year ago.  This isn't life.  This isn't living. But it IS. That's the maddening part.  This IS my life.  It's not able-bodied good ol' American Road Trip Livin' It Up life.  No,this is it's shadow, it's evil twin, it secret smegma-filled underbelly-button.  This is the barren desert of life. I suppose I have a bee in my bonnet about this because I recently read that "It's so easy to be only half-alive."  And I don't know what they meant, but I know that's what my life seems; even as I am daily living at the edge of my capacity.

I thought if you lost something, something else had to come in to replace it. Those are the rules, right? But I've just got nothing.  The chrysalis of my head injury wrapped tight around me.  My little caterpillar self is totally dissolved and at this point the molecules need to pull themselves together and get going on the next thing, the butterfly or the moth or, hell, even a redo of the wrinkly wave of a caterpillar would be fine.  But this, this painfully conscious goo of me, what the hell?  Forget the inside of my house, the inside of ME needs interior decorating.  Where are the pretty colors inside me?  Where is the place that CAN feel buttery and rich? 

I'm tired of talking about it. And you're tire of reading about it. I'm impatient.  And I feel crappy about that too.  But then, I hear someone complain about having a killer head cold for 10 days and I feel bad for them.  That stinks; 10 DAYS!  So... maybe I can feel a little less angsty about my feelings at 15 months of having a bad head. It would drive anyone nuts, right?

And there's something else here.  There's some peace about not having a million desires pulling at me, not having the painting, the gardening, the cows, the storytelling, the canning, the herbs and all of those passions pulling at me.  I came across my to-do list from a month before my head injury and it's basically completely insane.  No one could accomplish all of that in 10 years, much less the one day I had given it.  And there's some quietness, some companionable solitude here: there's not much but what it is, is simple and sweetly peaceful, when I let it.  It's a desert, not a rich teaming jungle.  It's a desert and each grain of sand becomes something here, a jewel traveling across the land, reshaping it.  The grains of sand I do have, the things I do love, sparkle in my hand and feel less ordinary than they would in some place with more fascinating distractions. I am in a place without competing demands.  I am in a place where what matters, earth and sky, are all I see. For now, perhaps my life can be beautiful in its two-toned simplicity, beige and blue. The desert is part of the living earth too.  Life is there too. It's just not so obvious; it has its own peculiar ways and rhythms.  But all the nature shows are clear: life is here too, and you can find it if you learn how to look for it. Man, oh man, I sure hope so.

And as I think about it this way, things settle within.  I don't have to be the old me. I don't have to be anything at all. I can let myself go, the kite untethered to what was, to history, to time. What's fun and "living" to the people around me, isn't going to be my fun, my living, but my definition of this will be just as real. Their colors are not mine; their rich and buttery is not my rich and buttery. Maybe it looks dull to you, but this simplicity, the more I think about it, has become, must become evermore, gorgeous to me. As household maintenance, the bathroom should be repainted but it doesn't have to be a passion project.  It can just be whatever it is.

Say Yes to TV

One of the "benefits" of my head injury has been my new relationship with television.  I grew up mostly without TV.  Occasionally a parishioner would donate one to us, the pastor and his family.  But those would always be on their last leg and always black and whites, large and established in their wood casings and tweed accessories.  And in a few weeks they would kick the bucket and add to the tower o' broken televisions in the sun room.  They would last just long enough to catch us up on Perry Mason (noon, channel twelve, my favorite show) and Price is Right (my sister's favorite show).  We eventually got a new color TV and even got cable for a few months in my teens, but every time my mom checked the cable box, it was set to MTV.  So we lost cable.  But no worries, I was able to get all the MTV I wanted at my babysitting jobs and friend's houses.

TV was not simple in our home.  It was a complex struggle for control. My mother limited the TV to 1/2 hour after school and 1/2 hour in the evening.  The preferred shows had to be circled in the TV guide and pre-approved. My mother also, not surprisingly, hates TV and has no respect for it's watchers. TV is "garbage".  It is obnoxious noise for lazy people.  Real, active, productive people with a godly work ethic eschewed TV and listened to Dr. Dobson extol the virtues of spanking on the godly radio while they clean.

My father on the other hand, is a stalwart fan of TV.  He loves law, war, and detective shows and anything in black and white. I believe my parents mostly have a truce about TV at this point.

Does this hoar frost make my rose hips look big?

When I was 18, I found a $100 bill and a pager in an alley in Anchorage (my child-groom and I would hitch a ride into Anchorage about once a month for groceries and fast food.)  With that bill, we bought a TV.  With that TV we watched Rat Net: Rural Alaska Television Network (now called ARCS apparently, probably in a misguided attempt to be cool).  Rat Net collected the best shows from all of the major channels and served them up to us, peppered with riveting Gulkana and Copper Center town meetings, of course.  It was by far the best TV network in the world.  I could have watched it all day.  In fact, I did.  I curled up in our rusty pink trailer, smoked a hell of a lot of Matanuska ThunderFu**, choked on Jack Daniel's, ate can after can of Stagg Chili, and box after box of Lucky Charms (my mom called them Yucky Charms) and watched every type of Star Trek available. I also played pool and skipped most of my classes at Alaska Bible College until I was unwelcome there. I'm sure this experience is not new to most Freshmen college students away from their health-nut, TV-nazi parents for the first time, except for the part about not being allowed to re-enroll (as if I wanted to! pshaw!).

When he left, he kept the TV (along with, I've just discovered, most of our wedding photos). And I proudly went TV-less. Although every time I'm in a hotel I basically glue myself in front of the magic box and stare so hard I need eye-drops. We finally bought a used TV three years ago during the big switch to digital. We intentionally bought a TV that doesn't work for anything other than DVD's and VHS.  And then over a year ago, the kids got a Wii and we were able to stream Netflix's mediocre, but ad-free, on-demand offerings.  And then I got bashed in the head and all TV-hell broke loose. My TV-less-raised daughter now has three hobbies, all of them TV shows. Whatever, it's her life now.

After the initial four months or so of my head injury, during which I laid flat on my back in dark rooms with very very little computer or TV interactions, I was able to lay down on the couch in the basement and watch a little of the paltry Netflix offerings.  And then I watched a little more.  I still have to watch my watching, because there is definitely a limit to the amount of flickering screens I can take.  But it's forced me to shed my TV hang-ups.  There isn't much else for me to do.  I still have trouble following other people's plot-lines and TV allows me to float in and out of attention without offending anyone or causing harm. Movies are a little long for me to follow yet, but a 20 to 40 minute show is doable.

And it's all so fascinating and makes me feel like I'm 18 and stoned again.  Story, plot, characters, suspense. All of the things my current condition prohibits me from participating in fully in reality, I can vicariate with TV.  I've binge-watched: Parks and Recreation (twice, and the beauty is I couldn't remember anything from the first time around), Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it's spin-off Angel, Mythbusters. I was surprised by the reality show, Clean House, of a genre I normally hate.  Clean House de-junks people's homes to re-vitalize the house, giving new life to both the decor and the people inside. Plus Niecy Nash, the hostess at one point, was awesome.  I watched this as my house became evermore cluttered and confused from not having me constantly organizing and de-cluttering. And every dream I had was just being in an empty house taken down to it's studs -- no action or adventure or plot, just me and the beams and lathe of old empty houses. 

empty Love in the Mist seed pod in the frozen mist

I loved Clean House for peaking into other people's houses and lives and seeing the way our feelings and environment are so entangled, and seeing us all as humans struggling with the awkwardness of life and it's multiple layers and competing demands and impossible situations.  I loved that someone would come and help you out of your dark spot; help is there.  I needed to see that 140 some times, over and over: the life-mess and then the help coming and showing you how to clean it up.  I saw that I too deserved help cleaning up my head and my injury. And then I got myself in to 8 therapies, all useful, all necessary, all cutting in to my personal relationship with TV, but worth it nonetheless.

Now I have a new obsession: Say Yes to the Dress.  Brides shop for wedding gowns at a New York fancy pants dress gallery.  "Schlopp!" My friend cried, "For the love of all that is holy, stop watching that garbage!"  But I have dealt with "TV is garbage," before and those barbs don't even scratch the surface with me.  I've been laying around for 14 months, because I have to, and I have become immune to imagined (or real, but no one's actually said anything) charges of laziness and TV-garbage (that one's real).  Okay, maybe not totally immune, but I've got a lot of antibodies. 

The brides are New Yorkers mostly, Jewish girls who will marry a man in a yarmulke beneath a chuppah. And also Catholic mob brides marrying men named Sal and Vito who are twice their age and three times their size. And there are Southern Belles and Beauty queens and tom boys breaking out of character for a day, and two dykes (finally!) in white pant suits.  And women from all over the world.  I have no idea who the brides are in real life: gold diggers, narcissists, two-faced daddy's little precious princesses or maybe sweethearts, thoughtful and kind, adventurers, brave hearts, and generous souls. There's no way to tell, most of the time. No matter who they are, or what their hangups, this dress shopping is a snap shot of magic, in my opinion.  Surprised by myself, I've thought possibly too much about why I could possibly like this show and after taking a few pages of notes, I think I've figured it out.

sole mates?

Is it the romance of the blushing bride? Hell no. At this point, I feel sorry for the brides.  Marriage is like doing dishes through the years in the proper, home-ec order: glasses (easy, clear, shiny), plates wiped clean by a round or two with a clothe, silverware with a few tight spots, and finally, the pots and pans with their baked on shit that has to soak for ten years before you can even look at it.  And finally, I expect to be looking in resignation, at stained cookie sheets and pots for the rest of my life much in the same way my mother looks at my father watching TV. Right now, we're at the scrubbing-the-nasty stage. Plus there's the bonus head injury which brings with it an 80% divorce rate due to changed personalities, absurdly lopsided divisions of labor and time/money crunches that are insurmountable. Despite having professional help through the rough, I still don't find marriage to be a particularly romantic idea right now.  The 50th anniversary we were recently asked to applaud at church turned my stomach.  I actually grabbed Huck's knee and groaned in nausea: so much work for so much monotony. And yet the alternative is even more nauseating.

Frida is wearing my dress!

Is it the dresses?  I do love a good costume.  But I've never been a fan of clothes shopping.  I would not want to try on 40 million giant dresses.  I wouldn't want to spend a day critiquing myself in the mirror. And if it's anything like buying shoes, I'd annoy everyone, especially myself, with my indecisiveness. Also, spending thousands on one dress is not something that would amuse me.  My dresses were: #1 My grandmother's 1940's wedding dress. Free. A more perfect dress there has never been: cream brocade with a sweet little train.  And #2 was an emerald green punjabi with actual gold decals that I picked up, without trying it on, in Pondicherry, India for $15 US dollars. It was unflattering. But I succeeded in avoiding the task of picking out a dress.

My MIL made the passion flower cake

Am I standing in judgement over these brides? Do I watch it with voyeuristic horror, a la Toddlers and Tiaras (I could only handle 6 episodes) screaming at the screen.  Nah, I don't think so. I wouldn't be addicted to that.


These women try on these dress, bewildered by this rumor that there would be something called "the one," the dress that was meant for them, for their wedding.  I didn't believe it either. But show after show, it happens more often than not.  They find THE dress. And it's obvious to the bride, the sales consultant and the camera.  THE dress transforms the woman and they usually cry. They come into themselves, their own; their essence is enhanced by THE dress. Meeting oneself like this; it's a spiritual experience. Maybe I didn't have that with my wedding dresses, but I've had it with other objects.  And it turns dressmaking and designing (and sales!) into a high calling, into yogis, creating a path and an object that calls a woman into her truest self. Fashion (and TV, for that matter) is not all shallow frivolity, as I've always thought. It's a powerful magic.  And it's pleasant to think that right now, someone is making something, you don't even know what it is, but it has the power to bring you to yourself, to help you see your best self.  And some day you might find it.

The other dresses may be nice, may look pretty.  Hell, they ALL look pretty. The bride knows when a dress is great, but not quite. And then they know when it's perfect. There will be a dress that will transform every woman, of every size and age and proportion.  She will find this dress that radiates her essence, and she will fall in love again, but this time with her own precious self.  Sometimes the dress is exactly what they had in mind.  Sometimes the dress is something completely different, not what they were looking for or expected. Sometimes the moment is large and loud.  Sometimes the moment needs quietness and solitude to blossom.

crab apples in their wedding gowns

The things they say when they try on the dress: I feel powerful, I feel more "me" than I've ever felt before, I want everyone to feel what I'm feeling right now, I feel like a princess, like a goddess. One friend says, "You look so beautiful!"  and the bride, a bulky girl, her body a rebellion of all our nutty culture holds dear, she says, "I know!" They glow. The irrefutable truth of their power and pure beauty hits them and hits everyone around them.

Who they bring along with them is crucial and the fault lines in the relationships are immediately obvious.  Some brides bring moms and sisters and friends perfectly capable of being supportive.  Maybe they don't like the dress personally, but when they see the bride glowing and crying in it, they know to shut the hell up and be supportive.  Usually it is not a struggle, they see the look on the bride's face, they see her transformed and powerful and herself and they cry too, easily.  The dress is just a prop, the tool that works the magic. This is what love is, I think.  We see that essence when we love and we long to see it manifest, to have the whole world also see that best self, that essence. We can't push, we can't make it happen, we can't even predict what it will look like when it shows up, but when it does, oh how can we not love that?  Who can look on the woman transformed in this way and not love her? Any woman, any person.  We who love simply long for the object of our affection to radiate their beauty this obviously all of the time, and when we get a moment to see it, without the baggage of life's trials and cruddy tight spots and annoying habits, it's glorious. The dreams of the loving observer are also manifested, the dream of seeing you in all of your dreamy and priceless best-ness.

20 years ago

Ah, but then there are the train-wrecks. The bride who brings her family and then the friends she chose having come from such a family. There are the entourages who believe their job is to critique rather than witness a holy radiance. They ignore the bride's face and her feelings and when she is feeling her transformation, they will blurt out: "that's not you," as if they could know, as if it was up to them.  They will make fun of the dress of her dreams: like a mummy, like a marshmallow, like too much frosting.  They will be impatient, or insensitively too playful.  And it breaks your heart to watch.  The sales woman will work to separate the bride from her ignorant party.  They will keep her in the room a little longer, alone with each dress, so she can decide before she presents herself to her calloused entourage. And the sales woman will say, "If this is your dress, then you have to speak up, clearly." They will say, "It's your day.  It's your dress." And don't we all need those reminders?  Don't we all have a calloused entourage somewhere in our lives that doesn't care how we feel, what we want, feels that love is about criticizing you to their idea of perfection?  But at the end of the day it's our dress, our day, our essence, our decisions and our own power.  We all need a sales associate to separate us from the rowdy audience, to give us space alone to decipher ourselves and then to stand by us when we walk out into the world and there's no applause and they don't seem aware that we've already made our decisions and they make us feel powerful and alive.  You hope the bride goes home and watches her family on TV and sees clearly how wrong they are and goes out and eats Lucky Charms and watches TV until she can figure out her own way, what she wants, until she feels strong enough to ignore the entourage or even leave their misguided guidance behind. Eventually, maybe some day, like last weekend, a mother will visit her daughter and they will watch TV together and the mother will like it because it makes her daughter happy.