Open Book

It's never too late to have a happy childhood.

1. Tom Robbins is right, you know. Happy childhoods aren't only for the small of age; they are also the constant reinventions of the young at heart.
2. It can't go without acknowledgement, despite its over-hyped obviousness, so let's just get this out of the way, here and now: it's hot. Hot. Hot. Hot.
3. What a funny looking little word, that.
4. Yesterday, I took my uncle out for lunch in celebration of his 77th birthday. He's a gem of a human being, with a legendary sense of humor and a megawatt smile to go with his booming laugh. We had a great couple of hours together, and really should do that sort of thing more often.
5. The downside to our time together came as he was updating me on the wheres and whens and whats, the comings and goings, of my various cousins. As I sat there listening to one tale of woe after another, I was struck by the depth and breadth of dysfunction in my extended family. It sort of broke my heart a little. It also reinforced my awareness of just how lucky and blessed I truly am in this life of mine.
6. The other day, a woman offered me a piece of gum. I took it, thanking her, and she pulled a second piece out, handing it to me, as well. "Oh, one is plenty. Thank you!" I said. "You have to take two," she stated, matter-of-factly, a slight look of panic in her eyes. "It unnerves me to have an odd number of sticks left in the pack." I took the proffered piece and put it in my pocket, and watched as calm was restored to her face.
7. Hey...we all have our quirks, right?
8. I picked up a copy of Joan Didion's 'The Year of Magical Thinking' with the intention of giving it to my mother to read. Instead, I devoured it again myself. What a potent little book, fraught with raw and honest self-examination of one woman's grief. 
9. I've taken to reading on the front porch in the evenings, once the stinging heat of late afternoon has given way to slightly cooler temps and wistful breezes, pregnant with the promise of thunderstorms that never materialize. It's a lovely place to park oneself and get lost in other worlds. I even splurged on a two dollar light that clips onto my book, enabling me to see past the hour when the long summer day plunges into the sudden onset darkness of a short summer's night.
10. Up until yesterday, there had been a collection of inexpensive throw pillows piled on the porch swing. Now they're gone, pilfered by somebody for some reason I cannot even begin to unravel. It bugs me. Of all the things ripe for the picking on my front porch and in my gardens - small sculptures, a leather backgammon set, candles, a time-worn gnome - they took my cheap pillows. Why, do you suppose?
11. We - the husboyfriend and I - have been researching a bit for our trip to New England this fall. We are flying into Burlington, Vermont, spending a night and day there, and then heading east to the Maine coast for three nights and four days in Cape Elizabeth, staying at this jewel of a place, just outside of Portland proper. We are renting a car and going where the road leads us, meandering and wandering and exploring, with the faintest outline of an itinerary, just in case we need some inspiration along the way. 
12. Anticipation is one of the best things in life. I believe this heart and soul. Having a sure thing, just on the horizon, waiting...; it's one of the reasons I'm such a planner, I think.
13. And now this day awaits, planned to the hilt in its own right. It's going to be a full and busy one, right up through late evening. If I'm honest, I'd rather park myself right here where I am and spend these next hours dancing with the thoughts suddenly waltzing through my head. Alas, I am a grown up, however reluctantly so, and there is work to be done.

And the livin' is easy.

It's shaping up to be one of those perfect, quintessential Sundays 'round these parts.

I woke up to an empty house and a fresh brewed pot of coffee, courtesy of the husboyfriend and his early tee time. Relishing the quiet, I managed to polish off two cups of the bold roast elixir and four chapters of a book before forcing myself to fully get up, throw some clothes on and start thinking about the day splayed out before me. There's real luxury in that sort of languid awakening; no rush, no nagging voices reminding me of all those things I should be doing, no wrestling with self-induced laziness guilt prodded by the awareness of another's presence in the house, busily and constructively and actively doing stuff.

Bliss, really.

Now that I've indulged myself with such a slow, gentle entrance to the morning, I feel a bit like busily, constructively and actively doing some stuff myself.

It's cool outside this morning, relative to the recent draining heat wave, anyway. There's a fifty-fifty feeling in the air: in might rain; it might not. The sun may grace us with its presence; it might not. This, my friends, makes for perfect gardening conditions, and my weedy, leggy, heat stroked beds are calling my name. I'm sending them a message via telepathy. "Patience," I say using only the power of my mind. "I'll be along shortly."

If I didn't know better, I'd swear they just answered back with a mental sigh of "hurry up."

_____________

We went to a pool party yesterday afternoon, thrown by a co-worker of my husband's. She emailed an invitation to the entire office nearly a month ago, laying out plans for an afternoon and evening of fun, food and comraderie. She sent out a reminder email last week, asking for confirmations of attendance, the better to ensure she had adequate supplies of food and drink. Seventeen people responded in the affirmative, with their plus ones, their kids and their covered dish offerings.

Four people and their better halves showed up.

I cannot get over how utterly disgusted I am with the other thirteen people who decided not to show, and couldn't even be bothered to make a simple courteous call to the hostess to let her know their plans had changed.

The couple hosting the party live about 25 minutes outside the city proper in a lovely, quiet, rural area. Their home was beautiful, the gardens meticulous, the interior pristine, and the pool area festively festooned. In addition to the bring-your-own beverages, they had two massive coolers filled with "just in case" beer. In addition to the guest provided side dishes, they had a couple of pork tenderloins, beer marinated brats, hot dogs for the kids, and chicken ready to go on the grill. The hostess's husband, a bar owner, had even closed his establishment for the day - a SATURDAY - in order to fulfill his duties as grill master and host with the most.

In short, they spent - easily - a couple hundred dollars and lost a day's revenue in anticipation of opening their home to a whole cadre of co-workers.

I dreaded going - as I am wont to do - because I anticipated an afternoon spent trying to hide my social ineptitude from a crowd of fifty or so people, many of whom my husband works with day in and day out. I ended up having a wonderful time - as I am also wont to do - enjoying easy conversation, plate after plate of good eats, and several ice cold brews with a small group of warm, interesting, genuinely nice people.

And as we left, I nearly seethed with loathing directed toward the ungracious rude majority of folks in my husband's office. I felt so bad for the couple who had put so much effort into the day, even though they were beyond gracious and seemed to have a great time despite the no-shows.

I just don't understand what is wrong with people these days. Whatever happened to manners? To etiquette and thoughtfulness? When did it become acceptable to be rude - call it arrogant, even - without apology?

Sometimes people suck. Hard.

But today, I choose to focus on the kindness of the host and hostess, who did a good and heartwarming thing with grace and generosity beyond the pale. And I choose to remember my own manners, in the form of a handwritten thank you note that I'll be dropping in the mailbox across the street momentarily.

And I'm going to spend the day reflecting on Ghandi's powerful words of wisdom.

You must be the change you wish to see in the world.

While I'm fairly certain he meant this in the larger than life, global perspective sense, it's fitting for every day use, too. If you want to live in a courteous, gracious, hope-filled world full of goodness and light, start by having a good, hard look in the mirror.

Ignorant idiot rude people suck, yes they do.

Screw 'em.

Our saving grace is that there are still people in this world up to the task of drowning them out with kindness.

Let it begin with me.

 _____________

I feel so much better for getting that off my chest, lest I risked annoying my husband with my own annoyance, spewing my disgust without end until he might finally give me The Look - the one that says without saying, "OHMYGODWOULDYOUSHUTUPALREADY." And he totally would have, this I know because I have the uncanny ability of predicting our future conversations by reflecting on similar past ones. I just know. I've been there.

Please consider this my thank you note for allowing me to avoid such unpleasantness with him this afternoon by venting my steam out on you this fine summer morning.

Ya'll are awfully sweet that way. It's why I love you so. Granted, if you choose to come here, you have no choice in the matter, but that just makes your sticking with me all the greater a random act of kindness.

And having let it go, now I'm free to move on.

I'm going to go throw on some shorts and a grubby t-shirt, steal a pair of my husband's socks from his drawer since all of mine are in the laundry, throw on my formerly white, now dirt black tennis shoes, and toil in the gardens with my dog in tow.

After that, who knows? I'm thinking an ice cold glass of lemonade, a good book and some quality time with the front porch swing might be my destiny.

It's summertime, after all.

And the livin' is easy.

 -------------------------------

(Ed. update: It's hotter than it looks out there. If you need me, I'll be poolside. The weeds live to see another day.)

But then again, too few to mention.

There should be some sort of law or government regulation to protect me from myself, disarming my ability to open the 'Compose Post' tab and start typing while less than lucid.

It's too damned early for my tastes, coffee or no coffee, and I can offer you a money back guarantee on the proposition that staying up into the wee, wee hours of the morning watching the original 'True Grit' on the quite aptly named boob tube appliance will haunt me later today. I'm guessing by three o'clock or so this afternoon, give or take.

BUT, the early hour, it is for a good cause. My favorite co-worker - the one who typically opens the store every morning of the work week - and his soon-to-be wife are having their first baby today! So my complaining is, clearly, entirely selfish and my whining entirely self-absorbed.

Enough with that. 

Right, then.

A few days ago, I shared a little secret with you. One many months in the cooking up, many nights in the dreaming up, and many heartbeats in the "could this really be possible?" cacophony of the fantastical.

As it happens, yes, it really is possible. Possible in that banks are willing to lend to me, the owner is ready to sell to me, the Small Business Administration is ready to sign off on my business plan, and my husband (and financial better half) is ready to encourage me.

And still, even as I was composing that post divulging my little secret, I knew that it was improbable. After many long hours attempting to construct some semblance of business accounting out of 16 years of another person's haphazard hobby, and piles of research, and taking serious scissors to existing expenses, and refining processes...the truth became as obvious as the sky is blue.

This place is a city landmark. Its owner is entrenched, in the business and the community, and is beloved. It - as an entity - is beloved. It is sustainable - just - as it is.

Treat it like a brand new enterprise, with a previously non-existent high dollar rent figure and the little matter of a loan to repay, and the sustainability evaporates like water on a too hot day.

There was - is - no rationally justifiable way around this fact. It's a bookstore, in a slipping away printed book market. It's an established enterprise, with no magic bean of mystical new revenue streams to be had. It's a multi-hued dream with a black and white overlay of reality.

So, it's not happening. The risks to my family's financial bottom line greatly outpace the rewards to my ego, my id, or even to my heart of hearts.

I still love this place, from the top of my head to the tips of my toes. I will stay on here, coordinating events, ordering books, marketing, managing staff, striving to increase the bottom line, as long as the owner will have me. I will stay on here, doing everything I can to maintain the sense of tradition and history, the sustainability. Because, really? There is no pressing reason to leave, no alternate buyer on the immediate horizon, no place I'd rather spend my days (nights/weekends/you know how retail rolls).

And it's not all bad - far from it. In fact, I feel a great weight lifted. It's hard work, chasing a dream; harder still to face the diminishment of same. But an interesting thing happened as I gallivanted down this particular cobbled  garden path. I began to notice the roads less traveled, in the form of ideas, and seeds of ideas, and fresh possibilities. I began to tweak the business plan I'd put so much thought and passion into until it grew into something altogether new and different and...exciting.

Until it blossomed into a dream of its own.

There's an empty storefront across the street.

It just might have my name on it one of these days.

Hey...stranger things have happened, right?

You betcha.

:-)

It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.

1. Imagine what a world we could live in if all its peoples roamed the earth with the words of e.e. cummings swirling through their veins, pumping life into their hearts with every step. The title of this post makes do with but twelve of those words, and still manages to give me strength and comfort.
2. It's hot out there. Hot enough to make me want to start my own political party. The "It's Too Damn Hot!" party. There is a reason I love winter and am loathe, at times, to give due appreciation to summer's so-called charms. That reason: the heat. In winter, you can always throw on another sweater or blanket. In the too damned hotness of summertime, there is only so much you can take off.
3. You combine the first two items on the list, and I'll give you a Maxine quote: "It's not the heat; it's the damned humanity!" Had that one on a t-shirt that I wore until it literally (not really) begged me to be retired to dust rag pastures.
4. Have you ever read Ann Patchett? Bel Canto, maybe? If not, you should. I just finished her latest - State of Wonder - and feel I would be remiss, and also possibly a really horrible friend, not to mention bookseller, if I didn't recommend it to you with the highest esteem possible. It's a beautiful, rich, indelible book. My favorite of 2011 so far.
5. This is my favorite line from Laura Miller's review of the book, which you should also read (here): "Patchett doesn't argue for the potency of her female characters, but simply takes it for granted." And that...is a long overdue thing.
6. Speaking of potent women, Schmutzie - a blogger/entrepreneur/creative light who has often inspired me on a wide array of fronts over the years - has resurrected the best meme ever born in the blogosphere with her 'Where I'm From' post. If you've never tried your hand at this before, now would be the *perfect* time. Here's how I responded, five years ago.
7. Speaking of responding, I have read and been touched by your comments on my recent attempts to start posting here again. I thank you with all my heart, and am mostly in awe that there are still one or two people out there who bothered to remember this place once existed, as it endeavors to exist again. I often want to respond to your comments with comments of my own, but tend to doubt you'd ever see them. Would you? When you leave a comment somewhere, do you go back to see if someone replied to you, reacted to you, joined you? Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. And more often the latter, since the advent of Twitter. It occurs to me that I no longer have any idea what proper blog protocol is or should be.
8. We finally watched The King's Speech the other night. Great movie. Still think Jeff Bridges was robbed of a second consecutive Oscar for his inimitably brilliant portrayal of Rooster Cogburn.
9. My dog is sitting snuggled up right beside me, as close as he can get without actually sitting on my laptop. My dog needs a bath. Serious business.
10. Did you know the National Book Festival is right around the corner? Did you know it happens on exactly the same day my beloved Mountaineers play, arguably, the biggest home game in the recent history of its football program, against the vaunted LSU Tigers? Did you know I am beside myself and twisted beyond repair inside over the absolutely horrid thought of having to make a CHOICE? It is a conflict of interest I would wish on no man, enemy or friend. It feels a little like...while I will *win either way? I will also lose either way. Sorta ingloriously vainglorious, that.
11. Over the course of the past week or two, I have caught myself internally belittling and berating myself, without end. I'm socially awkward. Don't fit in, exactly right, anywhere. Don't take care of myself. Am haphazard, at best, with my own health. Am lazy with my appearance, my ambition, my dreams. This is a terrible, but long standing habit. I sincerely want to break it. But the only way to break it is to change some of those self-criticisms (that are based, let's face it, in some fundamental truths), and I've tried and failed at that 1000 times before. What can make it different this time? What can make me change this, overhaul my inner self to effect real outer consequence? I'm at a bit of a loss. And thinking this whole subject might be a post for another day, if it hadn't already been many posts on many prior days.
12. Related: why is it so often true that my first response to negative thinking is food? Scratch that. My first response to most anything is food. I hate food for making me love it so much.
13. Um, wow. Nothing like ending on a positive note, right? Did I mention it's too damn hot? 'Cause it is. And get offa my lawn, youse! Sheesh!

Days of Glory

What a weekend.

My 30th high school reunion was this weekend. First thought: the fourth of July is an awfully strange weekend to hold a 30th high school reunion. Second thought: 30th high school reunion?!? Geez. Between that milestone having now passed and the whole impending grandma-dom, I am officially a geezer, I reckon. Although it was kind of nice - and also, possibly, a bit of a stretch - to be nominated as one of the classmates who still looks the most like their senior yearbook picture.

Gotta take those feel good crumbs when they're offered, even when extended by the hand that would slap you silly, given the chance.

BUT ANYWAY.

It was also, as mentioned, the fourth of July weekend. This means, in my family, big doins and get togetherins. For starters, my parent's anniversary falls on June 30th. This would have been their 49th . But beyond that, my oh-so-lovely mother celebrates her birthday on the very same day as this adolescent nation of ours, and so, of course, the long holiday weekend...well, in my family, it's a "thing."

This year, my oh-so-lovely mother turned 70 (doesn't look a day over 50, I swear on everything I hold dear). Yet another milestone, reached on her first birthday after Dad's passing. She decided she wanted to celebrate it, and mark their unreached anniversary, in a rather unique way.

Which is how it came to pass that on Saturday morning, my brother, mother and I loaded ourselves into the car and made the 2 1/2 hour drive to the Greenbrier resort, a place near and dear to my parent's hearts. It's where they spent their first night as husband and wife. It's where they went back, again and again and again, year after year after year, creating memories that they talked up about right up to the end. It's where, in a back porch conversation over wine one summer evening, they agreed they'd like to spend at least a little piece of eternity.

And so it was there, in the gorgeous flower beds, on the first tee of the Old White golf course, even in the spring house, that we proceeded to dust the grounds with the small amount of Dad's ashes we'd kept aside for just such unceremonious ceremony.

I wonder sometimes what people must think of this long good-bye that has enveloped my father's death. Over the course of the month since he passed, there have been no fewer than three full-on memorial services in two cities. But the spreading of his ashes at the Greenbrier was a culmination of sorts, I think.

While I've managed to keep mostly together throughout the course of events of the past thirty days, I wasn't so lucky on Saturday. I couldn't help it, the tears came, and I cried. I bawled. Boo-hooed. Blubbered. And could not stop. I even cried all the way through our too fancy lunch. Maybe the tears were overdue; maybe I'd hoarded them from the prying eyes of observers. Maybe my dad lent me a touch of stoicism, knowing me and my propensity for crying at the drop of a hat and my long-stated advocacy of The Big Cry. And maybe, when it was the three of us alone, saying a potent, meaningful, intimate final farewell, he let me go, just enough, to let me go. 

It was positively cathartic, and exactly what I needed.

We all felt a little lighter of heart on the trip home, I think.

As it happened, despite my initial misgivings, it was a very good day, indeed.

So the weekend was. A couple reunion events, four nights of hosting/grocery shopping and cooking for/entertaining 10+ family members - including my mother's dog, regular shifts at the bookstore to accommodate days off for co-workers, fireworks, two dogs utterly freaked out by said fireworks, and one bittersweet day trip later, the weekend went. 

It's been a lovely sentimental journey.

But now, I must say, I am really looking forward to ... looking forward.