Seymour’s Fat Lady

Okay, I felt fine until my dear husband shared how deeply rattled he is by the whirlwind of change sweeping through the apartment. The more space that’s cleared, the more energy I feel racketing around. I gather he’s getting a kind of puppy-in-a-big-cage syndrome now that the padding of objects has been removed.

At any rate, I will never forget the catch in his voice when he talked about his grandmother’s canisters, which I inadvertently gave to the thrift shop down the street. It seems Rod likes to use objects that his relatives used. I understand this intellectually, because objects become pregnant with people’s energy, and it must be a great comfort to participate in the continuance of said energy after someone dies.

All the same, it’s a lot to ask that I share my kitchen with dead women whose taste in decor is very different than mine.

Our wrangling climaxed with me muttering, “You’re the one keeping a box of strangers’ used dentures in the closet, but I”M crazy because I want to give away the microwave?”

Moving is not easy.

I went to the thrift shop and recovered three of the four canisters. I put my dried beans in them and stashed them in the cabinet. 

We have the same anxiety, Rod and I. We just deal with it in different ways. He tries to stave off danger by accumulating possessions. I try to keep us safe by accumulating information and instituting the healthiest possible lifestyle.

For example, I want stainless steel cookware, and I’m convinced that the microwave is not only unhealthy, but also it’s redundant and therefore unnecessary.

These are the kind of beliefs that drive Rod nuts. He thinks there’s insufficient evidence that either microwaves or nonstick cookware is dangerous to one’s health, and he thinks I’m becoming a fanatic.

The back bedroom is unrecognizable! We got rid of so much stuff that the room functions perfectly as a combination office/reading nook. I am exhilarated by the energy zooming around in here. We’ve cleared space in most of the rooms, cabinets, closets, and drawers. Once we clear the piles of objects waiting around for their new owners, we’ll be almost ready to go.

My theory to all of this reorganization is that it will be a lot easier to move if we decide now what we want to keep, rather than hauling all our junk to a new place and sorting it out there. I don’t have a lot of work going on at the end of August, so I’ve got the time right now. I’ll be working come September, and lately fall just seems like one short skid into Christmas.

I feel rich and bountiful and totally at peace in this spacious apartment.

I just finished reading _Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally_, written by two Canadian journalists who embarked on a plan to eat only what grew within 100 miles of their apartment in Vancouver.

It was an amazing and inspiring memoir. Anyone who loves food and worries about the earth will enjoy reading a detailed account that includes two points of view, many yummy recipes, and tips on canning and preserving. As Rod and I strive to reduce our carbon footprint, we think about how much fuel is needed to sustain our lifestyle and are dismayed.

For my part, I ate what I thought was a healthy lunch of wheat bread, cashew butter, and fresh figs, with corn on the cob and a salad of romaine, radishes, scallions, carrots, mushrooms, celery, cukes, and parsley, in a balsamic vinaigrette. Water to drink.

Ten minutes after I ate, I had an asthma attack. WTF? 

Is it the pesticides that maybe didn’t rinse off? Is it the wheat? The fermentation factor of the vinegar or the mushrooms? I’m sick of feeling sick, and I’ll do anything to establish a little control of my environment–which is bad news for Rod, as our sometimes-conflicting brands of obsessive compulsive disorder start to clash.

All I know is, he thinks I’m crazy because I’d rather spend hours cooking a meal with friends than sit around watching television. We had a pirogi party once, and it’s one of my fond memories. He also doesn’t quite understand how deeply offended and shamed I am when he opens up a tin of processed soup. It feels like an arrow through my heart, that I, an Italian spouse, have to sit and watch my husband eat food that will kill him; food that he actually prefers to my homemade food, when the craving hits him.

I almost  never crave junk food, and when I do it’s because I’m depressed. If I had a live-in chef, I would never eat junk food.

Naturally, I did a google search to see who in New York has tried the 100 mile diet experiment, and I came up with a few Web sites that should help those in the NYC area wanting to try it. The last two links are specifically related to NYC greenmarkets:

http://www.localharvest.org/

http://www.locavores.com/

http://www.slowfoodusa.org/change/index.html

http://www.eatlocalchallenge.com/

http://www.cenyc.org/greenmarket/faq#q3

http://www.cenyc.org/files/gmkt/map.pdf

It was great seeing my friend Renee, sister of George the Voodoo Sisters’s victim. Thanks, Renee, for letting us stay with you. She is one of the friends I’ve known the longest. We met at my first publishing job in Princeton, New Jersey, and although she moved to Chicago years ago we’ve kept in touch through letters and e-mails and phone calls, and occasionally some crafty things sent through the mail. She sent me panties with the word “wench” stenciled on them. I sent her a tote bag crocheted out of plastic-bag yarn.

Renee is exactly the same size I am, which is convenient because we can share clothing. She just lent me some formalwear so that I can attend an upcoming wedding in style.

We’ve vacationed together and found we have similar tastes and rhythms, so that our time together is relaxing and invigorating in equal measure. I often wish she lived in NYC, but then again it’s nice to have a home base in the Midwest.

We also like to experiment with food, love to dance, enjoy fine wines, and require regular exercise in our routine, so we walked all over Chicago and snacked our way up and down Broadway.

Rod is allergic to cats, so I can’t have any, and I love visiting Mojo and Jinx when I go to Renee’s place. I got my kitty fix this weekend, as Mojo cuddled up with me at night in the guestroom.

The day before I get on an airplane, I wake up one or two hours earlier than usual. I have a lot to do. The mission is to make sure my personal effects are in tip-top shape. That way, if I die on the airplane, no one will have cause to judge me posthumously. For I am sure that my mother, even in the midst of her excessive grief at my demise, would find time to remark, “What’s all this dirt in the crisper from those organic vegetables she buys?”

I scrub the refrigerator, inside and out. Make sure no produce will molder in the time I’ll be away, which includes stocking frozen veggies for my husband, for I am not convinced he will cook the fresh ones, and then I’ll be at 30,000 feet obsessing about the florets that will parch into starched husks without my tender ministrations just in case I do not make it onto the ground alive.

Then I go shopping for which books to take on the plane with me. The reading fare must be light enough to permit me to pray fervently as I read so that the plane will stay in the air: This caveat precludes bringing literature that’s been on my must-read list for ages, because I can’t concentrate sufficiently on Joan Didion when I’m seized with existential dread. Stories must also be absorbing enough to hold my attention: this requirement rules out trashy magazines, because I just don’t care about the lives of celebrities. It also rules out poetry, which is too short.

For my trip to Chicago tomorrow, I picked up a book of Joyce Carol Oates short stories. I figure that a work of fiction like Haunted: Tales of the Grotesque will allow me a catharsis for my paralyzing fright.

I pack my carry-on bag. Scour the stovetop, making sure to lift the range hood and get the crusty bits from around the burners underneath. I bleach the countertops to a sparkling white. Today, for good measure, I’m wiping down the cabinets with a mixture of water, vinegar, and tea tree oil.

I lay out the clothes I’ll wear on the flight, making sure they allow room to move and a few layers in case I am hot or cold. I reorganize all the clothes in my dresser drawers, making sure the tee shirt piles are neat and my socks are rolled. I sweep the floors, vacuum the rugs, and plump the throw pillows on the couch, arranging them so that the lavender pillows alternate with the red and the teal ones.

I wash all the dishes in the sink, dry them, and put them away.

Then I try to calm down by reading, drilling belly dance moves, watching television, cooking, taking a walk, breathing, practicing yoga, and calling all my loved ones just so that, if I am thrown from a jet that combusts over Delaware and I have a (mercifully) fatal heart attack as I’m plummeting to earth, friends and family will have a fresh memory of my dulcet voice.

Today I have to write an article, concoct a chana dal, shower, finish packing my bag, call everyone I know, and attempt to read Joan Didion’s _The Year of Magical Thinking_ before giving up and watching reruns of Reba’s sitcom while loathing myself because I’m a lazy yogi who can’t meditate and there’s the excellent chance I’ll pass out of this incarnation tomorrow when I’m soaring through the clouds, without ever having disciplined my mind so that I’ll probably reincarnate as a gnat.

If you are reading this, think of me tomorrow and send me good travel vibes. Say a rosary so that I arrive in Chicago safely.

Whole lotta family this weekend. Saturday we visited my parents in Monroe Township, New Jersey–always such a treat. Thanks to anti-anxiety medication, I no longer have an asthma attack when I pass into the town limits.

My parents creep me out because we’ve been estranged for the better part of twenty years. Reentry might be impossible; I don’t know yet. What I do know is that our interaction is so excruciatingly uncomfortable, so far from what we want from each other, that I just have to look at associating with them as a spiritual exercise akin to zazen exercises, pain as a form of awareness.

I am completely unable to enter into the joys of the summer suburban lifestyle. I am becoming more and more of a pain in the ass, now that everything makes me frickin’ wheeze. For example, I’m afraid to go swimming because I’m worried that the chlorine in the swimming pool will make me sick. I don’t want to sit in the sun, I don’t want to drink too much wine because I’m already on so many meds.

My sister-in-law’s bridal shower on Sunday was beautiful and low key. She was glowing with happiness, which made all our efforts worthwhile. Naturally I have Pyrex envy and am already thinking about registering somewhere just in case family members want to get us housewarming gifts.

Monday we went thrift shopping with my in-laws, mainly to look at furniture so that we can compare the prices in South Jersey to the Manhattan/Brooklyn prices. Rod and I have some tastes in common, and I’m looking forward to locating a rustic refectory table for the dining room.

Other interior decorating tastes are more disparate. I had to forcibly make myself stop giving things to the Salvation Army today, after four trips to and from our four-floor walkup.

I have a job interview tomorrow and a trip to Chicago planned for the weekend, which will include a belly dance performance. Last week I went to the psychiatrist, who changed my medication, so I feel spaced out while my body’s adjusting to the difference.

Rod just sprayed Lysol in the apartment, prompting me to have a wicked bad asthma attack. Seriously, people: Why are we using these toxic chemicals when there are natural alternatives?

Mix up two tablespoons of tea tree oil in two cups of water, put the mixture in a spray bottle. Done. There’s your Lysol.

I’m like a five-foot-tall canary in the mine: I can smell the danger before Rod can. He finds it frustrating that simple things like Windex can constrict my lungs like a Colombian boa. I’ll admit it does seem as though the older I get the more I resemble a high-maintenance purebreed dog, like a pug: eye problems, breathing problems, congenital laziness and a tendency to put on a belly.

What the pugs and I also have in common is unconditional love for our people.

When I first heard that our bid had been accepted, I boiled up a pound of pasta and proceeded to eat it out of the plastic strainer while it was cooling, the fusilli burning my fingertips. Flashback of childhood, me sneaking cold plain pasta out of the refrigerator at night when everyone else was asleep.

The second thing I did was cull through my belongings, playing my favorite game: If the apartment were on fire, what would I want to take with me?

Everything I haven’t looked at or touched in the last six months goes to the thrift store.

“It feels like we’re about to have a baby” I said to Rod two days ago.

It took two days of nightmares and cramming potato chips into my mouth. When I still didn’t get the message from my subconscious, the asthma kicked in. I can’t concentrate. I can’t read or sit through a movie.

This morning, my left eye won’t stop twitching. I thought I’d feel better after I dropped off stuff at the Salvation Army. The unavoidable sensation of something pursuing me. I need to be a moving target. The physical urge to go running as fast as I can.

I had a wonderful deep discussion with my very patient husband this morning, who stoically watched me bundling all my belongings into bags. The muscles in his face rippled handsomely as he clenched his teeth.

I explained that it calms me to purge my possessions, for the same reason that I never sit with my back toward the door in a restaurant.

When my corporate job of seven years evaporated into thin air, it took me five minutes to clear out my desk, and I had a tote bag in one of the drawers for just such an eventuality. Periodically, I’d been sending files to my home computer and making sure that nothing I needed would be left at the office. I pictured in detail the scenario of security escorting me out of the building with five minutes’ notice, and me airily swinging my bag filled with a Maleficent coffee mug, a box of Earl Grey tea, and a battered Chicago Manual of Style.

I dream of having a wardrobe like Daddy Warbucks’s or Einstein’s, made of just the quintessential multipurpose items.

I reread books like Anne Tyler’s _Morgan’s Passing_, in which the heroine buys a travel cosmetic kit when she’s thinking of fleeing her marriage, but then finds she has nothing to put in it.

I started out like Rod, my living space crammed to the rafters with books, DVDs, memorabilia. I saved even the piece of Bazooka that my high school sweetheart gave me. I dithered for years about whether I should chew it and THEN save it, as it sat hardening in a box of Valentine’s Day cards and love letters.

When that high school amour shot himself on his birthday this April, I had nothing concrete to hold onto. I’d let all my trinkets go during one of my many moves. I called my sister, crying. She agreed to look through the family photo albums, and she brought me some pictures of us from my prom.

They didn’t help process the grief at all. What I need of Don, I internalized years ago, and it is always there, indivisible from my very self.

This is what Rod doesn’t sufficiently understand: Nothing can separate us, ever. Even if we never saw each other again after today, I will be part Roderic forever, and I believe that includes my reincarnated lives, too. I don’t need anniversary cards to keep him near and dear to me. He’s part of my breath, my flesh, always. 

If there’s one thing I know from having lived through Don’s suicide, it’s that love never dies.